I have to re-play through KQ1 again, as the system I was using for Blogging Quest was returned and I was unable to get my saves and such off the system before hand. Not to worry. I’m going to be back up and running here soon, and blogging quest will return.
King’s Quest 1 – Day 2
Yes, it’s been a while, but we’ll not talk about that. Let’s jump into King’s Quest 1 Day 2!
When I last played I had found a ton of little treasures and items lying about, but none of the fabled three magic ones that were causing Daventry to go to ruin. In my quest for them I ended up finding a bridge to somewhere, with a troll guarding it. Figuring that I’d need something or someone to help me with it, since the game wouldn’t let me throw a dagger I had in my inventory at it, I went off looking again.
I ran back into the goat in the pens, which reminded me of the carrot I had in my inventory. Giving it to him? He just eats it and lets you go on your merry way. Not much help. Showing him the carrot lead to him following me where I went. Go goat. I took him back to the bridge with me, after which he made short work of the ugly troll and I was free to cross in peace to the other side. Impressively this seems to be one of the more clear puzzles so far in this game. Let’s hope it stays that way.
Here’s the gnome. He wanted me to guess his name and I only have three guesses. I know as a kid when I first played the game I figured it out, or I cheated, or had a friend tell me, but for the life of me I have no clue what his name could really be. Zelda, Rumplestilskin, Dolly or Joe, none of them worked. Not that it mattered much. He dropped a golden key and that’s good enough for me, because it worked on the door I ended my last play with.
Unfortunately it also meant stairs. A little side rant here. Sierra must have loved to put stairs in their games because it was pure evil to force you walk up them; with how your little person walked it was very easy to just fall off the stairs to your death repeatedly. I still have bad memories of the winding staircases in Kings Quest 4 and the many falls, deaths and restores it required. Luckily, I think I’ve improved and only managed to fall to my death twice (once on the way up and once on the way down).
This giant is what greets me in at the top of the stairs in a nice little patch of forest in the clouds. Must suck to be cut off from everyone, carrying around a nice chest of gold, and of course whenever someone comes to visit you get so excited, run over to greet them and stomp them to death. Or at least that’s the way I figured it. Still I needed that chest and he wasn’t going to give it to me.
So after finding a sling and combining it with my sweet little handful of pebbles, I went biblical on him and found myself standing over the now dead giant and in the possession of one of the legendary treasures of Daventry! One third of my way to being king! Back down the stairs and out to the “real” world again since the clouds ended up being empty of anything else to do. Poor giant.
I found the well again, and pulling from old memories I knew I needed to do something with it but couldn’t remember. Cutting the rope? Sure I got a bucket but then I couldn’t climb down the well and I’d fall to my death. Getting in the bucket and going for a ride? Perfect. I cruised on down, got out, cut the rope and took the bucket with me. After all, if I’m sacking Daventry for the crown, I might as well go all the way.
A short swim down the well later, I ended up meeting an old friend.
I remember being stuck on this guy for ages as a kid. What to do with him. How could I beat him? I wisely stayed back from him this time around, and feeling bad about killing the giant with a rock I didn’t want to kill another beast here. So throwing my dagger was out, but then I had a nice bucket of water and after throwing it at him he ran away with his tail tucked under him and I found myself in possession of treasure number 2 – the Magic Mirror. As good enough time to stop for the day before trying to find the last of the three.
Time Played: 1:55
Deaths: 6 (wolf, stairsx2, giant, drowning, falling in a well)
Score: 88 of 158
King’s Quest 1 – Day 1
Ahh, King’s Quest. Thanks to DOSBOX and a little bit of help from a front end (DFend) and I’m up and running with a beautiful PC speaker representation of Greensleeves. Thanks Sierra!
So, here’s the first thing you’ll see when you start your game. That’s you, Sir Graham, in his jaunty traveling hat. You’re in the Kingdom of Daventry. Seems like a nice enough, pleasant sort of place. Nice castle, with a moat, and even alligators to help keep the peace. First things first, I wanted to go and see who was in the castle. I’m assuming it’s the King, who’s going to give me a clue as to what I’m supposed to be doing. It’s been long enough since I’ve played this game that I’m going to need all the help I can get.
So crossing the bridge, I end up in the moat, and my first death. Probably one of many dozens that I?ll encounter along the way.
