Articles

by Randy Sluganski April 15, 2005

Eli’s Software Encyclopedia

Have you ever met someone and wondered how you had not known that person for the past twenty years? Well, it was that way for me after I met and had spoken to Eli Tomlinson for only a few minutes. It seemed our paths had always been going horizontally, but had never crossed. You may have recently stumbled across Eli on Ebay - where he has been auctioning some of his stock - or at his newly opened online store Eli’s Software Encyclopedia.

Eli resides in Scranton, Pennsylvania – only a five-hour drive from Just Adventure - and possesses an encyclopedic knowledge about the history and evolution of computer games. He also owns a ‘warehouse’ that contains almost 250,000 vintage computer games circa 1984 – 1994 – all in their original packaging and many still sealed

Just to wet your appetite a little – and I’ll write more about the games later – how about sealed copies of the original LucasFilm’s Maniac Mansion, Mean Streets – the first Tex Murphy game - and the entire Infocom collection. All told, almost 20,000 different pieces of software, some with more than 1,000 units apiece, others with just a few rare copies. And not just adventure games either, but every genre you can imagine: from early RPG’s like Bard’s Tale and Wizardry to sports games like Jordan vs. Bird and Microleague Baseball. If you can name a game from that ten-year period, it is surely somewhere in Eli’s warehouse.

Neither Rain, Nor Snow, Nor Dark of Night…

The five-hour drive to Scranton turned to six hours as a never-ending, driving rain slowed my progress. But once there, after a quick meeting with Eli, we were off to the last place I would ever have expected to find a secret stash of games – an abandoned grade school.

Up the stairs and through the double doors from which hundreds of screaming children once ran to escape into the late afternoon sunlight, we entered a dreary, abandoned hallway littered with ragged posters of Barney and random letters of the alphabet still clinging to the wall. Six doors – three on each side of the hallway – led into classrooms and still in place above each doorway was the name of that classroom’s teacher.

Inside each classroom, stacked from floor to ceiling, was box after box after box containing tens of thousands of computer games. Each room is devoted to a specific gaming system. There is a room full of nothing but Commodore software, another for Amiga, two for pc games, another for Apple and Atari ST and one huge room that is full of a mix of opened software that was returned from stores for various reasons. The software in this room is from the days when stores still had liberal return policies and a game could be returned simply because you ‘did not like it.’

It was like Christmas in April with thousands of boxes to open and explore and while Eli knows what games are in each room, he does not always know the exact location, so of course it wasn’t long before I gave in to the urge to search through the boxes.

I Promise Ma, I’ll Quit After Just One Game…

By now you are surely wondering how one person managed to accumulate such a wealth of games. Eli started the day after his 16th birthday when he got a job working in a computer store. He also did some programming, wrote some software and soon published a few games. His growing connections in the industry eventually led to him becoming the sole North American distributor for CRL – a UK based software house that primarily developed games for the Commodore. His middleman status for CRL allowed Eli to make dozens of valuable connections at all of the major retailers such as Electronic Boutique, Babbages, Best Buy and Wal-Mart. When CRL went out of business and decided to liquidate their assets, Eli stepped in and purchased their remaining inventory. He then proceeded to make more money in one month selling the liquidated software than he had earned for the previous entire year through the retail chains. From that point on, Eli started doing what are known as close-outs. He would purchase the entire stocks of companies like Box Office or Microprose, wholesale a few pallets through his newly formed company Mainstream America – one of the two largest software distributors in North America at that time – to reach his break-even point and then work trade shows on the East Coast. It was a very profitable business.

Eli then made one of his few poor financial decisions when he sold out to a company in Indiana. This company soon declared bankruptcy and flooded the overseas market – especially Australia and Japan– with cheap software in an attempt to make some quick money. The company then disappeared, owing Eli tens of thousands of dollars.

After that, Eli continued to rebuild his close-out business, albeit on a smaller scale until a fellow by the name of Chuck Bond appeared on the scene. Chuck – who was also known as Slash – approached publishers such as Sierra and Microprose, purchased their licenses and remanufactured their games as budget titles. Now this is another story for another article, but this was the first I had ever heard that there are cheaper, repackaged versions of games like Leisure Suit Larry 1 that are not as desirable by collectors. The market then further collapsed with the advent of cd-roms as publishers overestimated their potential sales and now thousands of cheap, cd-rom games were being sold beneath cost.

Eli opened a little computer store in Scranton, married (later divorced) had children and forgot all about the games in his warehouse – until now. Besides his online store and Ebay auctions, Eli also plans to open a small retail store in Scranton later this year.

Games As Far as the Eyes Can See!

As promised, it’s time to look at some of the games! I could literally list for pages the games I saw, but for now I’ll limit it to the adventure genre. Keep in mind that many of these games are on 3.5 or 5.25 diskettes and many will probably not run on Windows XP (But there are also numerous games on cd such as Silverload, The Scroll, The Riddle of Master Lu and more). In fact, I am currently in the process of installing both a dual boot system and an older pc with Win 95 so I can play or replay many of these old classics. One of my favorite finds was a boxed copy of Daughter of the Serpents, which is the non-talkie version of The Dungeon of Shame favorite The Scroll. Besides the games pictured on the opening page, I found a nice selection of Sierra games, Legend classics and a complete collection of Cinemaware (It Came From the Desert, King of Chicago, etc.).

Games I never believed I would own like the Magnetic Scrolls Collection, Agatha Christie’s The Scoop and Loom.

And even a game of which I had never heard and what looks to be an instant entry to the Dungeon of Shame – Free DC, a must-play game on 5.25 disks that has claymation creatures taking control of Washington, DC.

But there’s even more! Dondra, Lure of the Temptress, Nine Princes In Amber, Rex Nebular, B.A.T., Cruise for a Corpse, James Bond in the Stealth Affair….whew, I’ve barely scratched the surface.

Now before you whip out your checkbook to purchase those games you’ve coveted for years, be aware that Eli has a daytime job and can only go to his warehouse on weekends. Then, even though he has the game(s) you want, he still may not know exactly which box they are in and believe me, there are thousands of boxes so you may have to wait until he accidentally stumbles across your game while looking for something else.

But be patient, write to Eli (elit@adelphia.net) and tell him what you are looking for, tell your non-adventure collector friends that there are also lots of other classic games to be had at the largest collection of classic software in the world.

You Can Go Home Again

So it was that five hours with Eli passed like five minutes and my five-hour drive home stretched into almost 8 hours as I struggled through both driving rain and then three hours of blinding snow. But it was worth the journey as the back seat of my car was packed with over 70 adventure games to add to my collection. Plus, just the thought that a lot of Just Adventure readers would now be able to acquire their favorite old games without spending a fortune was more than enough to make the ride home warm.