Saturday was National Geek Pride Day. Lets take a look at the some of the geeky media which might have shaped your childhood.

Minecraft – childhood defining

If you had to ask people aged 20-25 what piece of media reminds them of their childhood the most, I reckon the most common answer you’d get would be Minecraft.

Releasing in X, many school nights were spent surviving, creating and competing in this blocky world. The base gameplay, the limitless potential with mods and the beautiful soundtrack by C418 combined to create the ultimate back garden for 00s kids.

Even if you’ve never played Minecraft, I would highly recommend checking out the soundtrack on Spotify. It’s fantastic music in its own right and is great to study to.

There’s a reason why videos like this exist on YouTube:

Living vicariously through Ben 10’s childhood

He had superpowers. He was no ordinary kid. He was Ben 10.

Ben 10 was probably the most iconic show to come out of Cartoon Network’s heyday. It featured 10-year-old Ben Tenison, who had luckily been granted the a magic watch called an Omnitrix. The watch could turn him into 10 different Aliens, which helped him save the world on numerous occasions.

Sounds ridiculous. Is ridiculous. But it was colorful and action-packed. When you’re in Year 4, that’s all that really matters.

Bakugan Battle Brawlers

From all good toy shops, you could buy these little polymer spheres called Bakugan. They came with these metal trading cards which you would lay out and play like Pokemon cards.

The twist was that you needed to roll the Bakugan onto the metal card. If you hit the target, the magnets inside of the card would cause the Bakugan to pop out into a little monster, ready to fight your opponents Bakugan.

No one ever actually played the card game, but whoever had the most epic Bakugan at school was top dog. The anime on Cartoon Network also made it essential to have an up to date collection of these things, because otherwise you simply weren’t the main character. They were a bit like fashion pieces, actually.

Yu-Gi-Oh cards

Similarly to Bakugan, Yu-Gi-Oh cards were Japanese made collectables which decided the pecking order on the school playground.

Even more similarly to Bakugan, no one had any idea of how you were actually supposed to play them competitively, but each card had unique artwork and styling which just made them cool to look at.

Yu-Gi-Oh were seemingly infinite in variation, tradeable and sometimes shiny. We all know if something is shiny then it must be important to have.

Again, Yu-Gi-Oh had an anime, which new cards would release in tandem with. This meant you’d be visiting your local corner shop regularly, just for that small chance of finding the new Blue Eyes White Dragon.

Flash Games

Who didn’t have another tab open to play games on during ICT? Filling the void for those of us whose parents wouldn’t buy us actual video game consoles, flash games were a more than adequate replacement.

Addictive games like the Papa’s Restaurant games, Age of War and Fancy Pants’ Adventure represented every genre of game under the sun. There were also clones of actual video games, my personal favourite being a 2D version of Minecraft.

The best part about flash games was that the people running the websites knew the struggles of the kids playing them. Schools would block them, deeming them a distraction, so the sites were often titled things like “CoolMathsGames” to avoid being detected as a games website. Genius.

Adobe Flash, the technology which all the games were built on, was sadly discontinued at the end of 2020. However, the very best of flash games have been redeveloped using their own game engines. So, if you’re ever feeling nostalgic and want to revisit a flash game classic, then help you can still help yourself to some 64-bit magic.