King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow CD-ROM (PC)

“I never saw KQ VI. I actually never played any after KQ II, which I thought sort of sucked. I suppose, since you're posting this, that they got a lot better?”

“Well. I've never beaten III, IV, or V. III had this time-based thing through the whole game and places you could die left and right and all these crazy spells you had to deal with and you had to make sure to be home when your wizard captor was or he'd kick your ass and that was just too much to deal with.

Then IV was kind of eh. And V is supposedly amazing beyond belief, but it would never run on my system for some reason.

Then VI was amazing. You play as Graham's son (introduced in III), and you're at this set of islands looking for this princess Graham rescued at the end of V. I forget the names, but there's the castle island you washed up on, this island that's a sheer cliff face and minotaur/trap-infested catacombs, the Beast of Beauty and the Beast fame's island, and this crazy island where everything's all... crazy. You can pick up holes in the wall, trees bark at you, there's a chessboard land... and then two other small islands you can only reach when you do certain things. And it looks great.

Then there's also VII, which was alright but entirely too cartoony to really make sense in the KQ world. And I never played VIII, because seriously.

Seriously.”

“Actually, your description of III sounds familiar. That might be the one I had.”

“The first one you're Graham and you've got to find the three items for the King and then he dies and makes you king instead.

The second one you're Graham and you've got to open these three magical doors across a bridge that falls apart if you cross it too many times, in order to rescue a maiden so you can marry her.

The third one you're Gwydion or whatever, slave to the evil wizard Mannanamananannamabanana and he's a total jerk and will kill you for just about any reason. There's timed stuff for some reason, and you've got to go around collecting junk for spells that let you talk to animals and stuff. Then in the end you meet your sister, Rosella, and find out you're actually Graham and Whatserface's son, Alexander.

The fourth one you're Rosella trying to find a cure for Graham or something and you encounter girly stuff like fairies and witches. The fifth you're Graham again and another evil wizard steals your castle and family. The sixth you're Alexander and you're trying to find the princess from the end of V. And the seventh you're Rosella (and also her mother) again and you're turned into a troll or something and you and your mother have to figure this out and get home and also help you marry the troll prince or something I don't really remember.

We don't speak about the eighth.”

“Yep. III is definately the one I had and didn't like.”

“And for good reason. It's certainly my least favorite of the series.”

“You didn't mention that Activision is allowing their IP to be used and not gaining any money from it.”

“It's in the article, though.”

“@amedeus8 who wants to click articles nowadays?”

“Most of the people who bothered to read this post.”

“I have the King's Quest collection on Steam, I think it has the first 7 games. But not the 8th I guess. I've yet to play any of them, though I do also have the Space and Police quest collections.”

“I've got way too many games in my backlog, hundreds.”

“I'm not even sure any of those games will work on Windows 7.

I think King's Quest on Steam uses Doxbox, built in or something.”

“From XP on, you can run most DOS games from the command prompt.”

“Yeah, I have the same KQ Collection. I used to have SQ6, but now I have the newest SQ Collection. The only problem is it doesn't have the original version of the first game, which I like a lot more than the remake, so I had to pirate that one anyways.

But yeah, I use D-Fend, which uses DOSBox. And it's such a pain to get some of these old games to work right.”

“I kind of want to grab the King's Quest games. As well as the Space Quest ones.

But then, I also kind of want to regrab the Monkey Island games I am missing (may soon be able to do that on my 360. I will keep you posted), the Goblins games, Full Throttle, the Sam and Max games, and plenty of those too.

And yes, fan made versions of these games can be very good.

I have kind of played around with the idea of a fan game in the Goblins series.

Anyways, I will check this series out, maybe.”

“I don't know the Goblins series. But yeah, grab the first Monkey Islands. And then the fifth one. Whatever you do, skip the fourth one. Trust me. Your ability to tolerate games is wayyyy lower than mine and I can't even make it through this. And I'm both a die-hard Monkey Island fan and a lover of bad games.

I finished Full Throttle like a month ago and it's really good, but also really short. And I like Space Quest more than King's Quest. You are now fully prepared to do these things and have a grand ol' time.

Do you like any Myst or Myst-style games by any chance?”

“What was wrong with the fourth one? I thought it was pretty fun.”

“It was probably slightly better on the PS2 because the control scheme would seem better. But if you play it after the other three, you kind of understand. Just everything went so far downhill. The best example is that in the original games, Guybrush was actually pretty smart. The world around him was off. In the first two, the world around him was actually realistic (remake notwithstanding), and people and situations were just goofy and it was fun. Guybrush was given equally goofy responses in conversations and it all balanced out and Guybrush working through the game and solving the problems seemed plausible. It all worked.

