Sierra's classic adventure series King's Quest has officially turned 40, according to its creators Roberta and Ken Williams.
The series that primarily focused on the adventures of King Graham and his family in the land of Daventry got its start on the IBM PCjr back in 1984 with the original AGI version of King's Quest. However, it didn't find widespread success until it was ported over to the Tandy 1000, and the Apple IIe & IIc following the failure of the IBM machine.
Encouraged by its popularity on these other platforms, Sierra later released even more ports of the game for the Apple IIGS, Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, MS-DOS, Macintosh, and the Sega Master System throughout the mid-to-late 80s, and also created an SCI-enhanced remake (titled King's Quest I: Quest For The Crown) in 1990 for both DOS and Amiga.
In total, the series contains 8 unique entries, with the main standouts (in our opinion) being King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella, King's Quest V: Absence Makes The Heart Go Yonder, and King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow.
In 2015, The Odd Gentlemen, together with Activision, also released an episodic reimagining of the series, which retold various events depicted in the original games, though this was made without Ken and Roberta's involvement (besides an initial passing of the torch at The Game Awards in 2014) as they were busy sailing the world at the time.
To celebrate the 40th anniversary, Ken Williams has released a 35-minute video on his Twitter account, where Roberta goes over her own personal collection of King's Quest boxes and answers some frequently asked questions about the series. This includes an update on her thoughts about whether she would ever return to create a King's Quest IX if given the chance.
Previously Roberta told us in an interview last year that it "won't be the same" to work on a King's Quest title that they don't own, but her opinion on this seems to have softened slightly due to her positive experiences working on Colossal Cave:
"You know I’ve thought about this. I don’t think they’re going to call. I just really don’t. I don’t think they’re going to do that, but if they did, I don’t know. I might think about it. I actually enjoyed going back to games again with the modern version of Colossal Cave. It had been 25 years between my last game, which was King’s Quest VIII, to Colossal Cave. 25 years before I got back into gaming design at all. Again, it’s circular. Going back. I kind of enjoyed it. So you never know. Never say never."
What do you make of this news? Would you like to see a new entry with Roberta at the helm? Comment below and let us know!