January 16, 1990
Stopped by Broderbund to pick up my December royalty check: $4,000.
Scott and Nicki came by. They’re already six weeks behind on the Mac conversion. I broke it to Nicki that her graphics weren’t good enough and we’d have to get someone else. She was crushed. It was terrible. I’ve never felt so awful.
January 21, 1990
Idea for POP 2: Shadow Man! I even drew up a sketch for the package front. It shows the Shadow Man standing alone on a craggy cliff, backlit by the full moon. It’s bold, as sequels go. But will it play in Persia?
January 25, 1990
A week of Broderbund days. Monday I signed the Amiga contract with Danny Gorlin and had lunch with Ed Bernstein. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I spent sitting at an IBM screen pushing pixels in an attempt to get Jim St. Louis’s EGA versions of my original Apple character animations to look decent.
Jim’s work is dismayingly bad. I’m not sure he’s saved us any time at all. I’ve got no choice but to redo it. What at first seemed like a fun thing to do for a couple of days has turned into a massive project. Three days, and I’m burnt out and not even half finished.
Brian and Lance are thrilled to have me coming in every day, even though it’s for a bad reason. The first day, I worked in Lance’s room, the last two in Brian’s. Brian in particular is happy as a clam. We just got another rave review (Nibble magazine), the customer response cards are uniformly “Excellent,” the IBM version is starting to come together… and now that he’s got me under his wing, he’s confident everything will go smoothly.
Dad delivered his new music, which he and Tom Rettig are both pleased with. (Dad: “This is the first music I’ve written that I’ve really liked.” Tom: “This is the most exciting project I’ve ever worked on.”) Even Lance likes it.
Doug brought Ken and Roberta Williams by today and I showed them IBM Prince. (Ken: “Great animation.”) Doug then explained that he was losing me to the movies, and that in an effort to forestall this he’d written me a bad recommendation for NYU.
Alan Weiss has been removed from the job, putting Prince’s future on NES and Game Boy temporarily in doubt. Dianne Drosnes is taking over licensing. Tomi and I have already talked to her. A Nintendo license might mean an advance of $150,000, and again that much in royalties… enough to pay for three years of film school… so it’s worth politicking for.
Getting Prince onto as many different formats as possible (maximizing my future income stream) is all very well, but what’s really grabbing my attention these days is the potential for something bigger. Dad’s suggestion that I make a franchise out of Prince sequels, Doug’s offer that I captain a new graphic-adventure line for Broderbund, and my own idea of starting a company with Tomi, Roland, or Lance, are all sort of churning around in the back of my mind; I’m just waiting for them to coalesce into some really irresistible form.
January 26, 1990
The character animations for IBM Prince are a big job. I’ve put in thirty hours this week and I’m barely halfway through. It turns out that what I’m doing is not, as billed, a “polish” of Jim St. Louis’s work, but a complete overhaul. In some cases I’ve even had to go back to the Apple originals.
I hope Jim doesn’t notice that all his work has been redone when he sees the published product. I actually feel worse about the possibility that his feelings will be hurt than I do about having wasted time and money paying for work I’m now having to redo myself.
It’s all coming together. Sound effects, music, graphics. Tom Rettig, Dad, and Leila have outdone themselves; they’ve given this project the best work they’re capable of, and more of their time than Brian or I had a right to expect.
Meanwhile, Lance is in a foul mood, working ten hours a day as usual and worrying about getting it all done in time. Tonight we shared a quiet evening working till 10:30 pm.
This is going to be the definitive version of Prince of Persia. With VGA and sound card, on a fast machine, it’ll blow the Apple away. (In contrast, none of the Karateka conversions was as good as the Apple original.) If it makes its new April release date, it’ll be shown at Computerfest in May. I hope so. God, I hope it’s as big a hit as it deserves to be.
