@@Njuregen I hear reviewers (not Hun but others) say certain types of games (Kings Quest or strategy games for example) have no place on NES or SMS. But the thing they always forget is growing up we were mostly broke kids. If it had not been for the NES port of KQV, I would not have gotten to play it. Also true for some of my favorite games at the time, the Koei strategy games.
"You cannot LOOK AT the CARROT" might be one of the funniest error messages I've seen in a long time. It feels more like the kind of thing you'd find in a parody game in a video making fun of old adventure games than something that'd actually be in one. Some carrots are simply too powerful, I suppose.
@@KairuHakubi 100% the parody game in a video making fun of adventure games that I was thinking of. You just have to sit there and imagine why on Earth you can't get ye flask, or, in this case, LOOK AT the CARROT.
I was pretty cranky at how the game would not let me look at that carrot no matter how hard I tried. It gives the same message for every single thing in your inventory. Once you pick it up, it's almost as if you can never make eye contact with it again!
@@hungrygoriya wouldn't it be weird if they intended to separate the concept of BEHOLD the item (for the first time), with.. _observe_ the item.. and the latter you'd have to be like "pull out" or "hold"
I never got to play this as a kid, but my dad had some of the really old, text-only adventure games on his work computer. I agree that a big part of the fun was trying to figure out what the game wanted you to type. Still, I can totally understand why the makers of the Master System port went the way they did, given the system's lack of a keyboard. A noble effort on their part. Love your channel. I see that your popularity is skyrocketing -- it is well deserved!
I used to play this text adventure about Sherlock Holmes and I remember really struggling to get anywhere, but loving it. I loved reading as a kid and that game and its first few "screens" are semi-burned in my memory. And thanks so much! I'm glad more people are wandering in here and discovering my channel. It's been a wonderful experience getting to talk with people about old games.
Never played this version, although I did get all the way through Maniac Mansion on the NES. Also, while I prefer the DOS graphics, I love how the wizard at 1:56 looks like he's doing finger-guns. It's Buddy Mage! He's got your back! 🙂
I don't quite know how - as I had an interest in computer & video games when I was growing up - but I was completely oblivious to the King's Quest series until just a couple of years ago. I was aware that those sorts of games existed on the old computers of the 1980s (I recall a schoolfriend showing me some of his games on floppy disk when we were little), but until relatively recently I had no idea that these sorts of adventures also made their way onto 8-bit consoles. Not only King's Quest, but a number of others besides, as I'm now aware. I can't help but think I missed out on a small part of the typical 1980s-'90s childhood. Oh well, at least I know about these games now, I suppose. And thank you, Hungry Goriya, for being the one to show me many of them!
If it makes you feel any better, I feel like I missed out on a ton of games and series growing up as well. I always feel a little "late to the party" so to speak, but thankfully I took a chance on King's Quest and the Monkey Island games because they were a huge part of my childhood. Are these the kinds of games you might consider trying out now?
Without fail, every time your channel comes up in my recommendations, it's covering some SMS game I never even knew existed. Not sure how I survived being a master system owner back in the day without some of these!
I only learned about many of these games over the past decade or so myself. I'm glad to share a bit about the console with people and hopefully bolster some interest in some of its library. It's definitely underappreciated!
Brings me back to the NES version of Maniac Mansion. I was in grade school when that came out, and I remember my friends and I trying to beat it while scouring Nintendo Power. Which had a lot of hints on what to do-- but it didn't have everything. Still, after many months we scoured through the game and found all the endings. The NES version of Maniac Mansion is underrated. It had some great music too!
Remember when it comes to Maniac Mansion, the Commodore 64 version IS the original version. Followed by the Apple II. I still say the C64 version is the best despite it not having music for the most part and the screen scrolling is a bit slow.
Thank you. You are the first person to reply to my comment.Goes to show your game attention is matched by your attention to your fans.Again i am so glad to have found you.
There was something refreshing about playing this version, definitely. I didn't mention it in the video, but I love how fast Graham moves by default in this one.
Thank you, Zerfall! I'm glad to have finally gotten around to talking about Master System again. This was too good an opportunity to pass up reviewing.
Passwords are one part of Gaming's Infancy that I am glad have been left in the Past. I never had a Master System as I started with an NES but the Games I've seen on the Console were Pretty impressive.
I was an early PC owner in the 80's and late to the console gaming scene, but I absolutely loved and played every KQ game on PC many times. Roberta Williams was definitely the first video game producer whose name I knew. I never knew they had a KQ port on console, I feel bad for whoever had to try and work the game into a console.
I'd be curious to hear more about the development of this port from the folks that worked on it. What a task! King's Quest V on the NES was a lot more fluid, even as a point and click game with a controller.
@@wilhelmschmidt7240 Good luck in the search for them! If you don't have an older computer anymore, I think they sell portable disk drives for modern computers, though I have no idea how they work, haha
While I do love the ambition of this version, it just seems like so much sacrifice. I feel like pulling back on the humor of the series is a bigger crime than that gargantuan password system!
I agree! I would've gone on some more about the humour being gone, but I didn't want to spoil too much either. It's a bummer because the witty writing is what really makes these kinds of games for me. With graphics like these, the writing is really all you have left!
Nice review as usual and it makes me realize I’d love to see more reviews and playthroughs of text parser games on the channel! It’s an interesting genre requiring very different logic from the player, and I’m sure your reactions would be entertaining 😁
There's an old text only game called McMurphy's Mansion that I finished after years since getting it as a wee lad... It's definitely a good game although it would be awesome if someone made a graphic remake
Kings Quest, Space Quest and The Dagger of Amon Ra are nostalgia explosions for me. I have never played the console versions before. I'm very intrigued...
OH wow. Follow up comment- I had NO idea Ultima IV was on Master system. I knew the NES got a port tho. Played the heck out of that game on IBM PC as a kid. Brutally hard, but just fun to me. Loved how you could walk up to 2 random bards named Paul & Linda and realized they were the McCartney's when the text song they sung was from Paul McCartney's Pipes of Peace album at that general time. All the little things we remember 😊.
Apparently the Master System version of the game's a lot more faithful to the PC experience, but it's the only one I've played so I can't say for sure.
I didn’t play King’s Quest as a child (not for lack of trying to wheedle its purchase from my dad at Radio Shack!), but I played another PC Sierra game based on the Disney version of The Black Cauldron. It used the same parser formula and environmental interactions that both perturbed and delighted me at seven or eight years old ;) Nostalgia for that one certainly blinds my eyes when I attempt to criticize it, and I don’t even mind. There was something so magical and satisfying about mulling over a situation and deciding how to approach it. I was already an imaginative child; games similar to that one and King’s Quest weren’t flawless, but they left me spellbound! They were definitely the gateway to my love of the adventure/action RPG genres.
I remember the dos version and i never knew wtf to do but it was fun looking around and finding little secrets. Remember that it was in the 80s before i ever had a nintendo so this was pretty amazing.
The DOS version was pretty tough to muddle through for me. I think it might've been one of the first text parsers I ever played so there was a bit of a learning curve there for me.
@@hungrygoriya same. I also didn't have the booklet or any sense of what the goal or story was. I didn't know you were supposed to find things. I just went around seeing what I could do and what would kill me
@@Whitehorse_crimefighter The scariest was getting snatched up by all the enemies here. Especially the witch. Being carried into the sky by the neck both fascinated and terrified me, haha
So happy to see a new video from you 🥳 have you ever played my favorite NES game Bucky O'Hair? It's has MegaMan type gameplay but you can switch between all the characters from the cartoon series... would make for a cool review (warning, it's a pretty difficult game)
Thanks very much! And I haven't played Bucky O'Hare yet. I've been looking for a copy of it for years, but it looks interesting. I don't mind a tough game so I'd be up for the challenge.
Bucky O Hare is a awesome NES game. I played it as a kid when it was new. I managed to get a copy for the NES long before it shot up in price. I paid about $10 for mine, in the box. Only thing I don't have is the manual and the poster since it is a Konami game so it is not complete. But my box is in very good condition even to this day and I have the cart. Expensive game now though.
Ahh, I miss the old school adventure games from Sierra/Lucasarts. Many happy and frustrated memories! I remember just how different Maniac Mansion was on NES vs Commodore 64 and such. HUGE differences. Still, NES/Master System were a LOT cheaper to get than a home PC back in the day, so I'm glad for the console ports, even if they weren't as good, just so more could have a chance to enjoy them!
I feel the same way about console ports. They definitely served their purpose for folks that wouldn't otherwise have a chance to experience them. I loved King's Quest V on the NES and still do to this day. I finally tried the PC version myself a year or two ago, and even though it's probably controversial to say so, I still prefer the NES game. I'll blame the nostalgia, haha
@@hungrygoriya Hey, never underestimate the power of nostalgia! MANY of us still love things that most would find crap, just because it's 'what we know'. Quick example- Temple of Apshai Trilogy (if I'm spelling that right >.
I remember discovering point and click games for the very first time, i had two as a kid, Space Quest 4 & 5. Didn't even have a computer until i was like 12! Would have loved to have had a decent point and click on the NES.
Did you ever play Maniac Mansion or King's Quest V? There are others too of course, but there's definitely some good stuff if you're still interested in playing some!
Something seemed off about Graham's sprite and it hit me about 10 minutes in that they didn't loop back his left and right walk cycle properly. You can see his arm swings forward then pops right back to the back swing frame instead of going to the middle frame first. Other than that, I'd say he looks like a chubby toddler in MC Hammer pants. 😆
First game I ever played on a PC was Kings Quest IV on a friend's computer back in the early 90's! I knew I needed my own computer after that and it's the reason I got one! A few months later, a friend brought over a 2400 modem before the internet even existed and it took all night to download a few pictures and the rest is history! ☺️
That's awesome! I have a friend who loves King's Quest IV and have watched him stream it a few times, but I haven't played it myself yet. It's great to hear these kinds of stories. Thank you for sharing about your first computer!
Holy cow - that password thing. I played these games on PC as a kid as well. I cannot even imagine how quickly i would have broken something if i had to re-enter a password every time i died. How absurd - it's not like King's Quest is known for having totally foreseeable and avoidable deaths.
Yeah exactly! I think I died 5 or 6 times trying to climb the stairs, all relatively close together, and I had to put a password in each time just to try again. It was not a dealbreaker for me since I have lots of patience, but I certainly didn't find that aspect very fun.
Great in depth review, thanks! When I finally got my hands on this version, I could never bring myself to continue on even though I was such a fan of the original and its remakes.
Funny but sad story, my late wife and I dated in the late 90s and I tried hard to get her into my favorite snes and sega games, but I just couldn’t get her truly into it. Zero completed games. It didn’t work so well, but one night in college, we visited a thrift store in Denver that had a sega and this game, amongst some sports shit, sonic, and whatever was on the chopping block in 98. She had played some kings quest on PC, so she loved that they had this game. It took awhile to learn, but we really bonded through the experience, filling up like 5 notebooks of passwords and clues (lol not kidding and I might be holding back). But we beat it together. Me, mostly playing, with her supporting and keeping notes. I didn’t mean to leave such a long message, but I’d like you to know that you are one of my favorite TH-camrs, and this one was incredibly unexpected, but very emotional 😊
I'm very sorry for your loss. I can't even imagine what it must be like to lose someone you love that much, but the memories you described here with her are beautiful. I'm glad you had this time together and that the game still means something to you. My sincerest condolences to you.
>Make friends with Kerrek >Buy Kerrek a cold one I missed out on this series, but if you haven't played the parody game "Peasant's Quest" from back on Homestar Runner I highly recommend it. I found it funny and very enjoyable despite not having played the series it was a homage to. I think it was a flash game, but considering that at the time it was probably the most ambitious of the type boasting its own GameFAQs page and taking a good chunk of my afternoon to load on dialup, I think it is safe to assume that it was probably a high priority for preservation projects when it was announced that Flash was getting axed. If you have played it, I'm curious as to what you thought about it having the background of being familiar with the King's Quest games going in. There's probably a lot of jokes that flew right over my head, and perhaps some puzzles that wouldn't have had me stuck as long as they did (I think I only resorted to consulting a walk through once or twice when I was really stumped.)
I played Peasant's Quest aaaages ago now. I should really sit down and give it another try. Unfortunately, it was so long ago now that I don't remember much of anything about it.
