I had TSN/INN for a couple years when I was a teen in the early 90s. It’s where I learned to play Go and a few other board games. Back in the day it was pretty revolutionary. I even remember the happy holidays card/disk they sent in the mail and the town graphic would change with the seasons (e.g. there would be snow in the winter months). Good old Sierra.
Ah…memories.
Talk about strange. Our first company intranet website, circa 2000, looked almost identical to the Mytopia site which in turn is strangely reminiscent of the old Sierra site. Hmmmmmm
Just what the internet needs, another social networking site…
Kali? Wow - it has certainly been awhile since I’ve heard someone mention Kali. I have to say, for the time - it was the shit.
The two buildings on the bottom left are a dead giveaway. Its clearly an homage.
The roads even wind the same way.
It’s worth noting that the only difference is that they’ve taken out the fun fantasy buildings (castle, coluseum, volcano, whatever that place with the orange columns on the right is) from the Sierra world and replaced it with a saloon, bar and casino.
These things do happen unintentionally sometimes, too:
“Dangerous” has a beat set at 103 BPM. The chorus of the song (This is serious/We could make you delirious/You should have a healthy fear of us/'Cause too much of us is dangerous) was taken, apparently unwittingly, from a 1983 Long Island Regional Poison Control Council PSA warning children of the danger of loose prescription medications.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangerous_(Busta_Rhymes_song)
If someone high up enough on the art chain had seen TSN back in the day, and both laid out the town and made decisions about the art style, the resemblance could be explained as possibly accidental.
One of the Mytopia founders on TSN and the visual similarities mentioned above:
Knowing that it is an homage, I’m now finding it interesting to note the differences. The one that really smacks you in the face is that the new version is much more “adult”. Where the old Sierra verison had a colleseum a put-put course with a windmill and a fairtale castle, the new one has a bar a casino and a card saloon.
Also, the old Sierra version had a phone booth. Those are of course obsolete now, so it was replaced with a mailbox.
And here I was hoping that maybe Kathy was back!
I was quite young when INN was passing out of fashion but I managed to sign up for a free 30-day pass or something. The graphics were pretty rad though there’s only so much fun to be had out of playing reversi with some stranger. Then and now. I seem to recall getting kicked off for saying inappropriate things on the bulletin boards. Hmm.
As for those wondering about the copyright question: it’s clearly a derivative work, at least by the standards of US copyright law, and if you think that the current company named Sierra Online doesn’t care, just wait until this little startup has some money to be sued out of. If they didn’t get permission then they have got to be the most moronic startup I have ever heard of. It’s one thing to have a startup based on a willful violation of copyright law (Napster, for example), but it’s another to have one based on a totally unnecessary willful violation of copyright law (they could have easily made it look different).
how can anybody argue that this was unintentional. Who has such an unconscious photographic memory. This was copied on purpose, of course.
What, not Quantum Link and Club Caribe?
Actually, I exaggerate. There are certainly more moronic startup ideas than this. But it’s still dumb to have done that.
grace – look at the design of the “house”, the “shop”, the “town hall,” the little pond. Look at the color choices. Look at the identical perspective, the identical shapes, the identical sizes.
This isn’t a case of someone having some long-standing image in their head that they unwittingly duplicate. I do that sort of thing all the time – but it is things like a great color scheme that I realize I first saw on the cover of an obscure book. But this – this is willful duplication of details. I’d bet cash money they even used that screenshot from Wikipedia as a reference.
(And not to go on and on… but they’ve duplicated even the subtle and pointless details. The slope of the palm trees. The edge of the red building in the lower-left corner. The stump. The fountain in the pond. The number of steps on the town hall. The sort of things you’d never remember just accidentally, because you’d probably never even notice them in the first place!!)
I like how the little red school house has now morphed into a bar.
Also notice in place of those monuments of civilization: The palace, the Roman Coliseum, and pyramid is our new monument of civilization: The casino.
Maybe my grandma was right and civilization is going down the toilet.
Hey folks,
Pretty interesting discussion 
For those of you who remember TSN, I hope we brought back some great memories. Truly, I didn’t imagine this many of you were out there, and am thrilled to find the community still vibrant and kicking.
The main game map right now serves as a fancy menu, leading users to the different games and regions within Mytopia. That’s where the similarities end; a lot has changed since 1991. It is a tribute to what, IMHO, was the best gaming community of all time and a watershed moment in digital entertainment. If Mytopia’s initial skin brings overdue recognition to that moment in history, we couldn’t be happier. Those guys inspired an entire generation of kids to get into gaming, myself included.
I’ve been communicating with the original team behind TSN and they’ve been very supportive.
Back to 2008 – We’re focusing much of our energy to laying an infrastructure to enable cross-platform gaming across the fragmented Web, and beyond. We’d like to help the world play together by building a device-agnostic, digital playground. I believe a similar vision guided TSN, and we’ll do our best to carry the torch. Please feel free to contact me at guy at mytopia with your feedback and suggestions (INN memories also welcome).
You know form can be a product of function right?
also these are indeed the end times.
Come one, those pictures are completely different.
Just look at the trees at the right of the town hall. The original had two trees, the new one has three. You see that? two!=three
Also just look at the resolution. The old one looks pixelated, while the new one is so super smooth.
Nice try, Jeff.