Gamers with a taste for history may remember the classic 1988 adventure/RPG Neuromancer by Interplay, which was of course based on the famed William Gibson novel of the same name.
Interplay developer Brian Fargo, whose current studio inXile is noted for resurrecting old RPGs that Fargo had worked on such as Wasteland, uncovered a trove of documents from when Interplay had to not only get permissions from Electronic Arts and Activision to produce the game, but help from people like Timothy Leary and Keith Haring.
”I was diggng through my garage today and found a bit of history with my agreements to get the Neuromancer game done,” stated Fargo, who then revealed he had to jump through some strange hoops. ”This was a property licensed in partnernship (sic) with two Beverly Hills hotel cabana boys and a rich plastic surgeon which game to me via Timothy Leary. I had to get Activision and EA to release rights and then coordinate with Devo and William Gibson on top of it.”
He added, ”One of the letters is signed by Keith Haring to Timothy from India. Good stuff.” Haring, of course, was the famous “graffiti artist” whose work is symbolic of the 80’s.
Neuromancer received glowing reviews at the time, mixing the traditional LucasArts-style adventure while depicting cyberspace as an action grid where players had to defeat “ICE” (Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics) to gain access to database nodes and steal their yummy information documents.
