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(re: re: PQ1 VGA remake – manual) That’s interesting. I haven’t played the version on the collection… in the version I played in floppies (which came with this documentation), these codes worked.
Are the codes in your collection manual different from these codes?
I do know some versions of KQ3 shipped with typos in the spells… which of course, made it impossible to *do* the spells. Maybe this is another case of poor proofreading?
-emily(Wow your’e lucky ) to find old Sierra games over there.. Anyway, if one is looking for old Sierra games, a very good place is to buy the “Collection” series (that includes all or most of the titles) of the game series he wants, probobly available on eBay.com … that’s the only place where you can surely find what you want. Note that apart from the many “Collections” series for each of the game-series, Sierra re-released many titles under “Sierra Originals”, also available somewhere..
(re: PQ1 VGA remake – manual)
This reminds me, with my collection the codes for PQ1 VGA remake don’t work, does anybody have any idea why that occured that the manuals had bogus codes, I know i’m not the only one to have that problem with PQ1 VGA.
(re: re: re: re: Soundtracks)
I use AudioCatalyst from Xing to rip. It had no problems seeing the CDA tracks.
(re: possible to view images at 100%?) Yeah, the site actually resizes the pics – because if you save them to your HD and look at them, they are still small.
It seems you have a lot of great documentation Emily, and some others have as well. I think these are things that we would want to add to the scanning project – high quality scanning along with time spent to make them look as good as possible. I don’t know what Brad has, but I sure don’t have a lot of this stuff (I’ll be updating my list to list ALL my Sierra stuff tomorrow). In fact I’ve been playing PQ1 VGA since I setup my Sierra gaming computer, it’s one I never really was able to play, but I don’t have the documentation – and I wanted to see it for that nice map! I’m don’t remember how you’re setup to scan Emily, but if you could scan the pics large enough for us (Brad and I are re-discussing formatting right now), and upload them to this site just temporarily since they’re big, so that we can download them and then you can delete them, Brad or I could do any editing / fix-ups required afterwards.(re: Finding / buying old InterActions) This image was taken from “The Sierra Museum” link in the left hand navigation. I’ve circled the covers that I do not have.
Sean: I think the bottom row-left is the 3 cars cover that you told me about Holiday 1998 (Alternate Cover)
Brandon/Sean: I think the 2nd to last row-right is the Red Baron II Fall 1997 Issues that you both have
Can anyone else say for certain what the other circled issues are? I am assuming Upper Left is Vol 1:1 or Vol 1:3
-Brad
(re: re: Half Life) You know…
I’ve never been a gamer (other than poker, chess, backgammon and craps). A long time ago, I used to play backgammon for serious money. As to Sierra’s games, other than Larry, Space Quest and Phantas 1 – I never really played them (for more than a few hours each).
That said…
I’m a great judge of what will, and won’t, sell. I had solid instincts as to what might be fun, and what wouldn’t. I also had “been around” long enough to know what had been done before, and what hadn’t. Lastly, I came from an engineering background, and knew what was possible and what wasn’t. I couldn’t be bulled by the developers. I knew what was possible, and I knew how long it would take to develop.
Sierra won because I was a good engineer with strong competitive, direct marketing and sales skills, and with an ability to “relate” to the ultimate buyers of our products – not because I was a gamer. I think it also worked because I had respect for our customers (who were the smartest people on earth). I had a concept that at the time was novel – I computed how much it cost to obtain a customer, and how much it cost to RE-obtain a customer if you ever burned them. It was clear that the cost to re-acquire a customer was prohibitive. If you burn a customer, it is game over.
Roberta was (and is) the creative member of the family, and I the business-person. She played games (and, created games). I ran a software company. These are different skill sets.
To be honest, she’s the fun person in the family. I’m the boring engineer/bookeeper/geek/marketing type person. (she’s also cuter…)
-Ken W(re: Finding / buying old InterActions) I have no idea … the company was sold in July of 1996. My brother, John, ran Interaction magazine, and stayed on for a couple of years after the sale – which would put the date in 1998 or early 1999 – so, your guess is a good one.
Ken,
Continuing with dates, can you recall any magazines/newletters published between 1982-1986 In my years of involvment playing/collecting Sierra I have never seen or heard of anything during those years. I know of a Cranston 1981 issue, and then my collection starts Vol 1 No 2 of 1987.