Everything seems to be going right. The Apple version hasn’t received any marketing push as of yet (and is selling a lackluster 500 or so units a month, as against 1,500 for a normal Carmen Sandiego title), but the reviews have been glowing enough to hold everyone’s attention. Everything depends on how the IBM version sells. (IBM Carmen is selling 5,000 units a month.)
In three months we should have some idea. The waiting is driving me crazy.
This isn’t such a bad business to be in. Now that I’m going to leave, I’m starting to miss it. It’s more fun now that I’m not programming by myself. I think it would be fun to start a software company to make games, or educational games.
But how can I do that while enrolled as a full-time graduate student at NYU? To try to do both at the same time would be folly. I don’t want to short-shrift NYU the way I short-shrifted Yale.
I don’t want to spend another three years moving pixels around, even though it would be fun. I want to make movies.
I’m so confused.
January 31, 1990
Another Broderbund week. I’m so tired of coloring in these frames, I see Dpaint in front of my eyes when I fall asleep at night. But it’s worth it. Two weeks of back-aching work, away from the new screenplay, is a reasonable price to pay for an IBM version as spectacular as this one is turning out to be – especially since the same graphics will be used in the Amiga, Atari ST, and CPC versions.
And it is spectacular. It fulfills all my hopes of what a VGA version might look like. With its 3-D shaded backgrounds and cleanly drawn animated characters, it looks like a Disney film. I think when people see it with the new characters, they’ll flip out. John Baker stopped by Lance’s desk on his way out, and was stunned by the opening sequence with the new music. “That is hot!” he said, a most un-Baker-like utterance.
Politically, the situation couldn’t be better. IBM Prince of Persia is being touted as a test case, an example of what the Broderbund in-house machine can do. If it hits, it’ll be a vindication of all John Baker’s efforts during his tenure at Broderbund to develop an effective system to run PD.
The truth is, in this case the “system” benefited from a lot of unofficial work by the original author – if I’d spent the past seven months off in Europe and Dad hadn’t done new music, it would have gotten done just as fast but it wouldn’t have been as good – but that’s irrelevant. It’s better for it to be viewed as an in-house triumph rather than mine. That perception will help ensure that it gets a fair shake in QA, marketing, promotion and sales.
February 2, 1990
Another lackluster month for Apple POP sales: 600-odd units. This in a month when Karateka sold 200, Wings of Fury 400, and Ancient Art of War 700 – in short, it’s selling no better than the old, established, dying Apple II games that came out a few years ago.
In the same month, the Apple version of Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? sold 15,000 units.
It’s frustrating. The reviews all say it’s the greatest Apple game in the history of the world. Where are the 15,000 Apple owners who bought Carmen Time this month? Do they read those magazines? Do they even know this game exists?
Patience, Mechner. It took seven months after release for Karateka to have its first big month (June 1985, 12,000 units). POP has only had four.
(But POP sold in at 3,000 units. This means the stores haven’t been reordering. Why not? I can’t shake this fear that something terrible is happening –- that it’s going to die.)
Relax. The IBM version is on its way. What happens with the Apple II version won’t matter so much.
God, I want this game to be a hit so badly. It’s the best game I know how to make. As far as I can see, I’ve done everything right. If it doesn’t become a hit, I don’t want to be in this business any more.
At least I’ve applied to NYU. But if POP isn’t a hit, how am I going to pay for it? $13,000 bucks a year! And the cost of living in the city…
The IBM version isn’t going to ship till April. Three months. I’ve got to get my mind off this somehow.
Like, by finishing my next screenplay.
By the time Deathbounce died, I’d already forgotten it. Four months after Karateka shipped, when it was looking like a dud, I felt only mild disappointment – I was concentrating on my schoolwork.
If Prince of Persia fails, it’s going to take the heart right out of me.
I want to travel to foreign countries. Someplace exotic and romantic that’s completely different from the USA. India maybe. China. Russia. If I don’t do it now I’ll never be able to do it again – not the way you travel when you’re young: looking for answers in everything, hoping to fall in love.
