Cartoon

Cartoons ('interactive cartoon', 'animated cartoon', 'Saturday-morning cartoon') are terms often used to describe many of the games (or elements of the games) in the King's Quest series by developers, critics, competitors, and fans alike. This article covers the history of this usage.

From King's Quest 1 sierra approached IBM to promote the idea of creating an 'interactive cartoon' game for IBM's PCjr. This game became known as King's Quest (inspired by the non-animated Wizard and the Princess before it.)

Since then King's Quest became known for its three-dimensional cartoon quality overwhelming and delighting its hundreds of thousands of fans. Since then it had been a tradition for Sierra, on up to many of King's Quests, and many of the later VGA Sierra games (until the company dabbled with "full-motion video") that Sierra often categorized their games as 'interactive animated cartoons', with what it called '3-D Animated Adventure Games'. (compare to Sierra's Disney's Black Cauldron for similar influence by Disney on early AGI 3D Animated Adventure style, made in part due to the success of King's Quest on the market)

Keep in mind that cartoon does not always denote 'unrealistic' or 'silly' but has to do with 'animation', so there could be a blend of both 'exaggerated' silly antics of Merry Melodies, or Looney Toons, but also more serious elements of Don Bluth or Disney Animated Films. Just as you can find different styles of cartoons/animation on TV to this day.

Background
King's Quest 1 and the first few up to King's Quest IV (with a slight change to the artistic style with KQ4 SCI, but still relatively the same as the AGI version of the game) were expecially intended to look like interactive 'cartoons'. In Roberta's own words on the series in 1988; 'it's the ultimate cartoon - a cartoon they can participate in.' It was this style that may have later influenced the look of later King's Quest 7, when Roberta decided to try to emulate feature length animated movies. But by then the technology had progressed enough to allow for animations as smooth and clean as traditional Hollywood cell animation.

Anastasia Salter notes in her academic work (What Is Your Quest?: From Adventure Games to Interactive Books), that from the two major companies that animated adventure games emerged, Sierra and Lucasarts that from the 1980s through the 1990s that both companies went from 2-D cartoon-style graphics of early games to later 3-D games that became standard throughout the industry.

Another academic notes about King's Quest:
 * "From the blocky cartoon sprites of Sierra's early King's Quest and Leisure Suit Larry, to the full-screen video clips of the Tex Murphy series (which featured recognizable actors such as Brian Keith and Margot Kidder), during the 90s, designers experimented with ways to use the computer's multimedia capabilities to tell engaging stories."

The Original "Interactive Cartoon" on PC
The earliest release of "King's Quest" (King's Quest Classic, the first game) even included cartoonish depictions of "Graham" (and other characters), roughly similar to how he appeared in the game (in a Fractured Fairy Tales style of Jay Ward Productions ). This was likely due to the fact that Roberta presented the game to IBM as an 'interactive cartoon' series. The main character Sir Graham (Grahame as he was known back then) is noted for how he looked and moved like a cartoon figure. In fact John Williams was out in 1984 promoting the game to the game industry and critics; stating that it was revolutionary and just like an "animated cartoon". It's noted that at the time full animation was revolutionary; there were plenty of action games on the market at the time, but there were no animated cartoons games until King's Quest.

It's noted elsewhere that within computers or computer games, that computer adventure games (as opposed to fantasy role-playing games such as Wizardry or The Bard's Tale) were divided into two broad game types: text adventures (no pictures) and graphic adventures (words and static pictures). King's Quest was an 'animated' adventure. It's hero, Sir Graham, walked, jumped, swam, climbed, fell, fought, and got chased much like a character in a Saturday morning cartoon. Cartoons are passive--A viewer just sits there and watches (and maybe cheer, jeer, or talk back). A player doesn't just 'veg out' with King's Quest. The player becomes one with Graham, controlling his actions, shares his adventures, ponders his problems, and suffers his fates.

