You know, everyone always says this, but I was playing King's Quest II off of my old Roberta Williams Anthology CD-ROMs from a decade ago. It works just fine in Windows XP. Here's what I do. I double-click on 'sierra.exe' to start the program. The screen goes black, but I can hear the music. I hit Alt-Enter to get back to the windows desktop. Then I click on the DOS window in the taskbar. The game pops up in full-color glory and I can play it all day like no one's business. Does this not work for other people?

I was a beta-tester on that thing back in the day, and I had some good times! What was great was that all the nerds like immediately formed all these little groups that they called "Guilds." They would have secret meetings in these huts (the only indoors that was created at the time). The largest group was call the "Guild of Darkness" or GOD, for short. One day they announced their meeting, members only. So I decided to crash it. I was this old guy with a grey beard and a robe on. My name was Beard. I walked in and stripped down to my underwear and started dancing (hitting up, down, left right, over and over again). I announced to the community that there was a naked dance party in the GOD hut. So other people starting showing up, stripping down, and dancing like crazy. They GOD guys got SO pissed and started threatening me. Things like "you are dead!" and "We will hire an assassin to take you out! This is your last warning!"

Anyway, good times.

The games should *play* just fine. Especially the early DOS games like King's Quest I & II, because they were basically designed to use the internal PC speaker for sound. As the games got more advanced (early 90's), they started using FM-synthesis on the sound cards. The sound should really be the only issue with these games.

From a Windows Tech site...

"Windows NT/2000/XP provides a DOS emulator for running 16 and 32 bit DOS programs but due to NT's security model, direct peripheral access is denied. The more recent DOS games provide sound by directly accessing the sound card and as a result although many can be run under NT, none have been able to produce sound and hence lose a great deal of playability."

You'll see if you try and play the later variations of the games... King's Quest 5-6, Police Quest 3-4, etc. The only sound that will work is the PC speaker sound, which really sounds terrible on those games.

I have a SoundBlaster card in my PC and still couldn't get sound from the newer titles without DOSBox or VDMSound. Some of the games even came up with a mesage "Unable to initialize audio hardware".

If it works for you, consider yourself lucky.

I credit the early Sierra games for the reason I type so fast nowadays.

I also remember the first point-and-click Sierra game I played, one of the Police Quest games, and I was like, "What the heck? Where do I type things? This sucks!"

Nice find.

That is where they went wrong. Everything prior to the point and click games were all rated 10 out of 10, IMO. Once they moved to the mouse they were more hit or miss. But games like the Space Quest series where it was more about the humor than the puzzles it didn't matter. Same with Leisure Suit Larry. But King's Quest and Police quest really suffered. They were about solving puzzles and they became way to easy once the mouse was introduced. If you have only played the mouse versions of the games then you are missing out. The classics are the typing adventures of the first in each series.

Your're welcome

I never played the game, though, is it any good?

even though i have no clue what you're talking about i laughed my ass off reading that

They're ALL good!!

This is one of the "typing" ones, too.

I could never beat King's Quest 6

n00b!

I actually liked both the typing and the point/click interface. Another darkhorse in the vein of all the "Quest" games was Gabriel Knight. Loved the first game.

Must be nostalgia. I've played all the King's Quests and I think V is by far the best.

FWIW, I enjoyed games like Planetfall, King's Quest I, and others, but I think things only improved until the mid 1990s.

Ah such fantastic memories with ole sierra properties. Quest for Glory 4 still sticks out in my mind the most. Nothing has ever touched its atmosphere and creep factor. "Black Monday" could not have been labeled more correctly when that fateful day came and swallowed up a large chunk of gaming. Thru years I waited for someone to buy rights from that evil conglomerate , realize those hot properties still have so much potential. Sadly after last dreadful larry attempt, no hope is left, its about as opposite of the direction they need to go as ice cube in desert.

Wow. Good old Sierra. It has been so long since I have played those, I can't remember which ones I played. I know I played one of the Space Quest games (3, maybe?), Police Quest 1 or 2, I think, and several of the King's Quest games. Good times. I don't think I ever played any of the Quest For Glory ones. I'm going to have to go check out some of those sites. Thanks!

Sierra-type adventure games were the first games I played on my PC back in 1991. Good times, good times.

Conquest of the Longbow was probably my favorite made by Sierra, though Day of the Tentacle is my all time favorite adventure game.

While I loved the Sierra games, one Lucasarts game has to be my favorite of the point and click adventures. Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atalantis was awesome, not only because it was a good game, but because I was just a die hard Indy fan, and that was a pretty good Indy story.

Too bad they don't make many like this anymore. Grim Fandango is the last Lucasarts one I can think of, though it's quite good if you've never played it.

Thanks for the links.
I've been replaying King's Quest 1 and just completed it in it's original form. Now, I'm playing it again in it's VGA form. There are some (minor) changes to some puzzles as well as new additions altogether (i.e. Fairy Godmother? I don't think there was one in the original KQ1).

There have been some great suggestions, even if some of them are relatively more recent (The Longest Journey, Syberia, Grim Fandango).

Let's go back to the 1980's.
There was another game I use to play all the time on the Apple IIc. It was based on the Robin Hood story.
It was text-based (type your commands), was in first-person (you did not see your character), and very limited animation if any. Things I remember:
Talking to Friar Tuck.
Burning a pile of hay to find something within it.
Taking a green awning and giving it to the tailor to make an outfit
Talking to the Merry Men.
Seeing Little John on a log bridge.

Anyway, I think the title was "Sherwood Forest" and it may/may not be a Sierra title.
Oh, yeah! You could type in profanity and it would show you a screen of a mouth being washed with soap. LOL!

Anyone remember/play this?
Where can I find it?

awww man... the Black Cauldron, Manhunter, etc... etc... all the games were fun.

The last Sierra game I played was King's Quest 7. The animation was awkward and the movement was slow.

Oh, crap, I totally forgot about the Manhunter games! There were two of them, and they had these gruesome close-ups that scared me so bad I almost peed my pants. Anyone know where these are available online? The abandonware sites already listed in this thread don't have them and googling "Manhunter" produces pornography.

Edit: Nevermind - check it out! Manhunter 1 & 2

I think the best out of all of the ones mentioned had to be Police Quest 4, I loved that game to death. A newer game, yet still old in my eyes of the adventure genre, that i loved so much had to be Phantasmagoria. The first one was so much fun, and the second one was good as well. I can't seem to get these to work anymore, if anyone knows a solution or some info that would be great.

I agree. Sierra kind of lost me after they left their tried and true 256 low resolution point and click games. All of those I loved...Space Quest 4, 5, Kings Quest 5 and 6, Leisure Suit Larry 5. There were some other decent ones...Gabriel Knight, Freddy Pharkas was a really amusing one also.

Off the Sierra track but around the same time, the Kyrandia series was a good time. Though I remember the first one of these types of games I ever played...Sherlock Holmes. Though...I never could beat it back when I was 11. Ha, no internet and walkthroughs.

Hear, hear! I've always said adventure games went downhill with the addition of graphics, and even further downhill when they added the mouse. Granted they were still fun, but they were no longer the mental challenge I loved from the Infocoms.

Soft Porn Adventure over Leisure Suit Larry!

Ahh yeah, Kyrandia. I think I played the first two, and they were enjoyable.

On another tangent, the Tex Murphy games (at least Under a Killing Moon and The Pandora Directive) were a blast.