kind of a reach but - I absolutely loved the writing in 20CFC, both the reviews and the restaurant descriptions, and I was wondering if you'd ever played the 1995 shmup Tyrian and if the datacubes from that were an inspiration at all? specifically the Guidebook entries had a very similar funny "basically-alien future person" vibe, and the reviewer portraits you mentioned in your post also reminded me a lot of the ones you get with the logs
I have played Tyrian! At least, a long time ago. I wasn't thinking about it specifically when writing 20th Century Food Court, but it likely informed me subconsciously, since we were absolutely going for that certain offbeat 90's feel that a lot of games from this time featured. It's also possible Kyle, the artist who drew the portraits, was influenced by Tyrian more directly. I could ask him. In general it's always good to have a portrait of a funny little guy next to some words... that's my pro game dev tip.