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In the mid 1980s, I had my first glimpse of a wonderful and exciting new world of gaming — a bulky blue-screen laptop playing King’s Quest III. I was less than 10 years old, but I was instantly hooked, as the game was a welcome refreshment from the button-smashing, non-narrative action games piling up beside family’s Nintendo.
Over the following years, I spent much (probably too much) of my time devouring Sierra’s adventure games — and I believe I probably played or owned almost every game they ever produced. From King’s Quest to Manhunter, Space Quest (III and IV were my favorites) to Heart of China, David Wolf to Hero’s Quest (later renamed Quest for Glory because of those pesky folks at Milton Bradley — who’s board game, by the way, couldn’t hold a candle to Sierra’s interactive adventure), Phantasmagoria to Willy Beamish, I grew up with Sierra. All the while, my Nintendo built up a thick layer of protective dust in the corner, buried beneath a pile of InterAction magazines.
In high school, I began to lose interest in gaming, and had all but lost track of Sierra by the time I was ensconced in college. Then, one day a couple of years ago, I decided to splurge and buy a new Sierra game to celebrate old times and my last summer vacation. I was disappointed to peruse the local computer store and see no trace of Sierra games — and even more saddened when a quick internet search revealed that Sierra had been sold, and that there would be no more adventures of Roger Wilco, Gabriel Knight, or King Graham.
Though I recently purchased a Playstation 2 as a pleasant diversion from adult life, I haven’t found a single game that can hold sway over my imagination the way Sierra’s games did. Perhaps it’s just because I’ve grown older and more cynical now, but I long for those days of real puzzles and real stories and genuine creative genius at work. I will always recall how magical and captivating those games were, and always admire how truly groundbreaking they were, in an era when our first glimpses of the power of computer technology were revealed.
Thank you Ken and Roberta, for creating such amazing games over the years. In some small way, they have shaped me into the person I am today. I’m glad to have found this forum to share in the memories with all of your other fans — they’ve encouraged me to make a trek to dig out all of my old Sierra games from my parents’ house and relive some good times!
Best wishes.
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(re: Sierra games changed my life!)
Steve,
Like many of us here, you have quite a few memories wrapped up in Sierra. I think we all feel the same way when we reflect on the past.
I strongly encourage you to dig through your parents garage, and try to dig up what you can. As you page through here on the board – you will find several archiving projects in progress for preserving Sierra’s past. One project in particular is the Interaction Magazine Archive.
We are still missing several of the Interactions/Newsletters and there might be a chance that the “pile of Interactions” that you mentioned might be one of them that we need to add the archive CD that is being produced – if you do manage to come across them, please let us know what issues you have!
Welcome to the board!
-Brad
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(re: Sierra games changed my life!)
Steve, the same thing happened to me right after college. It was quite a shock to realize that in 4 years, adventures had literally disappeared from the shelves. I must have been studying really hard!
Luckily, there are a lot of good new games available. Not Sierra games, but adventures that wouldn’t be around if not for what Sierra did for the industry.
Some new(er) games you should check out are Runaway, Shadow of Destiny (also available on Playstation), The Longest Journey, the Law & Order games, and Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon. These should all be available commerically. There are others but these are the ones that come to mind. They can be hard to find at retail (although just today I saw every single one of these on the shelves at either CompUSA or EB Games), but you can also order them online from places like Amazon and Chumbo.com.
Also, check out Tierra Entertainment’s site (link below) and download their KQ1 and KQ2 remakes. The first is a straight VGA remake of Sierra’s King’s Quest 1; the second is a wonderful “extended” version of KQ2 with all new story, graphics, and music, but with all of the same elements of the original game.
🙂 emily
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(re: Sierra games changed my life!)
I guess I owe a lot to Sierra games, Ken and Roberta Williams, Al Lowe, and those two loveable guys from Andromeda (I swear, I can never keep their names straight. 🙁 ).
