The Video Game Revue

Famous Adventurer's Correspondence School

Hey, do you recognize this?

Any idea at all? If you do happen to recognize this, good show. If not, I won't keep you in suspense any longer:

I was rummaging through my closet, and uncovered this old packaging for Quest for Glory. This isn't the true original packaging, if memory serves me correctly, as the game was originally released as Hero Quest and later renamed to Quest for Glory after some kind of legal issue over the name. Still, this should give some of you abandonware noobs some idea as to what you missed out on by not being into video games ten years ago. (I sure do love rubbing that in. Maybe I should seek professional help.)

Check out the awesome illustration of the development team on the cover of the technical manual:


Also have a closer look at the game box:


The system requirements, in particular, are interesting:


512k of what? That would be memory--or "RAM" for those of you who tend to confuse "out of memory" and "out of disk" error messages. You'll notice that a hard drive is under "recommended." There's another part of the experience that one doesn't get through abandonware: swapping disks at certain points in the game, just as you do for multi-disc games like Final Fantasy VII or Metal Gear Solid. Of course, with a hard drive, you just install the whole thing at once and don't need to worry about the disks.

There's some pretty decent writing inside of that Famous Adventurer's Correspondence manual; it has a pretty good sense of humor. Right now I don't have the time or inclination to scan the sucker and post it, which would be a legally questionable thing to do anyway (I doubt that I would get in any trouble--nobody even notices this blog to begin with.) At least you're aware of its existence now, if you weren't before.

That's my little bit of game memorablia for the day. In other news, I played a bit more through Ico, and I got past the Windmill, which is futher than I've ever been before (shamefully, as it took less than 90 minutes for me to get that far.) I think I'm making pretty good time through the game at least. Who knows, I might even finish it, and after that... a replay of Wind Waker? Front Mission 4? Viewtiful Joe? Something new? I honestly can't say.

posted by Parappa @ 10:25 PM