Play Sierra On-Line games in your browser (with added multiplayer)

http://sarien.net/

by jeff18 • 17 years ago

46 30 17 years ago

sarien.net

cedsav• 17 years ago

I still remember having to look into a French-English dictionary to find the right word for 'spacesuit'...

Old games are like legos, less sophistication = more imagination.

modoc2• 17 years ago

I HATE how hard it is to find Legos that aren't just part of a kit that builds ONE thing and has step by step instructions.

My nephew has several of these, but I think they're such a waste compared to the old days where you had a bucket of blocks, and you built whatever you wanted. I also have fond memories of Capsela, Constructs, and old Erector Sets.

jswinghammer• 17 years ago

I have the same reaction whenever I go to the Lego store. I think the stuff looks great but I wonder if I'll be able to find sets that can do anything for my daughter when she's old enough to not eat them.

rkowalick• 17 years ago

The buckets of basic blocks can still be found in quite a lot of places. Sam's Club, Walmart, etc. around where I live still stock pretty sizable buckets.

wmf• 17 years ago

Counterpoint from a few days ago: http://www.quietbabylon.com/2009/there-is-no-single-use-lego...

pavlov• 17 years ago

I still remember having to look into a French-English dictionary to find the right word for 'spacesuit'...

I had the same experience playing Space Quest I as an 8-year-old kid with my friend. Except that it didn't occur to us to look up words in a dictionary; instead we kept calling an older friend who actually knew English and could tell us the magic incantations we needed to type to get somewhere in the game.

I'll never forget that you need to "fasten seatbelt" before launching the escape pod.

bd• 17 years ago

Oh memories. It was not just about English - even if you knew what to do, you had to use the exact phrase game creators intended.

It could become very frustrating, especially as in those days you couldn't just go to web and find the walkthrough.

I remember being stuck on the top of volcano in Larry 2, trying to create a bomb to get inside:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QQRuRiPp6I#t=50s

Sometimes, the only option was to search through the game resource files, looking for strings that could be used.

gurraman• 17 years ago

That's exactly how i feel about EverQuest. I have yet to find a game that I like even half as much. The unrealistic graphics really lets your imagination fill in the gaps. This becomes increasingly hard with more realistic physics/models/movement as you start concerning yourself with flaws only in the details.

jcw• 17 years ago

I feel the same way. Too bad no company in their right mind would release a game with intentionally outdated graphics and physics. Imagine the public outcry. Maybe the current game-playing mainstream is so devoid of imagination that they're unable to play games that leave things to it.

enki• 17 years ago

ha, i remember learning english with SQ1 and a dictionary :p

javery• 17 years ago

No Quest for Glory (aka Hero's Quest) :(

timwiseman2• 17 years ago

I was a huge fan of that entire series (though 4 was kind of buggy).

It is hard to find games in that same vein anymore. Planescape:Torment and KOTOR came close, but even those are several years old now.

Gormo3• 17 years ago

Torment is definitely in my top 5 games of all time. Hard to believe it's been out for ten years.

If you haven't played it, I highly recommend "Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura", developed by Troika and published by Sierra in 2001. It's very similar in depth and mechanics to Torment, Fallout, and the other Black Isle RPGs.

percept• 17 years ago

Do you guys already know about this?

http://www.infamous-adventures.com/index.php?page=projects

Still not QFG, I know, just an FYI.

gamerates• 17 years ago

If you are looking for a great QFG remake: http://www.agdinteractive.com/games/games.html

The KQII remake (new animation/storyboard, new story, voice over pack) is probably one of my favorite games of all time.

Gormo3• 17 years ago

This site only offers games released under Sierra's older game interpreter (AGI).

The games from about 1989 onward, including QfG, used a different interpreter (SCI, which was very advanced for its time: an object-oriented VM platform with a complete GUI toolkit, running on top of vanilla DOS, years before Windows 3.0).

The SCI games can be played under ScummVM or DosBox, if you have the original binaries.

rikthevik• 17 years ago

A noble effort, but I had huge stability problems. Saving and loading are really cumbersome and in those games you'll be doing both of those a lot. :(

_phred• 17 years ago

Heck yeah, this reminds me why Space Quest's subtitle should be, "you're gonna die." There are so many horrible ways to die in the SQ games...

Unfortunately, it appears that inventory disappears on restore from saved game, and there's also a lot that can be learned from the interpreter's command completion menu. A galaxy away from playing SQ1 on 5 1/4" floppies, but still: bravo! A noble effort, and I'm looking forward to playing with this some more.

pierrefar• 17 years ago

From the about page: "I sincerely hope that Activision Blizzard can appreciate this tribute to these game franchises (as their original creators such as Al Lowe do), and not ask me to close down the site due to copyright issues."

I hope so too, but somehow I think his wish is not going to be granted...

patio11• 17 years ago

All of these games are being actively sold by the people who, you know, actually purchased the right to sell them.

http://www.amazon.com/VIVENDI-JEUX-PC-72465-Collection/dp/B0...

There is no "I really liked this when I was younger!" exception to copyright.

rms• 17 years ago

It's not a legal exception, but one of the problems with copyright is that the illegal solution is often much more convenient. And in this case outright superior with the addition of multiplayer.

btilly2• 17 years ago

True. But historically things entered the public domain within people's lives, which amounted to the same thing.

Under the laws before Disney began rewriting them, the copyright on many of my childhood nostalgia items would be expired, or close to it. Until 1909 the law was a 14 year period with an optional 14 year extension. Until 1976 the law was a 28 year copyright, with an optional 28 year extension.

Since 1976 the requirement in the US Constitution that copyright be "for limited terms" has been circumvented. Literally nothing new has entered the public domain, and much has been removed from it. I'm 40. Until last year there was literally nothing that had entered the public domain in my lifetime that had not been removed from it. Somewhere between now and 1923 I fully expect everything that has reentered the public domain in my lifetime to be removed from the public domain again.

People no longer have the experience of things entering the public domain. People have lost track of the understanding that there is supposed to be such a thing, let alone why it is important. I'm firmly in the minority that is both aware and thinks that it is a travesty.

jmtame• 17 years ago

Ultima would be a good game to multiplay. Black Gate in particular.

Gormo3• 17 years ago

For those interested in indulging in some Sierra nostalgia:

SierraGamers (http://www.sierragamers.com) is a lively forum maintained by Ken Williams, original founder of Sierra.

Quest Studios (http://www.queststudios.com) is a great site dedicated to the music of classic Sierra games, and also has a pretty good forum.

ImagiNation Revival (http://innrevival.googlepages.com) is a reimplementation of the ImagiNation service, which can be used with the original INN client (under DosBox with the serial port mapped to telnet).

And since this is Hacker News, The Ultimate AGI & SCI Web Site (http://agisci.classicgaming.gamespy.com) is a site dedicated to reverse engineering the old Sierra game engines. It's relatively old, but contains, among other things, IDEs for developing games that run under Sierra's AGI and SCI interpreters.

bravura• 17 years ago

Every time I type "inventory", I end up at the home screen in Leisure Suit Larry.

Play Sierra On-Line games in your browser (with added multiplayer)

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