King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown

King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown (English; in German about The King's Task: The Way to the Crown ) is a computer game that was originally published as King's Quest for the IBM PCjr and only received its full name as a successor game and thus the computer game series King's Quest emerged. The story and design of the adventure were developed by Roberta Williams . Williams was the main developer of the King's Quest series until the final official episode, King's Quest 8: Mask of Eternity .

action

In the fictional kingdom of Daventry, King Edward the Kind and his wife ruled. The people were happy and lived in peace. The royal couple were childless, so they sought advice from a magician. He promised them a child if they would give him the magic mirror for it. This mirror was exceedingly precious because it had the power to predict the future and thus helped protect Daventry from harm. Edward and his wife questioned the mirror. In him they saw the image of a young man with a crown on his head, whom they took to be their son, so they gave the magician their mirror. But the queen did not give birth to a child and the harvests in the kingdom were destroyed by storms, because the mirror that could have warned the farmers was missing. The people were now starving and the queen became seriously ill. A dwarf came along and said he could cure her. As payment for this he asked the king's shield, who had the gift of making its bearer invincible. He got it, but the queen did not get well and died a short time later. The country was attacked by its neighbors and the kingdom fell into decline. Years went by and King Edward was very lonely. Once he rode out and rescued a young woman who had been threatened by wolves. Her name was Princess Dahlia of Cumberland. The king took her to his castle and asked her if she wanted to marry him. But on the night before the wedding, she stole his keys, opened his treasury and stole the last of Daventry's magical treasures, the little treasure chest full of gold that never ran out no matter how much you took out.

Now Daventry was doomed for good, impoverished, defenseless and ruled by an old, weak king with no heir. So King Edward called his most loyal and courageous knight, Sir Graham, and gave him the task of finding and bringing back the three treasures of the land - the magic mirror, the magic shield and the magic chest. Should he succeed, he would become the next king of this kingdom.

Game principle and technology

King's Quest I was innovative in its use of 16-color graphics on the PCjr and Tandy 1000; even owners of CGA graphics cards could enjoy 16 colors when using a composite video monitor or television. The interaction with the graphics was a huge leap beyond the rarely animated graphics of earlier graphic adventures. In earlier games, each room consisted of a statically mapped background graphic and a text description; your own character was usually not visible. Movement took place by entering compass directions , whereby one was immediately transported to neighboring rooms. In King's Quest I , Sir Graham is a fully animated character who went through graphic worlds that were filled with other animated characters. Pressing an arrow key causes Sir Graham to walk in that direction. Compass commands were no longer necessary. You went to adjacent rooms by letting Graham go near the edge of the screen. Typing "OPEN DOORS" in King's Quest I does not, in contrast to previously published adventures, replace a statically mapped image of a castle entrance with a statically mapped image of a castle entrance with open doors; instead, the doors open visibly by playing an animation sequence .

The player interacts with the game primarily through text input that is interpreted by a parser . Critics often argue that interacting with games in this way is time consuming and frustrating. Proponents, however, argue that it requires more thinking skills from the player than the point-and-click method. One review noted, “Things have to be phrased a certain way. You might see a brown lump on the floor and want to pick it up with 'PICK UP ROCK', but get the error message 'You can't do that - at least not now'. But a little patience and a logical mind can always handle this limitation. 'LOOK AT THE GROUND'. You will see that it is not a stone, but a walnut. You shouldn't try to be verbose, because the parser used is not as intelligent as the AI technology in today's games or even like Infocom's classic parser interfaces. You can't just type 'Offer to help the woodcutter with his poverty issues' without the error message 'I don't understand' offer '.' but with 'HELP MAN' you get the desired result. "

Production notes

King's Quest I was commissioned in 1984 by IBM who needed a demonstration product for the graphics capabilities of their IBM PCjr. The game is not only the first to larger parts of animated adventure game, it was also the first game of Sierra Entertainment, which the (first from King's Quest II so designated) adventure game interpreter used (AGI engine).

At a time when computer games were usually written by a single person within a few weeks, King's Quest I was one of the most ambitious, risky and costly projects. In addition to Williams, six full-time programmers worked 18 months to complete the game for a development cost of more than $ 700,000.

Because of the poor sales of the PCjr, few people played King's Quest , and it took a year for the game to become a commercial success. Sales increased with the introduction of the Tandy 1000 home computer and other more affordable IBM clones . The growth continued when the game was ported to other popular platforms such as the Apple II , Amiga , Atari ST and finally the Sega Master System .

Versions

In addition to the original version ( AGI ), there is a new edition from 1990 that uses the Sierra Creative Interpreter (SCI). The new edition is characterized by more detailed graphics (still EGA , but the screen resolution has been increased) and supports sound cards . In 2001 AGD Interactive released an unofficial remake with VGA graphics free of charge , which also offers voice output. The narrator is the same one who worked for Sierra in parts King's Quest V and VI. Thanks to ScummVM , King's Quest I can be played on many other operating systems, including Linux , macOS and Windows 10 .

reception

The Amiga Joker criticized an overly simple course of the game, a "rather coarse pixelated" graphic, a sluggish control and a poor quality parser. In the compute! -Magazine rated Donald Trivette as saying that he is reminded of the quality of cartoons; The graphics and animations of King's Quest are "spectacularly better than in any other adventure" that he has seen before. The trade magazine Adventure Gamers ranked King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown 2011 in its list of Top 100 All-Time Adventure Games at number 75.

Web links

Individual evidence

^ Moby Games: Review of the game King's Quest
↑ ^a ^b Donald B. Trivette: Inside King's Quest . In: Compute! . No. 57, February 1985, p. 136.
↑ ^a ^b Max Magenauer, Oskar Dzierzynski: King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown . In: Amiga Joker . Special issue 4, 1993, p. 10.
↑ AdventureGamers.com: Top 100 All-Time Adventure Games. Retrieved April 4, 2016 .

[1] Moby Games: Review of the game King's Quest

[COMPUTE-2] Donald B. Trivette: Inside King's Quest . In: Compute! . No. 57, February 1985, p. 136.

[AJ-3] Max Magenauer, Oskar Dzierzynski: King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown . In: Amiga Joker . Special issue 4, 1993, p. 10.

[4] AdventureGamers.com: Top 100 All-Time Adventure Games. Retrieved April 4, 2016 .