Restarting my game, I navigate across the bridge successfully this time around and I make my way into the castle and talk with the king. It seems Daventry had 3 magic items – a mirror, a shield, and a chest – that helped keep it safe and prosperous. King Edward lost them through shady deals and if I can find them I will be appointed his heir.
Leaving the castle I wander about the countryside. I find a shack, which seems to have the kingdom?s only other human residents so far, and they are dirt poor. Just sitting at the empty table and waving their arms around madly when I talk with them. They are hungry, or so they say.
With a bit more traveling, I run into a ton of great treasure just laying about the kingdom. Graham finds an elf who just gives him a magic ring, a fairy who blesses him for being nice, a dagger, a golden egg, a four leaf clover, a carrot (maybe I should clue the woodcutter into the field of carrots behind the castle…), a bag of diamonds, and my favorite, a never-ending bowl of stew just sitting on the ground in the woods. What’s up with Daventry anyways? Why is this laying about? The king could get back to his prosperity if he just took a walk through his countryside picking up the things that must be garbage in this magical place.
Of course I run into lots of things to kill Graham as well. A witch. A wolf. A wizard. A troll blocks my way on a bridge. Graham also drowned while taking a quick dip in a lake, because I didn’t type swim fast enough. I’ve learned to travel on the edges of the screens just in case something pops up to try and kill me. That and lots and lots of saving.
The graphics are very dated. Sometimes you wonder what you are really looking at. It’s a battle trying to find out exactly what you need to type to actually look, or take anything on a screen. Still it?s impressive when you think this is 20+ years old and state of the art at the time. Take a look at the tree above. I thought they were pine cones at first, but a simple “take nut” rewarded me with a nut. Eating it also yielded me a gold nugget as well. I’m starting to like this place. What else might be lying around once I take over?
I took my magic bowl of stew to the woodcutter as he seemed hungry. If he couldn’t be bothered to pick a few carrots, why not bring the food to him! With some energetic arm waving, he and his wife were hungry no more and Graham was able to take their fiddle in thanks and play them a jig, and I’m also rewarded with more points!
After a bit more exploration of the countryside, I think it’s about time to get down to figuring out how to acquire the 3 magic items. Maybe figuring out how to get into the door in the mountain would be a good first step?
Time played: 1:03 hours
Deaths: 7
Score: 51 of 158 (Sweet, almost 1/3 of the way there!)
Blogging Quest – King’s Quest I – Day 0
Welcome to Blogging Quest. This is going to be my attempt to play through all of the Sierra ?Quest? games, one by one, and blogging everything along the way. Where better to start than with King’s Quest I – Quest for the Crown, the very first of the many Quest?s we?ll undertake.
Where to start with Sierra and me? I’ve talked previously about my love of Sierra games, and blogged my memories of playing Kings Quest 4 and Space Quest 3. They were the first games company that I really knew and was a fan of as a kid. I didn’t realize it at first, but my first exposure to Sierra was in the Apple/Commodore lab at my elementary school. Troll’s Tale was what we got to play after finishing up with Oregon Trail, or other educational games. And my next experience was on my grandma’s Apple IIe, with Cranston Manor. These games settled me into an irrational love of adventure games.
My first introduction to King’s Quest must have been around 1985/1986. My nerdy friends and I all played computer games, with only a few of them having a NES, so computer games were the common language of games between us all. A friend, Jeff if I remember right, came to school one day and was going on and on about this game he’d just played. It was great! You could walk around behind things, in front of them. You typed in what you wanted to do. You wanted to open a door? Type “Open Door” and it opened, right there on the screen! It understood you! (You could even type in bad words and it would chastise you.) Sweet!
Of course during the days of old, everyone traded and copied games for each other, so he quickly gave me the disk, which thanks to his IMB PCjr wouldn’t work on my sweet Amstrad 1512. Nevertheless, we played it at his place, and I learned the simple joys of the never ending Sierra deaths, and found to save early, save often was essential when playing a Sierra game (and even then, you could screw up and have to restart!). I began my love of the Sierra adventure game that would last me for many many years to come.
King’s Quest I was originally created to be a showcase piece for IBM’s new PCjr line of computers. It was to take advantage of the great new graphics and sound that the PCjr was offering over the competition. It was amazing at the time for an adventure game. You could see the protagonist. You could walk through the scenes and interact with them, where before they were just static screens. It wasn’t long before the game was ported to other systems, including a wide PC release, along with the Apple II, Amiga and others.
