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Though I haven’t played it myself, I hear the latest SWAT game goes back to the roots of Police Quest in that you’re supposed to arrest the criminals and use non-lethal ways to take them down whenever possible. Use of deadly force as anything but the last resort will be severely reprimanded.
Thanks for the reply 🙂
Tell her that I absolutely love Phantasmagoria and every other game she’s made. She’s a genius!
Can’t wait to hear the answers 🙂Here’s a thought on the book, that hopefully people will keep in mind as they read it…
The book chronicles Sierra’s early days. I’m actually the villain in the book. Steve Levy, the author, was a writer at Rolling Stone, and had the belief that software was art, and that art should be free. He saw me as an evil person trying to make money off an industry that shouldn’t be commercialized. At the time, the computer game industry wasn’t taken seriously. No “real” programmer would work on computer games. Sierra was comprised of “kids” most in their late teens (17 to 25). A lot of money was made, and a lot of partying went on. All (or, at least most) of it is in the book.
When the book first appeared, I was horribly embarassed when my dad got a copy. I gave him this one comment – “I was 20 years old during the time that is chronicled in the book. I was a kid at the time. The person in the book feels more like a “character” to me now, than a younger version of myself. It’s too bad that my teen years were so well documented. I suspect that many others subjected to the same scrutiny, at the same time in their life, might also have much to be embarrassed about.” That seemed to calm him down….
It was funny when I meet people that read the book. Generally, instead of people taking offense, they seemed to want to go out of their way to work for Sierra! Everyone expected the “fun” place from the book, and were horribly disappointed when they discovered that creating games was really hard work and long hours.
It is a fun read, and I do endorse the book. I just hope you don’t expect I’m really like that (although there was a guy who looked somewhat like a younger version of myself who may have been like that a long, long time ago…)
-Ken W
Thanks!!! Its funny to hear Ken and Roberta being in a book called “Hackers”. Ofcourse, at that time the word did not have the same meaning. I did see a movie by the same name. I will check out the book.
Øystein:
Here’s somewhat of a response from Roberta. It sounds funny, but we email each other all the time. Her computer is upstairs, and mine downstairs. We’re getting ready to leave on a three week trip, so she says that she will work on your questions while we’re traveling.
-Ken W
Quote:
“…
These are quite a few questions. I will try to work on them during our trip. Until then, I just don’t have the time. Bring them with you on your laptop.I assume, then, that he enjoyed Phantasmagoria I???
Roberta
…”Not to nag or anything but I’m a big fan and I’d like to hear her answers 🙂
Just tell me that you don’t have time or something if you can’t answer this and I’ll quit nagging.Quote:
“… (by mxCoder) Is there any insight to the lives of Ken and Roberta Williams before Sierra? Was Ken old enough to go to Nam? How did he get involved with the computer world? How did he meet Roberta? Was it love at first byte? 🙂 How did Roberta get into computers?
…”Hey! Finally a question I know the answer to!!!
Was Ken old enough to go to Nam?
– I was almost drafted, but never served. I was given a very low number – 10. Those were the days were you were assigned a number, and if your number was low enough, you were drafted. I had assumed I would be going when they canceled the draft!How did he get involved with the computer world?
– I was in high school, and on a field trip to UCLA when I saw my first main frame computer. There were no PCs in those days. I saw a computer game on it, a text game – called “Star Wars”, and was hooked immediately. Everything I did after that was focused on breaking into the computer business.
– I dropped out of college to attend a trade school. Roberta and I were married 4 days after I turned 18. I needed a job fast! I attended Control Data Institute in Los Angeles, and was a hero there. I had a natural talent for computers. My first jobs were as a computer operator on building-sized mainframes, but within a year I was programming.How did he meet Roberta?
– I was 16 at the time. She was dating a friend of mine. We double-dated one night. Somehow I got her phone number and called her months later, long after her and my friend had parted company. I talked her into going out, and started talking marriage about an hour into our first date…Was it love at first byte?
– Close! It was LUST at first byte…How did Roberta get into computers?
