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i think text adventure games came first only because of the limitations of hardware at the time. i’m not sure about the date of the first infocom game, but i’m sure full color graphics or raster graphics were either not possible on mainstream hardware, or at the least very difficult. or maybe the people that created them were already playing text games and just created their own because that’s all they thought was possible. and this is where i give HUGE credit to Ken, who programmed some of the very first graphical games in history. that is an AMAZING feat, and people should definetly show him the proper respect for that. yes Roberta designed it, but Ken made it work. i think that is why ken was such a good software company ceo, because underneath it all he is a great programmer. during the last 3 years i have been studying low level graphic drawing routines in C and Assembly in hopes to one day write a book on the subject. Believe me, what Ken achieved in the early 80’s is no small feat. everyone considers kings quest 1 and the like to be amazing, but mystery house was no less impressive. those early Sierra games were then just as important and amazing as doom3 and the oblivion are today. Ken and his peers started the video game push to realism that still hasn’t been quite achieved yet today more than 25 years later. i spent all day playing oblivion for the xbox 360 on a 56 inch plasma :), and we are definetly close now though. In my mind, Ken is right up there with Jack Bresenham, John Carmack and the people at Industrial Lights and Magic/Pixar. the people at infocom didn’t really do anything special as far as technical achievments go, in fact their efforts were extremely weak in that area, but they did do innovative things for interactive fiction. Sierra, on the other hand, did pioneer work in the graphics, sound, and story areas of the industry. somebody should write a real history book about computer gaming history(i know there are some, but they dont satisfy me), and Ken’s Sierra should definetly be a whole chapter.
Yes, I just picked Spellbreaker at random because of its enormous difficulty….
As far as my comment about the games succeeding today, I based that on the looks I recieved at school (I’m going back to get Teaching Credentials) when I’ve pulled up and played a text adventure (Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy) online….
With the EXCEPTION of Zork, Infocom’s games were primarily highly plot
detailed and many of the puzzles were next to impossible to solve.
SPELLBREAKER??Actually, I thought Spellbreaker’s plot was pretty weak (though it certainly had more plot than Zork); I’m not a big fan of the jump-around-between-disconnected-areas type of game. (If you were just naming Spellbreaker as an example of a game with horrendously difficult puzzles, though, I’ll agree, and they weren’t all difficult for the right reasons…) And while some of Infocom’s other games did have better plots, I wouldn’t say in general that all of Infocom’s games aside from Zork were ‘highly plot detailed’. Still, though, yes, most of Infocom’s games did have much more plot than Zork; I’m not denying that. I was only responding to a post saying that Zork, specifically, had plot as a high priority. Infocom’s later games, yes. Zork, no.
I guess I was thinking about the type of people that would play them
today. I love them, but I really can’t see people today playing them.I’m not so sure text adventures couldn’t be successfully sold today, if they were marketed right. But it would take some creative marketing to get the public interested in them, and I doubt any major company is going to be willing to take the risk to revive the genre when there are so many other genres they can develop that people are already drawn into. So I guess we’ll never know.
Definitely I agree that King’s Quest was more influental….Graphical Adventures were more prevaliant, and lasted longer…
Again, though, King’s Quest probably would never have existed if text adventures hadn’t come first, so does it really make sense to say that the text adventures were less influential? (I’m not referring here to Zork specifically, though; again, Zork wasn’t the first text adventure.) Like I said, I don’t think there’s much point in asking whether the first text adventure or the first graphic adventure was more influential; they represent very different stages in the industry, and influenced it in different ways. Which was more influential isn’t really (in my opinion) a meaningful question.
You can always start a campaign/petition on your own and announce it on fan sites like this one. But many have tried over the years.
You can find contact information for Vivendi on their website http://www.vugames.com, they are the current owners of Sierra’s old games.
Vivendi is planning to re-release some of the old games by the way, in collection packs, but the release date keeps getting pushed back. You should be able to find various threads talking about those collection packs on these forums, and on other adventure gaming forums.
It WAS a tombstone! (Unfortunately).
Fortunately Sierra didn’t have such a serious financial disaster.
Curious, what game was Sierra’s biggest failure?
This is tacky, but at Sierra, our nickname for Cornerstone, the business software from Infocom was:
TOMBSTONE
-Ken W
Definitely I agree that King’s Quest was more influental….Graphical Adventures were more prevaliant, and lasted longer…
My viewpoint wasInfocom’s text adventures provided a story and plot depth that to this day no other company has equaled. But that’s okay because most people don’t care about those things, they want graphics and action. Just like the percentage of movie watchers outranks people who read books.
