King's Quest 1

I have always been a fan of the King's Quest franchise, but I never played the one that started it all. There's a perfectly good reason for that. It was released in 1984, and I wasn't...you know...born.

This is one of the earliest graphical adventure games, and the story is pretty simple. There's a castle with a king in it. That king is perfectly cool with people just waltzing into his castle, apparently. When you talk to him, he's like, "Bro, there's a mirror, sceptre, and shield that I want you to find. I don't know you, but if you find this stuff, I'm p. sure you'll make a good king." Paraphrasing but trust me, it wasn't much deeper than that.

The story's simple, yes, but you have to walk before you run. This game is the grandpappy of all the other graphical adventure games that were to come, and I appreciate it in all it's 16-color pixelated glory. It's interesting going back to early titles like this and seeing the evolution of these games. There are certain things that surprised me during the course of the game. For one, I was surprised by the number of items you can pick up that do absolutely nothing. Red herrings out the wazoo. I'm more used to the concept of if you can pick it up, you're gonna need it at some point. I was also surprised that multiple solutions were possible for some of the "puzzles". This seems like a more advanced concept.

I must confess, I know there were multiple solutions because I cheated a couple times. Give me a break. I know adventure games. Sometimes the solutions are ridiculous, especially in these old ones. I was only going to spin my wheels for so long.

You want an example? K, fine. There is a giant. I have a sling and pebbles that I picked up along the way. Logic would dictate that I fling a pebble in the giant's face to end him. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out the correct word combination to actually do that. Turns out, the solution is to run around a tree for a couple minutes, avoiding the giant while he's chasing you, and the dude will fall asleep eventually. Uh...what? Perhaps the dude has narcolepsy. I don't know his life. But who in their right mind would think playing Ring Around the Rosie with a giant for 2 minutes would accomplish anything? I never would have gotten that. I regret nothing!

Long story short...I defeated a dragon with a quart of water, made some leprechaun's dance a jig, and may have inadvertently caused the king to drop dead by merely showing him the items he asked me to find. All in all, it was a very eventful day in Daventry.

I intend to play through the remaining King's Quest games in the coming months. I remember playing through the 7th one as a kid and watching my brother play those earlier in the series. He used to call me Lolotte to make me mad when I was around three or four... Yep, King's Quest has been a part of my life for a while, and I think I'll enjoy revisiting them. After all, Telltale Games is supposed to be rebooting the franchise in the near future. Ohboyohboyohboy!