King's Quest V (NES)
Jan. 5th, 2022 06:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yamamanama73 days until the vernal equinox
Warning: This is not meant to be a walkthrough but I am going to give away a lot of solutions, especially for the more inane puzzles.
I found an old post by Ken Williams of Sierra and he said that Konami just paid him well for it. Someone else said that Sierra would've licenced many more games had CD-ROM consoles took off. Sadly, Sierra had killed off the genre with Gabriel Knight and its cat fur mustaches.
The puzzle makes even less sence when you try to explain it.
I took over seven hundred screenshots so I decided to make most things into gifs.
If you say yes, you skip a rather lenthy intro, but one that does give context to the game and sets you on your journey. We're going to say no, although I have played both the NES version and the computer version.
It takes him six tries to shrink the castle. Also, nice use of color on the background there, game.
Wait a sec, the game must be glitching out on me. I must’ve found a bad rom. Hold on.
Okay, I got a fresh rom of this. Let's try this again.
Hey, everybody! I'm Peter Pantsless!
Ugh. If this keeps up, I might have to use a different emulator.
He looks like Gandalf the Corpse-Pale.
We move around with the d-pad, which is admittedly pretty nice. Selecting the running icon changes it so you have to point and click to move and I don't recommend it.
I'm not sure why Crispin can't just alter reality to fix this. Whatever, I'm just grateful the text is readable. Maybe I can plow through the game, since no effort I'm making is fixing the graphics. I do know the game pretty well.
Technically, there are poisonous snakes. But this is how it goes: if you bite it and get sick and/or die, it's poisonous. If it bites you and you get sick and/or die, it's venomous.
In the computer version, you could talk to the snake. He's like "stay away, this is my path"
Just kidding about the glitching! The game really does look this bad.
90% of this game is three shades of brown, one shade of yellow, two shades of green, one shade of blue, one shade of gray, and black. Occasionaly, there's red, like on Graham's tunic, and a lighter shade of blue, like on Graham's leggings. The mountains later on, while still horribly ugly, at least changes things up a little.
Even the clouds are green. Even though they have white on the hand icon.
That isn't a street, that's just grass.
Yes, you need a dead fish.
I'm sure the Genesis or SNES would do this game justice.
Occasionally you get this salmon color.
I've seen advertisements for this game and it tries to hide the game's graphics as much as possible. Distorts the screenshots, covers the front one with dragon fire. They also call him Sir Graham. Which is actually rather impressive, because Graham began his adventuring career as a knight and became king because the old king wanted a worthy successor. There's a Sega Master System port of that game which replaces the parser system with a Maniac Mansion-style command list and makes a great many changes to the game.
The interiors look fairly decent, aside from the sense of scale being off. He'd need a ladder to get those toys.
It's subtle, but the guy working on the wagon wheel is now gone and he dropped something shiny.
I'd imagine all of Graham's kingly riches were inside the castle when this whole thing happened, so he's reduced to foraging in the streets.
I wanted to know what score Nintendo Power gave this but they took so long to review it that I guess it just slipped through.
Nintendo Games Secrets also covered this game but I can't find anything, just "searched all the web couldn't find anywhere."
I’d say something about the names Amanda and Austin but Amanda and Austin don’t show up in the NES port. This game weighs in at 524 KB, which is about as big as an NES cartridge can get.
Yes, there's a character named Amanda in that. She's buying a pie for dinner or a pie for after dinner.
The name Amanda does show up in Late Antiquity. Her son's name is Austin. The reason for this is because Sierra had a contest in which people dressed up like they belong in a King's Quest game and the winner would actually make a cameo (voiced by Roberta Williams, I believe).
This is the first puzzle of the game. You need to buy one of those custard creme pies but you need a silver coin. Unfortunately for you, using a silver coin requires that you go into the inventory. Pressing B just cycles between look, talk, use, and move.
Oh, I have to use select.
Spoiler alert, you won't. I mean, you can but you've made the game unwinnable by doing so.
The inn in the PC version was called the Swarthy Hog in and I don't know if Nintendo's censorship policy is just that strict and/or they don't know what the word "swarthy" means, or if they just couldn't fit it on the sign. Not that the PC version actually does fit it on the sign, they just put some blurry nonsense.
The barn is interesting enough to merit a description but not so interesting that you can do anything with it.
Looking for anything in that haystack would be like finding a needle in a haystack.
It's just too bad Graham doesn't have a magnet, a lighter, and a can of kerosene. I mean, if the simile wasn't referring to a wooden knitting needle.
This room doesn’t even have a description. Oh, yeah, there’s a stick on the ground.
In the computer version, the bear isn't there unless you have the fish and you can suffer death by bee sting.
He looks like a bear when he walks at least. In the computer version, if Graham gets too close, the bear punches him. And doesn't really look like a bear.
That portrait looks like a portrait of Elizabeth I found at the Museum of Bad Art.
That's not a pie, that's a cake. Or maybe a broken image.
The dog can't resist chasing a stick.
You can also use a boot you find in the desert in the computer version and use the stick elsewhere, but you don't get points for it.
They should have named the other one Beeopatra. That would have been much better.
There’s no bug-a-loo in this version either!
It’s not automatic here. You actually have to USE the haystack. Thankfully, they don’t sing in this version.
Let's not go here yet.
This is hilarious because he’s like “Hello, friend tree!” and then is shocked by her ability to talk. I don't think he ever tries talking to trees or inanimate objects in any other situation, though I've never tried it.
“I CAN SIIIIIING!”
She actually can sing in the PC CD version. I checked and the game doesn’t let you talk to the willow twice.
At least Cedric isn’t racist in this version. He may be useless, annoying, a coward, an idiot, a communist, but he is not a porn star.
