Original Release: Sierra, 1992, PC
The five “Crazy Nick’s Picks” games were essentially special demos for some of Sierra’s adventures of the early ’90s (the early VGA period), sold at software counters in a little blister pack for five bucks or so each in 1992-1993.
At first glance they might look like a cynical scheme to cut out bits of existing game code to make a few more quick buckazoids … well, really they are, but it also appears Sierra had planned to lay the groundwork for the “Crazy Nick” brand to be their line of smaller budget action / arcade-y games, kinda like the stuff Apogee/Epic were putting out at the time; they announced a few original titles in an issue of the company promotional magazine, but that never came to fruition for whatever reason and the whole angle was dropped after these five initial games.
Unlike full-size Sierra adventures these have no install program, so if it doesn’t autodetect your sound card you’re stuck with honking PC speaker music. Probably easier to run in ScummVM since that supports them.
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: MS-DOS Emulation Guide
King Graham’s Board Game Challenge
Review by: C. M0use
King Graham establishes the Crazy Nick line as Sierra’s “Simple” series, as his entry clips checkers and backgammon from Hoyle’s Book of Games 3.
That’s really all there is to it, it’s pretty much a limited Hoyle 3 demo with two games and one opponent. CPU Graham plays pretty well and has three adjustable difficulty settings at least.
Leisure Suit Larry’s Casino
Review by: C. M0use
One of the more interesting titles as it combines elements from two different games, Larry’s entry in the series takes the casino games from Leisure Suit Larry 1 and adds the video poker from Larry 5.
This is also the only one of the bunch with an extra mechanic; you begin with a roll of $100, and losing it forces you to take out a $100 loan from a loan shark. This can only be done nine times. Once you’ve exhausted your credit, do you die? Does the game stop working? Honestly, I didn’t bother to check. I would guess that you’re just forced to stop playing until you quit out of the game to DOS and fire it up again.
Parlor Games With Laura Bow
Review by: C. M0use
Another clip-out from Hoyle 3, the unflappable Laura Bow gets … street gambling?
Yacht is a dice game that turns out to be fairly similar to video poker, and you got traditional dominoes as well.
Robin Hood’s Games of Skill and Chance
Review by: C. M0use
These three games are ripped from Conquests of the Longbow, virtually unaltered: archery, Nine Men’s Morris, and “sticks.”
Archery just gives you the practice mode found outside of the Merry Men’s camp, not the Nottingham competition from later on. Basically shoot at trees until you get bored.
Nine Men’s Morris, basically a more elaborate Tic Tac Toe, is played with that one drunk guy in the tavern just for funsies. No betting or anything.
Sticks must be really confusing for people who grabbed this off the shelf on a whim and have no familiarity with Longbow. You think it’s going to be another nice comfy medieval tavern game … suddenly you’re in a brutal fight to the death with Evil Monk! The action is just as confusing and random as it was in original game, and when you inexplicably kill the monk everyone just casually wanders back to camp all psychotic.
Roger Wilco’s Spaced-Out Game Pack
Review by: C. M0use
This one takes games from Space Quest 4 and the VGA remake of Space Quest 1 and is the worst of the bunch. The only even partway entertaining game is the skimmer journey. The Monolith Burger belt game is rote to begin with and never even bothers to speed up. Ms. Astro Chicken isn’t as good as the original version from SQ3 and was really thrown in SQ4 just as a joke.