Kings quest 1

[dbadalam]

Hi,

I've been a King's quest player from way back in the early 80's.  My earliest memories of playing Quest for the Crown was on our PCjr.  I was probably 12, my dad worked for IBM, we had an early PCjr at home.  My dad brought home the King's Quest game for me to try out.  I remember it was a self booting 5.25 floppy with no label.  I was hooked form there and exclusively played sierra games on the computer. 

I'm wondering if it was a beta copy of the game, because I remember certain things that seem weird to me now.
I remember that each screen would be in black and white, then I would slowly watch the color get drawn in.  I've looked for youtube videos for some shots of this effect on the original but didn't see any.  Does any body else remember that?  I suppose it could have been an early pre-release version. 

I also remember having two major troubles in the game.  One was getting Rumpelstiltskin name correct.  I think my dad looked at the source code to get me the answer.  I also remember not being able to give the three treasures to the king, as bowing never occurred to me.  I kept typing give treasures but of course it didn't work, and i was stuck until I was told what to do.  Does anybody else remember that being the case that you couldn't give the treasures to the King without bowing?  This time my dad was told by a co-worker to bow, so I was able to finish.

I remember purchasing KQIV, but had to send proof of purchase to sierra so they could send me the PCjr version 5.25 floppy's  (at that time the game had moved to 3.5").  I think that was the last time a PCjr version was made.  It also had a bug in it so you couldn't finish the game.  I eventually had an IBM 8088 clone pc made for me so I could use the original discs I bought and finish the game.  I remember being surprised how much better the graphics were.  The PCjr was useless by that time.  Actually most would argue it never was useful.  As an option you had wireless keyboard that barley worked.   Imagine typing having only every other letter register, so I had to wait for my dad to bring a cable home.

Strange KQ memories.

[kyranthia]

I don't remember the black and white screens.  But, I do remember the Rumpelstiltskin being extra hard since not only did you have to spell his name backwards, but you had to use the opposite letters of the alphabet to spell out his name.

According to the Wiki, the PCjr release was the very first and releases for other systems came later.  So, maybe that has something to do with it.  The version I played was on the Atari ST, which was a later version of the release.

[darthkiwi]

My parents, who played KQ1 when it first came out, told me that their version was a two-tone version. I don't think it was black and white, but as far as I can gather it was either black and green or black and orange, and you could pick which one you wanted.

[Arkillian]

Could've been for the old monochrome monitors. Those were a brown tint. That was the days of basic 10 logic.

[Blackthorne]

These children don't know what they're talking about most of the time.

The early/first versions of King's Quest had that effect - the screen was drawn, and the color was filled in.  In later versions, the process happened so fast, the human eye didn't notice.

If you want to see the process, look up Virtual Apple II.  You can play a demo of King's Quest there which is very much like that PCJr version.


Bt

[Arkillian]

Yeah- I thought it was weird that it was 2 color. I was certain that King's Quest came out in 16 colour or something. That makes sense though. I remember my old pentium struggling with KQ5- I played the version on the 3 1/4 disks for that game so I never got to live the glory of the 'POOOOOISONOUS snake' in verbal (just words- SO much less annoying ) , the same with KQ6 (BOY was this game a treat with sound though ) so I know what it's like for a computer to struggle with a game. I remember not being able to buy certain games cause they were SVGA, and having to use DOS to deltree old games to install the new King's quest game cause it took up my whole hard drive *fails*

Ah- those were the days I've played monochrome games before, but those are mostly text based ones. Sleuth was fun I hacked into the code and changed all the characters in the game to characters in my story ^^ Good tiems

[MusicallyInspired]

IIRC the first release of King's Quest was monochrome only. I also read somewhere that the easter egg death in SQ1 that takes you to Castle Daventry was special in that it was a coloured version, while at the time of release KQ hadn't gotten a colourized release yet. That sounds bogus, though. I can't remember where I read that.

The early/first versions of King's Quest had that effect - the screen was drawn, and the color was filled in.  In later versions, the process happened so fast, the human eye didn't notice.

Or so fast that the refresh rate of the monitor couldn't keep up.

[Baggins]

My earliest memories of playing Quest for the Crown was on our PCjr.

Back then, it wasn't even known as "Quest for the Crown", it was simply "King's Quest", and Graham was known as 'Grahame'!

[crayauchtin]

My earliest memories of playing Quest for the Crown was on our PCjr.

Back then, it wasn't even known as "Quest for the Crown", it was simply "King's Quest", and Graham was known as 'Grahame'!

I kind of wish that the original spelling of his name was "Graeme" -- I feel like that's the most epic and fantasy-like spelling of our name. I'm sure he would agree.

Nonetheless, I'm glad they settled on "Graham".