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

Sierra Games, does anyone remember this

[Burritos]

The Incredible Machine is cool!

Re:Sierra Games, does anyone remember this

[skotte]

I'm replying to this post here, because there's soooo many suggestions all below fFor different games.

I personally am working on Hero6, which is sort of the root of a dozen other off-shoot games and groups. i'm really tied into the group, just now, and i encourage you to check it out.

to the point: the biggest fFactor with what gets reproduced is people to get motivated and start doing it. many groups were started by simply one person in another group getting an idea, and going with it. as with all programming projects, it requires an art person, a programming person, and possibly a "plot" person, and hopefully someone to pull it all together.

and i have fFound The GIMP to be immeasurably useful in the art creation process. it has loads of scripts and tools, which do no end of good here.

There are several gaming engines which have already been produced, inluding MAD, and AGS. so you dont have to invent a whole game, necesarilly. you may just need some killer art work, and some good scripting!

Cheers!

Re:Sierra Games, does anyone remember this

[sharkey]

oad up the 200M hard drive with 20-30 good games like Kings Quest etc

Yep. As soon as I can afford a new PC, my P-200 gets turned back into a DOS PC. Makes playing the old DOS games easier (Except Ultima 7). Privateer, TIE-Fighter, etc.

Re:Sierra Games, does anyone remember this

[SCHecklerX]

And lives on in "Puzzles In Motion" on my palm pilot :)

Now if only the developer would release the source, or re-compile to take advantage of the 320x320 resolution of my Clie...Mmmmmm.

Re:Sierra Games, does anyone remember this

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, this post will be modded down; I simply don't care. What I really hate is seeing posts like the parent modded as troll or offtopic. It's on topic, and made me remember of a smart old game I enjoyed playing in the past. If you have kids, I suggest giving that game to them before considering Quake.

Re:Sierra Games, does anyone remember this

[NinjaGaidenIIIcuts]

Instead of keeping way old pc's which are near of their mobo capacitors bogging down, you'd get Mo'Slo.

Useful to make some DOS games running at a decent speed (e.g. 60 fps, nor 850+ fps) on a Pentium3 or Athlon.

You could make a boot disk to free up "conventional" RAM, also. Most Microprose games for DOS let an option to make efficient bootdisks. You should add some lines in Autoexec.bat and Config.sys, though, usually paths to your device drivers (sound, CD-ROM) and devices' configuration.

Add these lines to MSDOS.sys, attempting to only change their value to "0" if they already were in MSDOS.sys.

[options]

drvspace=0

dblspace=0

Re:Sierra Games, does anyone remember this

[spookz]

I am maybe taking this to the extreme but I still play some old sierra games on my Amstrad 1512, like Space Quest 1&2, Police Quest, Prince of Persia, etc.

Who needs expensive gaming machines?
Head down to your local tip today!

Be sure to play it properly...

[wrinkledshirt]

...and put each game onto thirty disks. :)

God, I remeber these

[Sc00ter]

I hope they bring back police quest, god I loved that game.. And does anybody remember The Black Cauldron sierra game.. what great games! To bad they turned to shit when they started doing it via mouse control. That was the best part, spending hours just working on the right phrase, and typing fast enough to do stuff before you would die.

Re:God, I remeber these

[Moridineas]

Black Cauldron is freely released! It's on Al Lowe's website, http://www.allowe.com/

Scott

Re:God, I remeber these

[Jethro]

That's no joke for me. My English spelling was simply HORRIBLE until I started playing all the Sierra games.

That, and after I learned to stop asking my dad how to spell stuff (he spells like he speaks and has an Indian accent - took me forever to figure out how to spell "sceptre").

Quest for Camelot....

[Arctic Fox]

If only they remake this game..... this was awesome.... haven't seen it anywhere available online.... What about Star Control 2? Accolade I know, but it was awesome too...

Re:Quest for Camelot....

[NanoGator]

The definitive version of Star Control 2 was on the 3DO. I realize that may be virtually impossible to acquire, I thought I should mention that.

Man... those Sierra games sure had character. Damn I hope that genre has a comeback. Both Sierra and Lucasarts knew what they were doing.

I wonder what mixing the Legend of Zelda (64) interface with a Sierra game'd be like....

