Okay, I’ll be honest here. I was born in the 1990’s, but I was born in the last few years of it. I don’t have many distinct memories that I can say for certain were in that decade. I was, culturally speaking, a 2000’s kid, for the most part. But that hasn’t stopped me from being exposed to and loving a significant amount of ‘90’s culture. In fact, in some ways, I’m kind of stuck there. I still listen to a ton of industrial metal and oldskool jungle, I’m in the middle of playing through Final Fantasy VII on an original PlayStation, and my two favorite movies of all time, The Matrix and Pulp Fiction, both hail from that decade. So today, I’m going to take you on a whirlwind tour of ‘90’s television--or at least, the parts of it I grew up watching. I hope you frosted your tips for this one...

Animaniacs

Let’s start with the show taught me at least half of everything I know about comedy. Animaniacs is an heir to the Looney Tunes school of cartoons, with wacky hijinks, perfectly timed one-liners, and jokes that turn out to be a lot dirtier once you grow up and realize what they mean. Seriously, I have no idea how the “finger Prince” joke, or the “I’m a pianist” joke, or...well, let me put it like this: if Yakko pops up, blows the camera a kiss, and says “Goodnight, everybody!”, then the show just got away with a dirty, dirty joke. With a rotating cast of characters at its disposal, the show was able to go anywhere and parody anything it pleased, whether through Pinky and the Brain’s various schemes to take over the world, Rita and Runt’s musical numbers, Slappy Squirrel taking Skippy Squirrel to Woodstock, or Yakko, Wakko, and Dot pestering some historical figure like Michelangelo or Einstein. And then, of course, there were the occasional bits of educational content, like the time Yakko sang the names of every country on Earth. This show has something for everybody, and if you still can’t find something you like in it, then I don’t know what to tell you. You probably just don’t get comedy.

Batman: The Animated Series

Batman: The Animated Series isn’t just a great show. It’s quite possibly one of the greatest Batman-related works in history, if not one of the greatest animated series of all time. This show changed the game for animation with its signature “dark deco” technique, where the backgrounds were drawn with light colors on black paper, as opposed to the usual dark colors on white paper. The result was a show that felt every bit as dark as Gotham City was in the source material. But the animation wasn’t the only thing going for it, as the show also helped invent and re-invent the Batman template. From this show on, Kevin Conroy has been the voice of Batman, and Mark Hamill has been the voice of the Joker, to the point where if either one of them doesn’t voice those characters in a later show or video game, the fans immediately brace for the adaptation to suck. BTAS also introduced Harley Quinn to the Bat-mythos, a character who proved so iconic that she made her way into the comics--and now, with Suicide Squad on the way, she’s poised to take over Hollywood as well. And, of course, we can’t talk about this show without talking about Mr. Freeze. Up until the “Heart of Ice” episode aired, Mr. Freeze was a bit player who liked to freeze people for no real reason. But with this show, Freeze gained the look and tragic backstory that make him so compelling and so key to the Dark Knight’s ensemble of super-criminals. In many ways, BTAS has been the template for every non-live-action of the Caped Crusader to come afterwards

WCW Monday Nitro

Wrestling, like any other form of fictional television, has its highs and its lows. One episode might make you cheer in excitement, and the next might make you bang your head against the wall until you have more concussions than the wrestlers themselves. WCW Monday Nitro was a show defined as much by its triumphs as its failures, and it did both of them spectacularly. On the one hand, you had things like the nWo storyline, which had people wondering just how much of it was scripted and how much was for real, and an assortment of Mexican and Japanese talent in high-flying cruiserweight matches that the then-WWF wasn’t offering. At its best, it was some of the best wrestling ever put on television. But for every moment like that, you had a bafflingly stupid move like the company-killing Fingerpoke of Doom, or Hulk Hogan going crazy after the Dungeon of Doom shaved his mustache, or Scott Steiner yelling “I hate ducks!” and beating up a toy duck for some strange reason. For its last couple of years, especially when Vince Russo was writing the show and giving the World Heavyweight Championship to such legends as himself--and no, he wasn’t a wrestler--Nitro just flat-out didn’t make any sense. Once it got bad, it was an unparalleled trainwreck of a show. But that was what made it so fascinating to watch all the way to the bitter end.

