King's Quest: Quest for the Crown

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King's Quest: Quest for the Crown

Developer(s) Sierra On-Line
Publisher(s) IBM, Sierra On-Line
Platform(s) MS-DOS, Tandy 1000, Macintosh, Apple II, Apple IIGS, Amiga, Atari ST, PCjr, Sega Master System
Release date May 10, 1984 (Original)
September 19, 1990 (Enhanced)
Genre(s) Adventure
Mode(s) Single-player

King's Quest: Quest for the Crown is a computer game, originally published for the IBM PCjr simply as King's Quest. The story and the general design of the game was developed by Roberta Williams. Williams was the chief designer of all official releases of King's Quest, working with the series all the way through to the last official release, King's Quest: Mask of Eternity.

Contents

[edit] Story

The Kingdom of Daventry is in serious trouble because its precious magical items — the magic mirror, shield and chest — have been stolen. King Edward the Benevolent sends his bravest knight, Sir Graham, to retrieve them. If he succeeds, he will become the next king.

[edit] Development history

Developed throughout 1983 and released in 1984 by IBM as a demonstration product for their IBM PCjr, King’s Quest was not only one of the first "animated" adventure games (Valhalla came before it), it was also the first Sierra Entertainment game to use the Adventure Game Interpreter (AGI) engine. (However, the AGI engine wasn't known as such until King's Quest II.)

In an era where it was common for computer games to be written by a single person over a matter of weeks, King’s Quest was one of the most ambitious, risky, and costly projects of its time. In addition to Williams, six full-time programmers worked for 18 months to complete the game at a cost of more than $700,000.

Due to the PCjr’s poor reception, few people played King's Quest, and it was a full year before the game become a commercial success. Sales took off with the arrival of the Tandy 1000 and other more affordable IBM ‘clones’ and continued to grow as the game was ported to other popular platforms such as the Apple II, Amiga, Atari ST and eventually the Sega Master System.

King's Quest was innovative in its use [1] of 16-color graphics on the PC, PCjr and Tandy 1000; even CGA owners could enjoy the 16-color graphics by using a composite color monitor or television, thanks to programmers exploiting the innaccuracies of composite NTSC chroma decoding [2][3][4]. Selecting 'RGB mode' at the title screen would instead result in the usual CGA graphics mode limited to a 4 colors [5]. In this mode, dithering was employed to simulate extra colors.

The level of interaction with the graphics was an enormous leap over the mostly un-animated 'rooms' of previous graphical interactive fiction. In previous games, each 'room' was a static pre-drawn background and text description, and your character was usually not visible. You navigated by typing compass directions, which would instantly transport you to adjacent rooms. In King's Quest, Sir Graham was a fully animated character walking through graphically-rendered worlds, which were filled with other fully animated characters. Pressing an arrow key would cause Sir Graham to begin walking in that direction. You could be southwest of a tree, walk east, and Graham would appear to walk in front of the tree. Then you could walk a few steps north, walk back west, and Graham would appear to walk behind the tree. Compass commands were no longer necessary, you moved to adjacent 'rooms' by making Graham walk near an edge of the screen. Typing "open doors" when near the castle would not cause a static predrawn image of a castle entryway with closed doors to be replaced with a static predrawn image of a castle entryway with open doors; it would cause the doors to visibly swing open.

The game relied primarily on textual input as its interface. Detractors often say that this way of interacting with games is time-consuming and frustrating, however, others would argue that it requires more thought on the part of the player. One review noted, "Things need to be worded a certain way. You might see a brown lump on the ground and want it, but typing 'PICK UP ROCK' could very well yield you a 'You can't do that - at least not now.' error. But a little patience and a logical mind can always overcome this limitation. 'LOOK AT THE GROUND'. You'll see it's not a rock after all; it's actually a walnut. Don't try and be verbose - the parser isn't as intelligent as today's gaming AI technology, or even Infocom's classic parser interfaces. You can't tell the game 'Offer to help the woodcutter with his poverty issues' without getting an 'I don't understand "offer".' error, but 'HELP MAN' does the trick." [6]

[edit] Releases and remakes

Identical places in the AGI (left, 1984–1987) and "Enhanced" SCI (right, 1990) versions of the game
Identical places in the AGI (left, 1984–1987) and "Enhanced" SCI (right, 1990) versions of the game
  • 1st Release (1984, IBM PCjr) - The original IBM-branded release for the PCjr. Came with a full keyboard overlay template.
  • 2nd Release (1984, IBM PCjr) - A minor update to the original packaging. Includes a smaller function key template.
  • 3rd Release (1984, Tandy) - A release repackaged for the Tandy 1000.
  • 4th Release (1984, PC, Apple, Amiga, Atari) - A set of ports for IBM PCs, Apple, Amiga and Atari ST computers.
  • 5th Release (1987, PC) - A full re-release adding support for the Enhanced Graphics Adaptor (EGA). Ran under DOS, unlike the 1984 releases, which booted directly at startup. It was with this release that the sub-title Quest for the Crown was used for the first time.
  • 6th Release (1990, PC) - This release is the "Enhanced" version of King's Quest. It uses the Sierra's Creative Interpreter (SCI) engine, the same engine used in titles such as King's Quest IV; while it still used 16-color graphics, it featured twice the resolution as well as music card support instead of the PC speaker. The project was described by some as 'destroying a classic,' and was compared to the controversial practice of 'colorizing' classic black and white movies[citation needed]. There are two different box variations for this release.
  • 7th Release (2006,PC)-This release came with the King's Quest Compilation. It is actually quite similar to the 1990 release.
  • There also exists a version of the game for the Sega Master System. It is unlikely that it uses the AGI or SCI engines.
  • In 2001, the group AGD Interactive released an unofficial remake based on Sierra's 1990 version, updating the graphics to use 256 colors, dropping the parser in favor of an interface that mimics that of King's Quest V and VI, as well as adding full speech for all characters of the game. The latter is especially noteworthy in that even though it is an unofficial, fan-made project, the game's protagonist King Graham is voiced by Josh Mandel, who also spoke the part in Sierra's official CD-ROM full-speech versions of King's Quest V and VI.
  • The "Enhanced" version of King's Quest: Quest for the Crown was announced for the Atari ST line of computers and later cancelled. No word if a beta version exists or how far in development although it was announced via Sierra Online's magazine: InterAction.

[edit] External links

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King's Quest series