MRY
Wormwood Studios
As I posted about in 2016, back in 1999 (when I was a sophomore in college), I got hired for my first commercial game work, writing the story for a game called Infinity by a development team called Affinix. The process of getting hired was surreal -- the guy (M.R. -- not sure folks want their full names included) financing the project was like one of these early internet millionaires, not like a billionaire or even close, but he had made a bunch of money cracking SEO on Altavista (!). Anyway, a young backend coder for him named J.K. had made a TI-82 RPG called Joltima, and was working on a GBC RPG called Infinity with a Japanese friend he knew from high school (H.O). H.O.'s brother, incidentally, was one of the original fan translators of Final Fantasy 5. Seeing J.K. screwing around on it after work one day, M.R. decides to fund the project, and they had hire an artist, a writer, and a composer. The composer was someone I'd collaborated with on a failed jRPG project in high school. When their writer flaked, he proposed that they hire me. So I drove out to the strip mall M.R. operated out of for an interview. Among other oddities, at one point during the interview a guy bursts in asking to talk to "Mr. Money Man" and offering to sell him a Rolex so that the interloper can pay for family medical bills. M.R. puts on the watch, examines it, takes it off, hands it back, "Fake. And I own two Rolexes already. The end up stopping because I don't wear them enough."
Anyway, M.R. agrees to pay me $5k to write the script, but the problem is, I'm leaving the country in less than a week for a study abroad period. I write frantically for 48 hours without sleep, turn in the script. He is flabbergasted. $5k for two days work? What kind of madness is this. But nevertheless he pays up. I take the money, use it to travel around Europe with my then-girlfriend, and we wind up getting married. Meanwhile, I use the paid Infinity credit to justify my next job (for TimeGate), which in turn opens the next door (with Bioware), etc. All thanks to Mr. Money Man!
Meanwhile, however, the project winds up stalling, despite me putting tons of unpaid hours designing combat, items, maps, etc. Eventually it gets mothballed. In 2016, the nearly completed project was released to the public. Then some retro company bought the rights, and is now launching a Kickstarter to finish the game (which is like 98% done). Anyway, it was really an extraordinary feat of engineering on the GBC. I don't think my contributions are particularly good, but all the other stuff is amazing and holds up pretty well.
I don't really encourage people to put money into Kickstarter, but I thought folks might at least enjoy checking the thing out.
https://www.infinitygbc.com/
