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Heh, I noticed recently that the new California quarter will have the Sierra logo featured on it. Well at least a side view of the halfdome.
final_ca_quarter.jpgI got the orb! But I still can’t get the stupid key! maybe that’s because my cursors are weird. they are all cut off on the top so i can’t actually see what I’m clicking. Whether I click the key or the pike, it still says the same thing. I’m so sorry! I’m probably irritating you so much! I’m just really demented when it comes to this stuff!
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“… (by Kay C) It still isn’t working. I released the crab long ago, but for some reason, the pike just won’t budge. It keeps on saying “The key’s stuck under the pike tip!” Also, where is the box that is supossed to be by the submarine that contains the floating orb?…”
You’re clicking on the key, not the pike tip. Click on the RIGHT-HAND SIDE of the pike, and then again, and you’ll get the key (well, sort of).The ‘box’ is an old toilet, broken in the submarine screen.
– Alistair
It still isn’t working. I released the crab long ago, but for some reason, the pike just won’t budge. It keeps on saying “The key’s stuck under the pike tip!” Also, where is the box that is supossed to be by the submarine that contains the floating orb?
This is very easy.. as most (I say most) of EQ1’s puzzles are. In the skeleton cave, first open the chest to let the crab out, then click the ‘hand’ icon twice on the pike- click near the end of it, the right-side end of it.
Regards,
– AlistairIt is too bad that Roberta has not been interested in talking to the fans here, but we have to respect her wishes at the same time. The archival team and I are naturally preparing comprehensive post-mortem interviews with many Sierra ex-employees. We are making sure to ask new questions with new perspectives and it will definitely not be standard interview fare. The interviews will be part of one of our special archival projects and we hope that when the time comes and Roberta sees what we are doing, she will be willing to talk us. I don’t want to get into this stuff much right now, but rest assured we will have a submission area for fans to submit questions for consideration, when the time comes.
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“…
It’s very unlikely that Roberta would look at your design. She made the comment the other night that she likes to think forward, not backwards. She is focused on whatever comes next, and doesn’t like to think about things she did before. She didn’t like thinking about Kings Quest 1 when she started on Kings Quest 2, or Kings Quest 2 during Kings Quest 3, etc. She loved the Sierra years (actually decades) – but, they were then and this is now. She refuses to do any interviews or ANYTHING related to the Sierra years.-Ken W
…”I think it’s a total shame that Roberta feels this way. Roberta is the reason why a lot of people in this forum are interested in, or actually working in, the game industry. (me for example) One thing I’ve noticed is VERY prevalent in this industry is that only the tiniest fraction of people actually see value in doing post mortems on their work. (looking back) Many say they do, but very few earnestly do. It usually gets done, but half-heartedly, is promptly forgotten, and people repeat the same mistakes they did 3 years prior. It’s a horrible shame that Roberta is of this school of people that would not impart her extremely vast knowledge to others on how things went from a designer’s POV. Very few people get the chance to design as many games as she has over the span of so many years, and her hindsight on mistakes/successes would help guide many others around time-consuming pitfalls and on to better game designs.
I’ve been inspired to get into games ever since I read Roberta quoted early in her career saying how she saw that most games out there were mindless action and that she wanted to make games that tested one’s ability to think logically and problem solve. I am personally trying to find out why this type of game fell out of favor (the average game today does not require the brainpower needed for the average game 15 years ago) and what can be done to respark an interest in them. I’m glad that Ken sees the value in analyzing the past, but I think Roberta’s perspective could be extremely beneficial as well.
-Jim
Eco Quest is so confusing! I cannot get the key form the skeleton! Can someone help me please?! Everything I’ve read said to pull the pike out twice. I can’t pull it out once!
Three this time.
04 – Paracas
05 – Intihuatana
06 – AtahualpaNice. What else is on the CD, besides “Girl In The Tower”? I too would love to see high resolution scans of the CD lable and inserts.
Welcome here! Great collection you’ve got there! I’ve never seen those extra items. Do you have a flatbed scanner on which you could scan at high resolution the pin, the audio CD inserts / covers, and the audio CD itself for our archival projects here?
If you can, just click on my name to see my email and send me a message, I’ll send you our scanning specs and we can arrange it.
Brandon Klassen, archivist ~ SierraGamers.com admin/dev team ~
Wow Darvin, those are some really cool memories – thanks so much for sharing those with us! I’m sure Ken will respond to your post. Perhaps some readers of this site might also ask you questions about your years working at Sierra. I’ve emailed you about the ex-employees area and about our archive projects.
