March 7, 1990
Roland came over for breakfast and we installed an extra 1 MB in my Mac. Roland tested it out by creating an 8,000-page document in MS Word.
March 9, 1990
Lunch with Latricia, Sophie and Jessica. Latricia didn’t seem to want to talk about Prince of Persia, so we talked about my Hollywood adventures instead. It’s true what Laurie said: Latricia doesn’t like this game. Even Sophie and Jessica are enthusiastic, but to Latricia, it’s an arcade game, and “arcade games don’t sell.”
A really good review by the Game Wardens.
The 3.5″ version of Apple POP finally signed out of QA today.
The IBM version is down to the last few bugs, and O God, it’s a thing of beauty. Playing it is a pleasure, even for me. It’s the most beautiful game I’ve ever seen. And I’m not the only one who’s saying that. If this version doesn’t sell 100,000 copies, there is no justice in the world.
Dianne stopped by and told me she was submitting it to Konami. Thank God she’s in there trying. I hope they sell a few before the bottom drops out of the cartridge business.
The tension is just about unbearable. This game should be a major hit. It should sell 250,000 copies. In the best case, if it gets licensed to game machines and coin-ops, I could end up making over a million bucks. Alternatively, everything could just… fizzle.
I won’t really know till May. Two more months.
NYU called to say they never got Doug’s letter of recommendation. I had to call and ask him to write a new one. I think it annoyed him. He’s also probably annoyed about the Roland MT-32 fiasco, where he tried to do me a favor and thanks in part to my lack of enthusiasm, it blew up in his face.
March 27, 1990
Got a $2000 check from James Alex, renewing the option on In the Dark.
IBM POP signoff looks imminent. I invited Lance, Leila, Brian, Tom and Oliver to dinner Friday to celebrate.
March 29, 1990
All versions of IBM POP have signed out. Hooray! On the horizon: Amiga and Mac. I’m worried about Scott. It’s almost April and I still haven’t seen an alpha version.
March 30, 1990
Prince of Persia IBM celebratory dinner at Butler’s. Lance, Leila, Brian, Ollie, Tom and me. It was a lot of fun. I paid. They were grateful. It was a good thing to do.
At the company meeting they unveiled the promotional campaign for Wolf Pack. Brian and I are seething with jealousy. It makes me sick to think that Prince of Persia hasn’t received even a tiny fraction of the attention (or money) they’re lavishing on this product.
Latricia T., once again you stand between me and perfect happiness!
Brian, John Baker, Tom and Leila would love to have POP 2 as an in-house project. If I’m going to be off at school, it would be a comfort to have it sheltered under Broderbund’s wing.
April 3, 1990
A perfect spring day. I drove out to Danny’s to see Amiga Prince. He’s on schedule! Brian is still maddeningly skeptical. Danny must really have traumatized everyone on Typhoon Thompson to engender such distrust.
A great piece of news: Tandy’s decided to stock Prince of Persia. They chose it over Wolf Pack – HAH! Take that, Latricia! (Steve Dunphy wrote in his memo to Brian: “Even though Latricia came with me, they decided to order 11,000 units. Imagine how many they would have ordered if I’d gone alone.”)
As Brian pointed out, on the strength of this one order, IBM POP has already outsold the Apple version 2:1.