– Roberta worked for a while as a computer operator for the county of Los Angeles. Then she worked as a software developer for Lawry Foods, programming in Cobol. She really didn’t like either job, but we were starving in those days, and needed her to work. I helped her pass the proficiency exams, and even wrote some of her code for her. She’s smart, so she figured it out, but it was never her “thing.” She is a creative person, and wasn’t really doing what she does best until Sierra (which was really her idea!)Thank you,
-Ken WPS We’ve now been married 33 years! .. and, they say it doesn’t work to get married young…
I currently have three copies of Space Quest 4: 16c, 256c and Multimedia. The two disk versions have an embossed glossy slipcover, but the Multimedia version is matte and not embossed. It’s an original release because it was out at the same time (and at the regular price of $65. OUCH!!).
Now that I’ve had a major resurgence in my Sierra collecting, I’m finding all sorts of variations in the different releases. I’ve almost got it down to knowing what kind of disks (mountain label, colorband, etc.) are in the box based on the stickers on the outside! Handy when dealing with Ebay auctions.
I’ve also always wondered about Sierra’s return policy of, “Just send us Disk 1 and we’ll send you a whole new set.” — Well, I’m assuming each game was “tweeked” as bugs were found after release, and subsequent releases had the patches already applied. Case in point being Quest For Glory 2. I have three different versions (disks only) that have different dates on the files and a different sized RESOURCE.000. A disk from one set will not work with a disk from another set, despite the version numbers being the same on the labels and in the game. Now, if I could only find the release notes on every version (I know HQ1 included a readme) I could find out what they fixed/changed/made better in each one!! It would be cool to try and collect ALL versions of a given game.
Tom.
Beetle B.
I have the Championship Boxing box and disk. It was given to me from my step father-in-law. I haven’t had a chance to try it out on my 486 IBM PS2 to see if it still works. I once ran an Alf game on that computer and it went so fast that I lost once I started the game.The box shows a kangaroo on the back fighting a boxer. I thought there were newer games by other companies with the same characters. I think it was Fist of Furry?
Usually if you stand right next to the dirt path…close enough to it but not on it you don’t get run over but you catch him to give him the skull. I got it on the first try after not playing it for a long time. The firecracker was always annoying though….it just kept blowing me up. It’s a good thing you start right where you left off when you die in this one instead of having to start over. 🙂
As much as I can recall, the treasure is only extra points, you don’t need it for anything. Sorry I’m not of much help, perhaps someone has a better memory or has played this one more recently.
Sorry…I meant King’s Quest III. I’m almost at the end of King’s Quest III…I think and I was wondering if I really need the buried treasure. I keep trying to walk 5 paces from the tree and even on slow mode I can’t get it. Do I have to use the treasure for something or is it there just to get points?
By the way, check out my website: http://ak47.talkspot.com
Hi alistair, thanks for your answer, initially l was still confused cause the answer was short, but l downloaded DOSBOX, and l can now play kings quest 1-4, BUT l have another problem, during the installation of my kings quest collection, l received messages telling me that kings quest 1-4 are played under DOS, and kings quest 5 and onwards needs to be played under windows, now l can’t seem to get kings quest 5 working, l receive error messages stating that l GDI.DLL file can’t be found, and another message with the headline CAN’T PLAY 16 BIT IN WINDOWS, or that this GDI.DLL file or one of its components is missing, or the path and filename are incorrect
Any suggestions?Hi there.
Let me first say that I’m a huge adventure game (and Sierra) fanboy. So much, actually, that I’ve decided to write a four-page feature on the subject in this Norwegian game magazine I write for.It’s about how the genre evolved from basic text screens in the early 80s to the blockbuster point n click games of the mid 90s. It’s about why the genre’s in the lousy state it is in today, and what part it will play in the games of tomorrow. I literally have hundreds of ideas for the feature, one of them being to ask the pioneers of the genre a few questions about the future of adventure games. I decided to start out with the questions, since these will probably take a few days to be answered. My, this is getting too long… Well, here goes:
1. What do you think is the main reason that adventure games were such a success during the 90s?
2. What happened? (Now that adventure game sales are low and game releases rare)
3. How do you see the state of the genre in the future?If one of you, or hopefully both, could please take a few seconds to answer these three questions, I would really appreciate it. Feel free to email me if you have any questions.