Re:Quest for Camelot....

[SuiteSisterMary]

Star control 2 is available for purchase and download, 14.95 American, and it runs great on modern hardware.

ScummVM

[bparrish]

There's an emulator for old LucasArts games that use the SCUMM scripting system.

http://scummvm.sourceforge.net/

There's also a port for Pocket PC. I've been playing Day of the Tentacle on my iPAQ with full speech. Runs great.

Sierra Game Timeline

[e1en0r]

This might be a little OT, but I found this link which has all the Sierra games and when they were released. Just in case anyone else was interested.

Re:Sierra Game Timeline

[CraigoFL]

Hehehe... that page lists "Softporn Adventure" as one of the games they developed in 1981. Since the highlight for that year is "Leisure Suit Larry is born (without a name)", it seems likely that that's what "Softporn Adventure" turned in to. Too bad they didn't keep the original title... could you imagine seeing that box at your neighborhood software store?

Re:Sierra Game Timeline

[friday2k]

Geee, thank you, now I remember how old I am.
Was King's Quest II really in 1985????? And Space Quest I in 87?
Excuse me Sir? Could we please go back in time to find some decent gameplay? And 15+ years to live again? These years were just fun (with or without computer games)

infkovhgroghprm...

[ThomasMis]

Rumpelstiltskin backwards in a reversed alphabet.... do you know how many times that little dwarf on the big stairway stole items from me until I figured that out!!!!

Already been done for KQ1?

[Zlorfik]

I have a CD collection of KQ 1-6, and unless I mistake it for another collection, it has an enhanced version for KQ 1 on it. I prefer the original... for people who played the original, we want to remember the original. New players however will probably find it impossible to play with the graphics of yesteryear.... :)

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.

[grammar fascist]

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.

Mind if I throw in an alteration for discussion?

Sad, because as a general rule, because of 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.

[Geek In Training]

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.

Don't be swallowed by nostalgia here.

*NOBODY* spent more time playing Kings Quest 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 (I was in college by 6, I think) than I did. And I loved them; I still own the collection that was released on CDs a dew years back.

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 know what you're saying; I don't find Return to Wolfenstein (nor CounterStrike) to be as engaging as Q3 for some reason, but I'm not going to let meself believe that it's because Wolfenstein sucks. It just means I have different tastes.

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

[gnovos]

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.

Just put your theory to the test, and you lose.

The very FIRST Sierra game I ever played, KQIII. Loaded it up, played it. It rocked. It rocked so incredibly much that, frankly, it's hard to believe that the "games" you mentioned are ever let out the door. Cookie cutter soldiers, even in fully rendered 3-D, don't hold a candle to the simply amazing amout on creativity and wit that these old Sierra games have, even to this day.

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'.

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

[krmt]

I just bought Grim Fandango for $10 at Best Buy, and man is it great. Adventure games might have died with this baby, but if you havnen't played it yet you must pick it up! It makes me long for the days of Space Quest and the like.

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

[stripes]

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

Well there is some of that. Rogue's ASCII graphics just don't stand up. I don't get the same fear in the pit of my stomach when the "K" comes into the room where I was hoping to recover. On the other hand CivI can still cause a "lost weekend"...

I think there are two things going on. One is nostalgia (esp for lost forms like the text adventure), and playing those might not make the grade anymore. The other is you are looking at 20+ years of computer games and picking a handful of the best ones, then you compare them with whatever has been around for in the last few months...well of corse master peaces of the past can trump a few randomly chosen games. They might not beat the best game of the year though. Even a Civ lover has to admit that the new Civ might be better then the original! Then again they might beat the best game of the year, as a Civ lover I think Civ won out for about a decade.

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

[stripes]

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

As a former CoinOp game developer I have to say the game developers do still care strongly about game play (er, they use to when I did it), but management didn't. More over the users frequently didn't, and since they pay the bills, well, frequently you follow their wishes.

Or you quit and program something else for a living.

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

[StarFace]

That is precisely what I was thinking as I was reading through this thread. The only game that I've purchased within the past half year that I've honestly completely enjoyed is Microsoft's latest Flight Simulator. That team really outdid themselves this time. I've been playing the game since before it had a version number, and it was freshly licensed off of its original creators, on a tiny 5" amber monochrome screen in the first IBM "portable" computer. The latest incarnation beats the pants off of its earlier siblings.

