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(re: Pepper’s Adventures in Time)
BTW, I found a copy of Pepper’s up on the auction block at Ebay. If you’re a Sierra fan, I reccomend that you snatch it up, as they don’t show up very often.
(re: Sorry – you are not authorized to view this message?) P.S. Hmmm…the link for the message thread appeared, but the browser gives it’s general error “can not display page.” I’m not really strong in the programming department, so I’m guessing that’s another problem entirely. Can’t hurt to mention it though, since I’ve been able to access any other threads so far.
Hey–could that message thread be a dead link for some reason?(re: Sorry – you are not authorized to view this message?) Ken,
I went back after I posted the first message to see if which threads in recent posts gave me that response. Only one:
Link: From another Fan to the greatest King and Queen of Sierra(javascript: submitIt(‘?msgId=15037’))
and it’s associated replys. Hmmm…haven’t seen that response from any other message, anywhere, to this point. I was assuming that it was possible to post a private message, or something. Then again, it may also be a bug.
I’m running the latest version of Internet Exploiter on Win98 if that helps you any, with (I think) all the most recent MS patches, but who knows? It’s probably a bug–er, “new improved functionality”–that MS introduced in their latest patching. 😉 (Anyone else reading this running IE6?)
I’ll let you know if I find any other instances of this, and thanks for checking into it.
Morgan(re: I changed how messages get posted) I’ll fix the BCC problem within a week. Sorry … am bogged down on some other stuff.
-Ken W(re: I changed how messages get posted) I’m sorry to say this, but as someone above pointed out.. v-bulletin is really the way (there are also others out there that are free and do exactly the same, but with fewer options).
One of the problems with the current version is that is sends an email to everybody ,with all email adresses visible. (you should put the email adresses in the bcc of the email)..(re: Pepper’s Adventures in Time)
brandon, thanks for the link. somehow, downloading a game from the website of one of the people who made it makes me feel less dirty than downloading it from an abandonware site. 🙂
i consider myself a bit of a sierra freak, and i don’t think i know anything about this game. maybe because it was never ported to the mac? (that’s all i had as a kid.) can’t wait to try this out!
🙂 emily
(re: I changed how messages get posted) I definitely plan on adding a search feature – but, am busy fixing the navigation, and the fact that the site is ugly.
Mostly though, I lost a month of development while the film festival was going on. I’m a bit of a film fanatic, and Seattle just had the international film festival. It lasted a month, and basically took over my life. I’m now back working on the code and you should start seeing some major upgrades soon.
-Ken W(re: Sorry – you are not authorized to view this message?) Hmmm….
I haven’t seen the message. It could be a bug (in fact, I’m willing to bet it is a bug!)
Can you give me the message number that you get the message for? Or, the message title? Or, something to help me trace it down?
Thanks – Ken(re: Pepper’s Adventures in Time) I believe Mark Seibert was the producer for this game. Anyway, in addition to a walkthrough, Mark’s got the full game available for download from his website! Pretty cool of him, “since Sierra no longer sells this game,” as he says.
Link: http://www.markseibert.com/the_full_game.htm(http://www.markseibert.com/the_full_game.htm)
I downloaded it and tried playing it myself some time ago, and I got to the end of the first chapter which was *very* enjoyable (love the animations!), unfortunately, after that I got a lot of crashes and errors, which made me miss cutscenes and generally discouraged me from playing further.
(re: Wow . . . it’s been a while!) LordKitty wrote: “On the down side, I’m on linux now, and WINE doesn’t support his project :(“
Must say I can’t see the downside of being on a non-Windows machine 😛(re: I changed how messages get posted) Hi Ken,
I just recently stumbled on this site (I don’t remember exactly how I found you…I recall stumbling upon Al Lowe’s site around the same time…oh well), and I notice this thread is a month old so you may not see this, but what about adding a feature (if you haven’t already considered it) for making a search of the existing threads and/or texts of the threads to find out if various topics you’re interested in exist yet? I don’t know how much that might add to the load on this system, not being much more than a base dabbler in programming myself, but have you considered it yet?
