News ID: 125
Date: 2010-12-12
Source: Sierra Chest
The Kingdom of Daventry is in serious trouble, after its precious magical items have been stolen from Castle Daventry. King Edward the Benevolent lacked an heir. A sorcerer promised to help the queen bear an heir, if they gave him their mirror that tells the future; looking in the mirror, the king and queen saw a vision of a young man becoming king. Thinking it was their own future son, they gave the mirror to the evil sorcerer. Alas, it was a lie and she had no heir. Years later, as the queen was sick and dying, a dwarf showed up promising to give a root that would cure her ills, if only the king would give him the "shield that protects its wearer against danger". The king agreed. The dwarf gave the root to the king, and departed. However the dwarf had lied to the king, and the queen grew worse and died. Sometime later the king looked for a new queen. One day, he rescued a beautiful young Princess Dahlia from the land of Cumberland. However, on the night of their wedding, she was discovered to be really an evil witch, and she stole the chest that is always filled with gold from the treasure and flew out of the castle on her broom. In time, the castle fell into ruin. Knowing that he had to save the kingdom, King Edward sends his bravest knight, Sir Graham, to retrieve the lost treasures. Because he had no heir, if Graham should succeed, he would become the next king.
Following the cartridge games crash in the early eighties, Sierra was on the brink of bankruptcy when IBM approached them with a proposal. IBM was developing the IBM PC Junior and wanted Sierra to develop a game that would demonstrate the new computer's superior capabilities when it would be showcased in early 1984. In an era where it was common for computer games to be written by a single person over a matter of weeks, King's Quest was one of the most ambitious, risky, and costly projects of its time. An entire team reportedly worked for 18 months to complete the game at a cost of more than $700,000. Notably, King's Quest was the first fully colored 3D adventure game to have animated characters instead of static pictures. King's Quest was the first game to apply the Adventure Game Interpreter (AGI).
