The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
Messed around with Kings quest 4 a bit, I’ve never played it before but I’ve always been pretty firm in the belief that the only good kings quest (aside from the AGD remakes) was 6 and it really hasn’t done anything to change my mind. Walked around a big forest area with no real direction and got killed by an ogre. *shrug*
Messed around with Kings quest 4 a bit, I’ve never played it before but I’ve always been pretty firm in the belief that the only good kings quest (aside from the AGD remakes) was 6 and it really hasn’t done anything to change my mind. Walked around a big forest area with no real direction and got killed by an ogre. *shrug*
A recent Roberta Williams quote that haunts me forever is that she doesn't play many video games, even adventure ones, because she far prefers designing them.
I mean, she practically invented the genre. Kind of hard to hold that quote against her with regards to King's Quest 4, almost all of the early games in that series were both a graphical and user friendliness leaps forward, despite what hindsight might suggest.
She was behind Colonels Bequest and Kings Quest 6, so the woman has some skills.
I think the big thing about most of the kings quest games were that they were usually debuting some new engine or technology, and were often designed in conjunction with the development of the technology, so they tend to be a bit bare bones compared to the work later games would do with that same technology.
Like you look at the original EGA SCI parser text engine that kings quest 4 introduced, and a bit later you get Quest for Glory 2 and Colonel's Bequest on that same engine, which are just worlds beyond KQ4.
And then again with KG5, the game itself is kind of lame but introduces VGA graphics, point and click, and in later releases the CD/voice stuff, and then other people build on it and you get absolute bangers like Space quest 4, Conquests of the Longbow, Kings Quest 6, and eventually Gabriel Knight and Quest for Glory 4.
Oh right. Years ago somebody made a Star Wars mod for Duke Nukem 3D that used the Dark Forces sprites. The way the creator avoided getting obliterated by Lucasarts was IIRC you had to actually have the Dark Forces CD in the drive to install the mod or something like that. I thought this Starfox thing was that sort of deal.
Working through a few more adventure games from the steam sale.
Freddy pharkas frontier pharmacist- what do you get when you combine racial stereotypes and fake chemistry in a western setting? Something that sucks apparently. Going to be honest, I can forgive some things as being relics of their time, like Apu in old simpsons episodes or whatever. But the simpsons is actually good. This game has you doing compounding pharmacy with a terrible interface looking up instructions from the manual… Which might be ok for a one off puzzle but you have to do it over and over… on freaking timers. Jeeze. Apparently people have fond memories or something, I am going to chalk that up to nostalgia. Made it half way through, did not care for it, won’t finish.
Space Quest 5 - now this I like. About half way through but so far it reminds me a lot of the orville - it’s clearly mocking star trek but you also do a lot of the kind of thing that you would do in a Star Trek adventure game and it holds up in that role. Away missions, EVAs, aliens and robots, colonies and starships in danger, etc. Hopefully it holds up but so far I dig it.
She was behind Colonels Bequest and Kings Quest 6, so the woman has some skills.
I think the big thing about most of the kings quest games were that they were usually debuting some new engine or technology, and were often designed in conjunction with the development of the technology, so they tend to be a bit bare bones compared to the work later games would do with that same technology.
Like you look at the original EGA SCI parser text engine that kings quest 4 introduced, and a bit later you get Quest for Glory 2 and Colonel's Bequest on that same engine, which are just worlds beyond KQ4.
And then again with KG5, the game itself is kind of lame but introduces VGA graphics, point and click, and in later releases the CD/voice stuff, and then other people build on it and you get absolute bangers like Space quest 4, Conquests of the Longbow, Kings Quest 6, and eventually Gabriel Knight and Quest for Glory 4.
I always appreciated how Sierra Online approached their off-Roberta series- they were all funded on the assumption that the first game wouldn't make a profit, but would generate enough of an audience and word of mouth off its quality that its sequels would.