-Brad
(re: Thanks Ken :)) What else can I say besides “thanks” a thousand times to you Ken, the games your great company produced were a big part of my childhood and are still a part of my life today, I can’t go a day without irritating someone about how awesome it is that the half-dome mountain from the sierra logo was in my geology book, or how I beat SQ3 within 15 minutes while simultaniously cooking Ramen, it might sound strange but I consider everyone on the (former) sierra team to be good friends of mine, all the little injokes and pokes at various people and things about the company just made you guys seem down to earth, I actually look forward to all the self-promotions in the games…I don’t care what anyone says, Disney got that idea from Sierra Online…and made it highly irritating!!
:-} (blushing)
Thank you!
-Ken W(re: Finding / buying old InterActions) I also wanted to ask if anyone knew when the last interaction was published? I want to say the Spring 1999 issue was the last one, but not positive. Does anyone have any information on that?
-Brad
I have no idea … the company was sold in July of 1996. My brother, John, ran Interaction magazine, and stayed on for a couple of years after the sale – which would put the date in 1998 or early 1999 – so, your guess is a good one.
The amazing thing is that Interaction was almost a break-even business. We received revenue from direct orders, PLUS, we were selling ads to our competitors. Between the two, we had almost as much revenue as it cost to print. I don’t know why they shut it down…
-Ken W
(Flash) Ken,
Saw your edit to my message about the larger flash file display liking that better, so I re-edited the message, putting a link in there to display it back large how you saw it originally. =)
-Brad
Thanks! – Ken(re: possible to view images at 100%?) Ken, I just uploaded four pictures in the Police Quest section (pages from the PQ1 manual). Before uploading them here, I viewed them in my browser window at 100% and they were legible. But once they were uploaded, they seem to have been automatically resized, which makes the text harder to read. They’re definitely displaying at less than 100%.
I’m using IE6… when I hover my cursor over the upper left corner of the pictures, I get the little toolbar that gives me options to print, send to My Pictures folder, etc. But when I hover the cursor over the lower right corner nothing happens. Normally, doing this lets you enlarge the picture to 100% (since IE6 automatically shrinks pictures to the size of the window they’re in.)
I saw that you said wide pictures would be resized automatically… these all started out around 600 pixels wide. Is that too much? They’ve been resized to about 450 pixels wide, even though there seems to be plenty of space in the frame for them to display at a larger size…
-emily
Emily:
It’s funny you should mention this – I was just thinking about it today. There are times when you WANT to upload a picture and not have it automatically resized. I’m swamped tomorrow – but, sometime in the next few days I’ll add a button on the upload dialog which says “please do not shrink this picture”.
-Ken W(InterAction Publication History) I also wanted to ask if anyone knew when the last interaction was published? I want to say the Spring 1999 issue was the last one, but not positive. Does anyone have any information on that?
-Brad(re: Finding / buying old InterActions) Hey all,
I used to have a lot of old Interaction/newsletter magazines but have no clue as to where they ended up. I think your current scanning project is an awesome idea, but I was wondering if there was a place where I could buy any of the issues. I’ve checked ebay several times but have yet to see them on there. I believe you are still looking for more issues too, I will get in contact with my dad because he may have some of the old ones. I will keep you posted.
James
James,
I hope you can find them – every bit helps. I think between Brandon and I scanning, and restoring each mag, we should be able to get this project moving. They show up on Ebay every now and then – but it’s pretty darn rare, and it’s usually the more recent ones that show up. What I am worried about is the gap between the 1981 Cranston Manor issue, and the one I have in 1987. I am hoping that they took a break in between, because in my years of Sierra collecting I haven’t seen stitch of information on anything magazine-wise published 1982-1986 I think we are going to have to rely on Ken for the answers to that one. Keep hunting James!
-Brad
Hmmm… got me — I have no idea. My recollection is that we always published Interaction, but maybe not. We almost bankrupted at some point – but, I don’t remember when. We may have stopped doing interaction for a few years during this timeframe. We’ll see what people come up with. Now, I’m curious.
