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The Birth of an Industry by Ken Williams (Page 5)
  

Since our very first adventure, we have continually worked to improve the graphics in our games. Hardware has advanced from black-and-white, to 4-color CGA, to 16 color EGA, to the current 256 color VGA. As the number of colors, screen resolution, processor speed, and system memory all increase, so does the effort required to create state-of-the-art game graphics. Roberta was developing two different games at the same time: King�s Quest VII and Phantasmagoria. Each game had very different requirements. King�s Quest VII had tons of cell animation � la Disney, and Phantasmagoria required us to build our own film production studio in Oakhurst, California (near Yosemite National Park). Both games had to support high resolution. Lorelie Shannon, co-designer of King�s Quest VII talked with Roberta during their work together on King�s Quest VII and these were her thoughts about the games she was working on at the time: "King�s Quest VII has very different animation. I would call it feature-film style, which is a different thing for King�s Quest. It also features two protagonists, which is different and unique for the series. both of them happen to be female, which I think is an interesting twist. I think having female protagonists added a softer, more whimsical approach to the game." Roberta had been wanting to do a horror game for years, but they never panned out. "Horror has to scare you, and it�s my opinion that up until a few years ago, the computer just wasn�t capable of scaring you. Pixalated characters, tinny music, slow seek times- those don�t exactly add up to nail-biting terror! I always just held off until CD-ROMs were faster, and we could use realactors. Youu need real people for a horror game. The protagonist has to be very real to the person watching the movie, reading the book, or playing thegame. Thee player has to empathize with the character or it isn�t going to work. You have to feel for them, to like them, to relate to them. If you don�t sort of bond with them, you won�t fear for them. If you don�t fear for them, you won�t get that feeling of horror. The games herein are offered for their historical value and for your entertainment. As you advance through the saga, you will see the technology and the characters developsimultaneously. Thee earlier games utilized a "parser interface", while the new games offer the "point--and-click"interface. Noo matter what form the story assumes, the magic of Roberta�s designs lies herein, and is ever present in the lives of those they touch. And the rest is history...

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