NICK REBOOT: BRINGING OUR CHILDHOOD BACK
“Which 90s' cartoon network character are you?” Buzzfeed quizzes, hopeful YouTube searches and endless nostalgic discussions on everything from white keds to Backstreet Boys albums -- we just keep trying to bring back the golden days. For us, television was at its best back then and nothing they show now can ever compare. We trained ourselves in impeccable English from watching Cartoon Network, honed our sense of humour from watching “Friends” and the best thing to ever have happened to all of us, hands down, was Nickelodeon.
Recently, my precious friend Fatin Khandoker (mentioning his name to show how utterly grateful I am to him) made a brilliant discovery: Nick Reboot.
Nick Reboot (http://nickreboot.com/) is a website that gives you a 24 hour live stream of all our favourite Nickelodeon shows from the '90s and early 2000s, as well as some early '80s content. More than being able to watch all our old favourites, the funnier part is the old commercials and Numbers we'd grown up watching, such as Burger King and McDonald's adverts, commercials introducing Windows '97 as “the newest technology” and the universally favourite “Nick nick Nick Nick Nick Nick, Nick-elo-deon” jingle.
The most awesome part is that the shows are aired live and in random order, meaning that it's exactly like watching the old Nick Channel on TV -- you're watching what everyone else is watching. An option to turn on e-mail notifications lets you receive alerts 20 minutes in advance whenever your 5 chosen favourite shows are about to come up. My email inbox is now a towering mass of messages telling me how Tommy Pickles, Ginger, Keanen Rockmore, Clarissa and the All That crew are waiting for me, and I love it.
The streaming screen starts loading as soon as you visit the homepage and below it is a scroll of the lineup of shows coming up. To the right is a chat section, with a live flurry of discussions and funny comments from others who are online and watching the shows. A separate forum is also available for those wishing to take part in more of these nostalgic discussions.
A premium option is available for those who want to watch the shows on demand (like Netflix) at http://ondemand.nickreboot.com/. Unfortunately, they don't let us download any of the shows. It really doesn't seem like much of a drawback, though, since it's all about recreating the '90s experience, back when no one downloaded anything and just enjoyed quality television.
A separate list of all the shows available lets you rate your favourites, the weights of which add in deciding the random order of the shows being aired. With everything from Legends of the Hidden Temple and our beloved Figure It Out to the slightly disturbing Ren and Stimpy Show, the list has every thing we've been dreaming of revisiting for all these years.
Never did I imagine I'd get to spend time again wondering when the celebrity guests will perform the secret slime action or shouting back the answer to “WHO LOVES ORANGE SODA?” Tommy Pickles' backyard adventures are back and so are the borderline insane shenanigans of the All That and Amanda Bynes Show crew. It's blissful, it's amazing. It's definitely the best thing to have happened to me in a long, long time!
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