Every week, we take a quick look at the latest console games available for download:
WiiWare -- One major title finally arrives this week on WiiWare -- Cave Story, the retro-style RPG/platformer available as freeware on many platforms, getting a bit of a visual upgrade for this commercial Wii release. It's a solid game, and it's very nice to see creator Pixel potentially earning some revenue for his stellar work.
Wii Virtual Console -- Nothing new this week.
DSiWare -- Five new titles debut this week. Drift Street International is a full-featured 3-D urban racing game which purportedly takes advantage of the DSi's extra horsepower. Libera Wing is a sci-fi tower defense game. And there are three Game & Watch remakes celebrating Nintendo's early handheld electronic games -- Mario's Cement Factory, Chef, and Judge; these are simple but polished games, perfect for killing a little time on the go.
XBox Live Arcade -- An update of a classic title arrives -- it's Rare's Perfect Dark, which began life as a Nintendo 64 first-person-shooter. This release reportedly also includes weapons and a number of maps from Rare's GoldenEye 64 as well, stripped of the James Bond license that's kept the game in legal limbo for far too long. The textures have been up-rezzed, but the 3-D models are still very boxy -- it gives the game a bit of a strange look. But it plays well with the 360 controller.
PS3 on PSN -- Nothing new for the PS3 last week, but Telltale Games announced that Sam & Max Season 3 will be debuting on PC and PS3, leaving the 360 and Wii to play catchup this time.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Please Wash After Handling the Corpse Fragments
With all the Resident Evil 5 action in our house of late, this health label at a wash-up station in our local grocery store came off completely wrong when I first read it:
Apologies for the quality of the cellphone photograph -- the situations requiring washing of hands are listed as follows:
Apologies for the quality of the cellphone photograph -- the situations requiring washing of hands are listed as follows:
- Between handling raw and ready to eat foods
- After using the restroom
- Before you start work
- After touching body parts
Saturday, March 20, 2010
The Unreadables
In the late 8-bit/early 16-bit era, Ocean was known primarily for publishing movie-based games. Usually these titles were generic platformer designs with artwork inspired by the movie license slapped on top. And usually these games were released just in time for the movie to hit the big screen, with ads prominently featuring the movie logo.
For one such game, things were different.
First, this game didn't make it to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System until 1994, seven years after the movie's theatrical release.
Second, the logo was almost hidden in the ad:
See it? Wrapped around two of the three shiny, shiny bullets? Brian de Palma's The Untouchables?
The logo is actually quite a bit easier to spot in this scan than in the original print ad -- I found myself staring at the page in Video Games & Computer Entertainment for a long, confused moment, wondering what the ad was promoting, before I spotted it.
Remember, kids -- when you're advertising a game based on a license that's no longer current, the last thing you want to do is hide the name.
For one such game, things were different.
First, this game didn't make it to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System until 1994, seven years after the movie's theatrical release.
Second, the logo was almost hidden in the ad:
See it? Wrapped around two of the three shiny, shiny bullets? Brian de Palma's The Untouchables?
The logo is actually quite a bit easier to spot in this scan than in the original print ad -- I found myself staring at the page in Video Games & Computer Entertainment for a long, confused moment, wondering what the ad was promoting, before I spotted it.
Remember, kids -- when you're advertising a game based on a license that's no longer current, the last thing you want to do is hide the name.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Clueless Gaijin Gaming: Atomic Robo-Kid Special
This week, we're taking a look at another Japanese game I sorely wished had made it to the States back in its day: Atomic Robo-Kid Special for the PC Engine, published by UPL Company Limited in 1989. It stars a cute, heavily-armed robot, who is out to destroy various other robots for no reason that really matters once the game is underway. Suffice it to say that the fate of robot civilization is at stake, and no knowledge of Japanese is required:
The difficulty has also been toned down -- I didn't have much problem making it through the first six stages, with the Act 3 boss battle over before I realized it was such. But the action is still pretty frenetic, and the design has a sort of super-deformed H.R. Giger look about it that manages to be cute and cybernetically creepy at the same time.
