I took one of these to so many LAN parties along with my deliberately-non-wheel Logitech PS/2 Mouseman. The mighty Allsop "wet look" pad with gel wrist rest:

Surprisingly it looks like you can still buy them new. Come to think of it, that wrist rest might be a good idea now.

Yeah I love those Allsop ones too! I still have one from 1995 or so (that's looking fairly tatty and gross to be honest) but was surprised to see them still for sale as xjas said, so stocked up on a few more.

just a basic blue one

I have the perfect mousepad for a 1998-build. I "liberated" it from my school's computer pool in 1998 and have used it eversince. It's the plainest red plasticky mousepad imaginable.

oeuvre wrote:

just a basic blue one

Indeed, especially one that's a good quarter-inch thick and not the wimpy wafer-thin ones they have now.

You could also try to find an OEM branded one from around that time. Gateway 2000, Compaq, Packard Bell, etc.

The only other "definitively 90s" mouse pad that jumps to mind for me would be the one from Mario Paint, which might be a bit of an interesting thing to use with a regular computer. 🤣 Hard to find these days though.

I personally use the 30th anniversary of Star Trek mousepad from around 1996.
Though I never watched the show but it has been under a mouse for more than two decades!

a cat because it's fresh to have a photo of a cat on a mouse pad, as well as being definitely a pad theme in the 90s.

...

Indeed. A bit to light. though. Remember, 90s was all about recycling and saving the rainforest.. 😉
Our teachers encouraged us pupils to get lower quality, higher priced, chlorine-free fair-trade paper.
We obeyed and felt responsible, a bit like heros of our young generation. 😁
These days, recycled school material seemed to have visually disappeared.
Sometimes, I wonder why. 😕 For doing schoolwork, one was as good as another.

Not really "retro" but has a vintage feel! I have a mouserug I purchased on a trip to the British Musuem. Looks like this (not mine)

xjas wrote:

I took one of these to so many LAN parties along with my deliberately-non-wheel Logitech PS/2 Mouseman. The mighty Allsop "wet l […]
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I took one of these to so many LAN parties along with my deliberately-non-wheel Logitech PS/2 Mouseman. The mighty Allsop "wet look" pad with gel wrist rest:

Surprisingly it looks like you can still buy them new. Come to think of it, that wrist rest might be a good idea now.

There is a laser-based Logitech PS/2 Mouseman? What does it look like? I've only used the serial and PS/2 wheeled versions.

Not optical (this was right around the turn of the century!) - I had one of these:

and one of these:

...for most of my time doing the competitive LAN party thing. Later on I did begrudgingly switch to a Labtec PS/2 optical wheel mouse like this one (which is almost certainly a rebranded Logitech), but my standard FPS control scheme still works better without a wheel.

Not optical, not wheel. How does it work?

feipoa wrote:

Not optical, not wheel. How does it work?

Whoops, misinterpreted what you were asking - I meant they're normal ball mice but they don't have a scroll wheel.

Oh. I never got hooked on a scroll wheel, so using the middle button to scroll webpages is fine by me.

I used these in the late '90s, mostly to play Quake III:

They were made by a company called "Everglide" and used with a ball mouse they were actually a nice improvement over a regular mouse pad.

Here's the one I'm using with my 486. My first computer was a Compaq ProLinea 4/33 so I was trilled when my high school computer teacher gave this to me my senior year.

I've never been able to find another one like it but I'm sure someone has one somewhere. If not I did scan mine in at high resolution so if anyone wanted to make their own they could.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/mzrl9rbb9665ztd … 20With%20Us.zip

Any mousepad that has the name and address of the PC shop that you bought your first computer at 25 years ago, which has gone out of business 20 years ago.