| Date | Important Events of the Day |
|---|
| June 1997 | We discovered the CyberLife Creatures Website while surfing on the Internet. We eagerly went to every software store on the island to see when the new games would arrive in Hawaii. The clerks looked at us oddly and said, "Creatures? Never heard of it!" |
| July 15, 1997 | On the day Creatures was to be released in the United States we went back to four local computer stores to see if they got the Creatures game. Nope. Not yet...it takes a while for things to arrive here on these tiny little islands out in the Pacific Ocean. |
| July 31, 1997 | Hooray!!! While our Mom waited for Elise to finish her dance class she went browsing at the mall and found Creatures! We rushed home to try it out. The first Norn we hatched was a female that we named Anso. We took her up to the computer to teach her some words, then told her to "push food." After about 20 minutes Anso seemed to be doing fine, so we hatched out another egg, this time a male named Al. Poor Al! He hatched out and just stood by the incubator! He wouldn't go up the lift, so he couldn't get to the computer to learn words, and he didn't know what "push food" meant. His life force kept dropping! He finally went to sleep next to the incubator and died in his sleep! Wah! In the mean time, we were so busy tending to Al that Anso had wandered off to the island where she got sick and didn't have enough food to eat. On her way back from her submarine ride she ran into a Grendel and got even sicker. We were running low on cheese! Oh no! What should we do??? We quit the game before Anso's health got any worse. |
| August 1, 1997 | Before attempting to resuscitate Anso we watched the video over and over to make sure we didn't miss anything. We also visited all the Creatures websites we could find to get valuable hints and tips. We learned an important concept: Exporting. From now on, we'll always export each Norn and make a copy before importing him or her back into Albia. |
| August 2, 1997 | We are trying to figure out what COB files are, and how to use them. It sure would be nice to have more food. We are really running low on cheese now! Thank goodness Alexander Laemmle came to our rescue. He taught us how to use COE and BORG. Now we can have 255 pieces of cheese! It is so nice to be able to scroll through Albia so easily with the BORG! We also downloaded the CyberLife Supernorns, Edele and Tim. We bred our first baby, a girl named Bess. |
| August 4, 1997 | Now that we understand how to use COBs we have plenty of food for our Norns! What a relief. No more food shortages. Now our Norns won't get bored as often because they can have new kinds of food, too, such as Sandra Linkletter's Strained Carrots and Pink Lemonade. We also got Alexander Laemmle's Holo Doc to keep our Norns healthy. |
| August 4, 1997 | Today we also got the
CyberLife Purple Mountain Norns and the new Object Pack. The Albian Carrot Beetles and bouncing carrots are SO FUNNY! We hatched out more eggs, Alfred, Anna, and Amy. Only one egg left! |
| August 5, 1997 | Oh no! Albia crashed. We had to uninstall the old world and reinstall a new world. At least we saved the .EXP files of our Norns so we didn't lose them. Plus, now we have 6 eggs back again in our hatchery. |
| August 6, 1997 | We discovered the hard way that it is not good for a female Norn to eat male hyper-tomatoes. It seems to make her infertile, at least for a while. |
| August 7, 1997 | There are many sites on the Internet where you can download Norns. We downloaded a bunch of them. Now we are busy growing them up until they are old enough to breed. |
| August 8, 1997 | Hey! Guess what! We found something really neat! We got a Weed Remover and a Universal Remover from
My Computer's Got a Brain to get rid of things that we don't want to have in Albia. No more worries about that dreadful Death Cap Mushroom! |
| August 8, 1997 | We bred a baby girl Norn, and the first thing she said was, "Bibble," so that's what we named her. |
| August 9, 1997 | Did you know that you can make more than one Albia? That's right! You can have more than one world! Just make a new .sfc file! Now our Mom can have her own world where she can have all the Grendels she wants. She likes those nasty creatures! But we're not surprised...she also likes reptiles. |
| August 9, 1997 | Yesterday we got some cheats from
