King's Quest: Quest for the Crown (Master System) Playthrough
110A playthrough of Parker Brothers 1989 adventure game for the Sega Master System, King's Quest: Quest for the Crown.
In terms of influence and impact, King's Quest is one of the true heavyweights of 1980s gaming. Originally created for the 1984 launch of IBM's PCjr computer, the first King's Quest was a revolutionary step forward in terms of graphics and game design. Its eventual success signaled the beginning of Sierra Online's dominance over the PC games industry, laid the foundation for the graphic adventure genre, and turned Roberta Williams into a household name.
You play as Graham, a knight of the kingdom of Daventry. The elderly King Edward finds himself on death's doorstep without an heir, and so he asks Graham to find the kingdom's three magical treasures. If Graham can succeed in finding the magic shield, the magic chest, and the magic mirror, he will inherit the throne.
Most of the game is driven by object-based puzzles, and the adventure is largely nonlinear in that you can go after the treasures in whichever order you like. The computer game used a text parser, but since the Master System doesn't have a keyboard, this version utilizes a context-sensitive, verb-based menu system. It lacks the elegance of Sierra's icon-based interfaces (like what was used in the NES version of King's Quest V), but it's an efficient and effective way of getting things done.
Graham's Sega quest remains pretty faithful to its PC counterpart. A few tweaks have been made to better suit the format, but all of the content has made the transition intact and the graphics have seen a considerable upgrade. The exploration is a fun as it ever was, and it's less frustrating without the ambiguity that comes with a text parser.
(Still, that Rumplestiltskin puzzle can get bent. It's such BS, just as it always has been.)
It's just a bit unfortunate that Parker Brothers went the cheap route and opted for passwords in lieu of a battery-backed saved system, and that the game felt so incredibly outdated in 1989, especially for a console release.
But overall, it's a good conversion, fans of the PC classic should enjoy it, and it is quite novel in how it's one of the very few US Master System exclusives.
And that ending is absolutely hilarious. The sprite they used for King Edward deserves a chef's kiss.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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