Sierra Pledges PCjr Support

Ken Williams, founder and president of Sierra-On-Line, has reversed his company’s decision to abandon PCjr support and has promised to include PCjr compatibility in new software.
In a telephone interview with jr Newsletter, he said the company’s decision to drop PCjr support for King’s Quest IV was a mistake, and his company is now releasing versions of King’s Quest IV with labels saying they will operate on PCjrs.
"I like the PCjr, it really gave us our start," Williams said, adding,"I was kind of depressed when we decided to drop support."
But, he explained, after an outpouring of complaints and a survey of PCjr users, "We were surprised at how many avid PCjr users there are." He said at first Sierra decided King’s Quest IV ran too slowly on PCjrs, and they inserted a "PCjr detector" with a warning saying King’s Quest IV would not run on PCjrs in the first versions of KQ IV. 
Since then, he said, they have found ways to speed up the game when it is running on PCjrs. And now, he said, they can be proud of the way it runs. He noted that all of their latest titles: Police Quest II, Leisure Suit Larry II, Space Quest III and Gold Rush, will operate on PCjrs.
Any PCjr user who purchased an early version of King’s Quest IV can return it for a current PCjr compatible version, he said. And from now on Sierra is going to support sales of its games to PCjr users.
Sierra-On-Line was started by Ken and his wife Roberta in 1980. Their first big hit was a program called Mystery House, for Apple Computers. But their fortunes really took off in 1984 when they made King’s Quest I, specifically for the PCjr. Using innovative three dimensional graphics and the PCjr’s 16 colors, the game was a huge success. Sierra games are still perhaps the most popular of all with PCjr users and it came as a shock to learn that Sierra was dropping us with their first releases of King’s Quest IV. 
As part of jr Newsletter’s campaign to encourage compatibility in new software, we contacted Ken and told him how disappointed our readers would be if PCjr users could no longer enjoy Sierra’s fine games.
As we reported last month, several ingenious PCjr users had already figured out how to run King’s Quest IV on their computers. Randy Pratt created a patch, which we immediately put on our latest version of our jr Patches Disk. Now, thanks to Sierra’s renewed loyalty to PCjrs, the patch won’t be needed.
We told Ken of our campaign to try to persuade software publishers to make their software compatible with PCjrs, and we asked if Sierra found it difficult to do so. "It’s not hard to include jr compatibility," he said. "We you’re already supporting Tandy 1000, it’s really very easy." This is a point we’ve been trying to convey to other publishers. Unfortunately, Ken did not provide us with a set of instructions for PCjr compatibility to give other software publishers.
More Memory Required
John Williams, Sierra’s Director of Marketing, pointed out that the high quality of Sierra’s games puts great demands upon the computer running them, both in terms of graphics management and available memory. Expanding upon Ken Williams’ pledge to support PCjrs in the future, John said, "In exchange for that support, we’re going to ask a little more from PCjr users. We encourage them to upgrade their memory and install speedup boards so our games will run best."
The newest versions of King’s Quest IV require 640K to run properly on PCjrs, he said. The new KQIV boxes state that 640K is required for PCjrs. King’s Quest IV is the only new Sierra game that has a special 256K version for PCjrs. Although Gold Rush will run with 256K, John said, "Gold Rush will probably be our last 256K adventure."
With the creation of King’s Quest IV, Sierra began using new game design software. It’s better than the software they used before, but it creates games that require more memory to operate. John said Sierra conducted a survey of PCjr users and found that there were many who had upgraded to 640K.  Enough to comprise a substantial market for future game software.
Compatibility Note
Now that Sierra is committed to PCjr compatibility, PCjr users should be aware of the fact that Sierra has included all the necessary elements to recognize memory above 128K and to configure PCjrs to run the games properly. Ken Williams warned against booting up your PCjr with other config.sys setups. He said this will conflict with the instructions Sierra has included in its software. So Sierra advises booting with a "plain vanilla DOS" (DOS that has not been modified to recognize your PCjr’s additional memory, ie. the original DOS disk. If you don’t have an original version any more, you can just make a copy of your DOS boot disk and delete the config.sys file and the autoexec.bat file. This will give you a "plain vanilla" boot disk.)
Sierra is the only software publisher that we know of which includes specific PCjr configuration programs in its software. So we don’t advise booting your computer with a "plain vanilla" DOS when attempting to run other software. Another article in this month’s newsletter includes specific steps to follow in order to get seemingly incompatible software to run on your PCjr.
Other news regarding our compatiblily campaign this month involves Accolade, makers of Mean 18, Test Drive, 4th and Inches, Grand Prix, and other titles. Charlotte Taylor, Public Relations Director, admitted that PCjr compatibility is not a major concern for Accolade, since the company targets its new software to computers that are currently selling well. Since PCjrs have been discontinued, they do not appear as computers that should be given much consideration in Accolade’s marketing plans.
However, after we informed Ms. Taylor of our contact with PCjr users around the country and that there are an estimated 500,000 PCjrs in the hands of the computing public, she said she would forward any information we could provide on how Accolade might make future titles PCjr compatible to the director of marketing. 
We told Ms. Taylor about our current efforts to come up with a set of instructions for software designers to help them include PCjr compatibility in future releases. "If it’s not too difficult, that’s something we should definitely consider," she said. This is hardly a committment, but it’s an opening. We intend to follow up on it as soon as we’ve assembled the instructions.
Do Your Part
We encourage you to help in the effort to persuade software publishers that there are many PCjr users who love our computers and who will purchase new software that is compatible.
Please contact the publishers of software you currently use to urge them to keep on producing software that is PCjr compatible. If they ask for more information, tell them to contact us at jr Newsletter, Box 163, Southbury, CT 06488. We’ll be happy to send them compatiblity information as it becomes available.