My Computer's Got a Brain. At first we didn't quite understand what to do with them. We finally figured out that all you have to do is double-click on the icon to activate it, and double-click on the one that says, "User," to deactivate the cheats. Now we can pick up and move things! |
| August 9, 1997 | Now that we can pick up things in Albia, we thought of a way to keep the Grendels away from the Norns. Just move the teleporters from the island and the lighthouse and stick them somewhere - like the middle of the ocean - where the Creatures can't get to them. Then move the Grendel machine to the ramp suspended between the coconut trees. When the Grendel eggs get laid, the Grendel is trapped up there above the island. We would have given the carrot vendor to the Norns and left the Grendel to starve, but Mom feels sorry for the poor Grendel. She gave him a ball (his favorite toy) and lots of food. She even gave him the clock that used to be in the Grendel tree. We learned in school to "Say No to Drugs," so we took the Hootch vendor and all the little green cups away from the Norns and gave them to the Grendel. Now he's drunk all the time! |
| August 15, 1997 | We have been breeding lots of baby Norns. We are on the"B" generation, and we just bred our first "C" named Chad. We found out that if you save the world while there is an egg in Albia, you can keep rehatching the same egg over and over! If you save the world when the egg is small, it will hatch out randomly as either boys or girls, but if you save the world when the egg is big, the gender is already determined, so it will always be a boy or always a girl. |
| August 16, 1997 | We like the "Sweet" Norns and "Immortal" Norns which have a high life force. We got them from the CyberLife website. |
| August 18, 1997 | We added the Norns page to Spotling's website. We put our favorite Norns from the "B" and "C" generation up for adoption. |
| August 20, 1997 | Today our Dad bought a new computer. Our old one only had 2.5 gigabytes, and it was getting very full, so the new one has 6.5 gb. Now we have more room for our Norns! We put all our old files on Zip Disks. Our old Albia occupies almost a whole Zip Disk, 86 mb. (Don't tell Dad it's that big! He wants us to use the computer for "educational" stuff.) |
| August 21, 1997 | Wow! The sounds come in much better on the new computer! Now we can hear the Norns talking! Oh, they're so cute! Doh-Plah-Doh! Jin-So! Doh-Plah-Di! I wonder why no one has a list of all these words on their website so we can learn how to speak Norn. |
| August 22, 1997 | We found a program that lets you breed Norns in-vitro. It's called Norn Ancestral Viewer, and it's from Vikram Madan's Out of My Mind website. Now we can breed those Santa Norns that don't seem to be fertile. We can also breed baby Norns, instead of having to grow them up to maturity, but that's cheating. (As if we don't do enough cheating already!) |
| August 23, 1997 | Now we are on "D" generation. We have to find a way to keep track of all these Norns. We downloaded Elisabeth Witek's Nornfamilie a while ago but we have never been able to get it to work, even with the .dll files and all that. Mom is fiddling around with some database and spreadsheet programs to see if we can make a list of all our Norns before we get too confused. We're going to need something real soon, now that we are mass-producing baby Norns with the Egg Hatchery Clinic. |
| August 30, 1997 | In the past few days we have gone through "E," "F," and "G" generations. We have been trying to breed some color variations. We have a pink Norn named Benji (named after our dog) and a light-colored Norn named Ellen. Their offspring are either pink or light orange, but they don't seem to be fertile. They have to be bred in-vitro. |
| August 31, 1997 | We have been looking at the information in the Genetics Kit, but we don't understand it. There are lots and lots of numbers, but we don't know what all those numbers mean. Dad could probably tell us, but we don't want to ask him. He'll go on and on forever about chemistry and biology and DNA and... |
| August 31, 1997 | We bred our first chocolate Norn and named him Hershey. His Mom had a teen pregnancy at less than 1 hour old. We didn't know Norns could breed when they were that young. |
| September 1, 1997 | We were running out of names so we went to the bookstore and got a big, fat book of baby names. |
