ShawnTheGrue

Following the first part of our month-long exploration of , author Shawn Mills takes us behind the scenes of one of Sierra’s less-heralded but no-less-exemplary franchises with first-hand contributions from lead designer Christy Marx and programmer Richard Aronson. This excerpt about the production of represents just one game of many included in Shawn’s 361-page book based […]

As the author of , I have a confession to make. As much as I wanted to help tell the story about the history of Sierra, to share how the legendary company became what it became, to really get behind the scenes of my favorite games, a small (or maybe large) part of me really […]

What can I say about Leisure Suit Larry that hasn’t already been said a million times over the thirty-odd years this series has been going? I mean, there were six classic games from Sierra On-Line, some barely related spin-offs, a couple of forgettable titles with a new star in the 2000s, a well-received remake of […]

“This is not the moon. Not some unknown planet. This is my home. The Earth. I don’t know what happened. What do I do now?” These are the words of Kosmos, an astronaut who is startled by a sudden explosion on the planet below while performing routine maintenance on a space station in Caligari Games’ […]

“With multiple highly successful franchises, Sierra was renowned for pushing the boundaries of writing, game design, animation, sound, music, and with the advent of CD-ROM, even acting. Today’s gaming storytellers stand on Sierra’s shoulders.” Those words were used to introduce Ken and Roberta Williams at the Gaming Industry Awards in 2014, where they were honored […]

From the earliest days of ’s black and white stick figures and line drawings to full-colour 3D presentations, Sierra always tried to stay at the forefront of graphics technology, innovating as they went. In their early 16 colour games, the artwork would be drawn either by hand, then plotted into the computer using coordinates as […]

The jump from small freeware adventure to even a budget-priced commercial adventure is a deceptively large one, as the two simply can’t be treated the same way. This point was driven home for me as I finished playing , from the same studio that previously produced  two freeware chapters in the same series, and (both […]

When you think of Sierra you might not necessarily think of the Atari 2600 or the Commodore 64, but both systems had a big impact on the fortunes of the company. From the earliest years of its life, the Atari 2600 console was the biggest video game platform in America. By 1983, six years after […]

The philosopher Plato once said about music that “It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, and flight to the imagination.” It was this flight to the imagination that was most relevant to Sierra’s adventure games. Sierra had an unrivaled music department that produced many groundbreaking adventure game soundtracks during the ‘80s and […]