The Last Days of Infocom - Now With Babes!

It was the end of an era when Infocom began adding graphics to its text adventures.

And taking a bit of a different approach to its cerebral advertising:

It's still a smart joke. Kind of.  But the ad devotes more space to the attractive alien woman than to the details of the game itself.

One can't really blame the publisher, I suppose; business is business, and Mediagenic/Activision had recently acquired Infocom.  It was in the shareholders' interests for the new management to milk the company's legacy for all it was worth.  But the computer game world was changing, and the original text-only Leather Goddesses of Phobos was already being thought of as a relic of a bygone age.  To justify the additional investment in graphics and audio, it was necessary for the game to sell to a wider audience, a cause which somebody decided would be aided by trotting out yon cleavage.

Sigh.

Epitaphs in the game industry are so rarely fitting.