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Classic Games (Games) Games

King's Quest III Remake Released 121

Posted by Soulskill from the never-stop-questing dept.
Beetle B. writes "Not being content with remaking Sierra's King's Quest I, King's Quest II and Quest for Glory II, the Anonymous Game Developers Interactive have released a remake of King's Quest III. Sure, the graphics may not appeal to the young'uns out there, but it's the gameplay that matters, right? Last year, after several legal battles, another game in the King's Quest series made by fans was released (with more episodes to come). And did I mention that they're all free? What other remakes of old adventure games are floating around out there?"
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King's Quest III Remake Released More

King's Quest III Remake Released

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  • Best in the series, easily. Will download. Will play.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dingen ( 958134 )

      Yeah, especially considering that KQ3 uses the oldest tech in the series (16 colors, sound from the PC speaker, no mouse). KQ1 and 2 were released with the same engine, but remakes made by Sierra were released in the '90ies to bring the game up-to-date with the tech of the time. KQ4 was released with a new engine, supporting sound and mouse right from the start. But KQ3 was left behind. No remake, no update, nothing.

      Such a shame, because KQ3 is really *really* good. I wonder why Sierra have released remakes

      • Only KQ1 was re-released, and that was using the SCI 1 engine - still 16 colors. KQ2 was never re-released. Also, KQ4 was released in both an AGI version and an SCI version.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by dingen ( 958134 )
          I'm sorry, you are right. Anyhow, KQ3 is imho the only game in the series worth remaking. Everything from 5 on is fine as it was released and part 1, 2 and 4 are not that interesting to play anyway. KQ3 really stands out in terms of storyline and gameplay, so its awesome that AGD released this new version today.
          • Give their KQ2 remake a try, they greatly expanded the game, and it's a lot more fun to play.

          • Anyhow, KQ3 is imho the only game in the series worth remaking.

            I thought King's Quest V was a lot of fun, I hope they do a remake of that.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Hatta ( 162192 )

              KQV is already VGA, which is the standard they target with these remakes. It's also the last time Sierra adventure games had a coherent style. After KQVI (which was on the same engine as V), KQVII went to hand drawn FMV animation. KQVIII was a 3rd person 3d action adventure game (and sucked horribly). Other franchises like Gabriel Knight tried live action FMV, or attempted to shoehorn the point and click formula into 3d. None of these really make good models for an updated KQV.

        • I bought KQ IV from a friend in high school and played it on my Turbo XT. When years later I finally got a machine with a sound card, I was disappointed to find that I had the AGI version. Then again, I hear the AGI version is rare so maybe it's worth something to a collector now :-P

      • >>>KQ3 uses the oldest tech in the series (16 colors, sound from the PC speaker, no mouse).

        The Commodore Amiga version had 4000 colors and near-CD-quality sound. Honestly, I don't know why people bothered trying to play games on anything other than Atari and Commodore back in the 80s? The IBM PC was sooo inferior in terms of sound and graphics.

        • I think you'll find that all AGI games were 16 color maximum. The pallette may have been different on different platforms, but it wasn't 4000 colors. Nor was it "CD quality sound"

          Maybe you should go grab your Amiga, your Amiga copy of KQ3, and play it again. Refresh your memory.

          • >>>The pallette may have been different on different platforms

            Right and Amiga has a 4000 color palette youngling. King's Quest 3 alternates between that mode and 64-color mode..... making the PC version look like a primitive 70s display in comparison.

            >>>Nor was it "CD quality sound"

            Strawman argument. I didn't say it was. The Amiga has a sampling rate of ~28,000 rather than 44000, so I said it was NEAR CD quality sound. If you don't believe me, there are tons of Amiga demos on

            • Re:The best one (Score:4)

              by kevinmenzel ( 1403457 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <leznemnivek>> on Friday February 25, 2011 @07:02AM (#35310880)

              It was square waves. That was it. Have you even PLAYED KQ3 on an Amiga? Are you sure you aren't thinking of a different KQ game? KQ3 runs on the AGI interpereter, which doesn't shift pallettes ever. It uses 16 colors. The same 16 colors for the entire game. The same 16 colors for EVERY AGI game. They didn't re-write the game for the Amiga, they took exactly the same resources, and shipped them with an interpereter for a variety of platforms. That is, until they released it for the Apple II GS when they slightly tweaked the music.

