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A copy of the On-Line Systems' 1981 Apple II game Softporn Adventure is about to sell on eBay, and you could still be the one to walk off with it! More »
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Some of the world's greatest paintings collide with some of the world's greatest adventure games in this collection by Aled Lewis. More »
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These days, if you're stuck in a game, you hit the internet. YouTube and GameFAQs are your best friends. Back in the 1990s, things weren't so simple! More »
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In the opening moments of 1999's Homeworld, you get to see the end of the world. Watch helplessly as an entire planet, and everybody on it, is burned to a cinder. More »
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There are few more storied franchises in adventure gaming than Sierra's Police Quest series, which in the late 80's and early 90's was home to some of the grittiest, most realistic and yet most rewarding games around. More »
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Even with a recent resurgence of sorts, the time when true adventure gaming was a blockbuster genre is well and truly past. Those interested in re-living that past, or in finding out what all the fuss was about, can check out Hardcore Gaming 101's Guide to Classic Graphic Adventures. More »
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Sarien.net is formerly the site where you could play, for free, classic Sierra games, such as Police Quest, in your browser. We say "formerly" because Activision owns that stuff now, and its lawyer-mans sent them a letter. More »
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Oh, wait, it was. Twice. OK, then, if it was an even older adventure game, maybe it would have looked like this! More »
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Kristoffer Zetterstrand's works take traditional painting and smash it head-first into things that aren't traditional painting. Often, that means video games. More »
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We've seen what Star Wars would look like as a classic Lucasarts adventure game, but artist Andy Rash's glorious pixel art looks so much like a classic Sierra adventure game that it's tough not to wonder what could have been. More »
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Before Lucasarts came along, the top adventure game minds in the world worked for a now-defunct publisher called Sierra. This coffee table book collects the art from those games, and I am now feeling very nostalgic. More »
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There's a big book coming out that's all about classic PC adventure games. Monkey Island, Police Quest, Zork, the works. More »
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It's not until you look at the games of the past that you realise how easy the games of today really are. More »
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As seen on I Heart Chaos NSFW. More »
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Alright Ashcraft. I'll see your Japanese schoolgirl drumming and raise you a one-man band, who is named after a classic 80's/90's adventure game series from Sierra. More »
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Sierra might have closed down, but the company's legacy lives on, as an agreement with parent company Activision brings classic titles Gabriel Knight and Arcanum to DRM-free PC game store Good Old Games. More »
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When Luis and Magaly decided to get married, they weren't thinking cake, slow dances and doves. They were thinking Roberta Williams, the Valley of Spielburg and Sonny Bonds. More »
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The grandfather of the physics-based puzzle genre has come home to roost, as co-creator Jeff Tunnell regains the rights to The Incredible Machine, repackaging and re-releasing the classic series on GoG.com. More »
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Valve and Activision are doing the legal two-step, with the former suing the latter over royalties from a 2002 lawsuit against Sierra. More »
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There once was a time, before closures, before Lucasarts, when the name "Sierra" meant premium PC adventure gaming. Those days are, sadly, long gone. But they will not be forgotten! More »
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No, 50 Cent: Blood On The Sand isn't dead, dead, dead. It's alive! The game, orphaned by Activision Blizzard, has indeed been picked up by publisher THQ, according to a rating by Australia's Office of Film and Literature Classification board. That's the part we did get right when we reexamined 50's fate. Honestly, though our interest in 50's music begins and ends at "In Da Club" we can't help but be warmed over by the ridiculousness of Blood On The Sand's debut trailer. It's brilliant. More »
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Now that Sierra has been swallowed by the maw of Actiblizzard, the great behemoth has spat out a few bones. More »
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Remember 50 Cent II, the sequel to discography-cum-video game 50-Cent: Bulletproof? The game that Sierra named 50-Cent: Blood on the Sand? The one that has a love-interest, slick graphics and tons of blood? More »
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We were as puzzled as anyone as to why Penny Arcade Expo attendees were being given lanyards advertising the currently in limbo Ghostbusters: The Game. Who would go to all the trouble of getting so many promotional items made up for a game that has no publisher? People from the past, that's who. According to Penny Arcade's Robert Khoo, speaking to Variety, Sierra had signed up to sponsor the lanyards way back in January, delivered the product in June, only to find out weeks before the show that the game was no longer a going concern as far as far as ActiBlizzard was concerned. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5045921&view=rss&microfeed=true Hmmm. I first see this news, I get excited. After all, Red Baron - despite being 18 years old - is still the best damn World War 1 game around. But then I start asking myself questions. Like, aren't Sierra dead? Wasn't the whole point of the original Red Baron the fact is was steeped in historical accuracy? Why is this now an arcade shooter for the PlayStation Network where 17 bullets cause a battleship to explode? More »
