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Wow, Johnny Magpie. I remember breaking a sweat after I read, “…Roberta Williams…is working on a project that…makes a few people around here nervous…It’s like putting a bloody chainsaw in the hands of Dr. Seuss…”
Of course, he was talking about Phantasmagoria. But that was back in 1992 or 93 I think, long before we would ever see it hit shelves as a massive CD project. I didn’t get a CD-ROM until 1995!
Tom.
Personally, I’d willingly pay up to $50 for it! (uh oh, I shoulda kept quiet.) Seriously though, if you break it down to a penny per page, let’s say roughly 20+/- issues at an average of 80 pages per issue (they got pretty thick by the end) would be about $16.00 right there. Less than a dollar an issue! And I was low-balling it, too.
If you really want to add an “extra value,” I would make that the “SuperDeluxe Ultra Mega Mega” edition, and include things such as demos, videos, and other multimedia that was sometimes included with the issues. Or even take it a step further, and include scans of all the catalogs that were included with the games. (the 10th anniversary one is the most entertaining and fun to read piece of advertizing I ever came across!) Best part about this is, you can release the first “version” and then work on this at your leisure. (No larry pun intended)
Of course, what you REALLY should do is release a 16-color version of the scans on disk, and include an order form to “upgrade” to the 256-color version on CD. 😉
Tom.
Yes, the ValuPriced software did have nice documentation. Not original, but very high quality. (Example, the KQ5 book is not embossed, and the inside is greyscale instead of colored for the copy-protection symbols, but it still has a nice color cover.
When you mention the “slash” releases, is that a specific company that Sierra gave license to to distribute the older titles after they were “obsolete”? My KQ2 version is probably the cheapest re-release I own with a photocopied manual and a dot-matrix-printed label on the disk. The slip cover of the box is slightly smaller and non-glossy. (The interior box was crap, so I tried to use an extra Sierra box I had and the slip cover wouldn’t fit.) I almost want to find a way to print a new label for it so that it at least APPEARS to match the rest of my collection! 🙂
Back to the discussion on the labels, upon closer inspection of the tan/mountain ones I mentioned that some were matte, some had a glossy mountan pic but the label itself was matte, and then finally the full lablel had a gloss. I’ve noticed that the changes also reflect a change in copyright on the information on the back (or bottom for 5.25)… reason? The phone number on the disks changed. The changes occurred in 1987, 1989 and 1990. My KQ disks actually have a mix of the labels, so I guess whichever disk you grabbed gave you a 1 in 3 chance of a right number, haha.
The archive project sounds awesome! I would love to be a part of it. I have a bunch of pristine Sierra catalogs which I wouldn’t mind scanning. After reading through them many times, AND the InterActions, Ken Williams is absolutley right… it would be almost redundant for him to write a book. 😉 Being on this board with that man brings back memories of when “word spread” around TSN/INN that either he or Roberta were online… it turned into a frenzy of people trying to find out or get into whichever area they were in! Aah, the years…
Tom.
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Chris, there is no need to add extra value to this IMO.
…”Could be, but you see I’m a tightwad by nature and like to get the most bang for my buck. Price would be a big factor for me. For the disc itself I’m thinking maybe I would bite at $10-15. If you wanted to get away with charging $20-$30 I’d say you’d have to throw in something to sweeten the pot. But that’s me.
Camelot – yeah! Funny eh?
About the Value-Priced software. These are interesting as they’re not really Slash. It appears that these releases do all have manuals / documentation of the proper quality – the only difference is that they have the Value-Priced sticker on them.
As for Slash releases, there’s at least one interesting one – the first Manhunter game, I have two different versions of the Slash release, with crap disks and documentation, but both versions have nice, proper maps (I don’t own an original so I can’t compare, but the maps seem like they would be originals, nice paper and all in color).
(PS in response to the other thread, cool! Let me know if you find anything in storage. We’d love to access that material.)
I’ll have to revisit my “Sierra Vault” (a/k/a closet at the parents’ house) to see if I still have the letters. I know I have the demo CDs but vividly remember dropping the one with the playable Shivers demo on the way to a friend’s house, rendering ONLY that game unplayable on the disc. (I was taking it there to play THAT specific one — imagine that!)
When I go back, I’ll see what I can find. I’m glad I was a packrat and never threw anything away, even kept most of the “Crazy Nick’s” sale offers that would show up occasionally. The only question now is if it’s all still where I left it… 😉
Tom.
Brandon — I think the version number on Camelot was just them realizing that there wasn’t a need for the extra “.000” at the end.
And I know what you mean about the VGA releases in the original boxes. There was a Leisure Suit Larry on ebay about a week ago (don’t know if it’s still there) that was the original pink box with the big VGA sticker in the corner. Contents of the box showed it was indeed the VGA version, on the colorband disks.
I also collect LP Records, especially Beatles, so all of these label/cover/disk variations fascinate me. I think there’s over 20 different “issues” of the Sgt. Pepper album, the rarest being the original Mono issue with all of the cut-out inserts included. Kind of like the original Space Quest 3 issue with the mask in the box!
