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#166985 - 23/06/2003 13:55 Re: P800 Review [Re: wfaulk]
BartDG
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/05/2001
Posts: 2616
Loc: Bruges, Belgium
That sounds familiar. I'm still racking my brains trying to remember that first CDROM game. I can see the ads for it in my head. Damn you.

Take your time, no rush

I googled a bit for this one. Turns out it was also a project of Roberta Williams.

King's Quest V - Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder changed the graphical adventure game in a major way. Although criticized by old adventure game fans who claimed the removal of the parser interface "dumbed down" the game, this new interface prevailed and became the new standard for adventure games. The gameplay of King's Quest V had some flaws, but with its hand-drawn 256-color graphics King's Quest V looked far better than any competing game on the market. It was the first Sierra game to sell more than 500,000 copies and it won several awards.

Constantly thriving to lead the way in utilizing the latest technology, Sierra decided to produce the first game ever on CD-ROM, supporting the Microsoft Windows multimedia features. This game was to be Mixed-Up Mother Goose, in an enhanced version with 256 colors and real speech instead of text. The voices in the game were performed by Sierra employees, including Roberta Williams herself. Due to little or no acting experience the end result didn't sound very professional, but it did the job. The game was a technological nightmare to complete, but its release in 1990 earned it the Best Early Education Award from the Software Publishers Association. Sierra went on to release an enhanced multimedia version of King's Quest V on CD too.

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#166986 - 23/06/2003 13:55 Re: P800 Review [Re: tonyc]
wfaulk
carpal tunnel

Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
Incidentally, did Roberta Williams back over your puppy or something? This seems to be less about the games and more about the author.
Nah, but she did take a bunch of my money as a kid promising fun games and never delivering. She also has a huge ego about her ``excellent'' games which bothers me a lot. Other folks made bad games now and then, but I can't think of a single games she made that wasn't, IMO, lousy. She's just my prime example of poor adventure gaming, and the ego part just pushes it over the top.
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#166987 - 23/06/2003 14:03 Re: P800 Review [Re: wfaulk]
tonyc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 27/06/1999
Posts: 7058
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
Fair enough. I guess I never followed the gaming press closely enough to notice her ego. Of Roberta's games, I've only played KQ I-IV and The Colonel's Bequest to any great degree, and thought that they were on average no better or worse than the rest of the Sierra lineup of that time.
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#166988 - 23/06/2003 14:03 Re: P800 Review [Re: BartDG]
JeffS
carpal tunnel

Registered: 14/01/2002
Posts: 2858
Loc: Atlanta, GA
Although criticized by old adventure game fans who claimed the removal of the parser interface "dumbed down" the game, this new interface prevailed and became the new standard for adventure games.
It was the first Sierra game to sell more than 500,000 copies and it won several awards.
And so quality gaming (IMO) lost out to survival of the fittest.
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Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings; they did it by killing all those who opposed them.

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#166989 - 23/06/2003 14:06 Re: P800 Review [Re: JeffS]
tonyc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 27/06/1999
Posts: 7058
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
And so quality gaming (IMO) lost out to survival of the fittest.
Quality pales in comparison to the almighty dollar? Say it ain't so!
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#166990 - 23/06/2003 14:43 Re: P800 Review [Re: BartDG]
Dignan
carpal tunnel

Registered: 08/03/2000
Posts: 12318
Loc: Sterling, VA
Here's another Williams bio. For some reason or another, I enjoyed the one Quest for Glory game that I played. I think it was the 3rd one. It was pretty interesting.
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#166991 - 23/06/2003 16:21 Re: P800 Review [Re: tonyc]
tman
carpal tunnel

Registered: 24/12/2001
Posts: 5528
Hmm... Probably not a good idea to admit this but I actually quite liked the mouse interface adventure games...
I still played all of the old text parser graphical/text ones as well but every so often I would get stuck even though I knew exactly what it wanted me to do. I just couldn't get the exact command word or wording right for it to do it.
Weird how before you couldn't get anything but adventure games but now it's all sports sims and FPS style games.

I really liked Monkey Island 1 to 3 and the Indy games. Wasn't that keen on Monkey Island 4 because the 3D system annoyed me. I still haven't actually completed it even though I bought it.

- Trevor

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#166992 - 23/06/2003 17:17 Re: P800 Review [Re: tman]
wfaulk
carpal tunnel

Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
every so often I would get stuck even though I knew exactly what it wanted me to do
That was a problem every once in a while on an Infocom game. I usually considered those to be design flaws. The point of the game is not to argue with the command parser.

One I remember in particular had to do with playing a life-size game of chess. Most of the pieces were easy to move, but you had to figure out just the right syntax for the knights. It wasn't "n.n.e", but "n then n then e". Very annoying.
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