You can buy your way into this caravan with a gold needle. in the computer version. You’re supposed to give it to the tailor because needle but you can buy the cloak you want with a gold coin. In fact, you can do a lot of ridiculous things, including buying a pie with a gold heart, and this is intentional because they not only wrote dialogue for it, they recorded dialogue for the CD rom version.
Mushka is Russian for little fly.
It looks like he can go around those rocks from here but it looks like there's just more desert.
I think this is based on the ruins of Petra, in Jordan. Because all deserts in video games are either Arabia themed or ancient Egypt themed. And they’re always hot deserts and sandy deserts. And most of the time, they have cacti.
Make sure to hide behind that rock.
Because you only get a fraction of a second before they show up.
This line was changed for the NES version because religion is a no-no. I’m pretty sure Zelda got away with it because, no, that’s not a cross on the shield, it’s lines dividing it into four parts! See, just look at the box art!
In the distance, you can see cliffs. Can’t do that in the PC version. Unless you’re in the scrubland anyway.
I restarted the game for two reasons. One: to get a screenshot of this magnificent vista that you'll never see if you're playing on a computer. Two: to see if saving and reloading resets the thirst counter, because we all want to know what happens if you go 255 screens into the endless desert. Sadly, it doesn't reset the thirst counter and therefore, someone better at rom hacking will have to find out what lies beyond. Maybe Graham escapes from the Matrix. Nah. It's probably garbledina. Or the game crashes. Or both.
The oasis looks surprisingly decent. In the computer version, there are five oases, well, really, four plus a well under a dead tree that you will probably never see because it's in an out of the way part of the map. Hell, the Sierra Chest's map doesn't even include the fucking thing. There are four in the NES version and the desert is smaller, presumably because of memory limitations.
Because of the decreased size, or perhaps because the programmers hate you, you can only go five screens before you succumb to thirst instead of seven in the computer version.
This guy was one screen away from an oasis. Two in the computer version.
Why he needs this old shoe and not just a random branch or rock isn't very understandable. Hey, I wonder what would happen if you gave this to the cobbler. Most likely nothing in the NES version.
If you go in the larger tent, even earlier, when the camp is seemingly deserted, you die. I'd imagine the two scenes look very similar in the NES version.
Also, you can't talk to the horses. Or the camel that was in the computer version.
Careful, the bandit is a very light sleeper.
The important thing to know is that in Latin, Jehova begins with an I.
I’m not entirely sure if the bandits are using the temple to store their ill-gotten loot or if they’re robbing the temple but have to take everything one gem at a time because otherwise they’d get stuck.
I think it's meant to be the former because there's a legend about bandits or pirates storing their loot/booty at Petra.
I keep using my L and R buttons thinking that nobody would be dumb enough to port King’s Quest V to a console with a two button (plus Select, as we’ve learned) controller.
I wonder what the bandits are thinking about their staff being gone. Somebody will probably go to the temple, thinking they left it there. He'll have a revelation. Like, maybe they shouldn't be hiding the loot. Maybe they should instead use it to buy things. Things they like.
As a kid, I thought one of the treasures in the temple was a solid gold fire hydrant.
Make sure you choose wisely. But you don't have to choose quickly. The door only closes on you if you try to grab anything but the items you need in the future.
Cedric doesn’t even warn you about the bandits in the NES version. Don’t even bother talking to Cedric because he never does anything useful.
That's what the gold coin's for. You can get away with using the gold needle in the computer version.
I bet Mordack’s secretly happy about Manannan becoming a cat and even calls him Mr. Schnookums when he thinks no one is listening.
I forgot to come here earlier.
But right now, he has nothing important to say.
TVTropes sez: You don't get only one shot at saving the mouse; if you fail (which is likely with the wretched imported control scheme), just leave the screen and come back to try again.
Turns out this statement was a lie. If you don’t throw the boot at the cat, and trust me, you won’t because you’re busy wrestling with the parser, you’re every bit as screwed as you’d be if you were playing this on a computer.
Maybe if you still had the stick, it will load the scene again.
Guess how many tries this took me.
6.
You’re playing a game of Find The Pixel on a moving object and clicking the wrong part of the screen causes enough of a delay. Thankfully, there’s nothing else like that for the rest of the game.
When a game tells you not to do something, either you must do that thing or you should never do that thing.
Now we can enter the DARK and SCARY forest. Without stupid Cedric bothering us, thankfully.
Your magic is useless against me!
D'oh! I had thought, given my attempts to use the amulet on Graham, that he wears it by default upon obtaining it. That is not so.
It turns out that it's just really particular about which pixel you click.
She sounds a bit like Ralph Wiggum in the PC version.
D'oh! D'oh! Then Graham decided to use the bottle instead of giving it to the witch.
Here's what's supposed to happen. I swear this puzzle was designed to screw over people didn't save often in multiple slots because there's no way you'd know the genie was evil unless you used the lamp yourself.
Ding, dong, the witch is dead! Oh, wait, wrong game.
The door can't be opened yet.
Now, if you don't have everything you need in the computer version, the scenery will devour you. In the NES version, you're probably just stuck forever.
If you didn't give the bottle to the witch yet, she'll be waiting here for you, blocking the way into her house.
The bridge doesn't look very grotesque to me.
Now we're going to ransack the witch's house.
I think you can go back in the forest.
Are you ready for the dumbest puzzle in the game?
That rock doesn't look suspicious at all.
He tosses the three emeralds, one after the other.
Tossing the last one into the honey. Thankfully, you can click anywhere on the screen and he'll always toss the emeralds in the same location.
That's what he gets for being greedy.
Getting out of the forest is a nice reward, but I'm not sure why he thinks Graham would be interested in a pair of shoes that is way too small for him.
Now that we're out of the forest, it's time for the obligatory trading sequence.
Can she play the piano anymore? Of course she can! But she couldn't before!
Since she can play the piano and because her tree hands were much bigger, she discards the harp.
For whatever reason, Graham is like "yeah, maybe I'll need this marionette."