[edit] Also, personally, always a much bigger Space Quest and Quest for Glory fan than King's Quest. The former for the funny writing, the latter for the fantastic world building.
She was behind Colonels Bequest and Kings Quest 6, so the woman has some skills.
I think the big thing about most of the kings quest games were that they were usually debuting some new engine or technology, and were often designed in conjunction with the development of the technology, so they tend to be a bit bare bones compared to the work later games would do with that same technology.
Like you look at the original EGA SCI parser text engine that kings quest 4 introduced, and a bit later you get Quest for Glory 2 and Colonel's Bequest on that same engine, which are just worlds beyond KQ4.
And then again with KG5, the game itself is kind of lame but introduces VGA graphics, point and click, and in later releases the CD/voice stuff, and then other people build on it and you get absolute bangers like Space quest 4, Conquests of the Longbow, Kings Quest 6, and eventually Gabriel Knight and Quest for Glory 4.
I always appreciated how Sierra Online approached their off-Roberta series- they were all funded on the assumption that the first game wouldn't make a profit, but would generate enough of an audience and word of mouth off its quality that its sequels would.
[edit] Also, personally, always a much bigger Space Quest and Quest for Glory fan than King's Quest. The former for the funny writing, the latter for the fantastic world building.
Those investments usually paid off too with better games. Sure there were flops and missteps every once in a while, but you look at the really great Sierra games - Kings Quest 6, Space Quest 3,4,5, quest for glory 2 and 4, conquest of the Longbow… These were sequels that built on experience from previous games. Even Colonels Bequest was a spiritual sequel to Mystery house, so really Gabriel Knight was the only home run out of the gate.
I do feel like Roberta Williams wasn’t necessarily into the fantasy games and was probably more interested in horror and mystery games - her best and most interesting solo games (KQ6 was codesigned and written with Jane Jenson) tended to the ones that leaned in that direction - The Colonel’s Bequest and Phantasmagoria.
Edit: also played just a bit of police quest 2 on recommendation- it really is kind of brilliant in its mundanity. Like the first puzzle is you get to work in your car, and the door is locked. The solution is you have to go to your car, take the keys from the ignition, and use them to open the door.
Which is hilarious from an adventure game perspective, I spent like 10 minutes trying to pick the lock or find an alternate way in.
Nearing the end (I assume) of Space quest 5, it just keeps on being great.
Thinking next either playing Fate of Atlantis or making a run at Gabriel Knight 1 or Quest for Glory 3, which I never finished all the way through for some reason.
Gabriel knight 2 is definitely killer, 3 is more meh IIRC.
Its kind of funny with the sierra stuff, there’s a lot of chaff with the wheat. With Lucasarts you can just tell someone “go play anything released between Secret of monkey island and Grim Fandango.”, with Sierra you have to say something like “play Police Quest 2, Space quest 3-5, quest for glory 1-4, kings quest 5, colonels bequest, conquest of the longbow, and Gabriel Knight 1-2”.
And then they say “and if I like those I should go play more games right?” And its like “eh…”
Not that the rest don’t have value at all, and there are certainly people that will stan for particularly games, but I feel like its definitely more like “play the other games if you want, but go play these other 20 adventure games by other companies first and circle back”
Just as a note too for quest for glory fans to go with the above GK3 fan patch, there is an enhanced edition fan patched for quest for glory 3 that fixes a lot of bugs and add workarounds to some issues that is recommended.
Also I think the most solid current way to play quest for glory 4 if you want to avoid problems is to play the original in SCUMMVM, as they have implemented a ton of fixes beyond the gog version.
Just as a note too for quest for glory fans to go with the above GK3 fan patch, there is an enhanced edition fan patched for quest for glory 3 that fixes a lot of bugs and add workarounds to some issues that is recommended.
Also I think the most solid current way to play quest for glory 4 if you want to avoid problems is to play the original in SCUMMVM, as they have implemented a ton of fixes beyond the gog version.
