sierra-online posts

King's Quest, one of the most popular and revered fantasy adventure game series of all time, will soon get an official revival courtesy of Telltale Games. As reported by our sister site Joystiq, Telltale has announced it has gotten the rights to create new episodic games based on the property. More details on Telltale's plans are due to be revealed at E3 in early June.

The King's Quest series started at Sierra Online and spanned eight games (not including spin-offs) from 1984 to 1998. All of the games were designed by Sierra Online co-founder Roberta Williams. Currently the rights to the King's Quest series are owned by Activision. It's currently unknown if Williams will be participating in this new revival.

In 2010, the development team Phoenix Online Studios started releasing their own free episodic continuation of the King's Quest series, The Silver Lining, after receiving permission by Activision to do so. The third episode in the five chapter series was released on Thursday.

Earlier week we reported that Sarien.net, a web site that offered free browser-based versions of classic Sierra Online adventure games, was shut down after nearly two years after those game's current IP owners Activision sent a "cease and desist" order to the owner of the site, Martin Kool. Now Kool has posted up word that most of those games will be coming back to the site after a deal was arranged between Kool and Activision.

In short Sarien.net will be allowed to offer up HTML5-based versions of the Sierra Online games that Activision currently owns with links to purchase the downloadable PC games via Steam and other outlets provided on the site as well. The only games that won't be a part of the deal, at least at the moment, is the Leisure Suit Larry games as Activision sold the rights to that franchise to Codemasters. Kool has already sent a request to Codemasters to arrange for a similar deal but so far there's been no response. There's no word on when exactly the games will be back online at Sarien.net.

In April 2009 we reported on a web site called Sarien.net which offered users free versions of classic Sierra Online adventure games to play via a web browser. The site also allowed people to see and chat with other players while they played the game. At the time we wondered if Activision Blizzard, who now own the rights to these games, would shut the site down.

Well it took longer than we thought, but this week, the operators of Sarien.net got the dreaded letter from Activision Blizzard's lawyers, asking them to "immediately cease any further distribution or exploitation of the Sierra Games on your Website". While the company has in the past allowed some of these kinds of free fan projects to go forward (The Silver Lining continuation of the King's Quest game series comes to mind) not every project will get the owner's seal of approval.

The King's Quest adventure game series continues to inspire its many fans to create projects related to the games. We've reported on the fan-created continuation of the game series with The Silver Lining. Now another fan development team, AGD Interactive, has announced plans to release a graphical remake of the third game in the series under the title King's Quest III Redux.

The same team did a graphical revamp of the first two games in the series along with another Sierra Online title, Quest For Glory II. King's Quest III Redux, which the team has been working on for the past eight years, is currently planned for release later in February and will include full voice acting, hand painted backgrounds and character portraits and more. The game will be released for free for both the PC and Mac. This will also be the final King's Quest remake project for the team as it plans to develop original game projects from now on.

After several days of a "police line" at the GoG.com web site, the DRM-free PC game download service has taken it down and revealed its newest additions to its library. As many suspected, the site has added the classic Police Quest games to its line up. The games from the now defunct Sierra Online are now owned by Activision. You can get the first four games in the series in one bundle from GoG.com for just $9.99.

Also added to the GoG.com site today is a bundle that collects six classic text adventure games from the 1980s. The Zork Anthology contains Zork I, Zork II, Zork III, Beyond Zork, Zork Zero, and Planetfall. That's a lot of gaming goodness in one small 9 MB download for $5.99.

This weekend's out of the blue announcement of a new game in the Tribes series of sci-fi shooters by developer Hi-Rez Studios likely has the attention of some old school gamers who remember where they were when the original game in the franchise was first released. However it's also likely that many people reading this web site have never played, or even worse, never heard of the Tribes series.

So we decided to whip a quick history of the Tribes franchise for those of you who have yet to play any of the games in the series. The franchise was a massive influence of the first person shooter genre, particularly in its multiplayer features. In many ways the first game in the series was years ahead of its time but its successors never achieved the audience that the first game did.

The DRM-free PC games download site GoG.com has offered up the first six games in the classic King's Quest adventure game series for (legal) downloads in two bundles of three games each. Now GoG.com offers up the final two games in the Sierra Online-created series on its site in a new bundle for $9.99.

King's Quest VII, first released in 1994 features animation and graphics that look much like the classic Disney hand-drawn animated films. King's Quest VIII: Mask of Eternity, first released in 1998, is the last official game in the series and the only one that uses 3D graphics. Of course, the team at Phoenix Online Studios have made their unofficial continuation of the King's Quest series with the first episode of The Silver Lining now available to download for free.

As we mentioned earlier this morning, the development team at Phoenix Online Studios finally released the first chapter for The Silver Lining, a free continuation of the classic King's Quest fantasy adventure game series originally developed by Sierra Online, earlier this year. Now DRM-free PC game web site GoG.com has offered gamers a way to download and play the first three titles in the original King's Quest series.

Put in a bundle pack and sold for $9.99, the titles represent a time where adventures games were one of the big PC game genres as opposed to the niche market they occupy today. GoG.com has previously released the final three official games in the King's Quest series in a separate bundle.

Earlier this summer, after a development period of eight years and considerable legal wrangling, the development team at Phoenix Online Studios released the first of five free planned chapters for The Silver Lining, a free continuation of the King's Quest adventure game series from Sierra Online. The game were released with the blessings of the franchise's current owners Activision Blizzard after the publisher at first denied the development team the rights to release the game.

With the first chapter now released, the dev team has been working on the second chapter for The Silver Lining and in a recent update on the game's official web site it announced that the second episode would be released sometime in September. They also went over some of the new and improved features for the second chapter including the addition of widescreen support, switching between extended and short narrations, more puzzles, new locations and more.

The classic Sierra Online-published Space Quest adventure games are no strangers to the DRM-free web site GoG.com. The site is already home to a bundle that collects the fourth, fifth and sixth installments of the humorous sci-fi game series. Now GoG.com has announced that the first three Space Quest games are available to purchase and download in a bundle.

The games, now owned by Activision, feature the space janitor Roger Wilco as he tries to fight for "truth, justice and really clean floors.' The first three games in the series were released in 1986, 1987, and 1989, respectively, and were very funny send-ups of sci-fi cliches as well as other events related to pop culture. You can download the Space Quest bundle from GoG.com now for $9.99.