King's Quest III Remake Released

Beetle B. writes "Not being content with remaking Sierra's King's Quest I, King's Quest II and Quest for Glory II, the Anonymous Game Developers Interactive have released a remake of King's Quest III. Sure, the graphics may not appeal to the young'uns out there, but it's the gameplay that matters, right? Last year, after several legal battles, another game in the King's Quest series made by fans was released (with more episodes to come). And did I mention that they're all free? What other remakes of old adventure games are floating around out there?"

Comments

Living in the past

[DNS-and-BIND]

Yet another remake, sequel, re-imagining, mashup, or reinterpretation. Sigh. I never realized at the time that things were so good...I honestly expected that we would keep going onward. For the past 10-20 years, it has just been remake after remake. For every movie like Pulp Fiction or Necronomicon, there are two Karate Kid or McHale's Navy made. Just imagine if all the talented people who spent hundreds or thousands of man-hours making this remake instead spent their energy on something new. It just says that things were better before and imagination has become an unusual quality.

Re:Living in the past

[iGN97]

Yet another whine, sulking, bitching repeat-post. Sigh. I never realized at the time that things were so good...I honestly expected that we would keep going forward. For the past 10-20 years, it has just been whining laced thickly on whining. For every comment with a constructive suggestion or a "hey, let's go make something new and interesting ourselves, because we have some good ideas, right?", there are two whiners whining about how much better things were before and how much better everything would be if everyone's time were spent making something new, as if newer is better. It just says that things were better before, when everything was new, and there was nothing to whine about.

Re:Living in the past

[MrHanky]

Blah, blah, blah. Throughout history, most works of fiction have been derivative crap, a few have been original and fewer still have been really good. Hell, pretty much all the best works of fiction are derivative works: Shakespeare's dramas hardly contain a single original storyline. Computer games certainly weren't any better in the 80s than they are now, you just tend to forget the more forgettable ones. Some of the better ones (Giana Sisters) were pure rip-offs.

Re:Living in the past

[C0R1D4N]

This isn't some company trying to cash in on and old IP (like Leisure Suit Larry Magna Cum Laude) this is a labor of love for people who just want to bring the game back to new audiences and trudge up some nostalgia for us old people who loved the Sierra quest series games.

Re:Living in the past

[MrHanky]

Utter bullshit. It can't possibly be a "self-justifying excuse" as I'm not justifying myself, nor excusing anything. OTOH, I do point out the fact that plenty of great canonical works are derivative. Speaking of "cultural decay", all the Greek Classics were re-telling old and well-known stories, and that at what was for more than a millennium known as the height of civilisation. So on the one hand, you have evidence, on the other hand you have your evidently false claims.

Re:Living in the past

[kevinmenzel]

AGDI provides awesome nostalga in different ways, including slightly reworking the games (massively reworking in the case of KQ2) - ways that hint every so often not only at the game they are remaking, but giving a nod to other games in the series, and bringing back people like Josh Mandel who voiced King Graham in the Sierra KQ5 and KQ6, and now the AGDI KQ1, 2 and 3. There is something really cool about hearing the original voice of King Graham brought back to games originally written before voice acting existed.

Re:The best one

[dingen]

I'm sorry, you are right. Anyhow, KQ3 is imho the only game in the series worth remaking. Everything from 5 on is fine as it was released and part 1, 2 and 4 are not that interesting to play anyway. KQ3 really stands out in terms of storyline and gameplay, so its awesome that AGD released this new version today.

Re:The best one

[kevinmenzel]

It was square waves. That was it. Have you even PLAYED KQ3 on an Amiga? Are you sure you aren't thinking of a different KQ game? KQ3 runs on the AGI interpereter, which doesn't shift pallettes ever. It uses 16 colors. The same 16 colors for the entire game. The same 16 colors for EVERY AGI game. They didn't re-write the game for the Amiga, they took exactly the same resources, and shipped them with an interpereter for a variety of platforms. That is, until they released it for the Apple II GS when they slightly tweaked the music.

So you're wrong. Flat out wrong. I know that the Amiga as a platform was capable of those things, but it did not do those things for King's Quest III, at least not on the Amiga I had at school, and you won't find a screen shot or an Amiga emulator that will prove you correct.

Re:The best one

[scdeimos]

Right and Amiga has a 4000 color palette youngling.

So, so sorry to burst your bubble but... the Amiga 500/1000 (and the Apple IIgs as well) had 12-bit RGB video output yielding a total of 4,096 possible colours. Palettes were always a subset of those 4,096 colours. Hence the usage of the name "palette".

Palettes on the A500/1000 were 16 or 32 colours (OCS had 6bpp graphic buffers) and 16 or 256 colours on the Apple IIgs, though more colours could be displayed on either platform by employing palette-switching tricks during horizontal retrace periods. This is essentially what HAM (Hold and Modify Mode) was and it could only really be used for stills. Half-Brite mode was a trick that switched palettes during the vertical retrace period and got you 64 colours on A500/1000.

It wasn't until the A1200 came along that with the AGA (and its 8bpp buffers) Amiga got 24-bit RGB output, but it was still limited 256 colour palettes or 262,144 colours (18-bit) in HAM-8 mode.

Re:The best one

[kevinmenzel]

Oh, and based on further research, the first Sierra engine that appears to use more than 16 colors on the Amiga is the SCI 2 interpreter used in King's Quest 5, which looks WORSE on the Amiga as compared a VGA DOS version... so even once you start using more of the avaliable Amiga technology, IT'S STILL not as good as it was on other systems. Not necessarily DOS (Although for SCI 2, DOS is almost certainly the best), but other systems nonetheless.

Re:Great....

[Israfels]

Exactly. Back then you had to type what you wanted to do. Now days people just use the action cursor and spam it all over the screen until the solution is automatically given to you.

It's replaced the user intent (push, pull, climb, take, move, play, turn, lift, pick, pry, catch, jump, eat, steal, drink, etc) with *ACTION CLICK*

Phone Games

[sycorob]

Games like King's Quest have relatively low graphics levels, require little computational power, and the interface is generally pretty simple ("Go North", "Look", etc). Wouldn't these make great smartphone games? Just make sure it autosaves all the time, and also add the ability to save manually (to restart something if you get stuck or dead). I'd love to play half an hour of King's Quest on the train. VGA was 640 x 480, and my Moto Droid (sideways) is 854 x 480, more than enough. You'd actually have to letterbox it!

Re:Zork

[kalirion]

From the disclaimer:

This site is not commercial and in no way affiliated with the current rightholder of Infocom copyrights, Activision, Inc., and does not claim to have any rights pertaining to any and all articles by Infocom and subsequently Activision, Inc.

So I'm not sure they have the right to be offering those games for free.

This is the SECOND big remake

[euroq]

I thought this was a joke when I first saw the title. The King's Quest III remake has been out for about 3 years now. Did they just re-release it for publicity?

Then I realize that the people who have been making this game are separate. The first KQ3 remix is here:
http://www.infamous-adventures.com/kq3/index.php?page=screens

So I am dumbfounded that these developers worked so hard and for so long for so many years on doing something that's already been done. I can't imagine there is much difference between the first remake and this new second remake.