I’ll be playing the 1987 wide release of the game for DOS, it’s essentially the same as the original 1984 release, but made to run on EGA computers, and not just on the Tandy 1000 or PCjr. For a bit more history on the game and other info check out the Wikipedia page on it.
Coming soon! Day 1 of Blogging Quest – King’s Quest I – Quest for the Crown!
Blogging Quest – A Playthrough Blog Of Sierra’s Quest Games?
I’ve been toying with the idea of doing my own Gameplay Blog, but realizing I have limited time and such to do so. I think I’ve got a possible way to pull something together and I think that it could work.
The idea is to play through all of the old classic Sierra On-Line adventure games, in chronological order, starting with King’s Quest – Quest for The Crown and working my way though the Space Quests, Police Quests, Quests for Glory (aka Hero’s Quest), Manhunter and a few other side adventures along the way.
I’ve played through most all of the older games, and a number of the newish ones but I’ve got a lot of remembering and typing and searching ahead of me if this actually all works out. Stay tuned!
Arcade Culture – What Gaming Lost?
I’m working on a bit of original content here for the site, but I saw this and had to post and comment on it.
On Insomnia.ac they’ve just put up an excellent commentary on Arcade Culture. To briefly summarize, Japan still has an arcade industry that is thriving, unlike the US, and that industry and culture represent more about what games used to be about and in his mind should also still be about.
The issue comes down in many ways to difficulty. Arcade games are supposed to be difficult to make you loose. This way you have to spend more to play more. The difference between us and Japan – we continue, and loose quickly again, where in Japan, you play with one credit, and when you loose, you don’t continue, you start over at the beginning again.
I love this idea. I played with the pocket full of tokens when I was younger, playing just to keep playing and never really getting better at games because I didn’t think I had to. I always had more tokens in my pocket to play with! But with the one credit, no continue way of playing you actually are forced to get better at the game. To master it.
Think of it this way. When life is cheap, you are not focused on becoming better. Think of the Contra Code. 30 lives! And you needed them! Badly! Contra was hard. My wife and I were replaying through this recently (Merry Christmas Jess!) and after playing through it a few times with the 30 lives, both she and I found that we could make it through all of levels 1 and 2 loosing only 1 or 2 men. Contra isn’t so difficult that it cannot be completed without the plethora of extra men, but like many we rely on them with the later stages, but through practice we’d been able to finish levels based on skill, not 30 extra guys.
Many modern console games hold your had way too much. They make things easier, saves are quick and plentiful and truly there isn’t much use for “lives” anymore when you can always just load your game, or use your unlimited continues. This isn’t to say I don’t like that though. With family and work, you don’t always have the time to spend plodding through level 1 just to get to the point you were stuck at yesterday on level 2 again, but at the same time I want my games to be a bit more difficult.
I’ve never beaten Super Mario Brothers. Not even with continues. This is more to do with my skill level in the game, and my not putting the time in to improve. The game starts you from the beginning each and every time you play, and it’s up to you to have the skill to complete it. I’ve completed Super Mario World though. All I had to do with it, was continue from my saves and keep plugging away on the same level I left off at. There is a big difference.
Blogging Games
A new fad in the game blog world seems to be Game Blogging, or taking a series and blogging your experience of playing an entire series all the way through.
I like this approach to game writing, if done well. There are examples out there where the author knows the series well, adds in commentary about gameplay changes, the backstory and coherence of the game world, and it works incredibly well. Others, end up being a walkthrough of the game with little more to add than what you could find on Gamefaqs.
Here’s a listing of a few I’ve found, some are better than others, but all are worth a look:
Blogging Ultima – The first that I found, and so far the best example of what blogging a game should be about. He’s up to Ultima VII already, but he’s played as well the side games along the way like Ultima Underworld, and Savage Empires. He offers less a running commentary on “went here, did this, then did this”, but more of a look at the mechanics, the history of the Ultima world, how they tie together, fun ways of gaming the systems and more all while still progressing you through the story of the game. Done quite well.
Blogging Zelda – The author’s only up to Zelda II so we’re pretty early into it, but already I feel a bit let down by it. He’s done a great job of keeping the tone informal and fun, but I feel like he’s missing opportunities to really explore the lore of the Zelda games (how nerdy does that sound). Zelda II is a perfect game to make connections to others ones with, but while his commenters are helping him out with them, I wish they were there already. Still, it’s a fun read, and he’s got a great writing voice for the games. *Update* – See below.
