In December of 1971, Jim Walls graduated from the California Highway Patrol Academy in Sacramento. He was sworn in as an officer with an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, surely a more exciting path than what the seven years prior, as an optician in Fresno, had offered. With the academy behind Walls started his new career in the force as a highway patrol officer in Southern California.

One night in Los Angeles nearly 15 years later, Walls found himself engaged in pursuit of an individual driving a stolen vehicle. At an intersection, the situation escalated into a shootout when the suspect abruptly exited the car and fired a Magnum .357, causing damage to Walls’ windshield. Despite the assailant’s clear intention to harm Walls, his focus momentarily shifted when his own vehicle began to roll. Walls quickly got out and exchanged gunfire, while the perpetrator managed to escape he was hit and injured. He was found and apprehended the next day when checking into a hospital with a “self-inflicted” gun wound.

While waiting the preliminary hearing the suspect briefly escaped but was promptly recaptured. Following a trial, he was found guilty on all seven felony counts and sentenced to 23 years in Folsom Prison. While he was waiting to be departed he confided to another prisoner that he intended to escape and seek revenge against Walls. True to his words, he successfully escaped and spent the subsequent two years evading capture before eventually being apprehended down in Florida.

Following the incident Walls initially continued his duty but it soon became evident that the event had inflicted psychological harm, leading to a delayed traumatic response. The close brush with death, along with the added distress caused by the escaped convict who Walls had both shot and identified, resulted in sleep deprivation and anxiety attacks.

In 1985 Walls went on administrative leave, for the department to evaluate his condition and determine if he was suitable to resume his work. During this leave, Walls was introduced to Sierra On-Line co-founder Ken Williams.

At the time the Walls family was living in the small town of Coarsegold, a small community known for its historical connection to the mid-19th century California Gold Rush, from which its name was derived. Only 7 miles up the road, a modern-day gold rush in high-tech creativity was occurring, in the town of Oakhurst, nestled in the scenic foothills of the majestic Sierra Nevada Mountain range, just south of Yosemite National Park.

Sierra On-Line had, in a few years, turned Oakhurst into an epicenter for computer software and game development, emerging as one of the primary employers in the area. The company’s influence extended beyond those directly engaged in game development, encompassing a diverse range of roles such as administration, marketing, quality assurance, customer service, and even cleaning personnel. Sierra played a vital role in the local community, contributing significantly to both the economy and the livelihoods of individuals residing in the area.

While most locals had a hard time comprehending what transpired behind the wooden facade of the custom-built Redwood building, most knew somebody associated with the company.
Founders Ken and Roberta’s idea of gathering master storytellers, artists, designers, writers, and programmers far away from the buzz of the big cities were indeed coming to fruition, here in the rural mountainous countryside.

With a businessman’s mindset, Ken consistently sought new ventures to expand his business and diversify his portfolio of games, to satisfy the hungry and rapidly expanding consumer market while also meeting the expectations of his investors.
At the time, police-themed movies and television series, such as NBC’s Hill Street Blues, enjoyed immense popularity, yet the subject matter had yet to be fully explored in the realm of gaming. Recognizing the significant untapped potential, Williams began exploring the concept of developing an authentic police-oriented adventure game but acknowledged that such a project would require a designer who possessed not only a comprehensive understanding of the correct police protocols and procedures but also someone with hands-on experience in regular day-to-day police work and the stories this spawned.

Williams, unafraid to hire designers without prior computer or programming skills, firmly believed that with the right passion and adequate resources, it was possible to craft more immersive and credible interactive stories. While the game industry was undoubtedly maturing, the distinction between programmers and designers remained somewhat blurred, a lingering remnant from the early days when games were often the creation of a single person.

During a visit to his hairstylist, Donna, Ken shared his vision of a police-oriented game. Aware that her husband was a police officer, Williams mentioned that he was looking for someone with firsthand experience in law enforcement. Donna told about her husband’s situation of being on leave and potentially facing retirement from the force. Williams, excited handed over his business card, urging Walls to reach out to him.

Walls was invited to Williams’ house for a few rounds of racquetball to break the ice and later to discuss the idea of a police adventure game, leveraging Walls’ extensive knowledge and experience as a police officer. While Walls literally knew nothing about computers or games for that matter, his 15 years in law enforcement was more than enough to convey believable stories and the correct police procedures involved.