There are other examples of modern games that manage to provide solid entertainment for hours, weeks, months, years.

The problem with perception is partially due to nostalgia, but I would venture to say it has more to do with the simple fact that you cannot have a classic instantly (despite what marketing would like you to believe.) We are living within the world of modern gaming, and in 20 years there will be games that we look back upon fondly from this era. We just don't see them yet because the present is not all condensed in distant memory.

This all said, there are still games being developed on old tech! Sure, the market isn't big, and quite often they are open for free play, but the world of MUDing is far from dead. You can find fresh MUD servers dishing out comparably advanced games, with good engines, methods for fun role playing, and intriguing universes and story lines, to this day.

If you look for the good games out there, you'll find them. They might not be stacked up in CompUSA with an entire row to themselves. They might not have 24/7 BluesNews.com coverage. But they exist, and to deny that is just to fool yourself and others.

P.S. to all of this. One of my favorite strategy games ever, Stars!, never had much in the way of graphics. It was simply presented, but had enormous strategic turn-based appeal. They've been working on the sequel for years now, and I'm in the same SimCity boat as you. Worried about the fact that they are spending X amount of time on graphics. I hear the latest beta is up to almost 2GB of graphics. *sigh* Hopefully they spent as much time on the engine, because that was an honestly good game. It even put VGAPlanets to shame.

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

[rho]

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.

Maybe. But, then, gameplay is gameplay, and good gameplay stands out. Or do you think that old ass Galaga game is still in the arcade for shits and giggles?

Older games were built by people with a love for games and game playing. Recent games are built by automatons punching out Yet Another Quake Engine-Based FPS--the standouts still stand out because they have good people behind them.

Overall, I think the signal-to-noise ratio was much higher in years past because the industry was just getting underway. Great things were done back then--it's much more automated and industrialized now, packaged up in slick marketing and clever graphics.

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

[interstellar_donkey]

Even then, I'm not so sure there is much nostalgia involved.

It's not that I dislike fancy graphics and sound, it's just that I've not seen much time and energy devoted to it recently.

Another person posting in this thread touched on it: Software developers care about making a great all around game. Managers care about selling a product. Because computers keep changing and new software keeps comming out, a new game can only really expect to have 18-24 month shelf time before it's pushed out of the way.

That just does'nt seem to be enough time for word of mouth to spread. So, it's probably not that there are'nt good games being made, it's probably just that I never hear about them throught he noise.

The gaming press has a lot of fault here. When I read their articles, they seem more focused on the fps and rts games. I mean, that's fine, it's just not my cup of tea.

I really wonder if there is a source of news I can turn to for game reviews that cater more towards people like me, who think graphics and sound are neat, but don't belive they should be the primary focus of the games.

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

[Dirtside]

Pardon me if this sounds like a flame, but your entire post is bullshit.

The proportion of games that have "craftsmanship" has not changed over time -- the same goes for music, movies, books, comics, take any art form. There were just as many horrible, stupid, piece of shit games in the "old days" as there are now -- but back then, bad games didn't even have shiny graphics as a saving grace!

I get so sick of reading posts like this. There are just as many good, well-crafted games today as there have ever been; we only REMEMBER the old games that were any good, because all the crap ones have passed into history and nobody talks about them any more. (To use a movie example, which one are people going to spend their time reminiscing about: Casablanca (1942) or Hillbilly Blitzkrieg (1942)?)

Ultima is coming back as well

[Hadean]

Although I loved Sierra games, I always preferred certain other RPGs... For those who loved Ultima instead, there are remakes being made of them as well.

Ultima 1: A Legend is Reborn - http://www.peroxide.dk/ultima/

Ultima 4: The Dawn of Virtue - http://www.hut.fi/~jtpelto2/ultima4/

Ultima 5: Lazarus - http://www.u5lazarus.com

Ultima 6: Prophecy - www.laymeduck.com/u6

Ultima 9: Eriadain - http://eriadain.multimania.com

Ultima 9: Redemption - http://icdweb.cc.purdue.edu/~fountain

Also, Bard's Tale is being remade into Devil Whiskey (Bard's Tale 4). It can be seen at http://www.bardslegacy.com

Re:Ultima is coming back as well

[aridhol]

See the Ultima Reconstruction Project for info on all the re-creation projects.

