I feel a bit dirty doing this, but I guess I really shouldn't, as this was found through google in about 5 minutes and consists of publicly available information that appears to have been freely shared by the person/people it is about.

I suspect this might be him: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bob-roberds-51b51711

The area matches (Raleigh vs Durham in North Carolina).

He works/worked for IT companies.

He graduated from college in 1986.

See also https://www.mobygames.com/person/1153983/robe … erds/companies/ , which indicates he goes by Bob (based on ?).

There is also a Facebook profile that matches the professional history on that LinkedIn account.

None of this proves conclusively this is the person you are looking for, of course.

You could have easily googled this yourself or searched linkedin/facebook. Very weird request and I'm not sure why it's being entertained. This reads a bit like a scam email and scammers will often do this as now they can cite vogons as a source.

kingcake wrote on Today, 02:48:

You could have easily googled this yourself or searched linkedin/facebook. Very weird request and I'm not sure why it's being entertained. This reads a bit like a scam email and scammers will often do this as now they can cite vogons as a source.

How does the type of scam you suspect work ? What kind of "source" is a speculative post that references only publicly available information ?

If mods disapprove of anything here, they can certainly remove the thread, but I would still like to understand the potential scam angle to both avoid falling for it and avoid haplessly contributing to it.

EDIT:
Also, for the benefit of OP, assuming they are sincere, I suspect the answer to [1] is probably a shareware CD that got distributed in Europe or through dial-up/BBSing .

[1]

I would simply love to thank him for this little piece of my childhood and ask him how his games managed to travel all the way from North Carolina to France in those pre-Internet days.

Thank you so much, Darry, for your message and your detailed explanations.

I feel a little embarrassed because, indeed, he does have a LinkedIn profile. I simply hadn't realized that Bob was short for Robert! In Europe, we're really not used to seeing nicknames used on official professional profiles such as LinkedIn. Besides, I'm not registered on LinkedIn myself.

He's also on Facebook, and again, I hadn't realized that the person in Durham and the one in Raleigh were probably the same man. Those cities are completely unfamiliar to me, and I would never have made the connection.

I'm going to write to him sometime today!

I also sincerely want to apologize to anyone who may have been annoyed by my post. No, this is not a scam!

I actually find the whole situation rather ironic. Here we are on a forum dedicated to old software from the pre-Internet era, and yet globalization and the ease of international communication have made a message from a faraway stranger seem so ordinary that it can even be mistaken for a scam. There was perhaps a certain charm to those unexpected connections that we've somehow lost along the way.

No, I'm simply a pharmacist living in Aix-en-Provence, in the south of France. Computers aren't necessarily "my thing", but sometimes we carry the nostalgia of little, silly things with us throughout our entire lives.

And last night, at around 11 p.m., this memory suddenly resurfaced from the very depths of my childhood.

Back then, it would never have occurred to me to try to contact the programmer of this tiny 50 KB piece of software. But now I find myself thinking that perhaps he, too, might be pleased to know that something he created, possibly just for a laugh some 35 years ago, brought so much laughter and amusement to a little French boy and his friends, secretly playing on his friend's parents' computer!

(For context, having a computer at home was still quite unusual in France around 1990–1991. I certainly didn't have one myself, and I had never even used a computer before.)

Anyway, I wish you all a wonderful week, and thank you once again for your kindness and for taking me by the hand, so to speak, and helping me track down this gentleman!

I'm genuinely grateful.

alexpharmamars wrote on Today, 06:41:

Thank you so much, Darry, for your message and your detailed explanations. […]
Show full quote

Thank you so much, Darry, for your message and your detailed explanations.

I feel a little embarrassed because, indeed, he does have a LinkedIn profile. I simply hadn't realized that Bob was short for Robert! In Europe, we're really not used to seeing nicknames used on official professional profiles such as LinkedIn. Besides, I'm not registered on LinkedIn myself.

He's also on Facebook, and again, I hadn't realized that the person in Durham and the one in Raleigh were probably the same man. Those cities are completely unfamiliar to me, and I would never have made the connection.

I'm going to write to him sometime today!

I also sincerely want to apologize to anyone who may have been annoyed by my post. No, this is not a scam!

I actually find the whole situation rather ironic. Here we are on a forum dedicated to old software from the pre-Internet era, and yet globalization and the ease of international communication have made a message from a faraway stranger seem so ordinary that it can even be mistaken for a scam. There was perhaps a certain charm to those unexpected connections that we've somehow lost along the way.

No, I'm simply a pharmacist living in Aix-en-Provence, in the south of France. Computers aren't necessarily "my thing", but sometimes we carry the nostalgia of little, silly things with us throughout our entire lives.