With a newfound purpose that helped divert his attention from the traumatic experience, Walls returned home and began drafting a few initial pages for the game concept. Williams actively contributed his comments and suggestions to refine the material. Over time, these few pages evolved into a comprehensive story, eventually forming the basis for a complete design document, encompassing specific game elements.

In 1986 Walls officially resigned from the police force and joined the Sierra family, as a contractor, to complete the design of what would become the first game in the Police Quest series.

Walking into the Sierra offices surely was like stepping onto the surface of an alien planet, this was definitely outside of Walls’ comfort zone. Nonetheless, he slowly but surely got acquainted with computers and the game development process. Roberta Williams, the designer of King’s Quest, occasionally offered guidance and insights, while artist Mark Crowe played a pivotal role in advising Walls on game design throughout the project. The programming team, comprised of Scott Murphy, Ken Williams, and Greg Rowland, also provided valuable assistance by outlining the technical possibilities utilizing Sierra’s established Adventure Game Interpreter.

As the project advanced, the team started to run behind, Al Lowe, who recently had completed his Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge lizards, took on the project as lead programmer.
Neither Lowe nor Walls were employees of Sierra but were contracted, this made it possible for the duo to work together in Lowe’s house down in Fresno. Here the laundry room was converted into a small office space.

The final story for Police Quest was a culmination of Walls’ personal experiences, as well as those of his fellow colleagues, complemented by inspiration drawn from crime novels, movies, and late-night police television series. Throughout the development process, Walls underwent a transformative journey and in 1987, he and the team would put the finishing touches on Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel and the story of Sonny Bonds, a traffic cop who soon finds himself working a homicide case involving the murderous drug dealer Jessie Bains, dubbed by the press The Death Angel.

The game and story transpire in the decaying fictional city of Lytton, modeled after Fresno but named after a town in Canada. The character of Sonny Bonds drew loose inspiration from Walls’ own son, Sonny Walls, both in terms of name and appearance.

Upon its release in the autumn of 1987, Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel marked a significant departure from Sierra’s previous adventure titles, and was the company’s most realistic to date, a far cry from fairy tale knights, space janitors, or ill-polyester-dressed middle-aged losers. Eschewing traditional puzzles and riddles, the game placed a strong emphasis on faithfully depicting correct police procedures. It provided players with a unique opportunity to step into the shoes of a police officer, allowing them to experience the challenges and responsibilities of the profession, all within the safety and comfort of their CRT screens.

Jim Walls’ first game, Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel released in September of 1987

Police Quest utilized the now-proven AGI text-parser-driven interface. Using low-resolution 16 colors EGA the game visually couldn’t depict the gritty reality of the criminal world but managed to give great insights into police procedures and didn’t hesitate to punish you if you didn’t comply with protocols.
Al Lowe’s wife Margareth did the music

Police Quest: in Pursuit of the Death Angel was following its release, received with praise for its authenticity and became critically acclaimed. While it commercially lagged behind Sierra’s flagship series King’s Quest, its success would mark the inception of the 4th major adventure game franchise by the company.

The game’s impact extended beyond the realm of entertainment. A reprint from the independent industry magazine for police management professionals, Law and Order from October of 1988, was brought in an issue of The Sierra Newsletter in the spring of 1989, detailing how a sergeant in Michigan saw how the game’s procedures had had a positive effect in his precinct.

In general, the game was praised by the law enforcement community and reportedly used as a training tool by agencies across the U.S., demonstrating to rookies the consequences of failing to observe proper procedures and as a refresher for more experienced officers. A testament not only to the effective incorporation of Walls’ expertise and experiences into a compelling and authentic narrative but also to Williams’ approach to hiring designers who would bring genuine expertise and credibility to projects.

Walls’ would remain at Sierra following up with the successor Police Quest II The Vengeance, essentially using the same design approach but with an even greater emphasis on using correct police protocols and a stronger focus on detective and forensics work. The main structure of Police Quest II was already complete in rough story form when the first title was published and builds further on the story of officer Bonds advancing to the homicide division trying to protect himself from now escapee Bains, seeking his vengeance.

The now aging AGI framework was swapped for the first iteration of the Sierra Creative Interpreter, first utilized with Roberta’s King’s Quest IV The Perils of Rosella, preceding the launch of Police Quest II by a month. The SCI framework introduced significant improvements to the game’s graphics and audio capabilities. It supported a higher resolution of 320×200 pixels with 16-color EGA graphics, creating a more visually appealing experience. Additionally, it featured a music-card compatible soundtrack, enhancing the game’s immersive quality and bringing it closer to the standards set by non-interactive movies and television shows of the time.