I grew up playing these games on the computer. King's quest and space quest among others are the reason that I learned how to type as such a young age. Maybe 10 years ago or so I picked up a complete copy of King's quest for the master system and I had dabbled it with it in emulators before but it was my first time playing all the way through it seriously. It takes about a whole 15 minutes to beat maybe but I still love it. Even if it's not the best way to play it I still enjoy it for what it is the worst parts are what you said about the text up top giving away any clues as well as not being able to look up everything with definitions. I can understand it though a lot of the text and descriptions for things we're probably wiped clean to save on ROM storage space to keep the price of the cart down. It is a little unfortunate though. Still I just love playing ports of games that I like good or bad
I'm glad you got to enjoy this version as well! It does have a couple of shortcomings, but nothing that makes it unplayable or too frustrating. It's just different than the usual fare. It's funny you mention learning how to type with King's Quest and Space Quest. I started up with a typing tutor way back when, but also used to play a Sherlock Holmes text adventure whose name I've long forgotten. I'm really grateful for the skill!
Great and in depth review. I have long been curious of this title for the Master System. Without a background in PC titles I assumed a typical action RPG. However, it's more interesting than I thought. I own some Master System titles and I have seen the same glitch issue you had with your game. Mine is a 2nd/3rd hand purchase of Shadow Dancer. I suspect it is the physical condition of the cart, but who knows? Great content! Perhaps a few title suggestions take them or leave them, as I haven't examined your library to fullest. Light Crusader for Genesis, Guardian Legend for NES, Willow for NES, or Deadly Towers for NES.
It's definitely an interesting little game. I wonder why those glitches happen... it always seemed to have something to do with the fairy godmother screen in this game, but it's interesting to hear that you're having similar issues with Shadow Dancer. I hope you didn't lose too much progress! And thanks for the suggestions. I've played The Guardian Legend and Willow before (loved them both!) but still need to play the others.
@@hungrygoriya Fantastic, I will check those videos out. The glitch I find on Shadow Dancer glitches the entire screen similarly. The game runs as if nothing has happened with player control and enemy's movement unhindered. It makes the game More difficult than it already is!😅 Looking forward to more retro reviews.
As a kid, I could never get anywhere in text parser games, so this format would have been right up my alley. And I hope someone in Graham's lineage goes on a Quest for Stair Handrails
I didn't get to try a text parser until I was older (save for a text-based Sherlock Holmes game when I was really little) but I can imagine the frustration as a kid. From what I understand of the later games in the series, nobody went on quest for handrails and many in the kingdom died repeatedly from their absence :(
As a kid of the 80s the ending made me laugh. Todays kids can't imagine the amount of bugs we encountered f.e. when you load a game from floppy and it's silently corrupted somewhere in the code. (Happened to me dozens of times on the C64). Super interesting review Goria, never played KQ, will fire it up on the Amiga some cold autumn day.
I always try to play games on the original systems as much as possible just to experience it as people did when it was new. I'm glad the glitching made you laugh... it was funny to me too when it happened! I hope you enjoy the series when you get into it.
The one where I'm playing the game and trying to give the bowl away is 19-inch and is actually the TV I had in my bedroom growing up. My husband loves CRTs and we have a whole bunch of them in the house that we use for various things. The other one that shows the password photo is a Sony Trinitron 2530. It's a beautiful CRT!
I loved playing King's Quest 2 and Space Quest on my friends PC as a kid. I got King's Quest for my SMS on my birthday and played the hell out of it. I'm sure it's terrible to play nowadays lol but at the time it was amazing.
The ones I remember having during my childhood were King's Quest IV and Space Quest III; I have no idea how I made progress given I didn't know any English (probably asked my dad all the time). Obviously, I was stuck most of the time, but it was great. Other than that, I now think that in those games the protagonists died in pretty gruesome ways and it felt more real at the time. Maybe, it was that the animations were quite vivid, as if they were real people, rather than videogame characters.
I'm always blown away at non-English speakers tackling games in an entirely different language. Wow! Some of my favourite parts of King's Quest V and VI were when the narrator would make a joke or pun about the way you died, which were a lot funnier replaying the games as an adult. If it's any consolation, as a kid, I didn't understand a lot of the language either, or the nuance in a lot of the writing.
Funny you should review this not long after I began my quest to listen to every SMS soundtrack (I just finished the NES library), though I'm only at Asterix. My first King's Quest was 6, because we'd only had hand-me-down computers, and most of them were Apple, so we spent more time with such classics as Cairo Shootout and... Print Shop. I remember first seeing it in my friends' basement on their shiny new IBM, and it absolutely blew my mind. I've had some fun with the series over the years (especially 3 and 6), but a recent playthrough made me realize that I'm kinda spoiled by newer Point-and-Click Adventures. Didn't play much of this version, but I do also prefer the text parser; it just flows a lot better, and I suppose this was the best option here, but it makes me wonder why they even attempted console ports of games like these. Usually, if you wanted something similar to this on a console, it'd be something like Out of This World/Another World or Flashback.
I haven't played Out of This World or Flashback before, but I've heard nothing but good things about the two of them. It's funny that you say you spent a lot of time playing with Print Shop. I played Compton's Encyclopedia a lot as a kid, which was really more of an interactive educational program than a game. I loved it!
I'm sorry you didn't get on well with it. I spent most of my childhood playing it and enjoyed it, and actually still prefer it over the PC version. That's very likely my nostalgia talking, but it is what it is.
I've never played King's Quest (any) and growing I played Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry (I was 14 but was probably not appropriate). A lot of me playing those games was oddly scrolling through commands when I was stuck except I'd type them out (Talk to everyone then give x to everyone, etc) but eventually I got better at it. Well, as "better at it" as I could. I also learned all the "funny" language you could use (swears) and I would miss that but this was an interesting game to learn about. Ultimately I think the save function would make me favor the PC versions
In many regards, there are many good uses for a text parser. In others, well, not only do you have to guess the verb, but they also expect you to guess the noun based on the pixels you see. It's even more frustrating in black-and-white/CGA because you'd be lucky if you knew there was silk on that one screen in Conquest of Camelot. (Then again, Sierra have an infamous reputation of "save early, save often, and don't overwrite saves".) Also, is there a revision to the Master System of King's Quest that changes the font? It sure looks like it from your footage.
You know, I'm not really sure why the font looks different. I only have the one cartridge, but I did record the CRT footage with a different Master System. Maybe it's console dependent? I haven't figured it out either but I did notice it as well.
31 character password code!? That’s crazy. Lol. I remember playing these games at school, was never very good at them tho. One of them had an awesome manual with art, don’t remember which. I’m an artist, so I always appreciated the art found in game manuals.
It was pretty wild! Manageable, but far from idea. I am the furthest thing from a visual artist, but I always loved flipping through manuals growing up. I know the King's Quest VI manual had some great art in it, but I'm not sure about the earlier games.
Watching some of those glitches, though annoying as a player, was entertaining as a viewer. Seeing his head repeated across the screen got a chuckle out of me.
It didn't bother me too much... at least it wasn't like when I got stuck in a wall in Blaster Master after several hours of playing with no passwords, or glitched out in Milon's Secret Castle and had to start over from the beginning!
I didn't even know a Master System version existed. This one seems like it ran afoul of harsh memory limits. Sadly, when text has to be cut, charm and flavor are usually the first to go. I'm not heartbroken about losing the text parser. I'm definitely someone who prefers not to have to do blind guessing. That password system is brutal, though, I can't imagine having to re-enter that on every dealth. I love the box art, though! Probably one of the best when it comes to American Master System!
I'd hope it was a memory limitation that caused them to drop so much of the fun from the game. I think if they'd managed to keep some of the extra commentary/humour in the game, I wouldn't have minded the menu system nearly as much. Text parsing is the only way to get all the extras, unfortunately!
@@hungrygoriya Yeah. It's hard to say they made the right or wrong compromises, but they chose functionality, which I can't fault 'em for, but I do feel like these classic adventures lose a lot without their playful snark
We didn't get this one in Europe, astonishingly (Carmen too now you mention it). As a Sierra fanboy back in the day I had to import it. But to play it? I'm using something with save states.
I remember the witch kept catching me in the gingerbread house, that still scares me and gives me goosebumps when I think about it!! I was never a quick enough to react back then….
I actually had no idea till now that KQ1 was on the Sega Master System. I wonder if it was even released in Australia and I could have played it as a kid? I'm really impressed with how they put together the screens from tiles and yet how good they look. 8 bit consoles like that do much better with traditional games like platform games, where you can have a lot of repeating tiles to create platforms and other 90 degree angle geometry. These scenes in KQ1 actually look quite organic. But that password looks frustrating - no doubt they had the developers create that because a battery backup would've driven the production cost higher than what the publisher thought they'd get back from it. Still, you are dead right - there was just no need to force you to re-enter it every time! Talk about making a bad situation worse...
Part of the reason I wanted to make this video was because of how few people seemed to know that this port existed. I think it's a great port all said, with the exception of the password troubles. It's not a dealbreaker for me, but I definitely wish it was different.
Great video on this cartridge, though it's hard to see why anyone weaned on console games would want to play a computer adventure title, and a then-five-year-old one at that. Incidentally, when I reviewed this game for Sega series on my other channel (Monarch1979), I too used the bowl puzzle as a example of constantly being left in the dark as how to proceed.
OMG thank you. I didn't know about the password thing. No continue option? I have this on my list to play, so I'll be emulating and using save states. I find a TON of 8 bit games play best when saving after each section. This looks to be one of them.
Truly unfortunate they missed out on key story elements so that you have at least a clue of what to do at times, like with the bowl. Given the poor state of the game because of this, I can see why nobody has bothered to hack save support into it, as was done with other SMS games like Golvellius. Cool to hear your impressions of this one, as always! I grew up playing Kings Quest/Sierra games on PC and the text parser taught me how to properly spell many words back then, in KQ1 the one that I recall learning was "cupboard". I probably spelled it "cubbard" or something before that, though I can't recall now. I'd love to see you cover the Quest for Glory series. They seem right up your alley. 🙂 Start with the EGA version of 1 if you do, and listen with MT-32 sound if at all possible. The MT32-pi is a cheap and super high-quality way to do this if you don't want to track down and pay the premium for the original modules. Much more flexible also, allowing both revisions of the MT-32 in one unit, and other MIDI options like GM/SC-55 with soundfonts. DOS games had some amazing soundtracks- well worth it.
Yeah, it's a bummer that so much got pulled out of this title, but at least it existed for people to take a swing at King's Quest that otherwise might not have been able to. I'd love to play Quest for Glory one of these days. I have a compilation disc hanging around that I still need to get to.
@@hungrygoriya I loudly and whole-heartedly second this suggestion to cover the Quest for Glory series. ... Fair warning, the series peaked at Shadows of Darkness, but my lord was it a peak to experience back then. I must have replayed it easily a dozen times and can still hear the title screen music with the wolves howling in the background. Just thinking about it now makes me feel so nostalgic I want to puke. Do yourself a favor and make sure you have the version with voice acting, you will not regret it.
Ah, one more thought. I can understand using passwords to save your progress, as battery saves were an expensive premium in the old days, and passwords even appeared in some 16-bit titles including the wonderful Mega Man X. But having to re-enter your password after a game over is cruel. Your suggestion was great, but I think they also could have done something similar to NES games like Shadowgate and Deja Vu, which were also adventure games that loved killing the player as much as possible, and just rolled back to the previous screen. That way, if the player had forgotten to ask the game to retrieve their password for a while they still wouldn't suffer too much of a setback. Of course I would still opt to have the most recent password stored in memory, so that the player would have that extra safety net if they somehow got themselves softlocked in a position where they were rolled back to a screen where they had somehow doomed themselves.
