King's Quest and Space Quest Come to Steam

[Andy Chalk]

King's Quest and Space Quest Come to Steam

The avalanche of classic gaming goodness continues with the release of the famed King's Quest and Space Quest collections on Steam [http://store.steampowered.com/].

Space Quest [http://www.activision.com] games in two separate bundles now available on Steam. The collections normally sell for $19.99 but until the end of July each is being offered for only 15 bucks.

Hardware requirements aren't terribly demanding, naturally, but a note included with the King's Quest Collection warns that neither Windows XP 64 nor Windows Vista are officially supported, although some of the games may run regardless. (Strangely, the Space Quest Collection doesn't carry the warning.) Your best bet if you're interested but doubtful: Wait awhile and let someone else try it. Conversely, if you do try the games under one of the aforementioned OSes, feel free to report your success, or lack thereof, right here.

The tales of Sir Graham of Daventry and Roger Wilco, Space Janitor, were staples of the golden age of adventure gaming and shouldn't be missed by any fan of the genre. 30 bucks for 13 Sierra classics? You're not going to find many deals better than that.


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[L.B. Jeffries]

Yeah, not shocked they did a sloppy job seeing as how this is Activision.

I've got the KQ Collection, I know what they're talking about. They ported all those games about two years ago using a tweaked version of Dosbox. There are some stability issues with the music and graphics. The VGA ones worked alright, but when you try to play the seriously old stuff the games alternate between proper graphics and their older 3 color versions.

Take KQ4, I have to start and restart it a few times until it syncs up right. That stopped being an issue at about the whale tongue when I gave up on the game, but you get the idea.

On a side note, where's my Gabriel Knight and Leisure Suit Larry? And even more importantly, where is Quest for Glory? I'll even play V this time.

 

[The Shade]

King's Quest 8! Woo! I dearly miss that awful, awful dialogue.

 

[scotth266]

Even if the OS's aren't supported, shouldn't the programs be able to run in compatability mode?

It also seems sort of bizarre to have Vista support. I'll be waiting for someone else to try this before I give it a shot... it's not like 15 bucks is a lot but I still don't want to pay for something I won't be able to play.

 

[oliveira8]

Even if the OS's aren't supported, shouldn't the programs be able to run in compatability mode?

It also seems sort of bizarre to have Vista support. I'll be waiting for someone else to try this before I give it a shot... it's not like 15 bucks is a lot but I still don't want to pay for something I won't be able to play.

Probably Sierra messed up with the coding to make it compatible with the new OS. Think LucasArts did the same for their old PnC games released on STEAM.

Edit: On the steam page it says "Some games of this collection might run under Windows XP 64 and Vista 32/XP but are not ofiicialy supported."

In other words if they don't work don't expect help from Activision.

 

[Lukeje]

Even if the OS's aren't supported, shouldn't the programs be able to run in compatability mode?

It also seems sort of bizarre to have Vista support. I'll be waiting for someone else to try this before I give it a shot... it's not like 15 bucks is a lot but I still don't want to pay for something I won't be able to play.

Probably Sierra messed up with the coding to make it compatible with the new OS. Think LucasArts did the same for their old PnC games released on STEAM.

Edit: On the steam page it says "Some games of this collection might run under Windows XP 64 and Vista 32/XP but are not ofiicialy supported."

In other words if they don't work don't expect help from Activision.

If they are the same versions that were released as box versions a while ago, then they just use DOSbox. Thus even if the version of DOSbox that comes with the game is out of date, you should be able to download a version of DOSbox that is compatible with your OS and just launch the files directly using that DOSbox.

 

[Woem]

Warcry's digital store [http://digitalstore.warcry.com] has had these collections available for months already (at the same normal rate), and not just the King's Quest and Space Quest series:

The Space Quest Collection [http://digitalstore.warcry.com/product.aspx?gid=267&pid=4782] contains every Space Quest adventure game ever made, from SQ1: The Sarien Encounter to SQ6: The Spinal Frontier.

The King's Quest Collection [http://digitalstore.warcry.com/product.aspx?gid=267&pid=4781] contains the King's Quest adventures KQ1: Quest for the Crown to KQ7: The Princeless Bride. This does not include Mask of Eternity, which I don't consider to be part of the King's Quest franchise if not only because it doesn't even revolve around the Graham family.

The Police Quest Collection [http://digitalstore.warcry.com/product.aspx?gid=267&pid=4783] contains the first three Police Quest games, from PQ1: In Pursuit of the Death Angel to PQ3: The Kindred. This doesn't include the fourth Police Quest, again which I don't consider to be part of the series because it revolves around completely different characters, in a different location and it uses scanned photos as backgrounds (brrr). It also doesn't include any of the SWAT games.

The Leisure Suit Larry Collection [http://digitalstore.warcry.com/product.aspx?gid=267&pid=4784] contains the first five Larry games, for LLL1 in the Land of the Lounge Lizards to LLL6: Shape Up or Slip Out. It's a real shame they didn't include the magnificent LLL7: Love For Sail which I consider to be the absolute prime of the Larry games. Note that there never was a LLL4 so there are in fact only five games in this collection.

 

[Volucer]

I just bought the complete Kings Quest collection last week, and now they go and release it on Steam. It's not all bad, I got mine for half the price they're offering it for. Always seems to happen though, I buy something and then within a week it's either on Steam or it drops in price...

 

[new_age_reject]

Aw man I love Kings Quest and all those old style adventure games! I'm gonna have to check out one of the other sources though by the sounds of things.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Whooo! I've been waiting for this! Great News.

 

[cobra_ky]

I got both collections about a year ago and all the Space Quest games run fine for me on Vista. i never got around to playing all the king's quest games extensively so i can't comment on them.