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It's left as a joke. Try to type "smash cave" and the game replies with ""Maybe next game. We're behind schedule."

A little bit more on that early Outlaws pitch.

Here's a rarity from my collection. Anyone else have this one? It's the limited edition of X-Wing on a golden CD. It was available through The Adventurer for people who owned the floppy disk version of the game. If you mailed Lucasarts a proof of purchase of the floppy version and $50, you would get the golden CD version instead of the regular one.

I have no idea how to scan a poster this big, but in the meantime here are some crappy photos (its hard to shoot it well through the glass).

I work in a creative company and I can absolutely see this happening exactly as you describe. The decisions that happen as a result of internal politics can be insane. I have no doubt that LucasArts would have happily killed The Dig as soon as it became clear it wasn't working (or any sensible CEO would have done), but Spielberg's involvement meant they probably couldn't. (Spielberg on the phone: "So... how's the game based on my idea coming along, guys?" CEO: "It's shaping right up, Steven... heh!" *gulp*) Trying to make a game to please Spielberg would have not been a fun job. Developer: "I've got this great idea!". Spielberg: "I don't like it, what else have you got?". After some serious missteps in the development, leading to plans being aborted, I can imagine it would have been the project nobody wanted to touch, but which they were duty bound to deliver. I listened to that interview with Falstein I posted a while back, and he talks about how LucasArts fired a bunch of people around 1992 I think. (Falstein was one of them). He said he felt it was a cynical ploy for the powers that be to make the company financials look better after a series of bad decisions, before they moved on while riding the short-lived financial high. I wouldn't be surprised if The Dig was connected. Spending the time and resources to develop a brand new engine was likely one of those bad decisions -- no fun to explain to your owner why you've scrapped all the work you've done. A decision like that smacks of hubris. (Just like the weird multimedia jaunt of Defenders of Dynatron City (Comic, TV show, and NES game -- just as the NES was dying). It always stuck out to me as a weird choice.) You can imagine The Dig becoming an albatross in the company. More difficult meetings: CEO: "Don't worry Steven, we're back on track with the The Dig!" Spielberg: "Hmm. I don't like these ideas, maybe time to find a new voice?" So yeah, all what you say adds up to me.

I’ve got an original MI1 poster, from when they were sold out of The Adventurer. (I bought it on eBay, I wasnt old or cool enough at the time to buy one for myself.) I also have all the different posters Telltale released, but they are not LEC posters!

I must say none of the broader conspiracy stuff being peddled really holds my interest, but maybe I can shed some modest light onto the confusion with Loom/The Dig. Moriarty has stated that while he had the basic ideas for two Loom sequels, he was too burnt out from the original game's production to actually pursue them. Following Loom he spent some time in the educational division working on an ill-fated Young Indiana Jones game(s). That division was in a physically separate office, or maybe even separate building, from the regular "games group," which is why Moriarty has no insight on the Forge designs that were kicked around -- he wasn't there to participate. And when he came back to the LucasArts building and took over The Dig, he apparently wasn't interested in digging them up. Interestingly, there seems to have been no less than two versions of Forge proposed. There's the one already mentioned, headed by Mike Ebert and Kalani Streicher (a duo that in the end never got the opportunity to design a SCUMM game, but ended up being instrumental in some 16-bit console classics), but there was also, apparently, an outline put together by Jenny Sward, Sean Clark and Mike Stemmle toward the end of Fate of Atlantis. Sward pitched it to no success, and Clark and Stemmle moved to Sam & Max Hit the Road. Moriarty not working on the Loom sequels was his own choice, though it's possibly one he came to regret in retrospect.

The way the script in that room works is: when its run is is passed an integer if its >7 it stops, otherwise it displays one of the 7 different scenes depending on the integer. Can you remember what line triggers one of them? We might be able to see what triggers the others but we need to track down the script number first and that's easier if I can search for a particular bit of dialog.