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(re: Outpost 1.5 and Outpost 2)
I guess nobody else remembers these games. I thought they were great, but hey, everyone has their own opinions.
(Thanks from the other side of the world.)
Writing from Australia,
I was just a kid when I got my first adventure game KQ 1. Sierra games were always a great escape and alot of fun to play.
Sierra’s games had something about them that is just lacking in todays games. Sure there is alot more eye candy but no games made today will ever have the impact the classics did KQ, PQ, LSL, QFG, SQ.
Even Sierra itself, it isnt sierra to me anymore. It just another company pushing out the same crap with no imagination. Sierra died when you and Roberta left.I came across this site when I found Al Lowes, and it delighted me to find such a group of Sierra enthusiasts and found myself scouring ebay for classic sierra merchandise/software. No other game set in history would make me purchase it again so long past their prime.
It sometimes is a shame to think that all good things must come to an end… But unfortunatley they do.
Ken, You & Roberta founded a great company
When I play sierra titles it brings back so many great memories.Thank you.
Gavin
(re: re: re: Good old Sierra-Times, Thanx to Ken & Roberta!)
Hi Ken, hi Jeff,
sorry for delaying asnwers.
@Jeff: The Website link is: http://www.enjoy-e.de (sorry, only in german).
@Ken: Legend of Zord is a 3D-action-adventure. A game like Prince of Persia.
Game Tycoon is a strategic-game, where you can build your own game-developement-company. You must create own games, make advertising, win auctions, find publishers, create new engines and so on… The shot shows the developer-office. All shots are as this. You can click several points in the screen (at this screen for example the plan-board, the clock, the coffeemaschine, the cyber-chicken on the monitor (cyber-chicken was another game of us 😉 )…Legend of Zord sells not so good, but with Game Tycoon we have a lot of success. The main-reason for this maybe, that the germans loves games like this 😉 and it is funny.
We are searching for now for publishers all over the world.I attach another shot of Game Tycoon, where you can see the interface to controll the game. The shot shows also the gameshop, where you get infos about the top-tens, can buy games…
In 2000, we also made a small season-greeting-programm. I think it was good. I have seen all old sierra season-cards and at 2000, I want to have an own and so we develope one for the xmas! Sorry, this version is only in german 😉 I can’t find the english-version.
Now I can only say to all: Have a very Xmas and special to Roberta and Ken: Thanx again to you. I think there are not many days, I didn’t think to the old times and the great games of Sierra -> of you! Also for you a very Xmas and if we didn’t see us on this great website till new year, also a happy New Year.
Regards, Marco
GameShop)(re: Cartridge Based (KQ5)) Alright I moved this post to the KQ chat area and I changed the title of your post slightly to better reflect the content.
Yes it is KQ5, and I have seen the actual game played on a Nintendo system… and of course you can see copies of it going for sale on eBay (although I haven’t yet found one with manual and / or box in good condition for my collecting satisfaction).
The game was done by KONAMI. Interestingly enough, when the Sierra logo comes up it’s “Sierra Design.” The graphics aren’t that great and of course the interface is a pain. But, if you can warp your thinking to handle the interface, and if you’re a big Sierra fan (as I guess many people on these boards are), it can still be fun to play and also very interesting of course from a historical perspective. We discussed this recently before (I’ll have to see if that thread is appropriate to move to this chat area, or you can try and find it yourself) and there’s a few of us here who have an NES emulator and a ROM of the game. Someone said (I forget who at the moment) that they were working on getting together a huge collection of screen captures from the game for us all to see. So that will be neat.
While we’re talking about game cartridges… the other Sierra game that went to cartridge was KQ1 for Sega’s SMS. Again, not great graphics but a very interesting interface. I’ve acquired an SMS emulator and a ROM of the game, so I am in the process of doing a whole ton of screenshots for that one. What is super-interesting about this one is the interface. KQ5 on the NES did a copy of the cursor interface. But for the SMS, they had to invent a new interface because KQ1 relied on typing. So guess what they did? They made an interface similar to the early LucasArts games. It’s pretty cool overall, it’s much more playable than the NES KQ5 (KONAMI would have done well to make such an interface instead). I will get those screenshots up in the museum area… sometime soon. I’m attempting to be as thorough as possible.(re: Game Archive)
When I get a new game on floppy, 5 1/4″ or 3 1/2″, I immediately copy the contents to hard drive and make ZIP archives of them. I will also check if there the disks have lables (software, not printed) and include that in the ZIP file name. For multiple disks I will copy the contents of each disk to its own folder and ZIP all folders into a single file. This way, I can recreate any of these disks as well as to check that there are no corrupted files (you will not be able to copy a file if it is corruped.) It is best to make a copy on some other media than floppy as data on a floppy is so vulnerable. I burn all of these archives onto CD, even multiple copies, each on different discs. I can also archive any relevant patches/updates or PDFs, etc. that I have made of manuals with these ZIPs.
