Here I am again in that state of international limbo, an airport. I’ve got a 486 computer and a new leather jacket to prove I was here.

It was a fun week. It’s really satisfying watching Prince 2 come together. The last few days have been somewhat marred by controversy over the subtitle. I got Brian and Bruce and the whole art department excited about “The Shadow and the Flame,” we were all ready to go ahead, and then Ken Goldstein shot it down. Now, thanks to Ken, everybody is all agitated about it.

Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame

Prince of Persia 2: City of the Dead

Prince of Persia 2: The City of Souls

I’m so burned out now, I don’t even care which one they use.

Pitched the train story to Ken. He said: “Do you really need a partner? Can’t you write it yourself?” For some reason the mention of Tomi got him all riled up. (As Brian said afterwards, “I thought he was going to blow a gasket.”)

Also pitched the company idea to Robert and Corey. This could really happen. (Gulp!)

[Paris] A last look at the film, a last chance to make sweeping architectural changes, and now it’s done. Aarón will implement the few minor cuts we discussed today, and by tomorrow afternoon we should be image-locked. Tuesday he’ll work on sound and get ready for the mix, which could be as early as Thursday.

It’s got a new title: “Waiting for Dark” (or maybe “Waiting for Night”): Esperando la noche. Havana 1992.

I like this film. Aarón says he does too. I don’t care if anybody else does. Lie.

Cast my vote for Clinton.

I couldn’t get Sophie or Anna or Frédérique to go to the Tilt d’Or awards with me, so I went alone. As if that weren’t bad enough, I won another Tilt d’Or (this time for Mac Prince) and had to get up on the podium and accept the award and say a few words into the mike. Saying it in French was the easy part; the hard part was keeping my leg from shaking – I was as nervous as I’ve ever been in my life. I thought I’d outgrown stage fright, but guess not. It’s going to be on TV, so I hope I didn’t make a total fool of myself.

Met some new people, including Frederick Raynal, author of Alone in the Dark; Eric Chahi, author of Out of This World (aka Another World); and Paul Cuisset, Eric’s successor at Delphine Software, who’s responsible for their new game Flashback. Eric’s left Delphine and is very upset about Flashback — not only because they stole his “look and feel” but because they’ve used it (he feels) to rip off Prince of Persia, which offends his sense of ethics.

Dany’s left Tilt. He’s in Thailand now trying to win over the parents of his Thai bride-to-be. When he gets back he’s going to work for — you guessed it — Delphine.

Dany’s successor is Guillaume, the guy who invited me to the awards ceremony. He’s brought on board as a fledgling staff member his boyhood pal Julien, who is a nice guy and gave me a lift home.

Julien said: “Of all the people who accepted awards tonight, you were the best, but you were the most modest.” The whole night was that way, with people coming up and saying staggeringly nice things to me. According to them, I’m one of the three best-known game authors in France, the other two being Eric Chahi and Frederick Raynal; and they were both so star-struck to meet me, I hardly knew what to say. Everyone here remembers Karateka. It’s really surprising.

Aarón and I finished cutting the film. (That is, I left Aarón at Atria, still working at 7pm, while I went to the Tilt awards.) We mix tomorrow morning at 9 am.

Spent today apartment-hunting on Telegraph Hill. Found one for $850/month that’s got a garage and the right kind of faded San Francisco charm. Conveniently (too conveniently?), it’s half a block away from Tomi and Pete’s office at 725 Greenwich. I’m pretty sure I’m going to take it.

Tomi and Pete and I came up with a name: Smoking Car Productions. They’re eager for me to move into their office. Tomi and I spent the afternoon working on the train game.

Now I’m listening to the Gainsbourg album I bought last night, and killing time until the Broderbund Christmas party.

