Abandoning
Space Quest
The
last Space Quest item Sierra sold was the Space Quest Collection,
which contains all the games from the Series. This particular item
wasn't all that wide-spread (as opposed to previous Space Quest
products), but at least it was available at their website. Sadly,
they stopped selling that package in 1998. To make matters worse,
they also stopped offering technical support, game hints and replacement
manuals. Simply put: they abandoned the games.
At
the moment, there's no reason to believe they are ever going to
sell the games again. If
they are to resume production (fat chance), Amazon.com
is the first place to check as they handle Sierra's online sales.
The collection (although out of stock and discontinued) is set to
$20 US. It
has been mentioned more than once: Putting the Space Quest Collection
back into production is too expensive. They gave three reasons:
The
high royalties attached. Royalties means that certain people (I.E.
the guys who created Space Quest) receive a cut from each copy
sold. At the time Space Quest was hot stuff, it wasn't unusable
for the designers to receive 5% royalties per copy. These agreements
made between the designers and Sierra still stand (even though
they might have been sacked or have left the company to work elsewhere).
The
collection will not sell enough copies to make a profit out of
it. Let's assume for a moment that Sierra needs to order at least
25,000 units to make selling economical feasable (we all know
buying bulk is cheaper). And let's say they're going to sell 500
copies a month, which is VERY optimistic if you ask me. This means
it'll take more than 4 years before every copy is sold! Can you
image how much they'll have to spend on storage, for instance?
Offering
technical support for these oldies is a hell. Space Quest wasn't
designed to run on today's Pentium 5000 Ghz with Windows NextGen.
We've
reached a dead end, right? I mean to say: if Sierra can't help us,
who can?
Buying
the Games - Bagain Bins
The Space Quest games are very hard to find, but it's not impossible.
The first thing you might want to check are the bargain bins of
your local software store. You never know what's hidden inside these
bins'o'pleasure. I've bought several Space Quest items this way,
including hintbooks. I must add: the more time passes, the more
unlikely it is to find Space Quest in a bargain bin. However, I've
found a copy of Space Quest 6 as recently as in the year 2002.
Buying
the Games - used Amazon items
Space
Quest is just one of the many products offered at Amazon.com.
Amazon happens to be Sierra official online seller. However, the
collection is out of stock and discontinued. From time to time copies
of the Series (not limited to the collection) are offered by Amazon-users.
Be a bit careful not to spend too much money.
Buying
the Games - eBay Auctions
I
always recommend people to eBay,
the largest online auction website in the world. It's your the best
option to buy Space Quest. Go to the website and search for "Space
Quest". You'll get presented with a list of games people are
selling. This means that if you can't find your Space Quest, return
some days later and try again. Their might be someone else now who's
selling the sequel you're looking for.
The
games are offered for dirty cheap prices most of the time. It isn't
very difficult getting your hands on Space Quest 3 for $7.50 US
for instance. On the other hand, the collection packages are quite
frequently sold for well over $100 US bucks. I therefore recommend
buying the games seperately, unless you live overseas and have to
pay for the shipping costs which can be quite high (probably around
$10 to $15 US). Many sellers may be willing to ship to your country.
Contact them and ask for the shipping costs just to be sure.
You
need
your own account before you can start bidding. Signing up for an
account is free. One of the most frequent questions I hear from
people is: Can you trust sellers? Well, you can never be 100% certain.
And the seller might not be problem: your package might be lost
during shipment for instance. So how can you be sure, or relatively
sure? I recommend bidding on sellers who have over 20 postive feedbacks.
It's highly unlikely that a person with a high amount of positive
feedback is about to scam you. Mind you, all my transactions at
Ebay went great, and I've done quite a few. Not one trade went unsatisfactory!
But how are you going to pay the seller? I recommend using PayPal.
You can register for an account which enables you to pay for auctions,
as well as other things, by means of your credit card. Don't worry
about safety: You'll only have to enter your credit card data once,
and you can use your account for free (when paying) over and over
again. Please note that the seller at Ebay must accept PayPal. But
quite a few sellers do so.
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