Sierra Entertainment, Inc. was an American video game developer and publisher founded in 1979 by Ken and Roberta Williams. The company is known for pioneering the graphic adventure game genre, including the first such game, Mystery House. It is known for its graphical adventure game series King's Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Gabriel Knight, Leisure Suit Larry, and Quest for Glory, and as the original publisher of Valve's Half-Life series.
Pinball games are a family of games in which a ball is propelled into a specially designed table where it bounces off various obstacles, scoring points either en route or when it comes to rest. Historically the board was studded with nails called 'pins' and had hollows or pockets which scored points if the ball came to rest in them. Today, pinball is most commonly an arcade game in which the ball is fired into a specially designed cabinet known as a pinball machine, hitting various lights, bumpers, ramps, and other targets depending on its design. The game's object is generally to score as many points as possible by hitting these targets and making various shots with flippers before the ball is lost. Most pinball machines use one ball per turn, and the game ends when the ball(s) from the last turn are lost. The biggest pinball machine manufacturers historically include Bally Manufacturing, Gottlieb, Williams Electronics and Stern Pinball.
The Incredible Machine (TIM) is a series of video games in which players create a series of Rube Goldberg devices. They were originally designed and coded by Kevin Ryan and produced by Jeff Tunnell, the now-defunct Jeff Tunnell Productions, and published by Dynamix; the 1993 through 1995 versions had the same development team, but the later 2000–2001 games have different designers. All versions were published by Sierra Entertainment. The entire series and intellectual property were acquired by Jeff Tunnell-founded PushButton Labs in October 2009. PushButton Labs was later acquired by Playdom, itself a division of Disney Interactive, so as of now the rights are held by The Walt Disney Company.
Starsiege: Tribes is a first-person shooter video game. It is the first of the Tribes video game series and follows the story from Metaltech: Earthsiege and Starsiege. It was developed by Dynamix and published by Sierra On-Line in 1998. An expansion pack, Tribes Extreme, was cancelled; it was supposed to add single-player missions, multiplayer maps, and bot AI.
Tribes 2 is a first-person shooter multiplayer video game developed by Dynamix and published by Sierra On-Line in 2001 as a sequel to Starsiege: Tribes.
Tribes is a series of five science fiction first-person shooter video games released between 1998 and 2012. The game plot is set in the far future. The series includes Starsiege: Tribes, Tribes 2, Tribes: Aerial Assault, Tribes: Vengeance, and Tribes: Ascend. Tribes is a spin-off series from the mecha simulation series Metaltech.
Red Baron is a combat flight simulation video game for MS-DOS created by Damon Slye at Dynamix. It was published by Sierra On-Line in 1990.
Starsiege is a mecha-style vehicle simulation game developed by Dynamix and released in 1999. Starsiege is set in the Metaltech/Earthsiege universe, which contains its predecessors Earthsiege (1994), Battledrome (1994), and Earthsiege 2 (1996). This universe also includes action game Hunter Hunted (1996), strategy games Mission Force: Cyberstorm (1996) and Cyberstorm 2: Corporate Wars (1998). It also includes the sequels Starsiege: Tribes and all subsequent Tribes titles. In 2015, this game and the rest of the Metaltech/Tribes series were released as freeware by Hi-Rez Studios, but Battledrome and the Cyberstorm series were not.
Dynamix, Inc. was an American developer of video games from 1984 to 2001, best known for the flight simulator Red Baron, the puzzle game The Incredible Machine, the Front Page Sports series, Betrayal at Krondor, and the online multiplayer game Tribes.
Sid & Al's Incredible Toons is a puzzle video game developed by Dynamix and released by Sierra On-Line in 1993.
The Incredible Toon Machine is a game from Sierra On-Line, and is the sequel to Sid & Al's Incredible Toons, also from Sierra. The game is a Windows port of Sid & Al's Incredible Toons with added multimedia features such as animated cut scenes between levels and CD music tracks.
Heart of China is a 1991 adventure game developed by Dynamix and published by Sierra On-Line. The game follows the exploits of pilot Jake "Lucky" Masters as he tries to rescue nurse Kate Lomax from a ruthless Chinese warlord.
Galactic Pinball is a pinball video game for Nintendo's Virtual Boy game console. The game was released on July 21, 1995 in Japan and on August 14, 1995 in the United States. It is set in the Milky Way galaxy, and has players maneuvering a puck around one of four pinball tables available in the game. The Virtual Boy's standard red-and-black color scheme resulted in criticism of this and other games on the platform for causing nausea, headaches, and eye strain. It uses parallax, which allows the game to display three-dimensional effects. It has received a mixed reception; it was praised for its authenticity, while reception to its physics and controls were mixed. It has received criticism for its lack of ambition and originality.
Johnny Castaway is a screensaver released in 1992 by Sierra On-Line/Dynamix, and marketed under the Screen Antics brand as "the world's first story-telling screen saver".
3-D Ultra Pinball is a series of pinball computer games developed by Sierra Entertainment's Dynamix. The games try to escape from the traditional, arcade pinball and feature animation, more than one table at once, and "temporary targets".
Damon Slye is a computer game designer, director, and programmer. In 1984 he founded Dynamix with Jeff Tunnell in Eugene, Oregon. He is best known for creating the historic flight simulations Red Baron, A-10 Tank Killer, and Aces of the Pacific.
Take a Break! Pinball was a 1993 pinball computer game collection by Dynamix/Sierra On-Line. It contained several individual boards based on various Dynamix or Sierra series such as King's Quest, Space Quest, The Adventures of Willy Beamish, Leisure Suit Larry, and Nova 9: The Return of Gir Draxon. It is the second game in the Take a Break! series of casual Windows games. It was designed for Windows 3.x.
The Incredible Machine is a puzzle video game released in 1993, and the first release in The Incredible Machine video game series. The objective of the game is to create Rube Goldberg machines by arranging collections of objects in a complex fashion, so as to perform some simple task. The Even More Incredible Machine was an extended version of the original, also released in 1993; it had 160 levels, about twice the number of levels in the original game, and had more parts to use in the contraptions.
Mark Frohnmayer is a software and electric vehicle entrepreneur. He was the lead programmer of Starsiege: Tribes and Tribes 2 at Dynamix before leaving to co-found GarageGames, where he helped architect the Torque Game Engine and led the development of Zap! The Game, Marble Blast Gold and Marble Blast Ultra.
3-D Ultra Pinball: Thrillride is a 2000 pinball game developed for Windows and Macintosh by Dynamix Inc. and for the Game Boy Color by Left Field Productions, and published by Sierra On-Line. The game is part of the 3-D Ultra Pinball series of pinball games.
