4 ms·

I love Adventure games. I was more of a Lucas Arts fan, I believe both for the richer narrative (as in Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion and Indiana Jones), but als

by soneca 9y ago

I love Adventure games. I was more of a Lucas Arts fan, I believe both for the richer narrative (as in Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion and Indiana Jones), but also because for a non-english speaker point and click was easier than writing. But I was always fascinated by the potential of writing anything in King's Quest. The problem is that I never could play it properly. The frustration from the "find the synonym" game for english speakers is a complete block for non-english speakers. That with the Sierra game choices where you could die or get permanently stuck, made it impossible for me to play it. I remember me taking days of trial to find out how to "pick up a cup" on one of the first scenes because I only knew about take or get things. But specifically LSL never was more than a curiosity to me. Maybe because I got to know it before puberty. The objective of getting laid did not look as interesting for a full game as facing a dead pirate or finding Atlantis. The nuances the author points out were all lost to me. In the end it was just a curious game to know about like X-Man, the Atari's porn game

amigoingtodie 9y ago
What about Willy Beamish?
- soneca 9y ago
  The name was only kind of familiar, so I googled it and WOW! I remember playing it and loving it. One of those things I would never remember spontaneously. Thanks for that! I remember mostly because of the frog! Although, judging by the screenshots I saw on Google, I didnt go very far in the game. Only a few looks familiar.
- greymeister 9y ago
  "Hoopa Coiler Agamemnon!" That was one of my favorites even though I can't stand the load times on Sega CD to ever play it again.
  - subwayclub 9y ago
    DOS PCs were the lead release for Willy. There are two versions as well, the floppy original which supports the soundtrack on MT-32, and a CD "multimedia PC" release which is basically the Sega CD version in 256 colors(no MT-32 sound, just SB/Adlib). The game has some clockspeed bugs on DOS, though. The animations play at the correct rate, but timers that use the in-game clock will fire too fast above about a 66mHz 486 speed. This left me stuck on a puzzle for a few years, since I first got to play the game in the late 90's and it wasn't obvious that I had a bug.
bobbyi_settv 9y ago
tvtropes had a good write-up of the "guess the verb" phenomenon with several Sierra examples including the infamous case of needing to "press" (but not "push") a button http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YouCantGetYeFlask http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YouCantGetYeFlask
liberte82 9y ago
Day Of The Tentacle FTW
- Xoros 9y ago
  "Friend of yours Bernaaard ?"
flavio81 9y ago
I think i have played Maniac Mansion like 300 times... truly an innovative game!
bravura 9y ago
I don't want to diminish your experience at all. But here's my story: I learned to read and write by playing Sierra games. I played them with my dad. And I guess I wanted to be able to play them alone. So the crappy text parsing forced me to learn written English. "Get knife" -> "What is a knife?", "Get sword" -> "I don't see a sword", "Get dagger" -> "You have the dagger". Over and over with many different circumstances. So I also learned to type. I entered pre-school already knowing how to read and write, much to the chagrin of some teachers. I am not saying this style of gaming was overall good. But it hard a weird unique impact on my development.
- soneca 9y ago
  The point and click ones taught me english a lot, as the verbs and dialogs were in english as well, with no translations.
- pmarreck 9y ago
  wow, that is amazing I'm actually surprised that to this day, learning reading, writing and math has not been very incentivized/gamified.
  - ufmace 9y ago
    Makes you think about the nature of learning and education a bit, and that modern schools aren't designed to teach people anything. Reminds me of PG's essay about why nerds hate school: http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
  - notzorbo3 9y ago
    There's plenty of gamified learning out there. It's just not something most educators want to use for some reason. Learning has to be boring and dull after all! Meanwhile, I started learning english (not a native speaker) at age 5 because all the broadcasted cartoons were in english, with subtitles. I remember my dad loading up gamified math puzzle games on the Commodore 64 for me to play. And this was some 32 years ago. I don't know why it's so underused. Perhaps educator are afraid they'll be seen as lazy or not serious about their teaching if they use such measures? What I do know is that gamification was one of the best ways of being educated as a kid.

by soneca 9y ago

amigoingtodie 9y ago

What about Willy Beamish?

soneca 9y ago
The name was only kind of familiar, so I googled it and WOW! I remember playing it and loving it. One of those things I would never remember spontaneously. Thanks for that! I remember mostly because of the frog! Although, judging by the screenshots I saw on Google, I didnt go very far in the game. Only a few looks familiar.
greymeister 9y ago
"Hoopa Coiler Agamemnon!" That was one of my favorites even though I can't stand the load times on Sega CD to ever play it again.
- subwayclub 9y ago
  DOS PCs were the lead release for Willy. There are two versions as well, the floppy original which supports the soundtrack on MT-32, and a CD "multimedia PC" release which is basically the Sega CD version in 256 colors(no MT-32 sound, just SB/Adlib). The game has some clockspeed bugs on DOS, though. The animations play at the correct rate, but timers that use the in-game clock will fire too fast above about a 66mHz 486 speed. This left me stuck on a puzzle for a few years, since I first got to play the game in the late 90's and it wasn't obvious that I had a bug.

bobbyi_settv 9y ago

tvtropes had a good write-up of the "guess the verb" phenomenon with several Sierra examples including the infamous case of needing to "press" (but not "push") a button http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YouCantGetYeFlask http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YouCantGetYeFlask

liberte82 9y ago

Day Of The Tentacle FTW

Xoros 9y ago
"Friend of yours Bernaaard ?"

flavio81 9y ago

I think i have played Maniac Mansion like 300 times... truly an innovative game!

bravura 9y ago

I don't want to diminish your experience at all. But here's my story: I learned to read and write by playing Sierra games. I played them with my dad. And I guess I wanted to be able to play them alone. So the crappy text parsing forced me to learn written English. "Get knife" -> "What is a knife?", "Get sword" -> "I don't see a sword", "Get dagger" -> "You have the dagger". Over and over with many different circumstances. So I also learned to type. I entered pre-school already knowing how to read and write, much to the chagrin of some teachers. I am not saying this style of gaming was overall good. But it hard a weird unique impact on my development.

soneca 9y ago
The point and click ones taught me english a lot, as the verbs and dialogs were in english as well, with no translations.
pmarreck 9y ago
wow, that is amazing I'm actually surprised that to this day, learning reading, writing and math has not been very incentivized/gamified.
- ufmace 9y ago
  Makes you think about the nature of learning and education a bit, and that modern schools aren't designed to teach people anything. Reminds me of PG's essay about why nerds hate school: http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
- notzorbo3 9y ago
  There's plenty of gamified learning out there. It's just not something most educators want to use for some reason. Learning has to be boring and dull after all! Meanwhile, I started learning english (not a native speaker) at age 5 because all the broadcasted cartoons were in english, with subtitles. I remember my dad loading up gamified math puzzle games on the Commodore 64 for me to play. And this was some 32 years ago. I don't know why it's so underused. Perhaps educator are afraid they'll be seen as lazy or not serious about their teaching if they use such measures? What I do know is that gamification was one of the best ways of being educated as a kid.