King's Quest Fan Project The Silver Lining Is Back 61
LoTonah writes "After eight years of development and a Cease & Desist from Vivendi, King's Quest fan project The Silver Lining is back in action. From the website: 'We are extremely happy to announce that our project, The Silver Lining, will definitely see the light of day! In a wonderful turn of events, Activision reached out to the Phoenix Online team a few months ago with a desire to revisit their decision regarding The Silver Lining. After negotiations, the C&D has been officially rescinded, and Phoenix Online has been granted a non-commercial license to release The Silver Lining! Our team is ecstatic about this, and as hard as we've worked for eight years, it's the tireless belief and support of you, our fans, that has made this possible.' The first episode of the project is due to be released on July 10."
I can't believe I'm saying this, but... (Score:3, Informative)
One company (on one issue) down, a few million more to go!
Re:Hmm... (Score:2, Informative)
It's not JUST that they're made by fans (although that's part of it - see below). It's the style of the actual original game.
These kinds of old adventure games actually came up with new, innovative, refreshing, and comedic CHARACTER INTERACTION (i.e. STORIES).
"Aliens are invading, and you must kill them or all mankind is lost" gets kind of old after the 5th... no make that the 1st, iteration.
As to why fan-made remakes are often better:
Because they are made by fans, and fans often understand the lore, storylines, plots, and nuances of the series better than any one individual developer or project manager at the company even does.
If you don't believe me, go find some die-hard Star Trek fans...
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Informative)
Try getting a good adventure game like the old Lucasarts point-and-click adventures.
As you or others may not be aware, Tales of Monkey Island [telltalegames.com] is thoroughly enjoyable. Telltale Games is doing a good job on this "long-dead" game formula with other games like the Sam & Max franchise as well.
Re:I can't believe I'm saying this, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Let's not forget some other unsung heroes. (Score:2, Informative)
You guys are going to love this.
http://www.agdinteractive.com/games/games.html [agdinteractive.com]
Not sure how these guys pulled it off (probably got permission before Vivendi ate Sierra), but they've been doing Sierra remakes for a long time.
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Informative)
Try getting a good adventure game like the old Lucasarts point-and-click adventures
There are actually more new point-and-click adventure games released than you probably think. Their biggest difference from the 2D classics are that most of them are rendered with beautiful 3D graphics even though they often have a fixed camera position to emulate the 2D-adventure style of play.
Try browsing around at Adventuregamers [adventuregamers.com] or MobyGames [mobygames.com] for a while.
Some examples:
Also don't forget that with ScummVM [scummvm.org] you can play LOTS of those classic 2D adventures that you never had a chance to play when you were younger. :)