King's Quest V 16 Color Version Playthrough

Channel:

Nerdly Pleasures

Subscribers:

707

Published on January 5, 2023 3:09:39 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k80h8yjgtmU

Game:

King's Quest V (1990)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 1:10:13

89 views

4

As a companion to my King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder's 256 Color (Floppy) Version playthrough posted a few years back, here I present my friend's playthrough of King's Quest V's 16 Color Version. When Sierra began to support 256 color VGA (and MCGA) graphics in 1990, many computer owners still had PCs capable of only displaying 16 colors via EGA cards or Tandy 1000 systems. As these 256 Color Versions only included 256 color graphics, they would not display properly in a system that only supported 16 color graphics. Sierra wished to support the older 16 Color graphics adapters, but that support would take up almost as many disks as the 256 Color Versions. As a consequence, Sierra released 16 Color Versions of many of its games separately from their original 256 Color Versions.

As the graphics for King's Quest V and later games had been designed for 256 colors, in the 16 Color Version those graphics had to be converted or redrawn to fit in the limitations of 16 colors. The same pixel resolution, 320x200, was used and the music and sound drivers were generally the same between the 256 Color Versions and the 16 Color Versions. As my 256 Color Version playthrough used the MT-32 for music and sound effects, this 16 Color Version playthrough uses Adlib for music and sound effects. These versions of King's Quest V do not support Sound Blaster for digitized sound.

The 16 Color Versions come with graphics drivers for EGA, for Tandy and for MCGA. They all display identically but use incompatible 320x200x16 color modes. A VGA card can use either the EGA or MCGA driver, but you will only see 16 colors from this version of the game. It is possible to get the 16 Color Versions to display on CGA cards in 2 or 4 colors by copying over a graphics driver from another SCI game like Quest for Glory II or some of the earlier games.

Sierra released the following games with separate packages for 256 Color Versions and 16 Color Versions : King's Quest V, Jones in the Fast Lane, Space Quest IV, Leisure Suit Larry 1 (Remake), Space Quest I (Remake), Leisure Suit Larry 5, Mixed-up Fairy Tales, Conquests of the Longbow and Castle of Dr. Brain. All these games use the SCI1 engine. It has yet to be confirmed whether a 16 Color Version of EcoQuest: The Search for Cetus was actually released.

When Sierra migrated to the SCI1.1 engine in 1992 with games like King's Quest VI, it ended the practice of producing separate 256 Color and 16 Color Versions. For those games, Sierra included an EGA driver that used a 640x200 resolution and tried to simulate more than 16 colors via dithering. Tandy 1000 graphics support was dropped even though later Tandy 1000 graphics adapters supported a 640x200 mode with 16 colors.

This playthrough was recorded via DOSBox set to 4,000 cycles. The copy protection is intact and can be seen twice during the game, once at the witch's hut, once when pushing the boat into the water. The nuked OPL emulation option was used for the most accurate Adlib emulation possible. This version of 16 Color King's Quest V is v0.000.062

Reuploaded to show ideal pixel aspect ratio and correct for YouTube color space.

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