In 1982/3, Ken & Roberta Williams, of Sierra On-Line fame, built a house in Oakhurst California, complete with stained glass windows showing scenes from their games. The very same house is these days available on Airbnb! www.airbnb.co.uk/rooms/745064... #SierraOnline #Oakhurst #Sierra - ThreadSky

lance-ewing.bsky.social • 79 days ago

In 1982/3, Ken & Roberta Williams, of Sierra On-Line fame, built a house in Oakhurst California, complete with stained glass windows showing scenes from their games. The very same house is these days available on Airbnb! https://www.airbnb.co.uk/rooms/745064635090998742 #SierraOnline #Oakhurst #Sierra

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lance-ewing.bsky.social•76 days ago

For those who really love the early history of Sierra On-Line, here is a digital scan of the invite to Ken & Roberta Williams's housewarming party at this very house on the 3rd Sept 1983. 200 guests received this invite. #SierraOnline #KenWilliams #RobertaWilliams

lance-ewing.bsky.social•76 days ago

And this is the other side of the invite. #SierraOnline

lance-ewing.bsky.social•77 days ago

Steven Levy, in his 1984 book "Hackers", describes the Williams' housewarming party held here in Sep 1983. "Over two hundred people wandered through the ten-thousand-square-foot cedarwood house, admired the stained-glass pictures, marveled at the fireplace of river rock..." #SierraOnline

lance-ewing.bsky.social•77 days ago

"...participated in a tournament on the racquetball court (which had a full-color Apple Computer logo embedded in the gleaming wood), sweated in the sauna, relaxed in the hot tub, played tug-of-war in the backyard Fresno River, spiked volleyballs on the court..." #SierraOnline

lance-ewing.bsky.social•77 days ago

"...watched video piped in from the satellite dish outside, laughed at the comedy troupe flown in from San Francisco, and played the six coin-op arcade games in the giant game room with the full-length wet bar." #SierraOnline

lance-ewing.bsky.social•77 days ago

In the 1985 book "Software People" by Doug Carlston (of Broderbund founder fame), he gives an account of his attendance at Sierra On-Line's 4th anniversary party held at this house in May 1984. Doug describes what he saw there: https://archive.org/details/SoftwarePeopleDougCarlston/page/n179/mode/1up #SierraOnline #DougCarlston #Broderbund

lance-ewing.bsky.social•79 days ago

The house includes a racquetball court. Ken Williams was a big Apple II fan and expert in those early years. Not surprisingly then, he had an apple computer logo built into the floor of the racquetball court. #KenWilliams #SierraOnline #appleII #appleiie

lance-ewing.bsky.social•79 days ago

The stained glass windows either side of the front door, showing characters from Sierra On-Line's 1983 "The Dark Crystal" hi-res adventure game, are simply amazing!! #thedarkcrystal #SierraOnline

imalittletpat.bsky.social•77 days ago

I suggest you save your game before entering

lance-ewing.bsky.social•77 days ago

That's good advice! 😆 I've been seriously thinking about writing a fan-made Sierra AGI game set in 1983 Oakhurst, and this would certainly be one of the locations. That and the top secret KQ project team office. #KingsQuest #SierraOnline

lance-ewing.bsky.social•76 days ago

I have heard from one of the former Sierra On-Line employees that the keypad security pin code to get into the Sierra On-Line programmer's office at the back of Ponderosa Printing building was 6502, i.e. the microprocessor used in the Apple II, VIC 20 and Atari machines they were writing games for!

lance-ewing.bsky.social•76 days ago

A lot of what I've been posting since joining Bluesky has been hinting at this. I'm a bit of a Sierra On-Line early history buff, with a particular interest in that top secret King's Quest IBM PCjr project that created the world's first animated graphic adventure game. #SierraOnline #adventuregame

imalittletpat.bsky.social•76 days ago

Oh, nice! I'm pretty sure I played your AGI fangame (well, demo) when I was in high school

lance-ewing.bsky.social•76 days ago

Really? Cool! When I started writing that, I was in the last year of university, but I first started reverse engineering the AGI interpreter in the early 90s, certainly by 1992. I only knew BASIC then, but it didn't stop me. Yeah, its a demo, but one day I'll finish it 🤣. I still have the game plan.

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