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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.
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
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 . . .
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 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
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.
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