!!Long comment incoming in which I talk about some of my most formative gaming experiences and overanalyze and wildly speculate on the psychological importance of relatively mundane video game features based on my own subjective experiences, and go off on tangents in a stream of consciousness!! I never did play this series, but in fourth grade we had Space Quest 4 on our class computer. We had no idea how or even that the game could be saved (we thought "restore" required some hidden extra life item) so we never made it past the first area in the future. It was still fun though, as there was a lot to do and find there, and every day we played it felt like we discovered something new, only to have it end in a sudden and comedic death. We even successfully caught the energizer bunny looking thing. No idea what it did, but it felt great to do. It really felt like this huge world where we could get Roger to do anything (and occasionally things that didn't result in his death) if we were creative or explored enough. I looked up a bit of a playthrough many years later and it turns out that we had spent all of our efforts over that year combing over what was essentially the intro area of the game, with many of the screens and interactions we found off the beaten path not even having any bearing on the game's progress. I thought if we could survive infiltrating that looming tower long enough and use what we found to successfully escape that junk planet we would have beaten the game, and I think our whole class would have felt satisfied and accomplished with that. After later learning that the game actually boasted a generous save system (d'oh) and the area that we thought was the whole game was just essentially the cold open for a far, far larger game that even with saves I doubt the combined efforts of our class could have solved over the course of the school year it kind of blew my mind how hard they went on some of these games, with beautifully rendered screens and tons of interactions that were in no way critical to game progress and just there for fun, misdirection, or just to make the game world feel like you were exploring an actual sci-fi setting and not just some video game level where everything had to have some form of utility to justify the effort that went into creating it and the space it took up. Another game that managed to recapture that spirit for me when I was older, and became my favorite RPG ever, was The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind. I remember going through character creation, and happened to glance at the lantern hanging by the door of the first building you enter during the opening. A box popped up as I hovered over this lantern, telling me that it was a Travel Lantern, how much it weighed, and its value. I realized then that I was playing a game unlike anything I had before. That little tool tip had just communicated that something I had taken for granted as a piece of baked-in decoration could be stolen, carried in my inventory, and sold if I were so inclined. It wasn't just the lantern, as I quickly discovered that just about anything that wasn't nailed down was subject to the same rules. I could be a master burglar sneaking into manors to loot their silverware, or scrounge up every nearly worthless empty bottle and dingy plate I came across to make a handful of coins. It may have been the silliest and least efficient way of earning money in the game, but I had never been given that level of freedom in a game before and it really made me have to throw out the rulebook on what I expected from an RPG. And those hours I spent in that small starting town, robbing the peasants of all of their relatively worthless junk to sell off, and eventually murdering innocent unarmed NPCs, another first for an RPG for me personally though I've since learned that several earlier PC RPGs allowed the player to murder almost any NPC, but up until that point my experience with the genre were the SNES and PS1 JRPGs, and Diablo 2 for PC, where there was a clear distinction between enemies to be fought and characters to be talked to, where loot was obtained by fighting monsters, opening chests, or occasionally digging in trash cans or inspecting suspicious areas. Morrowind turned all of this on its head, and while there is no real mechanical advantage to murdering helpless commoners to steal their cheap housewares just being able to do so opened my mind to new levels of interactivity in video games where even the most mundane items that mainly existed as decoration could be more than just a graphic, but something I could influence. It also organically taught me about which items were worth the effort to bother looting in a game with limited carry weight, and the poor souls I slew in cold blood helped me get a feel for the game's combat which has a logic to it but can be obtuse to newcomers that don't understand that it is more complex than an action game where if your weapon visibly connects it counts as a hit, as at its heart it is more akin to a tabletop game with there being calculations to see if your "hit" was actually a hit based on things like proficiency in the weapon type used and your current level of exhaustion (a system I like but is unintuitive to newcomers and not helped by the lack of feedback, as it can feel like the game is broken when your sword looks like it hit but the virtual dice rolled a miss, but when the same happens in Runescape you at least get a 0-damage hitsplat communicating that your attack registered, it just wasn't successful). I could go on and on about Morrowind, but I just wanted to talk about how it too went hard on small elements that weren't strictly necessary in order to make a world that felt different than anything else I had played, like Space Quest 4 before it, and elevated their respective game worlds to feel much larger than they actually were, like actual worlds where anything could be possible and there could be yet more secrets lying in wait, just by virtue of including significantly more than just the utilitarian elements required for the game. (Continued in reply)
(Continued from above as my comment was too long for TH-cam and I can't take the hint) Things that simply were too much of a luxury when developers had to squeeze every last byte of storage for all it was worth just to fit in what was critical to the game with rarely any room for anything more superfluous than a small Easter Egg. Having too much stuff unnecessary for the game itself can still take up valuable financial resources and development time, and could end up creating too much confusion for the players if there are too many places to go with only one being the correct one, and an abundance of items with no use in a game with item-based puzzles can quickly inflate the difficulty far past the point of fun. But I think in RPGs and Adventure games in particular, having some extra areas, items, and interactions can greatly enhance the experience. They may not serve a utility for reaching the end of the game (with the top score in games where that is also a thing) but just enough not to be overwhelming can make the game worlds feel that much more like worlds, instead of just prefabricated video game levels. If you try to wander off of the critical path, and instead of some barrier that would only stop a video game character like a short fence or invisible wall stopping you, you instead find yourself on a new screen that may not bring you closer to your goal, but at least allows you to experience more of this fantastical world, it can stimulate the imagination and suddenly it feels like every corner of this fictional world is more "real." As kids many of us felt this way to a certain extent by default, like if we could just get past those mountains or trees in games like Zelda there could be new lands just waiting for us to explore them, and I think by having some extra bits in them these games can lean into that childish belief, or for those of us that have grown past that stage, they can rekindle that bit of our imagination by challenging what we've come to expect from games. They give us a little glimpse of "what if" these game worlds really were entire worlds, and invite our imaginations to fill in the blanks and our gaming spirit to see what else we might discover. To mention Morrowind one last time, I first played it on Xbox and while it was not the first PC RPG to dabble in some of the things I mentioned it communicated with that single tool tip when I looked at that lantern that this was not going to be quite like any console RPG I had played before and it had an emphasis on freedom down to the most mundane aspects, and when it comes to player freedom I had only seen the tip of the tip of the iceberg when it came to that game. You can do more than steal and pawn every bit of clutter, you can also rearrange it, perhaps move into an unoccupied home (or claim one by killing the inhabitant or using magic to influence them into following you and relocating them) and then decorating it with whatever styles of housewares fit your tastes be it for their looks, value, or historical importance, and/or use shelves and tables to create a personal museum of the rare and unique items you have found in your quests, maybe set the tables with elaborate feasts and rare spirits and use magical mind control to have your favorite NPCs come to your house as if for a party fitting of a fated hero. In the game's heyday it was common for players to show their custom decorated abodes to friends and siblings in real life, and share screenshots online, with many of the most popular mods for the PC versions being player homes that featured ample space precisely for displaying items and even functional mannequins for armor (which was accomplished by creating an unplayable humanoid race with a wooden texture for "skin" and scripting them that they would spawn dead as persistent corpses frozen on the first frame of the death animation to keep them standing while also allowing the player to access their inventory since corpses worked like chests or other containers, but would visibly wear any clothing or armor placed in their inventory. I could go on about the robust magic system allowing players unprecedented freedom when creating spells, and much more, but there are a wealth of multi-hour analysis videos about that one 2002 RPG, probably because growing up with video games, and particularly console video games, it was the first RPG many of us played that allowed for an in-depth role-playing experience. Don't get me wrong, I love JRPGs, but although they started out trying to adapt the complexities of something like a Dungeons and Dragons campaign to the limitations of early video games, they sort of became their own thing over time, to the point where Super Mario RPG involves about as much role-playing as Super Mario World. Those of us that grew up on JRPGs and hadn't touched tabletop gaming or more faithful attempts to adapt them (generally by western developers on home computers) we thought of RPGs as those games with turn based combat, a heavy story focus, and leveling up in order to permanently become stronger as opposed to relying entirely on twitch reflexes. Ok, I said I was done with the Morrowind tangents, but I have to include this emtertaining story about a later game in the series. The Elder Scrolls Creators at Bethesda themselves used a similar solution to the Morrowind modders when making mannequins in the much more popular fifth entry in the series Skyrim (never being one's to let a popular and creative fan-made idea go to waste when they could just take it as their own), which were included in the base game and could be purchased for certain houses the player could buy. But as the engine now allowed direct access to the inventory of "living" NPCs and the fourth entry onward switched from using premade death animations to having the models ragdolling on death, the NPC mannequins made by them were technically alive, and the script that was supposed to cause them to remain statue-still would notoriously break, causing unintentionally creepy results that doubtlessly traumatized younger players that didn't know how they were technically implemented and would be scarier than the majority of videogame creepypastas even if it were just a story and not an actual thing that has been recorded happening countless times. They would occasionally not be where you left them upon returning home, turn their head to face the player, or in some instances unfreeze completely and start walking around the player's house as if they had fully come alive, but couldn't speak or do other actions that gave proper NPCs that extra bit of humanity. It was creepy in a sense, as the simplest way to code a mannequin you could dress up was to create a wooden person in the game code without the ability to move or speak in order to give the appearance of a statue to the player, but in the game they are technically people, and are technically alive, cursed by a special script to a statuesque existence that they constantly are fighting against. And sometimes, they succeed. I'm not afraid of mannequins in real life, but in Skyrim? Not in my home!
If you somehow had the patience to read through my unstructured, uninformed ramblings you have my gratitude. At some point I wanted to tie it back to the point that was made about the verb-noun system removing a lot of the fun of discovery and player expression out of the game, but I got quickly sidetracked when I made the mistake of deciding to talk about Morrowind. If you did get through that, I'd like to hear your opinions on my thoughts. Did you too once imagine these cartridges contained entire worlds that extended beyond the areas we were confined to in your youth? Do you have any thoughts on things games do that, intentionally or not, cause you to suspend your disbelief for a bit and help you feel immersed in a world instead of a finite level, if only for a bit? Am I just a rambling madman trying to chase that sense of wonder that video games gave me before it was stamped out by my understanding of the real world, which has its share of unexplained mysteries but none as fun or wonderful as magic, dragons, or a video game world without limits?
This may break your heart, but I haven't played Morrowind! I did watch a friend dabble in some of it but haven't experienced it for myself, so unfortunately I don't have much to add to that part of your comments. With respect to the rest though, about a limited but potentially limitless world that's only blocked by a single tree or bush was maddening for me as a kid. Even though none of the bushes on the edge of the screen ever burnt away in Zelda, it surely didn't stop me from trying to find just one that would open up a path to more of the world that I hadn't had a chance to look through yet. And I do agree with you about how extra areas do expand and develop a game's world in point and click/parser adventure games especially. After you play a few of them, you can see a "dead end" screen from a mile away, but when I was younger, it took me years to work through games like Curse of Monkey Island and King's Quest VI just because of all of the little misleading statements and extra items I got on those questions. They're fantastic experiences I wouldn't trade for anything, even if they did suck up a lot of my time. They're games that are very nostalgic for me, and also introduced me to a genre I've never stopped loving since those days. Thank you for taking the time to write so much here. Yours is an interesting perspective I enjoyed reading about.
I played Kings Quest for Sega, but never finished it. I admit frustration in trying to figure everything out, so much so, that I gave up, and sold the game. Retro games from the 80's were a testament to the willingness of young children to pit themselves against programmers shenanigans! I think I may have missed out in this one, but the frustration to a young boy is hard to quell. As to the password, putting an 8 into the password only to realize its a B or thinking the 0 (zero) is really an upper-case O (oh). Oh the frustrations of this game....
The worst part about the password mistakes is that if you make a mistake right at the beginning, you have to erase everything to get back to that character to fix it... so frustrating!
I had kings quest 5 for PC and it had some quality of life improvement where you didnt have to type comands but could bring up an item menu with pictures of your items that you could click and drag to the area of the screen you wanted to use that item. I had a lot of fun with that game when I was a kid. I loved the different worlds and biomes and it captivated my imagination. I also had that first kings quest game for dos actually it might have been the mac version but I was so young that I could only fall into the moat without my dads help. Lol.
I didn't know if I should click on the video thumbnail to start the video, or stand here and stare at the tasty and adorable meatbone in the thumbnail. I didn't click my way to this video... I tried to grab the thumbnail meatbone and it brought me here.
Completely agree that this shouldn't be the version one plays for their first time, but I do think it's almost nice to have the verbs and nouns given for a fun and more chill replay. That password situation is certainly dreadful, though..
I like that it allowed for people without a PC back then to still have an entry point into the KQ series. I played this one as you described it: a replay. If I hadn't known some of the trials of Daventry and kept getting smoked even more than I did with some memory of the game intact, I might've been a much angrier person during my playthrough from reentering those passwords that many more times.
Watched your vods on twitch playing this one, I had played it before and never beaten it. It's a strange version and I'm sure there might be someone out there who this was their first experience with the series and led them to play the rest :)
Thanks for having a look at the vods. I was instantly curious in how this port would work since I loved King's Quest V on NES so much, and thankfully it was still pretty fun even if it was lacking a little bit in the charm department compared to the PC release. I do hope that this was someone's gateway into the rest of the series. I'm sure it was!
Oh wow... I guess people really adore their King's Quest stuff! The Master System game's not exactly cheap either, but there aren't a lot of people that seem to know it exists.
Oh, for sure. The first King’s quest was one of the… Well, firsts, and the box it came in was very not small and very cardboard. Even 10 years back, it was a classic akin to Zork. I’m just rationalizing the price, the fact it went for so much shocked me too!
