About 2 or 3 years ago during a Steam sale, I bought the Sierra Online collection. It is pretty much as the title describes, a nearly complete collection of Sierra Online Adventure games that they put out during the '80s and '90s. It includes all the games from King's Quest, space quest, police quest, quest for glory, and a few other one-off games that they made. It's not entirely complete. The rights to the Leisure suit. Larry games are owned by another company these days, and there's a few other one-off games and smaller series that didn't get included. Like the Lara Bow mysteries. Overall though, it was a solid group of games for like 20 bucks.
I finally got it round to cleaning up an old laptop, and removing a bunch of junk wear and I can now use it as a Steam machine for really old games. So after sitting on these games for years, I finally decided to take a trip down memory lane and started with the space quest series. And boy that was rough as fuck.
I naturally started with the first game, although I thought the VGA remake was included (it wasn't), so I ended up starting the original 1986 graphic adventure with parser commands version. And I died within 2 minutes. Despite playing this game dozens of times as a kid, I can't remember layouts well enough and I don't remember the exact commands well enough either, so I didn't progress very far. I forgot that I had a lot of tricks about having certain commands pre-typed and ready for when I would need them at a split second. Apparently those memories have left my mind along with high school French.
After 15 minutes of that mess, I decided to switch over to space Quest 4 which was actually the first in the series to use point and click commands. I figured that would make things a lot easier for me. No, not really. I had forgot that space quest for actually had a reputation for being very buggy and surprisingly jaggy (if that's a word). It's not a smooth experience at all. Although, since this is the CD ROM version, I was surprised that the game actually includes a voiceover done by Gary Owens, who was an announcer for tons of TV and game shows throughout the 60s, '70s and even into the 80s and '90s. That was a fun treat. The rest of the game, not quite as fun. So I'm going to put that one down and maybe later today. I'll revisit something else in the series that has held up just a bit better.
I finally got it round to cleaning up an old laptop, and removing a bunch of junk wear and I can now use it as a Steam machine for really old games. So after sitting on these games for years, I finally decided to take a trip down memory lane and started with the space quest series. And boy that was rough as fuck.
I naturally started with the first game, although I thought the VGA remake was included (it wasn't), so I ended up starting the original 1986 graphic adventure with parser commands version. And I died within 2 minutes. Despite playing this game dozens of times as a kid, I can't remember layouts well enough and I don't remember the exact commands well enough either, so I didn't progress very far. I forgot that I had a lot of tricks about having certain commands pre-typed and ready for when I would need them at a split second. Apparently those memories have left my mind along with high school French.
After 15 minutes of that mess, I decided to switch over to space Quest 4 which was actually the first in the series to use point and click commands. I figured that would make things a lot easier for me. No, not really. I had forgot that space quest for actually had a reputation for being very buggy and surprisingly jaggy (if that's a word). It's not a smooth experience at all. Although, since this is the CD ROM version, I was surprised that the game actually includes a voiceover done by Gary Owens, who was an announcer for tons of TV and game shows throughout the 60s, '70s and even into the 80s and '90s. That was a fun treat. The rest of the game, not quite as fun. So I'm going to put that one down and maybe later today. I'll revisit something else in the series that has held up just a bit better.
Recently Spotted:
*crickets*
BTW, I've recently discovered a lot of adventure games run better through the latest version of ScummVM. You just need to point it at the folder where the game files are installed in. Helps a lot with improving picture quality and bugs
Sierra stuff looked old, hard and weird to me back them.
There are two excellent modern Leisure Suit Larry games on switch/ps4 etc.
The first is one of my favourite switch games.
I was only 16/ 17 back then and me and my buds could not get enough of Kings/ Space Quest. Then playing SNES, GB, Turbo... good times, when all we cared about was chugging Slurpees and Lays chips in Huntington Bean CA. Innocent times.
If the only game you ever played back then was police quest, I get why you wouldn't have played many others. That game was obtuse as hell. The police procedures were all supposed to be very authentic, but they did a terrible job with the text commands. The later games in the series were a little better, but definitely some of the weakest in all of Sierra's games.
Yeah, Sierra games were the go-to ones for me as well. Back then. My best friend and I had a divide and conquer strategy to make sure we could get our hands as on as many as possible. He would get the king's quest games, I would get the Space Quest games. We both collected the quest for glory games, because those were too good to not have your own copy, and then we pretty much let each other know when we picked up anything else so that the other wouldn't accidentally buy. It. Made it a lot more affordable to collect the library.