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Leisure Suit Unix
koshka writes "Remember wasting hours trying to navigate bamboo forests? Space Quest 3, Quest for Glory 1, and most recently Leisure Suit Larry 3 have all been completed using FreeSCI, an engine for running Sierra games on Unix." I can think of nothing better than using a $2000 computer to play Leisure Suit Larry. Oddly enough, some of Sierra's other games are also playable on Unix.
If I wanted to play a first-person shooter, well, that's what the local laser-tag arena is for. Higher framerates, better color depths, lightspeed-rendered immersive 3D environment, no lag, and multimedia including sound and tactile feedback.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Space Quest was known for its great quotes:
"You get the ladder and put it in your pocket. Ouch." - SQ3
"Bet you can't fit that thing into your pants. Guess I was wrong; it does fit. There must be plenty of spare room in there." - SQ6 (As you pick up a large board)
"That's right. You have no head. That darn pool must have been filled with acid. You obviously can't go on living that way." - SQ1
"The odor coming from your person makes you regret skipping last month's shower." - SQ1
"I intend to infest your planet with genetically-engineered, door-to-door insurance salesmen." - SQ2
"The guard appears to be less thick than you remember him. Many of his formerly contained body fluids seem to be at large." - SQ2
"Only a dumb moron would fall for that tourist trap! Suddenly, you feel like a dumb moron." - SQ3
"We rejoin our friend and semi-hero, Roger Wilco..." - SQ4
"This rough area tastes strangely like blood. Oh, that is blood! You shredded your tongue! Your mother should have warned you about licking strange areas." - SQ4
Djurkwhad: Whats your mamma call you?
Roger: A mistake. But my friends call me Roger. Roger Wilco.
"...and finally... FINALLY... nothing much happens. That must be an invalid code. Try again." - SQ4 (After trying and getting the wrong code after a LONG ass time)
Roger: Let's boogie, girls!
(Roger dances around)
Roger: I sure know how to bust a move
(If you click on a mannequin while dressed like a woman)
"Hey, keep your hands off yourself! This is a family game." - SQ4 (Using hand on yourself)
"Wilco! Have you been whiffing cleaning fluid again?" - SQ6
"Don't touch that. We don't know where you've been." - SQ6
"She looks like one of those 'professional' ladies your mom told you about." -SQ6
"Oh, yeah, real smart. Let's go poking around inside a pod that's probably carrying a half-dozen miniature face-hugging, saliva-dripping, face-eating exo-skeletal alien piranha things. And while we're at it, let's split up so that we're all alone and defenseless, okay?" - SQ6
"I hope I never get so far gone that I start talking to myself... like... this." - SQ6
"Picking up your clothes? Dammit, Roger! You're a janitor, not a responsible adult!" -SQ6
"That's not recommended. That'll either get you an appendaged removed, or a date you don't really want." - SQ6
A good series all in all.
They play great, too! I've had some problems getting hardware accelleration working in Quake II but other than that all of these run great.
Check out the Linux Quake HOWTO, and the Linux DOOM FAQ.
Peace.
Claim your namespace.
I remember playing these games on a 8086 with a MCGA monitor.
Great to know linux finally caught up with that technology.
Another 20 years and linux will be ready for last decades desktop.
Yippy.
Really all of lucas arts work from that period is outstanding, MI 1 and 2, sam 'n max, DOTT ...
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
I *still* boot DOS to play lesuresuite Lary. "We got our 'R' Rating for sex not violence" has got to be the coolest quote :).
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
I wonder why some of these gaming companies don't take the initiative of assisting developers port their software to unsupported systems such as Linux, and the BSD's.
The upsides to doing so would:
Cost nothing in their own budgets
Create more exposure for their companies
Could create revenue next time around for new games
Open a new market other gaming companies don't have. (Linux, BSD's)
It costs money in terms of:
Quality Assurance (aka Testing)
Packaging (yes, most people still buy boxes of software)
Tech Support -- the average Tech support call costs $5 to the company providing it. Sierra does this for free to their customers.
