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I dusted off one of my old games and had some hard time to get it to work right on WindowsXp. DosBox solved my problem.
As I started to replay this old game I must say that KQ6 is more than a game, it have an atmosphere that no other game I have ever played and the experience is more of an interactive saga than a game. Well, that may be what it was intended to be but that kind of game is REALY rare these days. I dont think I will ever get hold of a game as good as this one. (if not Roberta will make a comeback
)
KingsQuestVI did change my way of locking at computergames, and the storytelling have never bean so magic as back then Roberta and the others made KQ6.
Thanks for the good work you did then, back in the days!/Daniel
Nicks Naughty and Nice Network Nabbed at Noon. Now Nick kNows Nada.
Graham has to get the help of the Ice Princes to find Santa’s Naughty and Nice spys.
wouldn’t it have been cool if sierra had released “holiday” editions (maybe mini games) of quest games? like leisure suit larry had to be a “good boy” so santa’d send him a redhead. or roger wilco finds a lost shipment of santa gifts in space and has to deliver them to earth kids and be “santa” himself or something.
hey, list your ideas! it’d be fun…happy holidays!
Could you please post some more information about your system? Like, OS, videocard etc…
I’m currently replaying Shivers 2 (XP, P4, 1G Ram) and I haven’t encountered any problems so far. Well, it’s too fast… đ
Let’s say the knight was a man and he had Shaharazad put on his glove for his lost love. How romantic. : P
I was pointing out of course that it was weird that your opponent named the dead knight ‘Shaharazad.’ Both possibilities are unlikely (a female knight or a male knight with a Persian female name).
Thanks for posting the links. Itâs correct now, like you wanted. About your final remark: nothing wrong with correcting these things. The reply you got by this Baggins (not that big a topic to argue about) was not very polite and in fact a bit dumb. You pointed out a possible mistake in his info, which is relevant, and a sensible person would check the facts and arguments and say âthanksâ.
Baggins (the person who created the Shaharazad page in the first place) never thought that the knight was female (the game clearly states that he is a man), he just thought that his name was Shaharazad because of the appearance of the name on the gauntlet, though the name seems to be used as merely a reference to the character, not to the knight himself.
Iâm not quite sure what sort of agreement we reached. Baggins has restructured the Shaharazad page to be a description of the âreal worldâ character (mentioning that her name is engraved on the dead knightâs gauntlet) and the dead knight now has a page of his own with no mention of the name that Baggins thinks he has. I asked Baggins where he saw the knight being referred to as Shaharazad in the KQ Companion, and all that he said in response was âTo be honest not that big enough of a topic to argue about. I think its a bit better to seperate âdead knightâ and Sheherezade into seperate articles, in order to make things cleaner.â
Hey, itâs the fansâ job to point out piffling things! There wouldnât be anything to talk about in this fandom otherwise.Why the heck was the moon a crescent in the KQ6 intro, yet completely full scarcely a day later in the Realm of the Dead??
So your opponent doesnât think any more that the dead knight was female? Would be nice to know what the agreement is. Do you have a link?
Thanks, everyone. The situation seems to have finally been resolved. The person who wrote the entry couldn’t tell me just where in the companion he saw the knight being referred to by that name, but since we’ve come to an agreement of sorts, I can’t complain (anymore).
The Adventure Companion has been updated with material relating to King’s Quest and Gabriel Knight:
http://www.adventurecompanion.com
Fans of old Sierra in particular may enjoy the update. Have fun!
I’ve posted this here and in the GK section of the bulletin board. I hope this is okay.
Simo Sakari Aaltonen
(simo
adventurecompanion.com)I think people should agree both are right. Scott was probably shafted somewhat, and from his point of view Ken did get a little more “greedy”. But Ken is also right on running a business is hard, especially trying to keep it profitable. So anyone who tries to profit is greedy even just a little bit. Actually it’s not really true, greed is the lust for monitary wealth that consumes everything else. But to Scott that’s the way it looked, and to Ken it didn’t look that way.