(re: Catridge Based) I seem to recall KQ5 (maybe KQ6) on the Nintendo Entertainment System. Did this pan out well for Sierra? Does Nintendo get a percentage of the game sale? What kind of “licensing fees” does a company like Sierra run into when producing a game for a console? I appreciate anything that you can remember about this. I personally never seen KQ5 on the Nintendo but I have a friend that swears he seen it. Thank Ken!
I’ve long forgotten the details of this deal…
My recollection is that we received an advance against royalties, and that it was around $1 to $2 hundred thousand dollars. My recollection is that the cart bombed. As Josh mentioned, the graphics were so reduced in quality the game was almost unplayable.
I think it was Activision that did the cartridge – I don’t believe it was Nintendo.
Companies who want to do games for video game systems have to buy their “finished goods” (meaning the boxed CD or cartridge) directly from Nintendo, Sega, Sony or Microsoft (the xbox). Or, at least that’s how it worked in my day. The CDs would have cost Sierra somewhere around $7 each — which gives quite a profit to the videogame hardware company, whose costs would only be around $2. In the old cartridge days, it wasn’t unusual to pay around $15-20 for a cartridge (if Sierra had bought carts from Nintendo). It’s a give away the razor, sell the blades strategy. It costs the video game companies more to produce the machines than they are selling them for – but, they know you will buy carts.
-Ken W(re: Catridge Based)
Tim,
Ken can answer some of questions you posed, but I can confirm that there was indeed a KQ5 for the NES. It was extremely difficult to play, chiefly because the graphics were SO degraded from the PC version that you often didn’t really know what you were looking at.
–Josh
(re: Game Archive) Welcome! Glad to hear from a fellow collector. As you may see around here, there are some archival projects underway. If you have some rare games, we’d love to see a list of your collection in case you can contribute high-quality box / manual scans to the Museum area of this site.
I’m not sure about creating disk images. This topic was also brought up recently on the forums of SpaceQuest.net as Frans is starting his SQL, Space Quest Library, to find out and have a copy of every single version of the Space Quest games (some games have a lot of different versions!) It’s a worthy effort on Frans’ part, to which I will gladly contribute. I wish all Sierra games could go online in a quality archive, but that won’t happen for legal reasons. Hopefully Frans will not get shut down for doing it… he’s definitely doing it very carefully, check out his site. As for this site, Ken has said he doesn’t mind links to sites offering the games, but the games themselves cannot be posted on this site.
The problem with creating disk images, if possible, is like creating any sort of image file – it may not be easily accessible to everybody. Personally, this is what I do – I create a zip file with the contents of each disk in it. Then I create a text file that shows the directory listing of the files from each disk, including the date they were made, the filesize, etc., including hidden files like on some of the early games. In this text file I also record all the information from the disk labels. Oh, and of course I specify whether the set is created from 5.25 or 3.5 floppies. Then I zip it all together into one file. I find this is a good way of creating an authentic archive while maintaining ease of use.
In any event, it’s good enough for me. I don’t really care about creating disk images. When do you go too far in archiving something? What is far enough? Good questions to ask. As for keeping boxes sealed, I don’t either. I open them, make copies of the contents, and then keep the contents protected in comic bags with backing boards and the disks in a disk case.
For example I have the archive SQ2.2.0C.Disks.zip which is version 2.0C of Space Quest 2. It includes SQ2 Disk 1.zip, SQ2 Disk 2.zip and Contents.txt. For later games that actually require installation, I create, for example, SQ5.1.03.Installed.zip as well. However these early games don’t require installation, you can simply unzip all the files to one directory and then play the game. The text file looks like this, and of course the opening text changes dependant on whether you are working from the original disks, a copy, or something you downloaded. I generate the listing part of the text file by simply using the command dir x: >textfile.txt. If someone knows of a simple utility that gives more complicated disk information in an easily text-output format, I’d be glad to know of it to have more information in this text file.
This release is copied from the original disks.
As such all information should be correct.
Also included is SQ2 Disk 1 Unprotected.zip with a patched SIERRA.COM.
3.5″
SPACE
QUEST [TM]
II
Disk One
[logo] SIERRA (R)
S2L-104
SIERRA ON-LINE, INC – COARSEGOLD, CA 93614 – (209) 683-6858
Space Quest is a trademark of Sierra On-Line, Inc. Sierra is a
registered trademark of Sierra On-Line, Inc. (C) 1987 Sierra On-Line, Inc.
