Hello all. It’s been a while since I’ve updated this forum on SierraVault’s progress so I wanted to point out the update highlights over at SierraVault in the last couple of months. I’ve been working pretty hard to archive a lot of the game specific files (manuals, box covers and contents) and I’ve had several big submissions from readers as well. All in all I felt a brief ‘look at me!’ post was justified for those of you who might have forgotten about ‘the new Sierra site’ and aren’t checking me on a regular basis yet.
First things first. You can access my update log here.
Sierra Newsletter, News Magazine and InterAction scans
A reader, DaveJustDave, has mailed me two issues of InterAction magazine and the Sierra/Dynamix News Magazine. This now brings the total missing issues number down to six and the number of available issues for download to 32. Right now there is a slightly outdated ‘.zip’ archive of the issues available as well as individual downloads of each issue. At some point this weekend I’ll be updating the .zip to include all of the issues.
If anyone is interested, the missing issues at this point are:
Sierra Newsletter Volume 1, Number 1
Sierra Newsletter Volume 1, Number 3
InterAction Volume 5, Number 3 (Fall 1992) King’s Quest 6
InterAction Volume 6, Number 4 (Spring 1994) Gabriel Knight 1
InterAction Volume 8, Number 1 (Spring 1995) Twisty Brained Kid
InterAction Volume 10, Number 4 (Holiday 1997) Lords of Magic
If you have a copy of any of these issues, please contact me at alinnenkohl@fusemail.com and we’ll work out a way to get them scanned and uploaded. Several of my readers have sent in items to me for scanning and I’ve started a thread on my forum so the readers can report back the reliability of getting their items back from me. That thread is located here. The first box of submissions went out in the mail this week and it’s return has not been reported. If you are concerned about getting your items back you can at least check that thread to make sure I’m not stealing and ebaying anything sent to me 😉
Sierra Hint Book Archive
Another reader sent in a DVD of his collection of carefully scanned Sierra Hint Books. Vasyl had worked at it and determined a technical way to alter his scan settings so the red ‘cover’ in the text books could be seen through on the scans. The PDFs are created with a scan of the page on one side (red cover intact) and then a second scan of the same page with the red cover gone and the answer visible. While I haven’t done a one to one check on whether or not all of the Hint Books are available I think everything I knew about is there.
As with most sections of SierraVault, I have created a single .zip file with all of the Hint Books in it for download. You can still download each file individually as well.
While my readers have been stealing my thunder by sending in better submissions than what I’m putting out I am still working at scanning the original manuals, catalogs, box contents, diskettes and CDs. I am attempting to digitally ‘recreate’ the contents of each Sierra game by making PDF scans of each item available along with the best quality box cover scans I can find. This is very much a work in progress and I doubt, very seriously, I have ANY of the content mixes right. At the same time I’ve worked through about 80% of the manuals and box contents and those are available for download. As is always the case at SierraVault there is no abandonware – what I’m making available is everything EXCEPT the games. If you are one of these excellent OCD collectors and can give me a hand in determining which ‘files’ to link under which releases I’d love to hear from you.
As always, thanks for reading and I hope you like what you find over at SierraVault. My forums are here. If you like what you find, drop by and let me know about it. Thanks!
Andy