              So you're wrong. Flat out wrong. I know that the Amiga as a platform was capable of those things, but it did not do those things for King's Quest III, at least not on the Amiga I had at school, and you won't find a screen shot or an Amiga emulator that will prove you correct.

              • Re:The best one (Score:4)

                by kevinmenzel ( 1403457 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <leznemnivek>> on Friday February 25, 2011 @07:24AM (#35310964)
                Oh, and based on further research, the first Sierra engine that appears to use more than 16 colors on the Amiga is the SCI 2 interpreter used in King's Quest 5, which looks WORSE on the Amiga as compared a VGA DOS version... so even once you start using more of the avaliable Amiga technology, IT'S STILL not as good as it was on other systems. Not necessarily DOS (Although for SCI 2, DOS is almost certainly the best), but other systems nonetheless.
              • I think you are right, here's a video. [youtube.com]

            • Right and Amiga has a 4000 color palette youngling.

              So, so sorry to burst your bubble but... the Amiga 500/1000 (and the Apple IIgs as well) had 12-bit RGB video output yielding a total of 4,096 possible colours. Palettes were always a subset of those 4,096 colours. Hence the usage of the name "palette".

              Palettes on the A500/1000 were 16 or 32 colours (OCS had 6bpp graphic buffers) and 16 or 256 colours on the Apple IIgs, though more colours could be displayed on either platform by employing palette-switching tricks during horizontal retrace periods. This is

              • Gak, typo: OCS had 5bpp graphic buffers

                Also, "18-bit" is an implication, not a buffer depth. Although 262,144 is 2^18 HAM/HAM-8 modes don't work that way. HAM-8, because it's palette driven, is limited to 256 colours per scanline. In 1,024x768 mode you could get a maximum of 196,608 (256x768) colours, but by employing overscan tricks as well you could get to 262,144 (256*1,024) colours.

              • >>>A500/1000 were 16 or 32 colours

                And they could display HAM at 4096 colors. It's why the Amiga could display images like these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HAM6example.png [wikipedia.org] - Most RPGs of the period used still images. Those images were rendered in HAM.

            • >>>The pallette may have been different on different platforms

              Right and Amiga has a 4000 color palette youngling. King's Quest 3 alternates between that mode and 64-color mode..... making the PC version look like a primitive 70s display in comparison.

              http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkAgq4JHbW8 [youtube.com] -- Refresh your memory.

    • Same here. This was one the first computer games I played.

      I loved it.

      Did anyone else had the cheat book that you needed the red plastic to read? My dad had it but wouldn't let us use it so we would have to sneak into the computer room if we were stuck.

      • I had one of those for one of the Space Quest games I think... 4 or 5... I don't remember which... those were classic.

      • I had one of those for a different sierra game (they made one for basically all of them, and those hint books were the inspiration behind UHS (Universal Hint System) which was basically a windows app that read hint books with similar functionality.

        The best hint book for King's Quest though was The King's Quest Companion. Look it up. =)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Hatta ( 162192 )

      Really? It's easily the best of the text-parser games, but IMO surpassed by KQ V and VI. And I generally prefer the text parser for Sierra games.

  • For those who don't already know, Infamous Adventures also released a remake of Kings Quest III some time back - http://www.infamous-adventures.com/ [infamous-adventures.com]

  • I recently re-played Zork I all the way through, and it was a blast.

    Infocom released all three of the original text adventures on their website [infocom-if.org] for, in their words, "zero Zorkmids!"

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Seumas ( 6865 )

      And GoG is still selling them for $6. (???)

    • From the disclaimer [infocom-if.org]:

      This site is not commercial and in no way affiliated with the current rightholder of Infocom copyrights, Activision, Inc., and does not claim to have any rights pertaining to any and all articles by Infocom and subsequently Activision, Inc.

      So I'm not sure they have the right to be offering those games for free.

  • Where did I put that instruction booklet so that I can get the proper ingredients for the spells and not turn myself into a something.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dingen ( 958134 )
      They changed this process a bit in the remake, so you don't kill yourself every time you make a typo.

