Game designer Tim Schafer shares the tale (and scans) of how he got his first job in the industry, at Lucasfilm Games. (The LucasArts name didn’t join the party until 1990.) There’s some quality hilarity here:
I called David Fox right away and scribbled all the notes you see while I was talking to him. I told him how much I wanted to work at Lucasfilm, not because of Star Wars, but because I loved, “Ball Blaster.”
“Ball Blaster, eh?” he said.
“Yeah! I love Ball Blaster!” I said. It was true. I had broken a joystick playing that game on my Atari 800.
“Well, the name of the game is Ball Blazer.” Mr. Fox said, curtly. “It was only called Ball Blaster in the pirated version.”
Gulp.
But the best part may be his cover letter – which is in the style of a text adventure.
I had Ball Blaster too – d’oh. Awesome game though. Rescue on Fractalis was also an amazing game!