Anyone remember Kings Quest series?

[Lacan]

I haven't played a Kings quest game in over 7 years, until last week when Gametap put up Kings Quest 1,2,3,4 and 5 *hopefully 6,7 and 8 also soon*. I started playing Kings Quest 1 and manage to get the magic mirror. You have to use wits to beat a Kings Quest game.

 

I don't really see any quest games anymore and if there are sequals to them they are now probably PC RPGS full fledged or MMORPGs.

 

Is the adventuring gene that requires wits dead?

Edited April 22, 2006 by Lacan

[Trip_Cannon]

Anyone remember Kings Quest? That's like asking a sci-fi junkie if they ever heard of Star Wars!

 

I loved all the "Quest" games. As far as I know Sierra stopped making them around 97ish? Anybody know what they're last online release was?

[supercat]

I loved all the "Quest" games. As far as I know Sierra stopped making them around 97ish? Anybody know what they're last online release was?

 

I bought KQ-IV and was rather disappointed. The graphics resolution was upped to 320x200 (vs. 160x200 for the earlier titles) but the game still only used 16 colors, even on a VGA. No good reason for that. Even if the designers wanted to use 320x200 graphics, they should have used 256 colors on the VGA, and used dithering to blend a few extra colors on the EGA. I see no good reason for them not to have done so.

[supercat]

Since this is AtariAge...

 

I wonder if the 2600 could do a decent KQ-style game. The graphics would have to be designed carefully to work within the 2600's abilities, but I would think something decent could be pulled off.

[Lacan]

Actually the graphics in KQ 1-3 looks atari 2600ish. But I don't know if the carts of the Atari 2600 can hold enough memory to run the game.

[Dusk2600]

i grew up on kings quest vi. played it all the time on my old ibm as a kid. love the game.

[7800Lover]

I do! I do! I played updated remakes of KQ 1 and 2 for the PC as well as KQ 5 released on the NES. KQ1 was also put on the Sega Master system. Anyone play that port?

 

The problem with graphic adventure games (Kings Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Sam and Max, etc.) is that they have little replay value. Once you've beaten it, why go back? You've already solved the puzzles. That's my take on why the adventure genre is dead.

[tyranthraxus]

Sierra was one of the company's that took advantage of new technology as it came out. They were one of the first to support EGA and the major sound cards of the

day, Ad Lib, Soundblaster, Roland, etc. I think the reason they went with the high

rez EGA over a VGA release was simply because they didn't think there was enough

of a VGA market in 1988. It wasn't until 1990-91 when 386s and Windows 3.0 were

out that VGA started to take off (and prices started to drop rapidly on PCs around then too).

 

Check out:

 

http://www.vintage-sierra.com/

[supercat]

I think the reason they went with the high

rez EGA over a VGA release was simply because they didn't think there was enough

of a VGA market in 1988. It wasn't until 1990-91 when 386s and Windows 3.0 were

out that VGA started to take off (and prices started to drop rapidly on PCs around then too).http://www.vintage-sierra.com/

 

KQ-IV uses 320x200x16 mode to draw a 320x160 picture above five lines of text. Earlier games used 320x200x16 mode to draw a 160x16 picture (doubling up the pixels horizontally). At minimum, the game should have used 640x200x16 mode on the EGA to display a 320-wide picture with dithering to produce 80+ colors or so (e.g. by blending 6 dark colors, 6 light colors, and four shades of gray, one could get 36 saturated colors, 7 shades of gray, and 48 color+gray combinations). Using 640x350x16 mode would have allowed even more colors.

 

The PCjr/Tandy 1000 was the only display platform that could handle 320x200x16 but couldn't handle 640x200x16; I really wouldn't think that platform was a major consideration when KQ-IV came out. If support for it was needed, colors could be downsampled.

[Great Hierophant]

Just remember that they also had to consider the other platforms of the time, such as the Atari ST, which could only do 4 colors in 640x200. Also, the higher resolutions mean that the graphics take up more disk space and the game runs slower on older computers. Finally, dithering is hard to do and takes time to get it to work right, and Sierra couldn't pump out quest games fast enough.

 

As for using a 650x350x16 mode, notwithstanding the fact that only IBM PCs used 350-line resolutions, this assumed that the user had an EGA card with 128KB of RAM or a VGA card which may not have been the case. Later Tandys had the ability to do 640x200 graphics, but not the early ones.

Edited April 23, 2006 by Great Hierophant

[tyranthraxus]

Well the Tandy was a pretty successful line at the time so I think Sierra would try to cater to supporting the Tandy. The people who'd buy a Tandy were the type of households

that would want to buy PC games, the Tandy was the brand that really brought PCs to the mall culture.

 

But the disk size is the best theory so far. KQ4 was about ten 5 1/4 inch disks IIRC. By the time VGA quests were coming out they were using ten or more 3 1/2 inch disks

before CD-ROMs became standard.

[sku_u]

Since this is AtariAge...

 

I wonder if the 2600 could do a decent KQ-style game. The graphics would have to be designed carefully to work within the 2600's abilities, but I would think something decent could be pulled off.

 

See for yourself.