      • Damn modern games - always making things too easy. I *like* dying in a game when I do dumb stuff. ("If you keep wandering in the dark, you'll like get eaten by a grue.") It adds realism to those old classic games that modern games lack. These new games are... too easy.

        Hey why are those kids on my lawn???
        (door slams)
        (muffled yelling)

        • Exactly. Back then you had to type what you wanted to do. Now days people just use the action cursor and spam it all over the screen until the solution is automatically given to you.

          It's replaced the user intent (push, pull, climb, take, move, play, turn, lift, pick, pry, catch, jump, eat, steal, drink, etc) with *ACTION CLICK*

          • No it hasn't. There are multiple actions, selected by the user, that use different cursors. This isn't King's Quest 7.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ksevio ( 865461 )
      That was my thought when I first read this ...I'm going to have to find that damn booklet again.

  • Living in the past (Score:3)

    by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @04:02AM (#35310232) Homepage
    Yet another remake, sequel, re-imagining, mashup, or reinterpretation. Sigh. I never realized at the time that things were so good...I honestly expected that we would keep going onward. For the past 10-20 years, it has just been remake after remake. For every movie like Pulp Fiction or Necronomicon, there are two Karate Kid or McHale's Navy made. Just imagine if all the talented people who spent hundreds or thousands of man-hours making this remake instead spent their energy on something new. It just says that things were better before and imagination has become an unusual quality.
    • They did make an original game before this. It was called Al Emmo, and it wasn't very good.
    • If you are looking for an original adventure game title, Gemini Rue [wadjeteyegames.com] was released yesterday. It's made with the same engine and runs in the same resolution as KQ3, but rather than reusing an existing property it creates a new science fiction game world and story (though fans of the genre may find many elements that remind of Blade Runner, Beneath a Steel Sky etc.). It was made mostly by one guy, and it won the IGF student competition last year.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by iGN97 ( 83927 )

      Yet another whine, sulking, bitching repeat-post. Sigh. I never realized at the time that things were so good...I honestly expected that we would keep going forward. For the past 10-20 years, it has just been whining laced thickly on whining. For every comment with a constructive suggestion or a "hey, let's go make something new and interesting ourselves, because we have some good ideas, right?", there are two whiners whining about how much better things were before and how much better everything would be i

    • Re:Living in the past (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MrHanky ( 141717 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @05:42AM (#35310598) Homepage Journal

      Blah, blah, blah. Throughout history, most works of fiction have been derivative crap, a few have been original and fewer still have been really good. Hell, pretty much all the best works of fiction are derivative works: Shakespeare's dramas hardly contain a single original storyline. Computer games certainly weren't any better in the 80s than they are now, you just tend to forget the more forgettable ones. Some of the better ones (Giana Sisters) were pure rip-offs.

      • I have heard this attitude a million times and it is just a self-justifying excuse. It does not matter if it is good, only if it is original. If it is original then it may possibly be good. Failing to try is the worst. It is always a sign of cultural decay when fresh populations fail to innovate, and worse, think that copying is a most natural thing.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by MrHanky ( 141717 )

          Utter bullshit. It can't possibly be a "self-justifying excuse" as I'm not justifying myself, nor excusing anything. OTOH, I do point out the fact that plenty of great canonical works are derivative. Speaking of "cultural decay", all the Greek Classics were re-telling old and well-known stories, and that at what was for more than a millennium known as the height of civilisation. So on the one hand, you have evidence, on the other hand you have your evidently false claims.

          • So...about that Greek culture. How did that turn out? They're still going strong, right?

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by MrHanky ( 141717 )

              Yes, it's doing fairly well, considering that it's the origin of Western culture. Did you know that idiot is a Greek word? It describes you accurately in more than a dozen languages.

      • But you're equating derivation with remaking something, which is nonsense...

        Now, I don't know KQ. If it has a truly great story, I can see the point of translating it into a more modern medium. Just like good songs should be covered every now and then, because they're still good songs and "stuff happened" in the meantime.

        But even then, if you just 100% recreate the thing, instead of switching it up a bit -- why bother? I wish remakes would make more of a point of NOT sticking to the original. No, incr

    • Re:Living in the past (Score:5, Informative)

      by C0R1D4N ( 970153 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @05:47AM (#35310624)
      This isn't some company trying to cash in on and old IP (like Leisure Suit Larry Magna Cum Laude) this is a labor of love for people who just want to bring the game back to new audiences and trudge up some nostalgia for us old people who loved the Sierra quest series games.
      • In that sense, it's unnecessary. SCUMMVM supports the King's Quest series, so it doesn't need to be brought back.