I guess it makes sense that the toyshop would take something like that in return.
Graham definitely thinks ahead.
They never really think about just who they're going to sell these shoes too. I'd imagine kids' feet are proportioned differently from elves' feet. Maybe he's going to sell them back to the elves. Anyway, you get a cobbler's hammer for a reward. That's understandable. Probably not worth the emeralds, though.
Don't go to the inn until you rescued the mouse from the cat and obtained the hammer from the cobbler.
Because this happens.
And don't forget that rope either.
Somehow they locked the room from the inside.
That room looks spacious. Maybe this is the House of Leaves.
There's a leg of lamb in that cabinet that you're going to need.
This only happens in the NES version. And if you go back in through the front door, the innkeeper and his goons decide to rub you out for real this time. Let's just say accidents happen. Like the killing of you. By us.
Snakes don't have ears. I have no idea why this was the solution. Some people say the wagon doesn't leave until you have everything you need. They're probably wrong because this is a Sierra adventure game and is actively trying to screw you over at every possible moment.
Once you get past the snake, we can enjoy a different palette. Well, really, it's just the same palette with most of the colors removed, and maybe an extra shade of blue and gray here and there.
Make sure you're wearing the cloak or else you'll die.
I'm sure that branch is sturdy enough to support Graham's weight.
He gets up pretty high. I don't have a shot of him falling because he falls like he's on a black dwarf. I forgot to screenshot the next screen but, yes, they kept one of those rocks a false step (instant death) in this version.
Oh no, Cedric couldn't see the wolf because he blended in with the background.
You can also eat the pie but you're going to need it later. In this version you can turn back here, and I guess wander about Serenia without Cedric badgering you. In the computer version, you'll die on the way back and the game sometimes locks up.
In the floppy disk version, there was a weird "easter egg" here if you used the cloak on the sled fragments.
It would probably look more impressive on a different game.
They got a guy to imitate William Shatner to play the eagle in the CD-ROM version.
Good thing Graham knows how to play a comically oversized harp.
He sounds like Yoda doing a bad pirate impression.
The wolf looks suspiciously like a goat here.
I said about the cat chasing a mouse that there wasn't anything like it in the game. That wasn’t a lie. This isn’t nearly the pain in the ass that the cat puzzle is because at least it’s not a pixel hunt.
The yeti puzzle isn’t obtuse, it’s just stupid.
Typically, in an adventure game, every inventory item has exactly one use.
In the CD-ROM version, he talks in what I can only assume is supposed to be a Spanish accent.
In a rare moment of generosity, you can go get a crystal after this scene if you haven't already.
In the computer version, you can see a small mountain village on his flight through the mountains. I'm not sure what that's about.
The object in the roc's nest is extremely hard to see.
And you're going to need it.
Graham loses his cloak to the roc. Good thing you won't be needing it ever again.
Good thing you helped that eagle, eh.
He gets deposited on a small beach.
There's an object here to take.
How convienent. There just happens to be a stranded boat on this three screen large beach.
If you get in the sailboat now, Cedric will wait until you've gone out to sea to tell you there's a hole in the boat.
I'm not sure how good beeswax would be as a sealant.
Go out of bounds and a sea tentacle will grab you..
The one time Cedric takes initiative.
And of course it turns out to be a mistake.
Even if you wanted to abandon Cedric here, and believe me, you do, another harpy grabs you.
You have to be really quick here.
Harp... harpy... eh, still makes more sense than the rest of the game. I mean, the pun's right there. Still, maybe it would fit in King's Quest VI more. That game's all about bad puns.
You're going to need that impossible-to-see object. I don't know if you can come back here. I've never tried it.
He looks like a cardinal here.
Some people say it's impossible to leave the island without Cedric. That's a lie.
You rescue Cedric because you know that if you don’t, it’s going to come back to bite you in the ass.
Go here, to the screen we haven't visited yet.
I had my own taxonomy of unwinnable states in games and I can't find it anymore. I had the text adventure Theatre in mind, in which there exactly one part where you could make the game unwinnable if you throw the guy's corpse down the pit without first dousing it with sleeping drugs. If you go down there immediately, which you probably will, the game is like "oh, no, maybe that wasn't enough to sate the monster" and you get eaten. If you really want to, you can save after throwing it down there and go do something else, but in any case, it's obvious what you've done wrong.
Really, it all comes down to "if you can make the game unwinnable, how obvious it is what said action was"
And a lot of it is because of various threads I’ve read, one of which brings up Beyond Zork and how easy it is to put the game in an unwinnable state.
Incidentally, there's a puzzle earlier in this game that is very similar to one in Beyond Zork. Of course, the puzzle in Beyond Zork is better.
It's probably just a coincidence.
Someone on Selectbutton is not sure that Sierra played Zork because they had a habit of never playing games by competitors and never playtesting their games.
That’s how things were done back in the day.
Good old Cedric, warning us about things when it's too late.
They look less like serpents and more like iguanadons. Or at least those early reconstructions of iguanadons that had their hand-horn on their foreheads.
If you aren't holding the crystal aloft, you die.
Easy for you to say, Cedric. You can fly.
The chasm kind of prevents the purpose of a front door.
There's an obvious grate right there.
Ah, the limitations of this game's system. Most of the puzzles come down to "try every item in your inventory on the thing" and the ways to add challenge and trip you up are making it so you can use the wrong item to get desired results, but screwing you later, or just hiding the items you need really well.
In the days of a parser, you’d probably have to guess the verb.
An aside, there’s this really well-written Lovecraftian Southern Gothic horror game but it has a part where you need to “knead candle.”
Now we don't have to deal with Cedric for the rest of the game. Also, I may find the voice acting in the CD-ROM version hilariously bad, but I do have to give them props for just how audibly pissed Graham is with Cedric at the moment.
The Labyrinth is the only deviation from the standard inventory object puzzles.
