It is with thanks to contributor Lance Ewing that we learn about a game called Goofy’s Word Factory, which was being worked on by Sierra Online in collaboration with Disney in 1984.
As Lance understands it, the game was being worked on during July 1984 on the Apple 2, but never shipped. After that, Disney released three other titles towards the end of 1984.
On a Sierra registration card, there is a page with prices for all their products, and Goofy’s Word Factory is listed under both Apple 2 and Commodore 64. The Commodore 64 version also doesn’t seem to have been released either.
Oddly, references to the game continue to be made up until 1987, with an Apple 2 advert for the game in a Disney catalogue (see gallery). An interview with John Williams in Commodore Magazine in 1987 sheds some light on what happened:
“In terms of unreleased software, Goofy’s Word Factory opened a whole new can of programming worms. Goofy™ is a Sierra/Disney collaboration which helps children learn about the parts of speech. When we started the project with the Disney designers, we didn’t know what we were in for.
Our people thought that Goofy’s Word Factory would evolve into an arcade game, or something along that line of thinking. We had failed to take into account the Disney attitude towards writing educational material. After all, they’ve been working on school courseware for almost 30 years, and have their own opinions of how children should be taught.
So here we went to them with a proposal for four arcade games, featuring Goofy sorting out nouns, verbs, and so on. They examined our work, but asked us if we could write the program in the form of a story construction set. Children could input sentences and make them animate on the screen. We decided to develop this concept of the program, but it also presented some interesting problems.
It’s hard to generate a program that takes in and understands information like “The space shuttle danced to the moon.” The software actually contains a small space shuttle with legs that performs a jig. During the evolution of the program, we’ve taken about 100 different objects and given them the ability to walk, run, dance, and cry. It was also difficult to create program commands that the average child could understand. Once the initial program was completed, it was so large that we’re not sure it will ever be officially finished.”
So it seems that the game was originally intended to be a simple arcade game, but Disney wanted more of a story construction set. John suggests that work was still ongoing and not actually complete at the time.
Sierra’s contract with Disney ended at the end of 1987 and stopped selling their educational titles. It seems that they simply ran out of time. However, it is clear that a significant amount of work was done on the title – so could anything of either the Apple 2 or Commodore 64 version be saved? Did Peter Oliphant or Al Lowe have any involvement perhaps?
If you know anything more about the title, then please do get in touch.
