It's update time once again. We're pleased to report that our second major block of shooting in February and March for Legends of Adventure: The Story of Sierra On-Line was a huge success – and we're here to give you all the juicy details about the trip.
As we outlined in our previous update, this 15-day road trip took the LOA team down the entire coast of the Western United States – over 3,300 kilometres (2,100 miles) from Seattle to San Diego and back up to San Francisco – with stops in cities, towns, and a certain national park all along the way.
The Legends of Adventure team posing at Yosemite National Park in California – with the famed Half-Dome mountain from the Sierra logo in the distance behind us – on our last day of filming of this production leg
Our main takeaways from the trip?
1) Never sleep on gas station tacos in rural California! 2) It does, in fact, rain in Los Angeles. 3) All of our interview subjects were fantastic to speak with and extremely generous with their time. 4) We're incredibly fortunate to be able to help tell the story of Sierra On-Line thanks to your support!
Documentary Progress Report
If you follow Legends of Adventure on Bluesky and/or Instagram, you probably saw a few updates from our travels, but we wanted to share some more behind-the-scenes photos from our interviews with Sierra alumni Mark Crowe, Christy Marx, Lori Cole, Corey Cole, Jim Walls, Bill Shockley, Jerry Bowerman, and Ken and Roberta Williams.
Our first interview of the trip: Jerry Bowerman, Executive Vice President of Sierra On-Line from 1993-1997
A Guy from Andromeda in the flesh – a behind-the-scenes shot of our conversation with Mark Crowe (Space Quest)
Christy Marx poses with with copies of her two games after our interview
Quest for Glory series creators Lori & Corey Cole go deep on their time at Sierra On-Line
Police Quest creator Jim Walls poses with the first game in the series after our conversation
Former Sierra programmer Bill Shockley tells us about his final days at the company
Ken and Roberta Williams with the Legends of Adventure team after another day of interviews
It was a marathon shoot with a lot of early mornings and hours on the road, but we couldn't be happier with how this leg of production went. We heard stories we'd never heard before and learned more about some of the most beloved games of all time directly from the people who made them. We can't wait to share those conversations with you.
Additionally, nearly all of our interview subjects were kind enough to provide us with photos, documents, and other materials from their time at Sierra that we have scanned and digitized for potential inclusion in the documentary. It's a treasure trove of video game history that will be integral to telling this story.
Keen-eyed backers may have noticed that there are still a few photos and names still missing from the dozen or so interviews we promised in our last update. Rest assured, those interviews did occur as planned and we're just waiting for the right moment to reveal those to the public!
Future Update Plans & Next Steps
One of the highlights of this project has been getting to visit Oakhurst, California – the small mountain town that was home to Sierra On-Line and its employees during its heyday in the '80s and '90s. Our next backer update will be entirely focused on that visit and what we saw, so stay tuned!
While we still have a few more interviews left to conduct for Legends of Adventure, we're moving into the post-production phase. With over 40 hours of footage and interviews collected so far, our editors are beginning to assemble the roughest of rough cuts which we're hoping to have completed by the summer. Our composer Jess Forrest is also beginning preliminary work on the film's score and we're in the process of lining up other important elements for the final product such as sound, animation, titles, and more.
Legends of Adventure has been the project of a lifetime for our team, we're so grateful to the backers for their support and for trusting us to tell this story in a way that it deserves to be told. Be sure to follow us on Blueskyand Instagram for updates about next steps for the documentary – and of course more fun Sierra-related content!