This great-looking Act 5 boss provides more of a challenge, as we have to circle him constantly, whittling down his extra heads and dodging his shots before hitting his core body enough to take him down:
Act 6 resembles Act 1 of the arcade game, with R-Type-esque robot worms that Atomic Robo-Kid must battle in tight quarters:
The action does become repetitive after a while -- the difficulty ramps up, but the basic premise doesn't really change. Like most arcade games of the late 80's, it was originally designed to extract another token from the player's pocket as often as possible; the continues are limited to three here, so the player does have to develop a bit of skill, but it's not nearly as challenging as the coin-op.
Everything's in English, and the graphics look lovely in stills, so this is yet another game NEC mysteriously chose not to pursue for release on the American TurboGrafx-16. A Sega Genesis version did come out in the States, courtesy of small publisher Treco, but while the parallax scrolling was preserved, it didn't look, sound or play quite as nicely as it did on NEC's little white box.
Ah, well. You can't win 'em all, Atomic Robo-Kid.
The game was adapted from the coin-op original for a number of home computer and videogame platforms, although none of the conversions were particularly faithful to the arcade game. The PC Engine version retains the look of the main character and most of the enemy sprites, but the level designs are quite a bit different. The multiplane scrolling parallax of the coin-op is replaced by banded layers, changing the look of many levels, and the order of the levels has been rearranged. There's a fair amount of repetition in the graphics as well -- this fan boss appears in almost every level that isn't a boss battle in and of itself:
The difficulty has also been toned down -- I didn't have much problem making it through the first six stages, with the Act 3 boss battle over before I realized it was such. But the action is still pretty frenetic, and the design has a sort of super-deformed H.R. Giger look about it that manages to be cute and cybernetically creepy at the same time.
This great-looking Act 5 boss provides more of a challenge, as we have to circle him constantly, whittling down his extra heads and dodging his shots before hitting his core body enough to take him down:
Act 6 resembles Act 1 of the arcade game, with R-Type-esque robot worms that Atomic Robo-Kid must battle in tight quarters:
The action does become repetitive after a while -- the difficulty ramps up, but the basic premise doesn't really change. Like most arcade games of the late 80's, it was originally designed to extract another token from the player's pocket as often as possible; the continues are limited to three here, so the player does have to develop a bit of skill, but it's not nearly as challenging as the coin-op.
Everything's in English, and the graphics look lovely in stills, so this is yet another game NEC mysteriously chose not to pursue for release on the American TurboGrafx-16. A Sega Genesis version did come out in the States, courtesy of small publisher Treco, but while the parallax scrolling was preserved, it didn't look, sound or play quite as nicely as it did on NEC's little white box.
Ah, well. You can't win 'em all, Atomic Robo-Kid.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Oddities: Klendathu (1982)
Book-inspired games have never been common, and action-oriented adaptations even rarer. One such title was Leo Christopherson's Klendathu, published by Radio Shack for the TRS-80 Color Computer back in 1982, based on Robert Heinlein's classic sci-fi novel Starship Troopers.
Christopherson established a reputation for impressive animation on the TRS-80 Model I, where his artwork and sound design brought personality and life to games like Android NIM and Dancing Demon. This was his only published game for the CoCo, and while he took advantage of the color capabilities and square(ish) pixels of the new platform, his work here isn't spectacular. The burning flames look quite nice, and the bugs' walking feet are properly anchored to the ground, but there just isn't much else to look at. The soundtrack is also weak compared to his Model I efforts -- it consists of simple pops and beeps, with nary a hint of a keening alien insect or crackling flame.
The action is based on the alien bug battles central to Heinlein's novel, but there are some tactical aspects to the gameplay as well. The player must monitor the grid for bug activity and drop in where the battle rages hottest, switching zones rapidly to keep up with the insects. There are no fixed "waves," just a constant onslaught that requires the player to keep on top of the developing situation:
Once in the heat of battle, the player has a small flamethrower with which to ignite as many bugs as possible, using the CoCo's analog stick mouse-style to aim and the fire button to turn on the heat. There's a bit of Missile Command strategy available here, as a burning bug will occasionally ignite its neighbor, but for the most part the player's focus has to be on hitting each of the bugs with a shot of flame as quickly as possible:
There are some higher-level strategic concerns as well. The player must manage limited fire resources, and keep a close eye on the clock and the attacking bugs' impact on the player's protective suit. Get worn down by the bugs, or lose track of time and fail to return to the drop ship, and it's game over (incidentally, I recall this screen as the first time I'd encountered the phrase "bought the farm" as a jokey euphemism for death):
There isn't much more to the game than that -- fight the bugs, fight some other bugs, earn money, gain rank, and repeat. There are two difficulty levels and 5 game lengths to choose from, but the gameplay is essentially the same in all modes.
