Sierra adventure games get a unique achievement system

Sierra games showed no mercy. You died a thousand deaths before seeing the end credits, or you gave up trying. Without any warning or clue, players would wander off in an instant death situation, and the only way to know was by doing it.

For instance, in Leisure Suit Larry, just pressing cursor down right after the game starts, has Larry crossing the street and getting run over by a car. Walking to the left gets Larry beaten to death by a guy with a club.

I read a quote somewhere on the web which struck me as funny, with a cruel twist:

"Oh, Sierra games. You are like an abusive husband. Regardless of how you beat me up, I still love you"

This got me thinking. The Sierra developers put a lot of effort in these games to have you dying at every corner, that it would actually be quite an achievement to undergo them all -- and watch the animations that go with it! And so, I am proud to announce that the upcoming Sarien.net update has this new achievement system called... Ways-To-Go (tm).

Yes, Sarien.net is getting a major site update soon. Not only will this have a brandnew redesign (see screenshot), user accounts, savegames (that you can store online and share on twitter or facebook), but also unlockable avatars that you can use in every game (be Larry in Space Quest!), user scoring, rankings and this unique achievement system that rewards you for finding different "ways to go". Get run over by a car, eaten by an alien, shot down by the Death Angel, cut in pieces by leaserbeams, roasted on a stick, zapped by a Wizard... it's all going to be rewarding and fun.

With this new update I hope to show the world what is possible with combining old singleplayer games with the endless possibilities of the social web. I hope you will sign up when the new sarien.net goes live, probably somewhere in Februari or March! So, it's not there yet, but it will be... soon.

Sarien.net is live!

After months of hard work, you can now play Leisure Suit Larry, Space Quest and Police Quest in your browser, multiplayer. No need to write more about it here, just go there and find out:

www.sarien.net

Donkey Kong II for DS

Donkey Kong II, my all time favorite Game & Watch, is here for the Nintendo DS.It's not finished, you can't die, and it is probably loaded with bugs. But I loved this game so much that I just had to have it for my DS.



One thing that scares me is the phrase 'if you build it, they will come'. Hopefully Nintendo understands that this is my tribute to an all time classic favorite, and they won't hunt me down.

I loved Nintendo's Game & Watch Collection 1, which contained Donkey Kong 1. A classic that I played to death when I was a kid. However, I loved Donkey Kong II even more. But it seems that it's still missing from Nintendo's Game & Watch Collection 2 that was just released.

So, what I have so far is a demo version in which you cannot die, but you can at least free Kong.

Download:

DonkeyKongII.nds

or for other cards you might need one of these:

DonkeyKongII.ds.gba
DonkeyKongII.sc.nds

Press Start to restart the game.
Press Y to toggle LCD modus. This puts in a little extra retro touch.
Press A to jump.
Use the controlpad to move Junior around.


It was written using PaLib, and much appreciation should go out to fellow-Dutchman-and-dk2-fan Reinier Feijen who wrote the vector-graphics for his flash version. And of course Nintendo for coming up with the whole thing in the first place.

Complex - a nice puzzlegame for Pocket PC

Together with good friend and brother-in-law Ferry I created a game for Pocket PC's back in 2004. It's a simple game, but quite addictive and to be honest it's actually pretty cool! ;-) And hey, don't take my words for it, it got nominated for best puzzlegame of 2004 by Pocket PC Magazine :-)

We used to have a website about it, but without a fancy url. Anyway, you can check out the website here and download a demo of the game for free.

http://pocketeer.q42.nl