The Stories So Far

The Stories So Far is Part One of the Authorized King's Quest VII Players Guide by Peter Spear and Jeremy Spear.

Introduction
The King's Quest games are stories. Good stories. Stories not about shooting or kung-fuing things up, or hacking monsters to taco-sized bits with the magic sword of Whatchamicallit, but stories about people and their magical adventures. Their heartbreaks and their triumphs. Stories anyone - old, young, in-between, or non-commital - can enjoy. Let us relate to you a story about the games themselves.

The first time we ever heard about King's Quest was in December of 1984 when we were mooching some review software from John Williams of Sierra On-Line.

"Listen, kid! John said. "We've got this revolutionary new game that you gotta see. It's called King's Quest, and it's just like an animated cartoon. Trust me." Understand something, John is not now and, to the best of our knowledge, has never been a snake oil salesman. He does't even talk like one. Not in our presence anyway. But hype is often an alternate spelling of "extolling the wonders of the latest computer game." Except in the case of King's Quest, John may have been understating his case.

King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride was released in Noveber 1994, the 10th. anniversary of tte release of the orignal game. Over this period of time, the King's Quest series has become the best-selling computer game series in history. By the time you read this, it will have sold more than 3 million copies, most during times when any game selling even 100,000 units was considered a meghit. One can also make a good guess that another 15 million more copies have been ilegally duplicated and (presumably) played.

Two things made King's Quest revolutionary in the beginning. First, the game was fully animated. King Graham (the hero) actually moved from place to place; a dragon's flames needed to be avoided, a bean stalk needed climbing, and a lake needed to be swum. Watching where Graham stepped became as important as figuring out what to do next and how to do it. No one had ever done this before in a full-blown graphic adventure game. There were plenty of action games on the market, but there were no animated cartoons until King's Quest.

The second revolutionay aspect was that the game was written to run on the IBM PC. King's Quest was the first major game to be written for a computer that most people considered to be a serious business tool. OK, so it briefly came out first in black and white, although there were color versions of other types of "home" computers. But, a the time, color cards were rare on PCs. King's Quest demanded them and, over the years, better and better ones. They were still years away from being called "video" cards.

The King's Quest games are also "interactive multimedia" games from before the term was invented. Over its first 10 years, the King's Quest games (along with other Sierra titles) have ignited the popularity, and now necessity, of color graphics in better and better clarity and resolutions. The series set, and keeps setting, higer standards for animation and graphics. It was the first major product to champion sound cards. Along the way King's Quest V was one of the first major CD-ROM hits. And with King's Quest VII, the series introduces animations as smooth and clean as traditional Hollywood cell animaon.

We must also point out that the creator, designer, and writer of that first King's Quest game was a woman named Roberta Williams. Although Roberta had been designing hit adventure games for some years pior to King's Quest, the games' enormous successes played a big part in bringing more and more woman into what was once a heavily male-dominated line of work. This is not a shabby lists of achievements.

We guess John was right when he said, "Trust me!"

This is all interseting stuff, in its way, but what really keepds people coming back by the milions are hte stories. They're the real magic of King's Quest. Stories about a family, the royal family of a kingdo known as Daventry. Stories of people you can care about. Stories that make you laugh and cry. Stories of wonders and magical deeds. Stories to make you rush on in excitement and scratch your (preferred body part) in puzzlement. Stories that make you think. It is said that when a preview of King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella was first shown to an invited audience, a person wept when King Graham apparently collapsed and died.

King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride tells the dual stories of Princess Rosella and Queen Valanice as they quest through the land of Etheria. You don't need to know anything at all about what happened in the earlier six adventures in order to enjoy this one. Still, you might be curious about what has been going on in Daventry over the years, so here is the story so far:

King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown (1984)
(The original titile was plain ol' King's Quest) tells the story of a young knight of Daventry named Graham. He's summoned by his monarch, King Edward, who had no heirs. Graham was tasked to find the three great, and now lost, treasures of the realm before invaders overran the kingdom. He is promised the throne of Daventry as a reward if he is successful.

Suitably motivated, Graham tromped off, defeated a fire-breathing dragon to retrieve the Magic Mirror, fiddled around a bit with some leprechauns to get back the Magic Shield, and climbed to the top of a really big beanstalk to get the ever-full Chest of Gold from a giant. The dragon, broomstick witch, sorcerer, troll, hungry wolf, nasty dwarf, and riddlesome Rumplestiltskin he encountered along the way kept life interesting for him.

When Graham, quests completed, finally returned to Castle Daventry with the treasures, good King Edward was true to his word and gave Graham his crown. Then the ex-monarch dropped dead on the spot, immediately eliminating any of the inconveniences that are possible when an ex-king is hanging around while the new kid on the throne is trying to rule.