interesting the part about the nazi symbols. But why wasn’t this a problem for indiana jones 3 (the movie, not the game)? Was the scene with hitler censored in the german version?
It’s incorrect to say that it happened to all titles, but it happened for games affected by piracy: they sold more hint books than games. I have read it in the past but the only sources that I have found right now are the following one about the books…
Sierra released Leisure Suit Larry in 1987 without fanfare in an effort to avoid any bad publicity. Still, many retailers refused to carry the game because of its subject matter. But thanks to good word of mouth, the game sold over 250,000 copies in its first year, and was named one of the best games of 1988 by the Software Publishers Association. Sierra noticed a strange anomaly in its sales figures – they’d sold more hint books for the game than they had copies of the game. This led Larry to receive the unofficial title of the Most Pirated Game Ever.
(Source)
… and the following one about the lucrative hint line, but with no mention about figures:
https://twitter.com/randyzero/status/909138992658026496
I’ll try to search for better sources, hopefully something that provides figures.
I’m reading the design document. I never realized that “Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix” was designed in such details. I thought that its design document was just a bit more than a draft.
Thank you, this is interesting to me because it shows that there can be a puzzle that is not “illogical”, but at the same is impossible to solve without trying everything with everything.
It seems the designers didn’t care about this, because they assumed you would try everything with everything.
It’s unclear to me if this can be called a “bad puzzle”.
But let’s put this aside. That was SQ6, with the SCI interface. But can you give a similar example with the AGI interface (the text parser)? Why I am asking: because with that UI you cannot try everything with everything. So the designers cannot assume you will try everythjing with everything. So I expect that a puzzle such as the one you describe cannot happen with the AGI interface.
I was told that the famous ice cream brand “Algida” made more money by selling refrigerators for ice creams than from selling ice creams.
This suggests that TWP should really try to program elevators as side-business.
Horrible thought: Sierra was driven by piracy to design puzzles in that way?
(When one attempts to calculate the overall costs of piracy, I doubt he takes into account such indirect effects.)
Yes!
On the right side is the german version.
Also “Mein Kampf” was changed into “A Biography about Hitler”.
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It doesn’t really follow that since one or a few games didn’t sell too well but were pirated greatly, that the hint books was the most profitable part of the business. It’s a bit of a stretch there.
I’ve read in other places that Sierra made a lot of money from games that sold in considerable numbers.
I am sure they made some money from hint books, but it strikes me as a stretch that that was the primary source of profit; and more than a bit cynical that the games were designed with built-in flaws to force people to purchase the hint books.
It could be true, but it could also be that most game designers just had too much fun making hard puzzles and feeling all smug in frustrating players.
dZ.
Most puzzles were of the same kind, and you still had to try random things. In SQ1 you had to get money from a man outside a bar by selling your sand-skimmer vehicle. He will offer some amount of money and if you take it, you will not be able to get what you need, and will eventually have to restore.
What you must do is answer “no,” then go to the bar and come back out. The man will now offer you more money and a Jetpack, which you need.
Further on, you eventually learn that you must escape the planet, so you go to buy a spaceship from a Used Spaceship Dealer. There is a specific spaceship you must buy, the other ones won’t work. However, you can’t tell which one it is, so if you purchase the wrong one, it may malfunction and crash. You are now dead and must restore.
Yes, it seems very arbitrary, but the death sequence is rather funny, and you are sort of expecting it.
In SQ2 you happen to have a mail order form in your inventory. If you mail it when you see a mailbox, you will get a special whistle in the mail immediately.
Later on, you are stuck in the middle of nowhere with a big rock blocking your way. There is no passage. If you happen to try the whistle, a great big beast will come in by cracking the rock. There is now an opening for you to go through.
There are no hints and no connection between these things at all, but the beast is a parody of Warner Bros.'s Tasmanian Devil, and it’s a funny gag once it happens.
dZ.
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very interesting.
After reading your examples I learn two things
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even with the AGI interface it is possible to try “everything with everything”. (try all the options that the game gives you; or use all the objects in your inventory with their intended purpose).
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I think the only real problem is the combination between “there’s no way to tell if you are wrong” and “if you are wrong you discover much later”. It’s clear that if these two conditions are there together, it’s disaster. You’ll need to replay a big part of the game. If it wasn’t for this, it would be excusable.
Well, not all puzzles are like that, and the story, scenes, and humour are very compelling. It is very frustrating in those parts, though, if you don’t have a walk-through or hint guide.
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Oh sorry I only just saw that part.
Well the story goes like this. Indiana Jones 3 is a movie and the game based on it is a videogame. There is a whole list of Nazi symbols that are forbidden to be displayed or owned in germany, that particular version of the swastika is among them. The exceptions are the use for the sake of education and art. A movie like Last Crusade is considered art. And here it gets tricky. Essentially there has been a courtdecision how to treat this and it came down to a judge deciding that those media are to be treated differently. It can be drawn from this that movies are considered art (hence Nazi symbols are okay in the right context) while games are not(so no Nazi symbols).
That´s the way things are here.
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It’s mostly about the abstract humor and story. The setting is unrealistic yet full of references to present reality (and pop culture). In SQ there is also a charismatic hero, who is not very heroic (a space janitor!), so I’d say MI and later games have this in common.
Maybe just too many years passed by, but I remember SQ 1 VGA as a very smooth experience, which to me is very LA-like and not Sierra like. Perhaps some of annoying early Sierra stuff was fixed there. I think even the deaths already had a system of giving the player an option to try again without resorting to restore.
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I think they may have fixed some of those flaws in the VGA version. I’ve played both and the VGA versions seems a bit easier.
I’ve mostly played the Gabriel Knight and Leisure Suite Larry series. Still have to find time for Phantasmagoria, King’s Quest and Space Quest.
I didn’t yet play the remake of GK1 but I very much liked the style of the original game. And oh god, the game gave me a jump scare, when the underground zombies started to move. I set the game speed to max slow and just clicked my way out of the labyrinth. And even managed to get out on the first run. 
In the Larry series I started with the old VGA remake of the first game, then continued with the EGA LSL2 and cursed because of the Sierra style to miss things and having to load old savegames. Luckily you could have enough saves, though again I cursed because of the limitation of the engine to story all saves in one folder, you had to change the folder after some time AFAIR.
I highly recommend Void Quest.
It’s like an improved AGI sierra game. Same feeling, but better, due to text auto-completion and more.
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Guys, have you ever seen this?
Me, never. I wonder if that “Order hint book” is a parody of Sierra or self-mockery…
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I think I might’ve when I experimented with drowning, but I might be confused with a similar joke popping up somewhere else. (It’s been over a decade.)
More importantly. Has anyone ever timed if it does take exactly 10 minutes for that to happen?
I really read that out of context for a moment there!
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