It's been awhile...

[DrJ]

Howdy all!

It's been quite sometime that I've posted (read: after QuestStudios.com went offline I forgot this board moved). Hope everyone has been doing well. I still see some old 'faces' around here on the board, which is good to see.

I've recently been pondering more & more about capturing gameplay footage of the old Sierra games and requesting the Dev's to add commentary to these playthroughs. After which I would post them on YouTube or another streaming medium. With all the developers getting older, it feels a shame if we would lose a lot of funny/interesting stories that happened during the development of these adventure games. The playthroughs would consist of (at least) MT-32 soundtracks - or potentially remastered soundtracks like Alistair and others have done in the past.

Sometime in (I believe 2018), I actually got together with a few Sierra friends and recorded some video footage of Josh Mandel & Al Lowe talking about Freddy Pharkas at Al's house in Bellevue WA. The plan was to have the video we captured of them talking about the game as a small window overlapping the game-play. Unfortunately we never did anything with the footage. While I know some commentary footage was captured during the funding of the SpaceVenture KS, I believe there would still be a decent audience out there that would be interested in hearing from these developers.

Thoughts? Comments?

[Spikey]

Hey man! Great to see ya here. Now we just need Zemus, Caliburn, and a few others..

But I totally agree. Jan Paul Moorhead's recent passing highlights that all too well. No point waiting for some of these great folks to pass on to the next realm.

Which Sierra friends did you get together with?

I agree wholeheartedly about devs, too. There's been a recent flurry of attention on the Williamses, with their brief return to the Sierra community fold. But I personally would rather hear from the Josh Mandel/Al Lowe/Lori and Corey/Two Guys/etc crowds.

[DrJ]

Which Sierra friends did you get together with?

We all helped with the LSL Reloaded release That's a story for another time tho...

Either way - glad to hear you're positive about this idea. I've contacted Josh and probably will check with Scott Murphy about doing something like this as well. The chance to hear them talk about these games and why they made certain design decisions sounds like a fascinating story to capture.

As an example - Al Lowe told us that the reason he had the highly secured door in LSL7 be left "ajar" is due to the fact that in the Oakhurst office all Sierra employees had to use their badge to get into the main building, but 9 out of the 10 times that door was left ajar, which is why he designed that part in LSL7 that way...

[DrJ]

Kinda interesting turn of events - It seems Paul Morgan Stetler is going to do a live event on Phantasmagoria 2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIbN6XBtt-U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNpco8Q06DY

Not sure if Lorelei would participate - but might be an interesting event to keep track of.
Also reading that he has had thousands of people curious - kinda fuels the idea that what I would like to do could work. Even if I would use something like Patreon to help cover costs and entice some developers to participate.

[Spikey]

Yeah, I got in touch with him already, since I have a few masters of P2 audio that could be fun to share.

I like your idea, man. It's a good one and there's a few communities on Facebook that are active. "Sierra Gaming World" and "The Classic Gamers Guild" are two that would be very useful to tap, especially the latter, for your potential project.

As for Larry Reloaded.. I kind of get what you mean about story for another time. A lot of sadness with that project. We will talk another time on it.

Funnily enough, when I was considering doing a book on Sierra music over the summer (I'm still in the 'considering' phase) I wanted to include some non-music stories, because even though we've seen a lot of Sierra history books published or funded recently, most of them don't contain any substantial stories or insight from the developers. I'm not that interested in how great a businessman Ken Williams was, no disrespect to the man himself!

[Ari]

Hey DrJ! Good to see you here!
Sounds like an excellent Idea.
BTW, I had no idea you worked on LSL Reloaded. I'd love to hear some stories on that one.

[DrJ]

BTW, I had no idea you worked on LSL Reloaded. I'd love to hear some stories on that one.

We should. Maybe in a more "private" setting

As Alistair eluded - quite a bit of sadness surrounding that project.

I like your idea, man. It's a good one and there's a few communities on Facebook that are active. "Sierra Gaming World" and "The Classic Gamers Guild" are two that would be very useful to tap, especially the latter, for your potential project.

I'm going to see about doing a pilot of the Freddy Pharkas footage I currently have. See how that works out. I think it's a solid idea that could work for game series like Tex Murphy too. Would love to understand how they came up with the different choices for the paths you could take.