King’s Quest
Written by Judith // January 30, 2016 // Game Lore // No comments
Sierra is back! In 2014, Activision Publishing, a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, announced the revival of Sierra, with a mission to create new indie games and revivals of classic titles. One of their first offerings was a reboot of King’s Quest, published in five separate chapters, the first of which released in July 2015 and is available on Steam.
The original King’s Quest was first published by Sierra On-Line (now Sierra Entertainment) in 1983. It featured Sir Grahame on a quest to retrieve hoards of treasure and become king. The Digital Games Museum’s collection houses the 1987 re-release, which had improved graphics, an expanded backstory, the rename of “Grahame” to “Graham,” and the subtitle “Quest for the Crown“.
Sierra created the Adventure Game Interpreter (AGI) game engine for King’s Quest as the programming was too complicated for assembly language. Originally created for IBM PCjr, later versions of King’s Quest expanded to other platforms such as the Tandy and Apple II. DGM’s copy runs on MS-DOS.
2011.008.005 – Gift of Ben Rog-Wilhelm
