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Not that I am aware of. For the most part the current license holders of the old Sierra property have buried it and I’m not aware of any usage or publication still ongoing other than the occasional “Leisure Suit Larry game”.
Sorry,
Andy
Phil,
I moved this thread over to the Police Quest series page so you might be able to get some help.
The technical experts of Sierra games are at The Sierra Help Pages. Be sure to check the forums there for a definitive answer but I’d be willing to bet you are looking at an XP to Windows 7 issue – of which there are many. I am personally running a XP virtual machine through Windows 7 but in many cases I have to use an actual XP install (either on the same machine or another) to get some of the XP games to play (Kings Quest: Mask of Eternity is especially resistant to running on Windows 7 and SWAT 3 was a close contemporary to KQ8).
Either way, good luck. I wish there was a better answer but it seems the passing of time and operating systems wreaks havoc on those of us who want to hang onto and play our older games.
Andy
Ryan,
Your story invokes one of my most dreaded nightmares (behind being elected to Congress and one where I am in sun God robes while thousands of women throw little sliced pickles at me). Stick with us while we get the last of the InterAction issues uploaded.
As for the diskettes I’d put them in the oven. Turn your oven on to a low temperature (125 or so) and put the diskettes in there. Let them bake until they are dry. The same technique can be used on books that you get wet. They probably won’t ever work again but at least you’ll still have the physical media. The files themselves are available elsewhere ::cough, cough:: but I can’t help you there 😉
Good luck recovering. Let us know if we can do anything else to help you out.
Andy
At least as far as I see it the Software Publishers have actively defended their copyrights on the actual games. Beyond that there is still a potential revenue stream back to the copyright holders which I’ve personally always felt was a good place to draw the line. If it is possible to purchase a game in such a way that the money makes it’s way back to the legal copyright holder than I will always do that and it should be done that way. On that same hand I see little distinction between downloading and purchasing a used copy of a game through Game Stop or EBay. In both cases the money never makes it way back to the copyright holder (I doubt many EBay sellers are sending royalty checks to Activision).
Long story short Sierra Gamers won’t host any game files because while the ethical and moral questions aside there is very little question that doing so we would capital-I Illegal. That being said I would personally have no problem whatsoever with finding, downloading and playing a copy of the King’s Quest IV AGI since there is no legitimate way to purchase a copy in such a way that the money returns to the copyright holder. I think your efforts to find and secure a stable copy for the Sierra community is laudable. If I know this message board well enough I feel certain that a few people will likely be contacting you to get a copy for a Digital Archival project I know is in the works.
Andy
He said xp.
Collector has you covered. I used his installer and played through GK3 just a few months ago.
Andy
I think in some ways I am very reminded of the 1983 time frame in gaming. The video game collapse of 1984 cleaned the industry of a lot of arrogant hacks who were just cashing in for money and much of the Indy scene of the time became the standard bearers of today. EA and Activision were both splinters of larger game companies that were somewhat arrogant going into the crash and I think we are pretty close to seeing it again.
I like what you did – specifically calling out the Indy games you have enjoyed over the last few years. One of the upcoming things we are working on for Sierra Gamers is a recommendations area to highlight games like these from small developers who are doing it right. At some point we were going to ask for submissions of games our readers have enjoyed but you beat me to the punch.
Looks like I’ve got some homework to do 😉
Andy
Bump to top.
All of the old messages are still here. In the migration to the new BBS system all of the old links may have been broken but the content and messages are all still here…. somewhere.
The search feature on the BBS menu can help find them.
Andy
Thanks Michael. The admins are working hard to get the things up on this site.
The current release schedule of two InterActions a week puts us on about a four month schedule to have them all up. I’m hopeful to have the bulk of the work done by then. Variant releases, continued Sierra Museum entries, the works. There was a lot of Sierra history!
Andy
Wikipedia is an excellent tool. Taking a look they have the companies associated with Sierra broken down. How does this feel?
Sierra proper – Oakhurst operations
Dynamix – Everything they made ties back to Sierra and should be here. They were closed in 2001.
Included the adventures (Rise of the Dragon, Willy Beamish), Earthsiege/Starsiege/Tribes, Incredible Machine, the simulations and 3D Ultra along with others.
Impressions – 1995 acquisition, first major game for Sierra was Lords of the Realm 2. By 1999 they were on the Caesar derivatives (Pharoah, Zeus, Emperor). Last game was Lords of the Realm 3 in 2004. Shutdown shortly thereafter. I can see including everything that came out from Lords of the Realm 2 to the end with maybe a highlight of LOTR 1 because Sierra re-released it.Coktel Vision – 1993 acquisition. Goblins series, Inca series, Lost in Time, Ween, The Last Dynasty. Seemed to disappear off the map after Urban Runner in 1996. Reported to be focused back on Edutainment in Europe.
Bright Star Technology – Lots of the Discovery games: Alphabet Blocks, Lost Mind of Dr. Brain. Kid’s Typing. Early Math. Looked to be a big contribution in the early 90s with not much after that. Probably get most of those games included by fleshing out the Discovery series area.
Papyrus – Acquired 1995, nothing but Nascar Racing releases after 1999 which should be tied back to the Nascar 1/2/3 that were in the Sierra time frame. Some other racing games released in the mid 90s (SODA, Indycar)
Books That Work – ?