The interface still relied on text input using verbs and nouns, but the added mouse support allowed for mouse navigation. The driving mechanics from the first title were replaced with a similar approach used in Leisure Suit Larry, where players could type in their desired destinations rather than controlling the vehicle directly.

With the introduction of the SCI framework, Sierra recognized the potential for more advanced sound effects and instrumental music scores in their games. In 1987, the company placed a newspaper advertisement seeking talented musicians to join their team. Californian musician and vocalist Mark Seibert, who had broke up with his band a year earlier, responded to the ad and was eventually hired a few months later.

Seibert became involved in the production of Roberta’s King’s Quest IV as a musician and music editor. Following he went on to create the extremely fitting 12-track musical score, for Police Quest II, making it only the second game at Sierra to feature a complete musical accompaniment.

Recognizing Seibert’s talent and contributions, he was later promoted to the position of the company’s music director. Working closely with staff musicians, providing guidance and support in both composition and editing processes.

Police Quest II The Vengeance, released in November of 1988. The second title to use the Sierra Creative Interpreter

The Sierra Creative Interpreter allowed for the use of sound devices, like the Roland MT-32, allowing near-movie-like (only instrumental) soundtracks.
Mark Seibert, a newly hired musician composed the soundtrack. In my opinion one of the best the ’80s had to offer

Following the release of Police Quest II, Walls took a break from the series to see if he could write something different than police stories and designed the Tom Clancy-style 21st-century techno-thriller Code-Name Iceman, another adventure game that maintained the emphasis on utilizing correct procedures, albeit in a different setting. The game, notorious for its submarine simulation part, was met with disappointing sales figures when released in 1989.

Code-Name Iceman, released in 1989, was Walls’ attempt to step away from police-related writings and try his hands at something different

In 1990, when Sierra released King’s Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder!, the latest installment in its renowned flagship series, it marked a significant transition, signaling the end of their text-parser-driven games. With the introduction of the latest Sierra Creative Interpreter (SCI1), the company embraced 256-color VGA graphics and a fully point-and-click interface, allowing players to interact with the game using only the mouse.

Following the success of King’s Quest V, Sierra applied the SCI1 framework to their other major franchises. Leisure Suit Larry 5, Space Quest IV, and Police Quest 3, the latter being Walls’ continuation of the Sonny Bonds storyline, all adopted the new interface and graphical capabilities. This transition to SCI1 enabled Sierra to provide players with more immersive and user-friendly adventure games, aligning with the technological advancements of the time and setting the stage for the company’s future releases in the 1990s.

Police Quest 3 was from the beginning designed to be as close as possible to a cinematographic experience using the latest in technology. Digitized live actors and theatrical quality stereo sound and music portrayed the dramatic and intense realistic settings and subject matter. While the earlier games presented a more charming and lighthearted experience, technology now promised a darker and much more realistic encounter.

Not only ambitions had skyrocketed since 1987 with games and development teams getting bigger to encompass more elaborate stories and much more detailed and quality-oriented graphics and sounds, also Sierra was rapidly growing resulting in the family-oriented and easy-going vibe slowly fading, giving way for a typical corporate structure with numerous managers and multiple people affecting decision making, something Walls personally, did not particularly appreciate or resonate with.

During the development, in 1990 and 91, Walls’ dedication was starting to slip. He had designed the original design document but only anemic, others had to take over and try and complete the patchwork of different elements and stories. Both Mark Crowe and Jane Jensen stepped in to compensate for Walls’ somewhat lack of involvement and rushed to complete the game in time for its autumn release date.

During the development of Police Quest 3, Walls was interviewed in The Sierra News Magazine, where he revealed that he had intentionally left the story somewhat open, leaving room for a potential sequel that he had been envisioning in his mind. Sierra also hinted at the possibility of a sequel to Code-Name Iceman. However, while Police Quest 4 did eventually come to fruition, it was unrelated to the earlier titles in the series and didn’t involve Walls. A sequel to Code-Name Iceman never materialized.

Police Quest 3 The Kindred was released in the autumn of 1991 for the IBM/PC and Commodore Amiga.
This would be Walls’ last title at Sierra before leaving the company

The switch to SCI1 using 256 colors and digitized actors rendered the franchise more realistic than ever. The somewhat cartoon-like charm from earlier titles was gone, this was a title targeted at a more mature audience.
Mark Seibert worked together with Jan Hammer, who composed the soundtrack for the Miami Vice TV show, to create the game’s soundtrack

In 1990, Edmond Heinbockel, Sierra’s chief financial officer for the last five years left the company to start his own studio. Heinbockel sought experienced programmers and game designers, and he did not hesitate to offer promising opportunities to Sierra employees. By the summer of 1991, Heinbockel’s Tsunami Media had become a reality attracting several Sierra employees, including Walls, who made the decision to leave Sierra and join the competition.

