90s Archives : Page 5 of 14 : The Retro Network

The Legacy of Goosebumps: How R.L. Stine’s Scary Stories Became a Generation’s Gateway to Horror

In the early 1990s, Scholastic took a gamble on a series of spooky chapter books aimed at middle-grade readers. What followed was a publishing phenomenon that would haunt bookstores, school libraries, and Scholastic Book Fairs

Ghost Castle: The Haunted Board Game That Turned Fear Into Fun

Mickey Yarber

In the mid-1980s, when board games were branching into three-dimensional designs and Halloween-themed fun was creeping into toy aisles, Ghost Castle emerged as a standout. Released by MB Games in 1985, Ghost Castle was more

How The Blair Witch Project Convinced the World It Was Real

Mickey Yarber

In the summer of 1999, moviegoers lined up for a horror film unlike anything they’d seen before, and many of them genuinely believed they were about to witness the final moments of three missing filmmakers.

The Alien Autopsy That Fooled the World

Mickey Yarber

In the mid-1990s, when grainy VHS tapes and tabloid TV ruled the airwaves, one broadcast sent shockwaves through living rooms across America: Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction? Airing on Fox in 1995, the special promised

Remembering Tales From the Cryptkeeper

Mickey Yarber

The 1950’s introduced us to Tales From the Crypt, a wry, sardonic E.C. Comics series that turned the saccharine theme of good versus evil on its head. Like its comic predecessor and the HBO horror anthology

How It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown Became a Cult Classic

Mickey Yarber

Before Halloween specials were a staple of primetime television, before animated characters were synonymous with seasonal rituals, there was a boy named Linus sitting in a pumpkin patch waiting for something magical. It’s the Great

WCW’s Chamber of Horror Match Was Halloween Havoc’s Wildest Match

Mickey Yarber

In the annals of professional wrestling, few matches are as gloriously over-the-top as WCW’s Chamber of Horrors bout at Halloween Havoc 1991. Held on October 27 at the UTC Arena in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the event

Fascinating Facts About Tales From the Crypt

Mickey Yarber

From its cackling host to its blood-soaked morality tales, Tales from the Crypt remains one of the most iconic horror anthology series of the late 20th century. Airing on HBO from 1989 to 1996, the

How Scream Resurrected Horror in the ’90s

Mickey Yarber

By the mid-1990s, horror movies had lost their bite. The slasher boom of the ’80s had fizzled into formulaic sequels and straight-to-video fare. Audiences were yawning at masked killers and recycled tropes. Then came Scream…a

Remembering Kenny Roger’s Roasters

Mickey Yarber

In the early 1990s, when celebrity-backed restaurant chains were all the rage, one country music legend decided to bring his Southern charm to the dinner table. Kenny Rogers Roasters wasn’t just a clever branding move,

Enter Now: The Age Of Apocalypse! Part 1

David Inguagiato

An X-Men Age Of Apocalypse retrospective. Reliving X-Men Alpha #1 Age of Apocalypse is an X-Men crossover event that ran from February 1995 to June 1995 throughout various newly named X-Men titles. The regular ongoing

ESPN2 Was the Sports Network Built For the ’90s

Mickey Yarber

On October 1, 1993, at exactly 7:30 p.m. ET, a new kind of sports network flickered to life. With a smirk and a wink, co-host Keith Olbermann opened the inaugural broadcast of SportsNight by welcoming viewers to

Fascinating Facts About the Original Mortal Kombat

Mickey Yarber

When Mortal Kombat hit arcades across the country in 1992, it didn’t just enter the fighting game arena…it uppercutted its way into pop culture history. Developed by Midway, this gritty, digitized brawler stood apart from

RoboCop in WCW: When Sci-Fi Met Suplexes

Mickey Yarber

In the annals of pro wrestling history, few moments are as bizarre, or as gloriously ’90s, as the night RoboCop walked into a WCW ring. Capital Combat: Return of RoboCop, held on May 19, 1990, at

The Rise and Fall of ShowBiz Pizza Place

Mickey Yarber

In the neon-lit world of 1980s family entertainment, few places captured the imagination of children quite like ShowBiz Pizza Place. With its animatronic band, arcade games, and cheesy slices of pizza, ShowBiz wasn’t just a

The ’90s Closed the Book On Saturday Morning Cartoons

Mickey Yarber

For generations of kids, Saturday mornings meant one thing: cereal in hand, eyes glued to the TV, and a lineup of animated heroes, slapstick antics, and toy-commercial interludes that stretched from dawn until lunch. But

HyperColor Was Going To Be the Fashion Trend Of the Future

Mickey Yarber

In the summer of 1991, fashion got weird—in the best way possible. That was the year Hypercolor shirts exploded onto the scene, turning ordinary cotton t-shirts into thermochromatic canvases that changed color with heat. For