Well, yes Infocom’s game were massive hits at the time. I mispoke. I guess I was thinking about the type of people that would play them today. I love them, but I really can’t see people today playing them. People today are spoiled by 1000 channels of Cable and 4 GHz Processors.
With the EXCEPTION of Zork, Infocom’s games were primarily highly plot detailed and many of the puzzles were next to impossible to solve. SPELLBREAKER??
That’s Right!!
CORNERSTONE!!!
Somebody sent me a copy of it about 10 years ago…bad bad idea….that was the beginning of the end…many of the original designers started leaving in 86., then Medagenic bought them and used them as a label for things like Battletech, and Mines Of Titan…
Shame though, since Zork Zero and Journey (two of the last original games they made) were brilliantly written by Meretzky and Blank, resprectively. Meretzky, did some work for Legend and Activision, before starting his own company, and Blank started his own software company as well.
I heard somewhere that Zork Zero was the first game to incorporate VGA graphics (although there’s only 10 or so pictures and they are all when you read the encyclopedia).
Actually:
Infocom failed because they made a major committment to business software, and stopped making games. They were on top of the world, and decided that there was more money doing accounting software, and just stopped doing games.
The accounting software failed, and that was the end of infocom.
Too bad…
-Ken W
I hope everyone is aware that Colossal Cave inspired Roberta Williams to start making computer games? I had never played the game myself. So there is a connection between Colossal Cave to Mystery House and latter to King’s Quest. One leading to the other. Zork not being mentioned!
I wonder what was the big influence for 3D polygon games. Dynamics?Hm…seems to me there are some pretty serious misconceptions about text adventures going around this thread…
Zork, like all the other Infocom Games were highly descriptive and
detailed. The PLOT was always the highest priority on their games.
Um…what!? Zork had no plot, to speak of. Gather treasures. Put treasures in trophy case. That’s…about it. Later Infocom games did have more developed plots, yes, but Zork, not so much.(Highly descriptive and detailed, yes, but that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with plot.)
In my opinion Infocom’s games were more in-depth and detailed, and true
to the term Interactive Fiction. But this style appealed to a limited
audience and therefore the market did not lost very long, and the
company went out of business.
Nope. A limited audience? Infocom’s games were massive hits! And at the time Infocom went out of business, its games were still selling extremely well. The company went out of business not because its games weren’t selling, but because of some unrelated bad business decisions. (Like sinking all its capital into a piece of business software called Cornerstone that bombed completely.) And by that time, Infocom had managed to establish enough of a monopoly on text adventures that when it went under there was no one else around to pick up the slack.Maybe text adventures could still be sold today, if someone were willing to put enough money into advertising them to pique the public’s interest. Maybe not; maybe today’s gamers are too fixated on graphics. Either way, though, it’s a mistake to say that Infocom went bankrupt because text adventures stopped selling. It would be more accurate to say that text adventures stopped selling because Infocom went bankrupt.
As far as which was more influential on future games, though…well, actually, I’m going to say King’s Quest, but not for the reasons you might think. I’m going to say King’s Quest because Zork wasn’t the first text adventure anyway. Dungeon / Colossal Cave was. If Zork hadn’t been made, someone else would certainly have followed in Colossal Cave’s footsteps. (In fact, I think someone else did; I’m not sure I’m remembering right offhand, and don’t want to bother to check the chronology right now, but I think the first Scott Adams adventure games (not the Dilbert Scott Adams; different guy) predated Zork in the commercial arena, so Zork wasn’t even second.) Whereas King’s Quest basically pioneered a whole new genre (the graphic adventure).
However, if you were to ask whether Colossal Cave or King’s Quest was more influential…that might require a different answer. Colossal Cave was the first adventure game; without it King’s Quest would never have happened. (Sure, you could argue that someone else might have invented the text adventure later…but then again, by the same token, you could argue that if King’s Quest hadn’t come along, someone else might have invented the graphic adventure later, too, so that argument really isn’t worth much.) So by that token, there might be grounds for saying that Colossal Cave was more influential. Still, as I said, King’s Quest did pioneer a whole new genre itself, and I think really it doesn’t make sense to say either of those games is more influential than the other. They came at different eras (so to speak), and were influential in different ways, and trying to claim one over the other as more influential smacks of the proverbial comparison of apples and oranges.
