Sierra Entertainment
Sierra Entertainment | |
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Founded | 1979 |
Headquarters | Los Angeles, California, USA |
Other Names | On-Line Systems, Sierra On-Line |
Sierra Entertainment is an American video game developer and publisher. The company was founded in 1980 by Ken Williams. He had coded his wife Roberta's idea for a game, which eventually became Hi-Res Adventure #1: Mystery House. The game ended up being so successful that Ken and Roberta moved out of state, and eventually settled in Sierra, Nevada, which is how the company name was created. The company has developed and even published many highly successful franchises such as King's Quest, Police Quest, Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, and the Half-Life series. The company also acquired many other studios in its travels as a game production studio.
In 1996, Sierra Entertainment was acquired by Comp-U-Card (CUC) International for $1.06 billion. At the beginning of 1999, Sierra Entertainment was sold to Havas Interactive. The company ended up being owned by Vivendi Universal Games, but shut down all subsidiaries in 2004, and Sierra itself in June the same year. In 2005, Sierra was relaunched in Los Angeles, California, which published indie games, and the company reacquired their old licenses once owned by Vivendi. However, Vivendi later merged with Activision which eventually became Activision Blizzard, and so they disbanded Sierra in 2008 due to redundancy purposes.
Sierra was once again relaunched in August 2014.
Games
Music Development
DOS
To create music for MS-DOS games, the composers used Sequencer Plus Gold by Voyetra Technologies. Their MIDI files were then converted to a sound driver by Stuart Goldstein.
File Formats
Audio Personnel
- Al Lowe - Composer.
- Bob Siebenberg - Freelance musician; composer for Space Quest III.
- Amenda Lombardo - Composer for Mixed-Up Mother Goose.
- Christopher Braymen - Composer.
- James William Elliot - Composer for Mixed-Up Mother Goose.
- Ken Allen - Composer.
- Margaret Lowe - Composer.
- Mark Seibert - Composer, audio director.
- Neal Grandstaff - Composer.
- Orpheus Hanley - Composer.
- Rob Atesalp - Composer.
- Rudy Helm - Composer.
- Stuart Goldstein - DOS sound driver programmer.
- William Goldstein - Composer for King's Quest IV.