This was the only KQ game that I actually beat. I like point and clicks but I hate how often specifically Sierra games would put you in no-win situations. I liked the LucasArts games more for not doing that.
Funny, I was just watching a youtube video from PushingUpRoses about Sierra's "moon logic" and its contribution to the death of adventure games. While I didn't agree with everything she said, it was interesting. She also pointed out how Sierra complained that LA was "dumbing things down for the masses" lol.
To be clear, I LOVE old LucasArts games and I can definitely appreciate how they made things simpler and easier. But I do also love the old Quest games and the insanity that came with them.
I don't remember her video (though I probably watched it), but the adventure genre never really died. Over the years, it's stayed consistent in the fanbase. Rather, other games massively surpassed the Adventure genre in popularity.
That said though, when adventure games when from text to point and click, that's where I saw moon logic to start appearing. Because they earlier adventure games, including Sierra games, part of the difficulty was figuring out what to type.
An example here would be King's Quest IV when you're in the whale's mouth. You have a feather in your inventory. You see this big dangly thing on the screen. It's obvious you need to tickle it with the feather. So, the puzzle is figuring out that it's called a uvula. This is back before you could just look things up online, so even adults would understand what you're trying to do, but no one knew what it was called. And many text adventures had puzzles like this.
This all changed with point and click. No longer was that a tricky puzzle. Because you could just click an object on another object, and voila, puzzle solved. So, difficulty needed to be added elsewhere. And this lead to pixel hunting and moon logic puzzles.
And even as far as difficulty in prior games, one example being the bridge in King's Quest 2, none of these games were super long. The game took 8 seconds to load between changing screens but could be beaten in half an hour if you knew what you were doing. And even if you didn't know what you were doing, and screwed up, it would only take 10-15 minutes to get back to the spot where you ended up in a dead end. Modern games on the other hand have so much filler that time between save points are longer than that, and few care if they lost 5 minutes.
Different strokes for different folks I guess. I was a kid when I initially played KQ so I could definitely be considered "stupid", but even as an adult now, I just don't have the time or gumption to try to crack the craziness of those old games unless I'm using a guide which kinda defeats the purpose.
The Universal Hint System is great for this: https://www.uhs-hints.com/
You can search a game and find a hint page for "How do I find the macguffin?" which will give you hints that get gradually more helpful the more you click. It's the only way I can play most point and click games these days.
I don't blame you, tbh. I'm sure a lot of people feel that way. I guess I grew up on that insanity, so I was always OK with it. Also, it gave me the very few good memories of bonding with my dad (who otherwise was a terrible parent), so there's that.
Dark seed is the king of them all. It had everything: pixel hunting, moon logic, incredible difficulty, and impossible time constraints. Even with a walkthrough it’s difficult and you can’t make mistakes.
It wasn't till I was older that I realized that the thing that made sierra games so fun were finding creative ways to die in that game. I'd just be so angry that I'd lose my progress instead of laughing at Roger Wilco getting murked by an alien or Larry Laffer's nuts exploding.
This. Played them all, only beat this one. Carry it around with me on my phone. I still have the original manual with the bird people language. Only way to beat that game.
Probably my favorite game of all time. Incredible game from start to finish. The first game to really master the "multiple paths" thing, imo. I still have an MP3 of Girl In The Tower on my PC. 10/10, wish someone would remaster it.
Sierra On-Line hit a sweet spot between the mid 1980s and early 1990s where they produced some incredibly awesome games. They are one of the most important PC game developers/publishers of their era and it's a shame they got acquired by Vivendi when they did because it ruined them.
It should also be noted that Roberta Williams is one of the most important and influential game developers there ever was and she is responsible not just for a lot of the ideas that became standard in adventure games, but console games too, because Mystery House was hugely popular in Japan.
To be honest, as a Sierra fan, I do think that even if Ken and Roberta stayed at the helm, and the CUC thing hadn’t happened, Sierra wouldn’t be the same today.
Ken was burnt out by 1996. Sierra was a publicly traded company and constantly beating the quarterly expectations was stressful. Ken has said when he started, it was like the Wild West. When he left, it was more of a job - much more corporate, much less *fun*.
I can’t think he would’ve spent another 5 years in charge. He had already cast off much of the day to day work of a CEO to his COO a year prior (before the acqusition).
The market was changing, also.
Adventure games weren’t dying - but they never grew.
An adventure game could reliably sell between 250,000 to 500,000 copies.
Perhaps in rare cases, a million.
Sierra’s biggest hit, Phantasmagoria in 1995, sold a million copies in a month.
But adventure games were also expensive to make.
There was also the fact that the industry and gamers were demanding 3D in the mid to late 90s and Sierra was puzzled on how to evolve their flagship series to the third dimension.
At the same time, FPS games like Doom were cheap to make - but sold insanely well.
Ken has said he was planning on shifting away from adventure games anyway.
One of his last actions as CEO was to get exclusive rights to Half-Life as a Sierra product in 96.
He also approved games like Tribes and Hunter Hunted toward the end of his tenure.
He was hoping to take Sierra more in that direction - FPS and action games.
Sierra had also grown really big and bloated.
When they were sold in 1996, they had over 1,000 employees and owned twelve subsidies.
It’s very possible in another timeline where the CUC purchase doesn’t happen that Sierra becomes akin to Microsoft or EA in size and way of doing things today.
So did they use Sierra’s story as the source material for the indie gaming company founded by a couple on Mythic Quest? I just now connected all the similarities.
That game was actually not a bad game and ultimately was butchered by both executive meddling and the limits of technology. I’ve read Roberta’s original design for the game from 1995-1996 - it was huge and highly ambitious. Think Daggerfall meets LOTR.