There's the whole marketshare angle too. There's literally no profit in doing the port. Give it a few years though, and who knows?
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
i think its agi not sci, but noteworthy nonetheless that a fan made a professional looking sequal of the same graphical quality (using the same engine no less!) purdy nifty, still have to play it a bit more.
A shame about sierra...ken williams can rot in hell.
oh yeah, the link: http://frostbytei.com/space/
and for those who like html click here and if your really bored click here.
when Push Comes to Shove
That would be dopewars. It was written originally for VAXen, then got ported to linux. There have been wintendo versions released as of 1/01....
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
Damn straight. I find most current first person shooters boring after about an hour of play, although I do admit playing the original Doom in death-match mode for hours at a time. I find the big problem with those games is that it really requires no thought. You go around and blow everything to gibs. It's more rapid-fire reflex then anything else.
*shrug* Maybe I just prefer games that you actually have to think to be able to solve. (Oddly enough, I can't stand Myst... go fig.)
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
When i saw this posted I went on a search for old sierra games and found.... http://hyd.org/abandonware/sierra/. they have most of the games, except for some of the "recent" ones like KQ7, SQ6, LSL7.
treke
Yeah, I'm one of them. Seriously. Are you from Section 9 or Hillse?
"Watch these suckers jump when I get Administrator."
As much as I love the idea of running classic Sierra games in Linux (which I WILL do, naturally). Nothing beats running these games on the platforms they originally ran on. My first experience with sierra games was the orignal Kings Quest on my PCjr. What was great was it used the psuedo EGA graphics and the tandy 3 voice sound. Compared to the regular PC version, this was amazing. My current goal is to get an Apple IIgs and some classic Sierra games for it (IIgs versions naturally).
It troubles me that the state of Linux is such that the porting of a few ten-year-old DOS games to everyone's favorite OS is a newsworthy event. How about someone other than Carmack porting/making his new game run on Linux? As much as I loved the Sierra Quest games, The fact that this is such a big deal depresses me.
--Brogdon
This tagline is umop apisdn.
I'm probably the only one who remembers this, but LSL1 was essentially a graphics port of the text adventure Soft Porn, which may by why it was more lewd than the second LSL.
Section 9 kicks ass. I used to be an admin (probably still am...) but I haven't play tries in forever. I'll probably go back into it when tribes 2 comes out. I truly love the shifter mod.
Dive Gear
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
HL and CS are playable with OpenGL acceleration on Wine. Check out http://lhl.linuxgames.com/.
Obviously sarcasm, but these were my sentiments, years ago, when people were blowing $2500 (then!) to play Wolfenstein 3D and Doom on PC's. Of course, they could also use these same PC's for word processing, budget balancing, research, etc.
The operative word here is could not did ;)
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I had twice that into my Apple IIgs when I was playing LSL at its release. I spent a lot of time playing Sierra Online games back then. I also played a lot of Wings of Fury and Tetris too. I still fire up an emulator from time to time to play.
Everybody below is speaking of playing LSL on Linux, let's point something : UNIX is not only Linux. Example, you could play LSL on an old Sun Sparcstation 5 (which is cool and doesn't worth $2000 anymore).
Aye, we're talking about a virtual machine system developped 10 years before Java! And now it's running under MS-DOS (386+), Win32 and Sparc (and more)!!
I still have my DOTT CD - phear me!
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
As anyone can see, Linux's troubles moving into the gaming market aren't due to the OS, but instead to the fact that compared to Windows, hardly anyone uses it, and of those that do, most aren't interested in playing games.
My wife has this (board) game. I've never played it though.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball
Is there any chance they'll port halflife so i can play counter strike in unix? :>
©o,,o©©o,,o©©©o,
Space Quest 3 runs nicely under dosemu. I don't see why the others wouldn't.
Anyone know of an abandonware site that might have some of these games? I never got to finish Quest for Glory III back in the day...