[Note: Sorry in advance for the loquacious response. There are just some games that cause fond memories to gush out of me like blood from a stab wound.] God, getting the original DOS version for my Tandy 1000 was one of those _events_ you have in life that just sort of happened and then you can't forget about them later. It was 1985 when my dad brought home our Tandy 1000 (after months of asking for a Commodore 64 like our next-door neighbors had...he definitely made right choice there) with a copy of King's Quest II. I still remember finding the original at a software store, where the box art just called to me (I wish I could remember the name of the store. They had the games on mahogany, or faux mahogany, shelves with the box art facing outward, which while definitely not space-efficient, made everything on offer look so much more valuable or desirable to 10yo me). And then, something happened where I was somehow able to corrupt the floppy disk. One night after work, my dad apparently took the time to went to go to Radio Shack to try and get the game fixed. We hadn't had much look trying to track down a new copy, and I was heartbroken at the thought of not being able to finish this game I just couldn't stop thinking about. I still remember waiting at the window, waiting for him to get home that night, anxious and unsure if they'd be able to fix it. (Yeah, I'm *THAT* kind of introvert). Not sure, but I think what happened was that I'd somehow saved over or deleted a file on the disk (why it wasn't copy-protected, I couldn't tell you), and they literally just copied the files back over to the disk, because what dad returned home with was certainly not a new disk. And thank God for those Radio Shack guys, too. I was able to call them up here and there for help. They're the only reason I was able to solve the Rumpelstiltskin puzzle in this game or the "Sector HH" information in the original Space Quest. I at least understood how Williams expected us to solve the latter one (you can overhear the info at a bar); the Rumpelstiltskin puzzle is another story entirely. I sure as hell didn't solve it on my own, and "Sometimes it's wise to think backwards" is NOT the help she clearly thought it was when programming this game. That said, I wouldn't change the correct answer for the world, and doing so in the VGA remake is one of the main reasons that version fell so flat for me (on the other hand, buying that VGA remake came with the The Sierra Network...a purchase that *_literally_* became the most important, if ultra-depressing in retrospect, moment of my entire life). But man, I loved getting those Sierra games as a kid. All of them, but especially KQ3. I remember playing this version a few years later and being wildly underwhelmed by it. I'd forgotten about the password system here. Could be my brain blocked it out from trauma? 😂 I remember getting through it in one or two sittings, probably because I was already so familiar with everything I needed to do, and I remember being disappointed enough in the whole thing to try and forget that version existed afterward. I applaud programmers for _trying_ to translate these games to consoles, but it's just not the same experience without the parser interface. They always lost something vital in translation. I remember the NES version of KQ5 not being much better, while the Genesis version of my all-time favorite game ever, Starflight, while entirely faithful to the PC original, still managed to lose something. Sometimes, for whatever reason, barely-existent graphics are just charming enough that when you upgrade them you lose part of the experience, lose the charm. The look of the original King's Quest, Space Quest, and Police Quest games is iconic now; the Master System version just looks like "a game". I can't help but feel a little sorry for anyone whose introduction to these games were these console versions.
It's actually amazing that you were able to get some help from the Radio Shack folks like that. What a different time... I would've loved having that experience back then. Sorry you had so much trouble with the game and its lack of copy protection, but it seems to have facilitated a pretty unique circumstance in your life! As someone who only got to experience King's Quest first on console (NES King's Quest V), it brought me into the rest of the series. While it wasn't the most ideal way to play (though I'm still super nostalgic for it over the PC version), at the very least, it was a foot in the door to that world and those characters. I'm glad for it.
I didn't have a computer until... 7th grade maybe? I never got to experience these kinds of games. Red Baron 2 was probably the only PC game I had played until World of Warcraft in 06. It makes going back to them with no nostalgia kinda hard. Too bad. I bet I would have loved them as a kid.
We had a DOS computer with a bunch of shareware when I was a kid, but I never got to play the original adventure games on PC either. That's why I was pumped to get the Steam collection when it came out, and if I recall correctly, for a long while, the program needed a patch to work and I didn't know how to do that.
9:55 the rat is Bigger than Graham!!! For the passwords, a better option should have been to use words. At least, that way, writing down passwords might be easier. Apparently, KQV for nes was made!
I like the display option (implimentation could be better though) and master systems graphics, I've played a few kings quest games and watch speedruns from time to time, xbox has a fun free version of one of the kings quests. Save states are nice though I am used to not having to emu. Getting slapped with passwords is only fun when they make it fun.
I loved how this version looked, but I just wish it had been a little more fun to play. I was hoping for the experience of the PC games (the humour, mostly) but that came up a bit short for me.
I had no idea there was a Master System port of King's Quest, and one that is fairly competent and looks pretty good even though I like the DOS look better, probably based purely on nostalgia.
That was partly the reason I wanted to make this video. So few people knew about the port when I streamed it, and lots of fans of the game might enjoy trying it in this form sometime.
I played a ton of the original IBM PCjr version as a kid. I have so much nostalgia for the game. This port seems like an interesting take on the idea, but ultimately doesn't seem to capture what made the original so great.
Yeah! It's like a watered down version of the game that's missing the heart of the adventure. I'm glad you got to experience it back when it was new! That must've been so cool!
i remember i played kings quest 1 for the sms back in the day......but i cant remember if i beat the game or not...will have to check my spreadsheed(yeah. i keep spreadsheets of console games so i can eventually beat all games). one thing always bothered me....what is the name of the gnome? i was never able to get a clue about that.
I haven't gotten around to playing this one yet and that password system makes me wonder about emulating it so save states are available. Will probably start on SMS hardware and then once the password irritation gets to me swap over.
The passwords are a little obnoxious, but not too bad. I have an abnormal amount of patience though! Nothing wrong with playing it with save states to save yourself the time/trouble.
If you don't mind emulation, save states could be put to good in this game as it seems like the password is the biggest offense this port makes. I didn't know a Master System version existed. I played the Dos one a little but I wasn't enjoying it as much as Space Quest.
I agree with you completely. Save states would totally bypass the password system completely, and other than sucking the humour out of this version of the game, the passwords were my one big gripe.
Well, as someone who's only playing a lot of these older games for the first time nowadays, I am having a lot of fun with them. No harm in trying them out, and if they're not for you, then you'll know.
I can't imagine playing KQ1 in a way where I had to put the password in each time after dying! On the artwork, an interesting note about SCI ("Sierra Creative Interpreter") -- Sierra's game engine and editor -- is that they used vector graphics for the fullscreen background art to compress the graphics. That allowed artists to store what would normally be a fullscreen image at 320x200x16 colors in far less than 32KB (320x200 = 64K pixels * 4 bits per pixel [1/2 byte] = 32KB) -- often less than a kilobyte for an entire fullscreen image since they could draw all the artwork in just a few hundred vector commands (lines, curves, fills, etc) and store the resulting commands used to draw the 64K pixels instead of storing all 64K pixels. So they could draw each game screen from scratch, so to speak, without being forced to reuse any existing assets to save memory. Many consoles like SMS, on the other hand, used tile sets to compress what would otherwise require the memory of a a fullscreen image into a handful of repeated tiles laid out in a coarse grid. That lent itself to different artistic tools and processes which involved reusing as many existing tile assets as possible (albeit with great artistic skill to hide the repetition). I suspect that's a big contributor in why the SMS port looks so different beyond the human differences in art styles.
@@hungrygoriya I'd like to second this suggestion! They're my favorite adventure games of all time. Besides the fact that they integrate RPG elements in a way unlike any other adventure series, all the major puzzles in the QFG games were designed to be solved by multiple classes (fighter, wizard, thief, and later paladin as a fourth class). You could also overlap the skills between two or more classes, like create a fighter who can cast magic spells, a wizard who can lockpick, etc. So in practice, that meant I never got stuck on any puzzle for long even as a child back in the DOS days with no internet and no walkthroughs. Even if I was playing a wizard and couldn't figure out the "orthodox wizard" solution to a puzzle typically involving casting the right spell, I might be able to climb over the obstacle with rope like a thief, or fight like a fighter, or something else. The design forced the devs to create multiple solutions to all the major puzzles in ways where I never got stuck for long.
That password thing sound infuriating! Apart from that though, not a bad translation to console. Though yeah, context sensitive verbs and nouns certainly seem like they'd give some things away!
The password thing is good motivation to get good at least, haha... still not the most ideal scenario, for sure. And yeah, having all the information available was a little bit of a bummer in terms of getting spoiled. Thankfully I played this game a long while back and had some idea of what I was doing, but the noun list definitely points you in one specific direction. You don't really get to think!
As much as I love Maniac Mansion it's odd I never got to much into point and clickers. I liked a few of the monkey island games, and being a huge Terry Pratchett fan of course I liked Discworld but for some reason I never tried any of the king's quest games
I played Curse of Monkey Island a ton growing up and really enjoyed the others too. King's Quest feels like a totally different kind of game than that series, but I really enjoy them.
The SCI/EGA remake is by far most superior imo, it's also the only non VGA graphic updated remake Sierra developed in the long line of mainstay series first entry remakes
The Mac-Venture ports on the NES were all better than King's Quest, but if you had a Master System, KQ was a pretty good substitute for those. This is just one of the many genres in which the NES was superior to the SMS. Some genres, such as tactical RPGs, were completely absent on the SMS, while the NES had almost everything.
I grew up playing the LucasArts adventure games (Sam & Max: Hit the Road was my first), so I'm a lot less comfortable with the text parser style. Too bad the SMS version lacks some of the humor and some features of the original, otherwise it probably would have been a superior port.
I agree with you here! I think if they'd managed to maintain even a little bit of the charm of the original, it would've been a much greater experience. It's too bad!
Kings Quest belongs to a world in which it was the only game you owned and it 'kept you entertained' for months.
If you even had a parent to buy you this 3000 dollar pc, else you were stuck with a 8 bit nintendo, or sms.
@@Njuregen I hear reviewers (not Hun but others) say certain types of games (Kings Quest or strategy games for example) have no place on NES or SMS. But the thing they always forget is growing up we were mostly broke kids. If it had not been for the NES port of KQV, I would not have gotten to play it. Also true for some of my favorite games at the time, the Koei strategy games.
This was my experience too! I had about 4 PC games growing up (those came in over my whole childhood), and they barely ran on the system we had.
I played the few point and click games I had for months and months on end... this describes my experience well, haha
Absolutely, I played these games so many times growing up, and was always super excited to get the new ones as they came out. Such a wonderful series.
"You cannot LOOK AT the CARROT" might be one of the funniest error messages I've seen in a long time. It feels more like the kind of thing you'd find in a parody game in a video making fun of old adventure games than something that'd actually be in one.
Some carrots are simply too powerful, I suppose.
"You cannot get ye flask!"
@@KairuHakubi 100% the parody game in a video making fun of adventure games that I was thinking of. You just have to sit there and imagine why on Earth you can't get ye flask, or, in this case, LOOK AT the CARROT.
@@Ratralsis Cuz the game sure isn't gonna tell you!
I was pretty cranky at how the game would not let me look at that carrot no matter how hard I tried. It gives the same message for every single thing in your inventory. Once you pick it up, it's almost as if you can never make eye contact with it again!
@@hungrygoriya wouldn't it be weird if they intended to separate the concept of BEHOLD the item (for the first time), with.. _observe_ the item.. and the latter you'd have to be like "pull out" or "hold"
I never got to play this as a kid, but my dad had some of the really old, text-only adventure games on his work computer. I agree that a big part of the fun was trying to figure out what the game wanted you to type. Still, I can totally understand why the makers of the Master System port went the way they did, given the system's lack of a keyboard. A noble effort on their part. Love your channel. I see that your popularity is skyrocketing -- it is well deserved!
I used to play this text adventure about Sherlock Holmes and I remember really struggling to get anywhere, but loving it. I loved reading as a kid and that game and its first few "screens" are semi-burned in my memory.
And thanks so much! I'm glad more people are wandering in here and discovering my channel. It's been a wonderful experience getting to talk with people about old games.
Never played this version, although I did get all the way through Maniac Mansion on the NES. Also, while I prefer the DOS graphics, I love how the wizard at 1:56 looks like he's doing finger-guns. It's Buddy Mage! He's got your back! 🙂
Hahaha that's hilarious! I didn't notice until you pointed it out!
Lol
I loved the music in the nes manaic mansion
@@FallicIdol There were definitely some good tunes in that one!
I don't quite know how - as I had an interest in computer & video games when I was growing up - but I was completely oblivious to the King's Quest series until just a couple of years ago. I was aware that those sorts of games existed on the old computers of the 1980s (I recall a schoolfriend showing me some of his games on floppy disk when we were little), but until relatively recently I had no idea that these sorts of adventures also made their way onto 8-bit consoles. Not only King's Quest, but a number of others besides, as I'm now aware. I can't help but think I missed out on a small part of the typical 1980s-'90s childhood. Oh well, at least I know about these games now, I suppose. And thank you, Hungry Goriya, for being the one to show me many of them!
If it makes you feel any better, I feel like I missed out on a ton of games and series growing up as well. I always feel a little "late to the party" so to speak, but thankfully I took a chance on King's Quest and the Monkey Island games because they were a huge part of my childhood. Are these the kinds of games you might consider trying out now?
Thanks!
Thank you very much!
Without fail, every time your channel comes up in my recommendations, it's covering some SMS game I never even knew existed. Not sure how I survived being a master system owner back in the day without some of these!
