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

King's Quest: Quest for the Crown is a 1984 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.

[edit] Story

The Kingdom of Daventry is in serious trouble because its precious magical items have been stolen: a mirror which tells the future, a shield which protects its wearer against danger and a chest always filled with gold. King Edward the Benevolent (who has no other heir) sends his bravest knight, Sir Graham, to retrieve them. If he succeeds, he will become the next king.

[edit] User interface

King's Quest featured interactive graphics that were an enormous leap over the mostly un-animated 'rooms' of previous graphical interactive fiction. Prior to King's Quest, the typical adventure game presented the player a pre-drawn scene, accompanied by a text description. The player's interaction with the game consisted entirely of typing commands into the game's parser, then reading the parser's response, as the on-screen graphics rarely changed (except when the player moved to a new location.) As the first adventure game to integrate graphical animation into the player's view of game world, King's Quest shifted the focus away from the static scenery, to the player's character, which was now animated on-screen. As the player used the keyboard to explore the game world, the on-screen character, King Graham, was animated walking to the chosen destination. There were animation sequences for most player-world interactions reachable through the normal course of exploration. For example, there were different animation sequences showing King Graham picking up objects from the ground, opening doors, and wading through water. Depth perspective was simulated as well; Graham could walk behind objects, causing his character to be 'hidden' from view, or walk in front of them, obscuring the object. This attention to graphical animation, while commonplace in arcade-action games, earned King's Quest the distinction as the first "3D-animated" adventure game.

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 inaccuracies 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 game relied primarily on textual input as its interface. Critics 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.[6]

[edit] Game world

The fantasy world of Daventry consists of an 8×6 cyclic array of screens (or rooms) that make up the outdoor world in which the player can navigate freely (except for the screen South of the East end of the castle, which must be reached by special means), plus thirty or so additional screens for indoor and underground places (as well as a smaller world in the clouds).

[edit] Development history

Developed throughout 1983 and released in 1984 by IBM as a demonstration product for their IBM PCjr, King's Quest was 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.

[edit] Releases and remakes

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) - A set of ports for IBM PCs, and Apple 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.^[1] There are two different box variations for this release.
• 7th Release (2006,PC)-This release came with the King's Quest Compilation. It is 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 SVGA 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 Sir 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.
• In January 2009, AGD Interactive released a 4th version of the game, but this time with approval from Vivendi Universal. The graphics, animations and voice-acting was redone and improved dramatically, including corrections to a long list of problems compiled from fan feedback.

• The "Enhanced" version of King's Quest: Quest for the Crown was announced for the Atari ST line of computers and later canceled. No word if a beta version exists or how far in development although it was announced via Sierra Online's magazine: InterAction.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• The History of KQ1 at Adventure Classic Gaming
• AGDI Remake
• Original Soundtrack
• King's Quest at MobyGames
• King's Quest review at Adventure Gamers