In these days of computer-to-plate
publishing, using desktop layout programs, it’s hard to
imagine how primitive our operation was. I say “our”
operation because I was privileged to be a part of Computer Gaming
World for so long that I took a proprietary attitude toward the
magazine. Even before I became an official part of Russell Sipe’s
staff in 1986, I had written for the magazine, sorted mail, handled
UPS shipping to the retailers (in those days, mostly “Mom
and Pop” computer shops that handled computer games in zip-locked
bags hung on wire racks), and helped Russell with the booth at
local and national game conventions. In fact, I remember meeting
the folks from Australia’s Strategic Studies Group and the
U.S.’s Strategic Simulations, Inc. at the 1985 Origins game
convention in Los Angeles. But, the fact is that even
though everyone thinks I was there from the beginning, Computer
Gaming World was established by Russell Sipe. He worked a miracle
by getting the magazine out the door and surviving until the cash
flow caught up with the initial investment. He’s the one
who started on the proverbial kitchen table, moved the operation
to the spare bedroom, renovated the garage into a real office,
and expanded the operation from one office to two offices to new
offices during the time we worked together. I watched Russell
move the circulation needle from a few thousand to 20,000 and
up to over 100,000 while I worked with him. So, even though I’m
telling the story my way, I don’t want anyone to forget
him. He da’ man!

As I said, everything
was in place for success. Russell had already recruited Scorpia,
M. Evan Brooks and Charles Ardai as regular contributors and had
an entire network of strategy gamers from the local game clubs
to draw from as part of the contributor pool. All I had to do
was work with them in such a way that I didn’t make them
mad. Of course, my goal was to cram as much gaming goodness as
I could possibly stuff into the pages of the magazine and that
meant that it was only a few issues before I ticked off some of
our regulars. I didn’t tick off Scorpia (for a while, at
least) because I thought her columns were absolutely unique (more
on those, later), but I had the most boring review of a sports
game I had ever read. It was a game that was advertised in our
magazine, so I believed it needed to be covered, but the article
was so poorly written that I trimmed it down to a one-page article
from the 2-3 pager we were expecting to print.

By the way, a lot of
people may get the wrong impression when I say that a game was
advertised and needed to be covered. This is not and
never was the case in my days at CGW that an advertised
game got a good review because it was advertised, but
we felt that if a game had flaws and was advertised, the readers
deserved to hear about a flawed advertised game before they heard
about an okay non-advertised game. The irony of my entire tenure
at CGW was that we were constantly accused of being “in
bed” with advertisers at the same time that people in certain
major companies (Origin, MicroProse, Sierra and Activision) wouldn’t
speak to us because they thought they had been singled out for
editorial abuse. The truth is that Russell and I both believed
that we needed to be shot at by both sides in order to know that
we were being objective enough. Looking back, we must have been
plenty objective.

Scorpia not only kept
disk-based copies of all her characters and game saves, she kept
detailed files with hand-drawn maps and notes. I really enjoyed
having access to this human database of information. If I needed
help with a puzzle in an adventure or role-playing game, I could
call her up and tell her where I was. Instead of telling me the
answer outright, she would give me a hint—just like she
used to give in Scorpion’s Mail. Instead of saying, place
the cards in the following order, she would challenge you to remember
the mnemonic for the color spectrum that you learned in junior
high school (ROYGBIV) and you’d know to insert the cards
from red to violet in a set order (or, as in The Neverhood,
to press buttons in that order). No one, but no one could ever
match her walk-throughs or hints.

This brings me to the
biggest disagreement that Scorpia and I ever had. It was over
the MicroProse game, Darklands. Darklands was
a thorough and marvelous game of role-playing in medieval Germany.
Scorpia, like most players, hated the game because it crashed
too often. I was playing an unpatched version and had 60+ hours
with only two crashes. The guys at the office kidded me about
having the Immaculate Contraption because I was able to play many
games without experiencing the crash problems that others were
experiencing (I later found out the reason). She also didn’t
like the conclusion of the game, sacrificing one of the player
characters in order to win. I thought the idea of self-sacrifice
was a unique factor in computer games and Scorpia felt it mocked
the heroic efforts of her party members. I thought she was treating
her characters too much like her children, the digital equivalent
of those who pamper their pets. She thought I was lying about
the program not crashing on me.