"Alisa" - a legendary game that has not received the deserved popularity

What do you think, can a computer game to become a cult, without having a great popularity among a wider audience? I think I still can. A striking example of such a project is a game of "Alisa", which appeared for the Lisa and Macintosh computers. After reading this compelling story, you will know when and by whom was created this video game and trace its path from development to release.

Despite the fact that Bruce Daniels was the manager Lisa development team, he is quite interested in the Mac project. He was the author we used a text editor based on the mouse control. In 1981, Bruce temporarily held the position of a simple programmer for Macintosh team before decided to concentrate fully on the management of Lisa. He often came to visit us, to show off their new and exciting developments. At this time, Bruce has prepared for something really unique.

"You should see a new game, which was written by Steve Capps!", - he said this, connect your hard drive to my computer. Bruce has launched a text-based interface, similar to the UCSD Pascal, and has launched a program called "Alice". Steve Capps was the second member of the Lisa team, but in fact I never met him, though, and heard a lot about him.

The screen is darkened, and after several seconds of delay appeared checkerboard. In the background is placed small chess pieces white, arranged in the usual manner. Then the chess started to jump until they lined up very close in front of our eyes. The user was prompted to start the game by selecting the shape of the queen.

The main heroine of the game was Alice - girl in old-fashioned dress, taken from the book Lyuissa Carroll. Player controlled Alice could inspect the board only on her face. After the appearance of a three-digit account at the top of the screen started this game: opposing figure rose in the air and jumped on the Meto, where Alice was located. Jumps were single, but took place in a fairly fast pace. If the player remained in one place for too long, it could capture Alice and the game would be over.

control study and rules of the game did not take long. It was necessary to move the main character on the chessboard, evading threats. If an enemy figure still did not move, then I switched to this field Alice destroy the enemy and the player receives bonus points. If the heroine remained last on the chessboard, then added to the winning player.

I was really impressed with this game. It was necessary to show imagination to bring the fantastic character in a video game with beautiful graphics, in which it would be fun to play. It took me a bit of practice to learn how to survive at least a few minutes. Obviously, we had to move this game on your Mac as soon as possible.

Bruce Daniels looked pleased. He foresaw our thoughts.

"I think I can Capps port" Alice "on the Mac. Would you like to receive a copy of the game? "

He escorted me into the building Lisa engineering team, which was a rule according to which any employee from another department has to move in with a local engineer. I finally met Steve Capps. He was quite calm, friendly and had a great sense of humor. In the afternoon he visited our office at Texaco Towers, where I answered some of his questions on the technical side and the development environment. In turn, Steve assured me that the game port should not take long.

Exactly two days Capps has brought us to a floppy disk with a port of the game. "Alice" has worked on the Macintosh is several times better than Lisa. A more powerful and modern processor allowed to implement a very smooth animation and fast download speeds. Pretty soon all the members of our team have learned to survive in the game just a few hours.

It seems that in the coming weeks, I may have played more than a hundred rounds, but was considered the best player Joanna Hoffman - Chief Marketing Mac. Every day, she came to our office, to relieve stress through play, sending a knockout hostile chess pieces. She complained that "Alice" enough difficult. According to her, Capps had to change some settings to make the game more interesting.

Steve Jobs was not an avid player "Alice", but was very impressed with programming skills, applied at its creation.

"Who is this guy? Why it works in the subdivision Lisa? We have a place for it on the Mac team! "

But Steve Capps could not leave some projects for Lisa, so Jobs failed to transfer immediately. In one weekend, I met with Steve Capps, after which he said that is still waiting for him to work on a Macintosh. Finally, in January 1983 a compromise was reached by which the employee became Capps Macintosh division.

He quickly became an important member of our team, he has added new energy to the moment when we reached the finish line. He helped refine the Finder, and Toolbox, developed the floppy disk with the operating manual. In addition, he found time to upgrade "Alice" and add the new exciting features.

Kapss showed me a hidden menu in the game, called "Cheshire Cat". It appears after clicking on the map counting points at the top of the screen. Here you can adjust various settings that affect the gameplay. Then this drop-down menu with a damped bitmap Cheshire cat. Over time, there are new features that make some cells disappeared chessboard form destructive abyss, and the idea proposed by Steve Wozniak will add realism and image depths.

In the fall of 1983 Capps began to think about how you can make money on the spread of the game. One option was to sell the game through Electronic Arts, where he worked a former marketing manager Lisa - Trip Hawkins. But Jobs insisted that the publisher of "Alice" was Apple's. He held talks with Capps, as a result of which it was decided to create an advertising campaign to promote the game on the market.

"Alice" was presented during a special presentation, but it went on sale only two months later. The game comes in a luxurious cardboard box in the form of an old book with a nice logo, as if carved out of wood. Since "Alice" did not occupy the entire disk, in this edition includes several other bonuses, including randomly generated maze, written by caps.

When I saw the package with the game, I was surprised to find that the name "Alice" was replaced. Apparently, the brand with this name has already been registered, so the market the game came out under the name of "Through the Looking Glass." Unfortunately, the promised advertising campaign and marketing strategy for the game have not been realized. Due to the fact that the first Macintosh was meant as a computer to solve business problems, "Alice" has not reached a wide audience.

via Folklore.org