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| Police Quest / SWAT | |
|---|---|
| Genre(s) | Adventure,simulation,strategy,tactical shooter |
| Developer(s) | Sierra On-Line |
| Publisher(s) | Sierra On-Line |
| Platform(s) | Amiga,Apple II,Apple IIGS,Atari ST,Mac (System 7),Windows,MS-DOS,PlayStation 2,Xbox,PlayStation Portable,Mobile |
| First release | Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel 1987 |
| Latest release | SWAT Elite Troops March 1, 2008 |
Police Quest (orSWAT) is a series of policesimulationvideo games produced and published bySierra On-Line between 1987 and 1998. The first five wereadventuresimulation games, the first three of which were designed by former police officerJim Walls. The fourth to sixth titles were designed by former LAPD ChiefDaryl F. Gates. BothSWAT and thereal-time tactics gameSWAT 2 still carried thePolice Quest name and were numbered V and VI in the series, respectively, although subsequent titles in the series would drop thePolice Quest title altogether and were rebranded asSWAT.
| 1987 | Police Quest |
|---|---|
| 1988 | Police Quest II |
| 1989 | |
| 1990 | |
| 1991 | Police Quest III |
| 1992 | |
| 1993 | Police Quest: Open Season |
| 1994 | |
| 1995 | Police Quest: SWAT |
| 1996 | |
| 1997 | |
| 1998 | Police Quest: SWAT 2 |
| 1999 | SWAT 3: Close Quarters Battle |
| 2000 | |
| 2001 | |
| 2002 | |
| 2003 | SWAT: Global Strike Team |
| 2004 | |
| 2005 | SWAT 4 |
| 2006 | SWAT Force |
| 2007 | SWAT: Target Liberty |
| 2008 | SWAT Elite Troops |
We always wanted to put more into the games and I was never fully satisfied with the driving interfaces. However, the payoff came with the fan mail. When the letters came in, with some of the kids saying they wanted to grow up to be cops, we knew we were on the right track.
The first three games were produced by former police officerJim Walls and follow the adventures of Sonny Bonds, a character whose name and appearance was loosely based on his own son, Sonny Walls. Jim Walls makes a cameo appearance in each game, typically in the introduction.
Released in 1987 using Sierra'sAdventure Game Interpreterparserengine,Police Quest casts the player as Sonny Bonds, a 15-year veteran police officer in thefictional town[2] of Lytton, California. Assigned to traffic duty, Sonny investigates what appears to be a simple car crash but turns out to be ahomicide. Relieved by his supervisor, Sergeant Dooley, Sonny goes on a short coffee break with a fellow officer and returns to duty. He gives a traffic violation citation to a driver, single-handedly faces a tough gang of drunken bikers, and makes a DUI arrest. As the game progresses, he advances from patrol officer to temporarynarcoticsdetective toundercover agent in hope of tracking down a murderous drug dealer named Jessie Bains, "The Death Angel". In order to find Jessie Bains, Sonny enlists the help of his former high school sweetheart, "Sweet Cheeks" Marie, who is now working as aprostitute.
The game is the most realistic of those developed by Sierra in the late 1980s when compared toLeisure Suit Larry,King's Quest, orSpace Quest, and featured many puzzles where proper police procedure is required to succeed.[3] It was released forMS-DOS,Apple II,Mac,Amiga,Atari ST andApple IIGS. A SCI1.1enhanced remake in256 colorVGA was released in 1992, which was also the first game released in the series not to featuredead ends.
Released in 1988 and running on the then-current SCI0 engine, the game once again casts the player as officer Sonny Bonds. After arresting Jessie Bains, Bonds is permanently promoted to the homicide division. He begins dating Marie Wilkans, who helped him in his undercover work in exchange for the dismissal of prostitution charges against her as "Sweet Cheeks" Marie. A dark shadow is cast over Sonny's happy life, however, when Bains escapes from prison and seeks revenge. With the help of his partner Keith, Bonds must protect his girlfriend's life as well as his own while pursuing "The Death Angel" once again. Despite Sonny's efforts, Bains kills several people who were involved in his arrest and abducts Marie. Sonny pursues Bains to Steelton, the current home of Donald Colby, a reformed drug pusher from the originalPolice Quest.
