King's Quest

King's Quest is an adventure game developed by Sierra On-Line and originally released for the IBM PCjr in 1984. The game was designed to take advantage of the unique features of the IBM PCjr, specifically its 16 color graphics, 3-voice sound, and 128 KB of memory. While the IBM PCjr computer sold poorly affecting sales of the initial release of King's Quest, the game was soon ported to the IBM PC, Tandy 1000, Apple II, and other computers making it a huge success. King's Quest was notable as not only the first game in Sierra's successful King's Quest series, it was also the first game to use their AGI (Adventure Game Interpreter) development system which would later be used with great success on many following adventure games.

The game takes place in The Kingdom of Daventry. After three magical treasures are stolen, the kingdom is in great trouble. The treasures are a mirror that tells the future, a shield that protects its wearer against danger, and a chest that is always full of gold. King Edward, the benevolent king of Daventry, calls his bravest knight, Sir Graham, to take on the quest of recovering the treasures. Since King Edward has no heirs, if Graham is successful in his quest he will be rewarded by becoming the new king of Daventry. Players begin the game outside the castle of Daventry after Graham has learned of his quest.

King's Quest has the distinction of being the first animated adventure game. Previously, adventure games would show static images on part of the screen (if the game had graphics at all) while the player interacted only via text commands. King's Quest expanded this by including animation in addition to static images. Players could move their character, Sir Graham, around the screen using either the keyboard or joystick. Graham could walk in front of or behind object as well as interact with them. Players could additionally interact with the game by typing commands for Graham to perform in the text parser located along the bottom of the screen. The goal is to search the kingdom to find the stolen treasures and return to the castle with them. Players can issue commands to have Graham perform actions, examine locations or items, pick up items, talk to other characters, and more.

In 1990, an enhanced version of King's Quest was released which was renamed Roberta Williams' King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown. The updated version utilized Sierra's newer and more advanced SCI (Sierra Creative Interpreter) game engine which allowed for higher resolution, more detailed graphics and the addition of sound board support for stereo sound and digitized sound effects. This was the first of several remakes of older games Sierra would release; it was also the only remake which still used 16 colors — all of the later remakes utilized a newer version of SCI that supported 256 colors. While the remake featured very similar puzzles and story lines, some changes were included: Not all of the puzzles were exactly the same and some item locations were changed.