Don’t know if anyone has posted this yet. I read it on another board. The rumored classic Sierra game compilations are now listed on Vivendi’s site, confirming that they are in fact being planned and are scheduled for a fall release. I’ve included links below as well as my comments.
Space Quest:
http://www.vug.com/product.do?gamePlatformId=1941
King’s Quest:
http://www.vug.com/product.do?gamePlatformId=1939
Leisure Suit Larry:
http://www.vug.com/product.do?gamePlatformId=1942
Police Quest:
http://www.vug.com/product.do?gamePlatformId=1940
For now, the links only have box art and release date, but if you look closely at the boxes, you can make out certain details. These details are what disappoint me about the compilations. It seems that not all of the games for each series are included. If you look closely at the box, King’s Quest says 7 full games. I’m guessing they left out KQ8, which is the one that needs XP compatibility the most and could use some enhancing. Police Quest looks like it’s only 1-4, once again leaving out the games that people might actually have trouble running in Windows. I was hoping they’d include one of the later FPS SWAT games since those got good reviews. Space Quest looks like it has all 6 games so it seems to be the ONLY compilation with the full series. For some reason Larry says it only has 5 games, so I’m guessing they left out part 7. That’s pretty disappointing to me and makes me think that the games won’t be specially coded for XP and instead they’ll include an emulator or slow down features for the DOS games. But the sad thing is that they’re going backwards and including less games than the previous collections so they’re really not offering anything to people who already own the older collections except for new boxes. And the latest games in each of these series (excluding Magna Cum Laude if you want to consider that an actual LSL game) all came out about 7 or 8 years ago at least. At first, I thought they were going to somehow make the games run natively in XP, but now I’m starting to think they didn’t do anything special at all. Some of the boxes say ‘Runs on Windows XP.’ I know the games can run on XP to begin with, but how well they run is completely different.
I was expecting all of the current games in each series PLUS MORE, like unofficial remakes and maybe some random games not related to a series similar to King’s Quest including the Laura Bow and Mother Goose games. They could’ve spread the other less popular games across the collections and included them as well leaving some for the inevitable Quest for Glory collection. And I know VU wouldn’t have done it, but if I were rereleasing these games, I would’ve included scans of the different manuals and box art associated with the included games, plus disk images for alternate systems or I would’ve just remade the games to be XP native and included new features and options like graphic enhancements similar to DosBox or IIgs sound for the older AGI games, plus MT-32 sound converted to general midi.
I know we should be ‘happy’ to get anything at all, but when what you’re getting is less than what you could get 8 years ago, then it’s pretty much a big disappointment. The least they could’ve done was repackage the old collections, but now they offer less. Luckily, I never got my hopes up. I was only really interested in the LSL collection since that is the only one I really missed out on. And I just don’t understand what VU is thinking short-changing people like that, because I think others will definitely notice.
I’m interested in hearing opinions and comments from the rest of you.