Thursday 10 May 2012

Game 18: King's Quest IV - Introduction


A game simply isn't fantasy unless it has roman numerals...

King’s Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella is the first of the King’s Quest series on the list that I haven’t played previously. For that reason alone, I’m pretty excited about getting into it. There are plenty of other reasons to be excited though, not least of all that the game is a favourite for many in a long and mostly successful series. More significant though is how groundbreaking it was on release, breaking down walls in both technological and storytelling departments. Roberta and Ken Williams deserve a lot of credit for creating some really enjoyable adventure games in the eighties and nineties, but they also deserve a massive amount of praise for constantly pushing the envelope and refusing to rest on their laurels for any extended period of time. They knew if they wanted Sierra to have any sort of longevity, they would need to continue to lead from the front in every way possible.


...and in case there was any doubt, here's a unicorn, a princess, a castle and some sort of demon thingie.

The first thing to note about King’s Quest IV is that the protagonist is female. It’s regularly reported to be the first major graphic adventure game to do this, but I feel I should clarify this statement somewhat by calling it the first major graphic adventure game to have a female as the sole protagonist. After all, both Below the Root and Maniac Mansion gave the player the option to use female characters. Regardless, it was a brave step to once again change the protagonist in the series after game three saw Gwydion (aka Alexander) take centre stage from King Graham of the first two games. Another pioneering aspect of King’s Quest IV was in the sound department, with the game reported to be the first commercial release for PC compatibles that supported sound cards as opposed to only built in speakers. To make the most of this advancement, they hired well known Hollywood composer William Goldstein to write the 75 separate music pieces that can be heard throughout the game.


King's Quest IV SCI Version (click for a clearer look)

Continuing with the technical advancements, King’s Quest IV was the first game to take advantage of the SCI (Sierra’s Creative Interpreter) engine. All previous Sierra graphic adventure games had used the AGI (Adventure Game Interpreter) engine, which was a procedural language, whereas SCI was completely object-oriented. Apart from the soundcard compatibility mentioned above, SCI also allowed a higher resolution, being 320 x 200 rather than 160 x 200, had full mouse support, and a more sophisticated text parser than AGI. The SCI engine would eventually go through five major versions between 1988 and 1996, with the first one eventually taking the name SCI0. It was developed by Pablo Ghenis, Stuart Goldstein, Robert E. Heitman, Jeff Stephenson and Chris Iden, with the latter two having previously worked on the AGI engine. Interestingly, unlike other recent Sierra games of the time, the graphics, programming and animation were all handled by first time employees (apart from animator Gerald Moore), many of of whom would take part in numerous SCI developed games in the future.


King's Quest IV AGI Version (click for a clearer look)

It’s worth noting though that King’s Quest IV was actually released in both AGI and SCI engines. Sierra was uncertain how many potential players would have systems capable of running the SCI version, so felt they should cater for all. The SCI version would outsell the AGI version by nine to one, resulting in no future games being developed using AGI. It makes sense for me to play the SCI version, particularly as that’s the version that came with the King’s Quest 4 + 5 + 6 collection I purchased from GOG. Obviously I have the manual too, which describes what occurred in the first three games for anyone new to the series, while giving nothing away for the adventure ahead. At the end of King’s Quest III, an old and tired King Graham decided it was time to pass on his adventurer’s cap to one of his two twin children, Alexander and Rosella. While the player was left in suspense as to who would catch the cap the King threw in their direction, one look at the title of game four left no doubt. It’s time to take control of Rosella and to face whatever grand adventure awaits...


I really have absolutely no idea what's going to happen in this game...which is fantastic!

24 comments:

  1. Probably my favourite King's Quest, I just fell in love with Rosella's braids :).
    There are a couple of dead ends, save often.

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    1. I'm a sucker for blondes AND braids, so I'm likely to be just as enamoured.

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  2. I hate to sound like a teenage girl but OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!!!!!!!!

    http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/quest_for_glory

    Finally!!!!!!! The entire Quest For Glory series on GOG!

    OK, I'll go back to being a grown man now, albeit a very happy one. :)

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    1. It even includes both the VGA and original versions of the original game. GOG rule!

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    2. I bought myself a copy even though I already have the Anthology release (with authorized strategy guide!).

      Great series, especially 1+4.

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    3. Drat, I was slow giving you the link this time. From their last tweet "The original EGA version included!" which I think you'll like.

