this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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Encarta was the internet
Was Encarta the one with a trivia game? Or was that Britannica? Cause I remember my antisocial young self playing it to death.
I still got some useless facts stuck in my head, taking up valuable space.. I can't conjure any of them on demand; but someone could randomly mention a species of frog and I would go, "oh yeah, they're native to Madagascar!"
My Encarta 97 CD-ROM had a game where you went through rooms of a castle answering trivia questions to move on.
I stumbled onto this at a library as a kid and couldn't get enough! This library was a big one and it wasn't near us, so I selfishly tried to squeeze in every moment I could.
I did feel guilty, knowing my grandmother was stuck waiting for me, but the game was too compelling, my nerdiness too severe, and my grandma too gentle. I was powerless to do anything but press on.
Years later I realized...my grandma was a librarian, and this was an unfamiliar library to her. She had the better time by a mile, and must have counted her lucky stars that I was content to just stay in one place (AKA safe and behaving myself) for hours on end. I can remember her coming to check on me every so often, and each time I couldn't believe I got to play even more.
Thanks for the memory :)
Yeah that's the one!
Iirc encarta was an encyclopedia software