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Andy I’ve spent a good several hours perusing the old Sierra magazines on the Sierra Vault. You’ve done an excellent job!
Daniel
Ressurecting an old thread here………… I just discovered this series last week, as I spent most of it playing the first one. I just purchased Syberia 2 the other day and am currently playing it. The story is just incredible. The characters are amazing. I really like Oscar the Automaton (don’t call him a robot, lol). It’s cool when you find a game series that pulls you in. My other favorite game series’ that have made me feel this way besides Syberia are King’s Quest, Gabriel Knight and Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic.
SPOILERS:
Um………. I’ve thought a bit about Kate Walker’s evolution. In the first game she is this lawyer from New York. Kind of posh. Presumably into fashion and being a walking cliche of being a girly-girl in every sense of the term, according to her phone conversations with best friend Olivia. Then during the second half of the game her abandonment of her New York life is catalyzed by Olivia’s affair with her fiance, Dan. While she should go back to New York she continues with Hans and Oscar instead. I think she feels like since she has abandoned her lifestyle she feels more empowered. So she would be more inclined to carry her luggage now, or get her hands dirty carrying an oar.
Once again, I’m really loving this game. If anybody needs a new series to try check Syberia 1&2 out!
OT: I can’t wait for Jane Jensen’s Gray Matter =)
Too many pages?
I say BAH.
Click the InterAction tab. I’m a week or so away from being done with scanning about 75% of the InterActions (and earlier magazines) of what I have on hand. I’m missing somewhere just shy of ten of the issues and have no idea where I’m going to get them.
Sorry I missed all of this discussion way back when. I guess I’m just late to the party.
Andy
Hey Ken!
I’m trying to write a comprehensive history of Sierra; I have some questions. I’ve included some links for you to look at; perhaps you can correct some of the information. I’d really appreciate it as my goal is to eventually write a book on Sierra, though I doubt that will come to fruitation. Sorry for the number of questions, there’s just a very blurry time in Sierra history (1996-1997) in which there’s not a lot of information on the structure of the company and what was going on behind closed doors
1) When did you last work as the CEO of Sierra? I’ve heard conflicting reports that you resigned as CEO in July 1996 immediately after the sale to CUC; some sources have you as CEO as of December 1996 or as late as May 1997. I’ve read that you spent a year (1996-1997) training your replacement for the job, is this true?
2) What was the last product you worked on at Sierra?
3) Who took your place as the CEO or President?4) How long did you work for CUC as Vice Chairman and a member of the Office of the President? http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1996_Sept_13/ai_186741745
5) What do you remember about Half Life, regarding you signing it or anything regarding it? This article states you met with the creators of Half Life in November ’96 http://uk.gamespot.com/features/halflife_final/part24.htmlhttp:// and this is a press release from May 1997 regarding Half Life being signed: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1997_May_27/ai_19447366
6) What were the roles of Mike Brochu, Scott Lynch, Randy Dersham and Bill Moore at Sierra prior to and after the acquisition by CUC?
7) Why did Sierra take such an active interest in the and the Family and Home Software (Hoyle, Print Artist, 3D Ultra Pinball, etc) genres?
8) Did Sierra ever venture into hardware? Was this successful?
9) What was the operating structure at Sierra? For example were Impressions and Papyrus grouped under a division called Sports, or did Impressions and Papyrus exist as entirely separate divisions?
10) Is there any inside info you could give us on Sierra from 90-96, some tidbits that people here may not know?
10) How involved with you with the day-to-day management of Sierra as the company grew? Likewise, how involved were you with product development & R+D?
11) Do you have any interest in writing your own book on Sierra?
In Police Quest III there was a scene featuring a dog, and the credits mentioned an animal handler and the fact that a representative from some organization was present when these scenes were made (not sure if they were photographed or used as a reference for artists) to make sure the animal was properly treated. I suppose the same procedure was taken with other Sierra games as well – check the credits of the games.
Dear Ken
I am Tony from Nottingham, England.
I have been playing some of your games such as Gabriel Knight and the animals looked real. So I was wondering how the welfare of the animals are monitored in the live action sequences.
Do you use professional handlers?
Does an independent organization monitor the use of animals in your live action games?
Americans films use the American Humane Association to monitor animal welfare in films and I was wondering if there is something similar for games?
Yours Sincerely
T.Gallett,
Peter,
Thank you very much for the advice. So far I’ve only mentioned the site here and at Vintage Sierra’s forums. I wanted to at least respond to the people actively looking for certain issues of InterAction but I’ve still got a lot of work on the site (and with the scanning) before I really feel it will be worth advertising. In addition I want to watch the bandwidth usage as I go and see if I’m getting myself into trouble with this bright idea. I’d probably say I’m only through scanning and getting up less than 10% of the stuff I have and I’d really like to at least complete the InterAction scanning before I start trying to justify people spending their time visiting the site.