Oh, and thank you for putting this site up–it is really neat to learn about everything that went into Sierra On-Line and it’s history; I’m 25 and so I missed out on understanding the importance of most of it as it was happening, though I do remember the games fondly! =) Thanks.(re: Sierra and Disney) Disney was not (to my memory) in the game business prior to Sierra.
With respect to your question about whether they tried to “copy us” after they went their own way – that’s not how the creative world works. Generally speaking, it is not uncommon for people to believe they know more than other people. I have no way of knowing what the Disney people were thinking, but my guess would be that they really thought the games they did themselves would be a LOT better than those done with Sierra.
My vague recollection is that Disney lost a lot of money on the software business in the years after Sierra, but did several years later finally start to ship great product.
-Ken W(re: Pepper’s Adventures in Time) I stand corrected! I would have bet a lot of money that Peppers wasn’t Lorelei.. It doesn’t seem her kind of game. Weird. Oh well… I asked Roberta, and she knew immediately that it was Lorelei.
I hate it when your memory starts to go…
-Ken(re: Pepper’s Adventures in Time) I have all too much to say about Pepper’s Adventures in Time. 🙂 In fact, in my recent Top 20 Adventure Games of All-Time article at AdventureGamers.com (which I would link to if not for the ugly server problems that have us down right now), I named Pepper #19 to the shock of many. I still consider it the greatest educational adventure ever created. It was formerly known as Twisty History before being changed to Pepper’s Adventures in Time, for (as I understand it) trademark reasons.
It was designed and written (brilliantly so) by Lorelei Shannon. After writing my countdown article, I received an e-mail from a reader who demanded that I recognize Josh Mandel as the true creative force behind the game. I e-mailed Josh, hoping to clear this up, and received this, which he gave me permission to quote:
“I think you’ve made a very esoteric and splendid choice. While I helped Lorelei with various aspects of the game, I was honored to do so — I think she deserves every ounce of credit you’ve given her, and I feel no need to share it. It was generous of her to list me as a co-designer on the game, but I always felt that was greatly overstating my impact on the final product. PEPPER’S is a reflection of Lorelei’s spirit and talent far moreso than that of anyone else who touched it, and I thought it was a game of surpassing quality — certainly one of the most unrestrainedly delightful games Sierra ever produced, and woefully underacknowledged.”
Couldn’t have said it better myself. I learned more about the colonial era from this game than I did from an upper-division college history course. I’m glad to see someone talking about the game! 🙂
– Evan(re: Pepper’s Adventures in Time) Wow …. I never would have remembered that name until you mentioned it!
I have only vague recollections of the title. I “think” that it was developed by a company we acquired in Seattle called Brightstar. I remember everyone liked it, and that a sequel was planned, but then it bombed in the market – so the sequel was shelved. But, that said, I barely remember it – maybe someone else will have a better memory than me. Does the box say who designed it? I think it may have been Elon Gasper, or Marcia (something – I forget her last name).
-Ken W(re: I have to say Sierra sucks now) <sigh>
I should start by saying that I played my first computer game, the original King’s Quest from 1984, on the very first consumer release IBM-PC AT type computer at the age of 7, and, sorry Ken, but KQ1 was a copy we got from a friend we knew at the time; don’t worry though, I plunked many a dollar down on your fine games after that… 😉
I do miss those games–they’re a part of my childhood–and I hate that Sierra Entertainment shows us such distain as letting them all go out of print.
A comment like “Sierra sucks now,” is a philisophical debate, as a number of people have pointed out; it really should be interpreted to mean something along the lines of “I wish that the new owners of Sierra (Vivendi Universal) would revive the games that were popular before.”
Isn’t that what we’re all here talking about, anyway? This place that Ken has so kindly put up is an homage to our collective pasts–all the time we spent on those classic games we recall so fondly.
We miss King’s Quest, Space Quest, Larry, and the rest, because the new blood at Sierra Entertainment won’t agree to make new games, or re-release old games, now. Saying that “Sierra sucks now” is lashing out at the people that make those decisions as to what gets published, and what gets dumped.
