January 10, 1993
Consumer Entertainment Show in Las Vegas was a hallucinatory experience. Three nights at the Excalibur. Have a royal day.
My roommate was an unhappy Ken Goldstein, having girlfriend trouble. I shared the Broderbund booth with Christa Beeson (demoing Carmen Space), Jessica, and Kathleen, and demoed Prince 2 for about a million journalists. Appointments every half hour. They flipped out, mostly. I think it’ll be a hit.
Saw Dany Boolauck (working for Delphine now), Jean-Michel Blottiere, Richard Garriott (very cool, very much the mogul), Gary Kasparov (I shook his hand! He doesn’t like video games, thinks they’re destructive and harmful to children), Muhammad Ali (signing autographs), Kyle Freeman, Fredrick Raynal (from Infogrames), Ron Martinez, John Kavanagh and Dominic from Domark (they loved Prince 2), Arnie Katz, and lots of other computer-magazine journalists, some of whom were fans from way back and were thrilled to meet me. One even brought along his copies of Prince 1 for me to autograph.
Met Brad Dourif, who was Piter de Vries in Dune and Billy Bibbit in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. He got all excited when I offered to send him a copy of Prince. He gave me his home address and secret unlisted number. “Come hang out with us when you come to LA.” I asked him if he’d consider acting in a computer game. He said: “Sure!”
Had fun cruising the floor with Mike Estigoy, trying to talk to girls. I was doing my best to flirt with Lori from US Gold San Francisco when, in a miracle of perfect timing, an Italian guy named Pietro came up to us and said “Are you the Jordan Mechner? The famous Jordan Mechner? Or are you just some guy named Jordan Mechner?” When we got it straight, he practically fell to his knees and embraced me, he was so excited. It didn’t do me any good with Lori, though.
All in all, CES was a blast. It was, like, my first taste of public life.