And boy does it fail at being a good deviation. It’s a maze. It’s a maze with perspective switching as you go through. There is no time limit. There are no deathtraps, unless you count Dink.
Also, if you play the tambourine anywhere, Dink will magically come to you. Can’t do that in the computer version! I don’t know if this is a bug or a feature.
Nintendo Power calls Dink the blue beast.
Unfortunately, all of the directions to the exit begin where you meet Dink, so it takes slightly longer. There's only one place you can meet Dink in the labyrinth in the NES version, as opposed to four in the computer version.
You need the hairpin to unlock the door.
Yeah, maybe he'll get hungry again.
The NES palette does not look good here.
“olive skin” is a term I’ve never understood. Olives are dull green, lustrous black, or that kalamata color you get when you stir all your leftover paint into one color. She’d blend in with the background, though. In the computer version, her skin is the color of a tomato.
Unfortunately, she thinks Graham is with the giant space ants and goes back to scrubbing that one part of the floor while the rest of it grows moss.
Maybe she'll take a bribe.
Feeling nautical? Apparently, somewhere in Rocky and Bullwinkle, there’s a scene where Fearless Leader gives Boris an order. Feeling nautical today, are we? No, you just stepped on my foot.
Damn it! I was going to gawk at the scenery some. The Blue Beast is called The Blue Meanie by the King’s Quest Wiki, despite the fact that this is not Odyssey: The Legend of Nemesis. I don’t think he’s Sam. Cassima even says “I don’t think you’ve met Sam.” If this guy was Sam, I don’t think she’s be friends with him.
But whatever, you need to come here and this is the only way.
How does she even know you’re… never mind.
If Graham uses the organ in the PC version, it will play itself and Mordack will show up and force choke you to death. You can't do that here. I assume any deviations here are due to the fact that saving is done with a password and a temporary save. There is SRAM on the cartridge but no battery. There is a rom hack out there that prevents the SRAM from clearing after a hard reboot (to prevent save corruption, perhaps) for use in emulators and reproduction cartidge.
For fuck's sake, Dark Seed, a Chinese unlicenced port, has a battery backup.
If you get caught again, Graham will find that someone had realized Graham had escaped, went down there, replaced the loose stone, and mortared it in place. In the less than five minutes it takes to follow Cassima through the labyrinth, and then pass through the pantry and kitchen. I hope you got the cheese from the mousehole.
If you're wondering how to deal with the blue beast now, well, um. About that.
This room looks pretty decent, if overly cluttered.
The foyer is a lot more barren in this version. In the computer version, there were all sorts of weird statues everywhere.
So, in this version, if you encounter the cat, I think you can leave the screen without interacting with him in any way without Mordack appearing half a minute later and killing you. Can't do that on the computer version, nope. Whatever, I didn't encounter the cat at all. I know that in the computer version, the blue beast can appear in the organ hall, the dining room (both parts) and the foyer, while the cat can appear in the dining room, the foyer, the upstairs hallway, and the bedroom.
This is the best looking room in the game.
It looks suitably menacing and the artist understood how to work with the limitations of the NES palette.
This is the most hilarious room in the game.
The description of the bedroom in the King’s Quest Companion is “The king’s stomach briefly turned, unwilling to imagine the acts which might take place near where he stood.”
Since Mordack lives alone, I’m assuming he uses the bed for sleeping, eating, and maybe building a little fort.
The game makes no mention of that weird tusked skull.
They're hard to make out.
A few minutes later... in real time, not game time. But not quite as long as the computer version.
Mordack is so tired that he just falls asleep on top of his skull print bedsheets. You can stand in the door and he won’t see you. Maybe he thinks he’s hallucinating from lack of sleep.
I’d say something about Mordack not falling asleep until you've knocked out the beast and incapacitated the cat but then I watched a playthrough where she makes it upstairs without encountering the beast or the cat. She does knock the beast out. Eventually. But only because sometimes Mordack is standing around in his bedroom or laboratory and sometimes the RNG hates you. So I don’t know if any of that stuff about how Mordack doesn’t go to bed until the beast has been knocked out is true in the PC version. I do know that that statement is a lie in the NES version because I pulled it off.
Anyway, now that you have his wand.
I knew this could happen. In the computer version, each room has a timer and if you gawked at the scenery too long or spent too long deliberating on a puzzle, Mordack would show up and kill you. In the NES version, instead of doing that, the timer runs throughout the entire castle.
I thought that the timer stops once Mordack goes to bed but turns out I was wrong.
Lets try this again, with less description gathering this time.
I'm sorry. This was a lot more impressive in the computer version.
D'oh! D'oh! D'oh! I thought the game went straight to the final showdown with Mordack but no.
Mordack finds your lack of faith disturbing. Wait a minute, instead of animating Graham choking, they instead went for the death by iguana statue animation and it looks like Graham’s paying the price for his lack of vision. Memory limitations or lazy artists? You decide!
Good thing we have this temporary save file. And also a password, if you want to skip to the end of the game without dealing with the blue beast or the cat.
You… killed… Cedric!!!!!!!
No, wait, Mordack! I changed my mind! Forget all that stuff I said about rescuing my family! I want to join you and together we can rule the galaxy as father and son!
You only get a fraction of a second. But your pointer doesn't move away from Graham, so it kinda balances out.
It really is convienent that Mordack's transformations can all be countered by the ones on the book he left open.
Mordack forgot the first rule of transformations.
See.
In the sequel, Prince Alexander pines for Cassima despite knowing her for all of three seconds. Anyway, god damn it, Crispin.
The sequel was not released for the NES for obvious reasons.
There. See. It's possible to beat the game without maxing out your score.
Well, that's it. I've made plans for most of the next few months, though with omicron, I have no idea if they'll come to fruition. I'm hoping omicron burns itself out by the end of January. And I'm hoping that we don't have a new variant by then. At least Plymouth Philharmomic is postposting their concerts.
burning question: How does Graham always know what he'll need in advance, anyway?
