September 15, 2002

More Ogg Vorbis encoding today. That is my project for the weekend. The computer are hard at work moving the files over. I have gone through so many CDs already. I am finding so much music that I forgot that I had. This really is a great way to get use out of all those CDs that you tend to forget about.

Loopy did lunch at the State Street Diner. Other than that, it was a pretty slow day. I did make one discovery today (Loopy says that he showed this to me before but I never get excited about things until I discover them for myself.) I discovered a group of developers called Tierra making remakes of some of the classic Sierra On-Line adventure games like King’s Quest I and II and Quest for Glory II. Those were awesome games back in the early and mid 1980’s. King’s Quest I: Quest for the Crown was one of the games that got my excited about video games in the first place. Before that game, all there was to me was silly Atari action games. But KQ1 made me see that games could go in a whole other direction. I own all of Sierra’s King’s Quest games, there were eight of them, plus a remake of the original with better graphics. Well, Tierra is taking that remake and remaking it with much better graphics, some enhanced game play, new sound and even voice actors. Quite a change from the eight color, beeping, 1984 original. And it is free as well! And here is the link so that you can download it straight from Tierra Games. They are also on the verge (on the cusp) of releasing the remake of King’s Quest II and soon after that, Quest for Glory II (I don’t know why they are starting with the second installment in that series.) This is really exciting because the original games from these series are not available anymore. Lots of people want them but Sierra no longer makes them available, even for download. Also, many of the original games don’t work properly with Windows 95 and later. And some might not work at all. I played KQ1 and The Black Cauldron on my old Amiga 1000, long, long ago. I still have the original boxes.

Loopy downloaded the MAME engine and Forgotten Worlds and has been playing the classic arcade game. In fact, he managed to beat it within an hour or two of having downloaded it. It is neat to be able to go back and play the old games that have disappeared for so long. Those old arcade games where a real part of many of our childhoods. It is very nostalgic.

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