I used to play this game a lot back in the day. It would INFERIORATE ME that you had to take this step, but please, oh please, when you play as Larry, don't forget to erase the video tape. If you don't you need to start ALLLLL the way back at the beginning. THIS USED TO TICK ME OFF TO NO END!

OK, I am done, enjoy the Larry collection. Great games. No love for sale.

Oh yea, and don't forget about the easter eggs. ;)

Some good news about the Larry remakes in this regard: I emailed Al Lowe asked about whether the Larry 1 remake will feature deaths and/or unwinnable states. He said that there will be deaths, but that unwinnable states were a mistake back in the day and are a bug now. So at least Al now hates this sort of thing as much as you do!

I think most of the "dead ends" in the Sierra adventures were simply caused by oversights from the game designers. I can't imagine them being so cruel that they would put them into the game intentionally. Except maybe the Space Quest guys.

But I never liked them either, so that's good news from Al.

Actually most of the dead ends in early Sierra games were intentional, as they actually lead to unique death scenes or death messages. Ones you won't encounter if you have the right items on you.

This is particularly noticeable in some of the early KQ games, and SQ, and Gold Rush IIRC. For example yes that "bridge" in kolyma was designed to trap or kill you, if you used it too many times.

Actually it goes back to Infocom, which IIRC, the designers said they designed dead ends into the game because they wanted to be 'insidious' to the players!

In the hight of the SCI VGA era some of the designers moved away from the intentional "dead end", and one they existed, it was an oversight or bug. Generally they put in 'barriers' to prevent you from accessing places unless you had the correct items.

Those aren't dead-ends. Dead ends are for example forgetting to pick up an item early in the game in a location you can't get back to later, making it impossible to progress while avoiding to tell you why you can't. What you describe are more like surprise deaths that occur because you tried to do something the game doesn't want you try (well, they do want you to try it, it just spits in your face and mock you for doing so).

That said, I don't think dead ends are unintentional - it was just considered part of the experience back then. Dead ends and a huge amount of deaths in their games also helped Sierra sell hintbooks. For example, the hintbook for LSL1 even outsold the game itself (this was also due to being one of the most pirated games ever, but still).

I'm thankful the dead ends are gone. Deaths are acceptable in modern adventure games if there's a quick retry or reload option that lets you continue the game from before you did the action that caused the death. A genre that's completely reliant on exploration and trial and error gameplay should not discourage you from enjoying said gameplay elements.

Unless the game wants to portray an intense atmosphere where death is lurking around every corner.

Stareye... Um "surprise death" or "dead end"? Take for example the infamous KQ5! There are multiple locations where you can get stuck in an area except for death (and death generally comes much later in the game)... For examploe if you forget to take genie into the woods but dispell the witch's spell, you are stuck in the woods. You can wander around until you get killed by a spider or eaten by a plant. Those deaths will only appear if you don't defeat the witch, and she can't defeat you.

There are other places for example if you forget to get the crowbar, you will be captured and killed by the blue beast outside the castle. Note you can be playing for an hour or two before you reach that point in the game, before you end up on that death!

Same goes for 'saving cedric' or not saving cedric. The outcome does not show up into late in the game.

These were all described as 'dead ends" by the developers themselves!

Even that 'bridge example' I mentioned has been described by the designers and critics both as a 'dead end' situation. Because you may not know you crossed too many times, until you are late in the game! You could get through a third of the game, before it kills you, if you crossed a few times to early in the game.

Even in KQ1, most if not all "dead-ends" lead to a death situation, except for maybe missing the toadstool. If you get to the island without cheese or a treasure, the rat will kill you if you attempt to pass it. Without the clover or the fiddle, the leprechauns will kill you. Only the lack of a toadstool to 'shrink' will get you trapped underground permanently without any death as far as I know.

Most everything else has an alternate solution in order to bypass them, so no way to get 'stuck', as you will more than likely have an item on you. Plenty of treasures for example, that can be traded with many other characters. Although if you are robbed too many times by the dwarf, it may be possible to get stuck in a position where you can't get past the troll or some of the other treasure interested characters..

Dead ends happend when games lets you progress to a point of no return, despite not picking up an important item or doing something else. Death is just one of the two possible outcomes of a dead end. The dead end from KQ5 that you described sounds like a much better way than the other kind. I guess that makes two kinds of intentional dead ends - one that leads to death, and one that leads to endless wandering around without the ability to proceed.

What you described in the post I replied to sounded more like the surprise deaths we often see in Sierra games to me. It's clearer now what you meant. ;)

There's Dead Ends and Walking Deads (not to be confused by the comics/TV/games series). Both happens when a game allows you to irreversibly move to a new location (by this I mean once you've moved, there's no way for you to come back to the past location except restoring or restarting your game) while you've forgot to take an item, solve a puzzle or made a mistake such as losing an item, using it incorrectly, forgetting to note down something or pissed off an important plot character, in the location you're currently in.

The difference between a dead end and a walking dead is:
If the game eventually kills you for your past mistakes, it's called a dead end, the game eventually tells you "You've lost."
If the game does not kill you for your past mistake and lets you roam the game freely for hours on end while you are stuck in an unwinnable state, it's called a walking dead (you're still walking but you've lost the game and you don't know it.)

That does not mean dead ends are any less frustrating than walking deads because very few games from ye olde days told the player they screwed up somewhere nor where they actually screwed up when they killed the player. That does not either mean that walking deads were unintentional design mistake from the developers.

These things were simply there to make the games more difficult so players would buy hint books or dial the help lines and add length to a game without actually having to add more content nor puzzles. You'll notice that games without dead ends nor walking deads tend to feature much more puzzles and locations while lasting about as long as games that featured dead ends.

As for Leisure Suit Larry 5, if I recall correctly, I could be wrong and Baggins will surely correct me if I am, but it's impossible to get stuck anywhere in it, you can play from the very beginning to the ending cutscene without erasing the tapes at the beginning, recharging your camera, switching tapes or without recording any of the girls. Although the ending cutscene will be slightly different to reflect your mistake and you will have a lower score at the end, but I recall reading that Lowe specifically designed this game so it was impossible to die nor get stuck in unwinnable states anywhere in it.

Blueskirt, you are probably right about LSL5. However, I've only played throught he game once. So I don't remember all the details. LSL in general is not my cup of tea. KQ, SQ, QFG or PQ, I've probably clocked hundreds of play throughs in comparison!

Most of them were very intentional. For example, you can eat the candy in LSL1 (haven't tried it in the EGA version, but you can in the VGA version), even though doing this automatically makes the game unwinnable because you need it later. There's no way that somebody coded the ability to eat the candy without knowing you'll need it later. You can also give the candy to the cabbie (and maybe even to other people) with the same result, and in that case the VGA version even flat-out tells you afterwards it was a bad idea because you might have wanted to give it to somebody else. It wasn't until around when Larry 5 was made that people started treating unwinnability as a design mistake (LucasArts led the way here with games like Monkey Island), and so Larry 5-7 have no intentional unwinnable scenarios.

And LSL 2 has even more dead ends because most of the areas are timed and you can easily miss items you need later. Very frustrating.