Buy Windows 95, Dances With Wolves and Myst in this vaporwave classic

Leigh Alexander 8:47 am Wed Sep 2, 2015

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I might have been part of the last generation to grow up valuing "hanging at the mall" as the ideal pastime. I love abandoned mall photography, and basically any movie from the '90s that employs malls as the backdrop for Gen X cynical anti-consumerism.

Mall Quest is a fun dirge for that age, shuttling you among self esteem-ified pixel goons and chunky graphic renderings of the things you have to buy: Games like NBA Jam 2 and Myst, Silly Putty and movies like Dances With Wolves. It has the glossy Windows 95 look of the "vaporwave" digital art movement, whereby a generation of creators old enough to remember the innocent consumerism of the mall age and the home computer boom but too young to have it for themselves resampled its phrases and imagery.

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This game, free or pay-what-you-want, came out a year ago, but I only just heard of it recently. It's gleefully dystopic—and procedurally-generated, giving you a different mall-sprawl and shopping list of forgotten pop culture every time.

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