Warning: This is not meant to be a walkthrough but I am going to give away a lot of solutions, especially for the more inane puzzles.
I found an old post by Ken Williams of Sierra and he said that Konami just paid him well for it. Someone else said that Sierra would've licenced many more games had CD-ROM consoles took off. Sadly, Sierra had killed off the genre with Gabriel Knight and its cat fur mustaches.
The puzzle makes even less sence when you try to explain it.
I took over seven hundred screenshots so I decided to make most things into gifs.
If you say yes, you skip a rather lenthy intro, but one that does give context to the game and sets you on your journey. We're going to say no, although I have played both the NES version and the computer version.
It takes him six tries to shrink the castle. Also, nice use of color on the background there, game.
Wait a sec, the game must be glitching out on me. I must’ve found a bad rom. Hold on.
Okay, I got a fresh rom of this. Let's try this again.
Hey, everybody! I'm Peter Pantsless!
Ugh. If this keeps up, I might have to use a different emulator.
He looks like Gandalf the Corpse-Pale.
We move around with the d-pad, which is admittedly pretty nice. Selecting the running icon changes it so you have to point and click to move and I don't recommend it.
I'm not sure why Crispin can't just alter reality to fix this. Whatever, I'm just grateful the text is readable. Maybe I can plow through the game, since no effort I'm making is fixing the graphics. I do know the game pretty well.
Technically, there are poisonous snakes. But this is how it goes: if you bite it and get sick and/or die, it's poisonous. If it bites you and you get sick and/or die, it's venomous.
In the computer version, you could talk to the snake. He's like "stay away, this is my path"
Just kidding about the glitching! The game really does look this bad.
90% of this game is three shades of brown, one shade of yellow, two shades of green, one shade of blue, one shade of gray, and black. Occasionaly, there's red, like on Graham's tunic, and a lighter shade of blue, like on Graham's leggings. The mountains later on, while still horribly ugly, at least changes things up a little.
Even the clouds are green. Even though they have white on the hand icon.
That isn't a street, that's just grass.
Yes, you need a dead fish.
I'm sure the Genesis or SNES would do this game justice.
Occasionally you get this salmon color.
I've seen advertisements for this game and it tries to hide the game's graphics as much as possible. Distorts the screenshots, covers the front one with dragon fire. They also call him Sir Graham. Which is actually rather impressive, because Graham began his adventuring career as a knight and became king because the old king wanted a worthy successor. There's a Sega Master System port of that game which replaces the parser system with a Maniac Mansion-style command list and makes a great many changes to the game.
The interiors look fairly decent, aside from the sense of scale being off. He'd need a ladder to get those toys.
It's subtle, but the guy working on the wagon wheel is now gone and he dropped something shiny.
I'd imagine all of Graham's kingly riches were inside the castle when this whole thing happened, so he's reduced to foraging in the streets.
I wanted to know what score Nintendo Power gave this but they took so long to review it that I guess it just slipped through.
Nintendo Games Secrets also covered this game but I can't find anything, just "searched all the web couldn't find anywhere."
I’d say something about the names Amanda and Austin but Amanda and Austin don’t show up in the NES port. This game weighs in at 524 KB, which is about as big as an NES cartridge can get.
Yes, there's a character named Amanda in that. She's buying a pie for dinner or a pie for after dinner.
The name Amanda does show up in Late Antiquity. Her son's name is Austin. The reason for this is because Sierra had a contest in which people dressed up like they belong in a King's Quest game and the winner would actually make a cameo (voiced by Roberta Williams, I believe).
This is the first puzzle of the game. You need to buy one of those custard creme pies but you need a silver coin. Unfortunately for you, using a silver coin requires that you go into the inventory. Pressing B just cycles between look, talk, use, and move.
Oh, I have to use select.
Spoiler alert, you won't. I mean, you can but you've made the game unwinnable by doing so.
The inn in the PC version was called the Swarthy Hog in and I don't know if Nintendo's censorship policy is just that strict and/or they don't know what the word "swarthy" means, or if they just couldn't fit it on the sign. Not that the PC version actually does fit it on the sign, they just put some blurry nonsense.
The barn is interesting enough to merit a description but not so interesting that you can do anything with it.
Looking for anything in that haystack would be like finding a needle in a haystack.
It's just too bad Graham doesn't have a magnet, a lighter, and a can of kerosene. I mean, if the simile wasn't referring to a wooden knitting needle.
This room doesn’t even have a description. Oh, yeah, there’s a stick on the ground.
In the computer version, the bear isn't there unless you have the fish and you can suffer death by bee sting.
He looks like a bear when he walks at least. In the computer version, if Graham gets too close, the bear punches him. And doesn't really look like a bear.
That portrait looks like a portrait of Elizabeth I found at the Museum of Bad Art.
That's not a pie, that's a cake. Or maybe a broken image.
The dog can't resist chasing a stick.
You can also use a boot you find in the desert in the computer version and use the stick elsewhere, but you don't get points for it.
They should have named the other one Beeopatra. That would have been much better.
There’s no bug-a-loo in this version either!
It’s not automatic here. You actually have to USE the haystack. Thankfully, they don’t sing in this version.
Let's not go here yet.
This is hilarious because he’s like “Hello, friend tree!” and then is shocked by her ability to talk. I don't think he ever tries talking to trees or inanimate objects in any other situation, though I've never tried it.
“I CAN SIIIIIING!”
She actually can sing in the PC CD version. I checked and the game doesn’t let you talk to the willow twice.
At least Cedric isn’t racist in this version. He may be useless, annoying, a coward, an idiot, a communist, but he is not a porn star.
You can buy your way into this caravan with a gold needle. in the computer version. You’re supposed to give it to the tailor because needle but you can buy the cloak you want with a gold coin. In fact, you can do a lot of ridiculous things, including buying a pie with a gold heart, and this is intentional because they not only wrote dialogue for it, they recorded dialogue for the CD rom version.
