Second Initial

We Shall Rise Again

I had been a fan of the irreverent trivia game called You Don’t Know Jack™. It feels as though it’s been œons since I’ve played it, but the possibility of playing it with some friends this weekend prompted me to dig out the discs and see if I could get it running. Alas, the upgrades to newer hardware and OS X have taken their toll.

I won’t bore anyone with the details, but I will ask if anyone knows how to trick a Titanium PowerBook that’s booted on OS 9 into switching to 256-color mode, I’d be grateful to learn how. In OS X, I can switch from Millions to Thousands or 256, but only the Millions option is available when I boot in OS 9. Consequently, the game won’t run because it thinks the color setting is wrong.

But what I really wanted to share was the witty e-mail reply I got from the Jellyvision sales team—specifically the only person there who still uses a Mac. The response was nearly as irreverent as the game itself!

—

Hey Lee;

As the sole remaining Mac user at Jellyvision, I feel it is my duty to inform you of the state of YOU DON’T KNOW JACK’s incompatibility with OS X. Here’s the skinny:

In the olden days, all of our titles were created for both the Mac and Windows platforms. It didn’t always make sense to do both because the actual number of Mac JACK was relatively small compared to the throngs of Windows users. But, we felt it was our duty to address our loyal Mac brethren and sistren (is that a word?) It was a beautiful time.

[note from Lee - yes, sistren is a word]

As Jellyvision downsized, the number of Mac users downsized as well. As a matter of fact, I am currently the only Jellyvisionite with a Mac at his desk. A sad state of affairs, indeed, but as we know, most people are idiots, so there you go. Add to this the fact that we no longer have mega-distributor Sierra funding our projects, well there simply isn’t the cash around any longer to fund dual platform development for our games.

There is a ray of hope, however. Evan, the man-boy who programmed YDKJ 6: The Lost Gold, said that some day soon, there will be a new version of the coding software he used to create the game that will make porting the game to OSX a relatively painless process (currently, the game would have to be coded anew from the ground up—something the Jellyvision bigwigs simply won’t greenlight. Too much moolah.) And that pretty much brings us up to date.

I don’t know if it’s any consolation, but I feel your pain. Hell, I got a free copy of V6 and I can’t even play it at home. All we can hope for is a the day when the mighty Mac will rise up once again from under the shadow of its wicked Window-y oppressor, and take back its rightful place as the Apple-y king of the digital world!

Keep the faith, comrade!

Sincerely,

Sales Dept.

Jellyvision, Inc.

» Posted by ALBj at 11:59 AM (ET)
Category: Mac

Comments

Sorry, due to comment spam abuse, new comments on this entry are closed until I find time to upgrade Movable Type and enable registration and moderation.