King's Quest 1+2+3

This is a collection of King's Quest 1, 2 and 3. Be forewarned, these are OLD. However, I believe they have much to offer people who are interested in narrative video games from the mid-1980's. Some personal experiences: To me, PC gaming was a drastically different place back in the 80's. PC's typically cost several thousands of dollars before inflation, and typically went into the hands of the most tech inclined. Buying a new computer game or obtaining an illicit floppy usually was a big deal. These King's Quest games presented here are made to be played slowly. You are intended to take many notes to see what works and what does not work. READ THE MANUALS. Do not be afraid to look up hints. It is cool to puzzle out the solutions yourself, however, these games really were made with hint book sales in mind. You see, the developers made more money off of royalties of book publishing than the video games themselves, and piracy was just as popular then as it is today. King's Quest 1 is the AGI version, copyright 1987. It does not include the SCI version. I recommend checking out is the King's Quest 1: Quest for the Crown remake by AGD Interactive. It's a pretty respectable fan game, but you'll get the most of it if you have played the original. King's Quest 2 is also from 1987. I'll admit, I never beat this one. This is the one singular King's Quest that gave me the most amount of grief. King's Quest 3 is probably my second fav KQ title, after 6. READ THE MANUAL, expect to come up with creative uses of spells, and expect to fall a lot if you're not paying attention. There are many horrific and entertaining ways to die in this game. All in all, it's three extremely antiquated games that were brilliant for their time. I feel the full price of $10 USD is too much for what you get, however, so definitely wait for a sale. Free of nostalgia, but a big fan of adventure games, I feel this is a 3/5 package if and only if you get it on sale.

My friend's father introduced me to a 4 color version of King's Quest I that booted from a 5.25" disk. I'd played other games that were text adventure - or ones that had a static image at the top and some text below - but never had I seen a game where you could control a character walk around trees, open doors, pick up items - and do everything King's Quest did! King's Quest 1 and 2 are pretty light on the story - but King's Quest III is where it all really begins to weave a story! King's Quest III is fun but very, very difficult at times! Escaping the wizard and what you need to do to be rid of him should be your first priority! Just don't get caught with the spell components! Hide them... somewhere.

Now, before you lies the very beginning of graphic adventuring. While the first two games are of extreme historical importance, they don't offer much (or anything) in the way of story. You just go around, collect random items to solve some random quests and then the game ends. However, the third game is a giant leap forward. Playing as Gwydion, a slave-child of an evil wizard whose name I still can't pronounce (let alone spell), you have to collect a bunch of magic formulas and send the aforementioned wizard to oblivion (which is truly a great moment, once you manage to achieve it), before finding out your true identity, which connects this game with the seemingly unrelated first two parts. A large chunk of the game consists of avoiding the wizard, smuggling suspicious objects to a safe space without getting caught and then creating some magical items by closely (VERY closely) following the instructions from the manual. That's right, this is truly a masterful copy protection if there ever was one, making the game completely unplayable without the original documentation (hey, it worked back in the day). The process is not easy, but it really makes for an entertaining game. A lot has been said about the difficulty of these games. They are certainly not easy, but if you are careful and patient, you will probably manage to get by without a walkthrough. Here are some spoiler-free tips: 1) You WILL die. A lot. In all three games. Save often (meaning: on every screen). 2) All three games have some dead ends, but almost all of them are fairly obvious. If you lose an item or get a negative score after trying something, restore (see 1) ). If you get in unwinnable situation, it will rarely be because you missed some well-hidden barely visible small object. 3) Examine EVERYTHING. In each new location, type EXAMINE ROOM. You can also EXAMINE GRASS. Examine all trees and rocks. Look under things and behind them. Many important items are not readily visible on screen.

I feel as a young Generation Xer that these games totally rock! They helped me as a child to develop my brain. They taught me how to spell by saying with the original King's Quest 1 that I don't understand. If I spelled correctly the game would say you cannot do that here. It was so amazing on my dad's IBM PCjr. My mom got the IBM PCjr at a special Board of Education price of $900 which was a bargain at the time. This led to my love of BASIC programming. It fueled my interest in computers and technology. It gave me an appreciation of being a child and allowed me to fall in love with nature even though I was in NYC and it was mainly an urban jungle with Central Park offering a break from the cold hard reality of life. King's Quest II was fun as well because who would not love an adventure where you had a chosen bride that you needed to go on a quest to save the damsel in distress. This game and Sierra-On-Line games bring back so many happy memories. I am thankful that Activation has allowed Gog.com to release these games. Finally, King's Quest III was super hard especially since the timing issues with the original game was off. These games were on 5.25 inch black floppy discs that were the format before the harder plastic 3.5 inch 1.44 mb discs. We now all have flash drives and/or external hard drives and/or cloud backups for our data. The prior format to 5.25 were 8 inch floppies that were before my time. King's Quest III is really frustrating and hard but take heart and courage if you keep plugging away at it you will succeed. The puzzle with the spider web I was able to solve when I was young. It helped having an older brother to give you help. My sister was not interested in the games. My dad took great courage and pains to help me in the games and game me my love of technology that continues through today. Remember, it is all about hardware and software working in a perfect combination to allow us to work and have fun.

Such a tough game, tougher than all modern games, if we use intellectual effort as parameter, and not just stomach to endure those, that justify their price with tens of hours of repetitive actions and boring stories. King's quest is perfect, in some ways. It has exploration, puzzles with multiple solutions, action bits embodied by the "swim, crouch and jump" buttons, and some secondary, story unrelated, puzzles for extra score. What's there not to like? Of course you have to be a mature person. I had to use hints! and 6 times of it! Someone else would have posted that it's too hard and sulked and that it's not him, the player, who's dumb, but the puzzles that are unfair. With his pouty chin and crossed arms. Not me, i think it's great even though i couldn't figure the whole game by myself!