I personally grew up on the original "Hero's Quest" and love that game to death. And played that version to death.

I want to play through all of the games in order. And I started a save in VGA. Except...

-The character portraits look incredibly ugly. I mean the fan remake of 2 has beautiful portraits. And it was made by fans as freeware. (With Sierra's permission). KQ5 had much better portraits and that was a few years earlier. I would even go as far to say that while the portraits in KQ4 and The Colonel's Bequest, are rather dated and heavily pixelated, they are at least pleasant to the eyes... There is no excuse.
-The controls are trickier
-There is this annoying thing, in which every time you kill an enemy, you have to wait for the hero to walk to the center of the screen and pose, before you can search the body.

On the plus side though

-The story was retconned somewhat, to fit in with the later games (The original version said Erana was dead, and buried in Erana's Peace, the remake leaves her fate rightfully ambiguous)
-Added more dialogue for characters, which adds a little more charm to the game.
-It's a new experience for one who has played the original over and over.

I'm not really sure, which I should start a save in.

If you haven't ever played through the VGA version then it gets my vote. The controls are pretty much the same as III, no? What class are you playing as? Still if you keep finding yourself yearning for for the original than just play that one.

To be perfectly honest, as much as I complained about the character portraits, they didn't really bother me. Easy to ignore.

But the thing is, I had started a save in VGA, as a magic user. But I kept getting into battles and killing everything with my dagger, while conserving my magic. So, I thought. I should just restart as a fighter, and while feeling nostalgic, I became a fighter in the original version. Because I thought to myself, I'm going to play through the entire series, only with the originals. (So no GF2 AGDI remake either) I'm not trying to be a elitest who only plays the originals solely because they were first. I'm just trying to recapture playing the entire series of how it first began.

Then again GF2 AGDI remake cuts a lot of the frustrating aspects. But I don't find it as charming. I am one of those people who loves different coloured text for every character :D

Well, when I start 2, I think I'll do the remake, if not just for the Pizza Elemental easter egg xD

Conserve your magic? You should be practicing it. Then use the dagger. I still haven't tried the remake for II, but I rather like Trial by Fire as is. This would seem to be another vote for the VGA version of the first game.

Not really that, it's that I tend to use my dagger more out of habit. And I did use Fire Dart (Or whatever it was called) but my magic would drain almost completely after one battle. So I just found it more convenient to use my weapon (Like I said, out of habit) so really, I didn't feel being a magic user was my thing. But I'm going to continue my VGA save regardless, alongside the original. Because I got pretty far, and I think I can still salvage my save if I continue practicing my magic :D

And I will say, that the remake for II removes a lot of the annoying features.

-Such as being not being able to rest anywhere in Shapier aside from your room in the Inn and possibly one or two other places.
-Makes the time limit towards defeating the elementals less stressful.
-In-game features to help gather your surrounding in the maze-streets. As well as a much much easier way to find the money changer. (As the original game made it hard on purpose, so the player would use the map that came with the game, as copy-protection)
-Other minor fixes to make the game more balanced or less annoying.

And other stuff like a spellcasting mini-game with Keapon Laffin, similar to how you played a game with Erasmus. And tons and tons of additional Easter Eggs including The Sharkies from the KQ2 Remake, and even the original "Prince of Persia" himself making a cameo.

But personally, I like both the original and remake equally. The original for being what it is.
And the remake for what I said above.

You really do need to practice your magic - you will run out of mana almost immediately if you don't. That said, you probably won't manage very well by just using Flame Dart in fights. Learn some out-of-combat spells and practice those for a while since they're generally more mana-efficient. Getting things like Fetch and Open to 30-40ish is also useful for accessing areas and solving puzzles; rather than Flame Darting everything, try to get Calm (and later on, Dazzle) to avoid fighting things. The magic-user generally does best by pacifying or avoiding enemies rather than blasting through them all.

But if I don't fight, I can't loot the bodies.

Well there are other ways to get money, I'm sure :3

Also, I never actually figured out what Zap does. I assumed it charges my dagger.

Zap charges your next dagger strike, and I think it shows a * next to it in your inventory if it's charged.

Yep, and it gives you increased damage during combat, so it's a good idea to use it for every fight, and it'll improve your mana pool as well so you can later dish out fire darts.

A good tip - when you begin your game, dump all your points into magic/intelligence, that way you'll start out with quite a lot of mana and the rest of your stats will improve naturally as you fight. Before each fight use zap (charge it after battle), and once you learn fire dart use only 1-2 on the monster and fight the rest of the battle using your dagger.

This is a great tactic, especially if you use dodge, and later on you'll have enough mana to kill monsters using only fireballs.

Also calm is great, because that way you also build up your mana while being able to move around wherever you want to (getting money by doing other things) and when you need to kill enemies, you can just use zap/dagger with some fire darts. The great thing about this game is that you can go through practically the whole game without fighting a single enemy as a spellcaster, should you choose to do so. But if you like fighting you can easily build up your mana pool by practicing other spells and casting calm/zap before moving onto fire darts, so whichever strategy you prefer, you can have fun.

I played the EGA version as a child. I personally could never really warum up to the remake.

Back then when I played through it in ScummVM, I got to the ending and I was like "what the hell, is this a bug in ScummVM?", because the ending just isn't complete. I mean when you have played the original and then play the VGA version, you will see what I mean. It feels as if they ran out of budget (and they probably did). The EGA ending was so great. It really feels like a game bug.

And actually there is a background picture of the scene, that I'm talking about, left in the resources and I think it's never used. It was probably drawn for the complete ending. It's picture resource 101.

I would definitely always go for the EGA version.

I played through the VGA version of Hero's Quest first, so I'm partial to that. I actually think it's the best looking of the three SCI VGA games (four, if you include the Trial by Fire remake). The backgrounds look very crisp and appealing. I also find the portraits look wonderful compared to the smudgy art of the sequels. A matter of taste I guess :). It's a very unique style and I wonder how they created the portraits. Same goes for the combat monster sprites, I wonder if it isn't some sort of claymation.

That said, I love the art in Sierra's SCI0 games and find it incredibly atmospheric. I really think they captured the mysterious feel of the cold, deep germanic forests there. I sometimes play the EGA versions of both 1 & 2 just to see the scenery.

Good eye, that is indeed what it is, claymation. I remember it being advertised on the box when I bought this as a child, and I did a quick google-search to double-check :)

Thanks for clearing it up! Too bad the development of all these wonderful sierra games wasn't documented.

I personally grew up on the VGA remake and the EGA sequel - I never did stop to ponder why QFG2 was so different because I just assumed that's how it was. Then again, as a kid, I never really paid much attention to graphics XD

Heh, I remember giving every character magic and just playing the game using magic for all of the solutions instead of what the characters were suppose to do. I never figured out that fighters could force things open by clicking the sword on 'em.