You want to play classic Sierra games?

[mewsenews]

Then I have two words for you: Sarien and FreeSCI (uhh ok so FreeSCI is an acronym). Both of them are GPL, both of them run in Linux, and both of them seem pretty polished.

Get the PC games free

[MoceanWorker]

I have this site bookmarked that links to many different "Abandonware" websites that let you download those old PC games (i.e. Sierra, Broderbund, etc..) for free. Just playing Police Quest 1/2/3 gave me old memories of how I used to spend my days on the computer trying to solve the game. :-)

Re:Get the PC games free

[Peyna]

I still have 3.5" floppies of all the Police Quest series (1-4), a couple King's Quests, and a Space Quest here or there. Those games were great, and Space Quest always had that quirky humor in it. Actually they all did, that's what made them so fun.

Hell Yes!

[cscx]

> pick up mouse
>> Ok.

> move mouse to reply
>> Why don't you just walk there yourself?

> click reply
>> You suddenly notice a gust of wind through the room, after which you are greeted by an object with the strange words "Subject" and "Comment" on it.

> type shit
>> If only your mother heard you say that!*

> type comment
>> Ok.

> click submit
>> You suddenly feel sick and nauseous, ready to pass out. The next thing you know, the room goes black and you are whisked to an unknown location.

I have to say that the MUD-style EGA versions of the games kicked ass. I was actually disappointed the other day when they weren't listed on the "favorite game" poll.

* It always made me chuckle how Sierra always programmed in some quip in response to foul language typed in at the prompt.

Legend Of the Red Dragon (LORD)

[Nuke Skyjumper]

Since we're on the subject of old 286-era video games, I thought I'd mention that I run a LORD system under Linux via DOSemu.

The player list is currently maxed out, but if you log in just after midnight EST, you might get a spot just after old players are deleted.

Ultima 7 as well

[kdgarris]

Yeah, Ultima 7 too. Check out the Exult project. It's quite playable, and work is progressing on Exult Studio which will allow people to make new games using that engine.

-Karl

Re:Legal

[skotte]

potentially, yes. which is, i believe, why they go by "anonymous game designer #1", "... #2", and "... #3".

it is worth pointing out, they sometimes have direct contact with the game's original designers. Sierra might not approve, but the actual game designers certainly do.

ahhhhh

[ElDuque]

Many happy hours were spent on Mixed Up Mother Goose....Anyone else remember that classic? I've got a paper to write, but I feel somehow it is more important to search for that one.

Re:What platform?

[skotte]

yeah, it's win only. see, the game actually uses scripts, which access libraries. these are all called up by the gaming engine (In this case, AGS), which can be ported to any platform. but as it happens, AGS presently runs on win32.

Create your own using SCI and AGI and SQ 1 1/2

[screenbert]

I found a game called Space Quest - The Lost Adventures. Someone has programmed this game based off the Space Quest series. I was curious so I downloaded the game and couldn't stop playing it.

These games can be made either using AGI (KQ1 etc) or the new SCI engine (KQ4 etc). There are 2 complete engines that I found where it shows you how to create your own. They seem pretty easy to use. I found you can use the Above mentioned game to create your own. Sounds like fun. Anyway here are the links:

SQ Lost adventure: http://frostbytei.com/space/download.html

AGI and SCI engines and other info:
http://frostbytei.com/space/download.html

Have fun!

create your own sci-based games

[AnimeFreak]

My friend Brian develops SCI Studio which is a Win32 application that allows you to develop games similar to those mentioned in the story above.

In fact, you can also edit those existing games and make them run in Windows. You may also want to take a look at his other site as he is a big AGI/SCI fantatic.

Re:Remember Thexder?

[antdude]

Yeah, I remember it. It was so hard! I only got to the underground. I think Firehawk (sequel) was cool and too easy. I hated the ending boss (dumb idea)!

Re:Crooked Crooked Crooked

[SuiteSisterMary]

Pool of Radience, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Secret of the Silver Blades. 'Nuff said. :-) And Fallout/Fallout 2. Mmmmm Fallout.

Re:Sierra already did it themselves!