I’ve often wondered if it played out like this in the Sierra factory: They have plenty of boxes and documentation, but no disks — copy more disks = new labels/reissue. OR They have plenty of documentation and disks but no boxes. Quick! Make a 3-title VALU-PACK! OR They have disks and boxes but no documentation — reproduce original docs cheeply and outsource tech support = ValuPriced Software!
🙂 Tom.
KQ6 in *any* version is far from inferior. 😉 But to each their own.
The weird thing about some of the early Sierra games for windows is that they need to start up within an active DOS-based environment since Windows acted like a frontend for DOS. So while VDMS doesn’t do anything for the game itself, you need it to simulate that environment before the game can start up. Otherwise, if you double click on the shortcut or the EXE itself, it won’t do anything. Space Quest 4 for windows was like this, too.
I wouldn’t say that the steps are nonsense since I’ve spent a few hours getting all my old DOS games to work in windows XP without requiring their CD’s to play. KQ6 just ended up being the biggest problem. Getting KQ6 for DOS to work is easy, but I like to challenge myself. =) It feels good to get things working where the solution isn’t obvious. But since there doesn’t seem to be a quick magical fix to this cursor bug aside from installing VirtualPC or an older version of windows, looks like I’m out of luck. I’m in no mood to design a full-scale 16-bit Windows emulator project. =P
No CD version of EcoQuest 2 either, sadly enough.. similar deal to PQ3. Now where to you get your information from? 🙂 That’s what I want to know.
– Alistair
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“… (by The Walker) yeah, I suppose it does keep with the general art style. Still, KQ6win was the first sierra game I ever played. It came free with my Compaq 486 90MHz … I always felt that the game was worth a lot more than the computer. =P Back then, dial-up Internet cost $20 each month for 10 hours, so the game was my primary source of entertainment after school.To run the windows version, you right click on SCIVW.EXE, go to properties, click on the compatability tab, check all the boxes (and run in windows 95 mode). Then you make new text file, type “SCIVW.EXE -o C:SIERRAKQ6WINSIERRA.INI” (or where ever it put that file), save it as “run.bat”, and run run.bat using VDMSound. You might need to change the compatability settings of run.bat so that they’re the same as the compatability settings of SCIVW.EXE, too. The cursor bug might drive you nuts though. =(
…”Ooh, tasty waffle. 🙂
But seriously folks- you MUST be kidding! All that nonsense for an inferior game? VDM Sound does nothing for Windows games, anyway, IIRC..
Just play the DOS CD game with VDM Sound.. I can fix any problems with it..
– Alistair
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“… (by Chris Schweiter)
My whole point is that I think it would be a good idea if you could throw something in there that adds value to the purchase…Something no one’s ever seen before that could provide more incentive for someone to buy it. You may have gathered from the tone of my earlier posts that I’m not really that hot on buying the magazines by themselves…But throw in something cool and you’d probably have a sale….”Chris, there is no need to add extra value to this IMO. Just the ability to have the complete set of Interaction magazines on DVD would be priceless to many die-hard Sierra fans. I personally, only have 1 InterAction magazine, and would love to be able to read through them all. I have tried downloading pdf’s of them from the net, but generally they have been poor quality, large in size and in-complete. The ability to have copies of every magazine in itself is something that most on this board would never have seen before.
I am sure that many other Sierra fans would feel similiar about this project.
Honestly, you should buy the CD version from eBay which you are unlikely to find downloadable anywhere.
It has extra graphics and John Rhys Davies (actor from Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, Living Daylights) doing the narration and is well worth it.
The following guy is selling it for $14.99 which is good value.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=62053&item=8184821056&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW
The price has not yet been determined to my knowledge. It will depend on the final manufacturing costs.
Of course we will promote the product to other boards, when it’s done though and not before. We don’t want to make hype for something that’s not ready yet and have to deal with an influx of questions.
You computer is too fast this game! You need CPU-killer program what slow your computer until pick up firecracker . Download program from here:
http://www.mbnet.fi/apaja/kopioi.asp?tiedosto=cpuki205.zip&direct=1
The big issue which I can’t believe I forgot to mention will be price. Have you decided on one yet? And how to gauge interest…I suppose one could throw a firecracker in the pond and see what floats up, so to speak. Maybe get the word out of the project to other boards and see who’s interested. The forums over at justadventure.com might be a good place to start.
You’ll need to use the sierraw.exe executable copied from the cd into your kq7 folder rather than the sierraws.exe executable that is installed by default. Also, run in 256 color compatibility mode. If you want the game to run full screen, use run it from a batch file using Multires (free from http://www.entechtaiwan.com). Here’s the batch file I use:
c:
cd multires
multires.exe /640,480,8 /exit
d:
start /w C:\SIERRA\KQ7\SIERRAW.EXE c:\SIERRA\KQ7\RESOURCE.WIN
c:
multires.exe /restore /exitwhere my cdrom drive is d:, multires in installed on c: i the “Multires” folder, and the game is in the c:\sierra\kq7 folder. If you use the batch file, do not use use XP’s own 256 color setting on the compatibility tab.
