It was 1998, and I’d messed up. The artists had followed me, more or less, like a crazy cult leader through the desert through the lion’s share of 1997 with the Mistigris World Tour, and when we finally “came home” to resume releasing artpacks under our own name, I resolved to indulge them as they had humoured me, and give them what they wanted: regular, monthly releases. They had other, not-unreasonable requests – split the packs into different disks focusing on textmode art, hirez visuals and music. And then the breaking point: they wanted us to include “real-world art” in our packs. I was inclined to agree – the more art, the better! – but the path forward in such an unprecedented direction was unclear, and the technology to help us decidedly crude, the scanners and cameras of the time being huge, slow and lossy. So I dithered and delayed. Meanwhile, my department heads were stirring the pot putting a strange new emphasis on QC, “quality control”, with the idea that it would inspire artists to produce better work. But the slogan of Mist had long been “art for the artists”, so they were thus quite accustomed to doing what they liked and hoping we felt the same way. Now it seemed we didn’t.
So, a substantial chunk of Mist Classic parted ways from us and established Hallucigenia, where they could continue making computer art – and heck, real-world art too, why not? – in the manner to which they were accustomed. I always wondered… maybe if I’d acted sooner on admitting real-world art, I could have kept them under our roof and we could have maintained the momentum of an active core needed to continue operations. But we don’t have a time machine, so instead we get the historical record: Mist Classic stalled out in August of 1998 with me descending into HTML insanity, while Hallucigenia continued chugging along, and in October there it was: real-world art – they ran a gallery of Jack O'Lanterns in their artpack.
Since reforming, we’ve released three October artpacks, and they’ve only gradually been getting more and more Hallowe'eny – first, not at all in 2014, then substantially in 2015… this year, our October artpack was entirely Hallowe'eny. And here, in MIST1016, we just included a photo of an old Jack O'Lantern by Nail (that guy again?), a flaming skull (Ghost Rider or a Lost Soul from DooM? You be the judge!) so finally we can achieve a taste of the MIST1098 (well, at that time our naming convention would have looked like M-9810-B) that never was but might have been.
Instagram photo by Cthulu • Nov 3, 2016 at 9:57pm UTC
