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Sierra Adventure Game Compilations Coming Soon?
- Thread starter Illuminati
- Start date
PepsimanVsJoe
Member
xsarien said:
I thought it was entertaining. The trick is to get a bunch of electrical or masking tape and cover up all of the mentions of "King's Quest".
Mask of Eternity was a pretty cool game.
Joe Molotov
Member
godofcookery said:
OMG, Vivendi does your sucking known no bounds! I could do that myself. I guess now we know why Leisure Suit Larry 7 isn't included in the collection. Because Vivendi couldn't be bothered to add it, and just directly ported over the old compilation from 1994. There was a later compilation that included LSL7, but oh geez that came on 4 CDs. Let's cut corners and re-release the older 1-Disc, Pre-Windows 95 collection.
Joe Molotov
Member
Let us know if it comes bundled with DosBox, or if you have to download your own copy.
Tip of the hat? No sirs, wag of the finger. There are lazy ports, and then there are lazy ****ing ports.
All four collections found their way to my office this morning, proving - among many things - that The Sparks, NV Amazon facility is close enough to San Francisco that standard ground service will get to me in two days or so. I need to make a note to not renew my Amazon Prime subscription.
Some quick thoughts on the general presentation (e.g. packaging, included features) of these collections is in order. To put it mildly, "Don't strain yourself Vivendi, these games, along with LucasArts' offerings, only laid the foundation for graphical PC gaming as we know it." To say that these collections are "bare bones" would be a general slap in the face to skeletons everywhere, even the ones in your closet. Each box contains a single CD-ROM disc in a paper sleeve - the KQ set has two - and a leaflet entitled "Famous Jewish Sports Legends." No, I'm kidding. It's actually what amounts to a readme file with special installation and display instructions for the King's Quest set and a reminder to go to support.sierra.com and forums.vugames.com for support, not any forum or call center that might be mentioned in the games or their documentation. Why is it in EVERY box? It was probably cheaper to print four of the same message than one especially for KQ and three for everything else.
The one smart move on Vivendi's part was including PDFs of the game manuals, complete with the copy protection solutions. It's a shame that they didn't go through the effort of publishing a printed version like the previous collections did. Not that those were anything special, but I'm all about the tangible assets. What's obvious is that these are just scans of the previous collections' documentation.
What else? No, really, what else? These discs seem to be "Here are your games, now shut the hell up!" Coming up on nearly 20 years (or more) since these titles were originally released, it would've been great to do some proper extras. Interviews with the designers? Scans of original artwork? CD-Audio tracks of the game scores? None of that's here, and it's a good thing these are only $20 because I'd have a hard time justifying paying much more than that. The lack of any real effort shines especially hard on the Police Quest collection, where PQI and PQII aren't properly configured to use a sound board and instead revert to the Victrola of PC gaming, the venerable PC speaker. There is a solution to this problem, but 1) the misconfiguration shouldn't be there to begin with; 2) it's kind of obtuse. In addition, the profile for King's Quest VII isn't set for full-screen mode.
The games do run in XP thanks largely to DOSBox, not really any direct effort of Sierra and Vivendi themselves. What's stopping you from just running the games you have under the same environment? Well, nothing, really. The only benefit here is that it's a more seamless solution than running DOSBox with a shell (e.g., D-Fend) and setting all of the parameters manually. You also get documentation which you'd otherwise have to dig out of your attic or, worse, Google.
What gets me is the obvious meagerness of the packs. It's clear that those managing the project were either told to - or strived to - be as cheap as possible. There's no other reason why they crammed everything onto one CD with the exception of King's Quest and completely excised Larry 7 and King's Quest: Mask of Eternity. Furthermore, there's no reason for not including the original EGA version of the first of each series; they originally shipped on only a couple of low-density floppy disks and MAYBE took up about 2MB of space. The less-visible kick to the ol' bean machine is the misconfigured audio. While it's blatant on Police Quest I and Police Quest II, it's more subtle on other games; titles with General MIDI support are instead set to Adlib/Soundblaster with no installer to flip that setting. Instead you need to modify the resource.cfg files manually.
