Growing up, one of my favorite computer game series was without a doubt the Police Quest series. In one of my earlier Retro Game Retrospectives from back in July of 2012, I reviewed one of my favorites in the series: Police Quest 3: The Kindred. The final official game in the series was “Police Quest: SWAT 2”, released back in 1998, and the series has been dormant ever since. (At least as a “Police Quest” title; The SWAT series continued until Sierra closed it’s doors in 2006.) But recently, former police officer Jim Walls, the games original designer, announced a large interest in bringing the series back with an all new police related adventure.

A website called Choicest Games (who brought the story to this fan’s attention), has placed a “Reader’s Digest version” of an interview with Walls on their site, in which the link is at the end of this article. Aside from that, the complete audio interview is also available for listening. The original duo that was the driving force of the Sierra series “Space Quest”, “The Two Guys From Andromeda”, appear to be the ones doing the actual interview with Mr. Walls, which brings an interesting topic at hand: The duo had previously been successful in reviving the “Space Quest” series thanks to a Kickstarter project. In the interview, Jim Walls states that he would be interested in collaborating with his former Sierra staff to start a similar project to revive the “Police Quest” series.

“Police Quest” was a series of police officer simulation games produced and published by Sierra between 1987 and 1998. The first of the games were adventure and simulation style games, in which the first three were designed by Jim Walls, a former police officer himself. The first three games follow the life of Sonny Bonds, a character whose name and appearance was based off of Walls son, Sonny. Jim makes cameos in each game, and is typically the narrator when things go well, or poorly, in the game. The games, while not necessarily revolutionary in design, were quite an original idea in concept, as they were the first games of their type to accurately depict the occupation of a cop. While not emphasizing on shootouts during playing the game, the players had to rely on instinct and typical common sense to succeed.

Like most of the previous Sierra Kickstarters, Activision actually owns the rights to the intellectual property and licensing. The idea is still very much in the early days and there’s a lot of work that needs to be done. Jim Walls is asking anyone that is interested in helping out with the project to contact him via his website, but he’s made it clear that he intends on seeking Kickstarter funding sometime this year. We will keep everyone posted!

Choicest Games Interview Summary with Jim Walls:

http://choicestgames.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/creator-of-police-quest-announces.html

Complete Audio Interview: http://www.twitch.tv/andromedaguys/b/363076130

Jim Walls Official Website: http://jimwallsreloaded.us/