(re: What made the old Sierra great) I’ve been a Sierra gamer for a long time, and I’m finding it hard to identify what made it great for me. It was definitely about building memories – going from Digger, Pacman and others to Hero’s Quest in 1988 was amazing. I remember all of our group of friends who lived in one apartment building peering over each others shoulders shouting out advice and trying to figure the game out.
I lived in a foreign country, so the 800 line never really helped me (it did much later on, when I had lost a disk in the States), but the little clues pushing you to move to the next objective, the death messages, the cute asides by people, being able to create conversation, trying out different words to see if they would work – it was all a true adventure. Maybe not in Spielburg etc., but they were truly adventures wherever they may be.
The variety of environments to play in was also what made it great – fantasy lands, building machines, police work, and all the others, and it all came from one company. That’s probably the key – most companies don’t have that personalization of each game while at the same time each game was unique.
In other words, the care and feeling of each employee of Sierra came through in the games – in their depth, in the details, in the backgrounds.
