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(It’s Halloween Week on Unsung, where we’re sharing scary, spooky, and creepy stories. This is a story of a second creepy bug I remember from my childhood.)
The Monopoly Deluxe computer game from 1992 fascinated me for one reason that you will understand even if you know me only a little bit: despite not running on Windows, it had a really elegant rendition of a Windows-like user interface.
The game came with a pull-down menu, two kinds of keyboard shortcuts, and fun sounds. There was a history log, with font sizes! There was good typography. It was, in some ways, an improvement over its inspiration, sporting gentler fonts, nicer shadows, better bezels, and cuter animations. In hindsight, it was maybe the epitome of that particular design style, more thoughtful that it needed to be and done by – I felt it even then – someone who really cared about user interface.
It was still Monopoly, of course, and there were better games around. But I remember the interface of it all, and I particularly still remember one very strange moment.
The game allowed you to play against one or more computer players. Instead of happening quietly inside the CPU, the computer’s turn was visualized exactly like a human player’s would be. People awaiting their turn would still see die on the board, pawns moving, dialog boxes for purchases or renting or chance appear, and then… the buttons pressing themselves. This was another thoughtful design decision, making it easier to feel you’re playing against someone else, rather than a mindless algo.
That decision also came with some interesting consequences. One was the fact that, under some circumstances, you could beat the computer to pressing their own buttons. Instead of blocking that action, the game responded with a playful easter egg message that looked like this:
Like many other in-game actions, the message was accompanied with a sound. But this one felt different than all the otherwise joyful audio effects in the game. It was someone’s voice saying “I can do it” – perhaps a sample from a movie or another game, perhaps a reference to something. Even today, I have no idea. Without that context (if any existed) the voice felt… honestly? Intensely creepy. It was someone’s voice, or maybe even something’s.
Just listen for yourself:
I’m telling you all this from the perspective of today, when I understand all of bits and pieces.
But the way I stumbled upon it back in the early 1990s was this: I played against computer players for hours without ever seeing the “Dear Human” dialog or the voice sample, even once. But then, at some point, the game locked itself. Maybe it was an interface race condition, or maybe some other bug. In short: It was a computer’s turn, but the computer wasn’t doing anything. Tired of waiting, I clicked to rush things forward, and then… that creepy voice startled me. Worse, all of my subsequent clicks were accompanied by the same dialog box and yet another appearance of that terrifying sound sample. The game thought it was a computer’s turn and prevented me from doing stuff, but despite the creepy proclamations, the game also wasn’t doing anything itself.
Imagine a young me, playing the generally heretofore fun game late at night, when suddenly everything grinds to a halt, and the tone shifts completely. My keystrokes and clicks go nowhere, and I’m trapped on a virtual Monopoly board with a frightening voice – somewhere between a child, a robot, and the Twin Peaks’s Red Room – saying, over and over again:
I̷̳̦͉̯̎́̈́̎͛͘͜ ̵̹̀̓̃̇̃́C̴̼̜͔̈͐̈A̴͍̤̩̤̐̃̀̑̂͌͜N̶̬̅́̔̅͘͠ ̶̦͎̣͚̦͕͂D̵͙̰̬̲͎̩̒̇̒̕Ŏ̷̺͉̔̚͠ ̷̡̙̥̝͍͈̽͂́͒͋Ḯ̵̧͓͉͉͔̰̓T̴̩̥̤͌̓̇̉̂̒
I’ve since seen many ways in which interfaces got stuck, but this was the only one I felt like the UI became absolutely possessed.
(To run the game yourself, go to the Internet Archive, click on the big green button, wait until the board appears, press Ctrl+Q to exit the game (or use the right click menu), type mp digi=ibmbak.com to run it again (now with sound), wait until the board appears, press Ctrl+N to start a new game.)
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