But did they faithfully recreate the janky 2D fighting game combat?
I played through lands of lore SCUMMVM and while fully enjoyable, the timing of everything feels off compared to the DOS version. Its tougher to time realtime elements exactly and SCUMM often gets by on it rarely mattering in adventure games.
Just as a note too for quest for glory fans to go with the above GK3 fan patch, there is an enhanced edition fan patched for quest for glory 3 that fixes a lot of bugs and add workarounds to some issues that is recommended.
Also I think the most solid current way to play quest for glory 4 if you want to avoid problems is to play the original in SCUMMVM, as they have implemented a ton of fixes beyond the gog version.
I did not know Quest for Glory was so buggy. It does seem like you might as well play all Sierra games in ScummVM. It tends to fix a lot of issues in games.
It also fixes the microscope puzzle in The 7th Guest.
Also, it seems like the current ScummVM uses an MT-32 emulator or something as the default if a game allows it. I noticed it did that on Sam & Max.
For some reason, it would not let me point to Munt on my computer.
Just as a note too for quest for glory fans to go with the above GK3 fan patch, there is an enhanced edition fan patched for quest for glory 3 that fixes a lot of bugs and add workarounds to some issues that is recommended.
Also I think the most solid current way to play quest for glory 4 if you want to avoid problems is to play the original in SCUMMVM, as they have implemented a ton of fixes beyond the gog version.
I did not know Quest for Glory was so buggy. It does seem like you might as well play all Sierra games in ScummVM. It tends to fix a lot of issues in games.
It also fixes the microscope puzzle in The 7th Guest.
Also, it seems like the current ScummVM uses an MT-32 emulator or something as the default if a game allows it. I noticed it did that on Sam & Max.
For some reason, it would not let me point to Munt on my computer.
I’ve never heard many complaints about QFG1 or 2, either the originals or remakes (which seem to be about even in quality, the remakes are more consistent with the later games visually and a bit more user friendly but the EGA/parser versions have a ton of charm I feel like its worth experiencing at least once).
QFG 3 and qfg 4 were pretty buggy on release, probably owing to the fact that they were much more complex and had more going on under the hood than most contemporary sierra games.
The later releases including the gog/collection releases got rid of a lot of bugs, the fan patch for qfg3 got rid of a lot of bugs, and scummvm got rid of a lot of bugs.
Right now as far as I am aware playing qfg3 with the enhanced edition fan patch in scummvm is pretty stable, and playing qfg4 in scummvm is pretty stable, and both should have minimal problems.
The enhanced edition fan patch for qfg4 adds some removed content but IIRC accidentally reverted a couple of bug fixes, but they are pretty minor issues IIRC. Mostly what it restores are voiced lines for things though which I don’t know if is really that noticeable on the whole so if you want the most stable experience possible you probably aren’t missing much. Either way is probably going to be fine for most people.
I’m not sure how much difference if any there is between running the enhanced patch for qfg4 with scummvm vs dosbox. The enhanced patch for qfg3 is totally scummvm compatible because they intentionally added compatibility for it, but I don’t know if anyone has done that for qfg4s enhanced patch yet.
Note also for QFG2 the VGA remake is a more recent semiofficial remake by agd interactive/himalaya games, which is very nice and free but will not work within scummvm (it could in theory be made to work along with their kings quest games because they use the AGS engine but IIRC has not been a priority because it already works fine on modern systems). Probably not any kind of actual issue unless you are playing on an android pad or something.
I am a huge fan of the parser version of the original Quest for Glory/Hero Quest. I always felt something was lost with mouse interfaces- sure, they're a lot easier to interact with, however the solution space to a parser is, in theory, endless, while mouse solutions boil down everything to "act on object". Especially when verbs went away, so you were just left with Look and Use.
