January 11, 1987
Macworld Expo ’86 was pretty slick. The coolest thing there was the Radius 8 ½” x 11” tall screen.
Dad called all excited because David did well in the dan tournament. I hadn’t stopped to think about it until now, but the speed of his rise has been really startling. From total beginner to shodan in nine months. If he keeps this up another year or two, he could be one of the best non-Asian go players in the history of the world.
That’s something.
January 22, 1987
The Nintendo game machine has sold a million units in the U.S. over Christmas. As of now, only a handful of cartridges are available. Nintendo is keeping a tight rein on new titles, presumably to avoid a flood of product like the one that sunk Atari a couple of years ago. Broderbund — thanks to Doug’s Japan connections — has three of the coveted slots.
Karateka would be a natural, but Doug is apparently leaning toward choosing some older titles — Castles of Dr. Creep or Spelunker or Raid on Bungeling Bay or even Choplifter — instead.
I talked to Ed and Alan with great passion, trying to convince them. This is the first time in my life I’ve had to lobby so hard for something I desperately wanted, and it’s exquisitely frustrating. It’s so painful wanting something from someone, being reduced to wishing and hoping they’ll give it to me. I hate it.
If I’m going to be a screenwriter someday, guess I better get used to it.
January 23, 1987
Progress on Prince of Persia has slowed to a snail’s crawl. I’ve been drifting in to work around eleven or twelve, and between that, the Butchery and the Sport Court, my workday is about forty-five minutes long. Ed and Gene and Lauren keep checking in to see what new and exciting stuff I’ve got up on the screen, and they go away disappointed.
Instead, I’ve been spending my time playing with my new Mac, Radius screen, and Scriptor screenplay formatting software. Shiny new toys.
January 26, 1987
Got up early for a change and put in a full day’s work on the game.
Corey talked me into switching assemblers, operating systems, and disk media (from DOS 3.3, S-C Assembler, and 5 1/4” floppies to ProDos, Merlin, and SCSI hard drive). The change should take about a week, but I think it’ll pay for itself in the end.
January 29, 1987
Roland spent the whole morning helping me switch over to Merlin and ProDOS.
It was kind of a thrill to watch. Roland is a hacker of the old school. He’s polite and unprepossessing in his dress and demeanor, careful about money and contracts. He drives a Saab with license plate SNABBIL. But under that conservative surface is a demon – a guy who will put his day job on hold for 72 hours and sit down and reverse-engineer an Apple II conversion of Tetris, just for the pleasure of it.
Watching him do what he did for me today, I felt a little of the old joy come flooding back. I’d almost forgotten the most basic thing: programming is fun. I’ve grown middle-aged these past couple of years. Roland is 23 but he’s still young at heart.
January 31, 1987
Got to Broderbund around 8:30 and put in another solid eight hours. Converted BUILDER over to Merlin/Pro, but it’s not working. Give me another day or two to get all the bugs out.
Showed Ed the latest (Jan. 27) working version. He was gratifyingly thrilled about the 3-D box with scrolling borders.
