Kotaku Australia » sierra

8-Bit Wedding To Be Followed By A Life Of Text Adventure

Luke Plunkett — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:30:00 +0000

When Luis and Magaly decided to get married, they weren’t thinking cake, slow dances and doves. They were thinking Roberta Williams, the Valley of Spielburg and Sonny Bonds.

Congratulations, you crazy kids.

8-bit Wedding Invitation [Geekstir, via Gizmodo]

The Incredible Machine Incredibly Returns

Mike Fahey — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:20:00 +0000

The grandfather of the physics-based puzzle genre has come home to roost, as co-creator Jeff Tunnell regains the rights to The Incredible Machine, repackaging and re-releasing the classic series on GoG.com.

Designed and coded by Kevin Ryan and produced by Jeff Tunnell, The Incredible Machine took PC gaming by storm in the early ’90s, winning over casual and hardcore gamers alike with its challenging, Rube Goldberg-esque physics puzzles. The convoluted path the franchise took to get back into Tunnell’s hands is right in line with the convoluted nature of The incredible Machine’s puzzles. The rights were lost in limbo after parent company Sierra scrapped publisher Dynamix in 2001, with Sierra then being scrapped by Vivendi Universal three years later. Now the property is squarely in the hands of PushButton Labs, a company co-founded by the game’s producer, Jeff Tunnell, who couldn’t be happier.

“TIM was a genre defining franchise and I could not be happier to have the property available to PushButton Labs. I’m very excited to see what we can do with it moving forward.”

While we imagine what sort of greatness will come of the franchise in the future, we can explore its past today. PushButton Labs has packaged up the bulk of the series into one giant, Windows Vista and XP compatible package, available for $US9.99 today through CD Projekt’s GoG.com.

I will be staying far, far away from this re-release, as I fear for my free time.

Valve Sues Activision Over Sierra Monies

Mike Fahey — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:20:00 +0000

Valve and Activision are doing the legal two-step, with the former suing the latter over royalties from a 2002 lawsuit against Sierra.

On April 6th of this year, Valve was awarded a $US2,391,932 judgment against Activision as the result of a 2002 lawsuit against Sierra Online. The original lawsuit, which we reported on way back in 2004, involved Sierra distributing Valve software at cyber cafes, which led to Sierra preventing Valve from letting players unlock Half-Life 2 early. Speaking for gamers as a whole, Sierra totally deserved to lose if only for that fact. Having merged with Sierra parent Vivendi in 2008, Activision inherited the case and therefore the judgment.

They just don’t want to pay the whole thing.

Citing previous overpayments of $US424,136, Activision issued a check for $US1,967,796, which is the judgment minus the supposed overpayments. Valve, understandably unhappy about this, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday in order to secure the full amount.

According to the lawsuit, Valve claims that Activision informed them that they would not pay the full amount, and would counter-sue if Valve took them back to court. Now Valve has done just that.

Valve is seeking the full amount of the original judgment, as well as a court declaration stating that Activision cannot pursue additional compensation based on agreements that have long since been terminated.

Now we grab some popcorn, kick back, and wait for Activision to counter-sue. Good times.

It’s Ugly: Valve Sues Activision, Activision Threatens to Sue Valve [Game Politics]

Play Old Sierra Games, For Free, In Your Browser

Luke Plunkett — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 05:30:00 +0000

There once was a time, before closures, before Lucasarts, when the name “Sierra” meant premium PC adventure gaming. Those days are, sadly, long gone. But they will not be forgotten!

If you head over to Sarien, you can take part in a little project that’s part-game, part-museum piece, with old Sierra adventure games running in Flash on your browser. The graphics are the same, and if you want, you can use text commands, but a right-click menu system has also been introduced to speed things up a bit.

That’s the game part. The museum part comes in a gallery of assets from the old games, with a wide range of things like background art available for browsing.

Interestingly, it also supports…well, multiplayer, with the internet-based nature of the games allowing users to see other gamers attempting the same puzzles as you are in real-time.

Currently three games are supported – Leisure Suit Larry 1, Police Quest 1 and Space Quest 1 – with more promised.

Sarien [via GSW]

THQ Picks Up 50 Cent Off The Ground

Michael McWhertor — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 05:00:00 +0000

No, 50 Cent: Blood On The Sand isn’t dead, dead, dead. It’s alive! The game, orphaned by Activision Blizzard, has indeed been picked up by publisher THQ, according to a rating by Australia’s Office of Film and Literature Classification board. That’s the part we did get right when we reexamined 50’s fate. Honestly, though our interest in 50’s music begins and ends at “In Da Club” we can’t help but be warmed over by the ridiculousness of Blood On The Sand’s debut trailer. It’s brilliant.

