King's Quest: Quest for the Crown

Sierra's King's Quest series is most definitely one of the best known, and most loved adventure game series ever.

This is because each King's Quest game was both a technical masterpiece, and a masterpiece of gameplay. Nowadays, due to the heavy changes in computer hardware, the games look dreadfully dated, and only the great gameplay remains. By now most, if not all adventure gamers have grown used to an icon-based interface, and colorful SVGA backgrounds. Sierra has always been aware of this problem, and has released revamped versions of most of its long-running series. Leisure Suit Larry, Space Quest... they each have their VGA counterpart. This honour befell King's Quest as well, but a lot sooner than the aforementioned series. It received an EGA counterpart, which still had a parser interface, which by now looks very dated as well. And this is where Tierra Entertainment stepped in.

They took it upon themselves to modernize King's Quest I by adding beautiful VGA graphics, an intuitive mouse/icon interface, and 16 bit sound. The game even comes with an additionally downloadable Voice Pack - featuring the voice actor who played Graham throughout the original Sierra games as well: Josh Mandel. They have done this with an amazing professionalism. The game has improved in every aspect. If Sierra Studios were to have made this themselves, I doubt they'd have done it much differently. The backgrounds look gorgeous. The voice acting is great, and certainly worth the additional download.

The music... everything is up to the standard the Sierra VGA games set. And best of all, you will be glad to learn that it is freeware. Made with Chris Jones free Adventure Game Studio engine by three aspiring game developers, this is an exceptional achievement. It is not the only game Tierra Entertainment had in the pipeline either. This game is actually a side-project to a King's Quest parody they are making. Since the parody was to take place in Daventry, and would use all the same backgrounds and sprites - they decided to make this additional VGA version of King's Quest, which we all thank them for now.

The game does come as a very large download, weighing in at 22.3 MBytes - with the voice pack coming at the cost of another 17 MBytes. If you have not played the original King's Quest I, and have even a remote interest in adventure games, you can not allow yourself to miss this one. Even if you have played the original, I would strongly advise you to download this game anyway. You will not regret it.

Review By HOTUD