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Eight exhausting hours of meetings at Broderbund, pushing Prince 2 on all fronts. But it’s easy, with the wind at my back. The powers-that-be have given this project the coveted “Group 1 Priority” and suddenly no one can say no to me.

I don’t understand why they think this can be a Christmas 1991 release. There’s no such thing as a six-month development cycle. If even one thing goes wrong, we’ll miss Christmas. And something always goes wrong. I won’t even be here to run the project; I live 3,000 miles away now. Why is everyone – including me – pretending that this schedule is realistic? This is the kind of thinking that went into the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Anyway, I’m dutifully assembling the players one by one, proceeding just as if this weren’t insane.

Man, it’s great to be back. When I got into my rented car and hit Highway 280, I laughed out loud, I was so thrilled. The trees, the colors, the quality of the sunlight… San Francisco is the most beautiful city on the planet. It’s a wonderfully reassuring feeling to return and realize that my old life is still here, waiting for me, if I want it.

The good news is, they’re truly hot to do POP 2. Over lunch at Gulf of Siam with Brian and Alan Weiss, Ann Kronen covered her entire placemat with ball-point notations. She was in her most no-nonsense mode, like a businesswoman in a TV commercial, leaning forward and saying things like “Brian, that’s your department.” Doug must have lit a fire under her in this morning’s priority meeting; I thought I sensed the determination of someone who’s afraid she’ll lose her job if this product doesn’t ship by Christmas. Since she’d responded to all my previous Prince 2 proposals (the first in May ‘90) with a batting of eyelashes and a “Let’s wait and see” smile, I found today’s encounter immensely gratifying. Best of all, it looks like Lance is back in the running to get this assignment.

Toward the end of lunch, I decided there would never be a better moment, and brought up the royalty rate. Brian, bless his heart, stepped right in with the 8% figure. Ann took it with a brave blink. Brian went right on and said: “Doug waffled at first on the 8%, but because of the success of Prince 1 in Europe and Japan, and the strength of Jordan’s name, and in view of the contribution he’s going to make on the sequel, he finally said it was OK.” The way Brian presented it, Ann had no choice but to agree. I asked for 8% and, amazingly, that’s what I’m getting. Victory is sweet.

Before I left, I dropped by Doug’s office. Kazue was there, and Jeannine Cook, and Doug’s parents. Doug’s father told a story about someone’s grandchildren shouting “Who’s for POP?” as they ran downstairs, and he didn’t know what it stood for.”

“I thought it stood for ‘point-of-purchase,’” I said.

Doug laughed. “Not any more.”

Paid a visit to Presage in El Cerrito. It looks like Scott’s finally getting close to finished. My visit seemed to cheer everyone up. Funny how you can motivate someone to work harder just by showing up.

I did read most of the 1001 Nights and I did spend a couple of hours doodling on the POP 2 game design, but have nothing concrete to show for it.

I gave Kevin Burget a copy of Prince of Persia to play at the office and he’s really into it. It’s impressed him deeply. Some of the people in his office had already heard of it. Very gratifying.

Jim Alex called from LA to say he’s got someone who wants to do In the Dark as a TV Movie-of-the-Week. Will wonders never cease.

Brian says there’s a store in Alabama that has Prince stocked 45 deep. It’s their top-selling entertainment title, surpassing King’s Quest V and everthing else. Wow. Why Alabama?

Deep in game design mode. Tomi offered some good ideas, and I went out and bought 1001 Nights and played Beast II some more and Prince all the way through (finished with 28 minutes left!), but I’m still basically at a loss.

Goddamn computer games. I’m torn between never wanting to see another one, and wishing I were back in California starting my own development team so I could take two years and create something that would blow Beast II out of the water.

No… the way I’m doing it is right. In two years there’ll be computers with CD-ROM and the need for live-action footage. By then I’ll have made some movies, and know my way around a film set. I’ll be in a perfect position to raise some capital and put together a really hot development team to launch a new line of interactive CD-ROM games. If Doug’s still running Broderbund, he’d back me in a second. They all would. I’ll be an irresistible combination of new kid on the block and old familiar face.

So I’m doing all the right things. *sigh…*

Brian sent me an Amiga computer so I could look at what the competition is doing. I went out and bought Shadow of the Beast II and played it for a good four hours, most of that time spent waiting for it to load. Nice parallax scrolling, atmospheric music, and a smashing opening sequence that makes me ashamed of every review that ever called Prince “cinematic” (because what Prince is, really, is theatrical). Beast II is also insanely difficult, and the 45 seconds it takes to restart every time you die makes it infuriating to play. Yet it’s the #1 Amiga game right now. Maybe it’s the adventure element that people find appealing. If there were some way to get that into Prince 2…

Good news from Broderbund on two fronts. It looks like the sequel is going to happen. And, the Virgin Mastertronics deal has been signed! They hope to have both Nintendo and GameBoy cartridges out by Christmas ‘91. Maybe I’ll make out OK after all.

Larry Turman called to tell me his thoughts on Bird of Paradise. “You’re a good writer,” he said. “I thought so before and I think so now. What a damned unusual story you’ve written! Where in tarnation did you come up with that?”

He doesn’t want to produce it. “Don’t ask me why. There’s nothing I can really point at and criticize. It’s all of a piece; it hangs together… Why do I want to produce one movie and not the other? I don’t know. It’s like picking out a tie. It’s so damned hard to get a picture made, as you know at one remove from In the Dark. Maybe my head liked it a little better than my heart.”

He said he’d give it to his partner to read, and also offered to put me in touch with some agents if it doesn’t work out with the ones I sent it to. What a guy! He didn’t have to be that nice to me.