Blogging Final Fantasy – This one is more for a great fun take on the games, done with humor, and forgetting any stuffy over analyzing of the games. Perfect for a series that has way too much fanboy background to it, and has been done to death over and over and over.
Final Fantasy I – 4 White Wizards – This brave blogger, inspired by the blogs above, has taken on the task of completing FFI using a team consisting entirely of just 4 white wizards, the game’s weakest fighters, but best healers. He’s just getting started but could be worth watching.
Blogging Dragon Quest – Another “walkthrough” style game blog. Here’s a series that has a long history behind it, but unlike Final Fantasy, it hasn’t been done to death by American audiences. Still, like all of the blogs, reading along with an adventure is always fun, I just wish there was a bit more “meat”.
So you want to be an ARCADE Champion? – Concept? Take the Twin Galaxies arcade record book, start at A and play through till Z, and see if you can beat, or even place in the top scores that are in the book. It’s a great ride so far, through obscure games that we’ve all forgotten about in our MAME libraries.
That’s all I’ve found at the moment. I’m sure there are more out there. Drop me a line if you know of another one and we’ll add it on in!
Update 6/20/07 – Blogging Zelda linked back to me, and I think I now understand more where he’s coming from on the blog and appreciate it a lot more. He’s played through a few of the games, but has forgotten a lot of what he’s played and is more re-exploring the games all over again, and making new discoveries along the way. He’s not pretending to be a treasure chest of background information, and frankly I’d rather not have him be that way. Some of the best insights into games, books, movies or music can come from those who don’t have the baggage hanging over them, like the 20+ years of Zelda in this case. I look forward to reading more by him over these next few months as he continues to go places I have not made the journey into yet at all.
Kickstand Coffee Closed?
Visiting Tacoma blog Exit 133, I saw that the Kickstand Cafe has a “Closed Until Further Notice” sign up in it’s window.
According to the comments, the current owners Chris and Dawn are looking at selling the place, and that a possible new owner will regut the thing and start fresh with a new name, and new decor. Best of luck to the new owners, and I look forward to visiting for a cup of coffee sometime.
Google Analytics – Updated
It’s odd. I was thinking about Measure Map the other day. It’s the easy to use, blog specific, website stat tracker/blog analysis tool. I’ve been using it for Cinder Inc. for a year or so now, and have loved how it gave me great data on who came, and from where among other things.
Of course, Google bought Measure Map and any updates on it ceased. I was worried that with the Google buyout that it was just something they picked up, so it wouldn’t compete with their own Google Analytics. I have been playing with Google’s own tool for a few weeks now, and while it’s useful, it wasn’t very user friendly, and much of it’s features just didn’t seem all that useful with the amount of traffic that Cinder Inc. gets.
Today, Jeff Veen, the lead designer on the old Measure Map project, announced today a new version of Google Analytics, full of many of the features that made Measure Map easy to use, but also with a much more power and usability behind them. It’s a cross breed of the two previous programs, but so so much more it looks like.
They are rolling it out slowly to their users, with the top users getting it first. I look forward to the time I can play with it here in the future!
Puzzle Quest – Challenge of the Warlords
Puzzle Quest – Challenge of the Warlords
I heard about this game through a recommendation on Quarter to Three and after hearing the buzz I knew I’d have to get it. It’s a puzzle game, similar to the match three colors of Bejeweled, but it adds a fantasy story and skill system on top to really add another complete level.
You pick from one of four typical medieval classes (Knight, Warrior, Druid, Wizard) and with each having their own special skills that have different effects. You move about the country side doing quests for people (kill the rats in the cellar type things), but what makes it fun is the battles. You fight the rats, orcs or elves by playing a Bejeweled like game, with each side taking turns on the board. You match 3 or more of like gems of different colors to gain magic points so you can use your skills, while matching three skulls causes damage to your opponent. Couple this with the fact that your opponent is trying to do the same to you, and you start having to look moves ahead to try and win.
Filled with numerous variations, like being able to capture enemies so you can either learn their skills or use them as a “horse” and ride them into battle, or sieging the different cities you come across and bringing them under your control, the game is addicting. Jess and I both fight over who gets the DS to play before bed to just play a few more levels, or complete the next quest. Addicting, fun, easy to get into, but a lot of depth and different strategies to take as you progress in the game. The story is nothing to write home about, but then this isn’t about the story! It’s about beating an orc by playing bejeweled! What could be better!