Mushka is Russian for little fly.
It looks like he can go around those rocks from here but it looks like there's just more desert.
I think this is based on the ruins of Petra, in Jordan. Because all deserts in video games are either Arabia themed or ancient Egypt themed. And they’re always hot deserts and sandy deserts. And most of the time, they have cacti.
Make sure to hide behind that rock.
Because you only get a fraction of a second before they show up.
This line was changed for the NES version because religion is a no-no. I’m pretty sure Zelda got away with it because, no, that’s not a cross on the shield, it’s lines dividing it into four parts! See, just look at the box art!
In the distance, you can see cliffs. Can’t do that in the PC version. Unless you’re in the scrubland anyway.
I restarted the game for two reasons. One: to get a screenshot of this magnificent vista that you'll never see if you're playing on a computer. Two: to see if saving and reloading resets the thirst counter, because we all want to know what happens if you go 255 screens into the endless desert. Sadly, it doesn't reset the thirst counter and therefore, someone better at rom hacking will have to find out what lies beyond. Maybe Graham escapes from the Matrix. Nah. It's probably garbledina. Or the game crashes. Or both.
The oasis looks surprisingly decent. In the computer version, there are five oases, well, really, four plus a well under a dead tree that you will probably never see because it's in an out of the way part of the map. Hell, the Sierra Chest's map doesn't even include the fucking thing. There are four in the NES version and the desert is smaller, presumably because of memory limitations.
Because of the decreased size, or perhaps because the programmers hate you, you can only go five screens before you succumb to thirst instead of seven in the computer version.
This guy was one screen away from an oasis. Two in the computer version.
Why he needs this old shoe and not just a random branch or rock isn't very understandable. Hey, I wonder what would happen if you gave this to the cobbler. Most likely nothing in the NES version.
If you go in the larger tent, even earlier, when the camp is seemingly deserted, you die. I'd imagine the two scenes look very similar in the NES version.
Also, you can't talk to the horses. Or the camel that was in the computer version.
Careful, the bandit is a very light sleeper.
The important thing to know is that in Latin, Jehova begins with an I.
I’m not entirely sure if the bandits are using the temple to store their ill-gotten loot or if they’re robbing the temple but have to take everything one gem at a time because otherwise they’d get stuck.
I think it's meant to be the former because there's a legend about bandits or pirates storing their loot/booty at Petra.
I keep using my L and R buttons thinking that nobody would be dumb enough to port King’s Quest V to a console with a two button (plus Select, as we’ve learned) controller.
I wonder what the bandits are thinking about their staff being gone. Somebody will probably go to the temple, thinking they left it there. He'll have a revelation. Like, maybe they shouldn't be hiding the loot. Maybe they should instead use it to buy things. Things they like.
As a kid, I thought one of the treasures in the temple was a solid gold fire hydrant.
Make sure you choose wisely. But you don't have to choose quickly. The door only closes on you if you try to grab anything but the items you need in the future.
Cedric doesn’t even warn you about the bandits in the NES version. Don’t even bother talking to Cedric because he never does anything useful.
That's what the gold coin's for. You can get away with using the gold needle in the computer version.
I bet Mordack’s secretly happy about Manannan becoming a cat and even calls him Mr. Schnookums when he thinks no one is listening.
I forgot to come here earlier.
But right now, he has nothing important to say.
TVTropes sez: You don't get only one shot at saving the mouse; if you fail (which is likely with the wretched imported control scheme), just leave the screen and come back to try again.
Turns out this statement was a lie. If you don’t throw the boot at the cat, and trust me, you won’t because you’re busy wrestling with the parser, you’re every bit as screwed as you’d be if you were playing this on a computer.
Maybe if you still had the stick, it will load the scene again.
Guess how many tries this took me.
6.
You’re playing a game of Find The Pixel on a moving object and clicking the wrong part of the screen causes enough of a delay. Thankfully, there’s nothing else like that for the rest of the game.
When a game tells you not to do something, either you must do that thing or you should never do that thing.
Now we can enter the DARK and SCARY forest. Without stupid Cedric bothering us, thankfully.
Your magic is useless against me!
D'oh! I had thought, given my attempts to use the amulet on Graham, that he wears it by default upon obtaining it. That is not so.
It turns out that it's just really particular about which pixel you click.
She sounds a bit like Ralph Wiggum in the PC version.
D'oh! D'oh! Then Graham decided to use the bottle instead of giving it to the witch.
Here's what's supposed to happen. I swear this puzzle was designed to screw over people didn't save often in multiple slots because there's no way you'd know the genie was evil unless you used the lamp yourself.
Ding, dong, the witch is dead! Oh, wait, wrong game.
The door can't be opened yet.
Now, if you don't have everything you need in the computer version, the scenery will devour you. In the NES version, you're probably just stuck forever.
If you didn't give the bottle to the witch yet, she'll be waiting here for you, blocking the way into her house.
The bridge doesn't look very grotesque to me.
Now we're going to ransack the witch's house.
I think you can go back in the forest.
Are you ready for the dumbest puzzle in the game?
That rock doesn't look suspicious at all.
He tosses the three emeralds, one after the other.
Tossing the last one into the honey. Thankfully, you can click anywhere on the screen and he'll always toss the emeralds in the same location.
That's what he gets for being greedy.
Getting out of the forest is a nice reward, but I'm not sure why he thinks Graham would be interested in a pair of shoes that is way too small for him.
Now that we're out of the forest, it's time for the obligatory trading sequence.
Can she play the piano anymore? Of course she can! But she couldn't before!
Since she can play the piano and because her tree hands were much bigger, she discards the harp.
For whatever reason, Graham is like "yeah, maybe I'll need this marionette."
I guess it makes sense that the toyshop would take something like that in return.
Graham definitely thinks ahead.
