Space Quest: The Sarien encounter was first released in 1986 for the PC, followed by the Apple II, Amiga and Atari ST. It was rereleased for those platforms in 1987, as well as for the Apple IIgs and Macintosh.
The original black box comes in several varieties. As was published in Sierra Newsletter Volume 1 Number 2 (page 5), there was a misprint where the Half-Dome image on the back cover is horizontally mirrored.
Also, there are black boxes which have a faintly visible grid printed on them and others that don't. The black box also has fake coupons in it, including one of Droids-R-Us. These coupons have been removed from the rerelease following the Toys-R-Us lawsuit with Sierra. While the first release of Space Quest is pretty tough to acquire these days, make sure that these coupons are included in the box, as they usually are missing when you buy it second hand.