-John
No, a company can charge whatever they want to both cover the cost of the medium and produce a profit for an "official" disk. If you pay for a download, you have paid for the exact bytes as duplicated on their server and sent to your machine. You can take this and back your installation and backup copies are provided in the copyright legislation. If you lose your download you do not have the right to get a copy from someone else that downloaded the product.
They are still there. Half Life, Homeworld, Swat 3, Tribes and Tribes2. They also do "sports" games, well if you consider fishing, bullriding, and golf sports :). I wouldnt be disappointed if they'd go back and write some new adventure games (The 3d version of Larry previewed on Al Lowes website looked cool).
treke
But most of my old disks have become corrupt or lost over time.
So that means I have to hope I can illegally obtain the game files off of the net, and as we all know, that just ISN'T possible!
I mean, if it were then that would imply that poeple online were pirating. And nobody pirates, right!?
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
My first Sierra game was Leisure Suit Larry I (for those of you who haven't played this, it starts with an "age verification" quiz, where you have to answer questions like "Who was Spiro Agnew?"), followed by King's Quest IV. Then Space Quest III (Astro Chicken!). Then back to Space Quest I. Hero's Quest (later called Quest For Glory, for some reason) came next. Fun fun. Leisure Suit Larry III next; much racier than the first. Police Quest I . . . the best part was the overhead view of driving the car. Then Space Quest IV came out (to my knowledge, the first of the VGA series). This one was fun, but it marks the switch from EGA command-line to VGA point-n-click for Sierra. That title had some particurly funny parts, . . . like the throwback to EGA Space Quest I in the middle of all the 256-color beauty, and the parody software you could buy at the mall. But, all downhill from there for Sierra.
What the hell happened to them, anyway? Those were some brilliant game writers . . .
I wonder why some of these gaming companies don't take the initiative of assisting developers port their software to unsupported systems such as Linux, and the BSD's.
The upsides to doing so would:
Cost nothing in their own budgets
Create more exposure for their companies
Could create revenue next time around for new games
Open a new market other gaming companies don't have. (Linux, BSD's)
Its a bit odd to see that most gaming companies are still on the MS bandwagon, when significant articles, studies, polls, show that Linux and BSD's have gained ground within the past few years. I'm sure if there were more games available there would be a bigger boom of *nix users.
Anyone from a gaming company here care to comment?
Where in the world is my wife
360 degrees of Karma
Well, I don't know if it counts, but LucasArts recently released Monkey Island (Escape from Monkey Island). Still funny as heck.
And they fixed the main problem with going over to mouse, IMO.
In the old adventure games, you have to know what to pick up, to pick up something, like type "Pick up key". The problem with mouse, was that you could just move the mouse over the screen and right click on whatever to pick it up. In Monkey Island, they fixed it so that, Treepod has to look at something before it is visible to be picked up. Works great.
Je ne parle pas francais.
What about point and click sierra games like space quest 4 and QG3?
I remember playing Larry 1 on an amstrad luggable which I'm sure cost much more then $2000 dollars at the time. IT had a seperate monitor too! And a modem!
Wow, I couldn't agree more. For a little hint into what went down at Sierra, you might want to check out an interview Gamer's Depot did with Mrs. Williams some time back (thank you Google for finding that old review!) She gives a little insight as to what truly happened at Sierra. I guess it got pretty messy and she regrets the decision she and Ken made to sell.
As for looking back, I would have to agree that the Laura Bow mysteries were some of the best. Graphics were great for the time and it was all around fun that my mom and I would play (I was a youngin'). LSL was also a classic, but no one has mentioned Freddy Pharkas, Frontier Pharmacist, another classic from the designer of LSL, Al Lowe and with some help from Mark Seibert. Yes, they will be missed.