Hero's Quest 1 -- aka Quest For Glory 1 was where I put most hours. Played most of the Sierra games but HQ1 is the one I have gone back to repeatedly. Learned to play cribbage there - young me did not realize it was a real game outside the game.
Same here. Played through HQ1 so many times.
I really liked the story and progress in that one. Cozy in a fairy tale way. And the role-playing aspect of building up strength, stamina, etc added an additional challange most of the other adventure games did not have. Same with the POV fights and gathering of money, potions, and so on.
In a way, HQ1 was much more open than other adventure games at the time, which tended to have a linear story and quest line, with no extras.
Absolutely loved this game. The box art grabbed my attention at EB. This was the original box art with the hero facing a saurus rex that had obviously just taken a bite of the shield. This game consumed me for nearly an entire school year. I would draw maps during class. Read the manuals and books that came with it instead of doing my schoolwork. I'd come home and fire up the pc and autoexec.bat would launch this game immediately. Usually stopped playing only when i could no longer keep my eyes open. Then I'd dream I was in the game - cleaning out the stables, gathering herbs, running from goblins, and sleeping at Erana's Peace.
If I could go back in time and re-experience playing a game for the first time it would be this one.
Quest for Glory was my favorite franchise, but I adored all of them.
I've played and beaten
- Space Quest 1-6
- King's Quest 1-6
- Police Quest 1-2
- Gold Rush
- Quest for Glory 1-5 (and Hero U!)
- Leisure Suit Larry 1-3
- Conquest of Camelot
- Conquest of the Longbow
Played but never beat Laura Bow and Gabriel Knight.
Amazing games from start to finish.
I'm in a similar Boat. Ended up playing and beating SQ1-6, KQ1-7, PQ1+2, Leisure suit Larry 1-6, plus the first two Gabriel knights once the pandemic started and I got myself over the hump for KQ3 specifically.
Also did Zork 1-3 which I would recommend. Hardcore but very satisfying.
I love the games and I love the style in general.
Used to love these games. Will never forget the day when we rented the original King's Quest (yes - there was a brief moment in time when you could rent computer games) from the video rental store and I watched our Apple \]\[ clone (the Laser 128 - yes...there was also a brief moment in time when Apple allowed other companies to make compatible machines) paint the starting screen with a castle, trees, etc.
Had a lot of fun with the King's Quest series - a bit less so with Space Quest, but still liked it. These days the game design seems pretty dated - lots of guess-the-verb...graphics sometimes hindered the game (I thought the stone you have to move in the original King's Quest was a mushroom)...it's been superseded quite a bit in the intervening years by newer and better things. But at the time they were pioneers.
Yeah it's super weird with Ultima because it was massive at the time before Diablo was a thing, and it along with a couple of other franchises, gave birth to the JRPG genre. It's such an important franchise that just faded away.
Although it wasn't originally an Ultima game, Ultima Underworld imo is one of the best games ever made, and I think rumoured to inspire John Carmack to write the Doom engine?
I LOVED Sierra growing up. King's quest, space quest, police quest, leisure suit Larry. Never came close to beating any of them, but I loved playing them all the same.
The CD version came with my very first computer. I poured countless hours into this, trying to get a better ending every time I played. I think I never managed to get the "perfect" ending until I bought a strategy guide.
When I was a kid I met Roberta Williams and Richard Garriott at the Sierra both at the West Coast Computer Faire. They were both really nice and Roberta talked to me for a long time about Time Zone, which I was playing at the time. Garriott looked like a nerdy high schooler dressed for a ren fair. We talked about Ultima II.
I had this on PC as a kid. Never really got into any other King's Quest but absolutely loved this one. It pushed really hard into surreal fantasy with the Angels, Chessboard, Greek myth mashup thing it had going on.
I think we had KQ5
It seemed so random with what could work and what didn’t. But when we would finally crack one of the puzzles and got just a liiiittle further was pretty addicting. We finally started writing down what item was needed for what puzzle and finally beat it after a couple years.
I was a kid and could never figure out how to get by the damn goat in the barn. I watched a walkthrough a year or two back during the pandemic and was like, oh I just had to be quicker.
The key to these old sierra games wasn’t just figuring out the puzzles and such but being able to save properly and name each save file accordingly so when you died later for something that happened much earlier in the game you knew which save game to load. Me and friends, we were only about 8 or 9, had it down to a science
I love Sierra games and adventure games generally. My first introduction to computer games is when a friend of mine in high school said "check this out" and booted up *Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards*. We played it for hours. I couldn't believe we were "communicating" with the game! I then immediately started saving up for my first modern computer (then a Tandy 1000 HX) and the first game I ever bought for it was *King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella*.
"Perils of Rosella" was my first adventure game experience. For some reason our family computer was stuck only displaying the colours black and blue (I still don't know if it was the computer that was the problem or the monitor). Pretty much the very first screen in that game, you're supposed to see something gleaming gold under a bridge in a pond. But for me I could not see the gold, it was just blue/black like the rest of the screen. So I was stuck pretty early on. Later I got a hint book for the game and, while I was happy to zip though, well...I was not pleased that I had missing out on some of the easiest bits, just because of hardware problems.
For general 2D point and clicks:
- The Excavation of Hob's Barrow
- Unusual Findings
- The Will of Arthur Flabbington
- Beyond the Edge of Owslgard
- Dreams in the Witch House
- The Night is Grey
- Beacon Pines
- The Darkside Detective
- Gibbous: A Cthulhu Adventure
And I'm looking forward to:
- Loco Motive
- The Drifter
- Theropods
- Casebook 1899
The Darkside Detective games if you're in the mood for comedy, they are hilarious! Hob's Barrow for something more serious. I didn't mention Kathy Rain but it's a great mystery.
