The Old Hint Books on Sierragamers.com, and the Missing Few

[Walden]

Hey, I admit I'm new to these pages, but I'm a Sierra fan going back to 1989 (when I was doing a fair amount of catchup on all their adventure games since King's Quest 1).

The thing I appreciate most about Ken Williams's site, Sierragamers.com is the scans they did of what appears to be virtually all the hint books Sierra put out themselves before switching, like everyone else, to Prima. I love reading (or rereading) them.

The only thing I wonder about is that a few are missing. Specifically, every game from this time is represented, but with the five largest series where the first game had a remake, only either the original hint book or the remake hint book is posted on Sierragamers.com Specifically, King's Quest 1 and Leisure Suit Larry 1 have the originals, while Space Quest 1, Police Quest 1, and Quest for Glory 1 have the remakes.

Ken Williams made it very clear that whoever scanned the hint books for PDF versions did an amazing job that must have been very difficult. I do not wish to criticize that person's work. Still, I am interested in where I might acquire the hint books that were not posted on Sierragamers.com. Or, to be more specific, the two that I am most focused on for now are the original Police Quest 1 and Space Quest 1. I have already been investigating what is sold on eBay and it is useful, but most of those sold there are the older invisible ink formats. From my experience, the pen ink, the books' hint ink, or both have dried considerably. Also hints developed back in the days when the ink was fresher may still be readable or not, so I have not made much headway with the invisible ink format so far. (frustrating, you know :(

A large dealer in these materials on eBay (draconiangames) tells me that red ink (and thus permanent) format versions of those books (again, original Police Quest 1 and Space Quest 1) were printed, but, as Sierra was moving past the AGI era of games, not many were printed, making them hard to come by.

Still, I would just like to know if anyone has any information (any information of any kind at all) on these hintbooks, both the invisible ink versions or the red ink/cellophane versions.

(As a sidenote, I have never seen any sign of a hint book for the Leisure Suit Larry 1 VGA remake or for Sierra 1990 King's Quest 1 EGA remake. Does anyone know if either of those two ever existed at all?)

[Collector]

Welcome to SHP. I have not been collecting the hintbooks, so I am not the best person to ask. There are a few serious collectors that post here, so if they see this they might be able more input. However, it might take a few days for them see this.

As to Sierra Gamers, it is in a sort of a state of limbo. Ken has had little no input into it for some time. Andy Linnenkohl, the owner of the old SierraVault site was managing it for a while after he closed his site. He is probably the one that scanned most of the hintbooks. Rudy Marchant has been managing it, but most of his time is spent on his own site, Sierra Chest. Ken's brother John had spent some time fixing a bunch of broken things and was going to revamp it, but not much has been done beyond fixing the broken menu.

[Walden]

Hey, great to meet you. Good to see a Sierra fan site still going.

[OmerMor]

I've found (in this thread) (poor) scans of the original Quest for Glory 1 hintbook:

• http://baxterai.com/utils/misc/QFG/hq1HintBookAnnotated.pdf
• http://baxterai.com/utils/misc/QFG/hq1HintBook.pdf

Also, regarding missing evidence:

• LSL1 Remake hintbook: http://www.vintage-sierra.net/lsl/lslhint.php
• KQ1 Remake hintbook: http://www.vintage-sierra.net/kq/kqhint.php

[Collector]

I always hated the Vintage-Sierra watermarks on very low res images.

[Tawmis]

I always hated the Vintage-Sierra watermarks on very low res images.

I've never cared for Watermarks in general. Either put them all the way at the top or at the very bottom. Not right in the middle of the image. I get why they do it (it's harder to photoshop out), but it's also extremely annoying if you are just wanting to look at it.