The Video Game Revue

King's Quest IV

I have some friends who aren't into the "mainstream" video game industry. Some of them don't approve of how heavily a typical video game relies on violence to be entertaining, and some of them flat-out just don't consider themselves to have much of an appreciation of games at all. But they are still geeks--they still like Star Wars, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the TV series, of course), and Babylon 5, not to mention geeky comics, fantasy/sci-fi novels, etc. For me, the fact that they aren't also heavily into video games is somewhat baffling--but of course it would baffle me, as it's fair to say that I live for video games, to a large extent at least.

Now if you haven't picked it up already from the subtext of my introductory paragraph, let me make a quick point explicit: there is sometimes some conflict between myself and these good friends of mine who aren't "gamers." They still play video games occasionally and have opinions occasionally which I consider to be misguided. They also sometimes think that my opinions are misguided, and it leads to heated discussions. But we are all still friends--I hope.

Now for something that really cracks me up: once in a while, one of these friends of mine who isn't a gamer will attempt to "show me up" in some extent by discovering some kind of fringe genre or cool game that I don't know about and getting all wrapped up in it. You have to understand that for a proper, full-fledged gamer, this is a perfectly reasonable stunt to pull off. It's not like I play absolutely every great game out there--not by a long shot. But for somebody with only a passing interest in video games who doesn't really listen to me or take my opinions seriously, well, it's much more challenging to identify a great game that would have slipped under my radar. I would say that such individuals are largely relying on chance, and because they might not know what is truly on the fringe and what just seems fringe to a non-gamer, they are easily misled.

Case in point: old Sierra quest games. I've gotten some attitude before from individuals who picked up some abadonware Sierra quest games in the last few years and started up on these sanctimoneous rants to me about how great these games are. Which is absurd because what they don't realise is that back between '89 and '94, I positively adored Sierra quest games. Sierra was my favourite video game company (or perhaps second to Nintendo) for several years--they ruled! When I first played King's Quest IV, it completely blew me away; it was simply the most incredible game that I had ever seen or basically even imagined up until that point. And at a hefty 4 MB install footprint, it was the single largest video game ever developed (in terms of install size) at the time. King's Quest IV was to PC gaming in 1989 what Half-Life 2 is to PC gaming in 2005, roughly speaking.

This brings me to a point that I've argued in other arenas before. Basically, playing old games for the first time today does not give you the same reaction as playing it at the time. A casusal player might pick up King's Quest IV today and think "oh, what a cute, quaint game." Such a person has no concept of the fact that when that game was brand spanking new, you needed a $5000 PC to run the thing properly. An XBox 360, PlayStation 3, or Nintendo Revolution is a cheap, low performance game system when you take the comparison in the proper context. King's Quest IV was a greater technical marvel in its day than Halo was, by a long shot.

But of course, some smartass who just picked up King's Quest IV this month to play it, enjoyed what a fun, cute little retro game it is, and proceeded to attack me figuring that I would never have played such a fun little fringe game, is going to have no clue that what they were just playing was the biggest blockbuster, most technically impressive, high-profile, mainstream game that the industry had to offer roughly sixteen years ago. So imagine my utter delight--my complete and total smug satisfaction--at spelling out the truth for them. Yes, I am that kind of asshole.

posted by Parappa @ 10:35 AM