| September 1, 1997 | Sob! A chocolate Norn named Ganesa had a baby, but the baby died as soon as it hatched. |
| September 4, 1997 | We added a new page to our website in memory of Princess Diana. We already had Norns named Charles and Diana, but this time, when we bred them we didn't name the babies alphabetically. We named them William and Harry in honor of the two Princes. |
| September 4, 1997 | There are some really great COBs on the Internet! We just love the Super Speech Toy from the Norn Underground. It's so easy to teach the Norns their words. We don't have to take everyone to the computer anymore. Mom even gave a Speech Toy to her Grendel so that he can be educated, too. |
| September 8, 1997 | We got some Undead Norns named Unbelmont and Elga. They are so strange...never hungry, never bored, no life force, yet they are "Healthy," according to the Observation Kit. Since they are not fertile, they have to be bred in-vitro. The babies are funny because they hatch out big. It's really, really funny when they have a big body and a pin-head, or a big-head and small body! Sadly, though, some of them die as they hatch. |
| September 10, 1997 | There are some good Norns to download from Nornaholics Anonymous and Age of Albia, and The Creature's Crib. We are always on the look-out for more Norns! |
| September 12, 1997 | According to Mom's Database records, we now have 487 Norns and Grendels. Don't tell Dad...he's going to scream! |
| September 15, 1997 | We are now on "J" generation. Now we are breeding multi-lobed Norns. We are working on breeding Norns that are multi-lobed and immortal, plus have interesting colors. Some of the combinations are so funny...Purple Mountain legs, green arms, yellow tummy... |
| September 16, 1997 | At the latest count we have 615 Norns and Grendels. |
| September 20, 1997 | Usually if we leave the computer running unattended, a screensaver comes on and then it shuts down automatically, but we learned something new from the Internet. Leave Creatures running! Turn off the screensaver and automatic shut-down, and just let the computer run for hours. Come back later and see how many new babies hatched out on their own. This is a good way to do homework and play with Creatures at the same time! |
| September 24, 1997 | We got the new version of Alexander Laemmle's COE 1.5 TransBORG. We are working on developing some of our own COBs. We have lots of ideas for new COBs! We still have a lot of bugs in actually getting them to work, though. |
| September 30, 1997 | One of our Norns named Jon has a mutation that he has passed to his offspring. They get old fast. At about 4 or 5 hours they start getting gray hair and stoop over when they walk. We didn't discover this mutation until quite a few of our Norns already had the gene. |
| September 30, 1997 | Latest count: 726 Creatures. |
| October 2, 1997 | Spotling's website was getting too crowded, so Mom applied for another website. Instead of creating a new website, we are just going to overflow our Norns pages into the new website. I wonder if it will seem confusing when people are browsing and find themselves taken on a link to a new URL. |
| October 6, 1997 | Vikram Madan's updated version of Norn Ancestral Viewer is now available for download. Now you can breed Grendels, as well as Norns. Mom is happy. |
| October 8, 1997 | Some of our homemade COBs actually seem to work now! |
| October 9, 1997 | There are some nice colorful Norns to download at the Flip Side. There are blue, purple, green, red, and yellow Norns, bur our favorite ones are the Santa mixes. We have been breeding "Unreg2" and "Unreg3," and their offspring are so funny!!! The babies hatch out with tiny bodies but huge Santa arms or legs! LOL! |
| October 13, 1997 | We got "Girlmaker" and "Boymaker" COBs on the Internet. They look like Grendel Machines, but baby Norns hatch out of the eggs. |
| October 15, 1997 | Our third "blind" Norn hatched out today. He just sits there and looks at himself. We are not sure if this is the same as "Child of the Mind." We also have some Norns that are 2 or 3 hours old, who are still the size of teenagers, and are still infertile. We were hoping that they might be mini-Norns, but maybe they just mature at a very slow rate. None of them have gotten old enough to see if they ever become adults. |
| October 16, 1997 | We just downloaded the CyberLife Genetics Preview Kit. It sure is easy to breed lots of Norns quickly with this kit! We have noticed that if we try to load the moniker of a multilobed Norn we get an error message. But if we load a normal 9-lobed Norn, then enter the moniker of a multilobed Norn as the "other" parent, then it is possible to breed multilobed Norns. |
| October 19, 1997 | We got some Cardinal Norns and Many-Colored Norns from Slink's Burrow Online. We have been able to breed some baby Cardinal Norns, but so far our descendants of the Many-Colored Norns are not as colorful as the original parents. We'll keep working on it. |
| October 24, 1997 | As you probably guessed, Mom is breeding Grendels with the Preview Kit. Now she has some colorful Grendels instead of plain old green ones. |
| November 4, 1997 | We thought we had plenty of names to choose from out of our baby name book, but we are running out of names for our Norns. Now we are thinking of themes, such as names of flowers, spices, chocolate bars, and characters from movies or books. |
| November 12, 1997 | Just out of curiosity, we checked the size of our Creatures folder. It is 701 mb and contains 8,533 files. Yikes! DON'T tell Dad! |
| November 24, 1997 | Some of our new COBs are working now. (Finally!) The Komodo Dragon, Kitty, Benji, and Popping Impatiens are ready for download on our website. Sorry for the delay...it took us a while to get them to work properly. We are still working on the sprites for Spot and the UFO, and we still have some bugs to work out of the Bubble Gum Vendor. |
| November 25, 1997 | We drew a bigger sprite for the Nutcracker Doll so that it won't get "lost" somewhere in Albia. |
| November 26, 1997 | Mom's Grendel Doll is on the website, in case you want a little toy for your Grendels to play with. |
| November 30, 1997 | There's a new Albia Vista search engine at the Creatures Exchange. |
| December 3, 1997 | The Last Starfighter Norns are ready for download. |
| December 6, 1997 | Our friend, David, sent us some of his Norns. He also told us that Creatures Life Kit #1 is now available so we ran to the software store and got one. The new kit has Forest Norns and Ron Norns! |
| December 10, 1997 | Oh, no. Our Object Injector doesn't work since we installed the new Life Kit #1. We e-mailed Mindscape, and they said to export our Norns, uninstall, and reinstall Creatures. It seems like the new kit is not compatible with some of the third party COBs. |
| December 11, 1997 | David sent us some Star Wars Norns, and we put them on the website. We still need a few more, like Chewbacca, Obiwan Kenobi, Yoda, and Lando. |
| December 12, 1997 | Okay, here they are, the rest of the Star Wars Norns. Special thanks to David for sending them to us. : ) |
| December 13, 1997 | Have you been to SteerPike's Curiosity Shoppe? There are great works of art and some very funny COBs at this site. |
| December 14, 1997 | The Norns seem to like the Crystal Ball that came with Life Kit #1. We injected a bunch of them, and now the Norns are teleporting themselves all over Albia. |
| December 15, 1997 | Alexander Laemmle sent a Christmas present to all registered users of his software. The CGM GenMan is a wonderful little program that is so easy to use for breeding and cloning Norns and Grendels. |
| December 18, 1997 | We were playing with a baby Norn named Kavette. She was bouncing the ball and walking in circles around it. Then all of a sudden she climbed right on top of the ball! We haven't seen a Norn do that before. Norns are so full of surprises! Luckily we were able to take a picture quickly before she got off. |
| December 19, 1997 | We just got the new 1997 Christmas Pack from CyberLife. Sigh...the Genetics Kit is available, but our Dad won't let us get it. Even if we pay for it out of our own allowance, he doesn't want us to use his credit cards. (Not his fault, though...if he let us use it we would go on a Shopping Spree! Charge it!!!) We got some new COBs and two new kinds of Norns at Slink's Burrow. The Horn of Plenty provides lots of food for everyone. There are Cardinal Mountain Norns and Breedable Santa Norns. Now there's a Mrs. Santa, too. |
| December 20, 1997 | We might get kind of busy visiting friends and relatives for the holidays, so in case we don't have a chance to update until then, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! |