Microsoft's Waffle's Revenge

[RT-55J]

Do you remember those 1-bit background patterns that you could make from Windows 95? Do you remember how it came with several patterns built-in? And do you remember how one of them was called "Waffle's Revenge"? Well, I don't know about you, but for me the answer to each of those is a resounding "yes!"

I tried looking these patterns up to see if there were any pictures of them anywhere, and couldn't find anything. The closest I could find was a cheeky reference in this Neil Cicierega bit from several years back, no actual pictures.

Thankfully, while the Windows Wallpaper Wiki page for Windows 95 did not contain pictures of these patterns, it at least contained the internal codes for each of the patterns (in decimal, for some reason), so I was able to pull out my trusty Windows Calculator, set it to "Programmer Mode", and manually recreate the patterns by hand.

Isn't technology wonderful?

Anyhow, here are the goods:

Waffle's Revenge (77 154 8 85 239 154 77 154)

Bricks (187 95 174 93 186 117 234 245)

Buttons (170 125 198 71 198 127 190 85)

Cargo Net (120 49 19 135 225 200 140 30)

Circuits (82 41 132 66 148 41 66 132)

Cobblestones (40 68 146 171 214 108 56 16)

Colosseum (130 1 1 1 171 85 170 85)

Daisies (30 140 216 253 191 27 49 120)

Dizzy (62 7 225 7 62 112 195 112)

Field Effect (86 89 166 154 101 149 106 169)

Key (254 2 250 138 186 162 190 128)

Live Wire (239 239 14 254 254 254 224 239)

Plaid (240 240 240 240 170 85 170 85)

Rounder (215 147 40 215 40 147 213 215)

Scales (225 42 37 146 85 152 62 247)

Stone (174 77 239 255 8 77 174 77)

Thatches (248 116 34 71 143 23 34 113)

Tile (69 130 1 0 1 130 69 170)

Triangles (135 7 6 4 0 247 231 199)

Feel free to discuss waffles, revenge, early-mid-90s-computer-software-nostalgia, and the impossible task of long-term archival.

 

[Felicia]

Once again I am reminded that you can never simply assume "eh, I can probably find it somewhere on the internet already". Thank you for your work!

 

[Violentvixen]

Thankfully, while the Windows Wallpaper Wiki page for Windows 95 did not contain pictures of these patterns, it at least contained the internal codes for each of the patterns (in decimal, for some reason), so I was able to pull out my trusty Windows Calculator, set it to "Programmer Mode", and manually recreate the patterns by hand.

This is so cool!

Key (254 2 250 138 186 162 190 128)

Thatches (248 116 34 71 143 23 34 113)

I feel like I saw these two the most often. Couldn't tell you where or why (except a vague correlation to stuff about Ancient Greece with the first one).

 

[Kirin]

I feel like a few patterns similar to these also showed up in 1-bit MacPaint, Thatches for sure.

 

[Kirin]

Found the MacPaint 2 texture pallet!

 

[RT-55J]

Oooh. Those look nice.

 

[LBD_Nytetrayn]

Feel free to discuss waffles, revenge, early-mid-90s-computer-software-nostalgia, and the impossible task of long-term archival.

Once again I am reminded that you can never simply assume "eh, I can probably find it somewhere on the internet already". Thank you for your work!

That said, might uploading this to the Internet Archive as a backup be a good idea?