Had a surprisingly good time at the Broderbund Christmas party. Michael Baisuck and I had a drunken man-to-man in the parking lot after they kicked us out. “You know why I hate you?” he said. “It’s so goddamned easy for you. You’re rich, you’re creative, you’re good-looking, you speak five fucking languages, you can dance, and you’re not arrogant! If I had your life, I’d be having such a good time… But you don’t even seem to be enjoying it!” He proceeded to give me some good advice about how to spend my money while I’m still young enough to enjoy it. Like, buy a vintage ‘58 Corvette convertible instead of an anonymous current-year Japanese car.

It’s only what Patrick’s been telling me all along. There’s this thing inside me that makes me hold back. That dry adult whisper that counsels prudence, caution, thrift… Why? I’m fighting it on the big stuff, but on the small stuff, it’s winning.

So I bought Mom a really nice sweater for Christmas, and I’m flying to LA on the spur of the moment to hang out with George.

And maybe, just maybe, the next time I see the girl of my dreams at a crosswalk in North Beach, I’ll have the balls to say hello before she crosses the street.

My last two days at Broderbund were even more jam-packed than usual. Brian got back from vacation and we put Prince 2 into QA. (It was the day of Brian’s twelve-year anniversary.) Now that it’s approaching completion, a lot of upper-management types want copies to take home to play over Christmas.

Prince 2 is going boringly smoothly. Everybody wants it to succeed, the work is going well, and it’s even on schedule. Hardly the stuff of drama.

Tomi is proving her worth as collaborator on the train game. We argue a lot, but what we end up with is really good. This story’s going to be better than any movie screenplay I’ve written.

I rented the Greenwich St. apartment. Tomi made me a set of keys for the office. It’ll all be waiting for me when I get back in January.

I went down and saw Roland and showed him Prince 2. He was impressed. But, he’s not ready to commit to the train game. I think he’s scared it will turn into a huge project that will consume years of his life and drive him mad. Also, he’s just started on KidCuts and it’s not the right psychological moment to think of the next project. I haven’t given up on him, but I do need to start thinking about who else I might get to do it if Roland doesn’t.

I’m really enjoying the research for the train game. So far I’ve read The Birds Fall Down by Rebecca West and I’m in the middle of The Proud Tower by Barbara Tuchman. It’s great to have an excuse to learn all this fascinating stuff. I have the greatest job in the world.

“…Unknown Spears
Suddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened eyes,
And then the clash of fallen horsemen and the cries
Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears.”

–Yeats, 1895

[Chappaqua] A day of cheerful puttering about amongst my stuff. Tallied up twelve months’ worth of credit-card statements, that sort of thing.

I’ve got so much money it hardly seems real. It’s so much more than I need. The awful thing is, now that I have it, I feel the urge to keep it.

It’s good that I’m doing this train game. I should spend the money and not worry about it. The conservative impulse, at this point, is not my friend. If I’m not prepared to roll the dice now, when I’m young and on top of the world and the cash is rolling in, when will I ever be?

I know myself well enough to know that whatever happens, it won’t be my excesses I’ll regret, it’ll be the things I held myself back from doing. In all my life I’ve never yet given a present so lavish, or made a gesture so expansive, or indulged a pleasure so recklessly that I regretted it later. Whereas there are so many things I look back on now and think: That was one of the high points, that moment will never come again, why did I hold back?

I know it’s possible to err in the other direction too, to screw up your life by not thinking of the future. I just don’t think I’m nearly there yet…

[SF] Brian came by at four and we got caught up on the last few weeks. It turned out I’d been invited to the MacUser awards as a last-minute replacement for John Baker. So we changed into our suits and ties in the office, and I sped us to the Galleria in my rented toy car (a blue Mazda Miata) just in time for the 7 o’clock dinner.

Man, that was a posh affair. Beat the Tilt d’Or all hollow, budget-wise. Oh, and I won the Eddy. That is, Prince did, and I got to accept the award and make a speech. Brian was thrilled. Susan Lee-Merrow got blasted on white wine and fell asleep in her chair. I was glad I went.

The next morning I picked up the keys and let myself into my new apartment. An auspicious start to my new life in SF.

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.