 

I loved the King's Quest series when I was younger. They way they hybridized the whole text adventure concept kept me engaged for many hours.

[rorysl]

Man, the Quests are my faves. I grew up on Space Quest and King's Quest and, eventually (when I could get my hot little hands on it) Leisure Suit Larry. They're great! BTW, there were actually two versions of King's Quest IV. One was the comman 16-color EGA using Sierra's SCI format. This format was newer and used for Police Quest II, Space Quest III, Larry 2 -- these games were still 'type-till-you-bleed' parser based but had better graphics and sound card support (imagine!). BUT...because King's Quest IV marked a major jump in graphics and sound, Sierra also released a stripped-down version in their old AGI format for computers that couldn't handle the upgrade. AGI was the format used for all Sierra games prior -- KG1-3, SQ1-2, PQ1, LSL1. This version is rarer and plays nearly identically to the 16 color SCI version.

[Trip_Cannon]

I do! I do! I played updated remakes of KQ 1 and 2 for the PC as well as KQ 5 released on the NES. KQ1 was also put on the Sega Master system. Anyone play that port?

 

Yeah, I own that one. It's not too bad of an interface. Kind of more like the Lucasfilm (Zac McKracken, Maniac Mansion) games for C64, or Dracula for the Lynx...

[Great Hierophant]

The 2600 certainly has the resolution for AGI King's Quest, but I see four problems with getting it to work on a 2600:

 

Size - King's Quest was, in its most stripped-down version, put onto a 360KB Floppy. It would take a huge cart to fully store King's Quest.

RAM - King's Quest required 128KB of RAM to run on the PCjr. The cart is going to require a lot of RAM for it to run.

Input - King's Quest allowed the use of a keyboard and a joystick. Even with two keypad controllers, you wouldn't have enough keys to type the whole alphabet.

Color - King's Quest was designed for a graphics architecture that did not place any restrictions on which color you could assign to each pixel, and each pixel was individually addressable. Contrast that to Atari's playfield/background/ball/missile/player graphics, and you will see something lacking.

 

The Sega Master System port of King's Quest is among the worst I have ever seen.

[Classic Pac]

Apparently someone does as you can get a windows friendly graphically enhanced versions of King's Quest 1 and 2 at:

 

www.agdinteractive.com

[7800Lover]

Great news everyone! King's Quest is returning in a compilation form.

 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000AYFPK...glance&n=468642

 

Apparently, Vivendi will be releasing a compilation of the games in Dec. 2006.

[Great Hierophant]

Great news everyone! King's Quest is returning in a compilation form.

 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000AYFPK...glance&n=468642

 

Apparently, Vivendi will be releasing a compilation of the games in Dec. 2006.

 

The release date has been pushed back, it was originally supposed to have shipped around this time.

[ILA2600]

I remember as a kid going over to my uncles house and playing Kings Quest 1 on his old IBM computer years ago, I loved it, I wonder if I had a copy of it, would it play on Windows 98, through DOS!!

[Tempest]

I remember playing KQ1 on my friends IBM PCjr. We had a blast beating the thing, although we never did get full points (I eventually did, but much much later in life). After that I ended up getting an Apple IIe and looking forward to each years eventual new KQ or SQ release. I was heartbroken when KQ V wasn't made for the Apple II, but after seeing the demo I knew why. It was one of the most amazing things I had seen. I remember it well because the Babbages playing the demo was right across from the movie theater and I would watch it over and over again while waiting in line for the movie. I also remember my friend having a copy of the KQ christmas demo that showed characters from the yet unreleased KQ III, I think it was on my friends Amiga. Good stuff.

 

KQ VI was my fav of the series. The graphics were gorgeous, the music good, and the plot was great. The game was kind of lame if you took the quickest route, but if you did all the side quests (like resurrecting the princesses parents) it got REALLY good. KQ VII was a huge disappointment (lame plot, bad cartoon graphics), and I never did bother with VIII since it *really* wasn't a KQ game anyway.

 

The spell system in III is worth noting too. I remember having a bitch of a time trying to read the cursive writing in the spell book (which used all kinds of odd words to make rhymes). It was a cool idea for copy protection though.

 

Tempest

[ComputerCollector]

we played it on the apple II in school

[Rik]

King's Quest,my ALLTIME favorite game series!!!!!!!!!!I picked up "KING'S QUEST COLLECTION SERIES"at EB for $7.99,last year,man i got a good price on that,i saw the same thing go for over $100.00 on ebay.I am looking for "THE ROBERTA WILLIAMS ANTHOLOGY",ah yes,the Williams,when they were running Sierra,and games were at their BEST!!!!!!!!,I also think KQ8 was awesome,great fun I had playimg it!,but nothing beats,to me, KQ 5 and 6!God I wish adventure gaming would come back,but wishful thinking it is,there's no market anymore for adventure games,sad as it is to say.

Edited May 3, 2006 by Rik

[brendano]

I grew up watching my dad play the Space Quest series, I would give him suggestions and occasionally my ideas would work (Anybody remember the space slug in SQIV, I killed him). Now I own most of the Quest games including KQ but SQ will allways be better in my mind.