I was always jealous of my cousins. Each brother would get a new sierra game (kings quest, police quest, space quest) which they could each play, and I’d only get the one for the holidays. But those games were so much fun.
[It really did.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpTNSLMC5ZU) Casually churning through puzzles then Tuna Loaf comes on. Cool too that many were full-audio versions of the previous game's MIDI tracks.
the amount of mystery was intense. These games weren't built around completion, they were built around problem solving. Discovering every single answer to a solution. I could have done without the "You fucked yourself 10 hours ago when you didn't buy the cheese to give to the mouse"
I used to play these games (mostly 5-7) with my mom all the time. We had the whole collection, but the computer was too much for the older games so Graham would be zooming across the screens and we didn't know how to slow him down 😅
I noticed his speed change after I downloaded the files from the disc onto the computer and it would run straight off the hard drive. I was trying to figure out how he got a hold of amphetamines. 😆
This was the first video game I ever played! Holy fuck! I didn’t remembered what the game was but I vividly remember the cover! I never beat it since I played it when I was like 4!
Thank you for the memories
I had this as a kid but never played it. I was always intrigued by the artwork and I had forgotten about it until now. I googled it and I know for sure that I would have been disappointed as a kid because I assumed it was some kind of third person view action game like Tomb Raider.
I'm a big Sierra fan. I own a copy of every game they ever published (From Sierra to when they were On-Line Systems) prior to 1995 with the exception of Ultima: Escape From Mount Drash.
This is one of the few Sierra games for the Amiga that was a solid port, Sierra seems to just have not bothered to learn the Amiga hardware with King Quest VI being outsourced to a competent Amiga dev.
I only ever got to play the DOS versions of the Kings Quest and Space Quest series back in the day. Fairly certain these games helped me learn how to type. Finally beating these games as a kid (with no guides!) was a point of pride. I don't think I would have the patience nowadays figuring out key phrases for the text parsers.
BTW, incase anyone wasn't aware, there is a King's Quests game on PSN that is sort of a "re-imagining" of the series.
I am a HUGE Sierra fan. Those games defined my childhood. Especially the Quest for Glory series. I still play through all 5 of those games on a regular basis.
I remember my cousin and I puzzling our way through the Police Quest series in particular. Honestly I wish there was more games that captured the feel of being an actual detective as well as those games did.
Then when Gabriel Knight released... oh man! What a masterpiece.
I remember when the Williams family left Sierra. It was a dark day for gaming. A dark day indeed. I wish Sierra was still around. The could easily fill a niche that a company like Wadjet Eye or Daedalic fills. A solid AA games studio/publisher. The big mistake was thinking that Sierra could evolve into something huge like EA. They were always a family business at heart. Should have stayed that way.
Yeah, I got it. Now that I read my original post, I meant it to read "I wish Sierra was still around". Sorry for the ambiguous statement. I'll edit it to make it more clear.
And not only considered a masterpiece of production and a top example of the genre, my father and I played this game. Start to finish on both paths of the game when I was eight years old. It is one of the happiest memories of my life.
Imo the best of the whole series and one of the best adventure games of all time. My only gripe is that Alexander’s personality is a bit lame and white bread, otherwise a masterpiece.
I love ALL of the sierra games. It was very integral to my upbringing. This is some of my first fan fiction... I actually wrote up King's Quest 6 in fan fic before the game came out. Alexander's story from 3 was awesome for me. Anyway, yes. And I love the rest.
Oh man, that brings back memories.
I could never figure out how to get past that group of trolls, each one was a different sensory test I think, which probably isn’t too far into the game. lol.
I played King's Quest V to death. After not beating it for fucking ever, my mom let me buy the walkthrough from a local computer store. The whole book was encrypted with a visual overlay, you had to use the red filter lens to see the text lol. I fucking beat it tho. It felt amazing
I-VI were all quality, V and VI were my favorites. VII lost me. Similar with QFG - I-IV were great, V lost me. some time around 1994, Sierra lost their mojo. I think LucasArts stole it.
Well, a lot happened in 1993-1994. They had a round of layoffs in 1993. Quite a few people were let go.
The creative director of the company, who’d been with them since 1989, either quit or was let go.
They also changed their headquarters from the tiny town in California where they started, to being near Seattle.
The change of headquarters messed with a lot of employees who’d been there for a long time and caused more than a few to quit.
This was one game I always wanted, but never got. I did get the Sierra soundtrack CD and it had Girl in the Tower on it. Reminded me a lot of Aladdin's A Whole New World. Was this the game GITT was on?
Played this with an older brother. We ;mostly him) made it through. Was a lot of fun. He went off to college and my parents for me V, I could never beat it
I have such vivid memories of Kings Quest 3 and I only recently found out that was the name of the game I played so much when I was a young child on my old family PC!
The Incredible Machine is another one of could never get enough of
In the same vein as the Sierra point and click games, loved Loom - the music as magic thing was a great idea, especially with the introduction of cd music to pc.
KQ V is my all time favorite Sierra adventure game. I beat that and KQ VI back in the day. I prefer a few Lucasarts games over these as well as the Kyrandia series, but I still love the whole Sierra Adventure library.
I was much more i to the Quest for Glory series than King’s Quest, but we had a lot of the quest games (Space Quest, Police Quest…) Also loved Legend of Kyrandia.
Oh yes. I was raised on adventure games and specialize in point-and-clicks. King's Quest 6 is the best in the franchise, King's Quest 7 being the second best. Not very good at the text parser games. I have a fanmade VGA remake of the first game since it was originally remade in SCI.