Green Thumb Software – Was this the home productivity stuff? Home Designer, Landscape designer? A productivity section of software is probably called for at some point – likely in the Sierra Museum as opposed to product by product study in The Games area. There was the early stuff in the pre-84 range (Superscript, Sierra’s On Line) and then the stuff at the end (including Web Studio, Home Designer).
PryoTechnix – As far as I know, this was just the team that did Return to Krondor. Did they do anything else for Sierra? Shows acquired in 96, closed in 99.
Berkeley – You Don’t Know Jack series.
Headgate Studios – Acquired in 96, sold in 99. Front Page Sports Golf series that ended (for Sierra) with the PGA Championship 2000. From there they started Tiger Woods PGA Tour for EA. Interesting that Vance Cook (Access software’s Links programmer – I didn’t know that).
Northwest Synergistic Software – Thexder and Silpheed ports in late 80s. Back to Sierra for Birthright and Diablo: Hellfire expansion in mid to late 90s.
Later VU Studios (Likely not included on Sierra Gamers)
High Moon Studios – Later acquisition (2005-06). Darkwatch, The Bourne Conspiracy.
Radical Entertainment – Mid 2000s stuff that came out under the VU label. Scarface? Dark Angel?
Massive Entertainment – Ground Control, World in Conflict. More VU than Sierra.
Swordfish – Acquired in 2005, sold in 2008. 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand.
Valve – Half Life in 99
Relic – Homeworld in 99
Click Entertainment – Throne of Darkness in 2001.
Inevitable Entertainment – The Hobbit in 2003.
Liquid Entertainment – Lord of the Rings: Battle of Middle Earth in 2003The post 2000 acquisition and development house list probably continues. I’ve seen references to both Relic and Valve as being green lit and the games well in development before the 99 shutdown and I know most Sierra fans understand there was a bit of ownership over those games. What about the later ones? Did anything come out after 2000 that wasn’t captured in the top development houses already associated with Sierra that people feel strongly about?
Andy
Great insights, all.
In summation to this point we all agree the early acquisitions (Dynamix, Coktel, Impressions) “became” Sierra. Collector’s point about the sharing of code was an excellent point. Rudy brought up a pretty interesting question (and one I struggled with as webmaster of SierraVault): What do you do with games the companies put out before the mergers? What about when Sierra re-released them? Impressions had a lot of games on the market before Sierra and Sierra heavily pulled from that catalog in their Sierra Classics releases.
The digital archiving point made by Laine is excellent as well. While Ken and Roberta were out of Sierra in the late 90s and most of the early developers and game series we view as “core” Sierra were put out to pasture by the early 2000s there were still a lot of people getting up every day and going to work at Sierra. Were their efforts any less? Shouldn’t their games deserve some credit? A few years back I read a comment on a blog news post about the Sierra legacy from one of those employees and he made an impassioned argument that the “not Sierra” label was unfair. The VU to CUC to Activision hot potato handoff sucked but the Sierra name took a lot of years of mismanagement before it could finally be killed.
Andy
The SierraVault policy on LSL was: “No Al, No Leisure Suit Larry”. They left him out so I leave them out. Simple algebra.
Carry on though. This is a good discussion.
Andy
She was also the author of a Software Piracy editorial in Volume 1, Number 2 of the Sierra Newsletter.
From what I can understand a lot of the material for the Newsletters came from Sierra’s marketing group. It seems likely she was involved in Marketing and packaging.
Andy
Murray,
I don’t know. Mobygames shows her as a developer on some of the early games in the 85-86 time frame. She’s also mentioned in relation to King’s Quest 2 in some places.
Interesting question.
Andy
Michael,
Great catch. I’ve added a link to both Steam and GOG on the Links Page based on your post.
I believe the late Sierra collections are available on Steam and it looks like GOG is going to be rolling out more of the Sierra collection (some stuff was already out there – Impressions games I believe). The digital distribution networks seem to be the wave of the future. If it makes great games available again, more power to them. I think I’ll likely be forking over the $5.99 and giving the GK download a test drive today 🙂
Andy
Welcome Scott. Your work in helping put together some of SierraVault was excellent.
For everyone else – Scott is the expert of the Impressions strategy line. If he asks if you want to play a game of Thermonuclear War the answer is no. The only winning move is not to play.
Andy
Hello all,
My name is Andy and I am the current web admin for Sierra Gamers. Before taking over here I started and built SierraVault – an archival website about Sierra On-line that included high quality scans of everything from the Sierra game boxes to the full InterAction and Sierra News Magazine collection. In real life I am not a software nerd but a hardware one – working as an Electrical Engineer in Colorado. My web ventures are efforts toward at least dabbling in software development if only in a web based environment presently.
My wife and I are both avid gamers. I started gaming Christmas morning in 1984 with an IBM PCjr and a copy of King’s Quest (and a copy of Bumble Plot). At this point I can both spell the gnomes name and work on an XY coordinate system but only one of those skills came from gaming. My wife joined me in gaming in the early 2000s playing Mythic’s Dark Age of Camelot. We are both still casual online gamers (Lord of the Rings Online, currently and for the last couple of years) but we are also both pursuing Master’s Degrees at the University of Colorado and taking care of two needy dogs. No kids, thank God. Something would have to go.
If you have any Talkspot or website specific questions you’ll probably see me dropping in to try and help you out. If you want direct help feel free to get in touch with me directly. As you look around Sierra Gamers you’ll find holes in the digital collection and a plea for submissions from readers to fill those holes in. Getting that done will start by you getting in touch with me. Email is best.
Have fun on the website and let me know what we can do to make it better.
Andy