Bryan R.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
I'm surprised this hasn't come up before on Slashdot, it's actually kind of a sad story, what happened to Sierra(their adventure game department, anyway). In Feb. 1999(I think) Sierra's Oakhurst, CA office was shutdown and all employees of it were fired without notice on the day it all went down. For those of you who don't remember, the Oakhurst office was the first Sierra office and the one where, up until it's demise, they made all of their adventure games. If you're wondering what happened to a few of the more known designers of their adventure games, a few of them have websites. Al Lowe(creator of the LSL series) and Scott Murphy(co-creator of the Space Quest series) are the ones I know of. I've actually e-mailed Scott Murphy and asked him about this stuff, basically he said that when the company was sold by Ken Williams the new management were a bunch of losers who felt that following other game companies examples and switching to fully multiplayer and FPS games was the way to go. SQ7 was acutally in development up until the shutdown of the Oakhurst office, but it was a butchered fully multiplayer game that Scott Murphy wasn't proud of being forced to make anyway.
I loved Colonization and Railroad Tycoon (and Transport Tycoon) when I still had a dos partition. I've tried to play them using DOSEMU but the setup is so damn complicated and I've given up getting it to work. Has anyone else had any success getting their old dos games working in Linux?
Maybe it's just me, but I'd much rather see a SCUMM game engine (for LucasArts games, such as Loom, Monkey Island, D.O.T.T., Full Throttle, Sam'n'Max, Zak McKracken et al.) And before anyone says I should get coding myself, I've got too much programming-work to do already.
Mine was a $7000 25mhz 486 with a mighty 200mb of hard drive and a VGA graphics card that was totally wasted on leisure suit larry 1. Of course I was all of 13 at the time and had to keep guessing the age validating questions.
They wised up and bought companies to produce the games for them...
Sierra owns Blizzard (Diablo, War Craft, Star Craft...)
good god, granted some games are considered classics, but isnt there a time, say when the game is 10 years old that we all move on and grab the latest port of quake?
I had some games from the Ultima Collection running under DOSEMU. Worked good, though in XDOS it was a little funky. Best to just quit out of X and run from there.
*sigh*
I remember a long time ago - about 1990, I guess - I walked into my local newsagents and they had a few old computers for sale. I walked right by a Vic-20 and an Acorn Electron on sale for TEN IRISH POUNDS!!! I went back the next day, after smacking myself in the head many times, but alas, they were gone.
dave
(The electron was the precursor to the BBC micro and had a good structured BASIC with a built in assmebler as well as half a dozen serial and parallel ports. You could install a Word Processor and a Spreadsheet as ROMs. You could easily use these things to control robot arms or whatnot and they were so small (about the size of a PC keyboard) you could attach them to autonomous devices.)
When are they going to port over some good games?! I've been dieing to play a little DOOM II action..but no...stupid ID making me go back to Windows just to slay some imps! GGRR... Damnit...why won't anyone ever listen to my ideas?! DOOM + Linux = Dinux! HA! l8r
I hope Michael knows that LSL was designed to play on a $2000 computer in its day....
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
Perhaps someone could enlighten me as to why anyone should care why game technology older than many Linux developers should be exciting."
Old does NOT mean boring. This is a common misconception. High end graphics is nothing more than eye-candy. That being said, there is nothing wrong with eye-candy, but its not the end all be all of gaming. Look at Diablo II. Not exactly Quake 3 graphics, but still fun and quite popular. You know what the number one machine of all time for gaming is? PC? Nope. PSX? Nope. N64? Nope. The number one gaming system of all time, is the gameboy at a stunning 8 bits of power.
I still play a number of original Nintendo games. They were fun then, they are fun today.
Burn Hollywood Burn
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/03/06/162228_F.sht ml
Yeah DOS 3.2 could play LLS also..This won't help make linux a viable gaming platform. If anything I see it as an insult. "Your OS can't play the latest games on the market so stick to '90's Sierra games".
If your "linux" can truly do anything, I'd like to see you lifeless geeks write something that will get me heroin.
Let's see what Larry does when I type in "Shoot heroin".
Jab a needle today.
DOOM for *n?x is available. There's even a DOOM sysadmin tool.
