Playing earlier King's Quest games

[kturcotte]

I plan on playing The Silver Lining once it's finished (I prefer to play a game right through once I start it), but I'd like to go back and play the earlier King's Quest games as well, especially since I've only played 1-4. What's the best way to do this? 1-3 is easy enough, with the remakes. What about 4-8? I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit (I know, that may present some problems).
Thanks

[Arkillian]

1-6 will run in DOSbox just fine. If Windows 7 has a compatibility mode then it can run 7 in Windows 3.1- May be compatible with higher versions. I got the CD and it ran from XP there. You may have to play inception to get it all to work though. DOSbox is compatible up to Vista.

Lol. Running DOS inside of XP inside of Windows 7. That's hardcore

[Lambonius]

There is also a patch out there that will update the Windows version of KQ7 to the later DOS version of the game that was eventually released.  Once you've run that patch, it should also be fully playable using Dosbox.

[Sir Perceval of Daventry]

Gog.com?

[MusicallyInspired]

http://sierrahelp.com/

GoG's version is also the Win 3.1-only version, IIRC. The patch at Sierra Help Pages will update it to the newer version with the DOS interpreter. If you get the installers, it'll install the games for you, set up all the settings, and place nice shortcuts on your desktop. Click and go!

[MikPal]

And to make thingsa a bit simpler, ScummVM has compatibility with all versions of King's Quests 1-6.

And the original CD-version of KQ7 was playable on my Win7 64bit machine at least four months ago.

[MusicallyInspired]

There are animation speed issues with KQ6 and it's generally considered best to run these games in their native format as yet, but ScummVM is a huge convenience if you just don't want to bother with the details.

[Arkillian]

There are animation speed issues with KQ6 and it's generally considered best to run these games in their native format as yet, but ScummVM is a huge convenience if you just don't want to bother with the details.

You mean KQ7? The bomb scene? I had to download a retarder to do that scene.

[MusicallyInspired]

No, I'm talking about ScummVM (and you wouldn't need a retarder if you were using DOSBox, btw. Just lower the CPU cycles and be done. Same for KQ6). The problem with ScummVM and SCI1.1 games is that some animations play as if you've got a Pentium computer when they should act like you have a 486 or 386 computer. That includes KQ6, SQ5, LB2, PQ1VGA, QFG1VGA, QFG3, LSL6 floppy, etc. It's not a timer bug that will crash the game, merely that the animations simply are too fast when animated. ScummVM still hasn't ironed this out while the SCI1.0 games (KQ5, SQ4 floppy, PQ3, LSL1VGA, LSL5, SQ1VGA, etc) are perfect in this regard when played in ScummVM.

I was merely pointing out a flaw in ScummVM when playing SCI games.