Legends of the Hidden Temple

This show was actually part of my childhood, even though it had long stopped being made by the time I found it. Nickelodeon used to run a network filled with reruns of their old game shows, and back in first grade, that network was my #1 source of entertainment. Legends of the Hidden Temple was my one of my favorite shows on the network back then, and I think I know why my six-year-old self was so into it. The set design and atmosphere were--and still are--pretty damn unique for a kids’ game show, particularly with the iconic Olmec involved. What younger me didn’t realize is that the Temple was absurdly difficult to get through, what with the placement of the Temple Guards, puzzles that some of the kids were actually too short to complete, and the infamous Shrine of the Silver Monkey! (Come on, you knew I had to say it.) But all that means is that when a team somehow makes it out with the day’s artifact, it’s all the more reason to celebrate.

Nickelodeon GUTS

Like Legends of the Hidden Temple, GUTS was a show I watched obsessively as a six-year-old. Given that, at that time, my two biggest obsessions were baseball and game shows, this show was right up my alley with its sports theme and larger-than-life events. Looking back, the show is aggressively ‘90’s, probably more so than any other show on this list. All it takes is the first five seconds of the show to know exactly what time period this came from. It’s also the one show that, to this day, I’d be absolutely thrilled to be a contestant on. I’d probably get third in everything, including the Aggro Crag, but I’d have a blast doing it. (Oh, and if you’re a Sanjay and Craig fan, they did an episode where Sanjay goes on the show. Go check that out first if you want an idea of how the show goes.)

SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron

SWAT Kats is a sad case of a show getting canceled thanks to network chicanery. It’s kind of understandable on paper why the executives at Turner messed with this show, what with the dark tone and villains getting killed off every now and then, but really, those aspects were what made the show stand out, especially at the time. Besides, it's not like the impressionable little kids who would supposedly have their minds warped by this show had access to fighter jets armed with various bizarre types of missiles. (Seriously, imagine Green Arrow, but with trick missiles and a plane, and you have a rough idea of what the SWAT Kats approach to crimefighting is.) Fortunately, there was a successful Kickstarter last year for a follow-up series, subtitled Revolution, so maybe we'll see this series get the closure it deserves.

Transformers: Beast Wars

As of right now, Transformers, as a franchise, is primarily associated with the original ‘80’s cartoon and the terrible series of Michael Bay movies that takes a massive dump on said cartoon. But I would argue that Beast Wars was actually the highlight of the franchise as a whole. The show was entirely in CGI, which made the show visually stunning for its time. But that literally came with a huge price, because the show was incredibly expensive to produce. Unlike the original show, Hasbro couldn’t just throw a million Transformers at the wall and hope all the toys sold. The limited cast of characters meant each one had more depth and characterization to them--and in the process, we got truly compelling characters like Dinobot, whose arc of character development runs through practically the whole show, the deliciously hammy Megatron, and, of course, Waspinator, the universe’s favorite chew toy. The animation might look primitive now, but with writing so high-caliber, the show could have been done with a flipbook made of napkins and still been entertaining.

Batman Beyond

I know I’ve already covered a Batman show on this list, and I know this debuted in 1999 and therefore barely qualifies for this list, but screw it. Batman Beyond is awesome. It’s actually a sequel to BTAS, where some forty years after that show, Gotham is still overrun with supervillains and street gangs, a teenager named Terry McGinnis is using a more technologically-advanced Batsuit to fight crime, and Bruce Wayne himself serves as the new Batman’s mission control and mentor. It’s a cool concept on paper, but the industrial score, continuity and callbacks to BTAS, compelling new villains like Blight and Shriek, and creative stories like “The Eggbaby,” where Terry has to carry an egg around while fighting crime as Batman or he’ll fail his project at school. Yes, this is a real episode. Yes, they actually make this story work. Trust me, just check this show out. It’s more than worth your while.

ReBoot

ReBoot’s legacy, for the most part, comes from its technical achievements. It was the first half-hour all-CGI show in history, premiering a year before Toy Story hit theaters. Naturally, the animation doesn’t look nearly as mind-blowing as it must have back when the show first went on the air. But thankfully, this show has more merits than that to rely on. Over its four seasons, the show built up an expansive world and mythology, complemented by heavy computer jargon--hey, the show takes place inside a computer--along with unique visuals and a phenomenal cast of voice actors. Megabyte, in particular, stands out, with Tony Jay providing the perfect voice for a megalomaniacal villain who, through all four seasons, remains the main threat to our heroes at every turn. Perhaps if this show hadn’t ended on a cliffhanger...