Monday, April 16, 2012

Kickstart(er) My Heart!



While it appears Michael Bay has been hell bent on destroying parts of my childhood with first the Transformers movie franchise and now Ninja Turtles, the G.I. Joe film being a total piece of unwashed ass and I get to watch my wife's favorite things from her childhood get repacked, re-issued and re-updated ad nauseum its nice and refreshing to see a few fine folk from my teenage PC gaming years coming back into familiar territory.



Don't worry guys...I won't forget!

So while trolling around the interwebs last night I came across a wonderful discovery! The Two Guys from Andromeda are back! And they are making an all new 'Spaceventure'! Squee!


What do you mean 'Who?'! These are the brainiacs (term used loosely) that created the wonderful Space Quest PC game series that captivated my gaming imagination in the late '80s through early '90s! It was the story of Roger Wilco, intergalactic janitor, and his (mis)adventures in space. It was loaded with humor, puns, funny characters and all the good stuff that was trademark Sierra Online adventure gaming back in the day. Yes kiddies this was WAY before 'point and click' mouse gaming....you had to *gasp* type out commands! And it was fun! And we liked it that way! Now get off my lawn!


Now while no Kickstarter has been formed for this project (which I still encourage folk to support this project in any way possible...from Facebook 'Like' to following their Twitter account) there are other Kickstarters formed by other Sierra alum that want to make games again!


First we have Jane Jensen's 'Pinkerton Road'. Jane was the creator of the venerable 'Gabriel Knight' series.
A psychological, supernatural horror/mystery series set in New Orleans and other locals through out the world. I would love to see her stretch her writing wings again to create something as special as Gabriel Knight once more.


Now for my personal favorite. One I will have to support somehow (even being unemployed still I have to scrounge a few bucks for this).  If the name Al Lowe means anything to you as a PC gamer you are 1) old and 2) have a dirty sense of humor. Al Lowe has started a Kickstarter to remake and re-envision his classic franchise which has seen better times ever since it left his capable hands. Of course I mean Leisure Suit Larry!


I actually OWN this version of the game! I am old...

For me the two best series to emerge from Sierra was Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry. And in all honestly it was because of the amount of humor in each. It was right up my alley as it fell in line with comedies that I liked such as Animal House, Revenge of the Nerds, anything funny by Mel Brooks,etc etc and so on. These games were irreverent and made me laugh out loud while sitting in front of a Tandy computer. I remember having to answer Richard Nixon trivia to prove I was old enough to play LSL when you first booted up the floppy disk. And this was back before Google existed and the Internet was still in its infancy. Glad I knew who Nixon was. And that I got the joke of asking questions about 'Tricky Dick'.


So finding this info was a nice surprise and a great way to end a mini vacation I took with my wife to visit family and friends. I'm going to be watching these projects develop like a hawk and hope that I'll get to play in these toy boxes sometime soon. 


Maybe 'toybox' was the wrong thing to imply with LSL......