Making America's Past: the team, the box and the reviews
Who Brøderbund credited for its 1991 history game, what came in the box, and how the magazines took it.
The credits
The America’s Past manual credits design to Claire Curtin, David Ross, Leila Joslyn, Tom Rettig and Ann Kronen, with additional design and the programming by Jeffrey Charvat. Michael Barrett and Tom Rettig did the music and sound effects; David Ross doubled as product manager and Ann Kronen as publisher. Art and animation is credited to eight people, Leila Joslyn first among them, and Christa Beeson handled location graphic research. Clue research went to Susan Meyers, Katherine Bird and Jessica Meyers (Katherine Bird is also credited as a manager on the North Dakota disk). Rick Goldsmith wrote the V.I.L.E. descriptions, Warren Yamashita was lead tech, and Brøderbund co-founder Doug Carlston is in the special thanks. The in-game credits roll adds Daniel Goodwin under additional graphics.
In the box
The MS-DOS package travelled light. A contemporary review describes the documentation as “a small eight-page newspaper,” six pages of it covering the premise, the controls and tips, packed alongside the copy of What Happened When. The disks came in both sizes, six 5.25-inch and three 3.5-inch, all low density, and had to be installed: the manual lists a hard disk as required, 640K of memory for the VGA version and 512K for Tandy, EGA, CGA and Hercules, with mouse, keyboard or joystick control. The same reviewer counted support for Roland, Sound Blaster and AdLib cards and found each of them delivered “the same background music and a few minor sound effects.”
The reviews
Compute! made it a COMPUTE Choice in its October 1991 issue. Clayton Walnum called the VGA graphics “stunning, with many scenes rendered from digitized photos,” heard music “reminiscent of that of hard-boiled detective dramas, with a splash of sexy-cool jazz,” and called the game “a must-have package for anyone interested in superior and engaging educational software.” PC Magazine (October 15, 1991) said it made the original Where in the World “seem almost bland by comparison.” Computer Gaming World reviewed it in December 1991, liking it but warning that older players might tire of it.
The sharpest complaint came from a period review now archived on textfiles.com. Its author reached SuperScout, the top rank, after about forty cases, then faced roughly forty more before the 80-case retirement with no change in clue difficulty, and asked for a slower promotion path. Beyond that and a few gaps in the documentation, the reviewer had little to fault.