Brandon Klassen, archivist ~ SierraGamers.com admin/dev team ~
Of course, Peter Spear did some history of the KQ world in his KQ companions… but I never much liked his ideas, and he doesn’t tackle the things you mention (well it went up to KQ7, I think you may want to just plain discount Mask if you’re doing a back-history, though Mask certainly had some cool stuff in it).
some RPGs require some kind of secondary world depth… i mean, history, some kind of mythology etc. King’s Quest games did have some of this thing, but it was very crude… for example, what is there above Daventry? Realm of the Sun, or Etheria? is the realm of the clouds related to them? Who is the lord of the dead? Azriel or Samhein? what are all the races and species? what are their origins? generally, what is Daventry’s past?
I’d LOVE to see something that explains like this
The entry into hardware was my idea. Survey’s were telling us that we had brand recognition second only to Microsoft. Hardware companies were looking to Sierra to decide what hardware to release for home computers.
We experimented with hardware by starting with music cards, with great success. We decided to expand this to video cards – also with success. We were in a position to have a heck of a competitive advantage. We could bundle our games with the cards, and add expanded support to the games. Hardware companies couldn’t compete with this. We also had a proprietary marketing pipeline. Our magazine “Interaction” was going to hundreds of thousands of game buyers. It was easy for us to launch new products.
The problem with hardware though is that you have a VERY short product life cycle. Our distribution channel was such that returns could take months to come back to us. I was buying cards for $70 that we were selling to retailers for $90. Our margins were paper thim. If we shipped 10,000 cards, and took 2,000 back – we lost money. Returned boards tended to be unmarketable by the time retailers sent them back to us.
Overall, our expansion into hardware was a success, and we would have built a great business out of it — but, the company that acquired us didn’t like the thin margins, and shut the division down.
-Ken Williams
I actually bought the card and loved it. I was upset when Rendition gave up on the video card market.
At first I couldn’t get it to work, then Sierra had a rendition engineer call me and he compared my bios settings with theirs and found the problem. It worked fine after that. Ken sent me a free game for my help. Thanks Ken!
I always hoped Rendition would get back in the market.
Shortly after that Sierra was sold.
I just found a brand new Screamin’ 3D card in a bargain bin. I remember seeing advertisements for these cards in InterAction Magazine, plus I seem to remember a feature article that was written by Ken when 3D cards started to hit the market. I am curious now about the hardware distributing side of Sierra. The packaging is vintage Sierra circa 1996 and the card comes with IndyCar Racing II, Cybergladiators, Silent Thunder, and a Sharks Screen Saver. I realize that the chipset, a Rendition V1000 was the backbone of this card and others made by different companies, but it would be interesting to hear the history of Sierra hardware.
Thanks guys! I couldn’t figure out how to get past the bug on the original cd version, but I did load up the R.W. Anthology version and it played through just fine…so maybe it’s something to do with the disc, and not my computer…who knows! At least I got to see the good ending again…it’s been years!
I’m definitely going to check out that site for other bug fixes, though…I never did manage to get past error 52 without using the save files that came with the qfg collection, so it’d be nice to see if I could do that.
Yeah, I remember this same bug when playing KQ6 for the first time many years ago on an old computer. You should contact the guy who runs that page Collector linked to, and ask if he will solve this one in the future. Just last week he made an update to his page so he is still putting out the goods, which is very cool.
I’d defintely be interested in a KQ-world RPG-type game. It’s sort of interesting that Sierra didn’t really explore cross-genre projects with their characters and series.
I have never encountered this problem with KQ6, so I haven’t been able to explore the possible causes or cures. You might see this for possible help with the stick-in-the-mud lock-up. The good news is that there are now new patches for many of the speed bugs found in Sierra games. Patches for LB2 and QfG4 (yes even the the infamous Error 52 bug) and many other Sierra games can be found here:
Hi there…instead of starting a whole new thread, I thought I’d just add my problem to this one. The game keeps locking up for me in the swamp, when stick-in-the-mud and rotten tomato are slinging the swamp ooze around. I’m currently using the original cd version of the game, although I also have both the King’s Quest Collection version and the Roberta William’s Anthology version–I honestly can’t remember if either of these had the same problem, since it’s been a while since I played them (though I certainly do remember encountering the same lock-up in the past…just can’t remember if I was using the cd, or one of the collections then). I’m running the game on an old laptop with Win95–I bought it a few years ago specifically for playing older games on, and it works perfectly for 99% of them–the exceptions being KQ6, LB2 (that chase scene thing, which seems to be unavoidable), and QFG4 (the infamous Error 52). So, if anyone could offer any suggestions about what to do, it would be much appreciated!
