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However, there are authoring tools avaliable for AGI games and SCI games... http://www.agidev.com/

How abour color-blind people using CGA monitors?

Space Quest 1 VGA was perhaps a poor choice of example, since it *is* easy to run and play. Easier than when it was new, in fact. Rather than the old IRQ/Highmem/Soundblaster/blahblah DOS config nightmare, I just installed NAGI and copied my old game disks into the folder. See also FreeSCI for later Sierra games, and ScummVM for the lucasarts games.

You're right about hanging back on the lifecycle, though. I bought all of the last generation of consoles with a pile of controllers for a sum total of $180. It can pay to wait.

How easy it is for you to find old PC bits probably depends on your particular circle of friends. In this regard, it pays to know a couple of those "buy the latest all the time" guys, because they are perpetually unloading last years' gear at cut-rate prices.

Ok, only FYI (as many of these topics were covered in other replies) and certainly not for karma (as this topic is dead at this point), here is the definitive guide for playing Lucasarts/Sierra games on modern PC's:

First, Linux PC's:
Lucasarts games: http://www.scummvm.org/
AGI Sierra games (Lsl1, Sq1, Sq2, Kq1-3, etc): http://sarien.sourceforge.net/
SCI0 Sierra games (Sq3, Lsl2-3, Kq4): http://freesci.linuxgames.com/
SCI1 Sierra games (Sq4-5, Lsl5-6, Kq5, etc) and oddballs like willy beamish and all those old games like tunnels of armageddon: http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/
Windows Sierra games (Sq6, Lsl7, etc): http://www.transgaming.com/ (or apt-get install wine)

Any platform, Sierra games: This guy has done the unpossible, writing timing fix patches for the games so you don't have to kludge them with slowdown utils: http://geocities.com/belzorash/

Windows PC's:
LucasArts games: http://www.scummvm.org/
AGI Sierra games: http://www.agidev.com/nagi.html
SCI Sierra games: http://sourceforge.net/projects/vdmsound/
Windows games:
http://home.planet.nl/~harms646/larry7.html
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS-Enhancement s/ResChange.shtml
Games that just don't work right:
http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/

And just for grins, because it's freaking awesome:
http://www.agdinteractive.com/
http://people.freenet.de/lucasfangames/maniac/game s_eng.htm
Good luck, let me know if you have any problems.

It doesn't explicitly say so on the page, but the game seems to be Windows/Dos only.

That's what I noticed as well, so I decided to go off on a quest of my own see what I could find. Turns out the best place to go is to the AGI Development Site and see what's available. You will need to download one of the interpreters, which are listed on the 'links' page.

The one I decided to download was the Java AGI. It comes with no documentation so you will need to compile it yourself and then realise that you need to create an empty 'agi.conf' file (will need to investigate the config values) in the classpath and use com.sierra.agi.tools.AGI to get things running, oh and the 'user.dir' should point to where the game is installed. After all this I am only at the stage at listening to the music, as I see no graphics. This is all on MacOS X, with JDK 1.4.1.

I just experimented with NAGI out of mere curiosity. Unpacked the zip of SQ0 to a separate directory and ran NAGI there. *poof* Instant jump to opening screen and on with the game. From the short experience it seems to be very true to the originals.

As if I didn't have problems with my personal scheduling already. Damn.

The interpeter that comes bundled with SQ:Replicated is actually called NAGI which is a clone of the original Sierra AGI interpreter. It has been ported to Linux.

Debian Package of NAGI(will probably have more luck with this)

NAGI homepage

If you're interested in writing your own AGI games, you might want to check out the rest of the site.

- Nick Sonneveld

The interpeter that comes bundled with SQ:Replicated is actually called NAGI which is a clone of the original Sierra AGI interpreter. It has been ported to Linux.

Debian Package of NAGI(will probably have more luck with this)

NAGI homepage

If you're interested in writing your own AGI games, you might want to check out the rest of the site.

- Nick Sonneveld