I only learned about many of these games over the past decade or so myself. I'm glad to share a bit about the console with people and hopefully bolster some interest in some of its library. It's definitely underappreciated!
Brings me back to the NES version of Maniac Mansion. I was in grade school when that came out, and I remember my friends and I trying to beat it while scouring Nintendo Power. Which had a lot of hints on what to do-- but it didn't have everything. Still, after many months we scoured through the game and found all the endings.
The NES version of Maniac Mansion is underrated. It had some great music too!
Had the same issue with legacy of the wizard. Such good games.
I've only played the NES version of Maniac Mansion so far, so it's good to know that there's a little more to it on PC if I ever replay it.
Remember when it comes to Maniac Mansion, the Commodore 64 version IS the original version. Followed by the Apple II.
I still say the C64 version is the best despite it not having music for the most part and the screen scrolling is a bit slow.
Thank you. You are the first person to reply to my comment.Goes to show your game attention is matched by your attention to your fans.Again i am so glad to have found you.
I love the Master System version cuz sometimes it's fun to play a relaxing version of the game. Good to get your insights on this!
There was something refreshing about playing this version, definitely. I didn't mention it in the video, but I love how fast Graham moves by default in this one.
"It doesn't push the experience to an unplayable status, but it definitely cuts the fun off at the knees."
You are quite the trooper, haha
I do my best, haha
Your youtube name makes me smile everytime I read it.
Great review of a classic game. 👏
Another great video HG, you really hit the nail on the head with how this port turn out.
Thank you, Zerfall! I'm glad to have finally gotten around to talking about Master System again. This was too good an opportunity to pass up reviewing.
Passwords are one part of Gaming's Infancy that I am glad have been left in the Past. I never had a Master System as I started with an NES but the Games I've seen on the Console were Pretty impressive.
Now that I have a camera to take photos of the passwords with, I don't mind them so much. Back then though? They were just the worst!
Thank you very much for another good review while keeping your own perspective. :)
My pleasure! My perspective is all I have!
I was an early PC owner in the 80's and late to the console gaming scene, but I absolutely loved and played every KQ game on PC many times. Roberta Williams was definitely the first video game producer whose name I knew. I never knew they had a KQ port on console, I feel bad for whoever had to try and work the game into a console.
I'd be curious to hear more about the development of this port from the folks that worked on it. What a task! King's Quest V on the NES was a lot more fluid, even as a point and click game with a controller.
@@hungrygoriya It definitely gives me a dose of nostalgia, and wonder if I can find my old KQ floppy disks somewhere 😆
@@wilhelmschmidt7240 Good luck in the search for them! If you don't have an older computer anymore, I think they sell portable disk drives for modern computers, though I have no idea how they work, haha
While I do love the ambition of this version, it just seems like so much sacrifice. I feel like pulling back on the humor of the series is a bigger crime than that gargantuan password system!
I agree! I would've gone on some more about the humour being gone, but I didn't want to spoil too much either. It's a bummer because the witty writing is what really makes these kinds of games for me. With graphics like these, the writing is really all you have left!
Nice review as usual and it makes me realize I’d love to see more reviews and playthroughs of text parser games on the channel! It’s an interesting genre requiring very different logic from the player, and I’m sure your reactions would be entertaining 😁
I may just have to bust out some Space Quest, or the other King's Quest games. I've been meaning to play through them all.
There's an old text only game called McMurphy's Mansion that I finished after years since getting it as a wee lad... It's definitely a good game although it would be awesome if someone made a graphic remake
Kings Quest, Space Quest and The Dagger of Amon Ra are nostalgia explosions for me. I have never played the console versions before. I'm very intrigued...
As long as you don't mind a bit of finagling with the passwords and some slightly different puzzle solutions, you may enjoy this version quite a bit!
OH wow. Follow up comment- I had NO idea Ultima IV was on Master system. I knew the NES got a port tho. Played the heck out of that game on IBM PC as a kid. Brutally hard, but just fun to me. Loved how you could walk up to 2 random bards named Paul & Linda and realized they were the McCartney's when the text song they sung was from Paul McCartney's Pipes of Peace album at that general time. All the little things we remember 😊.
Apparently the Master System version of the game's a lot more faithful to the PC experience, but it's the only one I've played so I can't say for sure.
I didn’t play King’s Quest as a child (not for lack of trying to wheedle its purchase from my dad at Radio Shack!), but I played another PC Sierra game based on the Disney version of The Black Cauldron. It used the same parser formula and environmental interactions that both perturbed and delighted me at seven or eight years old ;) Nostalgia for that one certainly blinds my eyes when I attempt to criticize it, and I don’t even mind. There was something so magical and satisfying about mulling over a situation and deciding how to approach it. I was already an imaginative child; games similar to that one and King’s Quest weren’t flawless, but they left me spellbound! They were definitely the gateway to my love of the adventure/action RPG genres.
Nice to hear about your origins with the genre!
I remember the dos version and i never knew wtf to do but it was fun looking around and finding little secrets.
Remember that it was in the 80s before i ever had a nintendo so this was pretty amazing.
The DOS version was pretty tough to muddle through for me. I think it might've been one of the first text parsers I ever played so there was a bit of a learning curve there for me.
@@hungrygoriya same. I also didn't have the booklet or any sense of what the goal or story was. I didn't know you were supposed to find things. I just went around seeing what I could do and what would kill me
@@Whitehorse_crimefighter The scariest was getting snatched up by all the enemies here. Especially the witch. Being carried into the sky by the neck both fascinated and terrified me, haha
So happy to see a new video from you 🥳 have you ever played my favorite NES game Bucky O'Hair? It's has MegaMan type gameplay but you can switch between all the characters from the cartoon series... would make for a cool review (warning, it's a pretty difficult game)
Thanks very much! And I haven't played Bucky O'Hare yet. I've been looking for a copy of it for years, but it looks interesting. I don't mind a tough game so I'd be up for the challenge.
Bucky O Hare is a awesome NES game. I played it as a kid when it was new. I managed to get a copy for the NES long before it shot up in price. I paid about $10 for mine, in the box. Only thing I don't have is the manual and the poster since it is a Konami game so it is not complete. But my box is in very good condition even to this day and I have the cart.
Expensive game now though.
8:30 - I've never seen anyone enter in a code that fast, and that speaks louder than words about how they botched the continue system...
You are so remarkably patient with the games you play and review. Where does that patience come from?
Honestly, it's just my nature. It's just really visible when I play video games.
I didn't know the kings quests games were ever even on console! I'll have to find a copy some day and poke at these!
I hope you enjoy it if you do!
Ahh, I miss the old school adventure games from Sierra/Lucasarts. Many happy and frustrated memories! I remember just how different Maniac Mansion was on NES vs Commodore 64 and such. HUGE differences. Still, NES/Master System were a LOT cheaper to get than a home PC back in the day, so I'm glad for the console ports, even if they weren't as good, just so more could have a chance to enjoy them!
I feel the same way about console ports. They definitely served their purpose for folks that wouldn't otherwise have a chance to experience them. I loved King's Quest V on the NES and still do to this day. I finally tried the PC version myself a year or two ago, and even though it's probably controversial to say so, I still prefer the NES game. I'll blame the nostalgia, haha
@@hungrygoriya Hey, never underestimate the power of nostalgia! MANY of us still love things that most would find crap, just because it's 'what we know'. Quick example- Temple of Apshai Trilogy (if I'm spelling that right >.
@@pretzelthedude Oh goodness... sorry that getting back to that game after so long was a bust! You're right though: nostalgia's a hell of a drug!
I remember discovering point and click games for the very first time, i had two as a kid, Space Quest 4 & 5. Didn't even have a computer until i was like 12! Would have loved to have had a decent point and click on the NES.
Did you ever play Maniac Mansion or King's Quest V? There are others too of course, but there's definitely some good stuff if you're still interested in playing some!
@@hungrygoriya no, never had them as a kid!
Great review as always. I wasnt really a Kings Quest fan as a kid. But I did love Leisure Suit Larry pmsl.
Nice! I haven't played a Leisure Suit Larry game before, but I have a 5-game compilation kicking around I should really try out sometime.
@@hungrygoriya You really should, they are very funny!! I think you would love them.
Something seemed off about Graham's sprite and it hit me about 10 minutes in that they didn't loop back his left and right walk cycle properly. You can see his arm swings forward then pops right back to the back swing frame instead of going to the middle frame first. Other than that, I'd say he looks like a chubby toddler in MC Hammer pants. 😆
Yeah, he definitely has a weird walk. It made me laugh a lot, but I still think it's better than his busted ankles sprite from the DOS game, haha
Great video HG. I'm probably focusing on the wrong thing, but I get a kick out of how the box describes the game as "a text-adventure action game". :D
If they mean all the dying as a type of action, then they nailed it!
I didn't even know the original had a Master System port. Wild
That was the main reason I wanted to make a video about it! I streamed it recently and nobody seemed to know it existed.
Thank you. I dont know KQ is released on Master System. Seams so good for 1989
It was a fun time!
First game I ever played on a PC was Kings Quest IV on a friend's computer back in the early 90's! I knew I needed my own computer after that and it's the reason I got one! A few months later, a friend brought over a 2400 modem before the internet even existed and it took all night to download a few pictures and the rest is history! ☺️
Ever played the amazing DOS fps Nitemare 3D?
That's awesome! I have a friend who loves King's Quest IV and have watched him stream it a few times, but I haven't played it myself yet. It's great to hear these kinds of stories. Thank you for sharing about your first computer!
Holy cow - that password thing. I played these games on PC as a kid as well. I cannot even imagine how quickly i would have broken something if i had to re-enter a password every time i died. How absurd - it's not like King's Quest is known for having totally foreseeable and avoidable deaths.
Yeah exactly! I think I died 5 or 6 times trying to climb the stairs, all relatively close together, and I had to put a password in each time just to try again. It was not a dealbreaker for me since I have lots of patience, but I certainly didn't find that aspect very fun.
Great in depth review, thanks! When I finally got my hands on this version, I could never bring myself to continue on even though I was such a fan of the original and its remakes.
Awww its differences were that much of a turnoff? I can understand why. The DOS version (or others after the fact) are way more engaging.
Funny but sad story, my late wife and I dated in the late 90s and I tried hard to get her into my favorite snes and sega games, but I just couldn’t get her truly into it. Zero completed games.
It didn’t work so well, but one night in college, we visited a thrift store in Denver that had a sega and this game, amongst some sports shit, sonic, and whatever was on the chopping block in 98. She had played some kings quest on PC, so she loved that they had this game.
It took awhile to learn, but we really bonded through the experience, filling up like 5 notebooks of passwords and clues (lol not kidding and I might be holding back).
But we beat it together. Me, mostly playing, with her supporting and keeping notes.
I didn’t mean to leave such a long message, but I’d like you to know that you are one of my favorite TH-camrs, and this one was incredibly unexpected, but very emotional 😊
I'm very sorry for your loss. I can't even imagine what it must be like to lose someone you love that much, but the memories you described here with her are beautiful. I'm glad you had this time together and that the game still means something to you. My sincerest condolences to you.
>Make friends with Kerrek
>Buy Kerrek a cold one
I missed out on this series, but if you haven't played the parody game "Peasant's Quest" from back on Homestar Runner I highly recommend it. I found it funny and very enjoyable despite not having played the series it was a homage to. I think it was a flash game, but considering that at the time it was probably the most ambitious of the type boasting its own GameFAQs page and taking a good chunk of my afternoon to load on dialup, I think it is safe to assume that it was probably a high priority for preservation projects when it was announced that Flash was getting axed.
If you have played it, I'm curious as to what you thought about it having the background of being familiar with the King's Quest games going in. There's probably a lot of jokes that flew right over my head, and perhaps some puzzles that wouldn't have had me stuck as long as they did (I think I only resorted to consulting a walk through once or twice when I was really stumped.)
I played Peasant's Quest aaaages ago now. I should really sit down and give it another try. Unfortunately, it was so long ago now that I don't remember much of anything about it.
I grew up playing these games on the computer. King's quest and space quest among others are the reason that I learned how to type as such a young age. Maybe 10 years ago or so I picked up a complete copy of King's quest for the master system and I had dabbled it with it in emulators before but it was my first time playing all the way through it seriously. It takes about a whole 15 minutes to beat maybe but I still love it. Even if it's not the best way to play it I still enjoy it for what it is the worst parts are what you said about the text up top giving away any clues as well as not being able to look up everything with definitions. I can understand it though a lot of the text and descriptions for things we're probably wiped clean to save on ROM storage space to keep the price of the cart down. It is a little unfortunate though. Still I just love playing ports of games that I like good or bad
I'm glad you got to enjoy this version as well! It does have a couple of shortcomings, but nothing that makes it unplayable or too frustrating. It's just different than the usual fare.