What we really should say is that Sierra’s decision to let all that history go to waste is what really sucks. *That* is the real disrespect.
It should be obvious to any corp suit with half a brain and a degree from a mail-order catalogue that there is still a demand for those classical adventure games in the Quest series style based on all the fan sites and projects that exist, but at the moment there is too much demand for FPS type games. There is so much demand that NOLF, Doom-clones, AvP, Unreal, and the rest are still kings.
Amazingly, to me, some of those FPS’s are even fun.
Even having said all that, though, there is an old saying I picked up somewhere: “everything old is new again.” What that means is that, eventually, hopefully, the market will swing about and start to notice this particular genre of gaming and pick it up once more. A number of people have pointed out that there are other companies that are possibly picking up Sierra On-Line’s dropped gauntlet and putting out new work (sorry for not getting proper names here; it’s 2am at the time I’m typing), though it’s not the titles we want.
How can we make it “new again?” Support the fan projects. Help them, if you can. Quite probably, the only way we can convince Sierra, and anyone else, that they should revive the franchises is that there is such a demand that they’d make money on a new title.
Who knows, Sierra might find that the adventure genre is “new again.”(re: Sierra and Disney) So did Sierra break Disney into the computer gaming industry, or had they made games before? If they had made games before, were the games they produced after the Sierra partnership trying to copycat the magic that you guys had?
-Brad(re: Other Companies and that damn talking bear)
I don’t get it either and I’ve been to Oakhurst numerous times. Its just there on the main street across from McDonald’s
(re: Sierra and Disney)
Good question….
We approached Disney about doing games.
Unfortunately, there were creative differences between my staff and Disney. I always believe that each product should have one designer. My vision was that we would license the characters from Disney and then pay them royalties. I was young and didn’t know better. Instead, they formed a group that was then assigned to us – to help us design the games. Theoretically, the group was there to insure that we correctly represented the Disney licensed characters, but some of the people in the group interpreted this as “helping to design the game”. I liked the people we were working with, but design by committee doesn’t work. Each project went over budget and had long delays as my creative people and Disney’s fought creative battle after creative battle. The products that came out of the collaboration were great – I particularly liked the Black Cauldron game and Donalds Playground (both by Al Lowe). But, my recollection is that due to the cost overruns we lost money on all of them. Ultimately, we decided that it was too costly to produce the Disney products, and Disney started doing their own products without us.
-Ken W(re: Wow . . . it’s been a while!)
Brad.
I bought a copy at a garage slae on Sunday . . . sorry about that. I had no clue I was going.
Frans,
Yes, I’ve seen it, and I applaud his work. It’s absolutly fantastic that he is not only deep ionto the project, but also has a miniature following – something I can say that I’ve never accomplished.
On the down side, I’m on linux now, and WINE doesn’t support his project 🙁
–LordKaT
(re: Wow . . . it’s been a while!) Here Kitty Kitty,
I hope you’ve already seen the TSN/ INN remake fanproject? It’s awesome. Check it out here:
Link: http://fauxinn.cjb.net/(http://fauxinn.cjb.net/) Anyway, it’s damn good to see you again!
Frans van Hofwegen
SpaceQuest.Net(re: I have to say Sierra sucks now) Well, I’d just like to see something new from Sierra, if only for nostalgic reasons.
(re: Wow . . . it’s been a while!) LordKaT –
If I recall I think I have two copies of Yserbious in the Sierra Vault, might be able to let one go. I’ll check and get back with you – I am not absolutely sure about their contents though. Are you wanting it for a collection, or just to have the disks, or what? Email me
Link:brad@bradherbert.com (mailto:brad@bradherbert.com)-Brad
(re: Sierra and Half-Life 2) I believe Sierra lost its contract with Value to Activision and athough I am not sure of this my information is from reliable sources. As for the game itself the plot will be the thing that drives it home; it’s garphics are sub Doom 3 and it physic aren’t anything spectalcular in comparison. It will be a good game, but probably not as revolutionary as the first Half-Life.
