King's Quest: Special Edition

[B'rrr]

*graham waves his hand over the puzzle on the wall and new steps appear*

"wow! that was easy! I wonder why Alexander had so much trouble with this..."

[Enchantermon]

Right, easy to do but I'm pretty sure it's illegal.

Why?

[Rosella]

Probably because it would be effectively giving away the copy protection for KQVI.

[Enchantermon]

True, it would, but what they chose to do instead was provide a means of bypassing it by playing their remake. Not technically the same thing, but the end result is pretty much the same.

[Baggins]

D-D, maybe your confused with Father Death, that "hovered over graham" in intro to King's Quest 4, after the heart attack.

There is no Father in KQ2, nor in KQ3. Both have happy endings.

I think the thing that bugged me the most about KQ2+, although I still enjoyed it for what it was, was the fact that they replaced dracula, with a good guy vampire, and made the monk the badguy. They could have easily fit in an expanded story without screwing up Roberta's original intent with the characters.

Also the original KQ2 actually had a bit of a story, if you took the time to use the parser to interact with the characters a bit more, look, talk, offering several related objects to the individual characters (or alternate objects). The antique store owner for example had make five-six different lines, depending on what you asked her, offered her, or how you interacted with the lamp in her shop. Also alot of the plot in that game was hidden in the background messages, so you had to carefully look around each room, and features of the background.

Might it be a reference to the priest in the church?  I know the companion named him "Brother Fragola" but he might be an abbot in the game, and hence would be called a father.

No, he's just a monk, he's also called a "man of the cloth". I just played through the game the other day. he's also interesting in that he had actually heard of graham, and knew in advance of his coming to Kolyma, and wanted to help him on his quest. He could have been made even more interesting, if they had maintained the original intent, of the monks being an organization that helped and offering protecdtion to travelers in need (as stated if you take the time to look around the scenery around the monastery), as well as the dialogue with the monk.

To be honest though, and I know I'm in the minority here, I liked the ending of the KQ3 remake (I didn't care for their changes to Alexander's kidnapping, however). It just seems more likely that Graham would want to pass on his adventurers cap after actually getting to know his son for at least a little while. And Alexander, having no idea the significance of the cap, would likely not care that much that it was being passed on. All Alexander knows about his father at this point is that he's a king and whether or not he gives good hugs, you know? (I know Rosella told him "all about their parents" but it's not quite the same as getting to know someone.)

The problem arises that anyone who tries to play these so-called VGA versions in order, will end up being incredibly confused.... Especially if they pick up KQ4, which states that it takes place moments after Alexander's return.  

I run into people who think they know King's Quest, but have never played the originals, and think everything there is to know is from the VGA versions... It bothers me that they don't bother to go and buy the games... and play them how they were actually intended :p...

As for the ending to KQ3, its interesting that it goes against the King's Quest Companion, in that they burned the Manannan's house down, so there would be nothing left for Derek Karlavaegen to move into. One of the designers said this was intentional, because they were a bit miffed, how Derek dissed the events of KQ7, and denied them as having ever happened.

I think they didn't for kind of the same reason I suspect the Cliffs of Logic were done away with in TSL -- the spells were a sort of copy protection. You couldn't cast them without the manual. I don't think IA wanted to make that a necessity for their remake.

Not a particulary good copy protection, considering they were printed in the hintbooks, especially the King's Quest Companion back in the day, verbatim (I don't think hintbooks could have gotten away with that on any of the games in the series, when actual "copy protection" was implemented (like they don't tend to tell what to do with the Cliffs of Logic, nor do they print the KQ4 copy protection, nor the KQ5 disk version CP). Actually I remember reading they saw it more as a feature of the game, rather than copy protection. Something to make the game more immersive.

Also there was a problem in KQ3, that in one of the spells was written in the manual, in that if you tried to type out the command in the way it was written in the manual, the game wouldn't understand what you were trying to do, you had to find an alternate way to say the same thing. I don't think they fixed that until one of the King's Quest Collection manuals.

Also people used to say you didn't really need a hintbook in that game, or solve many puzzles, because the manual/spell book, pretty much told you what you needed to do for most situations, LOL. With that and the map, things were really simplified.

Speaking of copy protection, I'm greatly amused how Ken Williams has all/most of the KQ copy protection up on his website.

[Goldenfoxx]

Back to the OP's topic question for a second...

It's funny.  I owned Monkey Island when it was first released (it either came with my sound cards, my first CD-ROMs or both...), but I never actually played it until the SE released on Xbox Live earlier this year.  I've been saying the same thing for awhile now... KQ is a piece of gaming history, and if Activision would get off their butt and recognize the benefits of releasing, say, KQ6 on Xbox Live Arcade, I think it could rejunvenate a lot of interest in the series.  It would be difficult to update some of the parser interface games (as they'd require either a USB keyboard or an annoying QWERTY keyboard onscreen), even though I'd love to see KQ2 or KQ3 released that way.  But yeah, KQ needs a modern-console update.

[kindofdoon]

I really like the idea. Has anyone here played Bionic Commando Rearmed (2009)? It's a great game, and I really liked how GRIN (the developer) was faithful to the original "Bionic Commando" (1984ish). If PO could do the same to any KQ game, it would be AMAZING.

[Goldenfoxx]

I really like the idea. Has anyone here played Bionic Commando Rearmed (2009)? It's a great game, and I really liked how GRIN (the developer) was faithful to the original "Bionic Commando" (1984ish). If PO could do the same to any KQ game, it would be AMAZING.

Yeah, the Bionic Commando update was amazing.  The added two-player co-op was a welcome addition to that game (and I saw somewhere that they're doing a sequal to it)...  Obviously, updates to older games can go over very well if they're done right (the update to Lode Runner was also amazingly fun). 

[kindofdoon]

Yes, it is indeed a great, great game. I've beaten it around 4 times.  I personally think that the way GRIN revived Bionic Commando should be a model for all retro game remakes - they did a phenomenal job.

Point of reference: the sequel is being made by a new developer. The original developer, GRIN, went bankrupt shortly after releasing BCR, sadly.