In fact, I was playing DOOM II on an O2 at the ufie 3rd anniversary party.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
I haven't seen anything at all decent come from them recently except for SWAT 3: CQB. Other than that, they've just been milking Valve's Half-Life for all it's worth. Oh, and there was Homeworld, too, but Barking Dog developed that for them.
I've got pretty much every one of Sierra's old games (except Codename: Iceman and the Conquest series), and I think I've finished all of them. Question: What happened to Sierra? The last thing I remember them releasing was King's Quest: Mask of Eternity, and seeing as how it was a 3d adventure game with a combat system (A combat system! In a King's Quest game...), I lost interest. On an unrelated note, when Colonel's Bequest came out, it was supposed to be "First in a series!" Well, we got The Dagger of Amon Ra, but nothing after that. *sigh* Those were two of the finest games they made (right behind the often forgotten Manhunter titles). Later, Joe Shuler -BotF http://brotherhoodofthefin.cjb.net
It's funny that things need air to breathe
My first reaction is to wonder why someone would be so happy about the porting of such old games to linux, when they've been played so much on other platforms. But retro games are more popular than you'd think.
Hmm... I'd have to say that, given the current state of gaming on Linux, the old Sierra games are better than 99% of the "modern" games already. With the current absense of good adventures on ANY platform or OS (The Longest Journey notwithstanding, and maybe Escape From Monkey Island) this is actually very interesting, to me anyway.
sig fault
Is the idea here to port what PC/Mac users no longer want to buy? More and more stories on /. surround the idea of running windows on linux, running old crappy windows games on linux, etc. why?
Perhaps someone could enlighten me as to why anyone should care why game technology older than many Linux developers should be exciting.
Today: news organizations recruiting unstable high school gun nuts
Ultima VII. Excellent game, but run likes shit on today's hardware. So it is being re-written.
"Watch these suckers jump when I get Administrator."
...but what about The Incredible Machine? Now THERE'S a classic, quality Sierra game. TIM and Civ are the only games I've every actually purchased. I can run Civ on Linux (two ways, counting FreeCiv). How I wish TIM was on Linux....
(Yes, I know there was a project to recreate it on Linux, but alas it appears dead)
--
324006
Pleople spent time to create these games. Others spent time playing them. Why should they dissappear, especially if people can enjoy them again for there nastalgia. I never owned an Atari. I bought one a few years ago just to own a piece of old tech. Some day in not too distant future I am going to buy a Commodore 64. NOT at 128, who would ever needs 128 bytes!
[news for me, stuff that doesn't matter]
They're doing something similar for the LucasArts games here:
http://www.mixnmojo.com/scramm/
But it doesn't support Linux right now.
Claric
--
There's no problem that cannot be solved with a suitable amount of high explosives
good god, granted some games are consideredd classics, but isnt there a time, say when the game is 10 years old that we all move on and grab the latest port of quake?
You might, but I won't. The original Legend of Zelda is a quality game that I will never outgrow. Now if you're so accustomed to eye candy that you can't stand anything below a resolution of 640 x 480, I consider you spoiled.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Elgon
I'd seen that around ... but I thought it was only for creatin of NEW games?
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
I still see people getting a kick out of that game! My roomate was so stoked when his sister gave him a copy of Liesure Suit Larry (dunno which version). Somehow, trying to get some lame computer character laid is a gratifying, fun and relaxing experience. Don't ask me why or how; it just is. Maybe it's such a popular game because it allows all those people whose social skills have decreased due to huge amounts of computer time actually meet hot chicks and get laid. But we probably can't admit that, can we, those of little life...
I actually got the KQ 1-6 (well 7 too but that doesn't work for whatever reason) combo pack. Farily decent stuff, and KQ1 is still as fun as I remember playing it back in 1990. (Gotta love the computer speaker music). I'll have to get the LSL and maybe space quest games too.
They're also good because I can play them really fast on my Pentium 166 mHz system...sigh
----
Your mind is squeezed by a blast of pain!
anyone know how to get Johnny Castaway to run under linux, it's the best screen saver ever :) It was produced by sierra, so I wonder....
