King's Quest
Sierra On-Line released King's Quest: Quest for the Crown for IBM PC self-booter in May of 1984. King's Quest is a flip-screen animated adventure game that employs solid-filled vector graphics.
King's Quest was designed and written by Roberta Williams. The original version of King's Quest was programmed by Charles Tingley, Ken MacNeill and Chris Iden.
King's Quest displays in 4-color CGA, 16-color CGA+ or 16-color EGA 320x200 resolution, but the actual fidelity of 160x200 -- yes, you read that right -- is natively-scaled by the display (note the blockiness). The image above shows the 16-color EGA version of 1986.
King's Quest employs the Adventure Game Interpreter, aka AGI. King's Quest eschews a consistent isometric perspective in favor of a hotch-potch of crudely-drawn viewpoints. In addition, its movement and positioning are not accurate. Thus, it was distinctly unpleasant to play even in 1984. Just trying to move around in King's Quest -- in any King's Quest game -- I find myself gritting my teeth. Also, anyone who had read a few faery tale books could have written and drawn the King's Quest games. Thus, do I refer to the King's Quest games as scribble-slop.
Sierra On-Line's King Quest employed a hotch-potch of viewpoints instead of a consistent isometric perspective with accurate and responsive controls. A massively overrated "classic" that no one plays but just praises, King's Quest popularized soulless Sierra scribble-slop spam. Computer games would be a lot better off if Sierra never made one.
King's Quest Amiga 1986
Sierra On-Line released King's Quest for the Amiga in 1986. King's Quest was ported to the Amiga by Sol Ackerman and drawn by Doug MacNeill.
Amiga King's Quest was distributed on 1x 3.5" 880kB DD diskette.
Imagine how much better King's Quest could have been if Sierra were able to employ the Amiga 1000 as lead platform:
- 256K of RAM as standard instead of 128K RAM (expanded IBM PCjr)
- 7 MHz M68K instead of 4.77 MHz i8088
- 32-from-4096 colors in 320x200 instead of 16-from-64 CGA+ 160x200
- 4-channel FM-synthesized Paula audio instead of bleeps & blurps
- Smooth hardware screen-scrolling instead of flip-screen
- Smooth hardware sprite-shifting instead of software sprites
- Proper planar isometric projection instead of chunky vector graphics
- Icon-driven interface & smooth hardware mouse-cursor control
Yes, the original King's Quest predates the release of the Amiga, but the point of the above is to show how hardware capacities can shape game design.
Now we can compare King's Quest graphics of 1986 (EGA King's Quest) with Amiga Defender of the Crown graphics of 1986. You can click the image and mouse-wheel up and down in order to compare the graphics of both games.
See the difference?
Graphics-wise, Amiga Defender of the Crown of 1986 also compares favorably with King's Quest 4 of 1988 (see below). It was only via VGA King's Quest 5 of 1990 that King's Quest graphics overtook Defender of the Crown (see below).
Why do I add these comparisons? Because King's Quest graphics were hyped to the max back in the day yet King's Quest graphics were almost half a decade behind what the Amiga was capable of since 1986. The mainstream even went so far as to call King's Quest games "3D", when they are not. And I can't stand it when 2D games are called 3D. :)
King's Quest IV PC DOS 1988
Sierra On-line released King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella for IBM PC MS-DOS in September of 1988. King's Quest 4 is a flip-screen animated adventure game.
King's Quest 4 displays in 16-color CGA+, 16-color EGA or 16-color VGA 320x200, but only employs a 320x190 drawspace. King's Quest 4 was the first Sierra adventure game to display in 16-color EGA 320x200 as well as the first Sierra adventure game to employ the SCI interpreter.
King's Quest 4 was designed and written by Roberta Williams, composed by William Goldstein and programmed by Chane Fullmer and Ken Koch.
In addition to PC Speaker King's Quest 4 audio supports Roland MT-32 Sound Module and AdLib Music Synthesizer Card.
William Goldstein's compositions are the most impressive aspect of King's Quest 4.
King's Quest 4 requires an i80286/386 CPU clocked 8 MHz and 512K of free conventional memory.
King's Quest 4 was distributed on 9x 5.25" 360kB DS DD floppy disks or 4x 3.5" 720kB DS DD diskettes and extracts and installs to hard disk via Sierra 3D Adventure Game Setup/Installation program. The install size is 1.4 megs and consists of 23 files.
King's Quest 4 employs manual-reference copy protection.
No fewer than 20 "unique" Sierra trial-and-error quest games were released between 1984 and 1992 on IBM PC.King's Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Conquest, Quest for Glory.Quest, quest, quest! Spam, spam, spam!In addition, ports of Sierra games to other systems were lousy low-effort rush-jobs. They rarely bothered to redraw the assets or recompose the music to suit the different chipsets of other computers, but they approved the ports because they wanted their slop to spread far and wide. -- History of Adventure Games.
