Buying Sierra.

[kindofdoon]

I've played it, but haven't gotten to that point yet. Apparently it's very hard as compared to other games in the series.

[Tage7]

I've played it, but haven't gotten to that point yet. Apparently it's very hard as compared to other games in the series.

Took me forever to beat that because I lost the manual. One day, I just HAPPENED upon it. Oh what a happy day that was.

[kindofdoon]

What exactly is in the manual that makes it easier to beat? I always thought it was backstory...I never owned a manual, sadly, so I don't really know what was in them.

[Baggins]

Are you referring to KQ3?

Uh, you can't beat the game without the manual. It has all the magic spells, needed for the Sorcerery of Old.

If you don't have the manual, you'd need one of the other books out there, like King's Quest Companion, or Official Book of King's Quest, that reprinted the spells.

[wilco64256]

And even with the manual a lot of people still struggled because it had a typo or something.

[kindofdoon]

I meant besides the copyright protection glyphs (Cliffs of Logic, Crispin's wand, etc.)

[KatieHal]

Well...that's pretty much it. You can't answer the Cliffs of Logic or navigate the catacombs tile puzzle, or cast the spells in KQ3 without the manuals. KQ3 especially--KQ6, you could TRY trial and error, but that would be hellish with the Cliffs of Logic especially.

[kindofdoon]

Indeed. My copy of KQVI came bundled when we bought a Windows 95 laptop, so it was just the disk (as far as I know, I was young then). I didn't get very far as a kid without the manual, but recently, with the awesome power of the Internet that didn't exist back in the early 90s, I was able to find a manual and finish the game!

[Baggins]

KQ3, the manual basically told you everything you had to do in the game, every single item to find. It was 90% of the game. Most of the games puzzles surrounded the game's spells. Toss in the magic map that would take you pretty much everywhere, the game was "overlysimplified" (to paraphrase some of the contempory complaints about the game).

It wasn't really a very good "copy-protection"... Its also interesting to note that Sierra allowed said "copy-protection" to be printed inside several of Sierra authorized hintbooks, such as King's Quest Companion, and the Official Book of King's Quest. There were stories of people apparently pirating the game, and because the books were cheaper than the game ($17 or so), they would buy the book to beat the game, or check it out at a library.

[kindofdoon]

Now we have DRM...much better...

It's funny how much copyright protection has changed in just 15ish years.

[KatieHal]

I don't think I ever found the magic map, but even so, I wouldn't say KQ3 was over-simplified. Finding all of those ingredients, hiding them, avoiding Mannanan, getting up and down that damn mountain path! It was plenty challenging!

[Baggins]

I think the issue that people were complaining about, if you had the magic map you could move around the world rather quickly. It took away some of the sense of danger from the Wizard coming and going. They got enough complaints that they decided to not include the feature in KQ4.

[Lambonius]

The original KQ3 manual didn't have any typos, but the manual that came with the first KQ Collection didn't list any of the spellbook page numbers, so it was impossible to complete the game, because before you could cast a spell, you first had to turn to the correct page, which was ONLY listed in the manual.  I didn't know this at the time, so I spent countless hours typing every single possible iteration of "read table of contents" into that damn parser.  Years later, when bought the first KQ Companion, I realized what the problem had been.  How they let that get past the QA guys with that first Collection, I'll never know.

[Tage7]

And even with the manual a lot of people still struggled because it had a typo or something.

There was no typo in the manual as far as I was aware; however, the ONLY walkthrough on the Internet at that moment in time DID have a typo. Specifically, and I remember with every ounce of my being, the walkthrough stated "put the dough into a cookie"; however, the correct spell step was "pat the dough into a cookie". I, however, could never figure out the correct word. (or it could have been the other way around, ugh)

RRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWRRRRRRRRR!!!!!

[Baggins]

Hmm, ya, I think there was a bit of trivia in one of the King's Quest Collections that states that early version of KQ3 manual, did have a problem. It wasn't so much that it was a typo, but that the phrase in the book and the phrase used in the game were different.

Basically if you typed the spell exactly as it was stated in the manual, the game would think you made a mistake and kill you.

[Lambonius]

So both the original KQ3 manual AND the manual for the original KQ Collection were insufficient to get past the spell-casting part of the game.  Terrible game design (and Quality Assurance with the manuals) at its finest.

[Tage7]

If that were true, I wouldn't have beaten the game.

Edit: Whoops. Didn't read closely enough. It's possible I had a later edition.

[Lambonius]

If that were true, I wouldn't have beaten the game.

Well, obviously you didn't have either the original release version of the KQ3 manual or the KQ Collection that ended with KQ6 (I don't know if it was the first version or not.)    Again though, I can't say with 100% certainty about the original KQ3 manual, but I know for a FACT that the Collection manual didn't have those pesky page numbers in it, rendering the spell section un-passable.  Either way, though, having an entire game designed around an elaborate copy protection scheme is unarguably bad design, nostalgia blinders or not.

[Baggins]

Hmm I thought the manual for the 15th Anniversery collection contained the corrected text (as in the directions)? I think it was the one that mentioned the trivia about the early version. It also had latest version of the game, 1.4 IIRC. You can tell if escape brings up menus. In earlier versions escape would pause the game.

come to think of it the page numbers might have been included on card packed in with the collection, or in one of the bonus features installed with the game.

[Lambonius]

Believe me, if they had been included, I would have found them.    It was an older Collection--the box was thinner than the standard-sized computer game boxes of the day, and was kind of a dark pinkish red with gold embossed lettering and a little King Graham symbol on it.

This was it, I believe.  It only included up through KQ6--KQ7 was still newly released at that point.  I'm not 100% sure it was the 15th Anniversary Edition or an earlier one with the same box art though.

The spell instructions were correct--it was just that the Roman numeral page numbers were missing from the spell pages in the manual.  Like I said, I didn't know there was even anything missing until I bought the Companion a year or so later.  I honestly couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong.