Are you kidding me? The only way hearing the opening screen again[0] could evoke more warm fuzzy nostalgia with me is if at the end it would crossfade into Baba Yetu from Civ IV's main menu screen[1].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fRX4R6MY4A

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e0Qelqp-Cc

The MindMaze[1] music takes me back. I spent three-digits hours on that game as a little kid.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT-VbFcck6A

It shouldn't be that hard to build MindMaze on top of Wikipedia. I wonder if anyone's done it?

Although I do remember the hard geography questions very frequently just being "What is the county seat of (insert random US county)?"

Check out Wikimaze: http://wikimaze.appspot.com/

Though Encarta evokes a bit more of Civ VI Sogno di Volare to me, but I share the sentiment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQYN2P3E06s

Besides Encarta, the mid 90s where also the time where I was first able to buy satellite imagery on CR-ROM for all of Germany from my collected lunch money and years before Microsoft's TerraServer changed the world, which itself was long before Google Maps took over.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8q89q4/microsofts-terrase...

Either way, Microsoft should bring back Encarta and hire Christopher Tin to compose something for the occasion ;)

Did anyone else play with the gravity simulations to try to send the moon flying around like crazy?

Are you kidding me? Encarta was the bomb. As a kid, in the days before the computer was an endless source of information and distraction, I would just browse Encarta and learn random stuff.

Once some kid in my third grade class asked why race cars made noise they do when they passed, the teacher didn't give a satisfactory answer, and I was able to explain the Doppler effect to them based on animation I watched on Encarta.

Good stuff.

Given that Encarta was the bomb in the late 90's and early 00's and the 25-35 age group is well represented on HN I'd say Encarta i prime HN nostalgia material.

TBH, didn't realise it was still a thing in the early 00's!

It was the encyclopedia until Wikipedia really gained traction, which was 2004-ish for me.

Oh no, I've been looking for "modern Encarta" for years, in particular something that would easily show me different regions coloured by statistics and criteria - the ability to pick part of the earth, and then colour selected regions by economy, or productivity, or politics, or whatever, was phenomenal. Tablets _should_ be such a natural device for an educational geography product; but with free Google Maps + Wikipedia, nobody seems to be trying (at least I cannot find anything useful in my once-yearly attempts).

CIA World Factbook is fairly close from a data perspective but not super user friendly or polished:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world...

(Enable Flash to make it slightly less cumbersome)

This is something I plan to work on after getting my PhD in a few years. It's technically challenging, but there is so much things to do pedagogically around historical & linguistics maps on the globe.

Isn't GapMinder sort of what you're looking for? https://www.gapminder.org/tools/

I am 24 and very much remember it! Simpler days!

26 here... I think Encarta was one of the first CD-ROMS we owned (Compton was later, er, acquired surreptitiously).

I still remember the joy I had researching the Stegosaurus and the Platypus between my local library and my copy of Encarta for a school project <3.

I remember a period where Compton's was coming bundled with a lot of CD-ROM drives, but Encarta felt so much better. We'd have multiple copies of Compton's floating around and would have to struggle to find that valuable Encarta CD.

Oh I remember it well and fondly!

There was all of one or two internet providers in our county where I grew up at that time. Maybe one. We couldn’t afford it yet but my parents bought Encarta because it seemed like a wholesome tract for computer use.

I spent countless hours on there and used it for a ton of homework. IIRC my parents used it all the time as well. They likely still have the disks kicking around someplace.

22 here and I remember Encarta very fondly. I did not use it very often as back then paperback encyclopedias were still a "thing" and Wikipedia was pretty ok too; but I definitely reading about random physicists in Encarta. It was fun!

Huh, I'm almost 40, really didn't realise Encarta had still a thing for people who are now in their early 20's!

Well, we're talking about mid to late 2000s (~15 years ago). Remember that Encarta was supported until 2009. And I grew up in a developing country so everything was happening with a few years lag.

I'm 22 in the UK and remember Encarta fondly.

Consider sharing this sort of content anyway! Even for younger audiences, it's really cool to be exposed to new-to-you things.