Klendathu's design is simple and light on story detail, and the audiovisuals aren't nearly as atmospheric as one would like them to be, but the constant pressure to leap out of any given battle and see how the war is going overall provides a realistic touch. It was a unique CoCo-exclusive game, a fresh experience in its day, and I enjoyed playing it enough to seek out and read Heinlein's novel a few years later.
Christopherson established a reputation for impressive animation on the TRS-80 Model I, where his artwork and sound design brought personality and life to games like Android NIM and Dancing Demon. This was his only published game for the CoCo, and while he took advantage of the color capabilities and square(ish) pixels of the new platform, his work here isn't spectacular. The burning flames look quite nice, and the bugs' walking feet are properly anchored to the ground, but there just isn't much else to look at. The soundtrack is also weak compared to his Model I efforts -- it consists of simple pops and beeps, with nary a hint of a keening alien insect or crackling flame.
The action is based on the alien bug battles central to Heinlein's novel, but there are some tactical aspects to the gameplay as well. The player must monitor the grid for bug activity and drop in where the battle rages hottest, switching zones rapidly to keep up with the insects. There are no fixed "waves," just a constant onslaught that requires the player to keep on top of the developing situation:
Once in the heat of battle, the player has a small flamethrower with which to ignite as many bugs as possible, using the CoCo's analog stick mouse-style to aim and the fire button to turn on the heat. There's a bit of Missile Command strategy available here, as a burning bug will occasionally ignite its neighbor, but for the most part the player's focus has to be on hitting each of the bugs with a shot of flame as quickly as possible:
There are some higher-level strategic concerns as well. The player must manage limited fire resources, and keep a close eye on the clock and the attacking bugs' impact on the player's protective suit. Get worn down by the bugs, or lose track of time and fail to return to the drop ship, and it's game over (incidentally, I recall this screen as the first time I'd encountered the phrase "bought the farm" as a jokey euphemism for death):
There isn't much more to the game than that -- fight the bugs, fight some other bugs, earn money, gain rank, and repeat. There are two difficulty levels and 5 game lengths to choose from, but the gameplay is essentially the same in all modes.
Klendathu's design is simple and light on story detail, and the audiovisuals aren't nearly as atmospheric as one would like them to be, but the constant pressure to leap out of any given battle and see how the war is going overall provides a realistic touch. It was a unique CoCo-exclusive game, a fresh experience in its day, and I enjoyed playing it enough to seek out and read Heinlein's novel a few years later.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Video Podcast - The Pharaoh Trilogy Speed-Run
In this episode, we play through three vintage text adventures in under eight minutes, taking advantage of a handy programming bug.
The Gaming After 40 video podcast is also available on iTunes, blip.tv, and elsewhere. If you like the show, please tell your similarly inclined friends about us!
The Gaming After 40 video podcast is also available on iTunes, blip.tv, and elsewhere. If you like the show, please tell your similarly inclined friends about us!
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Adventure of the Week: King's Quest II (1985)
This week, we're playing Roberta Williams' King's Quest II: Romancing The Throne, sequel to the pioneering "3-D" animated adventure King's Quest. The game was originally released in 1985; we're playing the slightly-updated 1987 version for the IBM PC, with EGA graphics support:
The game was created using Sierra's original Adventure Game Interpreter, which runs in half-resolution to save memory for the depth masking used to create the 3-D effect. My first experience with KQ2 was with the 1985 version, on an IBM PC with CGA graphics, using dithering of the 4 available colors to approximate the intended look; the full 16 colors available in EGA look much, much nicer. As with other Sierra AGI games, the keyboard interface is still very important -- we type our commands, although the animation means that many of them cannot be executed unless Graham is standing in the right spot.
