| King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne | |
|---|---|
 Cover art | |
| Developer(s) | Sierra On-Line |
| Publisher(s) | Sierra On-Line |
| Designer(s) | Roberta Williams |
| Programmer(s) | Ken Williams Scott Murphy Sol Ackerman Dale Carlson Chris Iden |
| Artist(s) | Doug MacNeill Mark Crowe |
| Writer(s) | Roberta Williams Annette Childs |
| Composer(s) | Al Lowe |
| Series | King's Quest |
| Engine | AGI |
| Platform(s) | PC,Macintosh,Apple II,Apple IIGS,Amiga,Atari ST,PCjr,Tandy 1000 |
| Release | PCApple IIAtari STPorts 1987 |
| Genre(s) | Adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne is the second installment in theKing's Quest series ofgraphic adventure games bySierra On-Line. It was originally released in 1985 for PCDOS/PCjr, and later made available for theApple II/IIGS,Atari ST, andAmiga. It uses the sameAGIgame engine asKing's Quest I: Quest for the Crown and features King Graham as the player character. The title is a spoof of the 1984 filmRomancing the Stone.[3]
King's Quest II resemblesKing's Quest I in appearance and interface. Like inKing's Quest I, the game world has 'wrap around' allowing player to travel infinitely in the directions of the north or south (The King's Quest Companion which represented a novelized walkthrough explains that the western side of Kolyma folds back upon itself to both the north and south, forever bringing travelers back to where they started). This was the firstKing's Quest to include an introduction cutscene, just past the credits. It also is the first game in the series with a linear story progression. The world actually changes as the story progresses:[4] new characters appear in the world, and areas are opened up to the player and closed off when no longer needed.
Puzzles involve trading or using items to receive new items or to get past obstacles, allowing the player to progress. The game in general honors non-violent solutions, offering more points for them. Many puzzles have more than one solution, but only one optimum solution to earn maximum points. Alternate solutions will net less points or in some cases cause the player to lose points. Examples of alternate solutions are taking more violent approach to getting past an obstacle such as killing or stealing. Some choices may lead to dead ends or death.
All puzzles in the game are solved through a parser. The player may type a phrase with a verb and noun, for example 'Look at' or 'Pick up', the word list in the parser is fairly robust and understands quite a lot of non-important verbs which will result in unexpected replies. For example, the player could type, 'dig', or 'dig the beach' and receive messages about how pointless it is to be digging. Sometimes even illogical verb/noun combinations will net unique comments, such as typing 'Pick up horse' will mention the flying steed is too fast to catch. With this system the player can collect many items using 'pick up' placed into the games inventory. The items in the inventory have close up pictures giving an idea what the item looks like, or in some cases offering clues about the item. In a rare few examples an item may be manipulated in some way.
Having retrieved the three stolen treasures of Daventry, Sir Graham became the new king of Daventry. The mirror shows him a vision about a beautiful young woman, Valanice, in captivity on the top of an ivory crystal tower. Being charmed by her, King Graham travels to the world of Kolyma to rescue Valanice. There he must travel through sea, air, and even death to gain the keys that unlock the three doors to the enchanted island where the witch Hagatha has imprisoned Valanice. After meeting legendary figures such asNeptune,Little Red Riding Hood andCount Dracula, the latter of whom he kills, Graham rescues Valanice. At the end of the game, they are married in a ceremony attended by many of Graham's friends and several of his former enemies.
Limited floppy space would have restricted the design; however,Sierra On-Line had been compressing the pictures by drawing them as lines and fill colors for a while. The original version for PCDOS/PCjr does not support sound cards or mice, as they did not exist at the time of publication.[5] That scheme was kept all the way up toKing's Quest IV. This sequel to the originalKing's Quest provided not just a second look at the life of King (formerly Sir) Graham of Daventry, it also began a tradition of using King's Quest as a training ground for future designers. FutureSpace Quest series designersScott Murphy andMark Crowe joined the development team. They helped to make the game an even bigger hit than the original.[6]
According to the series; main designer and writer,Roberta Williams:
King's Quest II reminded me a little ofWizard and the Princess. We saw how previous games (Mystery House andKing's Quest I) were received by the public, and I was anxious to try my hand at a bigger story right away. Graham would be king by now. What quest should a lonely king go on? What should he see through the magic mirror? A maiden in distress! I started to foresee a family for Graham in the future. I couldn't fit some ideas intoKing's Quest I, so I was happy to get a chance to include KingNeptune, Dracula, everyone fromLittle Red Riding Hood, and that infamous rickety old bridge you could only cross so many times.[7] ... My earlier games, fromMystery House toKing's Quest II, were great games, but they couldn't have the deep complex plots I wanted due to memory and space limitations. Basically they were treasure hunts with lots of simple goals (you go from here to there) and fun puzzles to add to the challenge.King's Quest III had to push things a little farther.[8] ... The story always comes first, but technology plays a big part in what you can't do.[9]
King's Quest II contains 14 musical selections, includingTchaikovsky's love theme fromRomeo and Juliet.[10] Other tracks includeGreensleeves on the title screen,Bach'sToccata and Fugue in D minor in Dracula's castle, andMichael Jackson'sThriller when encountering the ghosts outside the castle entrance (only the opening bars of the last are played so Sierra would not have to pay royalties for using the song). The music for the game was produced by video game designer and programmerAl Lowe, who is also an accomplished jazz musician.
