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Lucasarts vs SIERRA: Who made the best Adventures?

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rtrooney - 21 August 2020 09:52 PM

All the other dead ends, per those same people, were intentional. And, like death, were intended to extend game play. This was in the day when length of game equated with value when a game might easily sell for $50US or more.

The actual result of that design decision was to encourage rampant piracy. Very few people were willing to spend the equivalent of over $100 in today’s money to be treated like that. They copied that floppy instead.

     

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Not to mention - what kid had that kind of money. For 99% of kids it would be a choice between piracy and nothing at all.

     
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did you know that you can die of embarrassment in PQIII, true!

Just remember to ‘save early, save often’ and save your ass or forget about it, seriously we can not be complaining about a 30-40 years old gig.

     
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Vehelon - 21 August 2020 10:48 PM

Not to mention - what kid had that kind of money. For 99% of kids it would be a choice between piracy and nothing at all.

Kids weren’t the target demographic for adventure games. Their parents were - the ones that actually had the money for a computer back in those days.

     

The truth can’t hurt you, it’s just like the dark: it scares you witless but in time you see things clear and stark. - Elvis Costello
Maybe this time I can be strong, but since I know who I am, I’m probably wrong. Maybe this time I can go far, but thinking about where I’ve been ain’t helping me start. - Michael Kiwanuka

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D - 21 August 2020 10:30 PM

Seeing as it was the January issue, it likely would have been written in December of 1980. As you can see, resurrection fallacy was already controversial and considered to be bad design during the earliest years of the genre.

Considered to be bad design by Scott Adams. I don’t see any evidence that many other game designers shared his opinion at the time.

Non-sequitur: I didn’t like his games at all, or rather the few I played. Boring in the extreme, uninteresting writing, and those graphics did nothing for me.

     

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TimovieMan - 22 August 2020 04:10 AM
Vehelon - 21 August 2020 10:48 PM

Not to mention - what kid had that kind of money. For 99% of kids it would be a choice between piracy and nothing at all.

Kids weren’t the target demographic for adventure games. Their parents were - the ones that actually had the money for a computer back in those days.

My old man used to get me stacks of games. Funny thing is, 99% of the games he got me were pirated Crazy

     
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TimovieMan - 22 August 2020 04:10 AM
Vehelon - 21 August 2020 10:48 PM

Not to mention - what kid had that kind of money. For 99% of kids it would be a choice between piracy and nothing at all.

Kids weren’t the target demographic for adventure games. Their parents were - the ones that actually had the money for a computer back in those days.

But there were 8-bit computers that kids had, and those computers had adventure games as well - even some random picks from Sierra and LucasArts catalogue.


Going deeper into that topic, there were a good number of cheaper adventure games that were released only on C64, some of them pretty good actually.

I have covered few of them on this forum in another thread (I forget which one it was at the moment), but here are links to my reviews about those by far and large forgotten, and somewhat obscure titles:

The Detective Game
http://www.adventuredoor.net/reviews/detective-game/

Drak
http://www.adventuredoor.net/reviews/drak/

Grand Larceny
http://www.adventuredoor.net/reviews/grand-larceny/

Zim Sala Bim
http://www.adventuredoor.net/reviews/zim-sala-bim/


Not only C64, but other 8-bit computers had some unique titles as well. I am trying to check some out in the near future, but I need to get familiar with how those emulators work and all that. I was also doing some checking into Amiga adventures, but had huge emulator issues, so I had to put that on hold for a while.

     
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Lucasarts made the best modern adventures.They techically pushed boundaries and create revolutionary achievements in adventure gaming, for Sierra,they just tried.

     

“Going on means going far - Going far means returning”

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I’ve been stalling on answering the main question of this thread because I wanted to do a really thorough analysis of it, but it’s become obvious that I’m simply not motivated enough to do so at this time. As such, I’m just going to get to the point and spit out your typical half-assed forum opinion on the matter, focusing entirely on the subjective.

I think the easiest way for me to arrive at an answer to this question is to apply the trolley problem to it. If my collection of Sierra games are on one track and my collection of LucasArts games are on the other and I have to chose which games are going to die, to never be played again, who do I choose?

The answer is LucasArts. To be clear, since I’ve reversed the question of this thread, I am saying that I prefer Sierra over LucasArts.

Why? For the same reason I’d rather watch Army of Darkness than The Shawshank Redemption and for the same reason I find the The X-Files far more enjoyable than Breaking Bad. I, quite simply, have bad taste. Tongue

LucasArts games for the most part are kind of like a Pixar movie. They’re well written, well designed games that are enjoyable for the whole family. That’s great and all, but I’m more of a Clockwork Orange kind of guy. I’m more interested in horror, sex, and bits of the old ultraviolence; areas that LucasArts didn’t really go to. Sierra gave me that in droves.

As far as horror they had Gabriel Knight 1-3, Shivers 1-2, Phantasmagoria 1-2, and to some degree Quest for Glory 4. Even the Police Quest games lightly dabbled in it with the Satanic cult of PQ3 and the serial killer of PQ4. Not to mention all the gruesome deaths that occur in the majority of their games, horror themes or not. They had the Larry games for sex comedy, and they catered to my love of 1st person games to some degree as well. 

The fact of the matter is that Sierra was the king of the type of low-brow, trashy entertainment I like. The acting was often bad, the writing was often poor, and the design ranged from mediocre at best to outright terrible. I don’t like any of those problems and will bitch about the last one to no end, but I’d rather have a game that contains them than no games at all that cater to my particular thematic tastes.

So there you have it. I imagine some of you are surprised because I’ve recently distracted you with my hatred of certain design choices that Sierra is famous for, but if you know my history on this forum, then the above should make perfect sense. I am, after all, the guy who dedicated an entire month of my year doing Scene of the Day to NSFW posts that I titled “Goregasm”. Just thinking about that tempts me to do a sequel…

     
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That’s a good point D. Let’s not forget that with Lucasarts you’re getting 100% George Lucas, which could be nauseating if those were the only games you could play. Imagine spending all your time in George’s head, and Ewoks running around in your dreams…

     

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