I'm trying to remember if it was Al Lowe or the Space Quest guys who would have give their games to playtesters, and the games would record their (parser) inputs, so they could then go and have the game respond appropriately to any new inputs they encountered. Rinse repeat.
I am a huge fan of the parser version of the original Quest for Glory/Hero Quest. I always felt something was lost with mouse interfaces- sure, they're a lot easier to interact with, however the solution space to a parser is, in theory, endless, while mouse solutions boil down everything to "act on object". Especially when verbs went away, so you were just left with Look and Use.
I'm trying to remember if it was Al Lowe or the Space Quest guys who would have give their games to playtesters, and the games would record their (parser) inputs, so they could then go and have the game respond appropriately to any new inputs they encountered. Rinse repeat.
I agree somewhat, however I can really count on one hand the parser games that did something truly interesting with it, most of the time it was just the scumm interface but with having to type verbs manually and guess the authors intent (I remember in space quest 3 trying to pick up some electronic component on the ground and trying 5 minutes to figure out what they wanted me to call it before the game accepted “object”. Sometimes the manuals would even include all the used verbs so you didn’t have to guess that as much, but at that point it really was just the maniac mansion interface by hand. Also, it can be annoying to switch back and forth constantly between mouse and keyboard.
Still it did add immersion, even if it was often somewhat illusory in actual practical effect.
I will say something like the colonel’s bequest would have been hard to do in point and click, and indeed that was part of the reason the sequel fell a bit flat compared to the original. Rather than taking notes and asking about things that seemed important it just turned into “exhaust every conversation tree over and over”.
Ended up playing quest for glory 3 and finishing it this time.
I don’t get the why some series fans don’t like it, I really enjoyed it honestly. Its a bit short, but Tarna is a great city, and I liked the plot and worldbuilding. It seemed like a pretty perfect break between 2 and 4.
I see people complain about not having much to do as the thief but you solve the main conflict in the most theify way possible…. I also see people complain about the demons coming out of nowhere as a threat but Rakeesh literally won’t shut up about them from the beginning of the game. Like “some asshole summoned some demons and I’m worried about it” is literally the first thing he says to you.
Since the Christmas split I received my Atari VCS, opened it for Christmas, had it overheat after being on for more than 10 minutes, and now have a replacement on its way from Atari. The time I spent with the Centipede remake was fun though (until it shut down). Next week I should be up and running.
Posts
https://www.retronews.com/unofficial-pc-port-of-star-fox-64-released-with-enhancements/
I doubt there would have been a guarantee. If I had gotten it, it would have been only for display purposes.
Actually, I'm curious if it still had the manual. You needed it to figure out where to go on the star map.
A recent Roberta Williams quote that haunts me forever is that she doesn't play many video games, even adventure ones, because she far prefers designing them.
I think the big thing about most of the kings quest games were that they were usually debuting some new engine or technology, and were often designed in conjunction with the development of the technology, so they tend to be a bit bare bones compared to the work later games would do with that same technology.
Like you look at the original EGA SCI parser text engine that kings quest 4 introduced, and a bit later you get Quest for Glory 2 and Colonel's Bequest on that same engine, which are just worlds beyond KQ4.
And then again with KG5, the game itself is kind of lame but introduces VGA graphics, point and click, and in later releases the CD/voice stuff, and then other people build on it and you get absolute bangers like Space quest 4, Conquests of the Longbow, Kings Quest 6, and eventually Gabriel Knight and Quest for Glory 4.
How do you make this work? It says you need a legal copy of Starfox, so if I buy a cart how does it hook up to the computer?
Even if the floppies work, I can't remember when I last had a PC with a working floppy drive.
Steam ID: Good Life
You need a ROM of starfox 64. If you want a legal one, that's going to involve an n64 cart dumper.
