[You may recall I recently wrote an open letter to the designer of a couple obscure adventure games that used to make me pound my little fist against the Apple IIe’s keyboard in frustration in my childhood, at the same time they formed my earliest and best nostalgic memories of gaming. Thanks to the magic of the internet, my letter reached former Sirius Software designer Bob Blauschild, who’s given me permission to publish his response in its unedited entirety. This is one of the coolest things that has ever happened in my career.]
Dear Leigh,
It was quite a shock, seeing your open letter to me. Hard to believe, but the number of letters sent to me by hot young babes (assuming that that’s your picture) has declined significantly over the past several decades. I was initially hesitant to respond. Your letter is so well written that any response I might offer could seem nearly illiterate in comparison. But you’re the pro in this field and I’m but an historical footnote, so with that in mind, here goes –
I’m touched that you fondly remember spending day after day hacking away at my games. I can’t apologize for making them too hard for a six-year-old. The target audience was approximately 10 or 12 to 40, and one goal was to make the puzzles difficult enough to make the game last a week or more to justify the price, without being so difficult as to drive the player to go postal (especially when my name was on the product and my address was in the phonebook).
I take it from the tone of your letter that your claims of suffering “childhood damage” and being “traumatized for life” at the hands of my code are somewhat exaggerated to show your commitment to the intensity with which you attacked the games. If they in any way led to developing a passion for thinking through challenges, then I’ll take just a little credit.
There is one section of your letter that does require a response. You list several Sirius Software games – Critical Mass, Escape from Rungistan, Kabul Spy, Blade of Blackpool, and Gruds in Space – and state that you are unsure about whether I was responsible for of all of those. I was not. The first two were mine, the second two were written by Tim Wilson, and the third I can’t recall much about now. As for your research that told you that Sirius Software’s adventure game titles were merely poor clones of Sierra’s Hi-Res Adventures, everyone’s entitled to their opinion, no matter how horribly wrong it is.
In the early 80’s I was interested in finding out why computer games were so expensive. Must be something there to justify the price, so I plunked down my $40 for “The Princess and the Wizard.” I was quickly hooked, and blew through all the graphic adventure games that were available. But there weren’t many, so thereafter I decided to try writing one myself as a hobby. But I didn’t want to just duplicate what was currently available. “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” with its non-stop action was a big deal then. What if I were to insert action sequences and moments of possible panic into my graphic adventure game? And how about adding some humor? That’s what I did, and the result was something new that outsold all of the Sierra games for a few months.
I wrote a second game, then went back to concentrating on designing chips in Silicon Valley, and then your letter showed up 26 years later.
Thank you for the jolt of nostalgia. Your writing style is terrific, and your success as a writer is well deserved.
Best Regards,
Bob Blauschild
[Bonus Material: Bob directed me to a site where, also thanks to the magic of the internet, Escape From Rungistan is playable — as are Critical Mass and likely a host of other amazing things. I still keep dying, but I’ll conquer it yet!
Thank you for everything, Bob!]
