Old Sierra Games Breathe Anew

Cow_With_Gun writes: "A small group named Tierra has taken it upon themself to resurrect the classic Sierra anthologies. So far they have brough King's Quest 1 up into the world of VGA and are working on other titles such as Quest for Glory 2 and King's Quest 2."

Comments

I dont know if I should be excited or sad.

[interstellar_donkey]

Excited because I love these games.

Sad, because as a general rule, despite all of our graphics and sound advances, todays games just don't have the greatness that could be found a decade ago in EGA.

Re:I dont know if I should be excited or sad.

[argStyopa]

I entirely disagree. I'm a game reviewer and I run into this from reader email all the time.

While nostalgia for old classic computer games might be cool in sort of a "I remember when..." way, PLAY THEM. Go to the Underdogs site and download them and play them. You will soon see that despite rosy-colored memories of how much fun you had playing Empire or Sword of Aragon, suddenly it's apparent that, while great games for their time, our expectations are tremendously higher. Games back then managed a very small number of variables, and were incredibly easy to 'break' by disobeying the programmer's expectations. Either that, or you were straitjacketed by the game to play the way it wanted you to. And let me say right out: this is NOT to demean the creations of pioneering game programmers like Dan(i) Bunten. Dani created some outstandingly playable games. But play Command HQ (probably the best game of its type at the time) and then play a beta of Warcraft III or Europa Universalis2. There are a jillion more levels of strategy, AI capability (sans cheating), units, capabilities, flexibility for mod authors, and on and on and on...

In the same sense everyone likes to dis as 'chrome' modern graphics ("real computer gamers will play in EGA and like it!"), that's horse puckey too. EGA SUCKED. I still can't even see the colors Cyan or Magenta without being nauseated.

Face it, like it or not, while some modern games blow, so did some old ones. And the good ones then can't really hold a candle to the good ones now (SFC, Shogun, West Front, EU2, etc) except through the fuzzy favorable view of nostalgia.

Re:I dont know if I should be excited or sad.

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, I have gone to Underdogs and downloaded all sorts of stuff...Below the Root, Systemshock, A Mind Forever Voyaging, etc.

And you know what? I still love to play those old games, and I get mad as hell when I can't play them because of poor backward compatibility. I would play them more if it weren't for the fact that W3000 or whatever it is can't play something written for DOS and CGA graphics or whatnot.

Now, I'm not about to say there aren't good new games like The Longest Journey or Half Life or Deus Ex or UT or Baldur's Gate or whatever. There are good new games coming out all the time.

The problem with many current games that I have that I resonate with the parent post about is that too many new games rely too much on graphics to pull us out of an otherwise bad experience. Not all games, but many. And regardless of the actual number of games doing so, it seems to me that reviews and the gaming media focus a bit too much on the technical aspects of things. Not that the technical limits shouldn't be pushed, but rather, that there are good low-tech games out there that don't get nearly enough attention.

Interactive fiction [text adventure] is a good example. It's about as old and primitive a computer gaming genre as you can get, and still going strong. Writing in IF is as solid and mature as it has ever been, and has a strong if relatively small community. I play IF regularly, mainly because, for all the flashy graphics and AI (that I love) from new games, nothing beats your own imagination. It's kind of hoky sounding, but it's true. And it's a genre, along with MUDs and other things, that doesn't get a half a blurb from most gaming sites ever.

There were crappy games in the past, there are crappy games now, and there will always be crappy games. But it seems that at some point (Quake?) some sort of obsession with visual and AI technique arose that has gone a bit too far. Maybe it's dying down a bit, maybe it's justified. I don't know. But I do think that primitive technically speaking doesn't mean primitive in terms of gameplay, and it's something major gaming sites have seemed to forget. During the "golden age" of gaming some people seem to be nostalgic about, there was excitement about games because they were _computer_ games, and computers allowed you to do things you couldn't do with pencil and paper or on a gameboard. There probably was more experimentation with gameplay and less refinement of existing genres. Now the balance seems to be in refining what's out there to make it more shiny, rather than trying to come up with something entirely different.

Re:I dont know if I should be excited or sad.

[wysoft]

I still can't even see the colors Cyan or Magenta without being nauseated.

Then you must be talking about CGA :)

Re:I dont know if I should be excited or sad.

[interstellar_donkey]

But I don't think King Graham et al. hold a candle to a good, solid 20-minute round of Quake III Team Arena (Capture The Flag mode).

I think it can. Those old games had something to them: writing.

Quake III is a compleatly differnet genre. There is no writing in it. The quality of game play relies almost entirily on the people you pick to play.

I don't play Quake III. Mostly, because I suck at multiplayer (and have never really enjoyed it), but I was really let down when I found out Quake III did'nt really have a game with a story line.

I loved Quake II. I felt a great sense of satisfaction when I beat the game. Quake III has no game to beat; it's never ending, and when broken down to it's key elements, all it basically consists of is a graphics and physics engine. To that end, the only real craftsmenship in most modern games is in technical tricks.

The older games had craftmanship in their stories; something we just don't see anymore.

Which is better? That's a matter of personal taste. Personally I'll take a good story over graphics any day.

And craftsmanship is, to me, key.

At present, I typically only play simulation games. One of my all time favorates is Sim City. As somebody who waisted a good deal of time in college playing Sim City 2000, I folowed the development of Sim City 3000 very closly.

I became worried when everything comming out of Maxis seemed to indicate the new version would have better graphics/more buildings/better interface. But nothing was said of game play.

I was heartfallen to discover after 20 or so hours of play with the new version that really nothing had been done to the simulation engine, and it seemed, under the auspicious of making the game more accessable to the new player, they had stunted the realism of the simulation.

The message sent was clear: Software developers today are more interested in making a game look pretty then givig it guts.

The really sad part is, the only game line I can think of that has real advances in every new release is the flight sim series distributed by Microsoft.

I've never sat down with a new release and been disapointed. When they put out a new edition, it's actually better. When I load up ms2k2, I never said 'oh I miss the wire frame world of version 2'.

Wouldn't it be better if...

[Jason1729]

instead of rewritting the same old games, they continued the series with new stories?

Jason

More forethought

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I know that not bothering to log in means that noone is going to read this but...

I've seen this tread alot, and aslong as people don't try to profit from these actions then they are unlikly to be foxed, in this case by Activison who I think owns the intellectual Property to serria. Altough, I also thought that about mod's

Anyway the point I whated to make was, I hope that the people who untake these projects spend some time insuring that these games remain timeless, or rather they still look good and play reasonably well five years down the track. Somthing that the orginal creators of the game often overlooked.

For example, insure that an internal clock is used making sure that the game still plays well on ever faster processors,

Use vector graphics, so that the game looks good at higher resolutions,

Perhaps, write the thing in java, since the java vm, will still be around 5 years down the track. or in a API which is still going to be around in the future.

ETCETC,

Anymore surrgestions??

Re:and this is moded 'troll' why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I personally believe the Quest-series was good because of lack of fighting and braindead action. Instead the creators thought up creative ways of solving problems, which can be more fun.

My Fondest Sierra Memory

[nat5an]

The coolest thing from my childhood that I remember was actually going to California on vacation and visiting the Sierra Headquarters. My family was cool like that. At that time they were giving us, as a tour group, a preview of Space Quest 4, with its (oh my God) VGA graphics and fully voiced dialogue! I was blown away. Then the presenter went on to show us all the various creative ways you could die in the first few screens of the game.

I kinda doubt that I'd have the same experience going to visit id Software headquarters so they could show us their incredibly cool graphics engine and wax poetic about the GeForce 4.