The game was first released in 1985 on a self-booting disk that supportedCGA,PCjr, andTandy graphic cards (as opposed toKing's Quest I, which had separate versions for all three) as a disk that booted on start-up. Sierra included several modifications to the AGI engine for compatibility with the IBM AT and EGA cards, which had been introduced sinceKing's Quest I was released. The copy protection used onKing's Quest I proved to be incompatible with the AT BIOS, so a different scheme was used. Color palette selection in CGA mode was changed to utilize the BIOS instead of modifying the palette register directly. The game engine was also changed to utilize the PC's timer chip instead of a CPU-based speed loop which would result in the game running too fast on the AT.
It was re-released in 1987 withEGA andHercules support to run underDOS. It was also released onApple IIGS version with improved soundtrack and sound effects. Sierra's hint book for the game was written by Al Lowe, the game's composer and the creator of theLeisure Suit Larry series.
The manual contains a prologue short story by Annette Childs. The story covers Graham being told by the spirit of the former King Edward in the magic mirror that he must find a wife, or suffer the same fate of the kingdom as he had. Graham calls upon his prime minister Gerwain to prepare a great feast, and call all the maidens and ladies throughout the land. None of the ladies interest the king, and he is left solemn. The magic mirror activates telling him about young maiden Valanice trapped in a tower by the evil witch Hagatha. He is told he must travel to land of Kolyma to find the magic doorway that leads to the enchanted realm.
A novelization of the game is included inThe King's Quest Companion which expands the details of story. It was written from the perspective of Daventry's prime minister, Gerwain (mentioned in theKQ2 manual). The first and second editions of the Companion also included articles withinAn Encyclopedia of Daventry (Abridged), which gave backstories for various characters and locations from the game. More back history about Kolyma can be found in the chapter, "The World of Daventry" in all editions.
Version history:
King's Quest received positive reviews upon release,[11][12] including an almost-perfect score of 39/40 fromASM.[13] Neil Shapiro from II Computing wrote: "The artists who have brought to life the vision of designer Roberta Williams and story author Annette Childs deserve much recognition. The artwork and animation is almost Disney-like in quality and execution."[14]
In 1990, the developers at SierraredevelopedKing's Quest with a new interface and up-to-date technology. The plan was to redevelopKing's Quest II but due to rather disappointing sales of the 1990 remake ofKing's Quest I, the prospect of officially remaking and re-releasingKing's Quest II was scrapped.[citation needed]
In 2002,AGD Interactive, then known as Tierra Entertainment, released an unofficial remake ofKing's Quest II under a fan license by Vivendi, known asKing's Quest II: Romancing the Stones.[15] In 2009, AGD Interactive released version 3.0, featuring redrawn backgrounds and dialogue pictures; the voice-acting was also dramatically improved and, thanks to fan feedback, many problems were attended to.
The remake uses a point-and-click interface functionally identical to an advanced SCI game engine, VGA graphics and digital sound, including full speech for all characters. Notably for an unofficial, fan-made project, the game's protagonist King Graham is voiced byJosh Mandel, who also voiced the part in Sierra's official CD-ROM full-speech versions ofKing's Quest V andVI. In contrast to the group's remake ofKing's Quest I, a content-wise identical presentation upgrade,King's Quest II+ redesigns the original game by adding a rewritten plot expanding on the 1985 version (although it changes several points of the plot, 'Dracula' is now a good guy, and the 'Monk' is a bad guy, several characters removed), a number of puzzles, new characters and locations including a town, and references to the laterKing's Quest games.
The third chapter of 2015'sKing's Quest, titledOnce Upon a Climb, is a reimagined retelling of the rescue of Valanice from Hagatha's tower fromKing's Quest II.[16]