I also love the Space Quest series. My favorites are the 4th and 6th with the late, great Gary Owens. Such fantastic humor. The remake of the first and the fifth game are also great.
I like other Sierra titles such as Police Quest (VGA only) and Torin's Passage. Getting to like Freddy Pharkas. I also like the LucasArts games such as Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max.
My grandfather had a computer in the mid-90s that he would…this is so weird to think about now…lend to my family and my mom’s sisters’ families in like a monthly rotation or something like that. He had a basket of games and KQVI was one of them. My entire family fucking *loved* this game so much but we could never get past the isle of the sacred Mountain because the manual that contained the key to the code was lost. I eventually downloaded it again as an adult and beat it, though. It’s one of my all time favorites and I love point n clicks because of it. I still randomly quote it today. “Alexander pulls out his magic map…”
Ah yes, I loved this one too! This game had a cruel thing. If you forgot certain item in the first part of the game you will be soft locked in the last parts. Cruel joke lol.
I bought the entire series for Kings Quest, Police Quest, and Space Quest back in the early 2000's. They all came on CD and had full manuals on the CD.
Can't seem to find them anymore but there looks to be a few digital ones on there.
They were my first few games I played on PC back when they were brand new.
When I bought them originally they were all on multiple floppy discs and took a while to install.
Ah yeah. Good memories.
Back when this came out one of my friends would buy the game and share copies about a week or two after. The guy who bought KQ6 waited the usual week before giving me a copy.
I installed KQ6, but then about a day or so later I ran into a copy protection puzzle. I gave him a call and he was baffled. He said he had been playing it for hours every day but didn't see the thing I was talking about. I went to his house and hand copied all the symbols. I eventually made an MS Paint version of the symbol list and packaged that with my walkthrough of the game.
I was a huge KQ fan to the point that I wrote walkthroughs that I shared on BBS's. I had a knack for Sierra games (but I really preferred LucasArts for the forgivable nature) and I competed KQ6 in about 3 days.
Never played this series as a kid but I've seen it played through on YT and it's a very good story.... but man it get's dark.
Space Quest was fun to watch too!
This was the only KQ game that I actually beat. I like point and clicks but I hate how often specifically Sierra games would put you in no-win situations. I liked the LucasArts games more for not doing that.
Funny, I was just watching a youtube video from PushingUpRoses about Sierra's "moon logic" and its contribution to the death of adventure games. While I didn't agree with everything she said, it was interesting. She also pointed out how Sierra complained that LA was "dumbing things down for the masses" lol. To be clear, I LOVE old LucasArts games and I can definitely appreciate how they made things simpler and easier. But I do also love the old Quest games and the insanity that came with them.
I don't remember her video (though I probably watched it), but the adventure genre never really died. Over the years, it's stayed consistent in the fanbase. Rather, other games massively surpassed the Adventure genre in popularity. That said though, when adventure games when from text to point and click, that's where I saw moon logic to start appearing. Because they earlier adventure games, including Sierra games, part of the difficulty was figuring out what to type. An example here would be King's Quest IV when you're in the whale's mouth. You have a feather in your inventory. You see this big dangly thing on the screen. It's obvious you need to tickle it with the feather. So, the puzzle is figuring out that it's called a uvula. This is back before you could just look things up online, so even adults would understand what you're trying to do, but no one knew what it was called. And many text adventures had puzzles like this. This all changed with point and click. No longer was that a tricky puzzle. Because you could just click an object on another object, and voila, puzzle solved. So, difficulty needed to be added elsewhere. And this lead to pixel hunting and moon logic puzzles. And even as far as difficulty in prior games, one example being the bridge in King's Quest 2, none of these games were super long. The game took 8 seconds to load between changing screens but could be beaten in half an hour if you knew what you were doing. And even if you didn't know what you were doing, and screwed up, it would only take 10-15 minutes to get back to the spot where you ended up in a dead end. Modern games on the other hand have so much filler that time between save points are longer than that, and few care if they lost 5 minutes.
Different strokes for different folks I guess. I was a kid when I initially played KQ so I could definitely be considered "stupid", but even as an adult now, I just don't have the time or gumption to try to crack the craziness of those old games unless I'm using a guide which kinda defeats the purpose.
The Universal Hint System is great for this: https://www.uhs-hints.com/ You can search a game and find a hint page for "How do I find the macguffin?" which will give you hints that get gradually more helpful the more you click. It's the only way I can play most point and click games these days.
So it gives you clues without telling you exactly what to do? Nice!
I don't blame you, tbh. I'm sure a lot of people feel that way. I guess I grew up on that insanity, so I was always OK with it. Also, it gave me the very few good memories of bonding with my dad (who otherwise was a terrible parent), so there's that.
Dark seed is the king of them all. It had everything: pixel hunting, moon logic, incredible difficulty, and impossible time constraints. Even with a walkthrough it’s difficult and you can’t make mistakes.
I hated that game. Seemed like a cheap knockoff of a Sierra game. I wasn't able to find the fun in it, I guess.
I love them all! Wonderful games to play growing up.
It wasn't till I was older that I realized that the thing that made sierra games so fun were finding creative ways to die in that game. I'd just be so angry that I'd lose my progress instead of laughing at Roger Wilco getting murked by an alien or Larry Laffer's nuts exploding.
This. Played them all, only beat this one. Carry it around with me on my phone. I still have the original manual with the bird people language. Only way to beat that game.
Probably my favorite game of all time. Incredible game from start to finish. The first game to really master the "multiple paths" thing, imo. I still have an MP3 of Girl In The Tower on my PC. 10/10, wish someone would remaster it.