[foonf]

Before they went under, they made a 256-color VGA remake of KQ1 for sure, probably other early games too.

They did Space Quest I also. The first Leisure Suit Larry game may have been the other one, I'm not quite sure.

Re:Half-life

[rehannan]

I wonder how well a FPS would play in Virtual PC?

Re:blah blah blah, King's Quest and POP

[Suppafly]

yeh.. and dont forget the bump mapping :)

Re: Reverse Engineered Games

[Chris Feddern]

A reverse engineered version (binaries, sources) of the original space combat/trade game Elite can be found here.

The source for a replacement binary for Frontier: First Encounters (Unix/Linux, DOS/Windows 98/2000/XP) can is here, and you can get the complete data files here(shareware, meaning you should send 5 British Pounds to Frontier Developments if you continue to use it after 30 days).

Re:Sierra already did it themselves!

[Chris Pimlott]

They did Space Quest I also. The first Leisure Suit Larry game may have been the other one, I'm not quite sure.

They redid Hero's Quest (aka Quest for Glory 1) in VGA as well. I don't believe LSL1 ever got this treatment.

Well...

[Restil]

I got 50% of it before it slowed to a crawl and finally stopped alltogether. If only I got it all, I'd host a mirror.

*sigh*

-Restil

Screw a remake! I want the original!

[NineNine]

Like the subject says... screw the remake! I want the original! All of my 5 1/4" Kings Quest 1 disks went bad looong before CD burners were around, so I never got a chance to make a lasting copy of it. Anyone know where I can get the ORIGINAL?

Spacequest!!!

[Triv]

If they ever get around to the spacequest series I'll be a very happy man. You've gotta respect a company that put Bill "Pug" Gates in a video game.

Scumsoft. heh. Man, they were ahead of their time.

Triv

Re:Spacequest!!!

[denzo]

Just to put some perspective into things, Space Quest III was made in 1989. Windows 3.0 was released in 1990, before the BSoD became a household term (it is documented to have existed since Windows 2.0, but who actually used it?). So yeah, they were a bit ahead of their time.

KQ1 on PCjr

[AaronW]

I remember King's Quest I and bought it when it first came out. The very first version was for the IBM PCjr to show off its graphics and sound capability (it could do 320x200 with 16 colors! and had 3 channel sound+noise support) Remember at this time most PCs with color could only do 320x200 4 colors (CGA). What was amazing was that they could fit the entire game on a 360K floppy! The graphics were actually rendered at 160x200 so they could store the coordinates in a single byte to save space. As I recall, when entering a new screen the game would draw outlines of everything and fill them in.

Sierra also came out with the PC version which looked like crap by comparison (4 dithered colors in CGA).

I also remember the later Sierra games where you could get them into interesting modes for script debugging and so forth.

After I upgraded to an 8 MHz 8088 XT with EGA with a hard drive I wrote a program to get around the copy protection of all of the Sierra games so I didn't have to keep inserting the floppies every time I wanted to play. It would intercept the disk requests and simulate floppy accesses for the copy protection. Things have sure changed since then.

Answers to Questions about Tierra

[Anonymous Coward]

I've known about this project for some time; I know Tom at Quest Studios, the person who is working with the "Anonymous Game Developers" at Tierra to produce the music for their remakes. Let me try to address some of the questions that people have asked.

1) Only the King's Quest I VGA remake has been posted; the team is currently working on three other projects, a King's Quest II-based project (more on that in a minute), a Quest for Glory II project, and a secret project. There are no plans to remake any other games at this time, just a lot of ideas floating around and only a few people doing all of the work.

2) Why King's Quest I? The team originally produced the VGA remake to hone their skills and spur interest in another (now-discontinued) project they called "Royal Quest I". KQ1VGA and RQ1 are not the same project, and never were. However, the original 3 AGDs (Anonymous Game Developers) had a disagreement over the path that Royal Quest I was going to take (the spoof was not going to be quite as "family-oriented" as the real King's Quest series) and Royal Quest I was cancelled. Another answer to the question is: King's Quest I may not be the best adventure game made, but it was one of the first of its kind on many platforms (from the Apple II through to the PCjr); it's historically significant, well known and remembered.