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  3. If this is the first King’s Quest you haven’t played, it’s the one I first played – and the first adventure game that I actually bought. – so this is a trip to nostalgia for me. I might warn you that there are quite a number of randomly wandering creatures that might be there or not, when you need them or need to avoid them. Two of them cost me two years of my life - gung fghcvq junyr that I didn’t even know that existed and gur naablvat pnir gebyy that I tried to get rid of in so many ways just to note one day that it had randomly disappeared. The first one was especially unfair. I mean, how could you possibly tell that in order to get n oevqyr sbe n havpbea you have to ubc va bprna naq pngpu n junyr evqr?

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    1. Oh, You just beat me with a couple of minutes.. :) my wager below is related to the oevqyr..

      The two other examples of unfair puzzles also had me stuck for a LONG time. Not the randomness, but these same scene anyway. I think I got the solution eventually from a friend.

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    2. I'm also pretty sure you have to meet certain conditions before that event will trigger.

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    3. I'm not going to read any of this now of course, but knowing there's almost unavoidable dead ends and random events is scaring me. All I can do is go in with an open mind and pay attention!

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  4. I also loved this game (I guess there were not so many Sierra games that I did not love..)! If I remember correctly, the puzzle design is very good in general (excluding at least one dead-end that is almost impossible to avoid - I guess we can already expect this from Sierra to boost the hint book sales..)

    I wager 10 of my companion assist points, that you are caught by it and need a hint :)

    Overall I think this is a very solid adventure game, and am waiting for your score. I am really surprised if it does not go clearly to lead.

    Regarding music: I had the privilege to own a MT-32 as a kid, and it really made the music WAY better than the normal Adlib / Soundblaster scores. Unfortunately I owned the AGI version of KQ4 at the time, so I don't know how the music sounds in this game.

    There are many clips in YouTube that do comparisons between MT32 and other sound cards for games from this era, so if you are unable to get the emulator ROMs, I suggest you (and of course other readers as well) should check them! And I am not so sure how well the emulator performs anyway (never used it myself)..

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zj4gx-ORIfo

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  5. Emulator works fine for me. I'm using the apperantly out of date one I posted a link to a few posts ago. KQ4 is one of those games that I didn't really like, but I was very impressed by the first time I played it. Its another of those where you're gonna be cussing stairs, though.

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  6. This is also my favorite among the KQ series, as noted before. I will play through this one with you!

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  7. This is actually the -only- King's Quest game I've played, the first game you will cover that I have played, and one of the very, very few adventure games I've played.

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  8. If you have a mac, Boxer makes it really easy to set up the MT-32 emulator (munt). It comes with it preinstalled with it's embedded dosbox. All you need to do is drag and drop the roms into it and away you go. http://boxerapp.com/

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    1. Does ScummVM come with decent soundcard emulation? Someone was talking about that a little bit ago.

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    2. Yep, as far as I know it also includes munt.

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  10. Caught up with ya!

    Came over here from the CRPG Addict a while ago and have read through the entire blog up to this point.
    Wasn't sure after the first couple of entries if I'd stay, but the blog has developed really well and I'm now looking forward to every new entry.

    Adventures are among my top three favorite genres (the others being CRPGs and TBS), so I've played a couple of them myself over the years (my first one was Gruds in Space on the C64, if anybody remembers. And yes, I am THAT old.).
    Thanks to the internet (and especially GOG) I have a long list of old games that I still want to play someday, and among them are quite a good number of adventures. I'll probably play at least some of them alongside with you and see how it goes.

    Have fun and keep up the good work!

    PrisonerOfRR

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  11. Definitely play this game through ScummVM rather than DOSBOX. If you follow the somehow obtuse instructions for obtaining the MT32 ROMs you'll get the MT32 sound which is vastly superior to the Adlib sound. Note that you won't be able to transfer save games, as ScummVM uses a different save game system.

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  12. In fact, consider playing the rest of the Sierra and Lucasarts games through ScummVM; it's designed specifically for adventure games rather than being an all purpose emulator. Here's the compatible games list:

    http://www.scummvm.org/compatibility/

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  13. Wow. I totally remember the King Quest's games. What a blast from the past. Cool page.

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  14. Did you cry at the intro? :-)

    I remember this old ad, from back in the day:
    http://www.game-nostalgia.com/sierra/kings_quest_series/screens/kq4_ad.html

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  15. "I really have absolutely no idea what's going to happen in this game...which is fantastic!"

    I read this in a Dr. Who voice. (Either Eccleston or Tennant.)

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