As the story gets underway, now-King Graham is doing well as a ruler:
But he is a lonely monarch; a vision of a beautiful woman trapped in a tower appears in the future-foretelling magic mirror hanging on the wall, and, in a simply rendered but dramatic moment, Graham dons his adventurer's cap once again to venture forth in search of love.
King's Quest II bears many striking similarities to King's Quest I. There are three sub-sections to complete in order to find keys to unlock three nested doors; the wraparound world map is sparsely-populated, dominated by trees, fields, mountains and beaches; and the random hazards and characters are almost exactly the same as in the first game. With King Graham at large looking exactly like Sir Graham, this adventure feels more like an alternate version of the first story than a true sequel.
For new readers, let me point out that this series of blog posts attempts to document the noteworthy features of vintage adventure games, beginning to end. So the following discussion will give away many of the game's surprises and story points. If you plan to play King's Quest II yourself, you may wish to refrain from continuing beyond this point. In other words...
***** SPOILERS AHEAD! *****
Roberta Williams uses fairy tale elements in many of her early games. This time, we find Grandma's cottage early on, and randomly encounter either Grandma ailing in bed, or a fatally carnivorous wolf. What I found interesting about this scenario is that there's a basket of goodies in the mailbox outside, but for some reason Grandma doesn't want them and instructs us to return them to Little Red Riding Hood. When we do so, Red claims that somebody stole her basket of goodies and gives us a bouquet of flowers for our trouble. Something about this family is either very strange or very confused; one doubts the goodies were stolen by a well-meaning thief and sent to the wrong Grandma. But it's an adventure game, and such conflicts are par for the course. A nice visual touch here is that Little Red's animation changes from a mopey walk to a bouncy skip after we give her the basket.
Religion in adventure games is usually treated perfunctorily, deus-ex-vending-machine style, and this one's no different. We get a protective silver cross from the monastery by kneeling and PRAYing next to the monk. The monk also turns up later to perform certain official duties.
Oddly, the game has no INVENTORY or TAKE INVENTORY command -- we have to use the Tab key to see Graham's possessions.
As in King's Quest I, there are hidden treasures in several places -- for example, a diamond brooch concealed within a hole in a rock -- and a randomly wandering dwarf who steals these goodies if he touches us. At least in this game we can visit the dwarf's home when he's (randomly) away, and steal some (presumably second-hand) earrings from his treasure chest.
There are numerous ways to die -- we can drown in the poisoned lake, or fall into a chasm, or get taken out by the wolf, or Dracula, or Hagatha the cannibalistic witch, or the wandering enchanter (whose spell ends the game by turning Graham permanently into a frog.) And there are tricky physical challenges again -- climbing up ladders and staircases at odd angles, Graham is prone to fatal falls.
Hagatha is very much like the witch in KQ1, but fortunately, she doesn't see as well. We can enter her cave quietly to rescue a nightingale she has kidnapped -- but if we pick it up without covering its cage, it sings, alerting her, and we are treated to a recycled joke about how much she would "love to have you for dinner."
Thankfully, Ms. Williams does provide us with some clues this time around. Each of the three magic doors has an inscription hinting at where the key may be found. The first reads, "Whosoever chooses to seek the key for this door will undoubtedly make a splash." Hint hint.
So off we go to explore the ocean -- the map is seemingly infinite, but we can swim too far out into the ocean, at which point the game tells us, "You are so far out to sea, you have no chance of ever getting back. You can no longer swim." But I discovered Graham's drowning animation would still allow him to struggle all the way back to shore, as long as I kept him moving. The key is to meet the Mermaid, perched on a large rock; there may be other ways to solicit her help, but I gave her a treasure, and she summoned a large seahorse. The creature takes us to see King Neptune, perched upon his underwater throne:
We return his trident (assuming we picked it up from the beach) and are given a key and a bottle containing a cloth. Opening the magic door, we are confronted with a second magic door, and a clue indicating that seekers of the second key should "set their sights high."
One area where KQ2 improves on KQ1 is that its structure keeps us from trying to solve problems too early. The antique shop is closed initially, opening for business only after we have opened the first magic door. The proprietress has an oil lamp for sale that costs us two treasures OR a successful rescue of her nightingale from Hagatha. I got hung up for a bit after acquiring the lamp, but finally remembered Roberta's general approach -- if we find a lamp, we should perhaps think of the Arabian Nights more than Zork. We have to RUB LAMP, at which point a genie appears and gives us a magic carpet. We can then FLY CARPET to reach a mountain top, where a poisonous viper blocks the way. We can actually rub the lamp three times; the second rub gives us a sword that efficiently dispatches the viper, the third a bridle that I never found a use for.
