Game:

King's Quest V (1990)

Duration: 36:30

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17

EDIT: I know the video above may not play as smoothly as it should, so if that bothers you, here's a link to the actual encode, which should play a little better (60 FPS instead of Youtube's 30):

http://archive.org/details/KingsQuestVSpeedrun

This is an "any%" run of King's Quest V (Steam version), played on ScummVM 1.7.0. I timed this run at 34:26, starting from the first frame I could see the screen with Crispin's house, and ending as soon as the final spell was selected. Anyway, I'm aware of the 100% run by shadyparadox, and though this is any%, it beats his run by a fair deal; however, that is likely due to his run probably being played under different settings (his run did seem pretty good, after all, with a couple minor routing errors). I'm not sure, but it looks like he may have used DosBox to capture his run, but I just couldn't get used to playing on that.

I can't speak to the accuracy of either DosBox or Scumm VM, but regarding the differences between them, it seems that with DosBox, there are brief pauses when bringing up the menu bar/inventory (something ScummVM doesn't have, which is more than likely the primary reason why my time is much lower than shadyparadox's). I did notice that Graham's walking speed in DosBox appears to be slightly faster, but it's kind of counter-balanced by the menu bar/inventory pauses. Also, there was a really annoying movement pause with that emulator on the snake screen if clicking in rapid succession, as I tend to do to make sure Graham moves as soon as possible. On ScummVM's end, I'm aware that this particular version doesn't capture the sled jingle correctly, nor the ominous music when the ice queen's wolves first come out to meet you. The previous emulator version did have these tunes playing correctly, but it had another bug where it always misplaced the mouse cursor slightly after a dialogue portrait, which was really annoying, especially when trying to grab certain items. So, the loss of those particular audios is a small price to pay for being able to click where I want to more consistently (and believe me, this game has some annoying hotspots).

As far as actual mistakes, there were unfortunately several misclicks, but at least there were fewer than what most of my runs have. Getting a successful any% run hinges entirely on whether or not you run into the cat (Manannan) in Mordack's castle, which seems luck-based (if there's a way to manipulate him, I don't know of it). A nice bonus was the incredibly quick appearance of the blue beast on the organ screen, which is quite rare in my experience (usually, you'll run into him in the dining hall). While the blue beast appeared quickly, so did the witch, which is exactly what you don't want; ideally, you'd want her to first appear in front of her house (shortest distance for her spell to travel, and she's directly in your path). However, in the event she does appear on the first screen as she did in this run, it's best not to walk all the way over there, and instead give the genie bottle to her on the next screen. All things considered, I'd estimate 10-15 seconds or so could still come off this time, perhaps a little more.

NOTE: I do not know if entering the catacombs grate as I did here is an emulation error or not, but it's easily reproducible in ScummVM (maybe DosBox too?) with quick enough clicking (incidentally, I don't think the game gave me points for that glitchy action). Other glitches I've experienced (although *very* rarely) are the normally unskippable dialogues of the ice queen and the harpies being cut off prematurely. Unfortunately, I've no clue how to reproduce either of these, or if said behavior is an emulation error or not.

Further explanation of the route can be seen here:

http://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/kings_quest_v.html

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