One of the great/terrible things about the internet is that everything you insert into it is stored, whether you like it or not. Just the other day, I discovered that I had a strange internet run-in with Jeff Minter in 1995, in a Mystery Science Theater 3000 message board of all things. Often, however, a site disappears into the ether or is redesigned and re-purposed for other means, with nary a thought of future reclamation and embarrassment. Archive.org attempts to keep a copy of EVERYTHING, via its Wayback Machine, so it’s perfect for those lazy Sundays of internet searchery.
I was big fan of Sierra On-line back in its heyday, their adventure games in particular. I certainly would have been interested in checking out any game that bore the name of Roberta Williams, the undisputed Queen of Adventure Gaming. “Danie”, from the King’s Questions section of the Sierra Message Boards circa 1996, however, was a much bigger fan that I could ever hope to be:
Hi you all Anyone, who is a fan of Roberta Williams, please post your message here, to share all of the imformation, you know about here e.g, what do you think of her, does her 2 sons have a homepage somewhere, or where can you read more about her (except on the Sierra web) ANYTHING!! I’m a huge fan of Roberta Williams and would really appriciate is you also could e-mail me at danie@xpoint.co.za I want to use all of these imformation on my homepage, to make sort of a fan club of her And Roberta, if you ever reads this message, PLEASE e-mail me, I shall be honerd!! Thanks you all!! Danie
I believe we have found evidence of the *first* internet stalker.
Oh, I kid Danie, because I’m probably secretly jealous that this internet outburst may have scored him or her an autographed photo of the legend, herself!
This next post is like some bad penny that just keeps turning up. Reading this, you may also feel that you have read it before, a million times over:
I am so embarassed, as I just got back onto the board after I got home from work and scanned through the messages. My brother and I share and internet access account and with the new system we both end up posting messages from “Zorrie”. He’s rather immature and he posted something rude, but I”m not sure what since it was removed by the webmaster. I sincerely apologize for his ignorance to anyone that may have been offended by him. No real harm done I hope! =)
Lynn
It’s sad that in over ten years of service, message board posters continue to suffer indignity at the hands of little brothers. I guess there’s not enough program code in the universe to unravel the mysteries of sibling rivalry.
Browsing these old forums feels a bit voyeuristic, nowadays, but I’m not sure why. These Sierra fans initially posted these messages on a public forum, so it’s not like someone hacked their email boxes. I also felt a sense of familiarity with the boards, and that I vaguely recall trolling them before, but, as the archive data is quite scatter-shot, I wasn’t able to find any of my own posts. It’s probably for the best, as they would have most likely looked something like this (on the Leisure Suit Larry board):
I can’t find the final dildo, where is it??????????
wizardofvideogames.com 