It's funny you mention learning how to type with King's Quest and Space Quest. I started up with a typing tutor way back when, but also used to play a Sherlock Holmes text adventure whose name I've long forgotten. I'm really grateful for the skill!
Great and in depth review. I have long been curious of this title for the Master System. Without a background in PC titles I assumed a typical action RPG. However, it's more interesting than I thought.
I own some Master System titles and I have seen the same glitch issue you had with your game. Mine is a 2nd/3rd hand purchase of Shadow Dancer. I suspect it is the physical condition of the cart, but who knows?
Great content!
Perhaps a few title suggestions take them or leave them, as I haven't examined your library to fullest. Light Crusader for Genesis, Guardian Legend for NES, Willow for NES, or Deadly Towers for NES.
It's definitely an interesting little game. I wonder why those glitches happen... it always seemed to have something to do with the fairy godmother screen in this game, but it's interesting to hear that you're having similar issues with Shadow Dancer. I hope you didn't lose too much progress!
And thanks for the suggestions. I've played The Guardian Legend and Willow before (loved them both!) but still need to play the others.
@@hungrygoriya Fantastic, I will check those videos out.
The glitch I find on Shadow Dancer glitches the entire screen similarly. The game runs as if nothing has happened with player control and enemy's movement unhindered. It makes the game More difficult than it already is!😅
Looking forward to more retro reviews.
As a kid, I could never get anywhere in text parser games, so this format would have been right up my alley.
And I hope someone in Graham's lineage goes on a Quest for Stair Handrails
I didn't get to try a text parser until I was older (save for a text-based Sherlock Holmes game when I was really little) but I can imagine the frustration as a kid.
From what I understand of the later games in the series, nobody went on quest for handrails and many in the kingdom died repeatedly from their absence :(
As a kid of the 80s the ending made me laugh. Todays kids can't imagine the amount of bugs we encountered f.e. when you load a game from floppy and it's silently corrupted somewhere in the code. (Happened to me dozens of times on the C64). Super interesting review Goria, never played KQ, will fire it up on the Amiga some cold autumn day.
I always try to play games on the original systems as much as possible just to experience it as people did when it was new. I'm glad the glitching made you laugh... it was funny to me too when it happened! I hope you enjoy the series when you get into it.
I'm so jealous of that beautiful screen. Is that a 15"?
CRTs are so hard to get, and they're always beaten up and about to break, in my experience.
The one where I'm playing the game and trying to give the bowl away is 19-inch and is actually the TV I had in my bedroom growing up. My husband loves CRTs and we have a whole bunch of them in the house that we use for various things.
The other one that shows the password photo is a Sony Trinitron 2530. It's a beautiful CRT!
I loved playing King's Quest 2 and Space Quest on my friends PC as a kid. I got King's Quest for my SMS on my birthday and played the hell out of it. I'm sure it's terrible to play nowadays lol but at the time it was amazing.
It's not too terrible to play except for the password nonsense. I liked my time with it!
The ones I remember having during my childhood were King's Quest IV and Space Quest III; I have no idea how I made progress given I didn't know any English (probably asked my dad all the time). Obviously, I was stuck most of the time, but it was great. Other than that, I now think that in those games the protagonists died in pretty gruesome ways and it felt more real at the time. Maybe, it was that the animations were quite vivid, as if they were real people, rather than videogame characters.
I'm always blown away at non-English speakers tackling games in an entirely different language. Wow! Some of my favourite parts of King's Quest V and VI were when the narrator would make a joke or pun about the way you died, which were a lot funnier replaying the games as an adult. If it's any consolation, as a kid, I didn't understand a lot of the language either, or the nuance in a lot of the writing.
Funny you should review this not long after I began my quest to listen to every SMS soundtrack (I just finished the NES library), though I'm only at Asterix. My first King's Quest was 6, because we'd only had hand-me-down computers, and most of them were Apple, so we spent more time with such classics as Cairo Shootout and... Print Shop. I remember first seeing it in my friends' basement on their shiny new IBM, and it absolutely blew my mind. I've had some fun with the series over the years (especially 3 and 6), but a recent playthrough made me realize that I'm kinda spoiled by newer Point-and-Click Adventures. Didn't play much of this version, but I do also prefer the text parser; it just flows a lot better, and I suppose this was the best option here, but it makes me wonder why they even attempted console ports of games like these. Usually, if you wanted something similar to this on a console, it'd be something like Out of This World/Another World or Flashback.
I haven't played Out of This World or Flashback before, but I've heard nothing but good things about the two of them. It's funny that you say you spent a lot of time playing with Print Shop. I played Compton's Encyclopedia a lot as a kid, which was really more of an interactive educational program than a game. I loved it!
7:48 That's a deal breaker ☠️
It's a big downfall of this version, that's for sure.
I spent a weekend visiting an out of town friend as a teen. We spent the whole time trying to crack king’s quest v on NES.
It broke me.
I'm sorry you didn't get on well with it. I spent most of my childhood playing it and enjoyed it, and actually still prefer it over the PC version. That's very likely my nostalgia talking, but it is what it is.
I've never played King's Quest (any) and growing I played Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry (I was 14 but was probably not appropriate). A lot of me playing those games was oddly scrolling through commands when I was stuck except I'd type them out (Talk to everyone then give x to everyone, etc) but eventually I got better at it. Well, as "better at it" as I could. I also learned all the "funny" language you could use (swears) and I would miss that but this was an interesting game to learn about. Ultimately I think the save function would make me favor the PC versions
I wonder if this is how every kid learns how to play these games. I feel like my first text adventure was like that too!
@@hungrygoriya Probably
In many regards, there are many good uses for a text parser. In others, well, not only do you have to guess the verb, but they also expect you to guess the noun based on the pixels you see. It's even more frustrating in black-and-white/CGA because you'd be lucky if you knew there was silk on that one screen in Conquest of Camelot. (Then again, Sierra have an infamous reputation of "save early, save often, and don't overwrite saves".)
Also, is there a revision to the Master System of King's Quest that changes the font? It sure looks like it from your footage.
You know, I'm not really sure why the font looks different. I only have the one cartridge, but I did record the CRT footage with a different Master System. Maybe it's console dependent? I haven't figured it out either but I did notice it as well.
31 character password code!? That’s crazy. Lol.
I remember playing these games at school, was never very good at them tho. One of them had an awesome manual with art, don’t remember which. I’m an artist, so I always appreciated the art found in game manuals.
It was pretty wild! Manageable, but far from idea.
I am the furthest thing from a visual artist, but I always loved flipping through manuals growing up. I know the King's Quest VI manual had some great art in it, but I'm not sure about the earlier games.
Watching some of those glitches, though annoying as a player, was entertaining as a viewer. Seeing his head repeated across the screen got a chuckle out of me.
It didn't bother me too much... at least it wasn't like when I got stuck in a wall in Blaster Master after several hours of playing with no passwords, or glitched out in Milon's Secret Castle and had to start over from the beginning!
I didn't even know a Master System version existed. This one seems like it ran afoul of harsh memory limits. Sadly, when text has to be cut, charm and flavor are usually the first to go.
I'm not heartbroken about losing the text parser. I'm definitely someone who prefers not to have to do blind guessing. That password system is brutal, though, I can't imagine having to re-enter that on every dealth.
I love the box art, though! Probably one of the best when it comes to American Master System!
I'd hope it was a memory limitation that caused them to drop so much of the fun from the game. I think if they'd managed to keep some of the extra commentary/humour in the game, I wouldn't have minded the menu system nearly as much. Text parsing is the only way to get all the extras, unfortunately!
@@hungrygoriya Yeah. It's hard to say they made the right or wrong compromises, but they chose functionality, which I can't fault 'em for, but I do feel like these classic adventures lose a lot without their playful snark
We didn't get this one in Europe, astonishingly (Carmen too now you mention it). As a Sierra fanboy back in the day I had to import it. But to play it? I'm using something with save states.
Save states make total sense in this case!
this was the first game I played on my IBM PC Jr in 1991
What a way to start out into gaming!
@@hungrygoriya I was only seven
I remember the witch kept catching me in the gingerbread house, that still scares me and gives me goosebumps when I think about it!! I was never a quick enough to react back then….
I actually had no idea till now that KQ1 was on the Sega Master System. I wonder if it was even released in Australia and I could have played it as a kid? I'm really impressed with how they put together the screens from tiles and yet how good they look. 8 bit consoles like that do much better with traditional games like platform games, where you can have a lot of repeating tiles to create platforms and other 90 degree angle geometry. These scenes in KQ1 actually look quite organic. But that password looks frustrating - no doubt they had the developers create that because a battery backup would've driven the production cost higher than what the publisher thought they'd get back from it. Still, you are dead right - there was just no need to force you to re-enter it every time! Talk about making a bad situation worse...
Part of the reason I wanted to make this video was because of how few people seemed to know that this port existed. I think it's a great port all said, with the exception of the password troubles. It's not a dealbreaker for me, but I definitely wish it was different.
@@hungrygoriya You're right, I've never seen any KQ1 coverage mention this port.
Great video on this cartridge, though it's hard to see why anyone weaned on console games would want to play a computer adventure title, and a then-five-year-old one at that.
Incidentally, when I reviewed this game for Sega series on my other channel (Monarch1979), I too used the bowl puzzle as a example of constantly being left in the dark as how to proceed.
I figure it was a way for people that didn't have a PC to get into the series and enjoy the game.
i was all about kings quest 3 on my tandy 1000 HX back in the day when i was little.
That one looks like so much fun. I haven't played any King's Quest 3 myself yet, but I'd like to someday!
Stumbled into...after falling down stairs 😂
... yep.
OMG thank you. I didn't know about the password thing. No continue option? I have this on my list to play, so I'll be emulating and using save states. I find a TON of 8 bit games play best when saving after each section. This looks to be one of them.
No continue option! Only password pain. Good luck on the adventure when you get around to it!
Truly unfortunate they missed out on key story elements so that you have at least a clue of what to do at times, like with the bowl. Given the poor state of the game because of this, I can see why nobody has bothered to hack save support into it, as was done with other SMS games like Golvellius. Cool to hear your impressions of this one, as always! I grew up playing Kings Quest/Sierra games on PC and the text parser taught me how to properly spell many words back then, in KQ1 the one that I recall learning was "cupboard". I probably spelled it "cubbard" or something before that, though I can't recall now. I'd love to see you cover the Quest for Glory series. They seem right up your alley. 🙂 Start with the EGA version of 1 if you do, and listen with MT-32 sound if at all possible. The MT32-pi is a cheap and super high-quality way to do this if you don't want to track down and pay the premium for the original modules. Much more flexible also, allowing both revisions of the MT-32 in one unit, and other MIDI options like GM/SC-55 with soundfonts. DOS games had some amazing soundtracks- well worth it.
Yeah, it's a bummer that so much got pulled out of this title, but at least it existed for people to take a swing at King's Quest that otherwise might not have been able to. I'd love to play Quest for Glory one of these days. I have a compilation disc hanging around that I still need to get to.
@@hungrygoriya I loudly and whole-heartedly second this suggestion to cover the Quest for Glory series.
... Fair warning, the series peaked at Shadows of Darkness, but my lord was it a peak to experience back then. I must have replayed it easily a dozen times and can still hear the title screen music with the wolves howling in the background. Just thinking about it now makes me feel so nostalgic I want to puke. Do yourself a favor and make sure you have the version with voice acting, you will not regret it.
Ah, one more thought. I can understand using passwords to save your progress, as battery saves were an expensive premium in the old days, and passwords even appeared in some 16-bit titles including the wonderful Mega Man X. But having to re-enter your password after a game over is cruel. Your suggestion was great, but I think they also could have done something similar to NES games like Shadowgate and Deja Vu, which were also adventure games that loved killing the player as much as possible, and just rolled back to the previous screen. That way, if the player had forgotten to ask the game to retrieve their password for a while they still wouldn't suffer too much of a setback. Of course I would still opt to have the most recent password stored in memory, so that the player would have that extra safety net if they somehow got themselves softlocked in a position where they were rolled back to a screen where they had somehow doomed themselves.
!!Long comment incoming in which I talk about some of my most formative gaming experiences and overanalyze and wildly speculate on the psychological importance of relatively mundane video game features based on my own subjective experiences, and go off on tangents in a stream of consciousness!!
