Roberta Williams' King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown

The Good
This remake of King's Quest has improved graphics and sounds. You get to explore Daventry again and it looks better than ever. Also, the nearly impossible gnome-riddle has been changed slightly to make it easier.

The Bad
I'm not a big fan of remakes. Sure, the graphics and sounds are better, but what you play is not the real game, the classic which has amazed people.

The Bottom Line
First play the original, than this.

The Good
It was very interesting to revisit Daventry with updated sights and sounds. Most of the graphic re-draws were (technically) much better than the original low-res graphics of the original. The enhanced music heard through better sound cards was also very welcome.

The Bad
Being intimately familiar with the original hurt my enjoyment of the remake drastically. It was quite frustrating; I kept going to places that either weren't there, or weren't available via certain paths that were in the original.

For those not familiar with the original, the setting was not up to the time's standards (1990), and didn't have the same hold. The original was a smash hit because of its technology and quaint setting, but a quaint setting wasn't enough to hold a player's attention in the 1990s.

The final nail in the coffin for me was a bug that crashed the game that was reproducable (near a stream, you could try to walk behind a wall of bushes, be completely obscured, try to get out, and then "fall" into the stream except that you'd keep falling over and over.

The Bottom Line
There is no compelling reason to play this remake unless you want to rediscover Daventry with enhanced sights and sounds (if that's important to you).

The Good
Ease of play - it may be a simple game by today's standards but that's a good thing: this was the first game of its type that I actually finished. I'm not at all convinced that every game must be difficult or pitched to hard-core gamers; there has to be an entry point that allows inexperienced players in or the audience can never grow beyond what it already is. As a direct result of my pleasure at winning this game I introduced it (and the series) to others, including some who got hooked on the entire genre because of it.

The setting - have to remember your childhood fairy tales in order to solve this one. The theme of a "place where all the fairy tales are real" is certainly not rare or original, but it's done in an amusing way here.

The remake - I never saw the original version until after I finished this one, and frankly I wouldn't have played it if I had. I've heard some who had played the original were upset that Sierra had dared to "mess with a classic", but the fact is few people besides game historians will ever see that version, much less play it. I don't mind the idea of re-making good games with updated technology. They're new to those who haven' t played them before. The most important part of this game( and most games, for that matter) is the underlying design, and this is a well-designed game. Whatever technology is used should serve that end.

The Bad
There was one puzzle whose successful solution seemed to depend partly on luck rather than skill (and which solution was necessary to winning the game), but other than that, nothing.

The Bottom Line
An engaging introduction to graphical adventure games.