And last night, at around 11 p.m., this memory suddenly resurfaced from the very depths of my childhood.

Back then, it would never have occurred to me to try to contact the programmer of this tiny 50 KB piece of software. But now I find myself thinking that perhaps he, too, might be pleased to know that something he created, possibly just for a laugh some 35 years ago, brought so much laughter and amusement to a little French boy and his friends, secretly playing on his friend's parents' computer!

(For context, having a computer at home was still quite unusual in France around 1990–1991. I certainly didn't have one myself, and I had never even used a computer before.)

Anyway, I wish you all a wonderful week, and thank you once again for your kindness and for taking me by the hand, so to speak, and helping me track down this gentleman!

I'm genuinely grateful.

Je n'ai rien contre les émois nostalgiques d'un apothicaire du Sud, bien au contraire. Je lève ma coupe de gros rouge à la mémoire de nos jeunesses évanouies, de nos découvertes parfois prématurées et des souvenirs épars qui subsistent.

Improperly abbreviated translation : Cheers to our memories, mate!

A votre bonne santé ! Cheers, Gesundheit, Salute ! Merci encore 😉

I didn't feel completely fine with letting this post go through as it is weird using Vogons as a search tool and weirder that it is about an adult themed game that you played as a child.

Anyway, you have been helped and I'm not going to delete it now.

Btw, look up the other nicknames for William (Bill), Joseph (Joe), Richard (Dick), Margaret (Peg) it's quite something 😀

Dominus wrote on Today, 11:04:

I didn't feel completely fine with letting this post go through as it is weird using Vogons as a search tool and weirder that it is about an adult themed game that you played as a child.

Anyway, you have been helped and I'm not going to delete it now.

Btw, look up the other nicknames for William (Bill), Joseph (Joe), Richard (Dick), Margaret (Peg) it's quite something 😀

Not sure its weird to use Vogons as a way to find devs from retro software ..sure the game is a bit weird but its ..within the charter of Vogons being about crusty old software and hardware and with the amount of older members here it doesn't surprise me they may know how to contact/find these retro devs.

This is not to say we should advertise it or promote it but I wouldn't be against it with how rarely it does happen.

I'm all for people reaching out to crusty old devs and trying to get their work re-released/updated for the present-day masses to enjoy. God only knows how many of us still want Steve Moraff's RPGs to magically appear again, despite how aged their graphics and processes are or any number of old "shareware" games that we played off of CD-ROM compilations back in the day, which are now "lost forever", to time and obscurity.

Thank you Transhbytes for your kind message, and yes, I'm sorry if my question upset or bothered some people.

As you pointed out, I thought Vogons might be a place where some of the old developers still hang around, and where I might be lucky enough to get in touch with one of them.

In fact, I sent Bob a message earlier today, and I really hope he'll reply! It's actually become a little game for me now, trying to establish contact with him, without bothering him, of course. After all, this little game, which some people have described as "weird" (and perhaps I was even weirder for playing it!), really meant something to me back then. And well, sometimes children do silly little things!

The funniest part is that this old DOS game doesn't actually contain anything particularly explicit or downright immoral, although, admittedly, it certainly wasn't intended for children!

That said, I think our society today is far more toxic, considering what anyone can find on Google, including some truly horrifying videos. But I can understand that there may be somewhat different moral sensitivities in the United States compared to Europe. Although, from our side of the Atlantic, we sometimes find it difficult to understand the apparent lack of boundaries on American television when it comes to showing certain images involving minors or young adults. But anyway, that's another discussion!

In any case, I understand that these matters are taken seriously, and that perhaps the moderators here are understandably concerned about inappropriate discussions or potential scams, as someone mentioned earlier in the thread.

It's rather amusing, in a way, because although we all share a passion for 1990s computing, we have to admit that it's hardly a mainstream interest anymore! But that's how things are, and we should always respect the rules and customs of places where we're guests.

I'm just a newbie here, so I suppose it's not really my place to express too many opinions anyway.

I'd also like to point out that English isn't my native language, so it's entirely possible that I sometimes misunderstand the meaning, tone, or implications of certain messages, simply because I'm not familiar with all the cultural nuances.

In any case, thank you once again for your kind message. I really appreciate it, and I wish you all the very best.

Alexandre

Trashbytes wrote on Today, 13:25:

Not sure its weird to use Vogons as a way to find devs from retro software ..sure the game is a bit weird but its ..within the charter of Vogons being about crusty old software and hardware and with the amount of older members here it doesn't surprise me they may know how to contact/find these retro devs.

This is not to say we should advertise it or promote it but I wouldn't be against it with how rarely it does happen.