It’s basically an old game that was ported to an even older technology by a crazy fan (there’s no other name for it…)…

In the early 1980s, Sierra pioneered the transition of adventure games from text to graphics. After Mystery House, many games ran on the Adventure Game Interpreter (AGI) engine. One of them was King’s Quest. AGI supported sound effects, music, and vector graphics that supported 16 colors, so you could use arrow keys to represent your character moving between scenes. Of course, you still had to write down text if you wanted to pick up or use something, but there was still a visuality to it all.

In 1988, however, AGI was joined by a new technology called Sierra Creative Interpreter (SCI). The first game, King’s Quest IV, was released in two versions (and the SCI version got two versions, too). The first version of the SCI engine, version zero, appeared in this game, but the “1” version had to wait until 1990, when it appeared in King’s Quest V. SCI also supported hundreds of colors and digitized sounds with its advanced scripting language.

King’s Quest 6 also ran on SCI, and it certainly brought with it the dead ends that were typical of the franchise at the time: not talking to someone or picking up an item at a certain moment often led to an unwinnable situation. The game was also loved by Brandon Kuori, who grew up with the fifth and seventh installments as well as Myst. Only later did he discover AGI and all its charms before SCI. Then he discovered the fan toolkit for making his own games in AGI. He started experimenting with his own Oregon Trail before turning his attention to King’s Quest 6, but that all started in 2006. When he ran out of ideas, he pulled out his favorite AGI game, Mixed-Up Mother Goose, because it featured children’s songs in a modern form, and praised Roberta Williams’ voice in it. He posted his work on YouTube, and at the request of the audience there, he finally finished his work, which he finished this year…

“I was fascinated by it. Something about it really sparked something in me and I wanted to know everything about it and how it worked. Of course, I did not work on it every day for 18 years. There were times when I worked feverishly for long periods of time, and other times when it lay dormant. Progress was slow and time consuming. Often I could not find the motivation to work on it. I got tired of the low resolution graphics and the typing interface. Trying to figure out all the things a player would type gave me fits. KQ6 is really not suited for the AGI system, so the memory load was a big obstacle.

I was surprised by a small group of very passionate people who demanded that it be finished and released. I never expected that. But my work at that time was on a disassembled computer in a closet 1,500 miles away from me. I’m not connected to the gaming world or retro gamers. Within days of the game’s release, I saw people playing it on Nintendo DSi, Game Boy Advance, old Tandy computers, and Hercules monochrome displays. I had no idea that this community existed.

I guess a personal “pie in the sky” dream of mine would be for the Williams’ and Jane Jensen to know about this game. I hope they appreciate it, though. I feel a little weird making something based on someone else’s intellectual property. It reminds me of a scene in Julie & Julia where Julia Child is mad at Julie Powell for making all the recipes in her cookbook. [If I could say one thing to the original creators, I would say this: Thank you for my childhood. Thank you for the feelings of joy and wonder that continue to fuel my imagination to this day. I give you this game as a gift. It is my gift to you,” said Kouri.

It can be downloaded here. It’s incredible what has been created.

Source: PCGamer