[HoE] Wierd Story Hook based on real life.

["David Pearson" <regault@u.washington.edu>]

I was just thinking today about a story I read a couple years ago about the
E.T. computer game.
You see, since the game company wanted to strike while the iron was hot and
release the game in time for Christmas of the year E.T. was popular, they
gave the production team only six weeks to make the game.
What this amounted to was a game that truly and immensely sucked, and since
the company responsible vastly overestimated the license's popularity, it
got stuck with 50,000 cartridges it couldn't sell. They wound up burying
these carts in some dump in the Arizona desert.

Now I think this can tie into HOE in two ways,

First, that many rom chips and printed circuit boards in one place would
make any Junker PC start salivating. You could write up a whole adventure on
various groups scheming to find a way to 'The Mother Lode'.

Second, since the game was so uncompromisingly awful, (Trust me, my brother
bought a copy off the ultra bargain table and felt cheated,) there were
definite negative vibes emanating from anybody who got duped into buying a
copy. This'd make the remaining copies into cursed relics, making any junker
item built with them count as 'damaged goods' as a variant on the hand carts
from "City O' Gloom"

Lane "No, I'm not dead, just lurking." Pearson