From: ender@uwaterloo.ca (Joe Mason)
Newsgroups: alt.humor.best-of-usenet
Subject: [rec.arts.int-fiction] Re: Download.com is your friend, really
Date: 8 Oct 1998 13:37:55 GMT

Subject: Re: Download.com is your friend, really
From: foxglove@globalserve.net (Drone)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction

In article <fake-mail-0610980100290001@rich-53-0136.direct.ca>,
fake-mail@anti-spam.address (Neil K.) wrote:

>  sandifer@crmse.sdsu.edu (cody sandifer) wrote:
>
> > [...] Nominated for two XYZZY
> > awards in 1997, Everybody Loves a Parade is a
> > newer example of a dying genre.
>
>  Grocible falls over.
>
>  You know, I'm sure there's a perfect IF slogan in there somewhere. "Dying
> since 1985" maybe? "Still Dying" perhaps? Or, at risk of angering a
> Whizzard, "Nearly Dead"? Never mind the obvious Mark Twain and Monty
> Python geek references.
>

Actually I think their own words are best. "Read my newest example of a
dying genre." That sounds cool.

Possible ad campaigns (this is off the cuff so please excuse vague dates):
----------------

FADE IN on the proscenium of a theatre. It's falling into ruin.

   TITLES:
   "THE PLAY. 600 B.C. to 1500 AD. R.I.P."

DISSOLVE TO the disintegrating pages of an ancient tome.

   TITLES:
   "THE NOVEL. 1500 AD to 1920 AD. R.I.P."

DISSOLVE TO an old projector, rusted and threaded with a cracked reel of film.

   TITLES:
   "THE MOVIE. 1920 AD to 1950 AD. R.I.P."

DISSOLVE TO a futuristic-looking city. TRACK LEFT until a garbage heap is
revealed, mostly full of old picture tubes.

   TITLES:
   "THE TELEVISION. 1950 AD to 20?? AD. R.I.P."

   NARRATOR:
   "All genres die."

DISSOLVE TO a command line prompt. The word 'OPEN MAILBOX' is typed, and a
rush of text goes by at blazing speed. The rush begins to slow down...

   TITLES:
   "INTERACTIVE FICTION 1980 AD to 1989 AD. ..."

   NARRATOR:
   "But one lived harder. Died faster."

The text is now slowly to character-by-character updating... Finally,
there's a period, and a new command line.

   NARRATOR:
   "Or so it seemed."

At the command line are typed the words 'SAVE GAME'.

   NARRATOR:
   "The 1998 Interactive Fiction Competition."

At the next command line are typed a series of navigation commands, taking
you faster and faster from room to intriguing-sounding room.

   NARRATOR:
   "It's alive."

FADE TO BLACK.

------------------

FADE IN on a desolate winter scene.

DISSOLVE VERY SLOWLY TO a gigantic new year's celebration crowd.

   NARRATOR:
   "In the last days of the last thousand years..."

FINISH DISSOLVE.

   NARRATOR:
   "In the last glow of the world's twilight..."

PARTIAL DISSOLVE to a nuclear mushroom cloud, only hinting at it.

DISSOLVE VERY SLOWLY TO a beautiful red sunset.

   NARRATOR:
   "Stoke the last embers..."

DOLLY OUT to reveal a woman, who watches the sunset through a window as
she inserts a 5.25 inch floppy in a drive and watches Plundered Hearts
come up on her black-and-amber monitor. As she types a there is the low
glow of a fireplace backlighting her.

   NARRATOR:
   "...of a dying genre."

   NARRATOR:
   "Cast your vote on the 1998 Interactive Fiction Competition."

FADE TO BLACK.

-------------------

CUT INTO a quick montage of cheesy horror movies. Coffins open. Corpses
sit up from autopsy tables and shock the hell out of the doctor-and-nurse
making out on the next slab over. Flesh-eaten zombies walk with their
hands limply extended. The whole bit.

And over it all, titles spin wildly onscreen, Batman-style:

   TITLES:
   "SOMETHING DYING WALKS THE EARTH!"

   TITLES:
   "IT CAME FROM THE BARGAIN BIN!"

   TITLES:
   "IT'S THE RETURN OF THE LIVING GENRE!"

DISSOLVE TO:

Dead quiet, except for a few electronic bleeps and bloops backgrounded by
some chintzy music. A drooling couch potato, illuminated by the slack
greenish glow of a monitor, mindlessly manipulates a joystick.

   NARRATOR:
   "Tired of games that are only interested in your body?"

CUT TO: Another game-player. Fingers rush frantically across a keyboard.

   NARRATOR:
   "Check out the 1998 Interactive Fiction Comp