Fair Use; XP; and the Future

[Unknown,Unknown]

Hey Guys,

I’ve actually been researching the use of Sierra games for a long time. If I go for my Masters Degree in Digital Media I will be able to teach game design at many colleges throughout the United States (Albright College included) and under the Fair Use clause of the berne copyright convention, you may use for a limited time, sections of copyrighted works, after you make a fair attempt to acquire licenses from the copyright owner. Basically, if the copyright owner refuses to sell you licenses, you can use a small part of the copyrighted material for educational use (basically, you can show it to your students, even for a whole semester, and the copyright owner is not allowed to sue you because you are performing “fair use” for educational purposes.)

I believe the decision to cancel the Quest series collections was the release of 2000 and XP. The end of the 98 product line meant the end of 100% compatibility with the old Sierra games, so every old Sierra game (count them on your shelves please) must be certified with instructions as to how to run it on XP, and I know with all of our minds together, we can do that.
If we can prove to Vivendi how easy it is to run under XP (once we figure it out) my guess is they’ll consider selling all the collections again, at a fair price. But who wants to pay a team of 20 programmers to fix an old game, that someone might not even buy? That’s why it’s up to us, the game lovers, the collectors, the preservors of history.

I am planning a site with a collection of links, and will personally be donating my time to ensure my favorite games run under XP, even if it takes me weeks of research. Has anyone gotten the original Hero’s Quest (CGA/EGA) to run under XP? I got it to run under 2000, but never checked XP.

Also, does anyone have an archive of the patches that Sierra had on their site?

Ken, one question for you: While you were at Sierra, did they still have the master diskettes for the old games in a vault somewhere, or must we start a compaign to re-collect all the games? I have about 80 of them, I haven’t counted recently, because I collected them for this sole purpose.

Dave

[Unknown,Unknown]

(re: Fair Use; XP; and the Future) Hi there
Take a look at the following site:
Link: http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/information.php(http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/information.php) 
it is basically a Emulator for DOS under XP.
Good news about it also is:
Quest for Glory I – Sierra (1989)
Works in DOSBox (Tested by 459 in DOSBox version 0.58)
Status – Supported!

[Unknown,Unknown]

(re: re: Fair Use; XP; and the Future)

> Take a look at the following site: http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/information.php&nbsp; it is basically a Emulator for DOS under XP. < Great! I’ll have to try it out this weekend. 🙂 Dave

[Unknown,Unknown]

(re: re: re: Fair Use; XP; and the Future) I have to admit that I tried to run almost all the old Sierra games (using VDMSound) under XP, and they work fine except for some notoriously annoying “your computer is too fast for this game” bugs.
I really don’t know why all of you are struggling so hard to run the games… VDMSound works fine for me. True, the sound isn’t PERFECT, but there is sound, and the game runs properly.

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