3) The KQ1 VGA remake has been available for download since last fall. Around the end of August/start of September, a speech pack was posted for the game, featuring dialog from Josh Mandel, the original voice of King Graham. The AGDs have also received help from sources they will not name to break the format of the Quest for Glory save-character file, so they can import QfG1 characters, and write out QfG2 characters for use in QfG3.

4) The above having been said, the current Sierra company has so not really said anything against the project. Even so, the AGDs continue to remain Anonymous, just in case. Strictly unofficially, Sierra seems uninterested in pursuing fan projects based on their games, but will of course still send out the typical legal boilerplate saying "No" if you bother to ask them if you can make a project using their intellectual property. Unfortunately, this approach suggests that it is only a matter of time before some of these fan projects become "too popular", in which case Sierra may HAVE to stop the projects in order to protect their rights, if they care about them. So far, this has not yet happened.

5) The games only run under Windows. I do not know of any plans for ports to other platforms, sorry.

6) The project is not related to the Hero6 project, nor is it related to the Space Quest: The Lost Chapter project (another good fan project in which Josh Mandel has gotten involved!).

7) A bit more history on King's Quest: The SCI remake of King's Quest I made by Sierra in 1990 was still 16 colors (EGA) and used a completely text-based parser interface, just like the original AGI version. The Tierra remake is in full 256 color VGA. Much of the artwork is recycled from the Sierra EGA SCI version, but you will find new artwork in various places, and a cleaned up score from Tom and of course the voice pack featuring Josh Mandel as Graham. The remake uses the icon interface introduced by Sierra in later games, and applies it to the classic game. No more frustration mistyping "push witch"; click the hand icon, click the witch. The only time you need to type is to answer the Gnome's question, where there is no time limit, or to name your saved game. (BTW - The other official Sierra remakes were Mixed-Up Mother Goose, Space Quest I, Quest for Glory I (aka "Hero's Quest", Leisure Suit Larry I, and Police Quest I. Yes, all of these were redone in VGA, with icon interfaces. Only the King's Quest I remake was in kept EGA with a parser interface.)

8) The King's Quest II project is NOT a remake. Officially, the project is called "KQ2+" and features new locations and an expanded plot, and an all-new soundtrack (by Tom, of course). The project is nearing completion and the AGDs expect to release it later this year. You can find two samples of the new KQ2 soundtrack on Tom's site on the "What's New" page. OK, that's everything I can tell you about it!

Re:Wasnt that long ago... or was it?

[Anonymous Coward]

You think you're old because you remember playing Leisure Suit Larry? Youngster, I remember LSL when it was called Softporn Adventure, a BASIC text adventure, on the Apple II.

...a cardboard box? Luxury! Why in my day...

<grin>

Not All The Games...

[GreenHell]

Not all the games are on that list, I know as I own one that's not listed there.

Which one? Why the official 'improved graphics' King's Quest I of course. There was an improved graphics one, it used the same type of engine found in Space Quest 2 or 3 IIRC, but was still in good ol' 16 colour.

The main improvement in the graphics that I could tell was that Graham was taller and skinnier, and now sort of resembled a person instead of looking like a walking block. They were sold in a gold-coloured box, and had a nice sticker announcing that the graphics had been upgraded. The game itself came on both the 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" disks.

There's one other thing I don't like about that page, Quest for Glory I is listed under it's current name, rather than it's original Hero's Quest name. I think they should have at least included that in there, but then I'm picky about these things.

Can they update the command entries?

[truesaer]

I love these old games, but this is one thing I wish I could forget:

> Ask officer where the body is

Huh?

> Ask policeman where the body is

Huh?

>Ask cop where the victim is

Huh?

>Ask where the god damn fucking piece of shit body is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Your mother would be ashamed of that language!

> FUCK OFF!!

Your mother would be ashamed of that language!

Then, you pay 4 bucks to call the tipline and find it you need to type "ask the second class sergeant of the county sherriff's department where the body is" or something similar but strangely different from what you were trying.

Crap, now I'm getting lameness filtered....this is just random complaining to bring up my average length per line. My favorite games were police quest, personally, but I also liked space quest. I never really played kings quest, though I'm sure I would have liked it.

Star Control 2

[orz]

Star Control
http://www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/

Star Control: TimeWarp (fan sequel)
http://www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/ timewarp/

Boy this brings me back...