Wandering through the land, we may encounter a random fairy who gives us a temporary protective spell -- just like KQ1's fairy godmother -- but it does seem to last quite a while.
There's also a Scott Adams-style plug for another Sierra product built in -- if Graham happens to look into a hole on the mountaintop past the viper, he gets a fairly substantial non-interactive preview of Space Quest!
The inscription on the third door tells us we "must have a stout heart," which is fairly vague, but as we're running out of other areas to explore, implies it's time to see if we can get across the poison lake to the foreboding castle visible in its center. Fortunately, there's now a boatman waiting there who can take us across, if we can beat the parser's unexpected stubbornness -- he's not FIGURE or BOATMAN, but FIEND, apparently.
This was the most frustrating part of the game for me -- maneuvering Graham past the dangerous thorns growing in front of the castle without making fatal contact with any of them was VERY difficult. I failed utterly using the keyboard, and finally had to plug in a gamepad and inch through the thicket, saving frequently -- it took me a good twenty minutes to get past this single screen:
Having made it through the thorns, I was dismayed to encounter some scary-looking ghosts -- but fortunately I was wearing the silver cross from the monastery, which frightened them off. Entering Dracula's castle, we find some twisty paths that make impressive use of the AGI 3-D technique as Graham carefully ascends the ramp:
After finding my way to Dracula's coffin, I was prepared to do away with him (though it's not strictly necessary.) But while I thought I had my vampire slayer's kit all set to go, with a mallet and a stake, the game thought differently. KILL DRACULA WITH STAKE does not work; nor does STAKE DRACULA; nor USE STAKE AND MALLET ON DRACULA. A simple KILL DRACULA does the trick. But we need to be quick about it -- if we don't kill him efficiently, he sees the cross we are wearing, transforms into a bat, and flies away. Killing him lets us find an extra silver key, which opens a chest in one of the castle's towers with a tiara treasure inside.
We have to pass through the thorns AGAIN on the way out, but at least we don't have to pay the boatman for the return trip.
Having opened the third door, we enter a different world with psychedelic coloration:
We have to find a way across the hot pink ocean -- there's a fishing net on the beach, and if we cast it, we catch a golden fish. LOOK FISH once it's been landed on the beach reveals that it's gasping and writhing in agony, and when we kindly toss the poor creature back into the ocean, it says, "In return for saving my life, I wish to offer you a ride across this ocean." Which is much appreciated, and very handy; Graham is apparently of Machiavellian philosophy, or simply feels it would be impolite to mention that it was he who endangered its life in the first place.
We find an amulet on the island, which, Roberta Williams-style, has the magic word HOME written on it. Inside the tower, we find more tricky stairs to navigate, encounter a lion at the top, and (in my playthrough, at least) give him some ham found in Dracula's castle to pacify him.
Past the door, Graham finally meets the girl from the magic mirror. We weren't allowed to KISS MERMAID, but are able to KISS VALANICE to wrap things up. King Graham is apparently a fast worker when it comes to the opposite sex:
This is probably my favorite scene in the whole game -- when Graham and Valanice marry, everyone's at the wedding. The guest list even includes several characters whom Graham has previously murdered in cold blood, including Dracula and the Giant and Dragon from KQ1. I guess everybody loves a royal wedding:
I had played through King's Quest II on my college roommate's computer, back when it was the new game on the block, and enjoyed revisiting it -- it's not notably better than King's Quest I, but nostalgia does have its attractions, and seeing it in proper 16-color EGA was a minor revelation.
Sometime soon, we'll take a look at King's Quest III, which finally takes the world of Daventry into new storytelling territory.
The game was created using Sierra's original Adventure Game Interpreter, which runs in half-resolution to save memory for the depth masking used to create the 3-D effect. My first experience with KQ2 was with the 1985 version, on an IBM PC with CGA graphics, using dithering of the 4 available colors to approximate the intended look; the full 16 colors available in EGA look much, much nicer. As with other Sierra AGI games, the keyboard interface is still very important -- we type our commands, although the animation means that many of them cannot be executed unless Graham is standing in the right spot.
