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We had a home on the lake near Sierra's offices. The lake was BASS LAKE, in Bass Lake California.
The extra spacial thing about that house was that we had a boat dock and two (at the time) teen sons. In summers we would water ski almost every day.
Those were the days!
Thanks for bringing back some great memories.
-Ken W
I would love to see a Phantasmagoria 3! Especially if it was more like Roberta's Phantasmagoria 1.
My guess is that it will never happen, but I don't completely understand why not. Phantasmagoria was a huge hit for us. It was killed by the acquisition of Sierra. It's a long story, the short version of which is that the company who acquired us had people in their sales organization who disagreed with the content in Phantasmagoria on religious grounds. Basically, they didn't push it, and without a sales/marketing effort the game stopped selling prematurely.
I've thought about doing a Kickstarter to do another Phantasmagoria style game, or simply calling Activision (or, whoever owns the rights these days) to ask if they'd fund the game .. or, simply funding it ourselves. But … at this point Roberta and I are happily retired. We miss doing games, but we don't miss having to stay put for years to build a game. We like travel too much!
-Ken W
Roberta and I gave up all rights when the company was sold and were required to turn in all disks we had that contained any source code.
I do know that source code is out there floating around and if you keep looking you'll find it .. but, we don't have any…
Good luck! And, hope you do someday release a book!
-Ken W
I apologize that I don’t have better memory on all this.
It seems wrong that LL5 would designate Leisure-Suit Larry 5. Our typical designation for Larry would have been more in the format: LSL5.
I do remember that Desi Hartman was an artist.
Good luck in your quest!
-Ken W
Hervé:
Bonjour! et merci pour tous vos efforts.
I am not sure what that refers to. We did have an artist named Rod. Perhaps it was just his way of putting his mark on the game. I do not know…
I thought we had already published most of our products in French. At one time our European operations were hubbed out of Versailles and France was an important market for us.
-Ken W
Greg:
Good speaking with you. Those were incredible times. If anyone ever invents a time machine I’d volunteer to be a test pilot!
-Ken W
Greetings! My email address is Ken at kensblog.com — write me directly.
Greetings!
I’m always up for doing these kinds of things, but Roberta decided long ago that she had “gone on to new things” post Sierra and would no longer do interviews.
So — if you want to do something with just me (aka Mr. Boring) … I’m happy to cooperate.
-Ken Williams
Thank you!!!! It’s amazing to be remembered twenty years after retiring. We miss those days!!
-Ken W
All good questions — Unfortunately, I’m not sure anyone knows the answer — or, at least I don’t.
Towards the end INN was partnered with AT&T.
There were some political issues between AT&T and Sierra and generally the INN staffed sided with AT&T, or at least INN’s leadership did. AT&T wanted INN converted to run “on the internet” which was just getting started, so everything kind of ground to a halt while a rewrite was discussed.
I remember getting AT&T involved thinking INN would be able to grow faster, but it didn’t work out that way.
I wasn’t in Oakhurst for the shut down. I don’t think it was very organized. Some people took home computers, and some were trashed. The same happened with the artwork. To the extent anything exists it would be from someone taking it home. I am fairly certain no official repository exists.
Wish I knew more…
Ken Williams