When all is said and done, making fans of these games wait a year since their initial listing on Amazon for what amounts to a less than enthusiastic effort on the part of the publisher is ridiculous. Not only are they "Just the games" that rely on free software available from dosbox.sourceforge.net to function, but as collections they're lacking. Previous issues of these same sets included trailers for the original, internal Sierra efforts at creating Space Quest 7, the first SWAT game (which carried the Police Quest brand) and printed documentation. The absence of Leisure Suit Larry 7 is also completely inexcusable as most fans will definitely notice its absence. But I suppose Sierra/Vivendi's stance is that those who have been chasing down copies of the original collections for over $100 on eBay should just be grateful that they got anything at all. I hope that any future installments, like Quest for Glory or Gabriel Knight, get substantially better treatment.
King's Quest Collection
King's Quest I (EGA Remake)
King's Quest II
King's Quest III
King's Quest IV
King's Quest V (CD-ROM)
King's Quest VI (CD-ROM)
King's Quest VII
Leisure Suit Larry Collection
Leisure Suit Larry I (VGA)
Leisure Suit Larry II
Leisure Suit Larry III
Leisure Suit Larry IV - Ha ha
Leisure Suit Larry V
Leisure Suit Larry VI (Diskette version) - Why, Sierra?
Police Quest Collection
Police Quest I (VGA)
Police Quest II
Police Quest III
Police Quest IV
Space Quest Collection
Space Quest I (VGA)
Space Quest II
Space Quest III
Space Quest IV (CD-ROM version)
Space Quest V
Space Quest VI (CD-ROM version)
How to enable General MIDI audio in supported games
1) Scan the directory, if genmidi.drv exists in the folder, the game supports it.
1')Copying the file into a folder that doesn't have it won't magically make that game support GM music.
2) Open the game's resource.cfg file in Notepad and make the following edit:
soundDrv = GENMIDI.DRV
Audio fix for Police Quest II
2) Open the game's resource.cfg file in Notepad and make the following edit:
soundDrv = ADL.DRV
6.8
All four collections found their way to my office this morning, proving - among many things - that The Sparks, NV Amazon facility is close enough to San Francisco that standard ground service will get to me in two days or so. I need to make a note to not renew my Amazon Prime subscription.
Some quick thoughts on the general presentation (e.g. packaging, included features) of these collections is in order. To put it mildly, "Don't strain yourself Vivendi, these games, along with LucasArts' offerings, only laid the foundation for graphical PC gaming as we know it." To say that these collections are "bare bones" would be a general slap in the face to skeletons everywhere, even the ones in your closet. Each box contains a single CD-ROM disc in a paper sleeve - the KQ set has two - and a leaflet entitled "Famous Jewish Sports Legends." No, I'm kidding. It's actually what amounts to a readme file with special installation and display instructions for the King's Quest set and a reminder to go to support.sierra.com and forums.vugames.com for support, not any forum or call center that might be mentioned in the games or their documentation. Why is it in EVERY box? It was probably cheaper to print four of the same message than one especially for KQ and three for everything else.
The one smart move on Vivendi's part was including PDFs of the game manuals, complete with the copy protection solutions. It's a shame that they didn't go through the effort of publishing a printed version like the previous collections did. Not that those were anything special, but I'm all about the tangible assets. What's obvious is that these are just scans of the previous collections' documentation.
What else? No, really, what else? These discs seem to be "Here are your games, now shut the hell up!" Coming up on nearly 20 years (or more) since these titles were originally released, it would've been great to do some proper extras. Interviews with the designers? Scans of original artwork? CD-Audio tracks of the game scores? None of that's here, and it's a good thing these are only $20 because I'd have a hard time justifying paying much more than that. The lack of any real effort shines especially hard on the Police Quest collection, where PQI and PQII aren't properly configured to use a sound board and instead revert to the Victrola of PC gaming, the venerable PC speaker. There is a solution to this problem, but 1) the misconfiguration shouldn't be there to begin with; 2) it's kind of obtuse. In addition, the profile for King's Quest VII isn't set for full-screen mode.
The games do run in XP thanks largely to DOSBox, not really any direct effort of Sierra and Vivendi themselves. What's stopping you from just running the games you have under the same environment? Well, nothing, really. The only benefit here is that it's a more seamless solution than running DOSBox with a shell (e.g., D-Fend) and setting all of the parameters manually. You also get documentation which you'd otherwise have to dig out of your attic or, worse, Google.
