King’s Quest (MB Hall of Fame Inductee)

Hall of Fame Inductee
King’s Quest
Original Release: 1984 (IBM PCjr)
Developed by: Sierra On-Line
Published by: IBM, Sierra On-Line

During a time when computer programmers took little risk on their projects and companies shied away from large budgets, there was little room for innovation. By 1984, on all the various home computer formats there were tons of RPG games. The text-based adventure had given way to exploration games with graphical interfaces. King’s Quest took everything one step further. Unlike previous games where the screens remained lifeless and unanimated, King’s Quest’s world was alive (or at least as much as possible with the limited technology). Not only that, Sierra and IBM opened up the purse strings and put enough money into this game to make it one of the most expensive game for its time, as well as the most labourious. It was time and money well spent as King’s Quest was one of the best RPGs of the era.

The treasured magical items of the Kingdom of Daventry have gone missing. It’s up to Sir Graham to search out for them. If Sir Graham finds the treasures of his kingdom, he’ll become named the king. He begins his quest at the castle and sets off in an open world with limited boundaries.

The fact is that this game, with regards to the amount of money and time spent on the project is remarkable. Considering that back then for games to be considered successful, some companies were happy only moving 10 000 units. Even if King’s Quest sold 10 000 copies, it would have never been able to return the amount invested in the game which was $700 000. The game was being developed by a large team led by Roberta Williams; who previously received acclaim for her work on Mystery House. The game was given a long development cycle, which was unseen during that era. In the early 80s, games had small budgets, worked on by only a couple of people and needed to be programmed quickly. King’s Quest was expensive, had a team of 18 people, and took half a year to complete.

At least there was no risk for Sierra. IBM was providing all the funding for its development, materials, and marketing. In fact, even though IBM was bankrolling the project, it would be IBM that would pay Sierra royalties for the game. For Sierra, it was no-risk.

It didn’t start off well for King’s Quest. The IBM PCjr platform was a failure and almost took the game with it (despite the fact that a second release of the game was published). However, later in 1984, it was ported to the Tandy, the Macintosh and IBM-compatible computers. On IBM PCs, the game took off and sold very well.

There were several reasons why this game was so popular. It was the first of its kind on the PC. Video games were mostly left to arcades and home consoles. Only hobbyists played computer games in the early-to-mid 80s. Computer games were generally more complex than those in the arcades or on home systems, but they lacked the graphical eye-candy that catered to the mass market. King’s Quest couldn’t be accused of being ugly. It was the first game to support EGA graphics which was the most powerful standard at the time. A game like King’s Quest was not only perfect for those who enjoyed playing computer games because of its RPG elements, but it was also able to attract those who had never played a computer game before because it looked easy to play.

For the most part, the controls were simple. The arrow keys on the keyboard were used to move around. It allowed for an unprecedented amount of freedom to explore the environment. Even the idea of hiding behind objects, which felt like second-nature in this game, was a completely innovative idea for computer games. Like most adventure games of that era, most of the commands the player would want to input would be done by typing them into the command box. That was the only thing it had that felt like the characteristic of a computer game. Arcade games only required a couple of button presses. Even though King’s Quest looked like something that visually would be home at the arcade, it was still something that turned off many because of its interface.

However, despite the fact that it didn’t become a worldwide phenomenon like Pac-Man or Donkey Kong, King’s Quest still found a large audience. IBM and Sierra quickly made their money back. It made its way to the home console market in 1989 with a release on the Sega Master System that was faithful to the original game. But they weren’t done there. The game went through several evolutions. It was remade in 1990 with better sound and more detailed graphics (although it was still limited to a 16-colour palette). Even though the game was changed a bit to make it both easier for non-PC gamers to get into as well as to encourage previous players to try out this version, it was met with a mixed response. While some liked and appreciated the improvements, others felt that the publishers were out of line for changing the classic game. It was a situation similar to the Star Wars remakes from a few years ago where better technology improved and altered the game slightly and die-hard fans took exception to this. Future collections of the King’s Quest series or Sierra games actually included both versions. Recently, however, the original version has been excluded from the latest editions of these collections.

King’s Quest became a top-selling franchise on computers. There have been eight games in the King’s Quest series with the last one being published in 1998. The game has been included in several compilations throughout the years. It is currently (as of this writing) available on Steam as part of the King’s Quest Collection. There are various copies of the original floating around the Internet available for download as well as to play in one’s browser. There is also a fan remake made by AGD Interactive that offers greatly improved graphics and sound with full-speech dialogue. This version is offered free and is made possible by a fan license from the owners of the copyright, Vivendi Universal.

It’s easy to forget about King’s Quest because it was published during an era where computer gaming made up a small fraction of all games played. It didn’t help that there were so many computer systems available at the time that there really wasn’t a standard platform that owned enough of a significant part of the market share. IBM knew that a selling point for computers would be gaming. With the help of Sierra, not only did it help move a few IBM-compatible computers but it also help revolutionize the adventure-based RPG on computers.