Windows brings out the Rorschach test in everyone (2003)

I don't think anyone complained about the hologram or red moon desert background because they disliked windows; they complained because they were hypersensitive to possible inappropriate/sexual connotations in imagery.

(Conversely, I very much doubt that the baby hologram or the red moon desert background swayed anyone to dislike Windows.)

People who hated Windows for being Windows would complain about it on technical grounds. It was terrible, and it crashed all the time. People who hated Windows because it was by Microsoft, would complain about Microsoft's bundling and monopoly tactics.

oh thanks, now I cannot unsee it. :)

The cover was a Bakelite toy city simulator appliance with a red MONSTER disaster button, and a stompy T-Rex-looking creature waving over San Francisco on its TV screen.

Maxis never called it Godzilla on the box or in the game. Reviewers looked at the inkblot and saw Godzilla anyway.

Original monster cover:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SimHacker/MicropolisCore/m...

Revised cover after the lawsuit, monster swapped for a tornado (the MONSTER button survived):

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SimHacker/MicropolisCore/m...

In Feb 2024 I emailed Jeff Braun (Maxis co-founder/CEO) and asked what actually happened and how much Maxis had to pay. He wrote back the same day:

> Maxis was sued by Toho. We never referred to the name Godzilla, our monster on the box cover was a T-Rex looking character, but... a few magazine reviews called the monster, Godzilla. That was all it took. Toho called it "confusion in the marketplace". We paid $50k for Godzilla to go away. In all honesty, Toho liked Maxis, they said $50k was the minimum they take for Godzilla infringement.

All the box scans are in the Micropolis repo -- high res front, back with the "floods, earthquakes, fires, tornados, meltdowns and monsters" disaster list, side panels, and the platform variants, each with descriptions:

https://github.com/SimHacker/MicropolisCore/blob/main/docume...

Full email thread:

https://github.com/SimHacker/MicropolisCore/blob/main/docume...

The back of the box kept advertising monsters as a feature the same year the monster got lawyered off the front.

The function names in the code all refered to it like "MakeMonster()", but admittedly there was a "GOD" symbol in the code used to index the Monster sprite likw "GetSprite(GOD)", but Toho could not have know that, since it was a C preprocessor macro that was compiled away in the binary:

https://github.com/SimHacker/micropolis/blob/master/micropol...

According to Microsoft programmer Raymond Chen on his blog The Old New Thing, Red moon desert was originally intended to be Windows XP's default wallpaper, but was allegedly changed due to some testers feeling it resembled a pair of buttocks, leading to O'Rear's other photo Bliss becoming the default wallpaper. While this wallpaper was temporarily set as the default wallpaper during Whistler, this story does not appear to be true; Bliss had already been selected based on extensive research by design manager Rob Girling and his team, and the Luna visual style shares the same color scheme as the wallpaper. It is more likely the wallpaper was set to default as a decoy; the unleaked Lab06 build 2415 predates build 2423, and shows Bliss set as the wallpaper.

https://halfblog.net/2011/12/04/daemon-worship/

>I just got a call from the owner of a hotel for which we provide hotspot service. She says that a guest spotted the “Powered by FreeBSD” logo at the bottom of the login page, and was offended; the guest was convinced that either we or the hotel management “worshipped the Devil” and refused to stay at the hotel unless the logo was removed. The owner could make no headway by explaining that the besneakered mascot was a cartoon character and was a daemon, not the Devil. And she feared upsetting the guest even more if she said that large portions of the same software are inside every Mac and iPad. The hotel stands to lose more than $1000 if the guest, who had originally planned to stay for a long period, moves out.

>One of our tech support people also got a call directly from the hotel guest, who claimed that having the logo on the page constituted “abuse.” The guest also claimed to be “losing money” because she wouldn’t use the hotspot if there was a “devil” on the splash page. He didn’t even realize what she was talking about at first…. He couldn’t imagine why on Earth this person was calling him and going on about devils.

>Attempts at misguided religious censorship notwithstanding, I don’t want to see one of my ISP’s customers lose business. And I’d like to keep a FreeBSD logo on our hotspot page. Is there artwork that doesn’t include horned creatures that might offend the ignorant or superstitious?

>–Brett Glass