Santa has his speed set to fastest

February 14, 2022 6:16 AM

"King's Quest III remains the least explored speedrun of the main series. And there are several, very good reasons for why that is."
posted by simmering octagon (16 comments total)

This was quite nostalgic for me.

KQ III is one of my favorite adventure games from back in the text input days.

King's Quest III Redux
posted by torii hugger at 6:59 AM on February 14, 2022

King's Quest was so awesome.
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:00 AM on February 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

I recently discovered that my neighbor was one of the original founders of Sierra and so I took a look at some of these old games. I definitely didn't expect to end up coming across speed runs, haha.
posted by feloniousmonk at 7:56 AM on February 14, 2022 [2 favorites]

TIL there is a category of speedruns where they compete for the fastest time to pet whatever in-game dogs there are. So everything are not entirely awful. Just mostly.
posted by The Bellman at 7:58 AM on February 14, 2022 [5 favorites]

Speed run commentary videos are one of my delights, thank you for sharing this one!
posted by Cozybee at 8:17 AM on February 14, 2022

King's Quest III is the first computer game I remember playing. The lady who ran the in-home day care I went to after school had it. We never, ever made it down the mountain path so I had no idea what 95% of the game was about, but I was still OBSESSED. In the years since it has never once occurred to me that it would be uniquely unsuited to speed runs but it makes perfect sense.
posted by lampoil at 9:13 AM on February 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

I was always a Space Quest player and never really got into the KQ line. Now, SQ can be absolutely brutal, but seeing KQIII in action takes it to a whole other level.
posted by Zargon X at 9:41 AM on February 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

I love cats, but that cat sucked.
posted by Lord_Pall at 9:49 AM on February 14, 2022 [3 favorites]

When I was a kid I had a C64, which represented a huge investment on my parents' part. But this game needed DOS!

A close childhood friend's dad had an IBM PC Jr that we used to play this game on - slowly. So, so slowly. The possibility of a speed run had genuinely never occurred to me, because (from memory) we spent more time waiting for a 5.25" floppy to load with every single screen transition than anything else.
posted by 1adam12 at 10:33 AM on February 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

KQ 1, 2 and 4 have got to be pretty unforgiving to speed run in their own right just due to the finicky navigation and the ease of falling to your death with one wrong step on so many screens. Adding in the RNG and Manannan's sadism, ridiculous schedule and his evil cat just induces a full-body cringe to even think about. And I had totally forgotten about the drawn-out ship voyage.
posted by mstokes650 at 11:04 AM on February 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

My mom and I played a lot of the early Sierra adventure games, including KQ3, together on an IBM 5155 XT luggable computer with a built-in 9" amber screen monitor. Somehow we managed to finish those games without any hints or help. It took forever, and man were the paths, stairs, and other things where you could stupidly and easily fall to your death annoying. We both kept playing adventure games together even after I left for university; we would talk on the phone to share hints and advice on beating the games. I played the first KQ game when I was stuck home with the chicken pox. That game made suffering through the pox much more bearable.

That 5155 was so slow rendering scenes that in KQ1 it gave away some of the hidden items, like a hidden hole under the rock, because it rendered the hole first and then the rock you had to move to find the hole.

In a fit of nostalgia I picked up another 5155 a couple years ago. This makes me want to give the KQ games another go in amber monochrome and PC beeper sound.
posted by fimbulvetr at 11:07 AM on February 14, 2022 [6 favorites]

Those KQ games were great. Played them on my Dad’s PC Jr.
posted by marxchivist at 11:46 AM on February 14, 2022

This is the first game I played and also the first hint book I had to get. This video makes me feel less bad about cheating.
posted by frenetic at 11:59 AM on February 14, 2022 [2 favorites]

Also any old school Sierra fans should check out Ken Williams' book: Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings. Fascinating reading about the day-to-day of Sierra back then.
posted by frenetic at 12:02 PM on February 14, 2022 [3 favorites]

It's really funny to me that they've gotten the active play time down to about 7 minutes of a 21 minute run. Maybe someday they can get the amount of time waiting (often with the player in another room doing something else) to be over 75% of a quality run.

I watched through some playthroughs of the old Kings Quest games last year, and one thing that struck me is how fast graphics and sound technology was moving in those days. KQ3 came out in 1986 and looked like . . . that, with 16 colors and every character being made of a few dozen enormous pixels and no features other than hair and the outline of clothing. KQ6 came out in 1992 and was fully voiced (with an original power ballad played over the end credits), with enough visual fidelity that you were expected to notice specific facial features on the character models. By the time you get to KQ7 in 1994, you're looking at basically a moderately-pixelated Disney cartoon. That's a huge amount of progress for 8 years.
posted by Copronymus at 12:21 PM on February 14, 2022 [4 favorites]

The Digital Antiquarian has a ton of words about the King's Quest series and other Sierra games (in reverse chronological order)
posted by credulous at 1:51 PM on February 14, 2022