I never did play this series, but in fourth grade we had Space Quest 4 on our class computer. We had no idea how or even that the game could be saved (we thought "restore" required some hidden extra life item) so we never made it past the first area in the future. It was still fun though, as there was a lot to do and find there, and every day we played it felt like we discovered something new, only to have it end in a sudden and comedic death. We even successfully caught the energizer bunny looking thing. No idea what it did, but it felt great to do. It really felt like this huge world where we could get Roger to do anything (and occasionally things that didn't result in his death) if we were creative or explored enough. I looked up a bit of a playthrough many years later and it turns out that we had spent all of our efforts over that year combing over what was essentially the intro area of the game, with many of the screens and interactions we found off the beaten path not even having any bearing on the game's progress. I thought if we could survive infiltrating that looming tower long enough and use what we found to successfully escape that junk planet we would have beaten the game, and I think our whole class would have felt satisfied and accomplished with that. After later learning that the game actually boasted a generous save system (d'oh) and the area that we thought was the whole game was just essentially the cold open for a far, far larger game that even with saves I doubt the combined efforts of our class could have solved over the course of the school year it kind of blew my mind how hard they went on some of these games, with beautifully rendered screens and tons of interactions that were in no way critical to game progress and just there for fun, misdirection, or just to make the game world feel like you were exploring an actual sci-fi setting and not just some video game level where everything had to have some form of utility to justify the effort that went into creating it and the space it took up.
Another game that managed to recapture that spirit for me when I was older, and became my favorite RPG ever, was The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind. I remember going through character creation, and happened to glance at the lantern hanging by the door of the first building you enter during the opening. A box popped up as I hovered over this lantern, telling me that it was a Travel Lantern, how much it weighed, and its value. I realized then that I was playing a game unlike anything I had before. That little tool tip had just communicated that something I had taken for granted as a piece of baked-in decoration could be stolen, carried in my inventory, and sold if I were so inclined. It wasn't just the lantern, as I quickly discovered that just about anything that wasn't nailed down was subject to the same rules. I could be a master burglar sneaking into manors to loot their silverware, or scrounge up every nearly worthless empty bottle and dingy plate I came across to make a handful of coins. It may have been the silliest and least efficient way of earning money in the game, but I had never been given that level of freedom in a game before and it really made me have to throw out the rulebook on what I expected from an RPG. And those hours I spent in that small starting town, robbing the peasants of all of their relatively worthless junk to sell off, and eventually murdering innocent unarmed NPCs, another first for an RPG for me personally though I've since learned that several earlier PC RPGs allowed the player to murder almost any NPC, but up until that point my experience with the genre were the SNES and PS1 JRPGs, and Diablo 2 for PC, where there was a clear distinction between enemies to be fought and characters to be talked to, where loot was obtained by fighting monsters, opening chests, or occasionally digging in trash cans or inspecting suspicious areas. Morrowind turned all of this on its head, and while there is no real mechanical advantage to murdering helpless commoners to steal their cheap housewares just being able to do so opened my mind to new levels of interactivity in video games where even the most mundane items that mainly existed as decoration could be more than just a graphic, but something I could influence. It also organically taught me about which items were worth the effort to bother looting in a game with limited carry weight, and the poor souls I slew in cold blood helped me get a feel for the game's combat which has a logic to it but can be obtuse to newcomers that don't understand that it is more complex than an action game where if your weapon visibly connects it counts as a hit, as at its heart it is more akin to a tabletop game with there being calculations to see if your "hit" was actually a hit based on things like proficiency in the weapon type used and your current level of exhaustion (a system I like but is unintuitive to newcomers and not helped by the lack of feedback, as it can feel like the game is broken when your sword looks like it hit but the virtual dice rolled a miss, but when the same happens in Runescape you at least get a 0-damage hitsplat communicating that your attack registered, it just wasn't successful).
I could go on and on about Morrowind, but I just wanted to talk about how it too went hard on small elements that weren't strictly necessary in order to make a world that felt different than anything else I had played, like Space Quest 4 before it, and elevated their respective game worlds to feel much larger than they actually were, like actual worlds where anything could be possible and there could be yet more secrets lying in wait, just by virtue of including significantly more than just the utilitarian elements required for the game.
(Continued in reply)
(Continued from above as my comment was too long for TH-cam and I can't take the hint)
Things that simply were too much of a luxury when developers had to squeeze every last byte of storage for all it was worth just to fit in what was critical to the game with rarely any room for anything more superfluous than a small Easter Egg. Having too much stuff unnecessary for the game itself can still take up valuable financial resources and development time, and could end up creating too much confusion for the players if there are too many places to go with only one being the correct one, and an abundance of items with no use in a game with item-based puzzles can quickly inflate the difficulty far past the point of fun. But I think in RPGs and Adventure games in particular, having some extra areas, items, and interactions can greatly enhance the experience. They may not serve a utility for reaching the end of the game (with the top score in games where that is also a thing) but just enough not to be overwhelming can make the game worlds feel that much more like worlds, instead of just prefabricated video game levels. If you try to wander off of the critical path, and instead of some barrier that would only stop a video game character like a short fence or invisible wall stopping you, you instead find yourself on a new screen that may not bring you closer to your goal, but at least allows you to experience more of this fantastical world, it can stimulate the imagination and suddenly it feels like every corner of this fictional world is more "real." As kids many of us felt this way to a certain extent by default, like if we could just get past those mountains or trees in games like Zelda there could be new lands just waiting for us to explore them, and I think by having some extra bits in them these games can lean into that childish belief, or for those of us that have grown past that stage, they can rekindle that bit of our imagination by challenging what we've come to expect from games. They give us a little glimpse of "what if" these game worlds really were entire worlds, and invite our imaginations to fill in the blanks and our gaming spirit to see what else we might discover. To mention Morrowind one last time, I first played it on Xbox and while it was not the first PC RPG to dabble in some of the things I mentioned it communicated with that single tool tip when I looked at that lantern that this was not going to be quite like any console RPG I had played before and it had an emphasis on freedom down to the most mundane aspects, and when it comes to player freedom I had only seen the tip of the tip of the iceberg when it came to that game. You can do more than steal and pawn every bit of clutter, you can also rearrange it, perhaps move into an unoccupied home (or claim one by killing the inhabitant or using magic to influence them into following you and relocating them) and then decorating it with whatever styles of housewares fit your tastes be it for their looks, value, or historical importance, and/or use shelves and tables to create a personal museum of the rare and unique items you have found in your quests, maybe set the tables with elaborate feasts and rare spirits and use magical mind control to have your favorite NPCs come to your house as if for a party fitting of a fated hero. In the game's heyday it was common for players to show their custom decorated abodes to friends and siblings in real life, and share screenshots online, with many of the most popular mods for the PC versions being player homes that featured ample space precisely for displaying items and even functional mannequins for armor (which was accomplished by creating an unplayable humanoid race with a wooden texture for "skin" and scripting them that they would spawn dead as persistent corpses frozen on the first frame of the death animation to keep them standing while also allowing the player to access their inventory since corpses worked like chests or other containers, but would visibly wear any clothing or armor placed in their inventory. I could go on about the robust magic system allowing players unprecedented freedom when creating spells, and much more, but there are a wealth of multi-hour analysis videos about that one 2002 RPG, probably because growing up with video games, and particularly console video games, it was the first RPG many of us played that allowed for an in-depth role-playing experience. Don't get me wrong, I love JRPGs, but although they started out trying to adapt the complexities of something like a Dungeons and Dragons campaign to the limitations of early video games, they sort of became their own thing over time, to the point where Super Mario RPG involves about as much role-playing as Super Mario World. Those of us that grew up on JRPGs and hadn't touched tabletop gaming or more faithful attempts to adapt them (generally by western developers on home computers) we thought of RPGs as those games with turn based combat, a heavy story focus, and leveling up in order to permanently become stronger as opposed to relying entirely on twitch reflexes.
Ok, I said I was done with the Morrowind tangents, but I have to include this emtertaining story about a later game in the series.
The Elder Scrolls Creators at Bethesda themselves used a similar solution to the Morrowind modders when making mannequins in the much more popular fifth entry in the series Skyrim (never being one's to let a popular and creative fan-made idea go to waste when they could just take it as their own), which were included in the base game and could be purchased for certain houses the player could buy. But as the engine now allowed direct access to the inventory of "living" NPCs and the fourth entry onward switched from using premade death animations to having the models ragdolling on death, the NPC mannequins made by them were technically alive, and the script that was supposed to cause them to remain statue-still would notoriously break, causing unintentionally creepy results that doubtlessly traumatized younger players that didn't know how they were technically implemented and would be scarier than the majority of videogame creepypastas even if it were just a story and not an actual thing that has been recorded happening countless times. They would occasionally not be where you left them upon returning home, turn their head to face the player, or in some instances unfreeze completely and start walking around the player's house as if they had fully come alive, but couldn't speak or do other actions that gave proper NPCs that extra bit of humanity. It was creepy in a sense, as the simplest way to code a mannequin you could dress up was to create a wooden person in the game code without the ability to move or speak in order to give the appearance of a statue to the player, but in the game they are technically people, and are technically alive, cursed by a special script to a statuesque existence that they constantly are fighting against. And sometimes, they succeed. I'm not afraid of mannequins in real life, but in Skyrim? Not in my home!
If you somehow had the patience to read through my unstructured, uninformed ramblings you have my gratitude. At some point I wanted to tie it back to the point that was made about the verb-noun system removing a lot of the fun of discovery and player expression out of the game, but I got quickly sidetracked when I made the mistake of deciding to talk about Morrowind.
If you did get through that, I'd like to hear your opinions on my thoughts. Did you too once imagine these cartridges contained entire worlds that extended beyond the areas we were confined to in your youth? Do you have any thoughts on things games do that, intentionally or not, cause you to suspend your disbelief for a bit and help you feel immersed in a world instead of a finite level, if only for a bit? Am I just a rambling madman trying to chase that sense of wonder that video games gave me before it was stamped out by my understanding of the real world, which has its share of unexplained mysteries but none as fun or wonderful as magic, dragons, or a video game world without limits?
This may break your heart, but I haven't played Morrowind! I did watch a friend dabble in some of it but haven't experienced it for myself, so unfortunately I don't have much to add to that part of your comments.
With respect to the rest though, about a limited but potentially limitless world that's only blocked by a single tree or bush was maddening for me as a kid. Even though none of the bushes on the edge of the screen ever burnt away in Zelda, it surely didn't stop me from trying to find just one that would open up a path to more of the world that I hadn't had a chance to look through yet. And I do agree with you about how extra areas do expand and develop a game's world in point and click/parser adventure games especially. After you play a few of them, you can see a "dead end" screen from a mile away, but when I was younger, it took me years to work through games like Curse of Monkey Island and King's Quest VI just because of all of the little misleading statements and extra items I got on those questions. They're fantastic experiences I wouldn't trade for anything, even if they did suck up a lot of my time. They're games that are very nostalgic for me, and also introduced me to a genre I've never stopped loving since those days.
Thank you for taking the time to write so much here. Yours is an interesting perspective I enjoyed reading about.
Would love your take on a best of cheapest master system games that are still fun to play
Interesting idea! I'll think on this!
I played Kings Quest for Sega, but never finished it. I admit frustration in trying to figure everything out, so much so, that I gave up, and sold the game. Retro games from the 80's were a testament to the willingness of young children to pit themselves against programmers shenanigans! I think I may have missed out in this one, but the frustration to a young boy is hard to quell. As to the password, putting an 8 into the password only to realize its a B or thinking the 0 (zero) is really an upper-case O (oh). Oh the frustrations of this game....
The worst part about the password mistakes is that if you make a mistake right at the beginning, you have to erase everything to get back to that character to fix it... so frustrating!
@@hungrygoriya You could pass for a child of the 80's! Thanks for the knowledge!
@@Maderyne I don't know what makes you think that I wasn't born in the 80s... such a funny thing to say!
I had kings quest 5 for PC and it had some quality of life improvement where you didnt have to type comands but could bring up an item menu with pictures of your items that you could click and drag to the area of the screen you wanted to use that item. I had a lot of fun with that game when I was a kid. I loved the different worlds and biomes and it captivated my imagination. I also had that first kings quest game for dos actually it might have been the mac version but I was so young that I could only fall into the moat without my dads help. Lol.
I was a huge fan of King's Quest V too, but I first played it on the NES instead. I didn't get into the parser games until about a decade ago!
I didn't know if I should click on the video thumbnail to start the video, or stand here and stare at the tasty and adorable meatbone in the thumbnail. I didn't click my way to this video... I tried to grab the thumbnail meatbone and it brought me here.
I'm surprised no one mentioned King's Quest V on the NES! It's... pretty rough.
I did mention it right at the beginning of the video. I love that port since it's what I grew up with.
@@hungrygoriya Indeed! I went straight to the comments, so that's my oversight. Thanks for the great retro content!
Completely agree that this shouldn't be the version one plays for their first time, but I do think it's almost nice to have the verbs and nouns given for a fun and more chill replay. That password situation is certainly dreadful, though..
I like that it allowed for people without a PC back then to still have an entry point into the KQ series. I played this one as you described it: a replay. If I hadn't known some of the trials of Daventry and kept getting smoked even more than I did with some memory of the game intact, I might've been a much angrier person during my playthrough from reentering those passwords that many more times.