As the story gets underway, now-King Graham is doing well as a ruler:
But he is a lonely monarch; a vision of a beautiful woman trapped in a tower appears in the future-foretelling magic mirror hanging on the wall, and, in a simply rendered but dramatic moment, Graham dons his adventurer's cap once again to venture forth in search of love.
King's Quest II bears many striking similarities to King's Quest I. There are three sub-sections to complete in order to find keys to unlock three nested doors; the wraparound world map is sparsely-populated, dominated by trees, fields, mountains and beaches; and the random hazards and characters are almost exactly the same as in the first game. With King Graham at large looking exactly like Sir Graham, this adventure feels more like an alternate version of the first story than a true sequel.
For new readers, let me point out that this series of blog posts attempts to document the noteworthy features of vintage adventure games, beginning to end. So the following discussion will give away many of the game's surprises and story points. If you plan to play King's Quest II yourself, you may wish to refrain from continuing beyond this point. In other words...
***** SPOILERS AHEAD! *****
Roberta Williams uses fairy tale elements in many of her early games. This time, we find Grandma's cottage early on, and randomly encounter either Grandma ailing in bed, or a fatally carnivorous wolf. What I found interesting about this scenario is that there's a basket of goodies in the mailbox outside, but for some reason Grandma doesn't want them and instructs us to return them to Little Red Riding Hood. When we do so, Red claims that somebody stole her basket of goodies and gives us a bouquet of flowers for our trouble. Something about this family is either very strange or very confused; one doubts the goodies were stolen by a well-meaning thief and sent to the wrong Grandma. But it's an adventure game, and such conflicts are par for the course. A nice visual touch here is that Little Red's animation changes from a mopey walk to a bouncy skip after we give her the basket.
Religion in adventure games is usually treated perfunctorily, deus-ex-vending-machine style, and this one's no different. We get a protective silver cross from the monastery by kneeling and PRAYing next to the monk. The monk also turns up later to perform certain official duties.
Oddly, the game has no INVENTORY or TAKE INVENTORY command -- we have to use the Tab key to see Graham's possessions.
As in King's Quest I, there are hidden treasures in several places -- for example, a diamond brooch concealed within a hole in a rock -- and a randomly wandering dwarf who steals these goodies if he touches us. At least in this game we can visit the dwarf's home when he's (randomly) away, and steal some (presumably second-hand) earrings from his treasure chest.
There are numerous ways to die -- we can drown in the poisoned lake, or fall into a chasm, or get taken out by the wolf, or Dracula, or Hagatha the cannibalistic witch, or the wandering enchanter (whose spell ends the game by turning Graham permanently into a frog.) And there are tricky physical challenges again -- climbing up ladders and staircases at odd angles, Graham is prone to fatal falls.
Hagatha is very much like the witch in KQ1, but fortunately, she doesn't see as well. We can enter her cave quietly to rescue a nightingale she has kidnapped -- but if we pick it up without covering its cage, it sings, alerting her, and we are treated to a recycled joke about how much she would "love to have you for dinner."
Thankfully, Ms. Williams does provide us with some clues this time around. Each of the three magic doors has an inscription hinting at where the key may be found. The first reads, "Whosoever chooses to seek the key for this door will undoubtedly make a splash." Hint hint.
So off we go to explore the ocean -- the map is seemingly infinite, but we can swim too far out into the ocean, at which point the game tells us, "You are so far out to sea, you have no chance of ever getting back. You can no longer swim." But I discovered Graham's drowning animation would still allow him to struggle all the way back to shore, as long as I kept him moving. The key is to meet the Mermaid, perched on a large rock; there may be other ways to solicit her help, but I gave her a treasure, and she summoned a large seahorse. The creature takes us to see King Neptune, perched upon his underwater throne:
We return his trident (assuming we picked it up from the beach) and are given a key and a bottle containing a cloth. Opening the magic door, we are confronted with a second magic door, and a clue indicating that seekers of the second key should "set their sights high."
