I forgot about the “copy protection” 😬 There was certainly some innovative stuff

I do remember that Mikael, and the rebooted Laura Bow Mysteries repreated it!
I think my favorites were the pinwheels where you dialed up the necessary answer (MI2 had one involving mix and mojo voodoo). I have no idea what you were supposed to do if you lost the relevant item.

I think my favorite copy protectipn ever was in Zak McKracken. The symbols you had to enter were on red paper so you couldn't copy it. If you messed it up a couple of times you were taken to a cut scene of Zak in a jail cell where it said you really should buy a legal copy of the game.

I sure do.



And I also miss not having to spend inordinate amounts of time figuring out where the save games are located...

SQF, wonderful memory about Zak McKracken. So many of the earlier great adventure games never lost sight of the fact that we were playing a game...and that a game above all should be fun.

Yes …. Fun !!

And I have never called wasting hours trying work out how “gadgets” work - as in some newer games - to be any kind of fun 🙄

Whilst spending many days creating my own maps in those early (especially Sierra’s) games WAS !!

Go Figure

Yes, and the magnifying glass in the Colonel’s Bequest was a more advanced version of that. Since you had to place the red-lensed magnifying glass over the finger prints that you had to identity to start the game, you couldn’t copy that either. I also think that this was the reason that Sierra changed their hintbooks. The first version used invisible ink that you had to use a special marker pen to reveal hidden text with. In the later hintbooks, you used a red transparent decoder card to reveal the hints. With the marker pen you could copy the books once the hints were revealed, but it wasn’t possible with the later version.

I was first captured by Myst, wandering through great artwork an design, having to figure things out with no walkthru and taking forever to finish. I miss the art, the wonder, the magic that it held for me. For me, the story was secondary, and, I guess that's why I made my game somewhat that way.

You just didn't get to play the game, flotsam !! 😒

I can remember reading posts from very angry people who had bought/traded games from other gamers and only afterwards found out that, to play the game, copy protection items were required and they HAD NOT been included in their parcel.

But the deal was done and they had no comeback

That would certainly have been maddening

This is a great response, Orion, and leads me to saying "Me too." I know I can download whatever game I wish to, but I liked having games in boxes stacked up on shelves next to my ridiculous number of books. I miss having a computer with that little slide out drawer that you dropped a disk in to. I also miss being one of the very few Boomers who REALLY liked "Drowned God."

I reviewed Drowned God in a different galaxy The Haze and thought that "never has so much conspiracy-babble been presented in as entertaining a way". I gave it 4 out of 5 stars!
So there are at least two of us

Dreyfus's I too miss the wonderful adventure games from DreamCatcher and the Adventure Company. I still love to play all my old games using the original disks. My favorite games to replay are Myst and Rhem and all those that followed in each series. I even enjoy the very old Tomb Raider games...I still have the dicks for TR 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. The newer ones have too much combat for me...too complicated.

I always love wondering around in the beautiful scenery of the early adventure games!

Gerry

The Adventure Company and Dreamcatcher Interactive were at the top of my call list GreyFuss and Kaki's Sister

Those hint books were full of information on the game you were about to play. They really went into depth on all parts of the game, story, characters, places, items, etc and let's not forget the hints. Some games came wrapped with a hint book. Those hint books were really nice, big books!

I miss those pc gaming outlets back in those days. My favorite was Walden Software. You knew there would be adventure games on the shelves when you went there

I subscribed to a few pc game magazines back then. They were a great source of info on games being developed. I have the image/page advertising Myst before its release framed. That game kept me up all night when it released. It started my adventure game hobby

The first game I played that started my interest in pc gaming was XF5700 Mantis Experimental Fighter. I bought my first computer from Radio Shack, a dos computer from the early 90's. I actually bought that dos to run my first astronomy program with no thought of playing games on it. I don't remember how but I came across XF and decided to check it out. I was totally taken by it

There are so many good game memories of those times, so much missed. Besides Cyan and Sierra games there were other games releasing that I thought were excellent - the Buried in Times by Presto Studios, Tex Murphy's by Access Software, The Zorks by Infocom, The Kyrandias by Westwood Studios, Dark Seeds by Cyberdreams, the Gateways by Legend Entertainment just to name a few. Those were some exciting times weren't they....definitely missed


Nice link oldbroad, thank you

Wow !! So many of the oldies now long gone !!

Here in the UK I could phone developers and personally talk to them and ask for hints and/or complain about things they’d included in adventure plots
(Revolution being one.)

Even got to speak my mind to a Sony rep. in Liverpool - when Sony took ownership of an old, established gaming studio there (Psygnosis) and then immediately closed down all future game production …. because they “weren’t interested in games” !! 👎

I loved The Adventure Company and Dreamcatcher games. Somehow I used to get mailings or something from Electronic Boutique that I looked forward to perusing. I do miss being awed by games. I don't really get that feeling anymore.

The good times regarding The Adventure Company, DreamCatcher and Got Game Entertainment are really dampened by the fact the developers never got their royalties from the sales. It was a very sad time behind the scenes especially when I developed friendships with the developers and we could not publicize any of it due to litigations and NDA's.