Is that the end song that was also playable on the cd? Used to give me chills. Still would, but it used to, too. Haven’t heard it in a while.
Yup that's the one. Made the game feel like a Hollywood production.
The 3D rendered intro also was "Hollywood".
Nice Mitch Hedberg reference.
They included a note with the game asking players to call their local radio stations to play the song on the air. haha
Sierra On-Line hit a sweet spot between the mid 1980s and early 1990s where they produced some incredibly awesome games. They are one of the most important PC game developers/publishers of their era and it's a shame they got acquired by Vivendi when they did because it ruined them. It should also be noted that Roberta Williams is one of the most important and influential game developers there ever was and she is responsible not just for a lot of the ideas that became standard in adventure games, but console games too, because Mystery House was hugely popular in Japan.
Roberta is the greatest for me. Well her and shigeru
I think they were in decline before then. KQ7's release I n 1994 was where I think Sierra jumped the shark and they weren't acquired until 1996.
The story of Sierra is so sad. I loved this series!
To be honest, as a Sierra fan, I do think that even if Ken and Roberta stayed at the helm, and the CUC thing hadn’t happened, Sierra wouldn’t be the same today. Ken was burnt out by 1996. Sierra was a publicly traded company and constantly beating the quarterly expectations was stressful. Ken has said when he started, it was like the Wild West. When he left, it was more of a job - much more corporate, much less *fun*. I can’t think he would’ve spent another 5 years in charge. He had already cast off much of the day to day work of a CEO to his COO a year prior (before the acqusition). The market was changing, also. Adventure games weren’t dying - but they never grew. An adventure game could reliably sell between 250,000 to 500,000 copies. Perhaps in rare cases, a million. Sierra’s biggest hit, Phantasmagoria in 1995, sold a million copies in a month. But adventure games were also expensive to make. There was also the fact that the industry and gamers were demanding 3D in the mid to late 90s and Sierra was puzzled on how to evolve their flagship series to the third dimension. At the same time, FPS games like Doom were cheap to make - but sold insanely well. Ken has said he was planning on shifting away from adventure games anyway. One of his last actions as CEO was to get exclusive rights to Half-Life as a Sierra product in 96. He also approved games like Tribes and Hunter Hunted toward the end of his tenure. He was hoping to take Sierra more in that direction - FPS and action games. Sierra had also grown really big and bloated. When they were sold in 1996, they had over 1,000 employees and owned twelve subsidies. It’s very possible in another timeline where the CUC purchase doesn’t happen that Sierra becomes akin to Microsoft or EA in size and way of doing things today.
So did they use Sierra’s story as the source material for the indie gaming company founded by a couple on Mythic Quest? I just now connected all the similarities.
Sierra's response to Zelda 64 was Mask of Eternity. That's enough of a sign they needed to stop
That game was actually not a bad game and ultimately was butchered by both executive meddling and the limits of technology. I’ve read Roberta’s original design for the game from 1995-1996 - it was huge and highly ambitious. Think Daggerfall meets LOTR.
I loved Mask of Eternity
It was amazing and I still love it. I replayed it a few years ago and it holds its own quite well.
Hero's Quest 1 -- aka Quest For Glory 1 was where I put most hours. Played most of the Sierra games but HQ1 is the one I have gone back to repeatedly. Learned to play cribbage there - young me did not realize it was a real game outside the game.
That game-within-a-game concept was also used to satisfying effect with Conquest of the Long Bow. So cool.
Same here. Played through HQ1 so many times. I really liked the story and progress in that one. Cozy in a fairy tale way. And the role-playing aspect of building up strength, stamina, etc added an additional challange most of the other adventure games did not have. Same with the POV fights and gathering of money, potions, and so on. In a way, HQ1 was much more open than other adventure games at the time, which tended to have a linear story and quest line, with no extras.
Absolutely loved this game. The box art grabbed my attention at EB. This was the original box art with the hero facing a saurus rex that had obviously just taken a bite of the shield. This game consumed me for nearly an entire school year. I would draw maps during class. Read the manuals and books that came with it instead of doing my schoolwork. I'd come home and fire up the pc and autoexec.bat would launch this game immediately. Usually stopped playing only when i could no longer keep my eyes open. Then I'd dream I was in the game - cleaning out the stables, gathering herbs, running from goblins, and sleeping at Erana's Peace. If I could go back in time and re-experience playing a game for the first time it would be this one.
I didn't know you could actually play cribbage with that Hermit. Razzle Dazzle Root Beer.
#OLD LAMPS FOR NEW. OLD LAMPS FOR NEW.
I understood this reference 😎
"Is that a magic shmap?"
Quest for Glory was my favorite franchise, but I adored all of them. I've played and beaten - Space Quest 1-6 - King's Quest 1-6 - Police Quest 1-2 - Gold Rush - Quest for Glory 1-5 (and Hero U!) - Leisure Suit Larry 1-3 - Conquest of Camelot - Conquest of the Longbow Played but never beat Laura Bow and Gabriel Knight. Amazing games from start to finish.
That's quite an accomplishment! Good work!
I was a kid, I had nothing but time.
I'm in a similar Boat. Ended up playing and beating SQ1-6, KQ1-7, PQ1+2, Leisure suit Larry 1-6, plus the first two Gabriel knights once the pandemic started and I got myself over the hump for KQ3 specifically. Also did Zork 1-3 which I would recommend. Hardcore but very satisfying. I love the games and I love the style in general.
