King's Quest 3 Redux

February 24, 2011 7:29 PM

AGD Interactive has released its remake of King's Quest III: To Heir is Human. (previously)
posted by nasreddin (25 comments total)

They design their sites like they design their games. It's one giant picture with image maps. There is no actual text on that site at all!
posted by joelf at 7:40 PM on February 24, 2011 [2 favorites]

Well you just destroyed any chance of me getting any work done this weekend. I now revert to my wide-eyed younger self... gleeeeeeee!
posted by starvingartist at 7:41 PM on February 24, 2011

omg yes. Welcome back childhood.

>kick cat
posted by naju at 7:59 PM on February 24, 2011 [4 favorites]

YAY!
posted by Sys Rq at 8:03 PM on February 24, 2011

Is this free? I played this a lot when I was a kid. Downloading NOW!
posted by no1nose at 8:07 PM on February 24, 2011

Wow, I only ever got to play the first two KQ games, on the Apple II that my dad (a tech-ed teacher) used to borrow from the high school every summer. Once Sierra started releasing games with higher system requirements, I was pretty much out of the PC gamer pool until I bought a computer for college; of course, by then Wolfenstein was all the rage and the old 3D adventure titles were all but impossible to find. Thank goodness I already did my taxes, this is going to take up a considerable amount of my free time.
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:23 PM on February 24, 2011

Goddamnit this is the one with the chamber pot.
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 8:40 PM on February 24, 2011 [1 favorite]

>kick cat
>kick chickens
>kick chamber pot over
>accidentally fall down stairs
>get lost in endless desert
posted by naju at 8:52 PM on February 24, 2011 [1 favorite]

haha I just died in about six different ways. GOODBYE WEEKEND
posted by bewilderbeast at 8:58 PM on February 24, 2011 [2 favorites]

Was a fan of AGD's first two remakes in the series, but is this one meaningfully better or different in strategy than IA's KQ3 remake from a couple years ago?
posted by FreelanceBureaucrat at 9:08 PM on February 24, 2011 [1 favorite]

I made it almost two minutes before randomly dying thanks to unforseeable bullshit. Thanks, Sierra.
posted by Copronymus at 9:42 PM on February 24, 2011

And it runs in Wine on Linux, too!

*calls in sick*
posted by cmonkey at 9:44 PM on February 24, 2011

Sierra-complaining aside, I do have fond memories of playing through the original. Well, the memories are fond once I got my hands on a walkthrough.
posted by Copronymus at 9:44 PM on February 24, 2011 [1 favorite]

I died constantly in every Sierra game, ever. That was half the fun, frankly-- the sheer variety of ways in which things could go dramatically, fatally wrong. Maybe it's time to replay the Laura Bow games....
posted by ElaineMc at 10:28 PM on February 24, 2011 [1 favorite]

God, yeah, KQ3 ruined my childhood. Fuckin wizard. Thank god for Monkey Isalnd.
posted by zvs at 12:05 AM on February 25, 2011 [1 favorite]

Damn this game...
*sings while sweeping the kitchen*

Look at this stuff
Isn't it neat?
Wouldn't you think my collection's complete?
Wouldn't you think I'm the slaveboy
The slaveboy who has everything?
Look at this trove
Treasures untold
How many wonders can one bed hold?
Looking around here you think
Sure, he's got everything
I've got bowls and doghair a-plenty
I've got spoons and thimbles galore
You want game points?
I've got twenty! (so far)
But who cares?
No big deal
I want mooooooore

I wanna be where the people are,
I wanna see, wanna see them dancin'
Walking around like- what do you call 'em?

**WHAT'S ALL THIS RACKET SLAVEBOY?? THIS IS THE LAST TIME YOU DISOBEY ME**

dammit...
posted by lemuring at 1:23 AM on February 25, 2011 [1 favorite]

In other King's Quest news, Telltale Games is set to start making new episodic content. I would rather see Space Quest brought back, but whatever.
posted by dortmunder at 3:40 AM on February 25, 2011

I died constantly in every Sierra game, ever. That was half the fun, frankly-- the sheer variety of ways in which things could go dramatically, fatally wrong.

Yeah, really. Anyone ever kill the monk in KQ II?
posted by marxchivist at 4:04 AM on February 25, 2011

The first computer game I ever owned. Lovely!

Dort: I agree, Space Quest was the jewel of Sierra's straight-up adventure franchises. (Well, maybe LSL. For a place with bipedal foxes and every children's story book trope ever, it took itself way too seriously)
posted by absalom at 4:48 AM on February 25, 2011

I get the feeling that I was too young to really be good at adventure games in their heydey, but I always felt that when I had the opportunity to play these games, I would quickly reach dead ends that made it nearly impossible to beat. It was like you had to think in computer syntax in order to be able to get anywhere. I usually just ended up walking around and then very quickly dying. I will say, however, that I spent hours trying to make any headway, any at all, in Leisure Suit Larry.

The point and click games like Sam & Max seemed a little more intuitive to me, but I still sucked at them.
posted by to sir with millipedes at 6:25 AM on February 25, 2011

Absalom, I agree. There's a soft spot in my heart for King's Quest because King's Quest II was the first non-text adventure I ever played, but the later KQ's got to be way too self serious to be entertaining. I gave up after four.
posted by dortmunder at 6:47 AM on February 25, 2011

I remember poking at at least three of the sierra games back in their heyday. The last one I remember working on, I entered a screen with an idyllic cottage next to a pleasant country road, with a tiny two foot wide stream running the length of the screen. I walked too close to the apparently six-inch-deep length of water, slipped in and died immediately, after having not saved for an hour. At that point I decided that if the game could say 'Fuck You!' to my face like that, I could do the same in return and uninstall. Novelty of the death scenes aside, randomly killing the player with no warning whatsoever, with mouse-smashing frequency, is a very shitty gameplay mechanic.

TL;DR - LUCASARTS RULEZ, SIERRA DROOLZ
posted by FatherDagon at 1:00 PM on February 25, 2011 [1 favorite]

FatherDagon: If that's the biggest Fuck You Sierra ever gave you, count yourself lucky. They were great at situations where, if you hadn't picked up something in the early locations (that you can no longer return to) you'd literally be unable to progress after a certain point.
posted by absalom at 9:36 AM on February 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

I cannot figure out where the page is that contains the last piece of the important thing you have to do to advance the story.

Could some kind person send me a MeMail with where on earth it is? I have all the other things from that book, all the elements for the thing, but I can't think of where that page is hidden.
posted by winna at 2:30 PM on February 26, 2011

Where is the damn lever in the study? I've been stuck on this for an hour.
posted by naju at 2:43 PM on February 27, 2011