Thank you for pointing out the Volume # mistake on the Camelot issue. I agree, you are right. I was so obsessed with getting the order right on that issue and the 10th Anniversary issue right after it I must have fat fingered the key and missed that. I’ll get that cleaned up at some point today. If you see any other mistakes like that please let me know, either here or by email at alinnenkohl@fusemail.com .
Andy
It works now. Just to point out also: while the link works and the actual file is named correctly, the ‘Sierra News Magazine Volume 2, Number 1 (Spring 1990) Conquest of Camelot ‘ magazine link should actually be named ‘Sierra News Magazine Volume 3, Number 1 (Spring 1990) Conquest of Camelot ‘.
As for the bandwidth, well, how much have you advertised the website? Is this the only place you have mentioned it, on sierragamers.com? If so then I suggest you post information about your effort on other various forums as I am certain that there are masses of people who would be very interested in, and pleased to read, these magazines and other miscellanies (adventuregamers.com, bigbluecup.com forums would be the first few I can think of from the top of my head… posting the information in the appropriate forum sections, of course). This applies even more if you endeavor to complete even more scans… I’m very happy to see such a readily (freely) available online collection of this, and know not of any similar place, other projects like this one seemed to have amounted to nothing (although the last time I truly did a serious search for it was maybe over a year ago, maybe more, and maybe I just don’t know how to search). When you have made the effort, then why not spread it?
And, of course, there is also the possibility (in the case of unmanageable volumes of visitors, but perhaps I am getting ahead of myself and not everybody is so nostalgic and interested in Sierra as I am 🙂 ) of alternative forms of distribution, for example p2p networks (from which your website could provide links to, as is often done for example with certain open source software in order to ease the burden). While dedicated high-capacity upload bandwidth (i.e. proper hosting) comes at a premium, many of us on ordinary, though relatively fast for this ordinary usage, connections are fortunate enough to have unlimited upload bandwidth, and p2p networks are a good way of taking advantage of this by distributing the burden amongst more meagre, but many, nodes. Again perhaps I am getting ahead of myself or preaching to the choir, but I imagine that if eventually you have 30+ magazines, etc, up there with many bordering or greater than 100 MB and many eager downloaders come along and want the whole collection then, well, there could be issues…
I’ve now posted the third issue (Summer 1992), added a pretty front end so you all don’t have to suffer from the HTML and fixed all the links.
I pay for premium web server space for my wife’s photography hobby/obsession/enjoyment and we’ve never hit 1% of the maximum bandwidth allowed. I’ve been watching it and will pull the site down (temporarily) if the bandwidth gets tight but so far so good.
Be sure to check the other sections of the website while you are there: I’ve been putting up catalogs, high resolution box cover scans, old Sierra focused articles and ads in addition to the InterAction issues.
Andy
I think I’ve got that fixed. I am brand new to web site publication and it worked on my machine but I’m thinking that might have been a local cache versus external deal.
Try again and let me know if it works. I’ll keep an eye on the bandwidth and may pull the website down if I am pushing too hard on the limits but so far so good.
I’m very excited that these magazines are being scanned and made available by you on the Internet, I just hope you have the bandwidth to handle it 😉 (~50mb files, after all, seem to me quite massive but perhaps you live in a country with the luxury of Internet service of the absolutely most premium kind).
But there is one small problem it seems, the links that have been provided to the magazine PDFs on the website seem slightly incorrect and, for me at least, the problem seems to be that the links capitalise the first letter I in the folder Interaction: so http://www.gracenroark.net/roark/sierra/Interaction/Interaction%2001%20Fall%201991.pdf (for example) should be http://www.gracenroark.net/roark/sierra/interaction/Interaction%2001%20Fall%201991.pdf and everything works fine.
I hope you take the time to look into this, but otherwise great work, thank you for it, I hope you keep it up, and I look forward to more of these magazine issues :)!
Very much alive and well. New issue up this evening (Spring 1991) which is an absolute classic.
Rosie O’Donnell, man mullets, TSN beta testing announcement – all included inside. So far no one has sued me for putting this stuff up and I’ll keep going until they do.
The website is in a total state of flux. As you can probably guess I’m not much of a website creator and I’m stumbling through getting the stuff up there while also trying to structure the site so I can anticipate all of what I’m going to be scanning. Don’t be surprised to find your bookmarks totally invalid if I do some wild, random total restructure overnight. The root web service is at http://www.gracenroark.net but the main page is my wife’s blog (for family). If you end up out there the basic page for the Sierra stuff will always be at:
If you end up in part of the website with lots of pictures of mountains, puppies and open water you have found my wife’s section. If you leave a comment, be kind. She has always eyed my obsession with a thirty year old software company that now makes games based on 50 cent to be somewhat suspect. Only the vague association with Portal has kept her from divorcing me.
