“Dear Human”

(It’s Halloween Week on Unsung, where we’re sharing scary, spooky, and creepy stories. This is a story of a second creepy bug I remember from my childhood.) The Monopoly Deluxe computer game from 1992 fascinated me for one reason that you will understand even if you know me only a little bit: despite not running on Windows, it had a really elegant rendition of a Windows-like user interface. The game came with a pull-down menu, two kinds of keyboard shortcuts, and fun sounds. There was a history log, with font sizes! There was good typography. It was, in some ways, an improvement over its inspiration, sporting gentler fonts, nicer shadows, better bezels, and cuter animations. In hindsight, it was maybe the epitome of that particular design style, more thoughtful that it needed to be and done by – I felt it even then – someone who really cared about user interface. It was still Monopoly, of course, and there were better games around. But I remember the interface of it all, and I…