Space Quest

[Amaris]

I beat Police Quest 1 (VGA remake) using a walkthrough, but I couldn't beat the original version. For some reason I couldn't figure out the right phrase to use in a part of the game and got frustrated and never went back.

I very nearly beat Police Quest 3, but died at one point and went to reload my save, but accidentally saved my game... on the freaking Game Over Screen!!! What game allows you to save your game on the game over screen, thus ruining your progress?

A Sierra game, that's what!

 

[Owain Taggart]

Ohh, that's gotta hurt. I don't remember any of their games letting you do that, but that'd be adding insult to injury.

 

[Aldo]

When you got a game over, you were always presented with three options: Restore, Restart, or, Quit. Easy enough, and seemingly no way to screw yourself over. Instead of choosing any of these three options (for reasons I am not aware of now) I went to the top and entered the screen where you can save or load games, in my haste to reload (I guess I really wanted to beat the game) I hit the save button instead. Thinking I was choosing my game to load it, I instead chose a spot to save it.

Thus, when I tried to reload the save it showed me the game over screen.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Ouch, man. Ouch! It reminds me of the times that I've mistakenly clicked on save instead of load merely because my mouse hand was being lazy and clicking on save instead and losing many hours of progress. But this is also why I never just use one save file anymore.

 

[USS Triumphant]

This is about Infocom games rather than Sierra ones, but I figured some of my fellow grognards in this thread might enjoy it anyway if youse guys haven't seen it before.

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[jgalley]

I LOVED SpaceQuest and other Sierra games. Their Football game was the best..I loved making my own plays and all. It was the football game going 3d that screwed things up. I remember it was so buggy that they actually recalled it instead of trying to patch it. It was that bad. I think that had something to do with the "downturn" you mention. I'm not sure but I know that recall had to hurt them pretty badly...may be a large part of what lead to them shutting down.

 

[Rincewiend]

You guys might want to check Steam, they got a whole bunch of them since this week...
There is even a Humble Bundle deal going on:

https://www.humblebundle.com/sierra-bundle

The Police Quest Collection, including PQ 1-4
Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father
The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery
Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura
Quest for Glory 1-5
Phantasmagoria
Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of Flesh
Caesar 3
Caesar 4

And 4 other more "recent" games: Timeshift, Shiftlings, Geometry Wars 3 and Velocity 2X

All for $15...

 

[Owain Taggart]

I think that had something to do with the "downturn" you mention. I'm not sure but I know that recall had to hurt them pretty badly...may be a large part of what lead to them shutting down.

Yeah, there was a massive firing around that time that people called Black Monday. And it was never quite able to recover from it. Overall, there were just a lot of factors that contributed to the downturn, leading it to become an empty shell.

In 2013, on my trip out west, we were on our way to Yosemite, drove through Oakhurst and had a flood of memories rush back to me as I recognized the old Sierra building (the one visited in SQ3?). It was unmistakably that very building, and I couldn't help but have a very wide grin on my face. It was now being used as a medical clinic, according to Google. But wow, that was a nice experience of having played their games and being in the area and recognizing their iconic building.

 

[Aldo]

You guys might want to check Steam, they got a whole bunch of them since this week...
There is even a Humble Bundle deal going on:

https://www.humblebundle.com/sierra-bundle

The Police Quest Collection, including PQ 1-4
Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father
The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery
Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura
Quest for Glory 1-5
Phantasmagoria
Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of Flesh
Caesar 3
Caesar 4

And 4 other more "recent" games: Timeshift, Shiftlings, Geometry Wars 3 and Velocity 2X

All for $15...

Just a little help, if you decide to get any of the older Sierra game collections, you'll have to download some extra patches and stuff to get them to work on modern machines. It's by no means a hassle, but it is a little extra.

 

[Mr Soak]

They'll be the GOG versions basically, with DOSBox included, already optimised for modern systems.

 

[JRoss]

Always meant to get into the game. I used to play Quest for Glory games all the time. Is Space Quest available anywhere? GOG maybe?

 

[John Clark]

Always meant to get into the game. I used to play Quest for Glory games all the time. Is Space Quest available anywhere? GOG maybe?

Yep. From what I can see on GOG, 1, 2 & 3 are available in one pack. 4, 5 & 6 in the other pack. (Here, they're currently £7.79 per pack or £11.58 for both)

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Don't know if the GOG versions are better but you can get the Space Quest collection from the bundle for a dollar.

 

[Aldo]

They'll be the GOG versions basically, with DOSBox included, already optimised for modern systems.

Really? Steam doesn't do that. If you get them off of Steam you are required to install a few extra things to get them to run.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Another tidbit: the Steam collection includes the VGA remake of Space Quest I but the GOG versions do not.

Also, some of the game will run under SCUMMVM so that could be an alternative to making them work under DOS(Box).