Many different individuals noted what they saw as the cartoon flavor to the series in their essays, reviews, books, etc. Including Roberta Williams, John Williams, Lorelei Shannon, Jerry Albright, Peter Spear, Jeremy Spear, Donald P. Trivette, academic writer Anastasia Salter, and many of the fans of the series (as noted by their letters to Sierra at the time ).

Gary Winnick who worked on Lucasart's Maniac mansion notes about playing King's Quest and Space Quest at the time :


 * I remember playing King’s Quest and Space Quest, mainly because Ron showed them to me when we were first developing Maniac Mansion. I was very intrigued by the presentation because at that time it felt a bit like I was playing an interactive cartoon.

Exaggerated cartoony elements occur throughout the early games in the series. When Graham bows to Edward his hat falls off his head, causing him to have to pick it off the ground. Edward does an amusing twirling dance in the original King's Quest PCjr after Graham returns with the three treasures, before he falls over and dies (this was toned down in later versions). Through the first four games birds or stars circle a character's head if they trip and bump their head, or fall out of a tree (if the fall doesn't outright kill them).

Another example of cartoon exaggeration is the addition of the 'comic' book like spell casting in which sound effects were written out across the screen in comic sans style lettering, such as Manannan's 'ZAP!', or the teleportation stone's 'POOF!'. Other elements were in the dialogue such as Manannan's use of puns whenenver he thinks up a punishment for Gwydion, or puns and other jokes that are given when a character dies.

While King's Quest IV SCI, and King's Quest 1: Quest for the Crown SCI remake, both updated the graphics to slightly more realistic style, they both maintained certain exaggerated cartoon sensibilities. As well as continuing the tradition of often funny 'cartoon slapstick' death sequences such as Graham being flattened like a pancake, fights often depicted as Graham in a cloud of dust (with random arms and legs sticking out), Graham being disintegrated by dragon fire with only his two blinking cartoon eyeballs left to fall into the pile of ash left behind, or leaving a Graham shaped hole after falling from the sky.

These and other events that would better fit in with Looney Toons or Merry Melodies (Disney) than 'realistic' animated movie.

Even the often semi-static backgrounds can be seen as similar to the static backgrounds in 'cartoons' (or 'matte paintings'). It's noted that characters and obstacles such as the trees in KQ4 are "merely small cartoon depictions on the monitor sitting" in front of the viewer. It also noted that the primary image of Rosella that the player encounters is a low-resolution cartoon depiction (which would differ from how a reader might image the character if they were reading the story from a children's book).

The the animated intros and cutscenes are referred to as 'cartoons' in the manual, and in the AGI developer Easter egg as well.


 * "Teresa Baker is the blond with the pony tail. She programmed the beginning and ending cartoons plus a few other miscellanous rooms."-From the KQ4AGI developer Easter egg.

The fact that Roberta, Ken and John Williams saw the series as an 'interactive animated cartoon', as did the gaming industry, this was reflected on the back of the boxes for each of first four games (primarily the original edition boxes), and even the Sierra catalogues at the time included a quote from "Compute! magazine /Computer Games Magazine " stating that the series; "It's like playing an animated cartoon" as part of its blurbs.

For example the back of the KQ2 (gold) box included this longer description: "King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne takes the technologies initiated in the original King's Quest and refines them into form. "It's like playing an animated cartoon," claims Compute! magazine. The animation and music in the game are unparalleled in the realm of computer adventure."

A Shift in Style
With King's Quest 5, and 6 its noted that the series cartoon flavor was lost to a more realistic animated 'storybook' look.

During an interview made for Start Magazine in spring of 1990 (about half a year before the release of KQ5) she was discussing the development of the game, Roberta mentioned that due to the success of her animated game series that studios had approached Roberta in the past to make an actual 'Saturday morning cartoon' based on King's Quest series (perhaps mirroring Dragon's Lair and Space Ace being turned into children's tv programming).

