Richard Garriott and Warren Spector (1992)
Courtesy of Joe Garrity and the Origin Museum, The Origin Gallery is pleased to present twelve (12) pictures of Richard Garriott and Warren Spector, which were taken in 1992. These pictures were apparently part of a promotion for Software Etc. and Egghead Software. The former was part of the B. Dalton family of stores, and was sold after Dalton filed for Chapter 11 protection. Its modern incarnation is known as GameStop. Egghead Software was another retailer that did well through the 1980s and 1990s, but ultimately fell upon hard times; after filing for bankruptcy, its remaining assets were bought up by Amazon.
Be that as it may…it would appear that, back in 1992, Garriott and Spector were part of some sort of promotional event for the retailers, and a few photos from that event have survived to this day.
Now, a few disclaimers.
These images are the JPEG scans of original 35mm slides, and are quite large as a result (in terms of both resolution and file size). They may take a while to load when clicked on. Once you click on them, they will appear in a lightbox formatted to fit your monitor resolution; right-clicking on the lightbox and selecting “View Image” (a feature not available in all browsers) will take you to the full-resolution image.
Additionally, unlike other materials contributed by the Origin Museum, these pictures were donated to the Museum directly by Origin when they closed back in 2004. They are not from the EA archive project carried out at Mythic Entertainment.
Finally, enjoy. Pull up the images. Pore over them. Take note of the classic Origin games on display. The Origin Gallery is indebted to Joe Garrity and Origin Systems, and (in a posthumous sense) to Egghead Software and Software Etc. for this fascinating glimpse into a tiny slice of the history of two of the “big names” behind the Ultima franchise.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Egghead become Newegg of newegg.com fame? I seem to remember Egghead’s website changing over to Newegg at some point. Whether through rebranding or acquisition I don’t know.
Newegg was created out of ABS Computers (ABS.com) who made custom computers. People were buying components from them and they eventually they figured out there was a lot of money there around 2000-2001. No relation to Egghead although it wouldn’t surprise me if they picked Newegg because Egghead was going out of business around that time.
2000-2001 was the time that Egghead had some serious problems – they got hacked right around or before Christmas and had customer credit card information compromised and it was the final nail in their coffin before Amazon bought them in 2001. Egghead was actually moving in the right direction – focusing on web sales of software/hardware before they were compromised. If they hadn’t been compromised during the Christmas season and had a good showing, who knows what would have happened. I think Amazon would have still impacted one or the other – would there be room for a huge Newegg and a huge Egghead and Amazon?
And I really liked Egghead, Babbages, and some of the other stores. Maybe it was my age, but there was a mystique about them. Then again, you used to be eager to buy games – they had maps and actual printed manuals and stuff. Now you have to pay a lot for collector’s editions that sometimes have less stuff than we used to get.
Looks like RG bought out all of the Savage Empires, I bet he has a basement full of them, cool shots!