They are just CYAing. Same reason the name is something odd like "Starship - Centuri Alfa"
Freddy pharkas frontier pharmacist- what do you get when you combine racial stereotypes and fake chemistry in a western setting? Something that sucks apparently. Going to be honest, I can forgive some things as being relics of their time, like Apu in old simpsons episodes or whatever. But the simpsons is actually good. This game has you doing compounding pharmacy with a terrible interface looking up instructions from the manual… Which might be ok for a one off puzzle but you have to do it over and over… on freaking timers. Jeeze. Apparently people have fond memories or something, I am going to chalk that up to nostalgia. Made it half way through, did not care for it, won’t finish.
Space Quest 5 - now this I like. About half way through but so far it reminds me a lot of the orville - it’s clearly mocking star trek but you also do a lot of the kind of thing that you would do in a Star Trek adventure game and it holds up in that role. Away missions, EVAs, aliens and robots, colonies and starships in danger, etc. Hopefully it holds up but so far I dig it.
[edit] Also, personally, always a much bigger Space Quest and Quest for Glory fan than King's Quest. The former for the funny writing, the latter for the fantastic world building.
Those investments usually paid off too with better games. Sure there were flops and missteps every once in a while, but you look at the really great Sierra games - Kings Quest 6, Space Quest 3,4,5, quest for glory 2 and 4, conquest of the Longbow… These were sequels that built on experience from previous games. Even Colonels Bequest was a spiritual sequel to Mystery house, so really Gabriel Knight was the only home run out of the gate.
I do feel like Roberta Williams wasn’t necessarily into the fantasy games and was probably more interested in horror and mystery games - her best and most interesting solo games (KQ6 was codesigned and written with Jane Jenson) tended to the ones that leaned in that direction - The Colonel’s Bequest and Phantasmagoria.
Edit: also played just a bit of police quest 2 on recommendation- it really is kind of brilliant in its mundanity. Like the first puzzle is you get to work in your car, and the door is locked. The solution is you have to go to your car, take the keys from the ignition, and use them to open the door.
Which is hilarious from an adventure game perspective, I spent like 10 minutes trying to pick the lock or find an alternate way in.
Nearing the end (I assume) of Space quest 5, it just keeps on being great.
Thinking next either playing Fate of Atlantis or making a run at Gabriel Knight 1 or Quest for Glory 3, which I never finished all the way through for some reason.
He had a blast playing that character.
Its kind of funny with the sierra stuff, there’s a lot of chaff with the wheat. With Lucasarts you can just tell someone “go play anything released between Secret of monkey island and Grim Fandango.”, with Sierra you have to say something like “play Police Quest 2, Space quest 3-5, quest for glory 1-4, kings quest 5, colonels bequest, conquest of the longbow, and Gabriel Knight 1-2”.
And then they say “and if I like those I should go play more games right?” And its like “eh…”
Not that the rest don’t have value at all, and there are certainly people that will stan for particularly games, but I feel like its definitely more like “play the other games if you want, but go play these other 20 adventure games by other companies first and circle back”
Not certain if they fixed it up.
I will have to see if there is a fan patch.
Edit: Yeah. Here is a patch that upgrades it for modern windows.
https://www.nexusmods.com/bloodofthesacredbloodofthedamned/mods/1
There is also a mini-comic that was the prologue for the game. You can find it on the web.
It came with the game.
It think the gog version does not have it for some reason.
Here it is:
https://sierrachest.com/index.php?a=games&id=39&title=gabriel-knight-3&fld=box
I know the cat hair mustache puzzle was a meme for a good while.
It does not include the expansions. There is a fan patch for that too.
Also I think the most solid current way to play quest for glory 4 if you want to avoid problems is to play the original in SCUMMVM, as they have implemented a ton of fixes beyond the gog version.
But did they faithfully recreate the janky 2D fighting game combat?
I played through lands of lore SCUMMVM and while fully enjoyable, the timing of everything feels off compared to the DOS version. Its tougher to time realtime elements exactly and SCUMM often gets by on it rarely mattering in adventure games.
https://x.com/yuzokoshiro/status/1874844127906722212
I did not know Quest for Glory was so buggy. It does seem like you might as well play all Sierra games in ScummVM. It tends to fix a lot of issues in games.