Police Quest II is notably more "mature" than the first title in the series and relies much more on proper procedure. Failure to properly maintain Sonny's firearm at various points throughout the game will cause it tomalfunction or misfire, and proceeding into a dangerous situation without proper backup will usually prove fatal.
Sonny and Marie are married following Bains' death. Promoted once more, Sonny now has to deal with rampant crime as adrug cartel begins operating in Lytton and evidence of a satanic cult starts to appear. However, when Marie is stabbed in a mall parking lot, Sonny's police work becomes personal.
Sonny must deal with a partner with questionable ethics as well as find patterns in crime to find his next lead. The Bains family also plays a role in this game.
Released in 1991 for SCI version 1,PQ3 is completely mouse-driven. It was only released for theIBM PC and theAmiga. Before the completion of this game,Jim Walls had left Sierra for reasons that have still not been publicly explained, leavingJane Jensen to finish the final in-game dialogue and messages. SWAT founderDaryl F. Gates was named to take over thePolice Quest series while Walls, along with several former Sierra employees, would go on to designBlue Force, an adventure game similar to thePolice Quest series.
The later games in the series were designed by Tammy Dargan and produced by former L.A. ChiefDaryl Gates, in a different style in both atmosphere, and later even in genre. Like the original series by Jim Walls, Daryl Gates makes cameo appearances in each game.Police Quest IV andV were later spun off into theSWAT series. Unlike the earlier games in the series, these were listed asDaryl F Gates' Police Quest, rather than being a numbered series (the numbered titles were still used in packaging and printed material included with the compilation CDs).
Daryl F. Gates' first game for Sierra departed completely from the style of the previous games. The player was no longer cast as Sonny Bonds, but as John Carey; the action was no longer in fictional Lytton, but inLos Angeles,California. Carey, anLAPD homicide detective whose best friend was killed in the line of duty, must track down a serial murderer in L.A.
Numerous mature themes are depicted in the game, includinghate crimes,Neo-Nazism, and youth involved in crime. Graphic imagery within the game also includes the body of a child murdered by gang violence and a severed head in a refrigerator.
Using SCI2 the game replaced from earlier games with scanned photos as backgrounds, and live actors filmed from green screen as charactersprites. It was released in 1993, for bothIBM PC andMacintosh. The game is generally incompatible withWindows 95, and later editions; the game may crash at certain points in the game, e.g. the shooting gallery and the shoot out. This, however, was fixed with the release of the CD version with Windows installer.
This game is the most "mature" of thePolice Quest series of games; while previously only a peripheral element, the themes of drug abuse, police corruption and gang violence play prominent roles in this game. Police procedure is less of an element in the game, pushed aside for the sake of storytelling.
Although the game is not referred to as PQV in the title screen, it is referred to as such in several other locations in the game including the files, and the game credits, and certain versions of the packaging near the ISBN/barcode and documentation.Police Quest 5: SWAT was re-released as part of the secondPolice Quest Collection,[4] and later as part of thePolice Quest: SWAT Force,SWAT Career Pack (which included all six PQ games), andPolice Quest: SWAT Generation compilations.
Police Quest: SWAT 2 is the sixth and final game of the originalPolice Quest series. It is areal-time strategy game using an original game engine. It retained only a few adventure game elements in the form of an inventory and use of a fewpuzzle items such as a pizza (to draw a suspect out of a house), and similar interface (look/search icon, pickup/hand icon, communication/talk/challenge icon, etc.). It is referred to as PQ6 in a few locations including its files. Sonny Bonds is one of the agents the player may employ in the game. It was included as part of thePolice Quest: SWAT Force andPolice Quest: SWAT Generation compilations.
Although thePolice Quest series continued afterOpen Season for two more games, these releases spawned theSWAT series and the series moved into different video gamegenres.
