The best scene of the year is that in A. Bomire’s The Backlot between the PC and the Fairy making a return from her original role in Dexter Dixon: In Search of the Prussian Pussy. The Fairy is an amazing partner in this scene as her amazement at her own body is incredibly palpable and this adds to her excitement lends extra heat to the entire encounter.   A. Bomire’s sex writing, always strong, is in rare form here, making this scene a worthy Erin recipient.

Wendell the Elf, Mrs. Claus and her friend Sara get it on for ages at the end of A. Bomire’s Santa’s Little Helper.  Every conceivable position is attempted and the action moves all over Santa’s underground recreation room.  This scene particularly deserves the Erin because, as we’ve come to expect from A. Bomire, the vast variety of sex permutations are all technically clean and fully implemented.

Hell in Highwater has a sprawling map, extremely detailed descriptions, great puzzles and vivid characters.  Combine these with the overarching ‘reclaim your soul’ quest and it adds up to an amazingly immersive gameplay experience.  The story alone makes the game worthwhile, even without the sex; the sex is skillfully incorporated, though, and enhances the story nicely.

In Sam Shooter IV: Children of the Damned, you wander through Hell, trying to find your way back home.  One-Eyed Jack has taken classic pictures of Hell from various religious backgrounds, and filled it with characters both familiar and yet still new (see the incubus for Best Male NPC). You can almost hear the wind screaming across the desolate landscape, or feel the heat as you wander through the appropriately…well, hellish, environs.

Cauldron wins his second Mulimedia Erin, this time for “Sexbot”, a small game written in Hugo about robots whose job is to pleasure humans.   Cauldron hand-drew extremely stylish images of the characters and their exploits.  He also included some nifty Java-like scrolling text effects that help create the setting for the game.  There is very little textual description of sex in the game; fortunately, the drawings are able to carry the day.

One thing that A. Bomire is known for is his technical ability.  He writes technically clean games, he tests them thoroughly, and he is always willing to help other authors with their technical questions.  He also, and this is important, patches his games post-release to fix any bugs found, even picayune ones.  The Backlot is not only clean, it is incredibly ambitious, with a huge map, tons of  characters, lots of extremely detailed sex scenes and cleverly layered puzzles.  In all, a solid Erin-winning performance.

Nobody comes close to One-Eyed Jack for comedy in AIF.  SSIV won this category by a landslide.  OEJ also won this category for SSIII and was runner-up for SSI.  His characters are so crazily outrageous and their adventures so outlandish that you can’t help but laugh out loud constantly, at least when you’re not enjoying his ‘best sex’ of course.

Parlour contained interesting, unconventional (for AIF) characters and heavily layered sexual actions. Parlour was tied for second place in the 2004 mini-comp, and the fact that it then went on to win this award demonstrates that the “Best ONS” category is worthwhile. Parlour clearly proved to be memorable.

Best Male PC.  Best Male NPC.  Best Lesbian Sex Scene. Best Sex Overall.  Best Atmosphere.  Best Humor.  Runner-up for Best Female PC. Plus, several additional Erin nominations for SSIV and Badman nominations for its author. Is there any wonder it is winning the Best Game of the Year Erin as well ?

NewKid, author of Ideal New England Prep School (HI) and Generic New York Apartment Building (GNA) and other games, could possibly be considered the father of modern AIF. With HI he took the AIF community beyond its Xtrek phase and demonstrated that AIF games could be high quality and intelligent. His TADS "chick.t" library has aided other authors and his presence in the community has been an inspiration to many more.