[quantaman]

I'm getting nostalgia thinking about playing King's Quest again and thinking back to Leisure Suit Larry. I'm also reminiscing to my dial-up connection looking at my 0.8KB/sec download. Stop slashdotting the site and let me download!!

A BT remake?!?

[Skyshadow]

Bards Tale remake? Alright! Mangar is one dead muther. Again.

I can't believe how many hours I spent sitting in front of my 8088 playing that damned game. To this day, I could navigate the Catacombs with my freakin' eyes closed. I shudder to think how much of the useful storage in my brain is consumed with Bards Tale, and how many more useful things I could have been doing while I was obsessing about intoducing Mangar to DEST (amazing how that little bitch never could make a saving throw).

Sierra games on Dreamcast -- Sariendc

[mastagee]

SarienDC
Ganksoft has done a port of Sarien to the Dreamcast. Haven't tried it out yet because I don't have a Dreamcast keyboard or mouse.

Redundant, but needs to be said again and again!

[gnovos]

These games were incredible. I have yet to play a game that really is able to draw me in and fascinate me as much as these old sierra games. Sure the FF games are beautiful and interesting, sure Metal Gear Solid 2 was fantastic, breathtaking even, sure Quake 3 makes my heart pound, The Sims leave me feeling happily frustrated, and Never Winter Nights will no doubt provide me with a lifetime of entertainment... But still, there is something missing...

Only the sierra games of yore were really able to bring my imagination to life. I could play those games for hours, find myself stuck, and spend the next few days puzzing over the answer. And, amazingly, the answers were never the "try random things until it works" variety, nor were they the Riven-style "huge leaps in hyperbolic logic and transdimensional linguistics to recreate the language of a forgotton species to translate the secret message that must them be decoded using the phases of the moon and the atomic weight of Rivenium". They were creative, funny, intriuging, disturbing, silly, and most importantly FUN.

If you are a game designer, do youself a favor... Go find those ancient rotting 5.25" disks from your attic and play those old sierra games, every one of them.

Just enjoy it.

[Kris_J]

The last games CD (actually GD) that entered my house was ChuChu Rocket. The games CD before that was a compilation of text mode games. I collect games from almost one end of the time line to the other. Trust me when I say that you can get just as much quick mindless fun out of Rogue as you can out of Crazy Taxi. Original, simple, gameplay beats cute graphics any day. It's only when you've got two original ideas competing that the eye candy starts to matter. Even then, a good game of Gauntlet beats a 3D adventure with a crap camera algorithm.

Meanwhile, for a nice mix of new and old visit my homepage for Star Wars Episode 1 and Pokemon data sets for text-mode (DOS) Monopoly.

We want leisure suit larry !

[blakestah]

Yo. Waddsa paddwoid ?

Wouldn't it be better if...

[Jason1729]

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

Jason

Useful info if you're running Sierra games for DOS

[NinjaGaidenIIIcuts]

Taken from Mo'Slo website. Hopefully the remakes will run under DirectX :-)

Sierra support technicians have suggested Mo'Slo for slowing too-fast character movement in Space Quest 1-5, stopping 'error 47' in Space Quest 6, stopping a lock-up at Bert's Park in Police Quest 1, slowing an uncontrollably-fast car in Police Quest 3, and correcting runway overruns during take-off in A-10 Tank Killer when DOS versions of these games are played on fast systems. Also, a user reports that Mo'Slo solves a problem with events (such as dying of thirst) happening too quickly in the VGA version of Space Quest 1 when running at 233MHz. In our own tests, Mo'Slo stops events (such as being zapped by the cyborg) from happening too quickly in the DOS version of Space Quest IV. A user of the 16-color Red Baron flight sim reports that Mo'Slo is needed for realistic play on fast systems (slow the game until the demos run at the right speed -- about 15% on a PII-233MHz). We have found that (!broken link!) Mo'Slo 4BIZ , using the alternate slowdown method, gives more predictable slowdown of Space Quest games on CPUs faster than 200MHz.

Finally!

