Interplay’s Latest Ain’t Shipped Till It’s Shipped
The software industry is notorious for missing product deadlines, and usually it’s not a laughing matter.
Apple Computer Inc., for instance, has been in obvious agony for months trying to figure out whether it can afford to wait for its own long-delayed new operating system to arrive, or whether it would be better to just buy a new one from somebody else.
But taking things too seriously is rarely a problem for the computer game programmers at Interplay Productions.
The Irvine-based company still hasn’t shipped Virtual Reality Baseball, even though it was originally scheduled for release in 1995. So, as another critical holiday shopping season passed, the company recently issued a press release explaining the delays.
Here, in slightly edited form, are the company’s official top 10 reasons VR Baseball is late:
10) Marketing is complaining there isn’t enough blood and guts in the game.
9) A virus from an Interplay rival has been detected. It causes players to purposely throw a game.
8) Have not been able to get the game to boot since implementing the “Players’ Strike” feature.
7) Two words: Nomo Mania.
6) There was a setback because testers were using illegally corked joysticks.
5) It takes way too many polygons to represent major league umpires.
4) Stupidly hired “Codeless” Joe Jackson as lead programmer.
3) Programmers found roaming through cornfields, saying, “If you program it, it will crash.”
2) Programmers and artists can’t continue without a collective bargaining agreement.
1) Took too long to abandon the “We can save money by using old source code from Pong” theory.
Actually, the game has been delayed by a series of technical and stylistic problems, said company spokesman John Soller. But he promised that “it will be the first baseball game released in 1997, right at the start of spring training.”
Either that or they’ll send out another top 10 list.
Greg Miller covers high technology for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-7830 and at greg.miller@latimes.com