They never really think about just who they're going to sell these shoes too. I'd imagine kids' feet are proportioned differently from elves' feet. Maybe he's going to sell them back to the elves. Anyway, you get a cobbler's hammer for a reward. That's understandable. Probably not worth the emeralds, though.
Don't go to the inn until you rescued the mouse from the cat and obtained the hammer from the cobbler.
Because this happens.
And don't forget that rope either.
Somehow they locked the room from the inside.
That room looks spacious. Maybe this is the House of Leaves.
There's a leg of lamb in that cabinet that you're going to need.
This only happens in the NES version. And if you go back in through the front door, the innkeeper and his goons decide to rub you out for real this time. Let's just say accidents happen. Like the killing of you. By us.
Snakes don't have ears. I have no idea why this was the solution. Some people say the wagon doesn't leave until you have everything you need. They're probably wrong because this is a Sierra adventure game and is actively trying to screw you over at every possible moment.
Once you get past the snake, we can enjoy a different palette. Well, really, it's just the same palette with most of the colors removed, and maybe an extra shade of blue and gray here and there.
Make sure you're wearing the cloak or else you'll die.
I'm sure that branch is sturdy enough to support Graham's weight.
He gets up pretty high. I don't have a shot of him falling because he falls like he's on a black dwarf. I forgot to screenshot the next screen but, yes, they kept one of those rocks a false step (instant death) in this version.
Oh no, Cedric couldn't see the wolf because he blended in with the background.
You can also eat the pie but you're going to need it later. In this version you can turn back here, and I guess wander about Serenia without Cedric badgering you. In the computer version, you'll die on the way back and the game sometimes locks up.
In the floppy disk version, there was a weird "easter egg" here if you used the cloak on the sled fragments.
It would probably look more impressive on a different game.
They got a guy to imitate William Shatner to play the eagle in the CD-ROM version.
Good thing Graham knows how to play a comically oversized harp.
He sounds like Yoda doing a bad pirate impression.
The wolf looks suspiciously like a goat here.
I said about the cat chasing a mouse that there wasn't anything like it in the game. That wasn’t a lie. This isn’t nearly the pain in the ass that the cat puzzle is because at least it’s not a pixel hunt.
The yeti puzzle isn’t obtuse, it’s just stupid.
Typically, in an adventure game, every inventory item has exactly one use.
In the CD-ROM version, he talks in what I can only assume is supposed to be a Spanish accent.
In a rare moment of generosity, you can go get a crystal after this scene if you haven't already.
In the computer version, you can see a small mountain village on his flight through the mountains. I'm not sure what that's about.
The object in the roc's nest is extremely hard to see.
And you're going to need it.
Graham loses his cloak to the roc. Good thing you won't be needing it ever again.
Good thing you helped that eagle, eh.
He gets deposited on a small beach.
There's an object here to take.
How convienent. There just happens to be a stranded boat on this three screen large beach.
If you get in the sailboat now, Cedric will wait until you've gone out to sea to tell you there's a hole in the boat.
I'm not sure how good beeswax would be as a sealant.
Go out of bounds and a sea tentacle will grab you..
The one time Cedric takes initiative.
And of course it turns out to be a mistake.
Even if you wanted to abandon Cedric here, and believe me, you do, another harpy grabs you.
You have to be really quick here.
Harp... harpy... eh, still makes more sense than the rest of the game. I mean, the pun's right there. Still, maybe it would fit in King's Quest VI more. That game's all about bad puns.
You're going to need that impossible-to-see object. I don't know if you can come back here. I've never tried it.
He looks like a cardinal here.
Some people say it's impossible to leave the island without Cedric. That's a lie.
You rescue Cedric because you know that if you don’t, it’s going to come back to bite you in the ass.
Go here, to the screen we haven't visited yet.
I had my own taxonomy of unwinnable states in games and I can't find it anymore. I had the text adventure Theatre in mind, in which there exactly one part where you could make the game unwinnable if you throw the guy's corpse down the pit without first dousing it with sleeping drugs. If you go down there immediately, which you probably will, the game is like "oh, no, maybe that wasn't enough to sate the monster" and you get eaten. If you really want to, you can save after throwing it down there and go do something else, but in any case, it's obvious what you've done wrong.
Really, it all comes down to "if you can make the game unwinnable, how obvious it is what said action was"
And a lot of it is because of various threads I’ve read, one of which brings up Beyond Zork and how easy it is to put the game in an unwinnable state.
Incidentally, there's a puzzle earlier in this game that is very similar to one in Beyond Zork. Of course, the puzzle in Beyond Zork is better.
It's probably just a coincidence.
Someone on Selectbutton is not sure that Sierra played Zork because they had a habit of never playing games by competitors and never playtesting their games.
That’s how things were done back in the day.
Good old Cedric, warning us about things when it's too late.
They look less like serpents and more like iguanadons. Or at least those early reconstructions of iguanadons that had their hand-horn on their foreheads.
If you aren't holding the crystal aloft, you die.
Easy for you to say, Cedric. You can fly.
The chasm kind of prevents the purpose of a front door.
There's an obvious grate right there.
Ah, the limitations of this game's system. Most of the puzzles come down to "try every item in your inventory on the thing" and the ways to add challenge and trip you up are making it so you can use the wrong item to get desired results, but screwing you later, or just hiding the items you need really well.
In the days of a parser, you’d probably have to guess the verb.
An aside, there’s this really well-written Lovecraftian Southern Gothic horror game but it has a part where you need to “knead candle.”
Now we don't have to deal with Cedric for the rest of the game. Also, I may find the voice acting in the CD-ROM version hilariously bad, but I do have to give them props for just how audibly pissed Graham is with Cedric at the moment.
The Labyrinth is the only deviation from the standard inventory object puzzles.
And boy does it fail at being a good deviation. It’s a maze. It’s a maze with perspective switching as you go through. There is no time limit. There are no deathtraps, unless you count Dink.
