Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

한국인 이민자 3세대 남주 Sam과 베벌리 힐즈 출신 여주 Sadie가 주인공. 여주인공 Sadie는 게임 개발자다. 80년대 후반-90년대 이야기. 존 카맥, 존 로메로 등 실제 인물들이 언급된다.

But the doctor was wrong. Sam’s mazes were always for Sadie. He would slip one into her pocket before she left. “I made this for you,” he’d say. “It’s nothing much. Bring it back next time so I can see the solution.”

Sadie가 만든 베이직 코드. 문법 오류가 있다고.

10 READY
20 FOR X = 1 to 100
30 PRINT "I'M SORRY, SAM ACHILLES MASUR"
40 NEXT X
50 PRINT "PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE FORGIVE ME. LOVE, YOUR FRIEND SADIE MIRANDA GREEN"
60 NEXT X
70 PRINT "DO YOU FORGIVE ME?"
80 NEXT X
90 PRINT "Y OR N"
100 NEXT X
110 LET A = GET CHAR ()
120 IF A = "Y" OR A = "N" THEN GOTO 130
130 IF A = "N" THEN 20
140 IF A = "Y" THEN 150
150 END PROGRAM

재결합.

“Promise me, we won’t ever do this again,” Sadie said. “Promise me, that no matter what happens, no matter what dumb thing we supposedly perpetrate on each other, we won’t ever go six years without talking to each other. Promise me you’ll always forgive me, and I promise I’ll always forgive you.” These, of course, are the kinds of vows young people feel comfortable making when they have no idea what life has in store for them.

공감.

There is a time for any fledgling artist where one’s taste exceeds one’s abilities. The only way to get through this period is to make things anyway.

Sam이 게임을 만들고 싶은 이유

“Sometimes, I would be in so much pain. The only thing that kept me from wanting to die was the fact that I could leave my body and be in a body that worked perfectly for a while—better than perfectly, actually—with a set of problems that were not my own.”

“You couldn’t land at the top of a pole, but Mario could.”

“Exactly. I could save the princess, even when I could barely get out of bed. So, I do want to be rich and famous. I am, as you know, a bottomless pit of ambition and need. But I also want to make something sweet. Something kids like us would have wanted to play to forget their troubles for a while.”

고스톱?

He told them he regretted that he had missed an early opportunity to invest in Nintendo in the 1970s. “They were just a playing-card company,” Watanabe-san said, with a self-deprecating laugh.

“Hanafuda. For aunties and little children, you know?” Nintendo’s most successful product before they made Donkey Kong was, indeed, a deck of hanafuda playing cards.

“What’s hanafuda?” Sam asked.

“Plastic cards. Quite small and thick, with flowers and scenes of nature,” Watanabe-san said.

“Oh!” Sam said. “I know these! I used to play them with my grandmother, but we didn’t call them hanafuda. I think the game we played was called Stop-Go?”

It was 1996, and the word “appropriation” never occurred to either of them. They were drawn to these references because they loved them, and they found them inspiring. They weren’t trying to steal from another culture, though that is probably what they did.