It’s been a few weeks since the closure and reopening of Sarien.net. Codemasters is giving me the silent treatment and Activision has been very kind and helpful since, though they have been busy with other licenses such as Guitar Hero, so I understand that Space Quest is not top priority.

It seems that in the meantime Telltale Games has obtained a license to work on new King’s Quest episodes, and my own pursuits to obtain licenses (or even the actual IPs, seriously) have stranded thus far. Then one morning I received an e-mail from Al Lowe with the subject “Guess what?”:

I was just contacted by the company who is negotiating for the rights to the Larry IP with Codemasters and he wondered if I knew anyone who could get the games to work on mobiles and iPads! Do I?!


- Al

Is that awesome or what? We did a skype video chat and started planning, as this was a new opening towards reviving Leisure Suit Larry for the iPad. After a few discussions with all people involved we came to the conclusion that using ScummVM or Dosbox could not only lead to GPL issues, but also result in a game that lacks the user experience of playing an actual iPad game, or at least as I (being a real fan) would want to play it. Gamers would end up playing an emulated or ported game, and I know that it would show.

The other option, having me and Q42’s iOS team build the AGI engine from scratch, would exceed budgets, so as of now I don’t have much to go on.

It is by far the end of the Sarien saga however. As of today I have put the Black Cauldron and Gold Rush back online for iPad play while I track down the rightful owners of their respective intellectual properties. Also I will contact Codemasters again to see if Leisure Suit Larry at least can be restored on sarien.net again. And if anything else happens I’ll be sure to let you all know.