Roberta Williams' King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown

The Good
The original King's Quest was the best-selling adventure game for Sierra. It was the first adventure game to incorporate text and graphics. The first version of the game was released in 1984, and this included an early version of the AGI engine, boasted CGA graphics, and came only on floppy disks. which allowed text to be boasting CGA graphics. The next version of the game was released in 1987, which included an actual subtitle (“Quest for the Crown”) and added support for EGA cards and hard drives. Three years later, Sierra looked back at their previous adventures and decided to go into “remake mode”, starting with King's Quest.

For those of you who haven't played the original, you play Sir Graham who is given the task of recovering three magic treasures stolen from the castle through deception and stealth. Getting these will be a hard task as Graham faces many characters and obstacles. If he brings these treasures back, King Edward the Benevolent will hand over the crown. What I like is that King's Quest has a simple storyline to it, other than storylines in most games that are hard to follow.

As a game that uses Sierra's newer SCI0 engine, the graphics have improved over the original, Although the structure of Daventry is slightly different to the original, with more lakes added and objects in different places, it is nice to walk through the environment, watching birds as they fly by. Dangers like the wolf, ogre, and sorcerer still exist, and you face the same consequences if you run into them. What I found funny is that once the sorcerer paralyzes you, the dwarf will more often than not come and rob you.

Sound card support is added, allowing users to play the game with their AdLib or Roland MT-32. With the latter, the music sounds much better, and there is ambient background sounds (birds chirping, for example) as you walk around Daventry. Starting from King's Quest III, “Greensleeves” is no longer the theme tune, and this is carried over to this remake. Although there is also mouse support, I just find it easy to control Graham using the keyboard. Like the original, you can die by doing stupid things. As far as those death dialog boxes are concerned, the background music for them changes; you hear about three tunes, instead of one.

I would also like to point out that Sierra removed a couple of design flaws where you could accidentally die. Gone are the arch-shaped bridges that made you fall into the moat whenever you start to cross it. This is replaced by a straight bridge with barriers on either side so that you don't accidentally fall into the moat. Difficult puzzles are made a lot easier, such as the gnome puzzle where a backwards-alphabet is not used, and the beanstalk is much easier to climb.

The Bad
Most of Sierra's remakes were released on or after 1991, so if Sierra had waited a year, then this KQ remake would have gotten the same treatment as the others: a game built using the newer SCI1 engine with gorgeous 256-color graphics and a point-and-click interface. As it was at that time, the remake sold poorly and prompted Sierra not to do any on their sequels. Luckily, a decade later AGD Interactive did a proper remake.

The Bottom Line
If you played the remake without playing the original first, you won't even care whether it is close to the original. But if you have played the original first, then this game is worth a try, even if it is a little bit bad. You have almost the same elements, and the structure is a little bit different from that of the original. You still need to know your fairy tales in order to solve some parts.

The Good
This remake of King's Quest has improved graphics and sounds. You get to explore Daventry again and it looks better than ever. Also, the nearly impossible gnome-riddle has been changed slightly to make it easier.

The Bad
I'm not a big fan of remakes. Sure, the graphics and sounds are better, but what you play is not the real game, the classic which has amazed people.

The Bottom Line
First play the original, than this.

The Good
Ease of play - it may be a simple game by today's standards but that's a good thing: this was the first game of its type that I actually finished. I'm not at all convinced that every game must be difficult or pitched to hard-core gamers; there has to be an entry point that allows inexperienced players in or the audience can never grow beyond what it already is. As a direct result of my pleasure at winning this game I introduced it (and the series) to others, including some who got hooked on the entire genre because of it.

The setting - have to remember your childhood fairy tales in order to solve this one. The theme of a "place where all the fairy tales are real" is certainly not rare or original, but it's done in an amusing way here.

The remake - I never saw the original version until after I finished this one, and frankly I wouldn't have played it if I had. I've heard some who had played the original were upset that Sierra had dared to "mess with a classic", but the fact is few people besides game historians will ever see that version, much less play it. I don't mind the idea of re-making good games with updated technology. They're new to those who haven' t played them before. The most important part of this game( and most games, for that matter) is the underlying design, and this is a well-designed game. Whatever technology is used should serve that end.

The Bad
There was one puzzle whose successful solution seemed to depend partly on luck rather than skill (and which solution was necessary to winning the game), but other than that, nothing.

The Bottom Line
An engaging introduction to graphical adventure games.

The Good
It was very interesting to revisit Daventry with updated sights and sounds. Most of the graphic re-draws were (technically) much better than the original low-res graphics of the original. The enhanced music heard through better sound cards was also very welcome.

The Bad
Being intimately familiar with the original hurt my enjoyment of the remake drastically. It was quite frustrating; I kept going to places that either weren't there, or weren't available via certain paths that were in the original.

For those not familiar with the original, the setting was not up to the time's standards (1990), and didn't have the same hold. The original was a smash hit because of its technology and quaint setting, but a quaint setting wasn't enough to hold a player's attention in the 1990s.

The final nail in the coffin for me was a bug that crashed the game that was reproducable (near a stream, you could try to walk behind a wall of bushes, be completely obscured, try to get out, and then "fall" into the stream except that you'd keep falling over and over.

The Bottom Line
There is no compelling reason to play this remake unless you want to rediscover Daventry with enhanced sights and sounds (if that's important to you).