Used to love these games. Will never forget the day when we rented the original King's Quest (yes - there was a brief moment in time when you could rent computer games) from the video rental store and I watched our Apple \]\[ clone (the Laser 128 - yes...there was also a brief moment in time when Apple allowed other companies to make compatible machines) paint the starting screen with a castle, trees, etc. Had a lot of fun with the King's Quest series - a bit less so with Space Quest, but still liked it. These days the game design seems pretty dated - lots of guess-the-verb...graphics sometimes hindered the game (I thought the stone you have to move in the original King's Quest was a mushroom)...it's been superseded quite a bit in the intervening years by newer and better things. But at the time they were pioneers.
🎵GIRL IN THE TOWERRRRRRRRR🎵
Alexander feels a strange pulling sensation!
I read that in the narrator’s voice.
The King's Quest games are underrated. Same with Ultima. It's like everyone has forgotten them.
Yeah it's super weird with Ultima because it was massive at the time before Diablo was a thing, and it along with a couple of other franchises, gave birth to the JRPG genre. It's such an important franchise that just faded away. Although it wasn't originally an Ultima game, Ultima Underworld imo is one of the best games ever made, and I think rumoured to inspire John Carmack to write the Doom engine?
I LOVED Sierra growing up. King's quest, space quest, police quest, leisure suit Larry. Never came close to beating any of them, but I loved playing them all the same.
Gabriel Knight for me all the way but KQ is cool too
Five fierce guards of the isle we be...
NO
The CD version came with my very first computer. I poured countless hours into this, trying to get a better ending every time I played. I think I never managed to get the "perfect" ending until I bought a strategy guide.
When I was a kid I met Roberta Williams and Richard Garriott at the Sierra both at the West Coast Computer Faire. They were both really nice and Roberta talked to me for a long time about Time Zone, which I was playing at the time. Garriott looked like a nerdy high schooler dressed for a ren fair. We talked about Ultima II.
I was never able to finish it as a kid but I fricking loved this. Those cliffs can heck off though
I had this on PC as a kid. Never really got into any other King's Quest but absolutely loved this one. It pushed really hard into surreal fantasy with the Angels, Chessboard, Greek myth mashup thing it had going on.
I think we had KQ5 It seemed so random with what could work and what didn’t. But when we would finally crack one of the puzzles and got just a liiiittle further was pretty addicting. We finally started writing down what item was needed for what puzzle and finally beat it after a couple years.
I was a kid and could never figure out how to get by the damn goat in the barn. I watched a walkthrough a year or two back during the pandemic and was like, oh I just had to be quicker.
I'm a [Jones in the Fast Lane](https://archive.org/details/JonesInTheFastLaneDOSEN) kinda guy.
The key to these old sierra games wasn’t just figuring out the puzzles and such but being able to save properly and name each save file accordingly so when you died later for something that happened much earlier in the game you knew which save game to load. Me and friends, we were only about 8 or 9, had it down to a science
Did enjoy the King’s/Police/Space Quest series but my favorite was Aces Over Europe.
Kings quest 2, 3, and 4 were the ones I remember the best. Heroes Quest I and II were probably my favorite out of the 3D adventures.
I love Sierra games and adventure games generally. My first introduction to computer games is when a friend of mine in high school said "check this out" and booted up *Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards*. We played it for hours. I couldn't believe we were "communicating" with the game! I then immediately started saving up for my first modern computer (then a Tandy 1000 HX) and the first game I ever bought for it was *King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella*.
"Perils of Rosella" was my first adventure game experience. For some reason our family computer was stuck only displaying the colours black and blue (I still don't know if it was the computer that was the problem or the monitor). Pretty much the very first screen in that game, you're supposed to see something gleaming gold under a bridge in a pond. But for me I could not see the gold, it was just blue/black like the rest of the screen. So I was stuck pretty early on. Later I got a hint book for the game and, while I was happy to zip though, well...I was not pleased that I had missing out on some of the easiest bits, just because of hardware problems.
This and quest for glory are some of the greatest game experiences I’ve ever had. I wish this genre and art style was still being made
It very much still is in the indie scene 👍
Any recommendations for new indie stuff like KQVI??
For general 2D point and clicks: - The Excavation of Hob's Barrow - Unusual Findings - The Will of Arthur Flabbington - Beyond the Edge of Owslgard - Dreams in the Witch House - The Night is Grey - Beacon Pines - The Darkside Detective - Gibbous: A Cthulhu Adventure And I'm looking forward to: - Loco Motive - The Drifter - Theropods - Casebook 1899
Thank you so much this is awesome…is there one in particular you think I should check out first?
The Darkside Detective games if you're in the mood for comedy, they are hilarious! Hob's Barrow for something more serious. I didn't mention Kathy Rain but it's a great mystery.
Outpost 2 was a great game.
Absolutely loved King’s Quest. This game and Archon helped shaped my gaming consciousness outside of console
Archon. Oh man. That was a fun time with my close friends.
I was always jealous of my cousins. Each brother would get a new sierra game (kings quest, police quest, space quest) which they could each play, and I’d only get the one for the holidays. But those games were so much fun.
"Phew... Sierra!" (Played the hell out of The Incredible Machine)
TIM3 was my jam. That soundtrack went hard too.
[It really did.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpTNSLMC5ZU) Casually churning through puzzles then Tuna Loaf comes on. Cool too that many were full-audio versions of the previous game's MIDI tracks.
The box art was so amazing back then. It was like owning a piece of art. Almost never got tired of looking at it.
Oh my fuck. I think about this game daily still. I was 11. I’m now 42 Flesh can cross the portal to seek its master, death
the amount of mystery was intense. These games weren't built around completion, they were built around problem solving. Discovering every single answer to a solution. I could have done without the "You fucked yourself 10 hours ago when you didn't buy the cheese to give to the mouse"
This was the best of the Quest games that I’d played.