King's Quest 4 Amiga 1990
King's Quest 4 was ported to Amiga in 1990 by Revolution Software (Beneath a Steel Sky). Amiga King's Quest 4 was distributed on 4x 3.5" 880kB DD diskettes and extracts and installs to hard disk drive via Sierra Amiga User-Setup & Installation. The install size is 2.4 megs and consists of 21 files.
Never forget what Amiga-native graphics look like. This is Defender of the Crown of 1986 on an Amiga 1000 of 1985:
Imagine thinking King's Quest graphics of 1988 were king-tier...
King's Quest V PC DOS 1990
Sierra On-Line released King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! for IBM PC MS-DOS in November of 1990. King's Quest 5 is a flip-screen animated adventure game.
King's Quest 5 was the first Sierra On-Line adventure game to employ Sierra On-Line's icon-driven interface (as opposed to the menu-driven and text-input interface of King's Quest 4).
In addition, King's Quest 5 was also the first Sierra On-Line adventure game to feature 256-color VGA 320x200 graphics (as opposed to the 16-color EGA 320x200 graphics of King's Quest 4).
King's Quest 5 of November 1990 marks the point at which VGA graphics finally overtook Amiga Defender of the Crown graphics of November of 1986.
However, in terms of composition and artistry King's Quest 5 is no better. Proof:
In King's Quest 5 right-clicking cycles the mouse-cursor through different commands such as walk to, talk to, look at and interact with object.
King's Quest 5 was designed by Roberta Williams, programmed by Chris Iden and drawn by Andy Hoyos.
King's Quest 5 music supports IBM PC Internal Speaker, Sound Blaster Card, AdLib Music Synthesizer Card, Creative Music System/Game Blaster, IBM PS/1 Audio/Joystick Card, Tandy 1000 Series, Tandy 1000 SL, TL, HL and RL Series and Roland MT-32, MT-100, LAPC-I, CM-32L and CM-64.
King's Quest 5 was distributed on 8x 3.5" 1.44MB HD diskettes and extracts and installs to hard disk drive via Sierra On-Line Game Setup/Install Program. The install size is 9 megs and consists of 36 files.
King's Quest 5 Amiga 1991
King's Quest 5 was ported to Amiga in 1991 by Sierra On-Line. Amiga King's Quest 5 was distributed on 8x 3.5" 880kB DD diskettes and extracts and installs to hard disk drive via Sierra Install Utility. The install size is 6 megs and consists of 26 files.
Instead of being carefully redrawn for the Amiga palette, the graphics for the Amiga version of King's Quest 5 seem to have been lazily auto-nerfed by an algorithm. The color scheme is unnatural; they are not colors that an Amiga artist would employ; they are not Amiga colors; that is not artistic Amiga stippling.
VGA or no, the King's Quest games were not very good, anyway.
King's Quest VI
Sierra On-Line released King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow for IBM PC MS-DOS in October of 1992. King's Quest 6 is a flip-screen animated adventure game.
King's Quest 6 requires an i80386SX CPU clocked at 16 MHz, along with 573,000 bytes of free conventional memory.
King's Quest 6 was pogrammed by Robert W. Lindsley, drawn by Michael Hutchison and John Shroades, and designed and written by Jane Jensen and Roberta Williams.
King's Quest 6 displays in 256-color VGA 320x200, but still only employs a 320x190 drawspace.
King's Quest 6 was distributed on 9x 3.5" 1.4MB HD diskettes, 10x 3.5" 1.44 MB HD diskettes or 11x 5.25" 1.2MB HD floppy disks. King's Quest 6 extracts and installs to hard disk drive via Sierra On-Line Game Install/Setup Program v.3.465. Install size is 13 megs and consists of 30 files. To free up space, a stupid 6 meg opening cinematic by Kronos Digital Entertainment can be deleted.
King's Quest 6 Amiga 1994
King's Quest 6 was ported to Amiga in 1994 by Revolution Software (Beneath a Steel Sky). Amiga King's Quest 6 was distributed on 10x 3.5" 880kB DD diskettes and extracts and installs to hard disk drive via Sierra Install Utility. The install size is 15 megs and consists of 1,513 files.
Instead of being carefully redrawn for the Amiga palette, the graphics for the Amiga version of King's Quest 6 seem to have been lazily auto-nerfed by an algorithm. Thus do I fail the Amiga version on-sight. And I wrote it back off in the day, too.
Sierra On-Line did not understand the Amiga or care much about the Amiga versions of their games, but LucasFilm did because they took pride in every release, whether it was for the lead platform or not.Across any and all genre of the early 80s to the late 90s LucasFilm were simply much better at coding, writing, drawing and composing than Sierra On-Line, period.LucasFilm was high quality, Sierra On-Line was low quality. It really is that simple.-- PC Games of 1992.
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