[miffo.swe]

I have been thinking of getting my PC4i up and running again just to be able to play KingsQuest 1. It runs in machine mode right from boot, no dos there to meddle with. I never did finish the game. Kings Quest was my first encounter with the foreign language english and i learned much by trial and error. "put lard in bowl" "jump tree" "hump watermelon" My english teacher newer liked my strange arrangement of english words, i wonder why?

Re:Silpheed

[Kris_J]

I had Silpheed, but I could never beat the last ship. Never. Personally, I preferred Xenon 2 for the Amiga.

Re:Solar Wind?

[vidarh]

You might be thinking about Trailblazer, but there were quite a few others that fit the description as well.

Not a remake - a parody

[WyldOne]

There was only one re-make of Leisure Suit Larry, and that was the first only. (Lnad of the Lounge Lizards.' Since then they have not done any thing regarding the old quest series. (Kings, Space or Police)

This is a Parody of the Kings quest series. I for one would like to see this genre come back. I had them all.

Re:Anyone knows where I could find vgatrek.exe

[interstellar_donkey]

Might start here:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=vgatrek

"Interlude"

[hawk]

THere was another of that era, maybe a year or two early. "Interlude" promised to improve your love life, and gave you and that special person a quiz before giving you instructions or some such.

The ad had a buxom beauty in her underwear striking a pose (in bed?), and ran in full color in mainstream computer magazines. THe caption was something like, "How's your love life?"

At one point, Jerry Pournelle ran a review. All I recall is that he and Mrs. Pournelle set out to try it "in the interests of science," were unimpressed,and that it ended asking if anyone had a use for a "sheepskin rug with jam stains" or some such . . .

hawk

Re:"Interlude"

[Tackhead]

> THere was another of that era, maybe a year or two early. "Interlude" promised to improve your love life, and gave you and that special person a quiz before giving you instructions or some such.

ROFLMAO. Damn, I remember getting a copy of that. And someone else has already mentioned Strip Poker with Suzi and Melissa.

Anyone know if Interlude's mirrored anywhere?

ObRetrogaming: Bilestoad on the Apple ][. Gawd, how I loved that game, nice chunky chop-chop sounds... mmm... Marc Goodman, thank you!

One of the ironys...

[RobL3]

of the "New Apple" is that I have to run Virtual PC running an Apple][ emulator in order to run some of my favorite old games (Wizardry, Ultima, Bards Tale, Etc.)

Re:The C64 owned the PCjr

[Piper82]

Oh I know. I had one of those too. The difference with the PCjr was that with it's (higher rez) colour monitor, KQ1 was beautiful and crisp vs the C64 on then 20 year old B&W Sears tv. :-) No doubt the C64 had way more games, but it's KQ1 that did it for me. The PCjr was of course a PC in a day where 90% of PC's lacked graphics period. Most were stuck with a monochrome hercules card and if you're (un)lucky, CGA. It even had a great wireless keyboard (later models)!

Game reviewers...

[Pac]

So you claim to be a game reviewer and at the same time proves that you can't really tell a great game from an "outstanding computer graphics achievement".

I am not blaming you. You are probably a perfect instance of the sad state of game reviewing today, people who can't understand what a game is about, who probably never played a good TEXT adventure and if presented to one would keep moving the mouse frantically, trying to make that blinking cursor move.

Under your line of thought, movies like "Citizen Kane" suck, because we all know black and white "sucked". "2001" sucks also, because we all know pre-computer special effects "sucked".

You should learn more about what games are about before saying you are a game reviewer. You are embarassing yourself and your employer.

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.

Re:Just To Remember

[BLAMM!]

It's not just a Windoze friendly game. Version 1.5 was especially unstable, but 1.2 played reasonably well. The only way to run 1.5 correctly is on a DOS box. Ah, the hours we wasted at work blowing each other up. :)

And you do know the comments can be edited, right? Some quotes are just mandatory.
"Push the button, Frank."
"I'm only mostly dead."
"I'll bite your kneecaps off!"

I am

[DrCode]

I'm playing Gabriel Knight (1) at the moment. Great story, gameplay, and sound, with voice-acting by Tim Curry and Mark Hamill. Other games I've played recently are Privateer (1), Wing Commander 3, and Ultima7/Serpent Isle. Sure, many games from the 80's, like KQ1, are fairly primitive and lacking in plot; but once 486's and CD's became common, the games became quite entertaining.