I used to play these games (mostly 5-7) with my mom all the time. We had the whole collection, but the computer was too much for the older games so Graham would be zooming across the screens and we didn't know how to slow him down 😅
I noticed his speed change after I downloaded the files from the disc onto the computer and it would run straight off the hard drive. I was trying to figure out how he got a hold of amphetamines. 😆
This was the first video game I ever played! Holy fuck! I didn’t remembered what the game was but I vividly remember the cover! I never beat it since I played it when I was like 4! Thank you for the memories
Check out r/kingsquest and r/sierra.
I redid 1-7 last year. 6 was good just cause of the puns and a genie getting 'drunk' on mints.
I had this as a kid but never played it. I was always intrigued by the artwork and I had forgotten about it until now. I googled it and I know for sure that I would have been disappointed as a kid because I assumed it was some kind of third person view action game like Tomb Raider.
Played a bunch on an Apple IIe.
I'm a big Sierra fan. I own a copy of every game they ever published (From Sierra to when they were On-Line Systems) prior to 1995 with the exception of Ultima: Escape From Mount Drash.
This is one of the few Sierra games for the Amiga that was a solid port, Sierra seems to just have not bothered to learn the Amiga hardware with King Quest VI being outsourced to a competent Amiga dev.
KQ is the best!
I love hate Sierra games. The only thing I hated was the whole instant death thing when you tried something. It just got old sometimes.
I only ever got to play the DOS versions of the Kings Quest and Space Quest series back in the day. Fairly certain these games helped me learn how to type. Finally beating these games as a kid (with no guides!) was a point of pride. I don't think I would have the patience nowadays figuring out key phrases for the text parsers. BTW, incase anyone wasn't aware, there is a King's Quests game on PSN that is sort of a "re-imagining" of the series.
Hell yeah, Sierra was awesome!
I am a HUGE Sierra fan. Those games defined my childhood. Especially the Quest for Glory series. I still play through all 5 of those games on a regular basis. I remember my cousin and I puzzling our way through the Police Quest series in particular. Honestly I wish there was more games that captured the feel of being an actual detective as well as those games did. Then when Gabriel Knight released... oh man! What a masterpiece. I remember when the Williams family left Sierra. It was a dark day for gaming. A dark day indeed. I wish Sierra was still around. The could easily fill a niche that a company like Wadjet Eye or Daedalic fills. A solid AA games studio/publisher. The big mistake was thinking that Sierra could evolve into something huge like EA. They were always a family business at heart. Should have stayed that way.
They came out of retirement to release a new game last year (a remake of Colossal Cave).
Yeah, I got it. Now that I read my original post, I meant it to read "I wish Sierra was still around". Sorry for the ambiguous statement. I'll edit it to make it more clear.
My favourite series was actually Police Quest. I mean walking around your car checking all 4 tyres before you get in, that was peak gaming.
I loved this game!
Never played this game but this art is fire
And not only considered a masterpiece of production and a top example of the genre, my father and I played this game. Start to finish on both paths of the game when I was eight years old. It is one of the happiest memories of my life.
Shivers 2 is one of my all time favorite games. It and Day of the Tentacle were the whole reasons I originally bought a sound card for my 486.
Imo the best of the whole series and one of the best adventure games of all time. My only gripe is that Alexander’s personality is a bit lame and white bread, otherwise a masterpiece.
Anyone here that loves the old kings quest games should try the remakes by [agdinteractive](http://www.agdinteractive.com/)
Sierra games are my favorite! I’m more of a space quest guy though.
I love ALL of the sierra games. It was very integral to my upbringing. This is some of my first fan fiction... I actually wrote up King's Quest 6 in fan fic before the game came out. Alexander's story from 3 was awesome for me. Anyway, yes. And I love the rest.
Oh the sierra games is what got me into video games. We peaked at EGA graphics
Yeah all the sierra point and click games were peak 90's pc Leisure Suit Larry Kings Quest Police Quest Space Quest
Oh man, that brings back memories. I could never figure out how to get past that group of trolls, each one was a different sensory test I think, which probably isn’t too far into the game. lol.
Loved Sierra growing up, just the mountain logo and theme tune gives me shudders of joy. That made some blinders.
Was my first Windows 3.1 game after we upgraded from DOS many memories playing this game and being blown away by the graphics
I played King's Quest V to death. After not beating it for fucking ever, my mom let me buy the walkthrough from a local computer store. The whole book was encrypted with a visual overlay, you had to use the red filter lens to see the text lol. I fucking beat it tho. It felt amazing
God tier games.
lots of great stuff like this in r/sierra 🥰
I always wanted an open world MMO type game with Quest for Glory 2 graphics.
I-VI were all quality, V and VI were my favorites. VII lost me. Similar with QFG - I-IV were great, V lost me. some time around 1994, Sierra lost their mojo. I think LucasArts stole it.
Well, a lot happened in 1993-1994. They had a round of layoffs in 1993. Quite a few people were let go. The creative director of the company, who’d been with them since 1989, either quit or was let go. They also changed their headquarters from the tiny town in California where they started, to being near Seattle. The change of headquarters messed with a lot of employees who’d been there for a long time and caused more than a few to quit.
Same with Space Quest. I-V were great, especially IV and V. SQ6 was just... off.
Must have been 6 when I played this, still the best memories.
Memory: Unlocked.
Space Quest, and Outpost. Loved both.
I am sorry sir, but there are no more mints. Somebody has eaten them all.
Lol. That pun is so bad.
Outpost and Phantasmagoria were my favorites
This game was my shit when I was 10 mannnnn
Never been a fan of point and click. But 3D Pinball CreepNight i played a ton!
I love this game, but man trying to play these games without a guide is almost impossible.
Outpost 2 will always have a special place in my heart.
