Fronzel Neekburm

I think you also have to remember that most of the stuff we've seen involve being on a ship
with corridors...
 
You could judge all the Space Quests pretty harshly if all you saw was:
 





 
 
And I think this Spaceventure room and others from the demo are already up there with the best and most interesting ship
rooms from the Space Quests:
 

Yaay! Someone's always been a kidder, and I think we know who it is. ;)

"Safeguards? Don't be such a weak sister. There ARE no safeguards! This is the fifties."
 
Harvester is back and I'm loving every twisted minute of it!

Revisiting what worked in the past and updating it to fit with modern sensibilities == good.
Simply going back to what was done in the past because it was all wonderful == bad.
 
This is effectively the problem with modern politics too, but I digress.
 
I do think Purple Tenticle has misinterpreted what Fred is saying. The 1990s should be remembered, but critically and with the benefit of historical hindsight. What I mean is - don't see the 1990s as a list of great games. Properly look at what was good, what was bad, and why it worked in the specific context of its time and space.
 
A lot of things in the 1990s worked really well. Good story telling; deep, well-formed worlds; artistic graphics; attention to music; and a focus on puzzle-solving - mental gameplay rather than cut-throat action. It's those things that can be revived and repackaged. You don't need a "Sierra 2.0" to do that. You don't need major companies to do that. And, with the way game development is nowadays, you don't even need a large studio to do that. Indeed, I would argue a "Sierra 2.0" would stifle that very freedom and creativity that would be needed to make genuinely good games for the modern market.
 
Without wanting to put words in Fred's mouth, I think both he and I feel that parroting the past is redundant. If I want to play Space Quest IV, I'll play Space Quest IV. I don't need Scott and Mark to try and "re-capture the magic" by repeating what they did in a new game. It won't work. What I want Scott and Mark to do is get all those things that were good about the 1980s and 1990s and re-use those skills in a new and creative way to give me a new product. And to learn from their mistakes and the bad things about the 1980s and 1990s, so that they can bring us something fresh.
 
"Sierra 2.0", if it is to exist, should be a very loose affiliation of like-minded individual game companies looking out for each other. This is already happening, as you can see the way they promoted each other's Kickstarters and new products as they come out. It's that sort of general feeling of an artistic community rather than an actual company that draws me in. Because it fits so well with the social media generation of indie development and sharing knowledge. No doubt we'll see Sierra-alum games being featured on the same community blogs and played by the same people. There's no need for a physical or virtual office and company controlling everything from the centre. We've moved on. It's one of the good things about the 2010s that should be harnessed.
 
That might all sound a bit pretentious, but I think it's a crucial distinction to make. Some things sucked about the 1990s. The corporate pressure, the technological constraints, shite graphics, the price of games, the length of games, the hair, dear God, the hair...
 
Sierra's games weren't good simply because those people were together in Oakhurst in the same building. It may at that time have been PART OF the reason for it, but I doubt the same would be true today. They were good for far more reasons, and it was to do with part of the culture of games at that time. By the same token, we need to be aware that everything bad about games in the 1990s was also part of that culture. So you can't simply replicate it and expect gold.
 
Take the good things of the 1990s. Mix them with the good things about today. And think about what was bad about the 1990s and bad about today - and how those things can be best avoided.
 
Replace "Sierra" with "America", and 1990s with 1790s, and send that to anyone you know in the Tea Party. It's effectively the same argument... :p #satire #OoohGetHer

Soylent Smoothee: Spit or swallow?

Yawn. I rate this 2/5 on the Trolling-scale. Should've spiced things up a little by adding "SpaceVenture sux! Who's this Chris Pope guy?" at the end there.
 

Ooh, can it be parser-driven, and can it be in the turboshaft, and can I write the responses?

Which reminds me of that wonderful poster that Troels delighted us with last year during the TGA-campaign. The one that said "Vote YES! on lobotomies for adventure game designers!"

Am I the only one who thinks this quote should be trademarked? It's a tarantinoesque catchphrase waiting to happen! This could be printed on t-shirts!
 
Despite that, sorry, don't feel I'm qualified to apply. I suck at everything (mostly at composing, idea helping and artist...ing).

Am I the only one who thinks this quote should be trademarked? It's a tarantinoesque catchphrase waiting to happen! This could be printed on t-shirts!
 
Despite that, sorry, don't feel I'm qualified to apply. I suck at everything (mostly at composing, idea helping and artist...ing).

Holy shit! The Troweman is at it again! Somebody fetch me some fucking popcorn! :D

Which reminds me of that wonderful poster that Troels delighted us with last year during the TGA-campaign. The one that said "Vote YES! on lobotomies for adventure game designers!"

If you want you can use this. I started doing this on this weekend and I've been thinking of re-creating the whole original SQ3 intro.

How could I possibly forget? This is all kinds of brilliant! :)
 
Nice to have it in higher resolution now. This goes straight into my SpaceVenture archival folder.

Ok :) I'm glad that I'm helping someone.

Oh, no, no. I'm glad you're having fun finding the secret content. There are a lot of newcomers to this board that may not know about those, so I'm glad you posted them.

Thank you for remembering that. :)
 

Which reminds me of that wonderful poster that Troels delighted us with last year during the TGA-campaign. The one that said "Vote YES! on lobotomies for adventure game designers!"

Did no one else read the Galactic Inquirer?
 

Josh Mandel is no Phony Guy From Andromeda. He's the honourary Third Guy in my opinion. He missed the mark a bit with SQ6, but he is a great game designer and a hilarious writer. SQ6 has some of the funniest lines in the whole series.
 
Josh has said that he feels very badly that SQ6 wasn't as well received by fans. He respected SQ very much and tried to do the series justice. He took it hard that it wasn't considered very SQ-like by fans and that some people hated it. He DID leave halfway through it and that hurt it quite a bit.
 
He said he wanted to bring it back to its roots, so he made Roger a janitor again. He also wanted it to have some of the non-linearness from SQ3. He tried hard to bring back the feel from SQ3. Even Fester Blatz returned. Odd that it turned out so different.

My favorite SQV-exchange would have to be:
 
“What set of happy circumstances left the Eureka Captain’s chair open for me?”
“Well, our last Captain blew himself out of the airlock...”
“That’s too bad.”
“If you say so, sir.”
 
And yes, I was referring to the time pod codes. Didn't know what the hell else to call these... things.

One of my favorite lines in SQV was the homage to Trouble With Tribbles. "But, captain. He called the ship a garbage scow." "Cliffy, it IS a garbage scow." Or something to that effect. That line cracks me up every time.

True. What copy protection doesn't?

Whatever they were, that copy protection sucked. ;)

I'll have to go against popular opinion and say that I disliked SQIV to such an extent I never even bothered to finish it. Storywise it's the best in the series, hands down! But in terms of gameplay, I found it an unnerving, endless barrage of dead-ends, trial & error and instant death for deviating even the slightest bit from the straight and narrow. Hell, even the copy protection manages to be bothersome to this day, thanks to those weird-ass hieroglyphs. I want to play these games for the fun, not for masochist kicks.
 

The Alien dead end in SQII is actually the only dead-end in a Sierra game which I thought was memorable and fun. It gave me a nice feeling of "Should've seen that coming." instead of the usual "You've got to be fucking kidding!".
 
Chalk me up as a big fan of SQV as well, some of the dialogue is just beautiful. Plus, the graduation theme played im my head each and every every time I received my annual report card and it said that I won't be held back a year.