It’s good to know that there is at least one project still alive
Can’t wait for the other scans, keep up the good work!
I remember the BBS well. My absolute favorite memories are from sitting at my PC jr late at night, logging on to the BBS and looking around. On a very few occasions, a message would come in from Ken Williams! I remember going absolutely nuts when seeing those messages, and being able to talk to him live (while trying to keep my hands from shaking!)
I would love to see some of those archives, if they exist, or better yet, a re-creation. Thanks for posting about that BBS, I had forgotten all about it!
Just as a side note, the copies of Sierra Newsletter Vol 2, Number 1 (Spring 1989) I found out on the internet were missing the poster pullout and had cut outs on a few of the pages. While I have substituted some acceptable scans I found without scanning my own on that particular issue I scanned my copy and it is up with those pages intact.
I’ve also been putting up the poster pullouts as different downloads (the .jpg files) as separate downloads. Please forgive the pushpin marks in the corners – I decorated at one point. I still miss that apartment.
One last final technical note: For some reason my webserver/page/hosting service seems to have a problem with Firefox from time to time (which is a real shame because it’s the browser I like to use). If you can’t get the page to load in Firefox try either Opera or IE and you should be ok. If you are still having problems drop me a line at alinnenkohl@fusemail.net and I’ll see what I can do for you.
Andy
As per my last post I’ve finally gotten around to starting my scanning project:
Sierra Newsletter, News Magazine and Interaction Archive
I’ll be continuing to scan the magazines, catalogs and other assorted Sierra stuff I’ve had for years and putting it up there if anyone is interested. From reviewing the Interaction page I could see the two issues I’m missing (Vol 1 #1 & #3) have been scanned and I’d love to get a copy of them if I could.
Anyone who is interested feel free to pull down the scans as I put them up and use them however you want. If the bandwidth goes insane or I get a cease and desist letter I’ll remove them.
Have fun!
Andy
I remember using that BBS for hints. Before it had come along, you’d get perpetual busy signals trying to call to talk to a person for hints!
Yep. I could’ve put together a better collection with about a week’s work with minimal effort. No excuse for it. With the time it took for them to release these collections, I was hoping they were actually putting effort into it and maybe updating the games to work natively in XP/Vista and solving driver problems.
If I was making the collections, I’d include every game with scans of the releases of the different game materials as well as box scans and clue book scans. I also would’ve included support for different versions of the game in some way or another, like the Apple IIgs versions (which are vastly superior to the DOS AGI games). I’d do that either through emulation or just by updating the games. I’d update all of the games to run natively on newer systems and iron out the bugs and driver problems (like 3dfx games). And if none of that was feasible from a business standpoint, then I’d just release the games for free or open source them.
Speaking of new games…
Looks like we might see a new Larry “adventure” game. Hmmm, that reminds me, wasn’t Magna Cum Laude also an “adventure” game?
Thank you for reminding me! I will pass along your greeting.
-Ken W
PS Anyone who wants to track us: You can sign up at http://www.nordhavn68.com for my blog … we’re currently in Mexico on a boat, working our way towards Costa Rica.
My major beef with these collections is that they were delayed for like two years I remember. I am disappointed that they are not complete….. missing the AGI versions of the SCI remakes. And in some cases full sequels (I for one throughly enjoyed Mask of Eternity and was sad not to see it).
By the way folks, downloading the patches people made for Dosbox for these collections is a must for those who have not done so yet. The AGI games are patched with the three voice style like the Tandy 1000s.
I can’t agree with you more, and you’re not the only one who’s disappointed. There have been complaints all over the Sierra community and on the VU boards as well for some time now, but they fall on deaf ears. Still, some people say that we should just shut up and be happy that the games have been released, otherwise VU might decide not to release the other collections because nobody likes their “new, improved” versions of the PQ, KQ, SQ and LSL collections.
I’m out to sea on a boat, and can’t play the video. We’ll be back to shore in April, and I’ll try it then. Al Lowe mentioned we were in there.
It doesn’t bother me, but I don’t know why they think they can do it without compensating me, or asking permission, in some way. Even that doesn’t bother me as much as them clearly producing new games based on Al Lowe’s games, including he and us, and then them not offering to Al any piece of the action.
Oh well…. as long as it is a good game, I’m thrilled. I like to see the series live on!
-Ken W
