Here's a little palette cleanser…
…after that Lord of Ultima news piece. It’s an interview with none other than Corey Cole, the husbandly half of the husband-and-wife duo behind the Hero’s Quest (later Quest for Glory) games that Sierra published back in the day.
Give it a read; there’s a lot of neat stuff in there. I was especially amused by Cole’s anecdote concerning a scene (the Saurus Repair Shop) that had to be cut from the second game due to exceeding their disk space allotment. Oh, the era when game developers had space constraints. It was a nobler time. (How many gigabytes of hard drive space did I need to install Mass Effect 2, again?)
And…I see I need to pick up the CD-ROM version of Quest for Glory 4 now. Voice acting? Narration? John Rhys-Davies?!?!? I had the diskette version. I feel cheated. Cheated, I say!
More and more developpers are actually getting space constraints. The DVD format is starting to show its limit and there’s actually been some exemple of consoles games who cut content because all couldn’t fit unto the 8GB of a DVD-Rom.
Of course business being as it is, cut contents gets back as DLCs now 😛
Sergorn: That’s a fair point about DVDs, which I hadn’t paused to consider. In the digital download space, there really isn’t such a thing as space constraints (at least not that I’ve noticed — 12.53 GB for Mass Effect 2 off of Impulse, for example).
Which, I suppose, explains its appeal to publishers and developers.
Ah… I love the Sierra games. Just about as much as Ultima in fact!
Quest for Glory was a brilliant series, and I really wish more people could experience it (not on any digital distributor, unlike most other Sierra adventure games).
QfG4 is probably my favourite (despite the amount of bugs it shipped with), and I was amazed when I latterly got the CD-ROM version.
Checked out AGDI’s remake of the second game?
I’ve tried QFG2’s remake but I got bored because of that big labyrinthine city. I understand this was the way it was in the original game, but I feel if there is one thing they should have changed: this is it.
AGDI’s work is awesome though – their King’s Quest II reimagination is nothing short of a masterpiece.
John Rhys-Davies?!?!? Awesome! That guy played Da Vinci in Star Trek: Voyager! And there is remake of first QFG on nwn engine. http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Modules.Detail&id=1750 Never played it though.
Yeah, he was awesome as Leonardo.
And thank you for finding that QFG remake…now I have ANOTHER game to play. Fortunately, I just reinstalled NWN, so I can have at this one.
I’m personally not a big fan of remakes using the NWN engine and less for Sierra games. Just defeats the purpose. The VGA version is just fine. Still well playable today.
Oh but the whole point of the Sierra remakes is to remake the old EGA parser based games into VGA versions with the mouse driven interface. So if you’d play the King’s Quest remake they’d all look and play the same (except for KQ4 altough there is one being done).
There hasn’t been any remake of a VGA sierra game for this very reason – they’re all very well playable today (and even moreso now that they are compatible with ScummVM :))
Exactly what I’m saying 🙂
Oh I thought you were saying there was no point of remaking Sierra games, because you thought the VGA games were the ones being remade ^^
I’m lost… hahaha. Monday morning and my brain hurts… hahah I think I worded that wrong above 🙂
What I was saying if there is no point remaking (an already made VGA version) to another platform or version…. (phew) 🙂
Well, there’s a second remake of King’s Quest 3 due out sometime soon (by AGD Interactive)…
I noticed that – I’m sure it will be great altough one might wonder the need of this considering Infamous Adventure released one a few years ago. Altough I heard AGD’s KQ3 is supposed to be more of a sequel to their KQ2’s reimagination.
Thanks god they come so many years appart though, had they come closer to each I think this would have lead to lot of flame wars and bitterness.
I’d love if down the road all the non-VGA Sierra games were eventually remade like this.
Now that is going to be good. I prefer the AGD remakes so far. QFG2 is amazing.
I’m hanging out for SQ3 VGA remake. Strange also why no-one has down Leisure Suit Larry 🙂 2 and 3 are my favorites.
I know Infamous Adventures is working on a SQ2 one. I think there was a SQ3 being worked on, but I’m not sure if it is still being worked on. Ditto for the KQ4 VGA remake. (Actually after looking a bit around the web seems there were a lot of these remake going around: Colonel’s Bequest, Police Quest II, Conquet for Camelot… but many have died over the years)
Regarding Leisure Suit Larry, I think the graphical style of the games might be a reason for the fact there hasn’t been any remake. Due its more cartoony approach, it’s probably more difficult to find artist that with regular Sierra art. I did remember seeing an updated LSL2 AGD remake though – it kept the same graphics as the original games, but translated it with the VGA point’n click interface.
Larry II and III don’t seem more normal. Did not like the way Al Lowe took Larry with the Cartoon approach. Would of been better to stick with the original look 🙂
Yeah originally Larry had a realistic look, but they switched with Larry 5. However since the Official LSL1 VGA remake took this same cartoony approach, an LSL2&3 remake would need to keep the same graphical style to be consistent.