Man, this brings back memories of having all sorts of weird floppies cross my path... and scanning them to make sure they didn't contain Michelangelo or another scary virus! The labels look just amateurish enough to raise the Eyebrow of Doubt, but just professional enough to make you think "whatever it is, it could be interesting!"
I can't tell if the word "imaginary" is a (very good) pun in relation to Bandersnatch (developed by Liverpool's Imagine software) but, as many people will already know, it did kind of exist.
The ambitiousness of the project helped Imagine, one of the UK's most successful games companies, go bust, all while being filmed for a BBC documentary[0].
Bandersnatch would eventually be released as Brataccas[1], and the brand "Imagine" was taken over by the other company in the BBC documentary, Manchester's Ocean software[2], which went on to further success, later merging with French company Infogrames.
I love this idea. In Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, there was a software called "Reason". It was only mentioned a few times, but I always keep thinking back to it whenever we're in a planning meeting.
>Reason allows users to specify in advance the decision they want it to reach, and only then to input all the facts. The program's task was to construct a plausible series of logical-sounding steps to connect the premises with the conclusion. The only copy was sold to the US Government for an undisclosed fee.
There was another software I forget the name of, but the guy had modeled his sofa and staircase on it to try and figure out how the sofa got impossibly stuck halfway up stairs, and it kept trying different angles in order to come up with a way to get it unstuck.
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[ 0.14 ms ] story [ 36.7 ms ] thread— What’s not on the list?
— Go ahead. It’s got to be in there somewhere.
Did you remember to flip the plastic switch on the GLaDOS floppy into the write-protect position before framing it? :^)
May be too hard to get right about software. Anyone tried?
"I spent so much money on this arcade game back when I was a kid."
Oh no
The ambitiousness of the project helped Imagine, one of the UK's most successful games companies, go bust, all while being filmed for a BBC documentary[0].
Bandersnatch would eventually be released as Brataccas[1], and the brand "Imagine" was taken over by the other company in the BBC documentary, Manchester's Ocean software[2], which went on to further success, later merging with French company Infogrames.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt9BsZCifgU
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brataccas
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_Software
>Reason allows users to specify in advance the decision they want it to reach, and only then to input all the facts. The program's task was to construct a plausible series of logical-sounding steps to connect the premises with the conclusion. The only copy was sold to the US Government for an undisclosed fee.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/dirkgently/gordon_way.shtml
There was another software I forget the name of, but the guy had modeled his sofa and staircase on it to try and figure out how the sofa got impossibly stuck halfway up stairs, and it kept trying different angles in order to come up with a way to get it unstuck.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/