However, by then as Roberta was looking at making VGA games, they turned the companies down because they thought 'Saturday morning cartoon' style looked too cheap, and they wanted to maintain their image (by this time Sierra had started to move towards VGA and high quality scanned graphics). In Roberta's mind since the success of the first game, she had started hoping for quality animation by real cartoonists, and was hoping she would have that technology at her hands as well to use in games. Sierra was also approached to make board games and books based on the series (it wouldn't be until 1995 that the first King's Quest novel became a reality).

Still the development material for KQ5 and KQ6 still calls the animation between actions: 'cartoons', and it is still highly influenced by Disney and Don Bluth, especially in the background artwork. The process to make the animation was still very similar to the process that Disney or Don Bluth or any number of studios did for classic 'cell animation' (however drawn in the computer rather than 'hand-drawn'), even with newer processes such as 'blue screen/green screen' being utilized and then recolored for certain scenes and animation. There were still elements that maintained the 'animated cartoon' influence:


 * "Among the clever, "musical" sound effects created by Chris Braymen, the game's composer, are the clattering bones, twisted xylophone notes, and rattling chains made by a gang of dancing skeletons. The effect is reminiscent of classic Disney cartoons of the '30s and adds a special dimension to the adventure."

Like KQ4 the game and it's developers refer to the cutscenes (including the intro scene) as 'cartoons' (this is even mentioned in the game narrative or credits themselves).


 * Warning: This is the opening cartoon of the game, and should be viewed to receive an overview of the plot.-From KQ5CD


 * "Warning: This cartoon contains material that may be necessarily for information or clues to complete this game. Please be sure to check your inventory if you decide to skip."-From KQ5CD


 * Opening Cartoon by
 * Kronos:
 * Stanley Lui & Albert Co.
 * -From the KQ6 credits.

Stuart Cheifet, host of the television program Computer Chronicles noted the 'obviously great graphics' of KQ5, and commented that it was like "watching a cartoon on TV".

The Return to Animated Roots
As far back as 1984, when Roberta and others were seeing her games as a form of 'interactive cartoon' she was thinking ahead to the time when technology would allow her to go more heavily into animation and sound and eventually look like a real cartoonist type of thing. However technology was more of a limitation, and she wouldn't fulfill her dream until six games later, the 7th game im the series.

King's Quest 7 went especially to emulate a Don Bluth or Disney feature film look. Something they previously did not have the technology to conceive. It is suggested that the cartoon-style of early King's Quest graphic art, may have had an influence on the look of KQ7, when Roberta decided to try to emulate feature length animated movies. But by then the technology had progressed enough to allow for animations as smooth and clean as traditional Hollywood cell animation.

According to Andy Hoyos, who may not fully understood the 'cartoon' inspiration behind earlier games in the series:
 * "The look of King's Quest VII," says Art Designer Andy Hoyos, is that of an intensely brilliant cartoon. It's different from anything we've done before in the series. We were inspired by the animated feature films of Disney and Don Bluth...particularly "Aladdin." The intensity of the palette used by the "Aladdin" artists was amazing."

Roberta clarified that KQ7 represented a different style of animation than previous games (but was still under the category of animation), that it was what she would call "feature-film style" which was a different thing for King's Quest (as opposed to more 'Saturday-morning cartoon' style in previous games). She believed that it would be viewed more as an interactive "animated feature film", than what people thought of as 'computer art'.

According to the KQ7 Hintbook:


 * You've never seen animation like this in a Sierra game before. In fact, you've probably never seen it in any other computer game before. It's feature-film quality animation, with characters that are lively, funny, and altogether unique. Lead animator Mar Hudgins had this to say about them: The characters in KQVIII run the gamut, from very 'straight' characters such as Rosella and Valanice to the very cartooned types like the jackalope or the ghoul kids...

Still for some critics the art style of King's Quest VII was too much them, that is to say it looked too 'cartoony' (perhaps in a reverse 'uncanny valley'), and the hi-res graphics didn't leave enough up to the imagination like earlier games did (to fill in the gaps).

