King's Quest: Collection Series (King's Quest I-VII / The Colonel's Bequest / The Dagger of Amon Ra / Mixed-Up Mother Goose)

by Vivendi Universal

Product Features

• Games included are: Kings Quest I-VII (1 to 7), The Colonel's Bequest, The Dagger of Amon Ra and Mixed-Up Mother Goose - Plus a sneak preview of King's Quest: VIII Mask of Eternity

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00001NFRB
• Media: CD-ROM
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #31,860 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

A collection of seven games in the classic King's Quest PC game by Roberta Williams. Also includes several bonus games.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fun for All Ages, May 29, 2001

By 

Jonathan Schaper (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: King's Quest: Collection Series (King's Quest I-VII / The Colonel's Bequest / The Dagger of Amon Ra / Mixed-Up Mother Goose) (CD-ROM)

This is a collection of the first 7 King's Quest game covering a history going back to the mid-80s. Therefore the earliest of these games are quite primative, but have a nostalgic charm to them, and all the games have fun fantasy stories with a wonderful, light sense of humour.

When the first King's Quest came out it was at the vanguard of game design. Unlike the text adventure games common at the time (some of which had a few static graphics), here you could see your character moving around an actual environment and interacting with objects. The games themselves are quite simple (basically, they are just treasure hunts where you have to find the right object and take it back to the correct character to trade for another object, etc.) but charming. The interface on these earliest games are parser, as opposed to point and click, meaning (with the exception of movement by cursor keys) you have to type in commands in order to tell the character what to do. This had its disadvantages (at times, you know what to do but not how to say it), but it also had its advantages (there was less room for guessing by just clicking your inventory objects on the hotspot one at a time).

In KQ1 and 2, the puzzles are mainly based on remembering rhymes and fairy tales (e.g., you know Little Red Riding Hood needs a basket to take to her Grandma's house), but with KQ 3, the storylines start to become more complex and original and interesting, and actual problem solving starts to come into play. And with KQ4, the graphics start to become more artistic (although still primitive by today's standards).

KQ5 is the first one with a point-and-click interface, and suffers from the problem that it is easy to solve puzzles by just clicking inventory items at random instead of by thinking, (and many of the puzzles are obvious at any rate, especially when you find the right object) but the enjoyable storyline makes up for this. KQ6 (designed with the help of Gabriel Knight's Jane Jensen) is clearly the best story-wise, and has some challenging puzzles (save often to avoid frustration). KQ7, the first designed for release exclusively on cd-rom, has the best graphics of the series (even better than the 3D crap in #8) and includes a world straight out of a Tim Burton movie that is especially fun to explore, but is geared towards a younger audience (even then, I enjoyed the story and interesting puzzles with multiple solutions). Unlike Lucasfilm games, the characters in KQ can die and, if this happens, you have to restart from a saved game, but it is sometimes fun to see how many different ways they can die (for #7 it is the most entertaining part of the game).

Included is the newer version of Mixed Up Mother Goose where young players help to recreate mother goose rhymes by reuniting characters with lost objects (no death in this one). The original MUMG had a certain charm, but only toddlers will fail to find this one annoying. Also included are both Laura Bow mysteries (about a girl detective in the 1930s), which are fun to play but are convoluted and very frustrating to solve (especially since they are in real time, so while you observe something important in one room, you often miss something else important in another room). Several text games that came out pre-KQ1 are also included (which will help newer players understand why KQ1 was so revolutionary).

Most of these games would no longer be worthwhile on their own except as nostalgia (KQ6 and 7 (and maybe 5) being the exceptions), but as one package this is a wonderful buy and leaves one hoping that a KQ9 will come out and repair the damage caused by that travesty, KQ8.

45 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Roberta Williams, November 29, 1999

By 

"malloy3" (L.A.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: King's Quest: Collection Series (King's Quest I-VII / The Colonel's Bequest / The Dagger of Amon Ra / Mixed-Up Mother Goose) (CD-ROM)

I've been playing King's Quest since I was 4 years old, starting obviously with the first one. I can honestly say that KQ1-KQ6 were absolute masterpieces. If you love fantasy, you will love these games. The only one I can't praise is the 7th one. It was sort of experimental, and the graphics were far too cartoonish (for my taste, anyway). But the rest of them are really pieces of art. Although the earlier ones do not have state of the art graphics (when compared to current games) they are nonetheless enjoyable. In fact, the graphics were amazing for their time. I think my favorite one would have to be KQ4: The Perils of Rosella. You journey through the mystical land of Tamir as Princess Rosella on a quest to find a magical fruit that will heal your dying father and a talisman that will heal a dying fairy. These games are for those of us who would rather test our wit than our reflexes. Both the Laura Bow mysteries are also incredible. I find myself replaying them often, and noticing things I hadn't before. And both of them, even the first one with its EGA graphics, have spooky moments. Roberta Williams created the first ever non-"text only" computer adventure game. I think anyone would want to play one of her games based on that fact alone.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You can run games on XP, September 15, 2004

By 

j (USA) - See all my reviews

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: King's Quest: Collection Series (King's Quest I-VII / The Colonel's Bequest / The Dagger of Amon Ra / Mixed-Up Mother Goose) (CD-ROM)

I won't bother repeating how wonderful ALL of the games are, because everyone has either said it or already knows it. I am writing this in response to the review that says you cannot run it on XP- you can. You must change the compatibility settings to windows 95. Right click, and go to properties. You will see the compatibility tab. Just change the settings to windows 95 and check all the boxes.