1Jim Chou STS 145 – History of Computer Game Design March 18, 2002 Case History of The King’s Quest Series Sierra Online’s King’s Quest series’ games are among the most popular, prolific, and significant works in the relatively short history of the computer game industry. Arguably it was these games that brought the genre of the adventure game to never before seen recognition in the computer gaming world, coupling intricately-woven, detailed storylines with the latest and greatest in computing technology. King’s Quest did not found the genre, of course; that distinction goes to the perennially revered Adventure and Zork, the staples and ancestors of the genre [Ne99, LBA79]. However, many consider Roberta Williams and her creation, King’s Quest, to be equally significant if not merely more profitable. As significant as the series’ rise to the top is its fall from grace. The adventure game as a genre is no longer demanded, with the advent of even better graphics cards, high-performance CPUs, and the like. Even though one of the indispensable keys to King’s Quest’s success was the introduction of key technologies in its games, ironically the technology has leapt past the genre, moving on to found new genres such as first-person shooters and real-time strategy which have supplanted adventure games at the top of sales lists. Nonetheless, as proof that a good plot can never be overvalued, we will see that the significance and spirit of King’s Quest and the adventure game lives on even in today’s world of high-powered 3D graphics cards. The significance of adventure games cannot be overemphasized. Indeed, it was one of the first genres that could be even considered a genre, its inception so firmly planted in the seeds of computing gaming. Text-adventure games such as Adventure and Zork had already firmly established the genre, as “deterministic, intellectual problem solving [games] in the context of a story.” [Ta99] Roberta Williams merely added on a graphical element, evolving the text-adventure game to a ‘sophisticated’ graphical world. Despite the simplicity of this conception, the evolution to a graphical universe would change the2industry. “Text-only adventure games had already invaded the home computer, and while games such as Colossal Cave, Adventure, and Zork were enjoying much success, game players were growing antsy for some graphics to compliment the beautifully complex stories … With the prospect of giving the computer game industry a shot in the arm, Roberta Williams and her husband Ken began creating software that far eclipsed even the wildest of dreams.” [Dr97] The juxtaposing of graphics and complex stories is only part of what makes an adventure game whole. Another important facet that the series kept from its text-adventure beginnings was the challenging puzzles the player had to solve. This problem-solving aspect of the games characterized the intellectual side of the genre. Certain puzzles often defined a particular game, and were instrumental into making the series such a success. Roberta Williams states, “Designing good puzzles is an art. To jog the player’s mind without giving it all away or making it so tough that they give up – that perfect balance is a very fine line … it’s how you give messages, arrange your clues, dialogue, inventory, and environment.” [Sa00] Mystery House was Roberta Williams’ first endeavor into the graphical adventure game, and in fact, the first well-known endeavor of its kind, period. With Roberta in creative control and her husband Ken at the programming helm, Mystery House was released Apple II in 1980 [Dr97], setting the stage for the first King’s Quest game a few years later. This was definitely a big step up from the text-adventure game, but it definitely retained all the elements of a Zork; with prompts such as “You are in the front yard of a large abandoned Victorian house. Stone steps lead up to a wide porch. Enter command?” What was decidedly missing, however, was movement. There was the visualization of the text in static forms, but no animation. The subsequent3breakthrough in this animation aspect keyed the revolution that was King’s Quest I: Quest for the Crown. Using the arrow keys on the keyboard, the player could actually control the main character’s locomotion, guiding him over drawbridges or into a corner of a room. This was known as “object blocking,” allowing movement of a character on screen to go behind and in front of objects. King’s Quest I was originally released on a platform made by IBM called the PCjr. This new platform was a redesign of the IBM PC aimed at the home market. Among the significant design enhancements that separated the PCjr from its predecessors was the increased graphics and sound capabilities. “In addition to CGA's normal 320 by 200 by 4 [colors] and 640 by 200 by 2 limited-color and monochrome graphics modes, the PCjr was also able to produce 160 by 100 by 16, 160 by 200 by 16, 320 by 200 by 16, and 640 by 200 by 4 color graphics modes – the 16-color modes used the same color palette as color text mode. The sound enhancement came from the addition of a Texas Instruments SN76496 chip, a three-voice tone generator. This increased the number of voices from one to three, with 16 volume levels for each channel, and noise-generation for sound effects.” [Le99] The release date of the PCjr in 1984 coincides with the release date of King’s Quest I, which is actually not a coincidence at all. IBM hired Roberta Williams and her company specifically to make a revolutionary PCjr game that would utilize these increased multimedia capabilities. These efforts led to the “genre-creating” [Le99] King’s Quest, and also explains why many games created in the 1980’s by Sierra used a resolution of 160 by 200, even when higher resolutions became available. 160 by 200 by 16 colors was the PCjr resolution for King’s Quest, so even though the games were ported to other platforms after the quick demise of the PCjr, Sierra games such as King’s Quest retained the same graphics engine and thus used the same resolution. The co-evolutional bridge between technology and game evolution is never more apparent than this union between IBM and King’s Quest. Mystery House had explored new realms of graphical possibility, but the ground-breaking graphics The PCjr.4capabilities of the PCjr directly
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