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(re: Running older games on Windows XP) It’s been fun getting most of my Sierra Games from the late 80’s to before the company went with the new owners to even run. But it seems that the only games from that time that I didn’t already throw out are my Sierra Games. Always revisiting them brings you back to when gaming was great. Still miss the normal Sierra Gang and the wonderful games they made. I would have bought Kings Quest XXXVI if it came out.
But there is a program I found out there that will also help. For people who have PCI sound cards like the SBLive and SBAudigy, getting sound to work on the “Older” games where you had to pick the video card and the Sound card can be nothing short of a nightmare since those sound cards do not emulate DOS drivers in Windows XP. After searhing for years to get something to work, I found a program called SounfFX 2000. It’s from a company in England, but it works wonders for all of my older Sierra Games. It’s not always 100% on but with a little setting here and there, your music will play like the best of them.
It amazes me. It’s 16 color, basic Midi, yet I’m still in wonder as if it’s were up to todays standards.
I always did love the company. And it’s sad the direction it went into after it was sold, but at least I have my old titles! The classics.(re: So Ken, anymore news on this “meeting” with Sierra’s CEO in April?) Nate:
Good question. The Sierra meeting appears to be dead. It’s a long story, and it’s mostly my fault, but there’s plenty of guilt to go around.
As you know (from my messages on this board), I contacted them several months ago. A meeting was tentatively set up between myself and their CEO in Los Angeles on April 14th. That was months ago.
I set up the meeting via one of my old employees, one of the few who is still there, an incredibly gifted person, who runs their european operations. I never spoke with the current CEO. They wanted me to fly immediately to New York to meet with them, which I refused – which is how it came to be that we set the meeting for April 14th in LA — because that is when I would be in the area.
When they asked if I could meet in New York, and our meeting was postponed for months, I asked if it would be possible to start working immediately, via email, phone calls, and fax. I have never been a fan of face-to-face meetings. At Sierra, I had a bizarre system for meetings. I met with my team VERY early in the morning, before the workday began, once per week. I didn’t want to lose any “work time” to meetings. I’m all about efficiency. If there’s a more efficient way to do something, that’s the system I like. Also, I hate riding on airplanes. The idea of flying to New York for a meeting, just didn’t sound like fun. And, lastly, this is the 21st century. Telephones exist. Email exists. Fax machines exist. Use them. I was ready to start that day. Waiting three months to get started seemed like a strange idea to me — but, I agreed.
During the intervening three months I heard zip. Nada. Nothing. Rien. Zero. Then, my schedule changed. A few days ago, I let them know that I had to return to Seattle early, and wouldn’t be in LA as I had thought on April 14th. Once again, I spoke through an intermediary. No direct contact with their CEO. I offered an immediate conference call. My intermediary responded “maybe”.
Given their clear lack of excitement about talking to me, I sent the following email:———————–
Dear []:
Pass this along to Bruce Hack (VUGames CEO) if you think it is relevant…
I have a website that I operate personally (www.sierragamers.com). It has thousands of messages, many of which are me sharing my thoughts on the computer game market. Some of the comments are on Sierra and some are on the industry as a whole. Some are interesting, some are not.
Mr. Hack could hang out with me for the next 10 years, and not learn as much about what I think, and what Sierra customers think, as he would by simply reading through the website. To some extent, meeting me is more time consuming, and less efficient than reading through the site. I tend to say the same things over and over and over and over. I don’t have a lot of opinions, but the ones I do have I am highly opinionated about.
To the extent he does read through the site, a fun place to start would be for him to write me, and tell me “Ken, you are full of crap, and here’s why.” Or, “Ken, your opinions are completely obsolete in today’s market, and here’s why.” I would then respond in self defense, and a discourse would ensue which would hopefully result in something better than he or I could have arrived at alone. Customers would win the debate… which is of course the right answer.
-Ken W
PS Here’s a couple of fun postings to start the conversation going. He will need to register on the site before these links will work. Once he is on the message boards, he can click on my name on any message board to see everything I’ve ever posted….
http://www.sierragamers.com/bbs.asp?msgId=12260
http://www.sierragamers.com/bbs.asp?msgId=17091 ———————–
This was sent several days ago. To my knowledge (and, I check these things), neither he, nor anyone else senior in his organization, has ever been to the website.
I WOULD like to help Sierra. I feel bad that this offer of help doesn’t include a willingness to jump airplanes and fly to meetings. The bottom line is that I was never really about money. Don’t get me wrong. I like money as much as anyone — but, I haven’t asked Sierra for a dime, and don’t want a dime from them. My offer of help is not financially motivated. My sole interest is that I think I can help them make better games, and make customers happy. I like games, and I like customers. If I can help, I would like to do so. That said, I can’t do it alone, and I don’t want a full-time job at this point in my life.
If their current head hauncho doesn’t value my input highly enough to call me within the three months after I’ve offered to help, then the reason is that he doesn’t perceive that I can add value. If he doesn’t believe I can add value before he hears what I have to say, I doubt his willingness to listen is going to rise after I speak.
When I last worked for Sierra, we had roughly 700 developers, and 300 “other” employees, most of whom were customer support, sales or manufacturing. Product was king at Sierra. I was willing to outsource anything except customer satisfaction. My guess is that Sierra has fewer employees in product development today, than I had in accounting (a very small overworked department). You have to have priorities. When the accountants outnumber the developers, it isn’t good. When you can’t talk to someone for three months without having a meeting, it’s not a good sign.
All that said… I have never spoken with anyone in senior management at Sierra as it exists today. They may have two million developers for all I know. Mr. Hack may be someone who I would respect tremendously and who is well on track to build Sierra (and VUGames) into the next Microsoft (except bigger). I may be back posting on this bulletin board tomorrow raving about their product strategy. I honestly haven’t the vaguest idea what is happening at Sierra or VUGames.
What worries me, and what keeps me awake at night, is this deep rooted fear, that the company Roberta and I worked so hard to create, over an 18 year period, simply doesn’t exist anymore. Hopefully, I’m wrong.
-Ken Williams(re: no need to criticize Ken Williams)
Though not written in the best of English or termology, this poster is quite right.
I hold Ken and Roberta in the highest regard for running a business. They ran, to me, the most historically powerful PC game company ever. (Nintendo is the historically powerful on consoles.) To tread new ground and take the risks going along, writing the book as the road was being paved . . . in essence, Sierra, under the Williams, was all that is America and that America can be.
I feel that unless a person in a business owner of at least five years in entitled to offer insight or any sort towards any other business. And when I mean business, I mean small or large, OTC or publicly offered, contracted or creative.
Thanks to Ken, and the PowerPoint presentation he posted a while ago, it’s opened up even more success in my small business to know that even a large company like Sierra started out like me. I admire this forever from the Williams.
(re: re: INN Recreation)
There is a group that is trying to recreate it. The FauxINN page is here:
(re: re: re: INN Recreation)
Do you know how many people would love to have it back? It’s amazing, that was the best ever to be honest. I met so many wonderful people through INN including you at the Fresno Gathering where you where the guest speaker. I was one of the one’s throwing that party. Hope you get industrious real soon!!!
Shelley aka Laughter
(re: space quest 6,missing manual?)
Oops!sorry for posting unneccessarily,i thought the first time i posted this question,it was lost,due to a glitch,but i located it just after posting question again.
(re: INN Recreation)
I liked playing on INN. Have you talked with the people at AOL about INN? At one time, I thought they were going to use it on their service. Alas, it never saw the light.
Try and get it back.
Trevor
(re: re: Kings Quest 5 copy protection)
replacementdocs.com or something along those lines
can’t you just play without the copy protection?
just kidding! go there, to that website. has many good thingy stuffs (that’s a scientific term) related to gaming.
(re: Monique Parent @ NJ Horror Convention)
It seems that if you tune in to Cinemax late at night, you will see many of the actresses used in the Phantasmagoria series. Victoria Morsell apparently was in one episode of a softcore Skinemax production and if you look at Monique Parent’s resume on us.imdb.com you will see that she frequents many late night tv shows. I even read somewhere that the actress who played Grace from Gabriel Knight 2 was in one of these shows once.
(re: Oakhurst in January) Ross,
Thanks for uploading the pictures! I had trouble viewing the DAT attachements, but was able to convert them into JPGs… will attach them to this message.
-Braduploaded 4/5/2004 4:48:52 PM
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uploaded 4/5/2004 4:52:39 PM(re: Kings Quest 5 copy protection)
The one that’s in the museum right now had the codes extremely hard to read, to keep them from being reproduced.
I have another manual at home from a later release that’s in black and white. I will check and if it’s easier to read, I’ll scan it for you.
-emily
(re: re: So what did you like more?)
While you just covered PC games of Legend, I remember how the old Atari/Mattel/Coleco/Nintendo/Sega games also had posters, slip covers, little magazines/comics and all these deluxe extras. Today, but a game, there’s your disc and manual, if you’re lucky! This goes for PC, too!
I like to open Microsoft products, they still back in the extras, as does Apple and Adobe, but those aren’t games, and I have to do either work or college work on these products.
Excitement was opening a new Sierra game and ignoring the advice to make a back-up set of disks, installing the game and going through everything, only to either realize I need an upgrade or something.
To keep the cost of games same for the consumer today, companies have taken out all of the extras (not all games, not all companies) and have given us the “bare bones” of a product. I paid $59.99 (and tax) for Enter the Matrix on DVD-ROM, only to have it comes with a cheapo manual, and the disc in a paper sleeve that sratches the disc when I get the game out! Yeah, I bought a console version, but still, I’m out $110!