One area where KQ2 improves on KQ1 is that its structure keeps us from trying to solve problems too early. The antique shop is closed initially, opening for business only after we have opened the first magic door. The proprietress has an oil lamp for sale that costs us two treasures OR a successful rescue of her nightingale from Hagatha. I got hung up for a bit after acquiring the lamp, but finally remembered Roberta's general approach -- if we find a lamp, we should perhaps think of the Arabian Nights more than Zork. We have to RUB LAMP, at which point a genie appears and gives us a magic carpet. We can then FLY CARPET to reach a mountain top, where a poisonous viper blocks the way. We can actually rub the lamp three times; the second rub gives us a sword that efficiently dispatches the viper, the third a bridle that I never found a use for.
Wandering through the land, we may encounter a random fairy who gives us a temporary protective spell -- just like KQ1's fairy godmother -- but it does seem to last quite a while.
There's also a Scott Adams-style plug for another Sierra product built in -- if Graham happens to look into a hole on the mountaintop past the viper, he gets a fairly substantial non-interactive preview of Space Quest!
The inscription on the third door tells us we "must have a stout heart," which is fairly vague, but as we're running out of other areas to explore, implies it's time to see if we can get across the poison lake to the foreboding castle visible in its center. Fortunately, there's now a boatman waiting there who can take us across, if we can beat the parser's unexpected stubbornness -- he's not FIGURE or BOATMAN, but FIEND, apparently.
This was the most frustrating part of the game for me -- maneuvering Graham past the dangerous thorns growing in front of the castle without making fatal contact with any of them was VERY difficult. I failed utterly using the keyboard, and finally had to plug in a gamepad and inch through the thicket, saving frequently -- it took me a good twenty minutes to get past this single screen:
Having made it through the thorns, I was dismayed to encounter some scary-looking ghosts -- but fortunately I was wearing the silver cross from the monastery, which frightened them off. Entering Dracula's castle, we find some twisty paths that make impressive use of the AGI 3-D technique as Graham carefully ascends the ramp:
After finding my way to Dracula's coffin, I was prepared to do away with him (though it's not strictly necessary.) But while I thought I had my vampire slayer's kit all set to go, with a mallet and a stake, the game thought differently. KILL DRACULA WITH STAKE does not work; nor does STAKE DRACULA; nor USE STAKE AND MALLET ON DRACULA. A simple KILL DRACULA does the trick. But we need to be quick about it -- if we don't kill him efficiently, he sees the cross we are wearing, transforms into a bat, and flies away. Killing him lets us find an extra silver key, which opens a chest in one of the castle's towers with a tiara treasure inside.
We have to pass through the thorns AGAIN on the way out, but at least we don't have to pay the boatman for the return trip.
Having opened the third door, we enter a different world with psychedelic coloration:
We have to find a way across the hot pink ocean -- there's a fishing net on the beach, and if we cast it, we catch a golden fish. LOOK FISH once it's been landed on the beach reveals that it's gasping and writhing in agony, and when we kindly toss the poor creature back into the ocean, it says, "In return for saving my life, I wish to offer you a ride across this ocean." Which is much appreciated, and very handy; Graham is apparently of Machiavellian philosophy, or simply feels it would be impolite to mention that it was he who endangered its life in the first place.
We find an amulet on the island, which, Roberta Williams-style, has the magic word HOME written on it. Inside the tower, we find more tricky stairs to navigate, encounter a lion at the top, and (in my playthrough, at least) give him some ham found in Dracula's castle to pacify him.
Past the door, Graham finally meets the girl from the magic mirror. We weren't allowed to KISS MERMAID, but are able to KISS VALANICE to wrap things up. King Graham is apparently a fast worker when it comes to the opposite sex:
This is probably my favorite scene in the whole game -- when Graham and Valanice marry, everyone's at the wedding. The guest list even includes several characters whom Graham has previously murdered in cold blood, including Dracula and the Giant and Dragon from KQ1. I guess everybody loves a royal wedding:
I had played through King's Quest II on my college roommate's computer, back when it was the new game on the block, and enjoyed revisiting it -- it's not notably better than King's Quest I, but nostalgia does have its attractions, and seeing it in proper 16-color EGA was a minor revelation.
Sometime soon, we'll take a look at King's Quest III, which finally takes the world of Daventry into new storytelling territory.
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