Treasure, it seems, is buried in unlikely places. Somewhere hidden, sure, but also accessible – the kind of place the average guy might walk past every day but wouldn't take a second glance at. That's just the way it goes, apparently.
For example: this week Mojo was alerted to a story that was published over a decade ago, in the summer of 2000. It's an innocuous little story in an innocuous little magazine, but there is no doubt that it is indeed great treasure. It was just hidden in plain sight, all along.
This is all I could find.
The first to stumble onto the story was Mojo reader XeroCool, who graciously sent us a transcript of an article that appeared in the June 2000 issue of RePlay Magazine. The article in question – Sega Goes Internet – detailed Sega's latest innovations in the field of coin-op arcade technology, and took a look at some of their upcoming games. As one of these games was the popular Star Wars Racer, RePlay devoted an entire page to the history of Sega's relationship with George Lucas' classic franchise. I – well, there's not really much I can say to prepare you for this, so you may as well just read it yourself:
SEGA had approached LucasFilm in the late 1980s, only to be turned away. “Their video game department told us the Star Wars license was still in the hands of Atari,” says (Star Wars Arcade producer Jesse) Taylor. “They basically told us to come back in a couple of years.”
Nevertheless, SEGA CEO Hayao Nakayama was keen to establish a relationship between the two companies, believing that LucasFilm's back catalogue of 'point and click' text adventures (sic) could work as a 'new breed' of arcade game. That avenue of pursuit was abandoned after a prototype Monkey Island arcade cabinet was rejected by LucasFilm games division (although it did result in a successful SEGA-CD port two years later), but Nakayama's enthusiasm had won through – and by 1991 SEGA were granted exclusive rights to produce coin-ops using the Star Wars license.
The article blathers on for a while about Star Wars Arcade, and Star Wars Trilogy Arcade, and that's all fascinating. But a Monkey Island arcade cabinet? Prototype or not... what the hell?! Could it actually be real?
We asked around.
It was supposed to exist, but I never saw it. We thought it was a dumb idea, honestly.
I definitely remember people talking about it, but I don't know if that proves anything. Sorry.
It was all very vague, and it seemed it would stay that way. A fascinating rumour, but perhaps nothing more.
But then, Dave Grossman e-mailed us again:
Okay, I remembered someone who might actually know something about this. Hope it helps!
There was an e-mail address attached for one Vince Lee, who some of you will recognise from the credits of – well, pretty much every game LucasArts released in the 1990s. Check this shit out:
Yeah, it was real. I inherited a bunch of code off of the Sega version when we decided to put it out on the Sega CD – the password system, pretty much. It was hashed out between the Sega guys and Doug Norby, who was the LucasArts President at the time. The ideas were insane – they had an insult swordfighting concept that was like some kind of word-based Tetris (and it was pretty damn hilarious too, albeit unintentionally...) and another one where you had to use the navigator head to get around different mazes. Norby wanted them to keep the narrative in place because that was our “thing” but they couldn't do it. They figured out the password system, but they had no real way to make people keep pumping quarters into it, which I guess is the whole point of an arcade game. So nothing ever really came out of it except that one prototype of the Tetris thing.
I'll let you be the judge of that for yourselves. Whilst you mull it over, you may want to check out this picture Vince attached to his reply...
*twilight zone music*
Source: RePlay (via XeroCool)
"Yeah, of course. Why not? Sierra probably had a leg up, though, since we kids would have spent fifty bucks just trying to get the hell out of the police station or castle or whatever without getting killed or reprimanded..."
If it isn't, set it as a feature story.
Egg on my face. :~