9 replies to this topic

[smokehouse]

I came across this game in an Atari 800 lot I purchased for $30. Here’s a pic:



I know some of the history of this game but what I don’t know is it’s worth. I do know it’s worth quiet a bit but it’s hard to find an online rarity guide.

Any help?

[deathtrappomegranate]

It's not at all common - rated 8/10 for rarity at Atarimania.

Could you scan the packaging?

[Plastron]

Hehehehe i think i played this as a kid. If it the one i played you have to work your way up from a hooker to a high class lady.

Was quite funny well it was when you were 13 at least

[Callipygous]

The naked lady on the right is Roberta Williams, author of many Sierra adventures.

[Allas]

Callipygous, on Sat Oct 15, 2005 4:19 PM, said:

The naked lady on the right is Roberta Williams, author of many Sierra adventures.

Sure???...

[remowilliams]

Callipygous, on Sat Oct 15, 2005 4:19 PM, said:

The naked lady on the right is Roberta Williams, author of many Sierra adventures.

OMG that is her, isn't it! Never knew that. She must have had some job back then!

That's certainly the best picture she's ever taken as well.

[Goochman]

There is a funny article on this cover shot - all of them were Sierra Employees at the time - That is Roberta on the cover.

I forgot where the hot tub was from - it was def an 'on the cheap' photoshoot.

[Tempest]

remowilliams, on Sat Oct 15, 2005 5:35 PM, said:

Callipygous, on Sat Oct 15, 2005 4:19 PM, said:

The naked lady on the right is Roberta Williams, author of many Sierra adventures.

OMG that is her, isn't it! Never knew that. She must have had some job back then!

That's certainly the best picture she's ever taken as well.

Well it's her... kinda. They just photoshopped (or whatever they had back then) her head on another persons body (you can tell if you look close). She found out about it later on and was quite ticked off.

Tempest

[jaybird3rd]

Tempest, on Sat Oct 15, 2005 7:31 PM, said:

Well it's her... kinda.  They just photoshopped (or whatever they had back then) her head on another persons body (you can tell if you look close).  She found out about it later on and was quite ticked off.

Tempest

Hmmm ... that's the first time I've heard this. I remember reading someplace that they were seated in a hot tub at Ken and Roberta Williams' residence. If I remember correctly, the lady on the left worked in Sierra's shipping department (or was it the mailroom?), while the one in the middle was married to someone in Sierra management (don't remember who exactly). The guy was a waiter from a local restaurant.

[orpheuswaking]

The game was called "Softpom." In the Spring of 1981, Ken had met a programmer who had been talking to publishers about an adventure game he had written and was trying, with little success, to market himself. This game was not your usual adventure where you quest for jewels, or try to solve a murder, or try to overthrow some evil Emperor Nyquill from the Planet Yvonne. In this game, you were a bachelor whose quest was to find and seduce three women. The programmer had written the program as a training exercise to help teach himself about data bases, using the sexual theme to make it interesting. It was the kind of thing that hackers, at least the ones who were aware that a thing called sex existed, had been doing for years, and it was rare to find a computer center without its own particular sexual specialty, be it an obscene-joke generator or a program to print out a display of a naked woman. The difference was that in 1981, all sorts of things that hackers had been doing as cosmic technical goofs had a sudden market value in home computer translations.

The program in question was a cleaned-up variation of the original. It would get vile only if you used obscenity in your command. Still, in order to win the game you needed to have sex with a prostitute, buy a condom to avoid venereal disease, and engage in sadomasochism with a blonde who insisted on marrying you before you could bed her. If you wanted to do well in this adventure, the replies you typed into the computer had to be imaginatively seductive. But there were perils: if you came across the "voluptuous blonde" and typed in EAT BLONDE, the computer would type out a passage intimating that the blonde was leaning over and performing oral sex on you. But then she'd flash her gleaming choppers and bite it off!

To those with a sense of humor about that sort of thing, Softporn was a uniquely desirable Apple game. Most software publishers wanted nothing to do with the game; they considered themselves "family" businesses. But Ken Williams thought the game was a riot: he had a great time solving the adventure in three or four hours. He thought the controversy would be fun. He agreed to market Softporn.

One day not long afterward. Ken walked into the office and said, "Who wants to come over my house and take pictures in the hot tub naked?"

The idea was to get three women to pose topless in Ken's hot tub for the Softporn advertisement. Somewhere in the picture would be an Apple computer, and in the tub with the three naked women would be a male waiter serving them drinks. They borrowed a waiter from The Broken Bit, a Coarsegold steak house which was about the only decent place to eat in town. The three women, all On-Liners, who took their blouses off were the company bookkeeper, the wife of Ken's assistant, and Roberta Williams.

The full-color ad, with the women holding wineglasses (the water in the hot tub tactfully covering their nipples), the fully clothed male waiter holding a tray of more wineglasses, and an Apple computer standing rather forlomly in the background, caused a sensation. On-Line got its share of hate mail, some of it full of Bible scripture and prophecy of the damnation ahead. The story of the game and the ad caught the imagination of the news services, and the picture ran in Time and over the UPI wire.

Ken Williams loved the free publicity. Softpom became one of On-Line's biggest sellers. Computer stores that wanted it would be reluctant to order just that one program. So, like the teenager who goes to the drugstore and says, "I'd like a comb, toothpaste, aspirin, suntan oil, stationery, and, oh, while I'm here I might as well pick up this Playboy, " the store owners would order a whole sampling of On-Line products ... and some Softporn too. Ken guessed that Softpom and its ripple effect just about doubled his revenue.