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A crash course in the history of the Adventure game.

by Ernie Smith
(9/28/98)











The Goods
Quick Peek: King's Quest VIII comes back in grand fashion with a more action-oriented 3D game while still retaining its adventure qualities.
Release Date: November 1998 Developer: Sierra
Publisher: Sierra
Homepage: King's Quest VIII
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What do you think of when I say 'adventure game'? You may actually think of a lot of things. There is a lot of history and baggage that goes along with the adventure genre. After tic-tac-toe and Pong, the first computer games ever were textual adventures. That's because they're pretty easy to make -- anyone with a basic knowledge of BASIC can make a very good adventure game. Heck, I made a couple of them back in the day (in QBASIC, for the uninitiated). The ancient Zork series (which seems to come back every once in a while, most recently in Zork: Nemesis) may come to mind, as will the more recent Myst and Riven, but one game series really stands out (cliché phrase alert) above and beyond all the others. That would be the King's Quest series.

Roberta Williams was the one who created the graphical adventure genre and got us out of games that made BASIC compilers our best friends (thank God for that, they needed to be deceived). Through her excellent stories and amazing ideas she has been able to slowly chisel out what can arguably be called the best adventure game series ever: King's Quest. Not only that, but she has had other great hits as well, including, but not limited to, Phantasmagoria (her most recent) and Mystery House (her first). During the past few years though, she has taken somewhat of a break from doing much serious game making, knowing that the gaming industry has changed around her and left her suffocated.

Roberta simply puts it as this: "... since the overwhelming advent of 3D "action-type" games (plus the advent of more 'mass-market' computer owners), gamers are more into quick gratification and lots of movement and action…and games which don't require a lot of thought or really deep or difficult puzzles." That's why Roberta has taken a completely different turn for her latest game, King's Quest VIII. Now, not to be cynical, but I feared this moment more than any other -- the day that Sierra would be forced to sell out their greatest series of all to the mainstream computer game industry. I'm entirely positive though, from what I've seen, that they'll pull through.

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