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“… (by Brandon Klassen) SierraGamers has 4750 registered users at this time. Never mind all the adventure fans we can reach through various other adventure websites and message boards who may not be registered here. …”My personal experience is that about one in 10,000-15,000 unregistered users will end up buying something if the price is right. Once you take the step to registered users, I would suspect things improve significantly.
It’s kind of like… out of someone who pirated Photoshop, and someone who purchased it… who is more likely to buy a Photoshop help book? You could say both are as likely, but the truth is the registered one has more invested and therefore more to gain (or less to lose) by taking the extra step and making an additional purchase. Not that I’m equating unregistered users to pirates: the point is that there is a difference between committed and uncommitted people. 🙂
What did you change the compatibility settings to? Have you tried all the different options (even NT and win2k)? Sometimes those work, for some strange reason.
Also, I’m not sure it would help with this error, but try manually setting the computer to 640×480 resolution and 256 colors before you launch the game. To do this:
Right-click desktop
Select Properties
Go to Settings tab
Click Advanced
Go to Adapter tab
Click List All Modes
Select 640×480 and 256 colors from the list, click Okay.yeah, I suppose it does keep with the general art style. Still, KQ6win was the first sierra game I ever played. It came free with my Compaq 486 90MHz … I always felt that the game was worth a lot more than the computer. =P Back then, dial-up Internet cost $20 each month for 10 hours, so the game was my primary source of entertainment after school.
To run the windows version, you right click on SCIVW.EXE, go to properties, click on the compatability tab, check all the boxes (and run in windows 95 mode). Then you make new text file, type “SCIVW.EXE -o C:\SIERRA\KQ6\WIN\SIERRA.INI” (or where ever it put that file), save it as “run.bat”, and run run.bat using VDMSound. You might need to change the compatability settings of run.bat so that they’re the same as the compatability settings of SCIVW.EXE, too. The cursor bug might drive you nuts though. =(
Thanks Chris.
“Since you pretty much run the project…”
Actually Ken and Brad are in charge of this one, but I’m acting as their spokesperson since both of them are very busy.
“It’d be cool if they could write memoirs about the early days…”
“good idea if you could throw something in there that adds value to the purchase…Something no one’s ever seen before that could provide more incentive for someone to buy it.”
Actually we are communicating with former employees about their memories from the early days – but it’s for another project. We have a number of cool projects down the line, but we don’t want to keep fans waiting to wrap them up all together to make it a great-value purchase. We want to put out each one as it’s ready.
Personally, I think that a complete set of InterActions on DVD is going to be value enough and incentive for many to buy it. Very few Sierra fans have a complete set of magazines (I don’t) and they’re rarely seen on eBay. Many of these magazines ARE going to be something that very few people have seen before… or haven’t seen for a long time. It’s true that this website doesn’t see a lot of active discussion. On the other hand, I think that such a product as-is will sell in sufficient quantities as long as we get the word out to lots of different websites.
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There is a ton of work and thought being put into the InterAction Magazine project as well as other archival projects currently in progress. Please trust us that we will make this stuff happen and that we will do a professional job of it.
…”Brandon, I’m not questioning the level of quality of your work or your dedication to the project. I’m just offering input to help it be as much of a success as possible. Sometimes that involves playing the devil’s advocate, which I can do pretty well. Since you pretty much run the project, you know better about what will work and what won’t, and you know certain truths that I do not. That said, I will say what’s on my mind, but ask that no one be too offended if I seem somewhat of a jerk.
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“… (by Brandon Klassen) SierraGamers has 4750 registered users at this time. Never mind all the adventure fans we can reach through various other adventure websites and message boards who may not be registered here….
…”Though there may be 4700+ registered users, I daresay hardly any of them are active. It seems to me this message board gets an average of one post a day. The marketing of the archival project will definitely have to expand beyond the borders of this site.
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….I’m not really sure that adding a little message from Ken would make it any more marketable – after all, there are lots of little messages from Ken on these message boards already.
…”Actually I wasn’t really thinking of Ken at all. If I recall correctly, he regularly wrote articles in Interaction, anyway. Of course he and Roberta were important primary figures at Sierra, but so too were the employees. It’d be cool if they could write memoirs about the early days and you could see different accounts about how Sierra built up over the years. Of course, they would have to be located, convinced to write such things, and compensated – which most likely makes the whole idea impractical.
My whole point is that I think it would be a good idea if you could throw something in there that adds value to the purchase…Something no one’s ever seen before that could provide more incentive for someone to buy it. You may have gathered from the tone of my earlier posts that I’m not really that hot on buying the magazines by themselves…But throw in something cool and you’d probably have a sale.
Me too. I initially played the game on the Mac, and the dialogue portraits were the same as in the DOS version. I just can’t get used to those Windows dialogue portraits… that’s not the Alexander I fell in love with! 🙂
We’ve had this discussion before, but I also prefer the opening movie on the Macintosh version to the one either of the PC versions…
BTW, I could never get the Windows version going on XP at all. I did play the DOS version with VDMSound, no problems.
-emily
