The Kingdom of Daventry Needs YOU!

[EricKei]

This one is for the fans of the good ol' Sierra point-and-click adventures...and those who have never tried them. These should all work on XP/Vista/7.

Over the past few years, AGDI has released remakes (or, in the case or KQ2, a massive retooling and expansion) of the SVGA versions of King's Quest 1, 2, & 3, as well as Quest for Glory 2 -- all with Sierra's blessing and cooperation. Yep, that's right, boys and girls, they're available for download and playable in all their 320x200 resolution glory! ^_^;> Think yer video card can handle them?

And, oh yeah, did I mention they're free? Go go go. Now!

King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown

King's Quest II: Romancing the Stones (original subtitle: The Perils of Rosella)

King's Quest III Redux: To Heir Is Human

Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire

Just a couple side notes -- The games don't support anti-aliasing (despite what the Settings thingy says); BE SURE to run the Settings thingy before playing each for the first time, and read the Readme. They do support a "nearest neighbor" version of sprite smoothing, which just makes them look a little blurry to me, YMMV.

On KQ1 - They give you the option, when starting a new game, to activate "no dead ends" mode -- this removes some of the more BS deaths, and makes it so that you can always complete the game even if you missed a vital item from earlier on.

On KQ3 - These guys REALLY love their cheap deaths, don't they? The game has time limits in the first portion of the game. When that old fart you see early on tells you to do something, he means NOW. He will show up at the location he describes not long after he gives you an order, and, if you're not present and doing that activity at the time (or have completed it, it varies), he straight-up wastes you. Fair warning.

The QFG site has short audio stings on several of their pages when you load them up.

[gremcint]

now the originals for all of these are available on GOG. Here's a tip for quest for glory. There is an official VGA remake for QFG1, the AGDI version of QFG2 lets you import your character just like the official version then you can export to QFG3 and continue the series to the end.

[EricKei]

Yup yup. I figured, hey, why not free alternatives -- and, more importantly, no fighting with that thrice-accursed text parser to get anything done!

[lordlundar]

and, more importantly, no fighting with that thrice-accursed text parser to get anything done!

You seem bitter...

[EricKei]

You seem bitter...

Why, no, don't be *twitch* silly...Why would I ever be *ergh* *twitch* bitter or frustrated about a game *coughkq3cough* that requires you to not only type out commands -- meaning, the commands it expects, not the ones you want -- under a time limit so you don't get quick-fried? ("Silly user! That's not a saucepan! It's a pot! And those things the bird dropped aren't eagle feathers! They're just feathers! Where are you getting this nonsense from anyway, you silly dilly?" -- "Maybe the fucking EAGLE who just flew over me, which you called an 'eagle,', that dropped the feathers...") And, say, typing out spell incantations...verbatim...from memory -- as screwing them up once too often kills you too.

I, for one, was glad to move from text parsers to point-and-click, even if it means playing hunt-the-pixel o_O

On that subject, tho, dealing with the major, grumpy, immediate cause of frequent deaths (in kq3) once and for all -- in the text parser version -- was really, REALLY satisfying...Maybe that was the point >_> C'mere, you.

> Kick cat

ROWWWWR!

> Take cat

Taken.

Best I not finish that. Wouldn't wanna give away the puzzle finale, now would I?

[Ophbalance]

I no longer have any desire to play them, but I AM enjoying watching the let's play of them. I watched Hero's Quest recently (never did beat it myself). I was thinking of watching the KQ line after I get done watching a FFVII run through.