Re: [SWCollect] Heads Up
C.E. Forman schrieb: Hey gang, Wanted to warn everyone here. If you've noticed the Infocom T-shirts being sold on eBay by islandseven, don't bid on them. They're not originals, and the seller has been less than forthcoming about that fact. For that matter, don't buy anything from this guy. He's a total nut-job and has no respect for hobbyists like us. Oh yes, I noticed them. IIRC they went unsold. Most collectors probably and luckily can identify what they can get done at every other copyshop around the corner. BTW, did you guys notice that Leather Goddesses shirt as well? I was tempted on that one, but wasn't sure where it came from and it also had a nasty stain. But was it authentic, perhaps coming from a NZT contest? Shoppe column coming soon, with the full details. I've received threatening e-mails and phone messages over this one, and may get my eBay account temporarily suspended, so you KNOW it's gonna be good! B-) Uh, what have you done now? :-) But seriously, what did you do? When I emailed ebay about that counterfeit Infocom Collection while ago, they told me to contact the copyright holder and took no action. The copyright holder, translate Activision, never bothered to answer my mail (and it took me twenty minutes to find a suitable email address on their site). Marco -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
Re: [SWCollect] Some people push it...
C.E. Forman schrieb: Yeah, I believe the QFG Anthology was a Europe-only release, so it's harder to come by. (At least, I've only ever seen it in a European box - multiple languages in the back description manuals.) A couple of months ago I came by a toystore and just because I like going into toystores I went in. On a leftover table I found three QFG anthologies and thirteen Space Quest collections, shrinkwrapped and for about $1.50 each. Now go and envy me :-) Marco -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
Re: [SWCollect] King's Quest 1
Jim Leonard schrieb: I wouldn't call that 3D -- it's interactive fiction with graphics drawn in a 3D perspective. To contrast, the Quest games let you move something in front of or behind another on-screen object, so that qualifies more as 3D than Mystery House. I remember that back in those days there were just two distinctions for adventure games: text adventures and graphical adventures. The first, of course, the likes of Zork, etc., the latter anything that came with graphics, like Magnetic Scrolls, Telarium/Trillium and so on. I'd put Mystery House in the second category. The earliest games I can remember that today would fit the description of a 3D adventure because of their gameplay and use of 3D graphics in the current definition of the term are Mercenary from Novagen and Cholo from Firebird. Was there ever a special subcategory named to classify the later Sierra and Lucasfilm adventures? Marco -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
[SWCollect] Not Fair
Remember not too long ago I mentioned Bud Tucker in Double Trouble as a particularly rare and valuable game? Well some guy on ebay listed it among a bunch of different other auctions he had up. I bid the opening bid of 2 pounds. Nobody bid on it for a few days, then today I got a bid cancellation notice. Check this out: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemitem=3001627869 This is not the first time this has happened to me. I'm extremely pissed. What, if anything, can I do about it? I know, probably nothing, right? Stuart -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
Re: [SWCollect] King's Quest 1
Marco Thorek wrote: Was there ever a special subcategory named to classify the later Sierra and Lucasfilm adventures? At MobyGames we go over this every so often; people keep wanting to somehow *define* the words adventure game to mean Sierra games (the Quest games, etc.) Others want to actually create a new genre specifically for Sierra-like games. As official taxonomer for MobyGames, they will forever remain in our system as what they really are: Interactive Fiction with Graphics. This puts them in the same category as Mask of the Sun, Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur, etc. Because when you get down to it, all of the games Sierra put out from 1984 to 1991 that required text input are exactly that -- interactive fiction with graphics. The text parser may be bad, but it's still a parser and still required to complete the game. Entrance into a new room/area doesn't always print out a text description, but you do get text updates of events/locations/dialogue. So it's a gimmicky variant. -- Jim Leonard ([EMAIL PROTECTED])http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
Re: [SWCollect] King's Quest 1
Feldhamer, Stuart wrote: First of all, there was the novelty. At first it was pretty cool to be able to see your character on the screen. That is 90% of it right there. I can't see any other reason. Second, the animations. Even in their first game, KQ1, Sierra animated stuff like swimming. In later games, when you try to perform an action, you can actually see yourself doing it. Contrast this with seeing a picture of a snake in front of you and typing kill snake with rock and then the game responds with The snake is dead, and it just disappears from the screen. From a puzzle perspective this is fine, but from an entertainment perspective, I like being able to see what the character is doing. But the animations were incredibly crude because the sprites were inexplicably limited to half-horizontal-resolution sprites! And so were the backgrounds! I originally thought this would be for a speed increase or storage requirement decrease -- but on closer examination, the text boxes that pop up show that the game is running in 320x200, which is not half-horiz-res. And since the game backgrounds were all vector graphics, it would not have taken up that much more space to hold 320x200 coordinates. It drove me nuts to see, game after game, graphics created and displayed at 160x200 running in a 320x200 graphics mode! I swear, if I ever get in contact with Jeff Stephenson I am going to throttle that guy :-) I would LOVE to ask him why he designed the entire thing in low-res when all the output devices were regular res. Third, the action sequences. OK, I didn't actually like this, but the addition of the 3D movement allowed Sierra to put in such challenging tasks as making sure you didn't fall off the bridge into the moat, or running away from the dwarf. This was much much more of a hinderance than providing any actual benefit. Like climbing the beanstalk/walking up the stairs to the ogre -- remember how many times you had to go over that sequence over and over before you got it right? You had about 12 pixels leeway before the game was over. Which tree do you mean, the 1st tree, the 2nd tree, the 3rd tree, the 4th treeetc. I have never encountered that, but then again I've only played about 7 IF games to completion. Still, I find it hard to believe that the creators of the game would allow something like that to get in the way of playing. OK, maybe not such a great example. But when I played Kings Quest 2 for the 1st time (the 1st Kings Quest I played), I was always typing LOOK DOWN. This actually gave logical responses based upon where on the screen you were standing. So it might say You see nothing of note or You see a hollow stump. I found that cool also. In general, I think they did a fairly good job with the system. But that was so much extra effort! Walk, type, walk, type, walk, type... I will admit though, that it's more fun to click on a spot on the screen with the mouse and have the character move there automatically (and start to interact with something), than to first have to move the character with the arrow keys and then type something in. Sierra eventually realized that too. So maybe its original AGI system was ahead of its time, waiting for mice to become popular. Based on the 160x200 argument, I am having a hard time believing it was ahead of it's time. :-) And vector graphics were the *only* game in town for IF+G games until about 1986. -- Jim Leonard ([EMAIL PROTECTED])http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
Re: [SWCollect] King's Quest 1
Hugh Falk wrote: Sure, I wouldn't call it 3D either, but I would call it quasi-3D, which is why I asked for a definition (since the default definition would be almost but not quite 3D). One could argue that true 3D is not possible on a 2D monitor. One could argue the game wasn't 3D at all. :) Because it wasn't. You were limited to 2 degrees of movement, X and Y. The illusion of 3D can be attributed to the background graphics you were walking on and sprites obscuring your screen. But there was nothing 3D about them. While I'm on the topic, I'll assert that Atari's arcade version of Night Driver was the first ever quasi-3D videogame (released in October 1976). It was the first to approximate a 3D perspective. Unless someone comes up with a better example, I agree. -- Jim Leonard ([EMAIL PROTECTED])http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