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Quest for Glory II is the greatest adventure game of all time. That's not opinion, either. It's fact. Science. Only problem is, the game's from 1990, so it's also a little...rough. No more! Thanks to the team at AGD (who have also done fantastic restorations of the first two Kings Quest games), the game's "quaint" old VGA graphics have been updated, the timing of the real-time puzzles have been made easier and dialogue is now taken care of via menus, instead of having to guess via text input. Oh, and it's 100% free. In other words, the greatest adventure game of all time just got greater. More »
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We've been a little nostalgic the past couple of weekends, which included a look back at Sierra's origins; now Adventure Classic Gaming has a look at hidden assets of classic Sierra games. Not the Easter Eggs, but the bits and pieces hidden in the asset files of games — things that will never appear in the games themselves and take some exploration to actually get to. These range from bits of dialogue to wacky animations to pencil sketches; the author takes a look at some of these hidden assets and the meaning behind them: More »
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I've been keeping my eye on the "Stephen M. Cabrinety Collection" blog, which is a blog corollary to part of Stanford University's archive of gaming-related materials — while there are only a handful of posts, there are some interesting looks back at some more obscure bits of gaming history. The latest is the first part of a look back at the origins of Sierra — back when it was 'On-Line Systems.' While Eric Kaltman notes that he didn't have any of the original titles physically on hand, he did have "the first issue of the "On-Line Letter", a newsletter celebrating the first anniversary of On-Line Systems." Included are plenty of high-res pictures, though not all the interesting stuff is included: More »
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Ah, Sierra. So, so, so many fond memories. King's Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Quest For Glory, Half-Life 1, Homeworld, SWAT...so many good games, so many good times. So it's crushing to see that, as the label prepares to fade into oblivion following the Blactivision merger, its last game is...less than memorable. Hitting the printers as the ink dried on the Activision-Vivendi merger was Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, making it most likely the last game to be sold under the Sierra brand name (at least until someone digs it up, Atari style). An awful game based on an awful movie. Shame, that. More »
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That's a question Edge are asking today, and it follows on from a string of questions people have been asking for at least 10-15 years. What was once a company renowned for their PC adventure games, and later as the publisher of stuff like Half-Life and SWAT, are now facing oblivion, with Activision displaying zero interest in maintaining the brand following their merger with Vivendi. Me, I say put it to rest, and it's a sentiment shared by company founder Ken Williams: More »
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This is downright odd. More »
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As a part of Activision's continuing offloading of Sierra properties, Ludlum Entertainment has required the rights to create games based off of the works of Robert Ludlum. These include the Bourne series and Covert One, both of which excited Crecente to no end when Vivendi first announced them back in 2005. Now three years and one measly game later the ball is back in Ludlum's court. More »
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Activision announced today that it would be taking a handful of titles formerly published by (and planned to be published by) Sierra and add them to its own product portfolio. Games in the Crash Bandicoot, Ice Age and Spyro the Dragon series will join the Activision family of published titles, with Prototype and an unnamed, unannounced fifth title to rest in the shade of the mega publisher's wing. More »
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One of the most unfortunate cancellations of Comic-Con 08 was the Ghostbusters: The Video Game panel, planned to feature actors Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson as well as reps from Sierra. While we were disheartened to learn of the nixing of that particular panel, we took comfort in the limited, but very awesome, showfloor demo of Ghostbusters: The Video Game. Based on our limited playtime, we're more interested than ever to get our hands on the final version, and not just for the stellar performance from the Ghostbusters booth babes. More »
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When yesterday over 92 percent Activision shareholders gave their thumbs-up to the company's pending merger with Vivendi, it was pretty much a done deal, and today Activision Blizzard is official. More »
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Ernie Hudson's doing the promotional tour thing for the upcoming multi-platform Ghostbusters game. And that means that we all get a chance to ask him incessantly geeky questions about the Ghostbusters films and learn things we never knew. Things like: More »
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Sunday night's pre-E3 Kotaku party is going to be a booze-fueled, feel-good adventure. None of that, however, will dull the pain of Brütal Legend's absence at E3, an absence confirmed by MTV Multiplayer today. Double Fine Productions frontman Tim Schafer confirmed the bad news earlier today and I'm just barely keeping it together. More »
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While the upcoming Ghostbusters game will star many of the real film’s principal characters – including, crucially, all four Ghostbusters, William Peck and the Stay Puft marshmallow man – not everyone thought signing on was a good idea. Sigourney Weaver, for one. And Rick Moranis is another. But why’d Rick say no? Not like he’s exactly busy at the moment. Sierra's Ben Borth: More »
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There's a nice look back on various forms of copy protection and games. If you make it, they will pirate it - and it's an entertaining look back at some of the ways companies have tried to outsmart the piraters, sometimes somewhat successfully and sometimes not at all. But is there ever going to be an end in sight?: More »
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While I was at Sierra's preview event today, I got to see the latest Bandicoot title, Crash: Mind Over Mutant for Wii - it's also hitting Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, DS and PSP in the fall. More »
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