Gene and I came up with a setting for the new game before lunch. Ali Baba; Sinbad.  It’s versatile, familiar, visually distinctive, and — in the video game field — hasn’t been done to death.

Robert, Tomi, Steve and I had dinner at Acapulco. The waitress wouldn’t believe I was 21, because my New York learner’s permit didn’t have a photo on it. “You could have written this yourself,” she said.  So Steve ordered a Margarita, then pushed it across the table to me. I was on my third sip when the manager came by and whisked it away from me with a curt “Thank you.” He was so steamed, even after that, he had to come back to the table and give us a lecture.

What gets me is that they charged us for the drink.

One of those rainy late-summer days. Woke up at 11:30, drove Mom into town and back.

Finished that letter to Ed Bernstein at Broderbund. I needed to come up with some kind of storyline, so I just wrote something off the top of my head. I sealed the letter and mailed it.

Then a strange thing happened. I started getting images in my head of the characters: The Sultan. The Princess. The Boy. I saw the scenes in my mind as if it were a Disney movie. So I wrote up a scenario — churned it out in an hour. It came out pretty well, I think.  It’s just similar enough to Karateka, but more plausible, more intricate, and most important, more humorous. Gene will love it. Maybe the back story could even be written up and illustrated, like a comic book, and published with the game.

My night thoughts lately have been along the lines of: “Do I have it in me to do another computer game? Is this what I want to do? Can I do it? What if the code-writing part of my brain has atrophied? Will I fail ignominiously? Should I just turn to screenwriting full-time?”

Today made me feel better.

Another good day on the game. (Screenplay?  What screenplay?)  I’m getting to the point where I want to rush out and buy a video camera, a VCR and a digitizer and get to work.

Atari Karateka arrived FedEx. It looks great, sounds awful. Dad and I spent the day troubleshooting the music. It should be OK, but nowhere near Commodore quality.

I’m unutterably happy that I’m getting psyched up for this new game. It fills me with joy and confidence in the future.  

Then again, maybe feeling good doesn’t necessarily mean that what I write is good. Maybe the best stuff is produced out of blackest despair. Or maybe not.