-Ken W
(re: re: re: Police Quest Collection) mine didn’t come with documentation either, but you can find it on the internet. go to the site below and search for “police quest”
they don’t have the documentation for PQ1, but i have documentation for the VGA remake that i’m happy to share. i’ll try to scan it and upload it tonight.
-emily(re: re: Police Quest Collection)
I have the same collection used off of Ebay and it has 4 cd’s as well. I encountered an odd error in that when i tried to install and it asked for the Disc 1, nothing happened. So maybe there is an odd mix up in there somewhere? I played the first game, but have no documentation to get through the rest. If anyone has any ideas please let me know. And if someone wants to I’d be willing to sell them. Thanks.
(re: Sierra video promos) Hey Bob, great to see you here! If you have any memorable Sierra stuff, please do share it with everyone here!
Brad, I’ll revise my list again with the catalogues / extras that I have.
Beetle, yes, that may be so but we’re not using the music in a “product.” We’re just uploading it here for people to download. That’s not an applicable argument. Whether it’s in MP3 or OGG format – if Sierra wanted to take legal action for their old music CDs being ripped and uploaded, it wouldn’t matter.
As for the quality issue, I already said I think MP3 is still more wide spread and the quality difference is not a huge issue – at least at this stage in the game. There are “clueless” people out there who don’t know how, or don’t want to know how, or couldn’t be bothered to download codecs etc, no matter how easy it might be. They just want to play MP3s.
EDIT: Good quality the first time, definitely. And it will be a lot of work, but better to do it right first. Especially since most of the magazine paper is too thin, so depending on your scanner you will see through on the other side, and then you have to edit that all out. By the way I will tackle getting my scanner to work again tomorrow. I hope it’s not broken… 🙁(re: Old games re-release) Yeah I know how it is, I’m from Iceland and I was lucky to actually get so many of the old Sierra games I have now. In fact I often bought games when I wasn’t allowed to, but I’m glad I did, maybe two months later it was not available any longer.
I own most of the old sierra games becouse I bought the collections or tricked my family to give them to me as presents 😉Of coure then I go to Norway (moved there in Junge), and they seem to have decided to empty their dusty shelves in the storage and I found alot of old games I already had on a very cheap price…. grrr I hate when that happens, but of coures becouse they were on special they were quick to disappear.
(re: re: Police Quest Collection) It came in one case, for five cds.
And yes you probably have to play through the came to see if you are missing a CD, I think each scenario is on one cd so it’s four scenarios or something, been a while since I played SWAT though(re: Police Quest Collection) darn. i’ll try installing SWAT tonight to see if I’m missing a disk (but, will I be able to tell? or do I have to play through to the end before I find out I’m missing a disk?)
did yours come in two jewel cases, then? or one jewel case for all 5 CDs?
-emily
EDIT: never mind. I just checked and I do have 4 SWAT disks. I just hadn’t noticed that one of the CD holder thingies folded out.(re: re: Police Quest Collection)
I own the same collection and you Emily and there are four SWAT disks and one with the other four games.
(re: re: re: Soundtracks)
please do! that’ll save me a lot of work.
but out of curiosity… how’d you do it?
-emily
(re: Police Quest Collection)
there are 4 SWAT disks?
i just bought this collection and it has 4 disks… 3 SWAT disks and 1 disk with the 4 police quest games on it. however, i bought it used so it’s entirely possible i’m missing a disk. the game came in a 4-CD jewel case that had a SWAT cover on one side and a Police Quest Collection cover on the other side.
i haven’t actually installed or played SWAT, so i don’t know if it’s missing a disk or not.
-emily
(re: Old games re-release) Your lucky if you can find older games in bargain bins at all. My best bet is too look in ‘previously played’ bins. I found some oldies in there. Usually they have been sold by someone who didn’t have that love for oldies. Luckily I nabbed GK3 before it fell off the market here…
I saw the PQ collection in there before….I better go back and nab that too before it’s too late. I’ve yet to play SWAT.(re: re: re: re: Bugs) when you say “return to the site”, by which means (e.g. clicking the back button or renavigating back by typing
Link: http://www.sierragamers.com(http://www.sierragamers.com)
in the address bar or both)? i think i have some suggestions as to what could be done. is your base page (the default page) a frameset?
Yes … this is inside a frame. There is a frameset, with a frame on the left for the menu, and a frame on the right for the pages.
-Ken W
