Description
King's Quest is an adventure game where you play Sir Graham, a brave knight who is sent on a quest to retrieve three treasures that were stolen by deception and stealth: a shield that protects its bearer from invaders, a mirror that foretells the future, and a treasure chest that is forever filled with gold. If Graham takes these treasures back to the royal castle, then the ailing King Edward the Benevolent will hand over the crown. During his travels, Graham will meet characters that will either help or hinder him.
You move Graham around with arrow keys, and perform actions by typing commands into the game, usually a verb/noun sequence. Some of the puzzles in the game rely on fairy tales, and a good knowledge of them is needed to complete them.
Alternate Titles
- "KQ1" -- Common abbreviation
- "King's Quest: Quest for the Crown" -- 1987 re-release title
- "King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown" -- 1990 re-release+KIXX XL title
- "King's Quest 1" -- Informal title
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Trivia
Code Decryption
The developers used encryption to hide code from prying eyes. The encryption key was "Avis Durgan." However, according to PC Gamer (July 2000), nobody can remember why this key was chosen, or who "Avis Durgen is -- not even Ken Williams!
.. but Al Lowe does remember:
Avis was Jeff Stephenson's wife's maiden name. I guess he was in love!
Development
Originally developed by Sierra On Line and produced by IBM as a show piece for the IBM PCjr. The game was later produced by Sierra and was the foundation of the best-selling
King's Quest series.
Graham
Sir Graham was so named because of designer
Roberta Williams' fondness for graham crackers.
IBM Front Cover
Check out the IBM box's front cover--it has a completely wrong description and picture of King's Quest; this is because the box ad copy was written before the game was completed.
Novels
From 1995 through 1996 Boulevard Books published a trilogy of novels inspired by the
King's Quest game setting of Daventry and featuring members of its royal family as the main protagonists:
- The Floating Castle (1995), by Craig Mills, dealing with adventures Prince Alexander experiences between the events of King's Quests V and VI;
- The Kingdom of Sorrow (1996), by Kenyon Morr, filling in some blanks regarding King Graham's activities between King's Quests II and III; and
- See No Weevil (1996), also by Kenyon Morr, taking place seven years after the Kingdom of Sorrow and giving Graham's daughter, Princess Rosella, a chance to rule as regent during a crisis.
References
The flag of Daventry, as seen in the throne room, is in fact the flag of Sierra Leone. This is actually a pun referring to the development company, Sierra On-Line.
References to the Game
The website Homestarrunner.com created a game named
Peasent's Quest quite similar to
King's Quest. It has EGA graphics, text based typing, and the main character Rather Dashing is designed a little like Sir Graham.
Re-release
A complete version of
King's Quest is available on Classic Games Collection CD featured with the July 2000 issue of PC Gamer Magazine.
Rumpelstilskin Puzzle
One puzzle, naming the gnome's real name must have been deemed too hard (or obscure) in the original version of King's Quest. I believe the clue was "Think back-wards" or something along those lines. The answer? The player had to write out the alphabet as follows:
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
And substitute the letters from "Rumplestiltskin" with the letter below on the line. Of course most people entered "Rumplestiltskin" spelled back-wards (logical) and this didn't work. In the SCI (1987) re-release of the game the puzzle was made simpler with "Rumplestiltskin" back-wards being the correct answer.
Technology
King's Quest was the first Sierra game to use the
AGI game engine, which was used in Sierra's later games throughout the '80's. The way the engine was setup made it easy to port a game written with AGI to other computer platforms.
Awards
- GameStar (Germany)
- Issue 01/2007 - One of the "Ten Most Influential PC-Games". It managed to link texts and graphics and caused the rise of Graphic Adventures.
Information also contributed by
Andrew Shepard;
Bhatara Dewa Indra I,
Joakim Möller,
Pseudo_Intellectual,
Ricky Derocher,
rstevenson,
Shai Greenberg,
Tibes80 and
Ye Olde Infocomme Shoppe
