Computers were a bit different when I was about thirteen years old. For one thing, we had floppy drives for both 5.25 disks and 3.5 disks. We had a hard drive but it held about 20 megs, a fraction of what you can store on your average flash drive these days. EGA monitors and 8 channel sound cards were cutting edge tech.

And the games in my home all came from a California company named Sierra. Sierra was a pioneer in the field. They created the first graphic home computer game. The first color graphic home computer game and, eventually, the first 3d graphic adventure. It was the first adventure game where you could move around, over, behind, and through a setting. That game was called King's Quest and you played Sir Graham, guiding him in his quest to become king by retrieving the three treasures of Daventry.

King's Quest would be amazingly successful. There would be seven more games in the series. In addition Sierra would put out other adventure games, including the comedic Space Quest, the very real world Police Quest, the controversial Leisure Suit Larry, and my favorite, the Quest for Glory series.

The point of this nostalgic trip? I wanted to leave you with this advice, coined by Peter Spear in the King's Quest Companion.

Boy, if I have learned anything in my life, it is this:

When in doubt, or in trouble, pick up anything that is not nailed down, and if it is, look for loose nails or boards.

Check carefully into, under, above, below, and behind things.

Read everything; you might learn something.

Wear clean undergarments, brush after meals, and always remember:

Nothing is as it appears.

Words to live by.