News ID: 228
Date: 2014-04-02
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's condition grew worse until she 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.
Unlike other remakes of the classic Sierra adventures in 1991, King's Quest 1, designed by Roberta Williams, was never remade with VGA graphics by Sierra. The game was first remade in 1990 with the SCI engine, EGA graphics and text parser. Sales of King's Quest 1 SCI however were insufficient to continue remaking the older titles of the saga. That's where Tierra Entertainment (later renamed AGD Interactive) stepped in. Established by Britney Brimhall and Christopher Warren (initially known only as Anonymous Game Developers #1 and #2), and after approval from license holder Vivendi Games, they built the initial release just with the two of them, using the AGS engine by Chris Jones, adding a point-and-click interface, VGA graphics, and character portraits.
First released on August 7 2001, the game has undergone multiple upgrades with more people joining the AGDI team over the years. The initial voice pack for the King's Quest I remake was released on September 1st, 2001, shortly after the release of updated version 2.0. (for which Tom Lewandowski of QuestStudios digitally re-recorded Ken Allen's original musical score). On October 1st, 2003, version 3.0 was released, featuring translation pack support, bug fixes, optimized music and speech packs, and more. Version 4.0 of the King's Quest I remake was released on January 17th, 2009, featuring an entire overhaul of the backgrounds by John Paul Selwood, Emily Selwood, and Johan Botes, and narrator lines by John Bell. This build also removed translation support, but included the music and speech packs as part of the game download. Version 4.1, the final version, was released for both PC/Windows and Apple Mac on September 1st, 2010.
In later years AGDI also remade King's Quest 2 and King's Quest 3, among other sierra titles, with VGA graphics.
