About

Description

The Sierra Chest is a fan site, dedicated to preserving the legacy of the gaming giant Sierra through its many incarnations - from its early days as On-Line Systems through its golden years as Sierra On-Line, as well as through its tumultuous times as subsidiary of CUC, Cendant, Havas and Vivendi, and stretching to the present day as recently revived branch of the Activision portfolio. Covering over three decades of Sierra products, history and more in staggering detail, collaborating with numerous fan sites, developers and Sierra alumni, as well as offering a wide range of community features, the Sierra Chest is the most encompassing Sierra fan site known in existence, growing continuously with new site additions and providing the latest updates in the magical world of Sierra.

Brief history

Following the merger between Vivendi Games and Activision in 2008, and upon learning that the Sierra brand and official forums would soon cease to exist, life-long Sierra fan, collector and former forum moderator Rudy Marchant launched the Sierra Chest on October 11 2008. Lacking the knowledge on how to build a website, he called in the help of programmer Bojan Arah to build the initial code and had it hosted on a mere 120MB of available space. Originally only featuring video walkthroughs, text walkthroughs, a handful of screen shots and a forum, the site dramatically expanded its scope over the years with the addition of biographies, game credits, box art, trailers and demos. Requiring more hosting space, it moved to a different host in February 2010, quickly growing to 10GB and beyond. Further expansions to the site, including the addition of a music player and publications section, as well as overall code upgrades were conducted by Britton Mathews.

Meanwhile the Sierra Chest forums had been taken down in preference of a Facebook group through which Rudy made contact and became acquainted with many more fans, as well as Sierra alums and indie game developers, often collaborating on cross-promotion and forming strong relations and personal friendships over the years, as well as serving as admin of Ken and Roberta Williams' Sierra Gamers for a number of years and participating in various other Sierra-related projects.

The Sierra Chest's biggest upgrade however was yet to come. Moving away from the outdated look and functionality of the original Sierra Chest (pictured), in late 2016 the site was upgraded to version 2: Legacy of the Half-Dome, featuring a whole new interface, accessibility on mobile devices and a range of brand new community features.