I never paid more than $39.99 for a PC game, except Diablo II (the big, huge box edition with the Diablo movie inside) and was always enjoying the games until about gour years ago.
If I ever start a game company, I’d do the big box, fun game, goodies and such to give my gamers every dollar worth!
(re: re: Thank you Larry for my A in English Class!)
thanks to LSL, I was able to insult almost anybody and just stump them. Monkey Island 1 helped, too, but Larry was way more wittier.
(re: i cant remember the name of this game)
incrediable machine is everywhere for about $10 new budget. plus, a 3DO version is always at used game stores that are willing to carry the dead format
(re: So what did you like more?)
I like my old Sierra games, but I have to admit that I just LOVE to look at the old slip boxes (how cool and pretty they made them, back then!), open them, and just look at everything in them.
I feel a sort of bittersweet nostalgia whenever I open my KQ4 box, for example, and re-read all the funny bits about how great sound cards were gonna become (having an Ad Lib was cool back then!), or that damn trip to England that I didn’t win. :p
Same with my old ULTIMA game boxes – all the trinkets, cloth maps, and booklets…
It all made the old days of computer games all the more pleasant.
(re: i cant remember the name of this game)
After a quick check, Amazon is still selling copies of various iterations of this game.
(re: i cant remember the name of this game)
That would be The Incredible Machine. As for where to get it just poke around the internet I suppose. EBAY is usually pretty good.
(re: Thank you Larry for my A in English Class!)
Thanks to LSL, I learned how to spell leisure on a 3rd grade spelling test. I don’t know why I remember that though.
(re: CABAL, FreeSCI, Sarien and ScummVM)
Yeah, it’s an april fool’s joke. Still would have been cool to see an uber emulator though.
“CABAL team splits over fundamental design issues”
(re: Phantasmagoria 2 in dos mode )
Look in your game’s installed folder for the configuration file, typically “RESOURCE.CFG” and open it in Notepad. Look for a line that points to your CD-ROM drive, or an “audio=” line. Be sure that this points to your CD-ROM (ie if your CD-ROM drive is D:, then “audio = D:”.) If this does not help, then try to re-install the game and let it install to the default location.
(re: Phantasmagoria 2 in dos mode )
my copy of Phantas2 can be istalled via windows. if you have xp, just sent the properties for Win95 compatiblity mode.
i haven’t had your particular problem since 1999 and Win98. All versions since 98 SE never gave me that problem.
Hopefully the other posters on this site will help more than me.
(re: re: Ken: meeting you and Roberta (was re: re: Ken : The new picture))
Ken,
> Actually .. our boat is no longer in France. We moved our
> boat from France to Florida (via freighter) to position
> it for the cross-atlantic trip that starts next month.Ah, OK. So the trip is the other way around: from the US to Europe.
> Whereas this has never been an issue for me, it is an
> issue for many of them. There are some muslims who don’t
> like americans (as an understatement).I understand. Have you personally experienced any kind of threat or anything unpleasant? I would think that these people are a very very small minority, especially on the Riviera, but I may be wrong…
> Until things calm down, I think we’ll cut back our time
> in france.That’s a pity. Still, I’d think the situation could change quickly in the near future…
> PS We usually rent a villa at Cap Taillat, which is near
> where you live..I can’t believe it! That’s *really* near where I live. I live in Gigaro, far less than 10 km from the Cap Taillat. You must appreciate the fine wines of the “Bastide Blanche” 😉
If you ever come to this place, please drop me a message.
Have a nice trip on the Atlantic, and take care, that’s an adventure (but you’re used to adventures 😉 ).
Vincent.
(re: King’s Quest Collection 2 question)
This collection has both versions of the KQ1, AGI and SCI. It has all of the AGI KQ games except KQ4 AGI. The KQ5 and KQ6 games are the CD talkie versions with both Win and DOS versions. The KQ7 that is included is version 2, which is the only Windows version of the game that will run in Windows XP. KQ7 also includes the DOS version, which was not included with most of the KQ7 releases.
The collection also includes several other games such as both Laura Bows and some of the old Apple 2 games (Mystery House, The Wizard and the Princess, Time Zone, etc.) and an Apple 2 emulator.
(re: Ken: meeting you and Roberta (was re: re: Ken : The new picture)) Vincent:
Actually .. our boat is no longer in France. We moved our boat from France to Florida (via freighter) to position it for the cross-atlantic trip that starts next month.
Our current plan is to sell our boat slip in France (just outside Monaco) and move the boat back to the US. I love France, speak french, etc– but, (how do I say this politically correctly?) as you are aware, there is a significant percentage of the population in France who are muslim. Whereas this has never been an issue for me, it is an issue for many of them. There are some muslims who don’t like americans (as an understatement). Until things calm down, I think we’ll cut back our time in france.
-Ken W
PS We usually rent a villa at Cap Taillat, which is near where you live..