Even Mask of Eternity had a look somewhere between storybook realism of KQ5/6, some Don Bluth inspiration (where the Don Bluth tended to lean on more realistic 'darker' approach than Disney did), with facial and body animation texture styles of 7 mapped onto 3D models.

Anastasia Salter notes in an academic journal article (Adventurers Turned Tale-Tellers: The Emergence of an On-line Folk Art Community) about the change in art styles between the 'cartoony' 2-D to the new generation 3-D style...
 * Adventure games, with their strong focus on narrative and point-and-click exploratory interfaces, ruled the market of the late 80s and 90s with classic series like King's Quest setting sales records and generating new installments as late as 1994 (Business Wire, 1994). But the genre hit a turning point: graphics-based games, and the rise of 3-D, made the cartoony two-dimensional environments of the adventure games suddenly look dated. Attempts to bring the games into the new style failed, with later releases attempting to embrace action and in doing so alienating the franchises' followers.

The New Animated Adventures of Graham
The new series of King's Quest: Adventures of Graham, goes back to the series roots with a mix of storybook visuals, a lot of Don Bluth film (see Dragon's Lair game), and a mix between realism for some characters and cartoon silliness for others (Graham stuffing entire person's in his 'inventory' cape).

Reviews and articles about the series mirror those that came before even back to the earliest games in the series, again talking about how much its like playing a cartoon.

The Cartoon "Inventory" Gag
Another common feature of King's Quest and other animated adventure games is unusual, exaggerated, and unrealistic features of the games: the unfillable Bag of Holding that characters often have on them. Characters often find and stuff items that are bigger than their pockets and sometimes even themselves, or impossibly heavy objects that should not be able to picked up, or even carried effortlessly (the novelization for King's Quest 3 for example points out the extreme weight of the "Treasure Chest", and how it would be a huge burden trying to climb the side of a mountain). Sierra used to play on this sometimes poking fun at it within the games themselves, or in the documentation.

The King's Quest hintbooks for example makes comments such as:


 * "The same place that Superman puts his street clothes when he flies!"

In King's Quest: Adventures of Graham, this is played with a flourish as Graham sticks objects larger than himself (including wagon wheel analogues, and even people) into his cape with the KQ5/6 points jingle (to which they seemingly vanish until he's ready to pull them out).

Behind the scenes
While King's Quest, Space Quest, and Leisure Suit Larry tended to fall more towards "cartoony" fantasy than realism, Police Quest was intended to go into another direction (but was limited by AGI technology as well). While the first game and even the second had some silly and even cartoony moments (including its fourth-wall breaking refrences to the King's Quest universe), or the Japanese version of PQ2 made to look like a Japanese Anime cartoon; it was the intent of the producers of Police Quest 3 to make things more less of a 'cartoon'... "In the early stages of production, we decided that an ultra-real game like Police Quest 3 just wasn't suited to cartoon characters. That's why Police Quest 3 has the most extensive use of digitized live actors ever seen. Every character you'll talk to and interact with is a real person." While this is not directly about the influences on King's Quest it shows contrast to how other developers interpreted their own series, and tried to separate itself from the previous 'cartoony' look of their series.

Hagatha's appearance in KQ2 may have been inspired by one or more cartoon witch characters of the same name, for example Aunt Hagatha on the 1965-68 cartoon show, Milton the Monster, or Hagatha of the Groovy Ghoulies (1970-1971).

We have been approached to make King's Quest into a Saturday-morning cartoon but we don't think we'll do that because we think Saturday-morning cartoons look cheap. We want to maintain a quality image.

We have also been approached by two movie studios to do Leisure Suit Larry. We're currently in negotiations to see if we want to do anything there. Of course, we don't want to rush into anything. All of our characters are very precious to us and we don't want someone else to have the rights to them and do a bad job. We've also been approached to do board games and books for King's Quest.

It can be argued on which came first King's Quest or Dragon's Lair when it comes to the idea of 'interactive cartoons'. Sierra places the birth and initial release of King's Quest in 1983 the same year Dragon's Lair came out, but the mainstream release for King's Quest is also listed as 1984.