While most of us voces are not exactly old enough to have played King’s Quest, we certainly aren’t such ingénues that we don’t know what this series is and how it impacted video game history. So when we heard that some developers were remaking the King’s Quest series we wanted everyone to know about it.
WHAT IS AGD INTERACTIVE?
Anonymous Game Developers Interactive, AGDI for short, is a group of highly motivated individuals determined to revive the adventure game genre. Our aim is to remake classic Sierra On-Line adventure games, enhance them to modern standards, and then offer them as free downloads. We believe that adventure games must not be forgotten, and this is our attempt to keep the classics alive in a gaming market that is presently dominated by first person shooter and arcade shooter games.
We grew up on Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy—but unfortunately missed out on wonderful seminal works like Ultima and King’s Quest. Now, here’s the chance for us, and those like us, to go back and re-experience what we might have missed, and what we’re currently missing out on with the cornucopia of graphics-intense FPS games that have left behind the emotional narrative of text and texture gaming.
What could be next… Zork I anyone?
Link, via AGD Interactive.
Some of us are old enough to remember King’s Quest. And Space Quest. Hell, even Police Quest. I sense a theme.
Even the old text adventures. I have Moonmist around here somewhere…
There is a reason the genre died, though, and that brings us to the phrase you used, “modern standards.” These games weren’t hard, exactly, they were punishing, in the insane nun with a ruler sense. You could never be sure if
you did something wrong, somewhere, and at any moment the nun would pop out and ruler you into starting over. They ran on try-and-die gameplay, which isn’t anything but frustrating, and once you did figure out the game’s tricks, there wasn’t anything left to the game at all.
You know those Fallout speed runs, where the whole game is done in ten minutes, just because the player knows where to do and what to do there? That was the entire adventure game genre.
Of course, now we have Sam & Max and the new Monkey Island, so maybe the wounds will soon heal. I hope so.