Oh, and thanks to you both for keeping a kid like me entertained for years with wonderful stories, rich character designs and clever puzzles. It was great growing up during the heydays of the graphic adventure genre 🙂
Magnus
You’ll want to head over to Vintage-Sierra.com to check out the article about looking at Sierra boxes / packaging / stuff. This is a huge area of discussion. I plan to sooner or later setup an article with more information than what is at that site (such as going down to the specifics of each varying release), but it’s a great starting place.
In short, Sierra did have cheaper redistributions of their games, often either “slash” releases or “value-priced” releases. Anything with black-and-white photocopy-quality manuals is considered a “slash” release (budget release) and not a true Sierra release. These boxes are not identified. The box colors of these had great variation, white, black, grey, even the same game released as slash could have had different box color variations. The other kind, “value-priced,” often had various yellow circular stickers on the box – and these often had boxes and manuals that were just fine in terms of quality but perhaps not the same as the original release (but I can’t recall if these were actually Sierra-distributed or not). There are many other cheaper releases of Sierra games, some by Sierra itself, that probably not all variations of have been discovered yet.
I’m not sure what slash CDs were like, if there ever were any (there are “Value-Priced” CDs), but the slash disks were cheaply produced and usually had plain white labels and no Sierra logo or the usual type of wrap-around label that you see on Sierra disks.
The Space Quest IV box with emboss is an original. Without emboss, I don’t know for sure in this instance, probably a slash version, especially if it is one with a photocopied manual. Also at Vintage-Sierra.com you can check for pictures of what the contents of each box should have in the original Sierra release.
The slash releases are pretty much worthless by the way – unless of course you just want to play the game. But you have to be careful on eBay.
Hope that helps!
Perhaps I’ll start working on that article sometime soon, showing examples from my own collection. I know it would be a great resource to be able to look at what specific boxes and items should be like in detail.
Ken,
The talkspot site is great. I set up a site there, but haven’t had a chance to muck around too much yet. I like the fact that it takes no programming knowledge. I think that’s really missing on the Net lately, since it was founded on the idea of free sharing of information and Tim Berners Lee’s initial idea for the WWW that everyone should be able to design a web page. The Internet has gotten a lot trickier since, but talkspot looks like a good place for reinforcing that original idea.
I’m working on putting together a links list for gamequestnovel.com that will link readers to all sorts of sites related to the themes/settings/events in Game Quest. I’m going to put in a link for sierragamers. If you’d like, I could provide a link to talkspot – and also mention your book. Let me know. I had a quick read through the sample chapters and it looks great. Made me laugh. I’m moving across the country in a week or so, but I think I’ll order it when I get more settled.
The page a day via email idea is great. I’m all set up for once a week at this point, so I think I’ll stick to that for now, but I’ll definitely keep that in mind for the future. I’ve got a mail list, but it takes time to build that up…particularly with people so wary of spam…
Thanks so much for the advice! It was a real pleasure to hear from you.
Leopold
Here be it!
videoDrv = VGA320.DRV
soundDrv = ADL.DRV
audioDrv = AUDBLAST.DRV
joyDrv = NO
kbdDrv = IBMKBD.DRV
mouseDrv = STDMOUSE.DRV
memoryDrv = ARM.DRV
minHunk = 204k
language = 1
cmd = kq6
patchDir = . sync = . audioSize = 12kYes, I believe it was mentioned somewhere that the WB Sega CD had a bit of extra content added and certainly improved, smoother animation. Probably in an InterAction magazine or something like that.
We’ve done all this at the QuestStudios message board, check this thread:
http://www.queststudios.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1017 Admittedly we didn’t actually sovle the mystery. I emailed the guy who posted on Moby and never got a response (email was prolly out of date).
I assume it’s from the SEGA CD.
I’ve died in almost every way I can (one or two I haven’t, like not iodining your thumb at the game start and going through the whole game, only to lose at the end Nintari championships).. If you have WB questions, I know a fair bit about the game. 🙂
– Alistair