Police Quest III not only marked the end of Walls’ time at Sierra but also the end of protagonist Sonny Bonds. Though Bonds would make reappearance in 1992 with the SCI1 remake of the original Police Quest. The remake series never became commercially successful and a remake of the second title never materialized.

A remake of Police Quest in Pursuit of the Death Angel was completed using the same SCI1 as Police Quest 3 and published in the summer of 1992. The title was completely rewritten by the writers in Sierra’s Product Development department.
The game was released in the skull box, at just the right angles, the face would show an overlay of a skull

The VGA remake of Police Quest looked and played just like Police Quest 3. It featured 256-color VGA graphics, a point-and-click interface, digitized actors, and a stereo soundtrack

While all of my games are sealed I had a chance to borrow my brother’s open copies for a few photos

In a time before the World Wide Web and Google searches, hint books were the cure to most people’s headaches trying to complete any of Sierra’s adventure games.
Al Lowe once stated that the number of sold hint books for his Leisure Suit Larry exceeded the number of actual games sold, not only outlining the major issue with piracy at the time but also how challenging the Sierra adventure games were to complete.
Peter Scisco’s 1992 Police Quest Casebook was a must for any Police Quest fan, as a complete guide, with hints, walkthroughs, and maps to the first three Police Quest titles, including the VGA remake. The book also expanded the universe with its own sets of fictional stories based on the character and stories from the games. A second edition was released in 1994 to encompass the fourth installment

The Police Quest brand would live on and Ken Williams would find Walls’ replacement at the highest tier with retired chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, Daryl F. Gates. Unlike Walls, who wrote the story of the first three titles, Gates was mostly used as a technical advisor for the police elements and tactics. The following installments would slowly steer away from the adventure game genre and eventually completely lose the Police Quest branding.

Williams’ somewhat controversial choice of using Gates, Police Quest: Open Season, and the later SWAT titles will be a story for a future article.

Police Quest: Open Season was released in November of 1993, just in time for the all-important Christmas sales (Left).
A CD-ROM version was released in 1996 with audible narration and dialogues, enhanced graphics for inventory items, menus, and some of the close-up scenes (Right)

Police Quest Open Season would become Sierra’s first fully photo-realistic game. The era of true multimedia games was indeed upon us allowing for truly realistic settings with digitally captured actors and full voice acting (CD-ROM version).
The mature subject matter and the photoreal graphics consequently resulted in an MA-17 listing from the ESRB rating system, when it was established in 1994.
The game was written and produced by Tammy Dargan, a former producer on the TV show America’s Most Wanted

By 1995 the three original Police Quest games along with Police Quest: Open Season had totaled 850.000 in sold copies.

After joining Tsunami Media, Walls would go on to design Blue Force, an adventure game sharing similarities with Police Quest. Despite the efforts, Blue Force didn’t achieve significant commercial success upon its release in 1993. After his time at Tsunami, Walls contracted with Tachyon Studios and later Phillips Interactive Media. Unfortunately, none of these ventures resulted in any published titles.

Subsequently, Walls joined Westwood Studios, based in Las Vegas, where he became a part of the team working on the Blade Runner.

Walls joined Tsunami Media and created Blue Force, released in 1993, the same year as the 4th installment in the Police Quest series. The game was closer in spirit to the original Police Quest games than Police Quest Open Season.
Blue Force was, like Open Season, also released on CD-ROM but didn’t feature any voice acting, and was identical to the floppy release besides offering an audio interview with Walls and the game’s score as CD-Audio.
With a lack of polish and subpar written dialogues, Blue Force was received with only mediocre reviews. In 1996 Computer Gaming World even added it to its list of the worst game of all time

In 2013 Walls and Robert Lindsley, another Sierra veteran, launched a Kickstarter for an upcoming police game called Precinct, essentially a modern take on Police Quest. While it created much hype the founding failed.

Sources: Wikipedia, jimwallsreloaded.com, The Sierra/Dynamix News Magazine Vol. 4 No. 2, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings by Ken Williams, The Art of Point Click Adventure Games by Bitmap Books, InterAction Summer 1993…