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The other mountain If I was to name the most important computer game company for me, it would undoubtedly be Sierra . Sure, I loved Apogee’s arcades or some of Rainbow Arts’ titles, I also held Amiga’s Gremlin in high respect, but the biggest soft spot I have is for Sierra and specifically its first batch of adventure games. As a matter of fact, the original edition of “Leisure Suit Larry” was the first ever PC game I’ve seen. It looked terrible – with monochrome emulation of CGA on Hercules imitating graphics and speaker beeps pretending to be music, I was wondering how in the world anyone could choose this over my 8-bit Atari’s capabilities, almost multimedia by comparison. But as it was either that or the Wonderful World Of dBase III+, I didn’t really have any reasonable choice. Plus, it was my first adventure game ever and I liked the idea of typing the commands in real life language and reading what seemed an endless stream of various reactions. What the game lacked in graphics and sound, it more than made for in possibilities. Funnily enough, I had no idea what “Larry” was all about. In low resolution the main character certainly didn’t look like balding, 40-something man desperately looking for some real romance. And my knowledge of English language back then was simply non-existent. Not only I couldn’t get most of the slang and sexual references, it was so bad that once for two straight hours I was trying to recall what’d be the translation of Polish “dziękuję” (if anyone’s interested, it’s “thank you”). The quiz at the beginning of each game which was supposed to test my maturity I hardly even understood and defeated it simply by a systematic approach, painstakingly writing down all the bad and good answers – only to find out years later about a simple combination of keys which allowed to bypass it. Furthermore, the game was crippled, so I never really got anywhere except for the ruined bar and its close neighbourhood. But I loved it. It was such a different experience to any of the previous games I played. It was something more mature, and who didn’t want to be an adult in the age of 10? I spent long – but definitely not lengthy – hours with it and I still remember the monotonous music and the smell of my father’s dark office, lit only by the amber screen, where he left me alone once in a while and let me play. Soon I had my own PC (incidentally, the very same computer from my father’s work) and got hold of some more of Sierra’s fabulous productions. I was catching bandits with Sonny Bonds in “Police Quest,” I was travelling through space in both parts of “Space Quest,” I was even for a while visiting the magical world of “King’s Quest.” Although I have to admit I never really liked that one – even if it was the origin of all good things Sierra – but I do remember having this strange bootable 5” diskette with the original version of “King’s Quest” on it, and being able to run it was probably just about the only advantage of having PC/XT in the times where everybody else already switched to AT or 386 machines. But I digress. It really was days upon days between me, my two Polish-English dictionaries (heavy as hell), and my PC. And even the “stuck moments” – when for days you don’t know what to do next, revisiting every screen over and over again trying to find what you might have missed – bring back great memories today. While I was torturing the first generation of Sierra’s adventure games, the world already got to know the second. My father once gave me “a glimpse of the future” in the form of a screenshot of “Leisure Larry III” in some UK games magazine and I think I’ve spent a total of good half a day drooling over that one frame and dreaming how it would be cool to be able to play it. I don’t quite remember how much did I take, but I finally caught up. The games really got better – Sierra switched engines from AGI to SCI0 , adding preliminary mouse support, higher resolution and nicer fonts. As the result the games started looking beatiful (well, it was either that, or the fact that I got a colour EGA monitor), and I learned to appreciate the music, even if on built-in speaker any genre or style had a distinct “funeral quality” to it. This period gave me one of the best game experiences ever. I still remember the first few screens of the abovementioned third part of “Larry” (and the music which accompanied them), which for some reason seemed very sad to me, even if it was supposed to be a comedy. “Hero’s Quest” (later quickly renamed to “Quest for Glory” because of some copyright issues) kept me glued to my monitor for weeks, even if I’m by no means a fantasy fan. I had a two pages big map, drawn by hand, which I was extremely proud of; my character was great in everything I’ve never been in real life (and, for that matter, probably won’t ever be); and that largely underappreciated mixture of role playing and adventure was definitely worth every moment spent on it. But all that pales in comparison with “Space Quest III,” which enchanted me from the very first second the adventurous Roger Wilco, Galaxy’s First Janitor, stepped out from his damaged ship. I’ve always been a great sci-fi fan, and here I had best of both worlds: great adventure game combined with space phenomena, ultra-sleek technology, weird civilizations, and Astro Chicken! And then, when future never looked more bright, Sierra in one move gave to its newer titles VGA, lifelike graphics and mouse point-and-click interface. And that was the exact moment the “Quest” series lost all their magic for me. There was no typing which I loved, there was nothing left to imagination and it was the beginning of the end (the only game from that era I liked was career simulator “Jones in the Fast Lane,” but that’s a whole different story). Soon Sierra has launched a series of remakes of its original titles, with updated sounds and music, but otherwise identical: location for location, word for word, scene for scene, and I still can’t decide if they simply wanted to cash on the old ideas or preserve the original spirit. Either way, the solid amount of work which went to enhancing the old titles was at least admirable and the whole idea, I believe, unprecedented, alas, I already lost my interest. The years have passed. Never to this day I’ve enjoyed any other adventure game that much and played it with that amount of passion and dedication. And it wasn’t long before world would forgot about adventures anyway. Or most of the world, as it turned out, because a few weeks ago I’ve discovered a site telling me that people are still digging in AGI/SCI engines , reverse-engineering them, and even creating some fresh homemade titles! All that led me to seek for vapour- and abandonware sites and download some of the vintage, original titles. In a while they were mine again and it took only the first tacts of introductory music to “Larry” to bring a tear to my eye and a couple of minutes with “Space Quest III” for all the memories to slowly come back. Coming to think of that, I believe only now I could do them justice and understand most of Al Lowe’s spicy humour or the sci-fi references in Two Guys of Andromeda’s creations. But maybe I shouldn’t, maybe the good times from a decade back should be left as they are, without revising or rewriting them. I’m happy to have been a part of these good times. The fact is that right now people don’t play adventure games. If I was born only a couple of years later, I’d enjoy FPPs, RTSes and whatever-came-nexts and never would have a slightest idea that games could be so much fun – not mentioning that my English wouldn’t be half as good as it is today (not that I necessarily think it’s any good). I guess I was just lucky, and thanks to that luck I’ll always associate that unforgettable logo starting to paint on the screen with a sheer excitement and foretaste of many hours of great fun to come. And not many companies achieved that. The funny thing is that they all had mountains in their logos, the sad thing is that they all are no longer part of the gaming scene. by Marcin Wichary

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