Development
Developed throughout and released 1983 by IBM as a demonstration product for their IBM PCjr, King's Quest was the first Sierra Entertainment game to use the Adventure Game Interpreter (AGI) engine. (However, the AGI engine wasn't known as such until King's Quest II.)
In an era where it was common for computer games to be written by a single person over a matter of weeks in assembly language, King’s Quest was one of the most ambitious, risky, and costly projects of its time. In addition to Williams, six full-time programmers worked for 18 months to complete the game at a cost of more than $700,000. Notably, King's Quest was the first adventure game to have animated characters instead of static pictures. Because the game's complexity made it impractical to write in assembly language, Sierra developed a scripting engine (AGI) which worked as a high level language compiler and made it easily portable to different platforms.
According to Roberta Williams, "IBM came to us and asked us to make an adventure game for the upcoming PCjr. They said it had to be like no other game made before, and it had to also be replayable. In RPGs like Ultima and Wizardry, the gameplay is largely random and the player creates characters, but that isn't my style. IBM was in effect asking me to go against my style. And unfortunately my kind of game is the type that, once you've beaten it, there's no reason to play it again. So we compromised by making it that there were a couple different ways to solve puzzles and you could go back and try alternate methods to get more points."
Due to the PCjr’s poor reception, King's Quest did not sell very well. Thanks to the AGI engine, Sierra released versions for the Tandy 1000, standard PCs, and the Apple II, which at last made the game a success. The game was re-released for DOS (the original was on a self-booting disk) in 1987 using Sierra's updated AGI V3 engine. It was also ported to the Amiga and Atari ST at the same time, and eventually to the Sega Master System, in which the text parser was replaced by a point and click verb system similar to LucasArts adventures.
The DOS version of King's Quest lacks some sound effects present in the booter versions, including birds chirping and distinct sounds for each enemy. Also the AGI V3 engine used an off-screen buffer when drawing the graphics to avoid the painting effect of the original game. This was not done merely for the sake of tidiness, but because the booter versions inadvertently allowed the player to cheat as they drew hidden objects followed by scenery on the screen.
King's Quest was notably not ported to the Commodore 64 despite its being one of the major platforms at the time. Roberta Williams said that the limitations of its graphic system (three colors per 8x8 block) did not permit Sierra to get the level of graphics detail they wanted. In addition, the computer's 64k of memory was too small to fit the complex AGI engine into. She said that she'd always wanted to make an adventure game with animation, but it wasn't possible up to that point, adding that "the PCjr was a huge breakthrough because it had 128k of memory and 16 solid colors" and "My game will only be available on the PCjr until other computers meet its requirements."
- Original version (1983, IBM PCjr) - The original IBM-branded release for the PCjr. Came with a full keyboard overlay template.
- 2nd release (1984, IBM PCjr) - A minor update to the original packaging. Includes a smaller function key template.
- 3rd release (1984, Tandy) - A version for the Tandy 1000.
- 4th release (1984, Version for the standard IBM PC) (expanded backstory).
- (1984, Apple) - Version for Apple II. Requires the 128k //e, IIc, or IIgs to run.
- (1984, various platforms including Amiga, and Atari ST)
- 5th release (1987, PC) - A full re-release adding support for the Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA) and Hercules Graphics Adapter (HGC). Ran under DOS, unlike the 1984 releases, which booted directly at startup. It was with this release that the sub-title Quest for the Crown was used on the box for the first time.
- (1989, Sega Master System) - Game redesigned from the ground up for the Sega Master System. Loosely based on the original KQ1.
- (1990, Various versions for PC/Amiga) - SCI Remake
Read more about this topic: King's Quest: Quest For The Crown
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