K127J05
Volume in drive A is SQ2 DISK 1
Directory of A: CPC COM 8,048 19/09/85 16:47 CPC.COM [hidden file]
INSTALLH BAT 1,247 07/01/88 10:14 INSTALLH.BAT
_INSTALL BAT 1,010 07/01/88 10:15 _INSTALL.BAT
SIERRA COM 3,121 07/01/88 10:15 SIERRA.COM
AGI 39,424 07/01/88 10:15 AGI
AGIDATA OVL 8,192 01/12/87 8:49 AGIDATA.OVL
CGA_GRAF OVL 1,024 01/12/87 8:48 CGA_GRAF.OVL
JR_GRAF OVL 512 01/12/87 8:48 JR_GRAF.OVL
EGA_GRAF OVL 1,024 01/12/87 8:48 EGA_GRAF.OVL
HGC_GRAF OVL 1,536 01/12/87 8:48 HGC_GRAF.OVL
VG_GRAF OVL 512 01/12/87 8:48 VG_GRAF.OVL
IBM_OBJS OVL 512 01/12/87 8:48 IBM_OBJS.OVL
HGC_OBJS OVL 1,024 01/12/87 8:48 HGC_OBJS.OVL
MAKEPATH COM 74 22/04/87 12:05 MAKEPATH.COM
HGC_FONT 3,072 26/01/87 15:47 HGC_FONT
_SQ2 BAT 38 08/10/87 9:26 _SQ2.BAT
WORDS TOK 6,828 02/11/87 9:07 WORDS.TOK
OBJECT 331 15/10/87 9:48 OBJECT
LOGDIR 426 07/01/88 8:49 LOGDIR
PICDIR 444 07/01/88 8:49 PICDIR
VIEWDIR 720 07/01/88 8:49 VIEWDIR
SNDDIR 210 07/01/88 8:49 SNDDIR
VOL 0 70,302 07/01/88 8:48 VOL.0
VOL 1 161,203 07/01/88 8:48 VOL.1
SQ201088 QA 35 01/01/80 0:03 SQ201088.QA
INSTALLH 161,203 07/01/88 8:48 INSTALLH
26 file(s) 472,072 bytes
0 dir(s) 240,640 bytes freeSPACE
QUEST [TM]
II
Disk Two
[logo] SIERRA (R)
S2L-105
SIERRA ON-LINE, INC – COARSEGOLD, CA 93614 – (209) 683-6858
Space Quest is a trademark of Sierra On-Line, Inc. Sierra is a
registered trademark of Sierra On-Line, Inc. (C) 1987 Sierra On-Line, Inc.
Double Sided W161779
Volume in drive A is SQ2 DISK 2
Directory of A: OBJECT 331 15/10/87 9:48 OBJECT
VOL 2 411,093 07/01/88 8:49 VOL.2
VOL 3 0 07/01/88 10:03 VOL.3
SQ201088 QA 35 01/01/80 0:03 SQ201088.QA
VOL 0 70,302 07/01/88 8:48 VOL.0
5 file(s) 481,761 bytes
0 dir(s) 245,760 bytes free(re: Gabriel Knight 1) Well, as I said I got past the problem I had earlier, but now I’ve hit another snag.
If you haven’t played the game and don’t want to read any spoilers, stop reading now!
In day 5 or 6 you should write this coded message on the Laveau tomb wall in the cemetery and I was pretty sure that I was on the right track earlier also, but after not getting it to work after many tries I looked in several walkthroughs and tried to get the message right. I’ve come to the conclusion that this game hates me – the bloody game still says that the message isn’t right.
Major spoilers coming up! The message is supposed to be “dj bring sekey madoule”, but after entering that message and pressing the exit button, Gabriel just wipes out the message and says something about having a feeling that the message isn’t quite right.
Is there someone here who could help me with this problem? Am I doing something wrong, or what?(re: re: Coarsegold, Cali)
You could tell that house had alot of history.. It was everywhere! Game box covers, magazines. It looked like an amazing wood “cabin” house. Sorry about the bad news of it burning down, but glad to hear that everyone was alright when it did.
I want to buy it 🙂
(Thanks again and again! :))
Here in Russia it’s really tough to find GK the game, not speaking of the soundtrack 🙂
I do like this release. But if you ask me the “.wav” versions of GK1 main title and credits themes sounds somehow “stronger” than in-game midi. I’m speaking of files named “5.wav” (GK1 main title music) and “5400.wav” (GK1 credits music). You can find them in the “SFX” folder on GK1 CD-ROM. These are 22khz – mono, so I’d like to hear them with better quality and was hoping to find them on “enchanted CD”.
