 King’s Quest I & II (remake)
Nicola Mawson
Remember those 1980s PC games like Leisure Suit Larry, Space Quest and King’s Quest? Trying to run one of those now would probably result in a few swear words being uttered.
Modern processors are just too fast, and you generally need a converter to plug in the DOS operating system for you, because they don’t just run on anything. But they were run.
And in that spirit, Anonymous Game Developers Interactive has brought back “the spirit of adventure gaming through our work”.
The company has redesigned Sierra’s old classic King’s Quest and released two revamped games – King’s Quest I and King’s Quest II. The graphics are better, and we had no trouble getting the game – and sound – to run on an XP machine.
 Sierra’s original series chronicled the saga of the royal family of the Kingdom of Daventry through their various trials and adventures. The story takes place over two generations and across many lands, including Daventry, Kolyma, Llewdor, Tamir, Serenia, Eldritch, Etheria and the Land of the Green Isles.
The company released nine games in total, but King’s Quest IX never made it into stores. The series is a typical adventure game. You need to make the protagonist do certain actions to get certain rewards. Depending on which game you are playing, he either moves through a mouse or keyboard controls.
The team at Anonymous Game Developers Interactive have remade two King’s Quest games. King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown was initially released by Sierra in 1984. During the first month of AGDI releasing its King's Quest I remake in August 2001, over 5 000 copies were downloaded. In the first year, that number jumped to nearly half a million.
King’s Quest II was released in 1985 by Sierra. Since its re-release in December 2002, AGDI’s King's Quest II remake has been downloaded over 451 400 times.
The games are a great way to pass the time, and are still challenging after all these years. But, if you played the originals, you’ll know the entire score, because the new – free for download – version mirrors the Sierra games closely. These are great games to introduce to the kids who don’t know the story already.
But the graphics still aren’t a patch on new games appearing daily on shelves around the country.
You can go get the free downloads at:
Kings Quest I: http://www.agdinteractive.com/games/kq1/download/download.html
Kings Quest II: http://www.agdinteractive.com/games/kq2/about/about.html
|
