Johnny Castaway is a

screensaver A screensaver (or screen saver) is a computer program that blanks the display screen or fills it with moving images or patterns when the computer has been idle for a designated time. The original purpose of screensavers was to prevent phosphor s ...

released in 1992 by

Sierra On-Line Sierra Entertainment, Inc. (formerly On-Line Systems and Sierra On-Line, Inc.) was an American video game developer and publisher founded in 1979 by Ken and Roberta Williams. The company is known for pioneering the graphic adventure game ge ...

Dynamix Dynamix, Inc. was an American developer of video games from 1984 to 2001, best known for the flight simulator Red Baron (1990 video game), ''Red Baron'', the puzzle video game, puzzle game ''The Incredible Machine (video game), The Incredible Mach ...

, and marketed under the Screen Antics brand as "the world's first

story-telling Storytelling is the social and cultural activity of sharing narrative, stories, sometimes with improvisation, theatre, theatrics or embellishment. Every culture has its own narratives, which are shared as a means of entertainment, education, cul ...

screen saver". The screensaver depicts a man, Johnny Castaway, stranded on a very small island with a single palm tree. It follows a story which is slowly revealed through time. While Johnny fishes, builds sand castles, and jogs on a regular basis, other events are seen less frequently, such as a

mermaid In folklore, a mermaid is an aquatic creature with the head and upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish. Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide, including Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Mermaids are ...

or Lilliputian pirates coming to the island, or a seagull swooping down to steal his shorts while he is bathing. Much like the castaways of ''

Gilligan's Island ''Gilligan's Island'' is an American sitcom created and produced by Sherwood Schwartz. The show's ensemble cast features Bob Denver, Alan Hale Jr., Jim Backus, Natalie Schafer, Tina Louise, Russell Johnson, and Dawn Wells. It aired for th ...

'', Johnny repeatedly comes close to being rescued, but ultimately remains on the island as a result of various unfortunate accidents. "Johnny Castaway" includes

Easter eggs Easter eggs, also called Paschal eggs, are eggs that are Egg decorating, decorated for the Christian holiday of Easter, which celebrates the resurrection of Jesus. As such, Easter eggs are commonly used during the season of Eastertide (Easter ...

for a number of United States holidays such as Saint Patrick's Day,

Halloween Halloween, or Hallowe'en (less commonly known as Allhalloween, All Hallows' Eve, or All Saints' Eve), is a celebration geography of Halloween, observed in many countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christianity, Western Christian f ...

Christmas Christmas is an annual festival commemorating Nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a Religion, religious and Culture, cultural celebration among billions of people Observance of Christmas by coun ...

and

Independence Day An independence day is an annual event memorialization, commemorating the anniversary of a nation's independence or Sovereign state, statehood, usually after ceasing to be a group or part of another nation or state, or after the end of a milit ...

. During these holidays, the scenes are played out as usual except for some detail representing that holiday or event. During the last week of the year, for example, the palm tree will sport a "Happy New Year" banner, and on Halloween a

jack-o'-lantern A jack-o'-lantern (or jack o'lantern) is a carved lantern, most commonly made from a pumpkin, or formerly a root vegetable such as a mangelwurzel, rutabaga or turnip. Jack-o'-lanterns are associated with the Halloween holiday. Its name comes ...

can be seen in the sand. The screensaver can be manipulated into showing these features by adjusting the computer clock to correspond with the date of the event. The Johnny Castaway screensaver was distributed on a 3½-inch

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, a diskette, or a disk) is a type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined with a ...

and required a computer with a

386SX The Intel 386, originally released as the 80386 and later renamed i386, is the third-generation x86 architecture microprocessor from Intel. It was the first 32-bit processor in the line, making it a significant evolution in the x86 architect ...

processor and

Windows 3.1 Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0. Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series run as a shell on top of MS-DOS; it was the last Windows 1 ...

as its operating system. Today, it is widely available on the internet, but as it relies on outdated

16-bit 16-bit microcomputers are microcomputers that use 16-bit microprocessors. A 16-bit register can store 216 different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 16 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two ...

software components, it will only work on older versions of the

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

operating system, although workarounds exist for getting the screensaver to run on Windows 64-bit,

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

and

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

. Character design was done by Shawn Bird while he was at

. The program was developed at

Jeff Tunnell Jeffrey Tunnell is a video game producer, programmer and designer. In 1984 he founded Dynamix with Damon Slye in Eugene, Oregon. In 1990, Tunnell left Dynamix to start Jeff Tunnell Productions. Tunnell would go on to create famous brands such ...

Productions, the eponymous company of the original founder of Dynamix. According to Ken Williams, the screensaver was one of several products by Dynamix that were not costly to create and yet very profitable, like The Incredible Machine and

Hoyle Card Games ''Hoyle Card Games'' is a Game Boy Color-only video game that was developed by Sandbox Studios and published by Sierra On-Line under their Sierra Attractions label. Gameplay The package includes eight competitive card games, such as cribbage an ...

, also published by Sierra.

Reception

Computer Gaming World ''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American Video game journalism, computer game magazine that was published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 199 ...

'' called ''Johnny Castaway'' "a great launch" for the Screen Antics series, concluding that "Fans of

Johnny Hart John Lewis Hart (February 18, 1931 – April 7, 2007) was an American cartoonist noted as the creator of the comic strips '' B.C.'' and '' The Wizard of Id''. Brant Parker co-produced and illustrated ''The Wizard of Id''. Hart was recogniz ...

-style comics and sight gag lovers everywhere should love it".

References

{{reflist, 30em

External links

Johnny Castaway - Screensavers Planet

WineHQ entry - Screen Antics Johnny Castaway Screen Saver

Johnny Castaway Home Page
Screensavers Fictional castaways