        • Re:Living in the past (Score:5, Interesting)

          by kevinmenzel ( 1403457 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <leznemnivek>> on Friday February 25, 2011 @06:56AM (#35310860)
          AGDI provides awesome nostalga in different ways, including slightly reworking the games (massively reworking in the case of KQ2) - ways that hint every so often not only at the game they are remaking, but giving a nod to other games in the series, and bringing back people like Josh Mandel who voiced King Graham in the Sierra KQ5 and KQ6, and now the AGDI KQ1, 2 and 3. There is something really cool about hearing the original voice of King Graham brought back to games originally written before voice acting existed.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 )

      everything can't be good. the meaning of the word good would dissolve if it was so. if you love everything, you love nothing as much as anything.

      so there has to be some contrast. however, making a remake of a '80s adventure game is not a feat of any level in 2011(tools are so much better and you don't need to do tricks to achieve the logic so that it fits on the disks and memory, in fact it would be a pretty straightforward thing to just javascript the whole thing, yes, it would need a lot of hours to achie

      • Ther King's Quest II remake greatly expanded on the original game, and it was the original elements that made it really feel like an early to mid 90s adventure game, not the elements that were in the original game... but you have a point, something entirely original would be really cool. A solid 2D adventure game. It would be amazing to see something released for a console, because you could make an incredibly immersive 2D game in a DVDs worth of space, and the Monkey Island remakes have shown how well a co

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Willtor ( 147206 )

      Quality frequently doesn't abide by a rule of progress. It is okay to continue to play old games and not treat it as a commentary on new ones. There were some real gems that were produced back then. Keeping them alive for the next generation is a noble end in itself. Recognizing that is not criticism of games that have been produced more recently. It is merely proper acknowledgment of the quality of those games.

    • Just imagine if all the talented people who spent hundreds or thousands of man-hours making this remake instead spent their energy on something new.

      If you'd bother to look, you'd know that AGDI has produced original pieces of work.

    • There's something really ironic in complaining that modern games are all remakes or sequels, not like King's Quest... 3. :)

      But really, it's not as if the 80's were a golden age of great game design. For every gem like King's Quest or Super Mario Brothers, there were a dozen games that did well enough at the time, but have since been justifiably forgotten... and another dozen games that were basically garbage. And the same is true of the games being made today. 20 years from now, most of them will have

    • Just imagine if all the talented people who spent hundreds or thousands of man-hours making this remake instead spent their energy on something new.

      I haven't seen it mentioned in the comments yet, but AGD Interactive's commercial arm, Himalaya Studios [himalayastudios.com], announced during the KQ3 release that they are working on something new: a role-playing adventure called Mages's Initiation. From the official announcement on their forum [himalayastudios.com], their promo page [himalayastudios.com], and a thread on the AGDI forum [agdinteractive.com], it looks like in will leverage a lot of their knowledge in creating the Quest for Glory II remake to really bring that unique genre into the present day and future. I still haven't foun

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • No Linux version and the OSX version requires X11? hrmm must not have used SDL.
  • Somehow related but is there an open-source, cross-platform adventure game engine scriptable with a language like Lua. I haven't found one yet and always wished I could write new adventures for Guybrush Threepwood (or create somethin else completely new ). Most of the existing projects are using closed-source win32-only engines which is disappointing. I could help such a project if there is one.
    • You could read into creating a game compatible with ScummVM.... it's open source and cross platform... and supports quite a few interpereters I suppose, given the games it already supports... it might be over or underkill depending on your needs though... http://www.scummvm.org/ [scummvm.org]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 )

      well, there's nothing technically preventing you from doing fresh scummvm games. it's not the adventure gaming engine that's hard to do but coming up with the new script, graphics, plot etc etc.

