News You Can Bruise for 2002 August 20

Ideas For Robotfindskittenlike Games: Second In A Series If You Start Counting From Zero And Count This Entry, Or If You Don't And Start Counting From One: Response has been whelming for this idea. Pete Peterson II offers robotfoundkitten, "not so much a game as it is an 80x25 flat text file of a # next to a ? in the middle of the screen." A. Cairns suggests robotfindskittens, in which "robot doesn't know how many kittens there are and has to bump into everything on the screen." There's also the tragic prequel, robotloseskitten.

While good ideas (keep sending them in!), all of these require costly development effort and changes to the game mechanics, which would need to be focus-grouped at enormous expense. The easy money lies in simply rebranding the existing game with superficial changes that don't really change anything. For instance, robotfindskitten: special edition would have gold-plated non-kitten-items and be suitable for display on a coffee-table (well, those coffee table video game consoles, anyway). The personalized edition, code-named robotfindsyou, will give you the thrill of actually being found by robot! (Note: for purposes of the game, you will be a kitten). And we can use PayPal to support the pay-per-kitten model of robotfindskitten premium.

We should also go the Super Mario Bros. route and have various 'themed' robotfindskitten levels, such as the 'jungle' level (robotfindsmonkey) and the 'water' level (robotfindsmolamola). And on a very special episode, it's robotfindsrobot.