It’s cool to hear all sides of the story. Because they are different points of view. I don’t deem either view as unworthy. It would make an interesting book about the life of Online Systems (and sierra online later), as told by it’s employees and each on the same point of contention.
Keith Weatherby II
What about distribution of the ability to download the game on physical media? đ In other words, a full big box on store shelves with a single 3.5″ floppy disk containing a torrent file or an HTML link to the website? Sounds like it might be a viable loophole…
But I may have just ruined that. đ
-Tom.
I wonder how well Phantasmagoria would work as a DVD game for set-top DVD players. After all, it is an interactive movie. You could use the remote’s arrows to “scroll” the cursor around and click on the hotspots with the Enter button… the only problem would be the Save/Restore feature…
-Tom.
What do you expect? Boat Quest: The Perils of the Williamses? đ
Just kidding, of course. Everyone moves on to other things in life, and they have their own reasons for doing so. My assumptions are that, if Ken and Roberta were to create a game (and by today’s standards you’d need way more than two people to do that!) and it became successful, people would just demand more and more.
Sometimes you have to pause at making other people’s lives enjoyable and take some time out to enjoy your own. Sierra made my life fun for a solid 15 years, and continues to do so given the few titles I haven’t played through yet. It’s only fair that Ken and Roberta have some fun, too. đ
-Tom.
Wowie Wowie! Is it the fourth of July already? Cause there’s sure a lot of fireworks going on here!
I always find it fascinating to hear the “behind the scenes” stories of Sierra, good or bad. I fully understand the feelings of the creators from the “early days” when the company felt more like a close-knit family. Then as they got bigger, the attention each person or project was given had to be spread thinner.
I totally agree with Ken from a business perspective. If the game was predicted to sell, then it would get a bigger budget. Just like with film distribution. If a movie company thinks a film isn’t going to do that well, it will remain in limited release (under 1,000 screens) until it prooves its market share. It’s easier to cut your losses on a small distribution than to crank it out to 3,500 locations and fall flat on your face. We’re talking hundreds, if not thousands of dollars for each additional copy.
Believe it or not, Walt Disney Pictures didn’t feel that the first “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie was going to be as big of a success as it was, thus the marketing and promotions weren’t any more than your average Summer popcorn flick. (If you notice, the film doesn’t even have the company’s logo at the beginning. Just the title card) An action flick based on a theme park ride just didn’t fit the formula. After its success, they pulled out all the stops for the next installments.
I didn’t really notice back then that certain games were getting more promotion than others, except Phantasmagoria, which is understandable given the amount of time and money invested in it. Space Quest 6 made the cover of InterAction just like King’s Quest 7 did.
Management is a tough job. No matter what happens, good or bad, it’s always the manager’s fault. Everyone thinks they’re getting less attention than everyone else, and those who are allegedly getting “all the attention” get mad when they don’t get the same amount. It’s like being the parent of hundreds of children who all want the same amount of everything when there’s not that much to go around.
Regardless of what happens behind the scenes, the image that the company projects to its customers and fans is what’s important. Granted, I did become a little concerned of what’s ahead when I only saw Mark Crowe’s picture on the back of the SQ5 box but for the most part, Sierra was my “happy place” that I could always count on for laughs, fun, and most importantly escapism.
As for the transition to point-and-click, it never really bothered me that much. Windows was becoming more prominent and people were getting used to using a mouse so it only seemed like the logical step to the way things were going… away from Dos and Typing to Windows and Mousing. I DID enjoy the hybrid parser feature of Larry 7, but hated the single cursor. But that’s just my opinion. đ
-Tom.
Well, searching eBay would be a good start. You can get an idea of what the game is selling for in the condition you have it in. I know that copies of Phantasmagoria WITH the box go for about $25-30 at times, while just the discs (in the little folder with the booklet) go for $10-15.
-Tom.
I think you are right. I couldnât check the Kingâs Quest Companion, as I havenât the 4th edition. But that is fictionalised, so I doubt it may be considered as a source.
It isnât true in any case that KQ6 names the dead knight by that name, though. I just checked, and no name is mentioned.