I 90% own all of the classics. All Kings Quests, all Quest for Glorys, all Police Quests, all Space Quests, Conquest of Camelot, Conquests of the Longbow, Gabriel Knight’s, all Laura Bow’s (though i never really got through any of them), i have the seven crappy disks of the CD Phantasmagoria, the childish Kings Quest VII, where the mouse icon lights up for a puzzle point (not a good idead, Roberta!!), i.e. (same thing for Phantasmagoria!!!), . The only Larry I have is the first AGI version. When I aquired my exstensive collection, when it capped, I should say, was 8 years ago when Quest for Glory 5 came out. That WAS THE LAST GREAT ADVENTURE GAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. Im only 23 and your games changed my life! If not for them my typing skills would have been somewhat shitty at this point.
Not that you would have known, but, most people had to slave for hours just to get your games to work, with the soundblaster card (thankgod i had one), the adlib card, the IBM card, the GAMEBLASTER card, etc, etc, etc, ..
Ken and Roberta, your fans are still out there. And we all
would be willing to pay small amounts for some decent
adventuring. I, and many others love a game that takes
four weeks to complete. We all love not geting the best
ending. We all love great music, great non-puzzle puzzles.
We all know you have some money, I, my brother, and
my sister have been paying for it since the 80’s.
I know Ken never did much of the writing, I have always
know since I was 12 that it was Roberta’s face on the box,
like the author of a good book.
Please, come back to us.
Me and my brother saved up for 3 weeks just to get
Quest for Glory 2 one year before Kings Quest 6 came
out. But even then we played all aof the classics as they came out. The consensus shows that if you build it,
they will come.A RPG Leisure Suit Larry!!! What a great concept 🙂
People tryout their best pick up lines and other things to score with computer generated women!
Imagine the contraversey that would have stirred up…
So what exactly was the TSN version of ‘Larry 4’ going to be??
Also, when Al Lowe was asked to design the first multiplayer online adventure game, was The Realm basically what you guys had in mind?
Which is exactly why despite some good reviews, I would never buy any Activison’s graphical Zork games. The world that was created by Blank & Lebling (the authors), just could not be done justice by the corporation that bought them. Although, I did buy Leather Goddeses Of Phobos 2, because it was written by it’s original author. Although in hindsight it was worse than Leisure Suit Larry 4!!!
The majority of the time when another author takes over a series that someone else has created, they just can not duplicate the genius of the original.
I saw LSL:Magna Cum Laude last night for the PS2 at Gamestop. I was tempted to destroy the thing on principle, but I can’t afford the penalty fines…
Now there’s a petition that should be circulated…VU needs to stop trashing the image of Leisure Suit Larry and the legacy of Al Lowe!!!!!!!
Mostly, ‘I think I remember playing those on my dad’s old computer.’
But occasionally, ‘OMG!! You’re a SierraDork TOO?!?!’
And the most priceless was from this girl that said, ‘Oh yeah, we
played Leisure Suit Larry on my firend’s computer when we were in jr.
high. It was hysterical trying to get some old loser laid and now
that’s the type of people we’re supposed to avoid!!’-Tom.
Remaking text adventure games into graphical ones poses the same
‘challenge’ as making a book into a movie. Why does everyone always say
‘the book was better?’ Because when you’re reading, it’s YOU that’s
drawing the world, what the trees look like, how big the hills are,
what the wolf looks like… so when you see the movie, it’s not at all
like what you imagined.I find when I watch a movie first and then read the book, I get the
opposite feeling: the movie was better. Since I already know what
everything is supposed to look like, I’m eager to skim through all the
descriptive narration.As for the icon bar, I have a love/hate relationship with that. There
are some instances like the KQ4 example mentioned, where it would take
away from the gameplay. Though I couldn’t imagine games like Sins of
the Fathers or Dagger of AmonRa without them. Larry 7 was a nice
hybrid, although it could have been better implemented. (Like, have a
parser at the bottom all the time, perhaps?)-Tom.
Brandon, I need to finish scanning the missing catalogs, Julie, I’m getting the videos off of Sierra CDs mostly, and also using DosBox to create videos from Sierra’s non-playable demos (the XMas cards are coming soon)
I will be posting the demos I have, hopefully this weekend.
Steve, your site is turning out pretty good. Just so you know, two of those catalog images don’t seem to be loading.
Just added scans of various Sierra Product Catalogs
http://www.sierra-collector.com/games/catalogs.cfm