50 Cent: Blood On The Sand [OFLC via NeoGAF]

Sierra Closing 21 Game Servers

Stuart Houghton — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 05:00:00 +0000

Now that Sierra has been swallowed by the maw of Actiblizzard, the great behemoth has spat out a few bones.

On November 1st, Sierra will be closing 21 of its game servers, cutting off supports to games such as AvP2, Homeworld and Vampire.

None of the games affected are hugely popular, but doubtless someone out there will be a bit put out by this. Comments, anyone?

Full list after the jump.

1. Alien vs Predator 2
2. Arcanum
3. Caesar IV
4. Dark Reign 2
5. Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom
6. Empire Earth
7. Empire Earth 2
8. Empire Earth: Age of Conquest
9. Ground Control
10. Ground Control 2
11. Homeworld
12. Homeworld: Cataclysm
13. Nolf 2
14. Red Baron
15. Sanity
16. Star Trek: Armada
17. SWAT3: EE
18. SWAT3: GOTY
19. The Incredible Machine
20. Tribes 2
21. Vampire

Sierra Axe 21 Game Servers [Play.tm]

50 Cent: Blood on the Sand is Dead, Dead, Dead [Update]

Brian Crecente — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 14:00:00 +0000

Remember 50 Cent II, the sequel to discography-cum-video game 50-Cent: Bulletproof? The game that Sierra named 50-Cent: Blood on the Sand? The one that has a love-interest, slick graphics and tons of blood?

Yeah, it’s dead. Caught in the unflinching cogs of big video game business, mergers, and close downs, we hear. Victim of a flooded genre and a potential publisher with one too many shooters on its hands.

But don’t cry for Fifty. We hear the G-Unit-sporting rapper got his appearance cash, while Swordfish, the team behind the budding game, is likely to get sold off.

You gotta love this business.

Update, We Got it Wrong, Wrong, Wrong: Turns out that our internal sources were slightly confused and despite our best efforts we got it wrong. While I’m still waiting for some sort of official word from the companies involved, this is what we’ve heard: While 50-Cent: Blood on the Sand was indeed jettisoned by Activision, the project isn’t dead. In fact we’re told that it is approaching gold and that a deal, perhaps with THQ as publisher, is in the wings.

Update 2: Activision has responded:

“We have a policy of not commenting on rumors.

I can tell you that we announced back in July that we are retaining only those franchises that are a strong fit with our long-term strategy – - Crash Bandicoot, Ice Age, Spyro, Protoype and an unannounced new IP. We will not publish other titles that previously were part of the Vivendi Games portfolio and are currently reviewing our options regarding these titles.”

PAX Ghostbusters Lanyards Were Ghosts Of The Past

Mike Fahey — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 16:20:00 +0000

We were as puzzled as anyone as to why Penny Arcade Expo attendees were being given lanyards advertising the currently in limbo Ghostbusters: The Game. Who would go to all the trouble of getting so many promotional items made up for a game that has no publisher? People from the past, that’s who. According to Penny Arcade’s Robert Khoo, speaking to Variety, Sierra had signed up to sponsor the lanyards way back in January, delivered the product in June, only to find out weeks before the show that the game was no longer a going concern as far as far as ActiBlizzard was concerned.

With little time left to get new lanyards together, the PAX folks just ran with it, thus creating the sad little Ghostbusters promotional items. There’s a bright side at least. As Variety’s Ben Fritz points out, whoever winds up publishing the game just got a boatload of free advertising courtesy of Sierra.

The deal with those Ghostbusters lanyards at PAX [Variety]

Sierra (?) Bringing Back Red Baron (!?!)

Luke Plunkett — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 07:30:00 +0000

Hmmm. I first see this news, I get excited. After all, Red Baron – despite being 18 years old – is still the best damn World War 1 game around. But then I start asking myself questions. Like, aren’t Sierra dead? Wasn’t the whole point of the original Red Baron the fact is was steeped in historical accuracy? Why is this now an arcade shooter for the PlayStation Network where 17 bullets cause a battleship to explode?

Quest For Glory II Is Back, Yo

Luke Plunkett — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:20:00 +0000

Quest for Glory II is the greatest adventure game of all time. That’s not opinion, either. It’s fact. Science. Only problem is, the game’s from 1990, so it’s also a little…rough. No more! Thanks to the team at AGD (who have also done fantastic restorations of the first two Kings Quest games), the game’s “quaint” old VGA graphics have been updated, the timing of the real-time puzzles have been made easier and dialogue is now taken care of via menus, instead of having to guess via text input. Oh, and it’s 100% free. In other words, the greatest adventure game of all time just got greater.

Quest For Glory II [AGD, via IndieGames]