What gets me is the obvious meagerness of the packs. It's clear that those managing the project were either told to - or strived to - be as cheap as possible. There's no other reason why they crammed everything onto one CD with the exception of King's Quest and completely excised Larry 7 and King's Quest: Mask of Eternity. Furthermore, there's no reason for not including the original EGA version of the first of each series; they originally shipped on only a couple of low-density floppy disks and MAYBE took up about 2MB of space. The less-visible kick to the ol' bean machine is the misconfigured audio. While it's blatant on Police Quest I and Police Quest II, it's more subtle on other games; titles with General MIDI support are instead set to Adlib/Soundblaster with no installer to flip that setting. Instead you need to modify the resource.cfg files manually.
When all is said and done, making fans of these games wait a year since their initial listing on Amazon for what amounts to a less than enthusiastic effort on the part of the publisher is ridiculous. Not only are they "Just the games" that rely on free software available from dosbox.sourceforge.net to function, but as collections they're lacking. Previous issues of these same sets included trailers for the original, internal Sierra efforts at creating Space Quest 7, the first SWAT game (which carried the Police Quest brand) and printed documentation. The absence of Leisure Suit Larry 7 is also completely inexcusable as most fans will definitely notice its absence. But I suppose Sierra/Vivendi's stance is that those who have been chasing down copies of the original collections for over $100 on eBay should just be grateful that they got anything at all. I hope that any future installments, like Quest for Glory or Gabriel Knight, get substantially better treatment.
King's Quest Collection
King's Quest I (EGA Remake)
King's Quest II
King's Quest III
King's Quest IV
King's Quest V (CD-ROM)
King's Quest VI (CD-ROM)
King's Quest VII
Leisure Suit Larry Collection
Leisure Suit Larry I (VGA)
Leisure Suit Larry II
Leisure Suit Larry III
Leisure Suit Larry IV - Ha ha
Leisure Suit Larry V
Leisure Suit Larry VI (Diskette version) - Why, Sierra?
Police Quest Collection
Police Quest I (VGA)
Police Quest II
Police Quest III
Police Quest IV
Space Quest Collection
Space Quest I (VGA)
Space Quest II
Space Quest III
Space Quest IV (CD-ROM version)
Space Quest V
Space Quest VI (CD-ROM version)
How to enable General MIDI audio in supported games
1) Scan the directory, if genmidi.drv exists in the folder, the game supports it.
1')Copying the file into a folder that doesn't have it won't magically make that game support GM music.
2) Open the game's resource.cfg file in Notepad and make the following edit:
soundDrv = GENMIDI.DRV
Audio fix for Police Quest II
2) Open the game's resource.cfg file in Notepad and make the following edit:
soundDrv = ADL.DRV
Wasn't Larry 6 on CD the "talkie" version? I remember it being larger than my 350mb hdd at the time... I dunno how big though.
Still, for $20, I don't expect anything magical. Though, if this were an upcoming Wii VC release, you know people would be rolling around in their own feces over it. :\
I'm still gonna buy it, just because I don't have the originals any longer.
Still, for $20, I don't expect anything magical. Though, if this were an upcoming Wii VC release, you know people would be rolling around in their own feces over it. :\
I'm still gonna buy it, just because I don't have the originals any longer.
Joe Molotov
Member
bjork said:
Yeah, the talkie version was included on the newer collection (circa 2000) too, but as I said earlier, it looks like they just ported the old version of the LSL collection, presumably so they could cram it all on one CD.
For all the effort they put into this, it should have just been a free download off their website. Look at King's Quest 1-2-3+. Those games were made by amatuers and given away for free, and they took about a million times more effort than these lazy ports. Probably took less time to be released too. Vivendi's just trying to squeeze a little bit more blood out of Sierra's rotting corpse.
PepsimanVsJoe
Member
Yes there was a VGA remake of King's Quest 1. It was actually my first experience with the series and at the time I thought it was amazing.
I don't think it was a very popular remake though. In fact I think a ton of fans hated it..but eh well.
Lame compilations ftl but hell I'll get them anyway, they'll be nice for killing time between classes.
I don't think it was a very popular remake though. In fact I think a ton of fans hated it..but eh well.
Lame compilations ftl but hell I'll get them anyway, they'll be nice for killing time between classes.