I’ve always held that the Sierra of old did a lot of things that were revolutionary, sometimes for good, sometimes not (they were one of the first studios to do the whole Live Action thing, that didn’t turn out so well). But, I’d forgotten that they were one of the first companies to try in game advertising, YEARS before it became a common concept.

How did I remember? I decided to start playing Space Quest V again on Game Tap (one of my favorites in the series) and durring your test at the beginning of the game, one of questions is something along the lines of “How do you successfully perform a transporter conversion?” One of the answers is “Switch us to Sprint.” Now, it would have been more of an advertisement if that was the *correct* answer, but in conjunction with that, I remember that the original game came with an actual Sprint advertisement in the box!

How weird is that? And honestly, when the game came out, I didn’t even think about it as being weird. I just accepted it as the way games might be headed in the future. Interestingly, though, this was I think the only game where that ever occurred. Maybe Sprint decided it wasn’t the best way to reach new customers? Or maybe Sierra caught a bunch of flak for it from players. Honestly, I have no idea.