In Escape from Monkey Island, he's a complete bumbling idiot who doesn't really seem entirely aware of the world around him, and whom Elaine treats more like a pet than a love interest. It's really difficult to imagine him getting through the game by any means other than pure luck. Just stumbling into the right answers whether he was trying to or not. And the humor now stems from Guybrush's stupidity and real-world references and parodies rather than actually coming up with its own humor in the game. The world of Monkey Island has always been odd and throws in some newer technology once in awhile for a laugh, but they basically made the entire fourth game that, and every other line is some pop culture reference that doesn't belong.

That's just off the top of my head. It's what bugs me the most, but there's a lot more to it. I think my other biggest gripe is the Grim Fandango controls rather than the point-and-click standard that worked so well in the first three. It was fine in Grim, which was an excellent game, but just got tedious in MI. But like I said, that was probably not so bad on the PS2. In any case, it all goes pretty deep in. You'd have to play all the games and experience the difference yourself. But a good portion of the series' fans don't want to or outright refuse to consider the fourth game a part of the series, instead skipping right from Curse to Tales. In fact, some people don't even like Curse because it was a lot more cartoony, but it still keeps a lot intact regardless and I don't mind it. Most people just hate Escape.”

“@amedeus8 Yeah, I know not to play the fourth monkey island game.

There is enough of me screaming about shit on other spots on this site. that I need not invite more of it, by playing a really bad game such as Escape from Monkey Island. I mean, I have both Daikatana and EWJ3D for that.

I have done some play through of the first three. Working on the fifth.

The fifth one, Tales of Monkey Island, I am loving like nothing else. Especially the Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood.

So many options to do in that, that are just really really funny.

Such as pleading guilty.

And trying to use Elaine as a character witness to say Guybrush would never cause any major damage... which has Elaine ramble on about every screw up he did in their relationship (mixed with plague rages)

And, I have played Full Throttle... but a long time ago. I want to regrab a copy. It was kind of the game that got me interested in motorbikes as a teen.

Space Quest and King's Quest, however, I have yet to play.

As per Myst games--I have not played Myst.

I think when it came out, it was like ten cdrom discs or something (my memory may be inflating that). It just seemed like too many discs to a game, and well--for some reason I could not fit in my head how a game could have that much game play.

I came to he conclusion it must all be filler then.

It was either Riven or Myst that appeared to have an ungodly amount of CDs. Which were obviously full of filler. I mean--there is no way, you'd ever need more than on CD to fit a game onto.”

“Hmm, maybe I'll see what you mean once I play the first 3. So far I've only played the 4th.”

“Though I still think it was a fun adventure game overall.

I bet people would have loved it, if it wasn't part of the Monkey Islands series.”

“How does being part of Monkey Island make it less enjoyable?”

“@LordXenophon No clue, but people don't seem to like it. I thought it was fun myself. ”

“@KatrinaTheLamia I haven't played Tales yet, but I want to. I preordered it when they announced it, and I was waiting for the DVD. Now that I have the DVD, I was waiting for MI2SE. Now that that's out, I got my last two achievements from SoMISE and I'm running through MI2SE now. I couldn't get CoMI to work for awhile (couldn't swap discs), but I think a no-CD crack'll fix that, then I'll run through that, and finally get to experience Tales.

And I'm pretty sure Myst was only ever one CD. But Riven was... I think five. There were five islands in the game, and each one had its own CD, which a lot of games did back then. I'm a big fan of Phantasmagoria, and it has a separate disc for each of its seven chapters.

But they have the "Myst 10th Anniversary Edition", which contains the first three games, taking up a single DVD each. It's what I have and it serves me well. Most people, including myself, actually like the second game the best, so there's that. But all three are really good, and it's a neck-and-neck race for first, there.

In any case, another of my favorite adventure games is Zork: Grand Inquisitor, which is tons of fun and hilarious and features some great actors. It's Myst-style, though, so that's why I asked if you like that type of game.
@EarthboundX Yeah, play the first three. And if you still love the fourth one, then hey. More power to ya.”

“Myst was only one CD, but I seem to recall that you could also get it on floppy disks. That's probably why you remember such a large disk count.”

“I am almost completely positive Myst was only available on CD when it came out. That was its legacy. It was the main game that pushed the CD-ROM drive forward. Riven, the first sequel, was available on five CD's, because there was so much more to it. Like actual human actors in the physical world of the game, rather than just in the postage stamp-sized images in the books.

My mom and I had the original CD version, but now only she owns it. I have the Myst journal full of her notes, though. And I recently bought the special red box copy of the original Riven release off eBay. It belonged to a collector who died, and when I received it, all his notes were still in the box.

I feel like starting a collection, only it has to be accidental so I'm not sure how to go about doing that. I need to happen into the ownership of somebody's Exile notes next, though.”