How to get money by playing video games

After ripping my way through King’s Quest I, it’s now time to move onto the next game on the list, King’s Quest II: Romancing the Throne. This is another game that I’ve played through previously, but again that was a long, long time ago. Unlike the first game, I can’t recall ever playing King’s Quest II a second time, so perhaps I’ll find it a little more challenging. Developed way back in 1985, it wasn’t particularly surprising to find Sierra quickly pumping out a sequel after the success of the first game in the King’s Quest series. Roberta Williams decided she wouldn’t try to push the technology too far with the sequel, particularly as disk space and memory restrictions couldn’t cope with any dramatic improvements. The graphics and animations would be created the same way and the text parser would also use the same technology as were used first time round. She did feel however that there was one area in particular that she could build on while staying within the restrictions of the time, and that’s the story.


The story of King’s Quest 1 was a rather simplistic affair. Find three magical items for the King and be rewarded with the kingdom itself. The King of course very conveniently passes away the very moment the player returns with the items, leaving Graham seated on the throne as King of Daventry at the conclusion of the game. King’s Quest II picks up one year later. The year that has past was one of great prosperity for Daventry, ruled by a King who possessed a bottomless chest, an invincible shield and a mirror that tells the future. When looking in the mirror one day, Graham is shocked to see former King Edward, who warns him that Daventry will soon become weak if he fails to find an heir. The Prime Minister of Daventry, Gerwain, suggests to Graham that he hold a celebration where women from all over the land can come and try to win his favour. Unfortunately, while Graham does take Gerwain’s advice, he doesn’t manage to find his perfect match. Amusingly, his reasons for rejecting them are fairly finicky, such as “one maid squinted, another tripped over everything in sight”.


While standing in front of the magic mirror, Graham wonders aloud why he can’t find a woman that touches his heart and his dreams, despite there being hundreds of lovely maidens in the kingdom. The mirror immediately displays the most beautiful woman Graham had ever seen, and yet she looks sad, with a tear rolling down her face. The mirror tells him that this woman is Valanice and that she has been imprisoned in a tower by a witch called Hagatha and which is guarded by a ferocious beast in a land called Kolyma. To rescue her, he must venture forth and find three keys which unlock the doors to Kolyma. So…it should be pretty clear by now that Roberta spent a little bit more time on the story this time round, but that merely makes it longer rather than more intelligent or less cliché than the first. It will be interesting to see whether the in-game dialogue is improved upon, or whether the characters that pop up throughout have more personality than they did in the previous effort. I really can’t remember.

Well here we are! When I started this blog, I was already looking forward to replaying the Quest for Glory series. In fact, that was one of the reasons I placed criteria on what games can or can’t be added to the playlist. The last thing I wanted to do was create a scenario where I’d never get to the likes of the Quest for Glory and Monkey Island games, both of which gave me many happy memories. I specifically remember playing the first Quest for Glory (called Hero’s Quest at the time). I don’t know if others out there experience something similar (I assume they do), but I can also very easily recall a lot of other aspects of my life that occurred around the time I was playing the game. I know what music I was obsessed with and I remember which friends I was spending a lot of time with. In fact, one of those friends and I would play through adventure games at the same time (similar to the way Chet and I are about to do), calling each other up if we got really stuck. I believe Hero’s Quest was the first game we did that with, and I’ve listed it in my top five games ever since.


Many of the scenes are permanently implanted in my memory, as is the music, which I can bring to mind at any moment of any day. There are not many pieces of music in the games I’ve played so far where I could say the same thing, although the Leisure Suit Larry and Space Quest themes were also very memorable. The big question is whether or not Hero’s Quest can possibly come close to the lofty position it holds in my memory. As excited as I am to play it, I fear I may tarnish the nostalgia, the way I did that time where I watched Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal back to back (neither have aged well, let me tell you!). I’m also a little daunted at the prospect of playing and blogging about Hero’s Quest at the same time as Chet, who is by the far the better writer, not to mention doing so under the no doubt intrigued eyes of Corey Cole himself. Speaking of Corey, it looks as though the Cole’s next game, Hero-U, will get the funds it needs on Kickstarter. Exciting times!


Enough chit chat, what’s Hero’s Quest all about? Well the first thing I should cover off is the name. Why was the game called “Hero’s Quest: So You Want to Be a Hero?” and then later changed to “Quest for Glory: So You Want to Be a Hero?”? The answer is that the Milton Bradley Company had already trademarked the name HeroQuest (for their board game that I also played as a teenager), so it was changed to Quest for Glory to avoid confusion. Hero’s Quest was designed and written by Lori Ann Cole (wife of our good friend Corey). It was programmed by Corey, as well as Larry B. Scott, Robert Fischbach and Jerry Shaw (the latter two having already worked on Police Quest 2). Interestingly the graphics appear to have been handled by four Sierra employees that would all go on to work on Codename: ICEMAN (Jeff Crowe, Gerald Moore, Kenn Nishiuye and Cindy Walker). Finally, that highly memorable music that I talked about earlier was produced by Mark Seibert, whose list of games during this era is almost as long as my playlist.


Hero’s Quest is renowned for being a genre-defining game, being a genuine adventure / role-playing game hybrid. It has a lot of standard adventure game features and is built on Sierra’s SCI0 engine (the same one that was used for Leisure Suit Larry 2, Police Quest 2 and Codename: ICEMAN), yet it also contains many characteristics of the RPG genre. These include character class selection (fighter, magic user or thief) and character statistics that really do influence play. There are abilities such as strength, intelligence and agility, and skills such as parry, stealth and magic. I believe Beyond Zork had introduced a strong RPG influence to adventure games some years prior, but since that was Interactive Fiction, Hero’s Quest was the first graphical adventure game of note to do so. The game also introduced an increased level of realism, with day and night impacting play both visually and from an encounter perspective. The main character has to eat regularly and becomes tired from running and fighting, requiring rest and sleep. I don’t really recall having to eat, but I definitely recall having to watch my stamina while fighting. I’m genuinely interested to see how the combination of my favourite genres holds up today!


I believe I have played both the original SCI0 version of the game and the SCI1.1 version that was released in 1992 (both in my early teens), but I can’t be sure of that. The remake drops the text parser for an entirely point and click approach, and while it’s once again tempting to play the shinier version, I’ll be playing the original so I can make a fair judgement of the game compared to others of the same period (I’ll likely play the remake when we reach 1992). Thankfully both versions came in the Quest For Glory Collection that I purchased from GOG in preparation last year. Quite a few readers have also made that purchase, and others have since won the collection for predicting what score I will give each game. Since Lars-Erik (our awesome sponsor) has already sent me the GOG gift key for Emmanuelle and I’ve temporarily skipped that game, I will be offering the collection to the first person to solve my riddle below (the next game is on me Lars-Erik). Regular readers will know where to find it. I do hope the winners play along with me, and make sure you all visit Chet’s blog at http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com in the coming weeks to see his take on things. I believe he’ll be playing as a thief, while I’ll be entering Spielburg as a fighter. Why? Well, as Chet would say...because!



Example Bet:
Bet: "Genccrq V nz ol jvmneq fcryy
Naq lrg V srry zl cbjre fjryy
Gjragl lrnef V ovqr zl gvzr
Abj V funyy pbzcyrgr zl pevzr

Jub nz V?"