Interplay and TSR and Microprose pretty much had all my gaming money back then.
I really miss the early 90’s adult themed games for their humor the way I miss 80’s teen sex comedies.
You know when you are part of something every day, and think you know all the in and outs, and then you realize that you’ve somehow missed something big that almost everyone else knows?
I didn’t know about offworld.com…
I mean I’ve read the posts on Boing Boing and everything, just didn’t know it was its own site. The link in the footer just goes to Boing Boing’s About page oddly enough, If I hadn’t noticed the link in the header of the story I might never have stumbled onto this.
To be fair I spend all my time here on the BBS or in the Grid View, I love the grid view, you could almost say i digg it! 
The pic in this story shows a flier for the Infocom support hotline, with text saying “We’re right here” under a picture of a guy in a balloon.
Is this a reference to that old programmer/nerd “You’re in a hot air balloon” joke, maybe?
One (slightly over-detailed) example here.
Wow, I just checked out the scans from the game I’m most familiar with, The Hitchhiker’s Guide…, and there is a ton of stuff. Over 900 pages from brainstorming notes, computer code, newspaper clippings, marketing drafts, and even notes appearing to be an itinerary for meeting Douglas Adams in England (with Adams’ blacked out contact info). Very cool stuff.
In the distant past, I recall reading a bit from Meretzky on the design of Superhero League of Hoboken. One puzzle requires you to get to Carnegie Hall, and the story goes that it was at one point a parser-based game requiring the player to conjure the ingenious solution of typing “practice music” to be magically transported. The final, graphical version of the game turned out to be considerably more boring: clicking on a piece of sheet music just instantly pops up the context-sensitive verb “Practice” and transforms it into a non-puzzle.
It was a thoughtful piece on how something was lost in the move away from text parsers. Sadly, I have never been able to locate that reference ever again. Maybe I should just message him about it directly.
(Also, I hope Legend Entertainment’s games resurface someday – even the ones not encumbered by contractual problems related to the source material on which they are based, like Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon.)
For some unexpected reason I find this pure awesome.
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