SWAT 3: Close Quarters Battle andSWAT 4 are bothtactical shooters, the only games of that type in the series.SWAT 4 is the final game in the full eight-game series, though by this point it had nothing to do with the original games, with the exception of a cameo by Marie Bonds inSWAT 3: Close Quarters Battle and Sonny Bonds as a SWAT unit lieutenant inSWAT 4.
At this point neither Jim Walls or Daryl Gates were developers in the series, though Gates was a consultant onSWAT 3: Close Quarters Battle along with the Advisor Kenneth A. Thatcher of LAPD.
The first SWAT game—technicallyPolice Quest 5: SWAT—was later re-released as part of thePolice Quest Collection Series (the secondPolice Quest adventure compilation), and all six PQ games were released as part of theSWAT Career Pack, the third "complete series"Police Quest collection. The first two were released in a double pack called Police Quest: SWAT Force and more recently in thePolice Quest: SWAT 1+2 pack on GoG.com. In the past, the first three SWAT games were released in a compilation entitledPolice Quest: SWAT Generation.SWAT 3 is currently sold separately on GoG.com, separately from thePolice Quest packs.
SWAT: Urban Justice was a cancelled PC title (2001/2002) originally meant to be the followup to SWAT 3. An easter egg for the cancelled game can be found in SWAT4.
OtherSWAT titles include:
On July 16, 2013, Jim Walls announcedPrecinct, aKickstarter proposal for aspiritual successor to thePolice Quest franchise.[6]Sierra veteran Robert Lindsley has been signed on as the game's executive producer. The game was to be developed by newly established studio Jim Walls Reloaded, where Lindsley also served as the company's president.[7] The game aspired to follow the classic Sierra adventure game formula with a "modern feel". It had a funding goal of $500,000, with a fundraising period stretching from July 16 to August 16. However, Walls cancelled the Kickstarter prematurely on August 6, with $85,756 raised and 1,870 backers.
Subsequently, Walls and Lindsley announced that they would instead launch an alternative fundraising campaign forPrecinct, which they called "new and unique".[6] The new crowdfunding campaign would not have the same time restrictions as Kickstarter, and the game would be launched once the funding from its backers was secured. But this campaign was also unsuccessful, shutting down two weeks later. As Lindsley explained: "We simply don't have the momentum needed to meet the requirements of this project". Nevertheless, Walls and Lindsley still remain hopeful to realizePrecinct sometime in the future.[8]
In August 2014,Activision reactivated theSierra Entertainment label, opening up a future for the franchise as Sierra holds the IP for any future installments of the series.[9]
Sierra's first re-release of the games in a collection was in 1995 asDaryl F. Gates' Police Quest Collection: The Four Most Wanted. The package was released under theDaryl F. Gates' Police Quest series title, to cash in on the then newly releasedDaryl F. Gates' Police Quest: SWAT. Extras included behind the scenes history with the game creators, an abridged copy of the L.A. department police manual, and a video interview with Daryl F. Gates.
The second re-release collection was released in 1997 asPolice Quest Collection Series. It containedPolice Quest 1–3,Open Season, andSWAT. It also included the Daryl Gates interview and the documentation from the previous collection.
The twoPolice Quest: SWAT games were re-released in 1999 in a collection calledPolice Quest: SWAT Force.
The third re-release collection was released in 2000, as the "SWAT Career Pack" which included all sixPolice Quests: 1–3,Open Season,SWAT, andSWAT 2. It also included a demo forSWAT 3: Close Quarters Battle.
In 2003, the first threeSWAT games were released in thePolice Quest: SWAT Generation compilation.
In September 2006,Vivendi Games releasedPolice Quest Collection: Step Behind the Badge, including the first fourPolice Quest games, minus the original AGI version ofPQ1. The package included theDOSBox emulator for compatibility withWindows XP.[10]
Since January 18, 2011, thePolice Quest 1–4 andPolice Quest: SWAT 1 & 2 packs are internationally available atGOG.com in the form of digital downloads. The 2.0 installer for thePolice Quest 1–4 pack added in the original EGA version ofPQ1. In 2017,SWAT 3 andSWAT 4 were both added to GOG. A community-driven online backend is available forSWAT 4's multiplayer after the shut down ofGamespy.
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