In 1984 (maybe 85), my parents got a brand new computer…A Tandy 1000 SX. It was a considerable leap up from our Co-Co II, or so my parents said…I was 4. Still, they had planned on getting several games for the computer: some adventure game, a helicopter attack game, an olympic sports game, and a football game. Me, being the football nut I was back then, didn’t pay any attention to the rest of the list. Every single day, I ran downstairs to the computer room to see if the games had arrived. Usually, I ended up disappointed. Finally, one day I went down stairs to see this man, walking around a field. “Is this the football game?” I asked. Sadly, my parents explained to me it was a game called “King’s Quest.” I don’t know whether I determined right then or maybe later, but I knew from this game, I wanted to get into programming.
Course, now that I am, I need to re-evaluate my gratitude statement. Thanks for headaches, lost sleep, and the many lumps and bruises on my head from repeated bashings into my desk. XD
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(re: Sierra games changed my life!)
At last a place to praise the great ones of old.
From when I was around 8 years old, up until my early twenties, Sierra games were the ultimate form of entertainment to me.
When asked what my favorite book was, I always answered Gabriel Knight : Sins of the fathers. I know, it is not a book, but it is richer than any book I’ve read.
Theses games make your mind travel like nothing else.
To this day I cannot believe I experienced all of these emotions in a game. And now I have to get used to simplistic predictable stories, games with no real interaction between characters, and no memorable characters to converse with.
Sierra games felt special. They had almost a home-made quality to it…you could feel the love that was put into it. 🙂
I have noticed that there are not many companies who have deeply touched the soul of their customers the way Sierra did.
The boxes were awesome. The anticipation before booting up a Sierra game is a feeling I have yet to experience with something else.
These are just some thoughts, friends.
!Simon Love
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(re: Sierra games changed my life!)
You may be interested to know of the massive ‘underground’ community of people making their own homebrew adventure games.
The vast majority are obviously amateurish, but there are a few gems worth checking out!http://www.agsforums.com/
This is the homepage for one of the more popular game engines. You can find tons of links to games, as well as a friendly discussion forum.
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(re: Sierra games changed my life!)
I’m quite familiar with AGS, as well as AGI Studio, and SCI Studio. If you’ll pardon my opinion, AGS is nearly worthless. Yes, it has a huge following, but not because I ever voted for it. ^_^ I still have been unable to beat Tierra’s King’s Quest I or II because of the scripting job. AGS loses the sound driver or locks it up, and the script sits waiting for the “all clear” message from the sound driver. Deadlock…and there’s no way to get past it. It’s not only Tierra’s games, either…most of the fan made ones puke on my system. This tells me it’s not the games, but the engine. But, now this is getting waaaaay off topic. XD Sufficed to say, I’m eagerly awaiting SCI Studio 4.
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(re: re: Sierra games changed my life!)
there is a program called dosbox that runs old games. It can be found at http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/
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(re: Sierra games changed my life!)
Dear Steve,
The same thing happened to me when I was younger. When my family brought our first computer, my father wanted me to play a game called King’s Quest I to improve my english.
My parents couldn’t believe how fast I learned a new language (I’m living in Montreal, a french speaking city in Canada) and how much energy and time I spent into the game. Everyday after school, I was so anxious to go back in the world of King Graham and to find out the magic involving around. I don’t remember how many times did I played King’s Quest but I remember the pleasure of reading and learning the legends and fairy tales. King’s Quest, Space Quest, Gold Rush, Quest for Glory, Phantasmagoria, Gabriel Knight and company became a big part of my growing up as a very curious teenager. I played all Sierra’s Games and I wasn’t disappointed everytime.
Now, I miss Sierra’s games so much… I wished that the current Sierra company could make a compilation of all the Sierra games in a CD-ROM. I want to play those games again and go back in time so I can feel the magic again.
Since the sale of Sierra, no game (but Dark Age of Camelot) hasn’t impressed me as the adventure games of Sierra. I miss King’s Quest magic, Space Quest’s craziness, Larry’s jokes, Gabriel Knight’s mysteries and so forth.
Thanks to Sierra !
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