This Week's Sponsor:

Winterfest 2024

The Festival of Artisanal Software


Blast From The Past: Old Sierra Games Coming To The iPad as Webapps

Retro gamers and iPad owners, this might as well be your best day ever: Touch Arcade spotted an interesting and independent project from Martin Kool, a guy who’s working on bringing old Sierra adventure games back to the iPad as web apps entirely based on open web technologies such as HTML, Javascript and CSS.

Nine old Sierra games including gems like Leisure Suite Larry and King’s Quest are currently available for playing from a desktop browser over at Martin’s Sarien website, but iPad specific versions with dedicated URLs will come soon.

The iPad games will be entirely rewritten versions of the web-based code, specifically ported to the iPad screen and touch input. They’ll also have fancy home screen icons for you to look at on your Springboard.

The guy’s alone, he’s not making any money out of this (nor does he plan to insert ads in the games) and he’s ready to stop at any time if Activision sent a cease & desist letter. He hopes in some kind of free non-commercial license, though, and after what we saw, we sure hope he’ll find a way to let those old gems come and stay on our iPads.

Access Extra Content and Perks

Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for nearly a decade.

What started with weekly and monthly email newsletters has blossomed into a family of memberships designed every MacStories fan.

Learn more here and from our Club FAQs.

Club MacStories: Weekly and monthly newsletters via email and the web that are brimming with apps, tips, automation workflows, longform writing, early access to the MacStories Unwind podcast, periodic giveaways, and more;

Club MacStories+: Everything that Club MacStories offers, plus an active Discord community, advanced search and custom RSS features for exploring the Club’s entire back catalog, bonus columns, and dozens of app discounts;

Club Premier: All of the above and AppStories+, an extended version of our flagship podcast that’s delivered early, ad-free, and in high-bitrate audio.