April 28, 1989
Dr. Ward said I should rest as much as possible, so I stayed home and built a really boffo level. Named it BACH cause that’s who I was listening to.
April 29, 1989
Stayed home again and listened to opera and built game levels. I’m fed up with being home.
May 1, 1989
Doug and Jim came by. Amazingly, IBM POP is really happening.
Impromptu meeting with the art dept. to go over Paul’s sketches. David K. is my nemesis. It’s Brian and me against the world.
May 2, 1989
Today when Brian started to give me a hard time about paying for Jim and Doug’s equipment (a mouse and a couple of joysticks – maybe $150 worth of stuff), I did something almost unprecedented in our relationship: I argued back. To my surprise, Brian not only caved, but ended up practically apologizing.
It made me realize how much I usually avoid confrontation. Conflict always gives me the anxious feeling that I need to say something to defuse the situation and restore goodwill, even if it’s at my own expense. Today, I realized the formidable power of acting tough. Not only did I get my way, I actually gained goodwill points, because I made Brian feel bad for having upset me. There’s a lesson in that. I need to develop the ability to stand my ground.
The biggest conflict I see looming is with David K, who’s bent on doing something stupid with the box design, and who likes sleazy-looking princesses with pouty lower lips (like the Karateka box) whereas Brian and I prefer a more cool, chaste brand of ingenue, as exemplified by the poster of Diane Lane in Robert’s and my office. (During our meeting with Nancy and Paul, Brian got excited and pointed to the poster: “Like her!” he exclaimed.)
Alan Weiss dropped by to show me the new hand-held Nintendo “Game Boy” (a play, I guess, on Sony “Walkman.”) They’re licensing a version of Karateka for it.
Tomi says that since Dominique came back raving about POP, the programmers in France have been trying to adopt my animation techniques, but that they don’t have it quite right yet.
May 6, 1989
Robert’s friend Jim came by the office with his three sons. Ages 3, 5 and 7, blond kids with runny noses and an insatiable lust for computer games.
I gave them the joystick and watched them spend a good half-hour trying to get through Level 1. It was instructive. Chris — the oldest, an extremely sweet-natured and gracious kid — was generous about sharing with his brother Stu, who insisted on repeating the first three screens himself every time, then handing the joystick to Chris when he got to “the sharp part,” as he put it.
“It’s so lifelike,” Chris marveled. I asked him if it was too hard. (This was after they’d died on the spikes about 50 times in the first half-hour.) He said “No, it’s just about right. But it’s challenging.”
The whole thing was very encouraging. For one thing, they liked it. I don’t mean they said they liked it; I mean they played it. These guys are my target audience. After watching them I’m more certain than ever that this game will be a hit.
The other thing is, I liked them. Lately I’d been starting to feel jaded about this whole enterprise – “Oh well, it’s just a computer game” – but watching Chris and Stu, I realized: These guys love games. They love games the way I loved movies in college. Even more, because they’re not interested in girls yet. Computer games are like the air they breathe. If I can make one that they can get excited about, that’s a real accomplishment. That’s something I can be proud of.
So I worked till ten with renewed enthusiasm.
The game is really turning out well, by the way. When you’re fighting a guard, forcing him back toward a ledge, and the spikes spring out below, and you’re down to your last unit of strength, and you push him off the edge – it’s incredibly thrilling. It’s like an Indiana Jones movie. There’s no other game that even remotely approaches this. If there’s any games market left by this Christmas, this one should corner it. (He said modestly.)
Level 3 RunJump from jordan mechner on Vimeo.
May 7, 1989
CGDC (Computer Game Developers Conference) in Sunnyvale. Robert and Doug and I skipped out early and went to Great America. We rode the Demon and the Grizzly and Loggers Run.
