Ye olde Sierra Adventure Games go Online!

April 23, 2009 in Indie Games, Retro Gaming | 3 comments

sarien_netJust a short, but exciting, piece of news. GameSetWatch already apparently reported this, but I can’t help pass it along in case you don’t read the major news services.

Although many of you probably did not grow up in the 80s with text-based and graphical adventure games, my sister and I did. We practically grew up on a steady diet of King’s Quest, Quest for Glory, and Space Quest games. The days of huddling in front of the 13″ VGA monitor and solving puzzles together are gone. My sister lives an entire continent away, and we don’t play games together much anymore. Until today, that is.

Which would you prefer more:
A) being able to play your favourite Sierra On-Line adventure games in a web browser?
or
B) being able to play those games in a multiplayer environment?

A + B = Martin Kool’s Sarien.net

Much in the spirit of Jet Set Willy Online, this means that you can now play a handful of Sierra’s old adventure games in a browser-based multiplayer environment. Imagine having 100 Roger Wilco’s walking around, exploring the Arcada. Imagine solving puzzles in The Black Cauldron with a friend 1000 miles away.

And all done by one guy (with the help of a friend). Spectacular.

So head over to Sarien.net if you have a chance and enjoy the ride. The only thing I’d love to see would be names above the avatars (so we can identify each other) and perhaps picking different colors for our characters. It gets tough figuring out who’s who on a screenful of Roger Wilco’s.

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  1. gnome’s avatar

    gnome on April 25, 2009 at 9:34 am

    And it can get so incredibly silly too…

    On the other hand and since you mentioned JSWO, it would have been nice -though ridiculously difficult- to actually adapt gameplay to the new multiplayer setting. Btw, did you get a Spectrum yet?

    Reply

  2. Floordje’s avatar

    Floordje on May 4, 2009 at 10:13 am

    Now there are some vintage games we can both agree upon!

    Reply

  3. chris’s avatar

    chris on May 4, 2009 at 10:16 am

    @gnomemeister:
    Yeah – the environment is quite adolescent unfortunately. But still, it has the opportunity to be a lot of fun if you can find someone else to play with. Would be VERY cool to see new gameplay suiting a more persistent world – but that would be another game entirely :)

    No speccy yet ;( My dissertation supervisors are cracking down on me to finish (start) writing this damned thing.

    @floordje: Welcome! Indeed, who couldn’t agree on these retro treasures? :)

    Reply