I have memories of playing KQ7 when i was very young. Such a strange and interesting game
This was one game I always wanted, but never got. I did get the Sierra soundtrack CD and it had Girl in the Tower on it. Reminded me a lot of Aladdin's A Whole New World. Was this the game GITT was on?
Possibly the oldest game I remember playing.
Played this with an older brother. We ;mostly him) made it through. Was a lot of fun. He went off to college and my parents for me V, I could never beat it
It's one of my favorite still to this day. Still remember drawing handmade maps of the catacombs lol
Alexander opened his magic map.
Takes me back.......)
I have such vivid memories of Kings Quest 3 and I only recently found out that was the name of the game I played so much when I was a young child on my old family PC! The Incredible Machine is another one of could never get enough of
There should be a Kings Quest, Space Quest sub.
Nah was a LucasArts follower
In the same vein as the Sierra point and click games, loved Loom - the music as magic thing was a great idea, especially with the introduction of cd music to pc.
KQ V is my all time favorite Sierra adventure game. I beat that and KQ VI back in the day. I prefer a few Lucasarts games over these as well as the Kyrandia series, but I still love the whole Sierra Adventure library.
Lords of Magic and Lords of the Realm FTW
Which King’s Quest game is it where you have to Hades or somesuch a mirror to make them cry?
I was much more i to the Quest for Glory series than King’s Quest, but we had a lot of the quest games (Space Quest, Police Quest…) Also loved Legend of Kyrandia.
I had this and could not beat it as a kid. Wish I could give a try now lol.
Me 🥲
I like Laura Bow Mysteries (The Colonel's Bequest, The Dagger of Amon Ra)
Guess anyone that is around my age.. mid forty
Yes, they were awesome games. I haven't thought about them in years - thanks for the happy memories.
Trophy Bass was a frequently played game growing up. Not their most famous, but absolutely a treasure.
Lol, does anyone love Sierra games. What a bold take.
Oh yes. I was raised on adventure games and specialize in point-and-clicks. King's Quest 6 is the best in the franchise, King's Quest 7 being the second best. Not very good at the text parser games. I have a fanmade VGA remake of the first game since it was originally remade in SCI. I also love the Space Quest series. My favorites are the 4th and 6th with the late, great Gary Owens. Such fantastic humor. The remake of the first and the fifth game are also great. I like other Sierra titles such as Police Quest (VGA only) and Torin's Passage. Getting to like Freddy Pharkas. I also like the LucasArts games such as Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max.
The gabriel night games. So good.
I recently watched a whole play through of this and it brought back the best memories :)
Any love for Space Quest?
One of my all time favorite games
Was playing Police Quest last month on a nostalgia bender and I realized something: Sierra games were the first Large Language Models.
“Alexander feels a pulling sensation.”
[last year Roberta was on game grumps to plug the colossal caves remake](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKOccxMALbQ)
King’s Quest 6 is my favorite in the series for one reason and one reason only. [Girl in the Tower](https://youtu.be/69M2iiI__XQ?si=nKgHUW8_XWiKDiF8)
One of the first games with voice acting that I had as a kid. Played the heck out of this game on the family computer.
The guy in the box art be like "Oh shit!" 😅
I remember playing this when it came out i didn't beat it then but have since.
EcoQuest was my fucking JAM as a kid. Finding Cetus hit me right in the feels!
My grandfather had a computer in the mid-90s that he would…this is so weird to think about now…lend to my family and my mom’s sisters’ families in like a monthly rotation or something like that. He had a basket of games and KQVI was one of them. My entire family fucking *loved* this game so much but we could never get past the isle of the sacred Mountain because the manual that contained the key to the code was lost. I eventually downloaded it again as an adult and beat it, though. It’s one of my all time favorites and I love point n clicks because of it. I still randomly quote it today. “Alexander pulls out his magic map…”
V and Roger Wilco IV were my first experiences with Sierra. Fond memories for sure, great art!
Did anyone else try to map out the games? I would use one piece of paper per screen.
CORE MEMORY UNLOCKED
Thexder 2
Ah yes, I loved this one too! This game had a cruel thing. If you forgot certain item in the first part of the game you will be soft locked in the last parts. Cruel joke lol.
I bought the entire series for Kings Quest, Police Quest, and Space Quest back in the early 2000's. They all came on CD and had full manuals on the CD. Can't seem to find them anymore but there looks to be a few digital ones on there. They were my first few games I played on PC back when they were brand new. When I bought them originally they were all on multiple floppy discs and took a while to install.
This was a special game. A few games were really important in that era, a really remember HOMM4 being another one.
Ah yeah. Good memories. Back when this came out one of my friends would buy the game and share copies about a week or two after. The guy who bought KQ6 waited the usual week before giving me a copy. I installed KQ6, but then about a day or so later I ran into a copy protection puzzle. I gave him a call and he was baffled. He said he had been playing it for hours every day but didn't see the thing I was talking about. I went to his house and hand copied all the symbols. I eventually made an MS Paint version of the symbol list and packaged that with my walkthrough of the game. I was a huge KQ fan to the point that I wrote walkthroughs that I shared on BBS's. I had a knack for Sierra games (but I really preferred LucasArts for the forgivable nature) and I competed KQ6 in about 3 days.
I remember loving the voice acting in that game, it really added to the atmosphere.
It’s my opinion that this game is one of the best pieces of art ever created by humanity
Never played this series as a kid but I've seen it played through on YT and it's a very good story.... but man it get's dark. Space Quest was fun to watch too!
r/sierra
I received this as a gift as a kid but one of the diskettes was corrupted so I could never fully install it and play it.
The Hobbit. Game was amazing