My first reaction is to wonder why someone would be so happy about the porting of such old games to linux, when they've been played so much on other platforms. But retro games are more popular than you'd think.
The hobbyist mentality of the average linux user is quite compatible with the emulator mentality -- just look at the popularity of MAME and other emulation software on Linux and the BSDs. Both operating systems are suited to people who would rather relive what once worked than senselessly reinvent themselves.
There is a lot of money to be made in pandering to people's nostaligias, as any record company or movie executive would tell you. Combo packs of old games have been a staple of the game market for years. Bringing them to a new platform and one which is dominated by people who loved the original is the next logical step.
Well i can play LSL on a Z80 running CP/M!
Leisure Suit Larry In The Land Of The Lounge Lizards captivated my attention, mainly because it was funny and irreverant. I got quite a bit of play-time out of that one. Then I tried the second game in the series and found it significantly more tame. I guess Sierra decided that they didn't want to scare parents away from buying the thing for their kids.
I've tried a couple of other KQ/LLL-style games since then, but the only one which has grabbed my attention enough for me to run it all the way through has been Day Of The Tentacle, from LucasArts.
Now there's a classic game. I don't suppose anyone is porting it to Linux?
-deane
Gooroos Software: plugging you in to Maya
-deane
Oh...wait...
nevermind...
-----
IANASRP- I am not a self-referential phrase
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IANASRP- I am not a self-referential phrase
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email: proprietary becomes free, org to com
Forget this old stuff, we need a Linux port of Half-life and Counter-Strike!
And Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear, but that's not Sierra.
-
Heck you are right, I spoiled hours and hours of my time on Railroad Tycoon, as well as on Civilisation (the original one)...I sometimes play them if nostalgy befalls upon me.
The high-res version of RT just plain sucked. There is another older game you ought to play if you liked Railroad Tycoon: Transportation Tycoon (Also from MPS). It's cool, nice graphics, lot's of posibilities.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Hey, you don't need to buy one, just be sure to look around carefully. This weekend a friend of my sister was cleaning his basement and he found an old C64...He was going to *throw it away*, geez! For most people such old hardware has no value, not even historical one. Now I own my very own C64 with tapedrive and diskettedrive!
Yes, I should get a life instead of getting all excited about old machines. I own a Sinclair QL too, and an Atari Portfolio (granddad of all palmtops, it's display is broken tough).
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
it starts with an "age verification" quiz
Pinks away tear... Oh, I fondly remember that one when I was 12 and tried to pass it! I didn't understand (my english wasn't very good at that age) most of the questions and wrote them down as they passe, together with the answer I gave. I think I passed more than 4 hours before getting through it. Later somebody told me about Alt-X which skips the quizzie.
Years later, I tried the game again and I also played the quiz again: I knew most of the answers. More mature? Better understanding of the language? Go figure...but it still stays fun.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
For these old games, playing a downloaded version is not good enough. You need the manual. The one for LSL3 had the "Never Never eat" song which was the path through the forest (take the first letter of each word: N for north, E for east, etc), as well as other important clues for the game presented in a humourous and subtle fashion that an onlne walkthrough won't give. To really play LSL3, you have to spend hours looking through the Noontonyte advertisements trying to make sence of it all.
-no broken link
+5 free karma to the first person who posts an infocom archive!
"It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue."
my friend, you stand in a sewer and complain of the smell.
... Sam and Max, by LucasArts. Such a funny game, that you will wet-your-pants-laugh.
Don't forget MAME and all the other emulation projects for Linux. The Xmame home page is a good starter site to find lotsa info, as is the main MAME page.
If you like LSL and want other "racy" games, you can find on many ROM sites some of those old Japanese "strip" and many other games (like the one that was a Qix clone except as you cleared areas it exposed a nude girl). If that's how you get your jollies, hey, have fun, at least you aren't out shooting people...
- Twid
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
You forgot this one. :)
No one should be deprived the simple joy of using the mp5 for mass murder.