Also, if you play the tambourine anywhere, Dink will magically come to you. Can’t do that in the computer version! I don’t know if this is a bug or a feature.
Nintendo Power calls Dink the blue beast.
Unfortunately, all of the directions to the exit begin where you meet Dink, so it takes slightly longer. There's only one place you can meet Dink in the labyrinth in the NES version, as opposed to four in the computer version.
You need the hairpin to unlock the door.
Yeah, maybe he'll get hungry again.
The NES palette does not look good here.
“olive skin” is a term I’ve never understood. Olives are dull green, lustrous black, or that kalamata color you get when you stir all your leftover paint into one color. She’d blend in with the background, though. In the computer version, her skin is the color of a tomato.
Unfortunately, she thinks Graham is with the giant space ants and goes back to scrubbing that one part of the floor while the rest of it grows moss.
Maybe she'll take a bribe.
Feeling nautical? Apparently, somewhere in Rocky and Bullwinkle, there’s a scene where Fearless Leader gives Boris an order. Feeling nautical today, are we? No, you just stepped on my foot.
Damn it! I was going to gawk at the scenery some. The Blue Beast is called The Blue Meanie by the King’s Quest Wiki, despite the fact that this is not Odyssey: The Legend of Nemesis. I don’t think he’s Sam. Cassima even says “I don’t think you’ve met Sam.” If this guy was Sam, I don’t think she’s be friends with him.
But whatever, you need to come here and this is the only way.
How does she even know you’re… never mind.
If Graham uses the organ in the PC version, it will play itself and Mordack will show up and force choke you to death. You can't do that here. I assume any deviations here are due to the fact that saving is done with a password and a temporary save. There is SRAM on the cartridge but no battery. There is a rom hack out there that prevents the SRAM from clearing after a hard reboot (to prevent save corruption, perhaps) for use in emulators and reproduction cartidge.
For fuck's sake, Dark Seed, a Chinese unlicenced port, has a battery backup.
If you get caught again, Graham will find that someone had realized Graham had escaped, went down there, replaced the loose stone, and mortared it in place. In the less than five minutes it takes to follow Cassima through the labyrinth, and then pass through the pantry and kitchen. I hope you got the cheese from the mousehole.
If you're wondering how to deal with the blue beast now, well, um. About that.
This room looks pretty decent, if overly cluttered.
The foyer is a lot more barren in this version. In the computer version, there were all sorts of weird statues everywhere.
So, in this version, if you encounter the cat, I think you can leave the screen without interacting with him in any way without Mordack appearing half a minute later and killing you. Can't do that on the computer version, nope. Whatever, I didn't encounter the cat at all. I know that in the computer version, the blue beast can appear in the organ hall, the dining room (both parts) and the foyer, while the cat can appear in the dining room, the foyer, the upstairs hallway, and the bedroom.
This is the best looking room in the game.
It looks suitably menacing and the artist understood how to work with the limitations of the NES palette.
This is the most hilarious room in the game.
The description of the bedroom in the King’s Quest Companion is “The king’s stomach briefly turned, unwilling to imagine the acts which might take place near where he stood.”
Since Mordack lives alone, I’m assuming he uses the bed for sleeping, eating, and maybe building a little fort.
The game makes no mention of that weird tusked skull.
They're hard to make out.
A few minutes later... in real time, not game time. But not quite as long as the computer version.
Mordack is so tired that he just falls asleep on top of his skull print bedsheets. You can stand in the door and he won’t see you. Maybe he thinks he’s hallucinating from lack of sleep.
I’d say something about Mordack not falling asleep until you've knocked out the beast and incapacitated the cat but then I watched a playthrough where she makes it upstairs without encountering the beast or the cat. She does knock the beast out. Eventually. But only because sometimes Mordack is standing around in his bedroom or laboratory and sometimes the RNG hates you. So I don’t know if any of that stuff about how Mordack doesn’t go to bed until the beast has been knocked out is true in the PC version. I do know that that statement is a lie in the NES version because I pulled it off.
Anyway, now that you have his wand.
I knew this could happen. In the computer version, each room has a timer and if you gawked at the scenery too long or spent too long deliberating on a puzzle, Mordack would show up and kill you. In the NES version, instead of doing that, the timer runs throughout the entire castle.
I thought that the timer stops once Mordack goes to bed but turns out I was wrong.
Lets try this again, with less description gathering this time.
I'm sorry. This was a lot more impressive in the computer version.
D'oh! D'oh! D'oh! I thought the game went straight to the final showdown with Mordack but no.
Mordack finds your lack of faith disturbing. Wait a minute, instead of animating Graham choking, they instead went for the death by iguana statue animation and it looks like Graham’s paying the price for his lack of vision. Memory limitations or lazy artists? You decide!
Good thing we have this temporary save file. And also a password, if you want to skip to the end of the game without dealing with the blue beast or the cat.
You… killed… Cedric!!!!!!!
No, wait, Mordack! I changed my mind! Forget all that stuff I said about rescuing my family! I want to join you and together we can rule the galaxy as father and son!
You only get a fraction of a second. But your pointer doesn't move away from Graham, so it kinda balances out.
It really is convienent that Mordack's transformations can all be countered by the ones on the book he left open.
Mordack forgot the first rule of transformations.
See.
In the sequel, Prince Alexander pines for Cassima despite knowing her for all of three seconds. Anyway, god damn it, Crispin.
The sequel was not released for the NES for obvious reasons.
There. See. It's possible to beat the game without maxing out your score.
Well, that's it. I've made plans for most of the next few months, though with omicron, I have no idea if they'll come to fruition. I'm hoping omicron burns itself out by the end of January. And I'm hoping that we don't have a new variant by then. At least Plymouth Philharmomic is postposting their concerts.
burning question: How does Graham always know what he'll need in advance, anyway?
