"Let's Play King's Quest 5"

[Datadog]

Let's Play King's Quest 5 - Part 1 and so on...

(Contains explicit language)

There are billions of playthroughs for old Sierra games all over YouTube, but after 10 parts, this one's getting a fairly big fan-following over at thatguywiththeglasses.com and I'm getting really into it as well, so I thought I'd post it up here.

It's a guy replaying KQ5 for the first time since he was a kid and reviewing and unleashing his frustration on the game every step of the way as he tries to remember how to beat it. His reactions to a lot of the surprise deaths and puzzle solutions are priceless.

[DeadPoolX]

This sounds good. I'll have to check it out!

[MusicallyInspired]

I've actually been following this for a while. I didn't realize that the boot and the stick were interchangeable items puzzle-wise! Can't wait to see part 10!

[DeadPoolX]

I remember KQ5's graphics were amazing at the time. Of course, the original non-talkie version came out in 1990. VGA was brand new at that point.

What's interesting is that the VGA used in KQ5 looks somewhat inferior when compared to later VGA games. GK1 and KQ6, for instance, look remarkably better.

[Datadog]

I've actually been following this for a while. I didn't realize that the boot and the stick were interchangeable items puzzle-wise! Can't wait to see part 10!

I always knew you could throw either the boot or stick at the cat, but I didn't know it worked both ways for the dog. Good thing it did, though. Part 10 is already up on YouTube. Can't see to see Part 11 when he starts using "King Swayze."

What's interesting is that the VGA used in KQ5 looks somewhat inferior when compared to later VGA games. GK1 and KQ6, for instance, look remarkably better.

GK1 and KQ6 both had the advantage of being rotoscoped, though - but you're right. Even compared to non-rotoscoped VGA like in EcoQuest, you could tell it was a new technology.

[MusicallyInspired]

Rotoscoped?

[Akril]

Rotoscoped?

It's an animation technique where live actors are filmed performing a certain action, then the animators go through each frame of the video and paint over each frame, often creating a 2D character that follows the actor's actions. in GK1, KQ6 and SQ5, the artists didn't make the characters overly stylized; they just gave them a softer look to match the hand-painted backgrounds (you can see the filming of two of the actors in KQ6 and the transition from the original film to the finished cutscene in this video).

Rotoscoping helps to create more realistic animated movements, but it also takes away a lot of the spontaneity and magic of 2D animation, and is sometimes considered "cheating" by some people. The animated Lord of the Rings relied heavily on rotoscoping, as I recall.

[Jules]

Interesting, Akril!

[Datadog]

Yeah, essentially it's tracing human actors, but I think games like KQ6 pulled it off nicely. You could get the feel of human movement, but dropping a lot of the in-between frames sold the illusion that you were still a game character.

As a side-note on top of Akril's, Disney animators used it all the time throughout the 30's and 50's for their first few films (mixing it with traditional animation for non-human characters,) and ended up only using it for motion reference somewhere after "101 Dalmatians" before dropping it entirely. Don Bluth, however, ended up using the technique a lot more as he went along (in movies like Thumbelina, Anastasia, and Titan A.E.)

There's also an adventure game called "The Last Express" which was done entirely with Bashki-style rotoscoping.

[MusicallyInspired]

Ah, yes. Ok. I thought the term was in reference to the backgrounds which got me confused....

[Datadog]

It took over 3 hours and 21 episodes, but he's finally done!

If you fast-forward halfway through the last video, he does a funny sketch where he dresses up like Graham and wanders around town solving puzzles.