The writing on the gauntlet suggest indeed that your interpretation is right (âLIKE Sheherazadeâ).
âFlesh may cross the portal,
and seek its master Death.
Flesh may go where Death has trod,
and challenge, like Sheherazade,
He Who Reins Beneath The Sod,
to spare a mortal’s breath.â
Another clue might be that official hint book by Lorelei Shannon, which lists the characters with their names or description for each environment (like The Undead or King Caliphim and Queen Allaria), doesnât even mention the dead knight in the list of characters (p. 54), and speaks elsewhere only about the âdead knightâ (p.56).
Akril, you are right. The verse on the gauntlet reads:
Flesh may cross the portal and seek its Master, Death,
Flesh may go where Death has trod, and challenge, like Shahrazad,
He who reigns beneath the sod, to spare a mortal’s breathThe “Knight of the Night” never reached Death to challenge him. It is a very obvious reference to Shahrazad of “A Thousand and One Arabian Nights. Shahrazad challenged death by telling her stories nightly to stay alive. KQ6 has a Arabian motif to it. It is absurd to think that someone as literate and well read as Jane would make such a mistake in a game that she probably did a lot of research on.
If that’s the case, then the gauntlet was made for the knight ONLY for himself, knowing of his quest. That would make him the only owner of the gauntlet. Do we know any history of it?
Maybe Ken can pass this question on to Roberta or Jane. đ
Edit. If that’s the case, then the author shouldn’t put that info there unless it’s proven true. Or at least add that it’s only a speculation.
I think I bought GK3 after the Da Vinci code was released, although I didn’t know anything about either story. I’d finally bought a PC and I bought all of the games I missed out on that I wanted to play. I liked GK3 despite the quirky camera control, and I probably never would’ve won it without using a walkthrough. But the ending was a bit too Last Crusades-ish. I would’ve liked to see the ending done differently starting at the part where that guy reveals his secret and true origin, which took all of the mystery out of the rest of the game and made the last sequence all about navigating traps.
I didn’t like GK1’s ending sequence much either now that I think about it. It didn’t fit the voodoo atmosphere. However, I really like GK2’s ending. I thought the whole game was excellent and it’s probably the best FMV game ever made, although I’d probably be alone if I made a case for Return to Zork being the best.
Hello,
I thought I had all the versions of the xmas demos. Could anyone tell me what the difference is between the ver1 and ver2 versions listed below? In addition, what is the difference between the 1992 and 1993 versions?
xmas_card_1986_ver1.zip
xmas_card_1986_ver2.zipxmas_card_1992.zip
xmas_card_1993_256.zip
xmas_card_1993_256_2.zipThanks Mark
I believe the Space Quest in question was SQ5, as that one was Mark Crowe’s doing via Dynamix. I am amazed at how Scott blasted it though because many fans (myself included) really loved it. My fav is still Space Quest 3, but next in line is always 5. đ
Quote:
…I don’t blame Scott for being bitter though. I imagine Space Quest was like his child…I was thinking about this last night, and some of the history is coming back.
Scott and Mark (the two guys from Andromeda) seperated at some point. Perhaps Scott or Mark will jump on this thread and correct me if I have this wrong, but here’s what I vaguely remember:
Dynamix wanted into the adventure business. They were our subsidiary in Oregon that built flight simulators. I remember Dynamix courting Mark to come to Oregon. Meanwhile, Scott and Mark were having some issues between them. Mark decided to move to Oregon, leaving Scott behind in Oakhurst.
Space Quest was like a child caught between two parents. I don’t know how it was decided as to whether Scott or Mark would do the next game. I also don’t remember who did do the next game. From Scott’s comments, it seems that Mark did another Space Quest game from Dynamix, which didn’t do well. That wouldn’t surprise me. Scott’s a great writer, and his biting witt were an important part of what made the series so successful. This is not to downplay Mark’s contribution which was huge.
Space Quest was best when both were involved, but unfortunately, any time there is a divorce, it’s a sad situation, and often, the kids get caught in the crossfire.
-Ken W
