09/20/05: Added the Video Catalog section.
01/11/04: Vol. 3 No. 1 from 1990 is now up.
01/04/04: Happy new year. Vol. 1 No. 2 from 1987 is up.
08/06/03: Has it really been almost a year? Unbelievable. There *will* be new stuff here soon. Sorry for the delay.
10/13/02: Added the Winter 1988 TSN issue.
04/01/02: Added some copy protection, manuals, and hints scanned from my personal archive here.
03/12/02: Added the Spring 1989 TSN issue.
The magazine issues can be downloaded in one of two ways: indirect, and bundled.
The Indirect-format issues can be viewed via your web browser's internal plugin, and only the pages you want to view will be downloaded. This saves your bandwidth and mine if you are just browsing.
Each page will take approximately 40 seconds to completely load on a typical 56k modem.
The Bundled-format issues are a single monolithic file containing all the pages, quite similar to PDF. You can download it to your machine and use a standalone viewer to view it offline, or archive it.
The Bundled issues are HUGE! Please use the Indirect ones!
If you want a PNG-format lossless image of a particular page or article to use on your website or other publication, let me know. They are scanned at 300dpi so the typical page size is about 15 megs.
Sierra used to send tapes in the mail advertising their new products. Most were VHS tapes with live acting by the developers, and there was at least one audio cassette demonstrating the Roland L/A synthesizers on Sierra soundtracks compared to Adlib and PC Speaker sound.
Missing is the 1990 demo video and, if it exists, a 1988 one. Also I don't appear to have the second side of the audio cassette.
Will Friedman for selling me four issues at a reasonable price.
Joe Schierschmidt (Sir Wulf) for lending me the 1989 demo video.
The issues are scanned on an Epson Perfection 1240U at truecolor 300dpi, scaled to 66%, passed through a descreening filter, and encoded to DjVuPhoto at a decibel level from 28-32. I used scanimage from the SANE tools, ImageMagick "convert", and the DjVuLibre toolset from djvu.sourceforge.net, on a PC running Debian GNU/Linux. No commercial software was used in this project.
Simple. The standard jpeg/PDF format just didn't cut it for this project. DjVu maintains the most readable text of any current lossy color image compression, while keeping the file sizes quite low for the quality of the output. DjVu is not patent encumbered and has free encoding tools for Unix. In short, DjVu rocks for color document archival, and I hope to see its use more widespread in the future.
>I think a lot of people are going to be very (grateful) for your hard work.
I hope so. Not just in the sense that they ooh and aah at it, but that they realize what an unbelievable time of glory it was at Sierra, and maybe through making these publications universally available, someone might be inspired to follow in Ken and Roberta Williams' footsteps. Not just in writing adventure game software for computers, but realizing how important it is to develop our ideas and follow our dreams, in order to achieve personal success, and to produce something that is held in awe by generation after generation, even in an industry where things are practically obsoleted the day after they are produced.
Sierra was one of the most true examples of the American Dream, that unfortunately seems to have been lost today in corporate rigor; this notion of "intellectual property" where ideas are locked away by huge corporate bodies and traded only for precious gains, and the homogenous mass media and entertainment industry that we are forced to endure every day.
I hope that others might one day capture the same creative spirit that Sierra had and produce something new and exciting; and if I contributed to that in some meaningful way, I am satisfied with that knowledge.
So there you have it. Ranty as it is, those are basically my reasons.
Those elusive copy protection sheets that you've lost by now.
Scanned manuals from computer games.
Various help files and texts, dating WAY back.
A list of the Sierra magazines I currently have on hand.
AGI Studio website, and the newer Linux and Win32 versions.
Well, there's nothing here yet, since I haven't gotten any magazines yet from anybody.
Eventually, this page will be a PHP script with the ability to search for any particular topic, and have the Sierra magazine issues with material pertaining to that subject returned to you, ready to download in PDF format.
I will also scan and post the Roger Wilco 3-issue comic book that was sold circa 1991, and the "Space Piston" comic that came as part of Space Quest II.
I'd also like to scan any plain-paper or mailing-type promotional material that Sierra may have sent out. But it's up to other people to get this material to me.
Please help this project! You can donate or sell magazines or material outright to me. I am willing to pay nearly any sane price. Also, you may lend material upon Paypal escrow, if you are concerned about keeping your copy for yourself. I will pay you X amount to "borrow" the material through Paypal, and when you have received the item back and judged it to be in the same condition that you sent it to me in, you return the escrow fee back to me in Paypal.