      AGI, the adventure game vm/script runner (various versions) support is also merged to scummvm nowadays(also sierra sci). it could probably be modified to support a 'new' engine too.

      but if you're creating something new, coding from scratch is nowadays simpler if you got a clear idea what you want to achieve.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Hatta ( 162192 )

      Not yet, but soon! This adventure game was created with Adventure Game Studio. This has been a closed source project for many years, but late last year he opened the source to the IDE and the source code to the engine is forthcoming. If you're patient we will finally get AGS on Linux.

      For those suggesting ScummVM, it is not intended for homebrew games. There aren't even any authoring tools. The best case scenario would be incorporation of the AGS engine into ScummVM, but that's a long way off.

      FWIW, AGS

    • There are a handful of those, just google around I think one is called adventure game creator or so.

  • What other remakes of old adventure games are floating around out there?

    Why, all the Scott Adams classics of course: Mission impossible, Pirate's adventure, Voodoo Castle... Most *definitely* won't be pleasing to the young'uns graphics-wise ;)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Morroblivion [morroblivion.com] (Morrowind ported to the Oblivion engine) is getting close to completion...

      Dagger XL [wordpress.com] (Daggerfall remake) looks interesting too, hope it gets finished.

    • I never did find the lamp in "Voodoo Castle". That was annoying.

  • Wasn't it already remade once in the 90s? Sierra rereleased all the EGA KQ1, LSL, SQ games with VGA and a modified interface (no typing needed).

    • No... Only the first instance of each (Not even sure of that... I have my doubts on Police Quest, for example) series were made. So, KQ1, SQ1 and LSL1 are those I know of.

  • Phone Games (Score:3)

    by sycorob ( 180615 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @09:24AM (#35311688)
    Games like King's Quest have relatively low graphics levels, require little computational power, and the interface is generally pretty simple ("Go North", "Look", etc). Wouldn't these make great smartphone games? Just make sure it autosaves all the time, and also add the ability to save manually (to restart something if you get stuck or dead). I'd love to play half an hour of King's Quest on the train. VGA was 640 x 480, and my Moto Droid (sideways) is 854 x 480, more than enough. You'd actually have to letterbox it!

    • Actually the scummvm already has been ported to smartphones, and broken sword for instance also is ported to the iphone, ipad.
      And also the Nintendo DS has more than its fair share of adventure games.

      And yes they make great games less on smartphones due to the limited display size compared to the finger size, but for tablets they are a perfect match.
      The biggest issue is the input the point and click interface has to be refined slightly towards a finger centric approach which means optional hotspot display an

  • I never got to play this one. My friend had it but on a different system so we could never borrow it. I also was never able to get Quest For Glory 5. Is that freeware yet or does anyone know where to buy a copy? Would this run in dosbox or something or is there no hope for running this on a modern computer?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by asavage ( 548758 )
      Quest For Glory 5 will probably never be freeware and the copywrite won't expire within our lifetimes. It was released for windows and works on windows XP with a patch or in windows 98 compatibly mode. You can buy a used copy from Amazon. I don't know if you can buy anywhere else.

  • A remake is cool, but I think the more interesting news is that TellTale games is working on a brand new title for the Kings Quest franchise. There's a brief announcement on there blog. [telltalegames.com] (You have to scroll down pretty far).

  • Cannot... speak... must massage.... my coax cable... to speed up this download

  • I have a paper and exam due tomorrow. And then I read this. I am fucked.

    Thanks a lot!

  • http://golchest.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

    Still in alpha but making progress.

    Also I like Tunnels of Doom Reboot http://www.dreamcodex.com/todr.php [dreamcodex.com]

  • This is the SECOND big remake (Score:3, Interesting)

    by euroq ( 1818100 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @02:22PM (#35315550)

    I thought this was a joke when I first saw the title. The King's Quest III remake has been out for about 3 years now. Did they just re-release it for publicity?

    Then I realize that the people who have been making this game are separate. The first KQ3 remix is here:
    http://www.infamous-adventures.com/kq3/index.php?page=screens [infamous-adventures.com]

    So I am dumbfounded that these developers worked so hard and for so long for so many years on doing something that's already been done. I can't imagine there is much difference between the first remake and this new second remake.

    • Then you would be wrong. While the Infamous Adventures remake is as close to a 1:1 remake as possible, the AGDI game expands on the original, adding new elements to the adventure throughout the game. Not that either is necessarily better; but they are different games.

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