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!

Be sure to play it properly...

[wrinkledshirt]

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

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?

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!!!!

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.

[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.

[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.

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.

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.

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:God, I remeber these

[Moridineas]

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

Scott

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

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!

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/

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.