It also fixes the microscope puzzle in The 7th Guest.
Also, it seems like the current ScummVM uses an MT-32 emulator or something as the default if a game allows it. I noticed it did that on Sam & Max.
For some reason, it would not let me point to Munt on my computer.
I’ve never heard many complaints about QFG1 or 2, either the originals or remakes (which seem to be about even in quality, the remakes are more consistent with the later games visually and a bit more user friendly but the EGA/parser versions have a ton of charm I feel like its worth experiencing at least once).
QFG 3 and qfg 4 were pretty buggy on release, probably owing to the fact that they were much more complex and had more going on under the hood than most contemporary sierra games.
The later releases including the gog/collection releases got rid of a lot of bugs, the fan patch for qfg3 got rid of a lot of bugs, and scummvm got rid of a lot of bugs.
Right now as far as I am aware playing qfg3 with the enhanced edition fan patch in scummvm is pretty stable, and playing qfg4 in scummvm is pretty stable, and both should have minimal problems.
The enhanced edition fan patch for qfg4 adds some removed content but IIRC accidentally reverted a couple of bug fixes, but they are pretty minor issues IIRC. Mostly what it restores are voiced lines for things though which I don’t know if is really that noticeable on the whole so if you want the most stable experience possible you probably aren’t missing much. Either way is probably going to be fine for most people.
I’m not sure how much difference if any there is between running the enhanced patch for qfg4 with scummvm vs dosbox. The enhanced patch for qfg3 is totally scummvm compatible because they intentionally added compatibility for it, but I don’t know if anyone has done that for qfg4s enhanced patch yet.
Note also for QFG2 the VGA remake is a more recent semiofficial remake by agd interactive/himalaya games, which is very nice and free but will not work within scummvm (it could in theory be made to work along with their kings quest games because they use the AGS engine but IIRC has not been a priority because it already works fine on modern systems). Probably not any kind of actual issue unless you are playing on an android pad or something.
I'm trying to remember if it was Al Lowe or the Space Quest guys who would have give their games to playtesters, and the games would record their (parser) inputs, so they could then go and have the game respond appropriately to any new inputs they encountered. Rinse repeat.
I agree somewhat, however I can really count on one hand the parser games that did something truly interesting with it, most of the time it was just the scumm interface but with having to type verbs manually and guess the authors intent (I remember in space quest 3 trying to pick up some electronic component on the ground and trying 5 minutes to figure out what they wanted me to call it before the game accepted “object”. Sometimes the manuals would even include all the used verbs so you didn’t have to guess that as much, but at that point it really was just the maniac mansion interface by hand. Also, it can be annoying to switch back and forth constantly between mouse and keyboard.
Still it did add immersion, even if it was often somewhat illusory in actual practical effect.
I will say something like the colonel’s bequest would have been hard to do in point and click, and indeed that was part of the reason the sequel fell a bit flat compared to the original. Rather than taking notes and asking about things that seemed important it just turned into “exhaust every conversation tree over and over”.
God forbid people make something that actually works.
Fortunatley, it did not brick the console.
Edit: Ok. I got it work. The Rock driver must have been installed twice. I uninstalled it and the patcher worked. Yeesh.
I don’t get the why some series fans don’t like it, I really enjoyed it honestly. Its a bit short, but Tarna is a great city, and I liked the plot and worldbuilding. It seemed like a pretty perfect break between 2 and 4.
I see people complain about not having much to do as the thief but you solve the main conflict in the most theify way possible…. I also see people complain about the demons coming out of nowhere as a threat but Rakeesh literally won’t shut up about them from the beginning of the game. Like “some asshole summoned some demons and I’m worried about it” is literally the first thing he says to you.
The stupid console should have came with a second one anyway.
They are fighting old age