Watched your vods on twitch playing this one, I had played it before and never beaten it. It's a strange version and I'm sure there might be someone out there who this was their first experience with the series and led them to play the rest :)
Thanks for having a look at the vods. I was instantly curious in how this port would work since I loved King's Quest V on NES so much, and thankfully it was still pretty fun even if it was lacking a little bit in the charm department compared to the PC release.
I do hope that this was someone's gateway into the rest of the series. I'm sure it was!
Gotta emulate this, thanks. :)
I hope you have fun with it!
I never played the SMS version, but I loved the PC versions. Cool to see the graphical differences. Thanks for the video!
It's definitely different enough to feel interesting to play, even if you're familiar with the PC version. You're very welcome!
Never actually played this game, but I sold the box the dos version came in for $50, and that was like a decade ago.
Oh wow... I guess people really adore their King's Quest stuff! The Master System game's not exactly cheap either, but there aren't a lot of people that seem to know it exists.
Oh, for sure. The first King’s quest was one of the… Well, firsts, and the box it came in was very not small and very cardboard. Even 10 years back, it was a classic akin to Zork.
I’m just rationalizing the price, the fact it went for so much shocked me too!
Your videos haven't been showing up in my You Tube feed. So, I've missed the last 4 videos. But, I'm catching up now.
No worries!
[Note: Sorry in advance for the loquacious response. There are just some games that cause fond memories to gush out of me like blood from a stab wound.]
God, getting the original DOS version for my Tandy 1000 was one of those _events_ you have in life that just sort of happened and then you can't forget about them later. It was 1985 when my dad brought home our Tandy 1000 (after months of asking for a Commodore 64 like our next-door neighbors had...he definitely made right choice there) with a copy of King's Quest II. I still remember finding the original at a software store, where the box art just called to me (I wish I could remember the name of the store. They had the games on mahogany, or faux mahogany, shelves with the box art facing outward, which while definitely not space-efficient, made everything on offer look so much more valuable or desirable to 10yo me). And then, something happened where I was somehow able to corrupt the floppy disk. One night after work, my dad apparently took the time to went to go to Radio Shack to try and get the game fixed. We hadn't had much look trying to track down a new copy, and I was heartbroken at the thought of not being able to finish this game I just couldn't stop thinking about. I still remember waiting at the window, waiting for him to get home that night, anxious and unsure if they'd be able to fix it. (Yeah, I'm *THAT* kind of introvert). Not sure, but I think what happened was that I'd somehow saved over or deleted a file on the disk (why it wasn't copy-protected, I couldn't tell you), and they literally just copied the files back over to the disk, because what dad returned home with was certainly not a new disk.
And thank God for those Radio Shack guys, too. I was able to call them up here and there for help. They're the only reason I was able to solve the Rumpelstiltskin puzzle in this game or the "Sector HH" information in the original Space Quest. I at least understood how Williams expected us to solve the latter one (you can overhear the info at a bar); the Rumpelstiltskin puzzle is another story entirely. I sure as hell didn't solve it on my own, and "Sometimes it's wise to think backwards" is NOT the help she clearly thought it was when programming this game. That said, I wouldn't change the correct answer for the world, and doing so in the VGA remake is one of the main reasons that version fell so flat for me (on the other hand, buying that VGA remake came with the The Sierra Network...a purchase that *_literally_* became the most important, if ultra-depressing in retrospect, moment of my entire life).
But man, I loved getting those Sierra games as a kid. All of them, but especially KQ3. I remember playing this version a few years later and being wildly underwhelmed by it. I'd forgotten about the password system here. Could be my brain blocked it out from trauma? 😂 I remember getting through it in one or two sittings, probably because I was already so familiar with everything I needed to do, and I remember being disappointed enough in the whole thing to try and forget that version existed afterward. I applaud programmers for _trying_ to translate these games to consoles, but it's just not the same experience without the parser interface. They always lost something vital in translation. I remember the NES version of KQ5 not being much better, while the Genesis version of my all-time favorite game ever, Starflight, while entirely faithful to the PC original, still managed to lose something. Sometimes, for whatever reason, barely-existent graphics are just charming enough that when you upgrade them you lose part of the experience, lose the charm. The look of the original King's Quest, Space Quest, and Police Quest games is iconic now; the Master System version just looks like "a game". I can't help but feel a little sorry for anyone whose introduction to these games were these console versions.
It's actually amazing that you were able to get some help from the Radio Shack folks like that. What a different time... I would've loved having that experience back then. Sorry you had so much trouble with the game and its lack of copy protection, but it seems to have facilitated a pretty unique circumstance in your life!
As someone who only got to experience King's Quest first on console (NES King's Quest V), it brought me into the rest of the series. While it wasn't the most ideal way to play (though I'm still super nostalgic for it over the PC version), at the very least, it was a foot in the door to that world and those characters. I'm glad for it.
I didn't have a computer until... 7th grade maybe? I never got to experience these kinds of games. Red Baron 2 was probably the only PC game I had played until World of Warcraft in 06. It makes going back to them with no nostalgia kinda hard. Too bad. I bet I would have loved them as a kid.
We had a DOS computer with a bunch of shareware when I was a kid, but I never got to play the original adventure games on PC either. That's why I was pumped to get the Steam collection when it came out, and if I recall correctly, for a long while, the program needed a patch to work and I didn't know how to do that.
Interesting look at this version in a more favorable light, my experience wasn't so great but that had a lot to do with those pass codes...
Did they make you grumpy? I can totally understand why they would.
@@hungrygoriya Well I guess I got some satisfaction writing out all the codes, I even framed them for posterity😆
@@AdventureGameGeek Nice! That's awesome haha
9:55 the rat is Bigger than Graham!!! For the passwords, a better option should have been to use words. At least, that way, writing down passwords might be easier.
Apparently, KQV for nes was made!
KQV on NES is my favourite version of the game, but that's mostly nostalgia. I had it growing up.
I had no idea this was available on the Master System. And my buddy even owned a SMS back then...
I was surprised to find it on there as well. I love console ports of computer games!
I like the display option (implimentation could be better though) and master systems graphics, I've played a few kings quest games and watch speedruns from time to time, xbox has a fun free version of one of the kings quests. Save states are nice though I am used to not having to emu. Getting slapped with passwords is only fun when they make it fun.
I loved how this version looked, but I just wish it had been a little more fun to play. I was hoping for the experience of the PC games (the humour, mostly) but that came up a bit short for me.
@@hungrygoriya Can't search for a funny bone without a text box
I had no idea there was a Master System port of King's Quest, and one that is fairly competent and looks pretty good even though I like the DOS look better, probably based purely on nostalgia.
That was partly the reason I wanted to make this video. So few people knew about the port when I streamed it, and lots of fans of the game might enjoy trying it in this form sometime.
I played a ton of the original IBM PCjr version as a kid. I have so much nostalgia for the game. This port seems like an interesting take on the idea, but ultimately doesn't seem to capture what made the original so great.
Yeah! It's like a watered down version of the game that's missing the heart of the adventure. I'm glad you got to experience it back when it was new! That must've been so cool!
i remember i played kings quest 1 for the sms back in the day......but i cant remember if i beat the game or not...will have to check my spreadsheed(yeah. i keep spreadsheets of console games so i can eventually beat all games).
one thing always bothered me....what is the name of the gnome? i was never able to get a clue about that.
“Get ye flask.”
I haven't gotten around to playing this one yet and that password system makes me wonder about emulating it so save states are available. Will probably start on SMS hardware and then once the password irritation gets to me swap over.
The passwords are a little obnoxious, but not too bad. I have an abnormal amount of patience though! Nothing wrong with playing it with save states to save yourself the time/trouble.
@@hungrygoriya haha, I don't have much time to play these days so I need all the help I can get. I'm probably lacking in patience too.
@@Owazrim I hope I can catch your playthrough if you decide to stream it!
The font they used to spell King's quest always makes me think it says Ring's Quest 😅
True!
If you don't mind emulation, save states could be put to good in this game as it seems like the password is the biggest offense this port makes. I didn't know a Master System version existed. I played the Dos one a little but I wasn't enjoying it as much as Space Quest.
I agree with you completely. Save states would totally bypass the password system completely, and other than sucking the humour out of this version of the game, the passwords were my one big gripe.
I was always curious about these but i fear it may be too late to appreciate them now without the benefit of nostalgia
Well, as someone who's only playing a lot of these older games for the first time nowadays, I am having a lot of fun with them. No harm in trying them out, and if they're not for you, then you'll know.
I can't imagine playing KQ1 in a way where I had to put the password in each time after dying!
On the artwork, an interesting note about SCI ("Sierra Creative Interpreter") -- Sierra's game engine and editor -- is that they used vector graphics for the fullscreen background art to compress the graphics. That allowed artists to store what would normally be a fullscreen image at 320x200x16 colors in far less than 32KB (320x200 = 64K pixels * 4 bits per pixel [1/2 byte] = 32KB) -- often less than a kilobyte for an entire fullscreen image since they could draw all the artwork in just a few hundred vector commands (lines, curves, fills, etc) and store the resulting commands used to draw the 64K pixels instead of storing all 64K pixels.
So they could draw each game screen from scratch, so to speak, without being forced to reuse any existing assets to save memory.
Many consoles like SMS, on the other hand, used tile sets to compress what would otherwise require the memory of a a fullscreen image into a handful of repeated tiles laid out in a coarse grid. That lent itself to different artistic tools and processes which involved reusing as many existing tile assets as possible (albeit with great artistic skill to hide the repetition).
I suspect that's a big contributor in why the SMS port looks so different beyond the human differences in art styles.
You should play quest for glory. It's kingsquest with strong action/rpg elements.
I really should! I haven't tried any of those games out before but they look right up my alley.
@@hungrygoriya I'd like to second this suggestion! They're my favorite adventure games of all time.
Besides the fact that they integrate RPG elements in a way unlike any other adventure series, all the major puzzles in the QFG games were designed to be solved by multiple classes (fighter, wizard, thief, and later paladin as a fourth class). You could also overlap the skills between two or more classes, like create a fighter who can cast magic spells, a wizard who can lockpick, etc.
So in practice, that meant I never got stuck on any puzzle for long even as a child back in the DOS days with no internet and no walkthroughs. Even if I was playing a wizard and couldn't figure out the "orthodox wizard" solution to a puzzle typically involving casting the right spell, I might be able to climb over the obstacle with rope like a thief, or fight like a fighter, or something else. The design forced the devs to create multiple solutions to all the major puzzles in ways where I never got stuck for long.
That password thing sound infuriating! Apart from that though, not a bad translation to console. Though yeah, context sensitive verbs and nouns certainly seem like they'd give some things away!
The password thing is good motivation to get good at least, haha... still not the most ideal scenario, for sure. And yeah, having all the information available was a little bit of a bummer in terms of getting spoiled. Thankfully I played this game a long while back and had some idea of what I was doing, but the noun list definitely points you in one specific direction. You don't really get to think!
I love king's quest series
As much as I love Maniac Mansion it's odd I never got to much into point and clickers. I liked a few of the monkey island games, and being a huge Terry Pratchett fan of course I liked Discworld but for some reason I never tried any of the king's quest games
I played Curse of Monkey Island a ton growing up and really enjoyed the others too. King's Quest feels like a totally different kind of game than that series, but I really enjoy them.
@@hungrygoriya I'll check them out thanks!
Taking down passwords is much easier now with smartphones, but back in the day it was a pain, especially if you rushed and made a mistake.
Oh for sure... not to mention if the game font was tricky to read... yikes!
The SCI/EGA remake is by far most superior imo, it's also the only non VGA graphic updated remake Sierra developed in the long line of mainstay series first entry remakes
I'll take your word on it!
The Mac-Venture ports on the NES were all better than King's Quest, but if you had a Master System, KQ was a pretty good substitute for those. This is just one of the many genres in which the NES was superior to the SMS. Some genres, such as tactical RPGs, were completely absent on the SMS, while the NES had almost everything.
I wonder how different the Master System's library would've been without Nintendo's exclusivity stuff back then.
Even though I'm the right age, I've never played any King's Quest. Maybe I'll check out the upcoming Android release
Have fun with it! They're not for everyone, but I love the morbid sense of humour some of these games have.
I grew up playing the LucasArts adventure games (Sam & Max: Hit the Road was my first), so I'm a lot less comfortable with the text parser style. Too bad the SMS version lacks some of the humor and some features of the original, otherwise it probably would have been a superior port.
I agree with you here! I think if they'd managed to maintain even a little bit of the charm of the original, it would've been a much greater experience. It's too bad!
Have you ever considered making a review of Shining Force II?
I haven't actually played it yet! I hope to whenever I get around to playing it though!