Al Lowe auctioning off his ancient Sierra stuff

[jorpho]

"I’m 72 years old, and none of my kids want this junk!" Lowe said in an interview with YouTube personality MetalJesusRocks (aka Jason Lindsey, himself an ex-Sierra developer and a friend of Ars). "Does anybody?"

arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/11/al-lowe-reveals-his-sierra-source-code-collection-then-puts-all-of-it-on-ebay/#p3

Strange that there's nothing on his website about Wet Dreams Don't Dry. Maybe the German developers succeeded in so completely turning him off that he cannot bear to mention them?

I didn't recall hearing anything about the Dark Crystal game before, but I suppose there's not much to it.

[GamerL]

I heard Wet Dreams Don't Dry was pretty good though.

And Magna Cum Laude was honestly not that bad either, only Box Office Bust is the truly terrible Larry title.

I also quite enjoyed the Reloaded remake of the first game from 5 years back and had hoped that would lead to more remakes, but evidently there was something shady going on with the developers for it, which sadly convinced Al Lowe to retire for good.

[dsparil]

I played the Dark Crystal game, Gelfling Adventure, last year. It's one of his pre-LSL children's games, and a simple adventure game. It doesn't seem to come up anymore that he used to be a teacher and started out making children's games with his neighbors before being bought out or hired by Sierra. He also worked on some other Disney games that are pretty good.

Edit: Just want to add that the Al Lowe Dark Crystal game is different than the linked one by Roberta Williams. That one was more of a traditional adventure game and Gelfling Advenutre is multiple choice like his earlier games Troll's Tale and Dragon's Keep. It also features my favorite command of all time "SCREAM FOR A WHILE" in the swamp portion. Doesn't do anything but it was funny when it showed up!

[jorpho]

Surely viral fame awaits someone who remakes Dragon's Keep. Imagine the possibilities for this sequence:

THE BUTTONS IN THE ELEVATOR
SAY:

1. DOWNSTAIRS HALL.
2. UPSTAIRS HALL.
3. FUN!

(Select 3 and press RETURN).

A LOUD NOISE SOUNDS AND THE
LIGHTS GO OFF AND ON. THIS IS
HOW THE DRAGON HAS FUN.

So prescient.

[magic89]

Why not send source codes to GOG?

[eatersthemanfool]

Man. I don't know what I'd do with that but I still want it.

[jorpho]

Dec 1, 2018 19:51:32 GMT -5 magic89 said:

Why not send source codes to GOG?

What would you expect GOG to do with them? They're already selling the games in a form that everyone can run.

It might be of greater interest to the SCUMMVM team, but they probably already know everything they need to know about the internals of such games.

[jorpho]

But of course we can't have nice things.

Activision forced Al Lowe to cancel his Leisure Suit Larry source code auctions

[eatersthemanfool]

Fuck Activision.