P.S. Sorry for my English 🙂
(re: KQ8) I moved your message into Games Chat / King’s Quest Chat. If you post a message from within a thread, it will become a reply to that thread. If you post a message from the message listing of a chat board, it will become a new thread.
Is this the message that you read before? It’s also in this King’s Quest Chat section, and Ken does talk some about KQ:MOE: {LINK}14017
Otherwhise, not sure what else to tell you about it, since you mentioned you played it yourself. Do you have any specific questions about it?(re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Christmas design & picture) Somewhere, I have the letter that Wozniak sent me while he was in the hospital after his plane crash. It’s a very cool letter.
Brandon (one of our moderators here) is coming to my house next week to do some scanning. I’ll see if I can hunt it down.
-Ken W(re: re: re: Duplication)
Yea, wasn’t it King’s Quest XIII: Quest for Disk Space? It was so true back then! XD
(re: Sierra On-Line oldie-golldies)
You’d be surprised, but there are many of us that do.
Heres a whole board full of oldgamers:http:/www.oldgamers.dk
Long live classic Sierra! 😀
(re: re: Dowloading the older Sierra games)
😉 thats the link I use to find Sierra games. It has almost everyone.
(re: re: re: re: re: re: Christmas design & picture)
The new design is great! Very christmasy..
I have an old magazine about you saying something about that fire I’m sure of it. I also remember Steve Wozniak saying something in one them about a planecrash and playing Sierra games during recovery.
Do you remember that?
(re: re: Gabriel Knight 1)
Aww…where did you get GK1? I’ve been looking for the CD version in stores to no avail..
(re: Freddy Pharkas Fanart)
Cool! Your body presentation and proportions are excellent. If I may critique a little, the face could do with some work but that’s about it 🙂
(re: re: re: re: re: Christmas design & picture) So how big of an impact (if any) did that have on Sierra? Was there anything in its early stages that got burned at your place that led to it never being worked on anymore? Or the trauma of the event cause anything to fall to the wayside at work?
No – not that I can recall. I remember being depressed because I lost my Apple I (there were only 37 made, and mine toasted in the fire). Steve Wozniak heard about my loss, and connected me with someone who got me another.
We had moved from the house to offices in Oakhust several months before the fire — so all the business stuff was at work. I don’t remember any company impact — just the personal impact. All pictures lost. High School yearbooks. The Super 8 Movies I had made as a kid (I was already a “wanna bee” film maker as a young kid), all tax returns, financial records, Etc. Roberta and I’s history just vanished. The days after the fire were even strange. The kids literally had nothing but their pajamas. We had to go to the store to buy clothes .. they were running around in their bare feet.
It was a COMPLETE loss personally, but no impact on Sierra – other than a subtle shift in attitude. Almost losing your kids is a sort of wake up call. Keep in mind that Roberta and I were really kids at the time. Look at the picture of us on the front page of the website. The fire was a key element in maturing us, and almost going bankrupt in 1982 was a much bigger wakeup call. Without these sort of crises in our lives, I don’t know that I would have become the cynical hard-edged “business guy” who was able to win while so many other companies failed. In other words, the fire had a definite impact, but not in the way you might think.
-Ken W(re: re: re: re: Christmas design & picture)
So how big of an impact (if any) did that have on Sierra? Was there anything in its early stages that got burned at your place that led to it never being worked on anymore? Or the trauma of the event cause anything to fall to the wayside at work?
-Brad
(re: Offer to email old games)
ill do anything for kq5!!!!
gausie_jr@hotmail.com(re: What happend to the Photo-Gallery feature?) What happend to the Photo-Gallery feature?
Thanks for reporting the bug — I’ll look at it tomorrow (and, fix it!)
The photo gallery feature is still there, and I can use it — but, after three months of it being there, and no visitor to this site using it, I limited its usage to those with system administration privileges. That allowed me to simify the user interface for non-admins.
If you have a bunch of pictures you’d like in a gallery, zip them, and email them to myself, or Brad Herbert or Brandon Klassen .. we’ll be delighted to set up a gallery immediately!
-Ken W(re: re: re: Christmas design & picture) “I thought at one point I knew, or you had mentioned how your house burned down, but I seem to have forgotten. Care to fill us in?”
The fire department said the fire was caused by a powerstrip I had left sitting on top of a box of printer paper. The powerstrip was warm, and the paper got warmer.
The hot tub was the best part of that house. It was the one on the cover of the prequel to Leisure-Suit Larry. It also burned. The house that we built was newer, and lacked the charm of the original. I don’t remember if we ever lived in it.
-Ken W
