Re: "Sierra made the games of my childhood. Are they still fun to play?"

On Thu, 22 May 2025 17:30:30 -0000 (UTC), ant@zimage.comANT (Ant)
wrote:

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.adventure Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com> wrote:

On Wed, 21 May 2025 11:35:15 -0500, Praetor Mandrake
<horchata12839@gmail.com> wrote:

>

I lost interest in adventure games because Sierra put in a quest where
you had to pick up acorns and had to be on the exact pixel of the acorn
to get it.  It was misguided.

>

Your post reminded me of both the beanstalk you need to climb in
King's Quest and the tongue you needed to climb to get out of the
whale in King's Quest 4. In both instances, you need to click on the
right spot or you fall down and have to start over.

>

Save early. Save often.

>
See, I hate that.

<ramble mode engaged>

To be fair, you weren't the only one. Even in Sierra's heyday, this
was a common complaint with their games. It is one of the reasons its
competitors -- games like "Myst", or "The 7th Guest" or "The Secret of
Monkey Island" resonated so well with players. It was a more fair
experience, and one that relied more on intellect than pixel-perfect
mouse-clicks.

I don't hold this against Sierra, though. At the time, games were
expected to be antagonistically difficult, partly because PC games
were an offshoot of the arcades, and partly to extend a game's life
span. The entire genre descended from Infocom-style puzzlers, which
purposefully obfuscated the solutions, and the expectation was that
graphical adventures to do the same. Some people actually complained
about how easy and quick-to-finish games like "Loom" were. And Sierra
did adjust to the changing mood; their games started to give more
warnings about how certain actions might lead to death, and were
generally more lenient. Kings Quest VI, for instance, rather than lock
you out of winning entirely, shunted you to less-favorable victory
paths.

Sierra was also caught in a bit of a bind, since by the time it became
obvious how audience tastes had changed, they had made a name for
themselves with their brutal difficulty. Stray to far from that style
and fans abandoned them; stick too it too closely and they couldn't
attract new players. It was a bit of a Catch-22 for the company.

And add to all that the changing technology that allowed even the
most-action packed games to start adding the sort of rich characters,
story, world-building and puzzles that once were limited to adventure
games, and its no wonder the genre started to struggle.

I loved the adventure games of yesteryear, and I can still appreciate
them for what they were today. I just don't think they hold much
appeal to modern gamers. They're out of touch with current
expectations of what games should be like.

</ramble>