King's Quest and Space Quest come to Steam

[Datadog]

Yup. The whole story here.

Or I can paste it here.

Activision has released all seven games in the classic King's Quest series along with the six Space Quest games in two separate bundles now available on Steam. The collections normally sell for $19.99 but until the end of July each is being offered for only 15 bucks.

Hardware requirements aren't terribly demanding, naturally, but a note included with the King's Quest Collection warns that neither Windows XP 64 nor Windows Vista are officially supported, although some of the games may run regardless. (Strangely, the Space Quest Collection doesn't carry the warning.) Your best bet if you're interested but doubtful: Wait awhile and let someone else try it. Conversely, if you do try the games under one of the aforementioned OSes, feel free to report your success, or lack thereof, right here.

The tales of Sir Graham of Daventry and Roger Wilco, Space Janitor, were staples of the golden age of adventure gaming and shouldn't be missed by any fan of the genre. 30 bucks for 13 Sierra classics? You're not going to find many deals better than that.

[The Giggles]

Anyone know if it's the crap Vivendi releases without the original AGI games?

[JasefWisener]

If I had to guess, I'd say the Vivendi releases, as the blurb mentions "seven" King's Quest games and "six" Space Quest games. I could be 100% wrong, though.

[Collector]

I guess that it is OK for me to mention this now. I have been aware of this for some time, but was asked to keep mum about it. If anyone here remembers a while back, Qbix (one of the two main DOSBox creators) was asking about the compatibility of the collections with the latest DOSBox. This was because Steam had contacted him about the pending release and said that they would not work with the latest DOSBox. They, of course do work with 0.73, but via my patches. However, you cannot upgrade without breaking the launcher that the inept developers came up with, as the config file is hard coded into the launcher. This ancient dosbox.conf is hard coded into the launcher.

This is also the reason that I made the post about the many flaws of the VU KQ collection, partially as a source of information for Qbix to give to Steam. This information was passed on to Steam, along with contact information to me, but neither one of us heard back from Steam. We assume that they are essentially the same as was released by VU with all of the same flaws, but through Steam. I cannot say if my patches will work with them, as I do not know how much or if Steam has altered them for their needs. If anyone does buy them, I would be interested in if the patches work.

[Qbix]

I contacted them, they didn't initiate the contact.

When I heard rumours that they were going to put those collections on steam I contacted in the hope to improve them as gamers deserve something better than the job they did the first time. My efforts (with the help of collector) were probably in vain, I didn't buy the games at that time nor intend to this time, so I can't be sure of that.

[Tawmis]

Bummer that they couldn't have gone with fixing the launcher and using the updated patches and such to make everything much easier for the end user. Instead they went with the disclaimer. I'd say I'd buy them from Steam, but since my wife's car JUST broke down today, I am predicting some very tight financial times ahead.

[Collector]

I contacted them, they didn't initiate the contact.

Ah, OK. I guess that I assumed that they had contacted you since this was so much before any announcement. It now makes more sense that they just ignored any help offered. Oh well, Let Steam be flooded with support demands the way the VU forums were. One difference, I won't be there to do their work for them the way I was on the VU forums.

If my patches don't work because of whatever DRM nonsense that Steam incorporates into them (the way that they did with the LA releases) then I will not be updating them for the Steam releases. Like Qbix, I will not be spending my money to buy any of these, so I will not be able to fix them.

[Fender_178]

I dont know why anyone would spend money on this if they all ready own this particular collection. Unless they dont own it which I could understand. Ya I have seen this when I was on steam the other day and the box art picture that steam has for the game is the same as the the collection that was released on CD for sale.

Im pretty much figuring that this forum might get some posters who bought this through steam with their problems. (ex Kq7 Sq1VGA, Sq4-6) bc of the timer bugs. But the NRS patches might work with steam for SQ1VGA and SQ 4-6. But KQ7 they might be out of luck there. Im just guessing here.

[DeadPoolX]

I guess the reason to buy it from Steam is finding the recent collections can be somewhat difficult -- unless you're particularly tenacious, like Collector and Rudy.

I really wonder who their target audience is with this. Most Adventure gamers will already have most -- if not all -- of these titles. I know I certainly do and therefore, never bought the collections.

Honestly, I think this is merely a reaction to LucasArts having recently released some of their older games. The timing is quite coincidental otherwise.

[Fender_178]

Well one possible target audience would be the people who played some of the games but never played all of em.

Also It seems like to me that steam installs the games the same way the Collection on Cd does because some on on the steam forums mentioned the quick closing DOSBox window when he/she tried to run games 1-6 (King's Quest) and some cant get Kq7 to work since they are running a 64 bit version of their operating system (vista or Xp)

[Collector]

Well, Steam had their chance. Qbix offered help as did I via Qbix. I have already worked out all of the problems with these releases, save the missing games. My patches even provide a way to add the missing games if the user already owns any of the missing games. I could have easily developed better packages. 64 bit users are SOL:

Some games in this collection may run under Windows XP 64 and Vista 32/64, but are not officially supported

On a side note, I am curious as to whether or not my patches will work on them.

[Fender_178]

Very true Collector especially when it comes to KQ7.

Collector if you head on over to the Steam fourms it seems like to me that members over there are trying your patches or suggesting the editing of the launcher.ini file for KQ games 1-6. Heres the link http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/f ... .php?f=670


It seems like the patches should work if you edit the command line/target to look something like this c:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\king's quest collection. And you will have to do this for each of the shortcuts.

Or if anyone who installs the steam version of the collection all they need to do is change what the installer says that its going to install the game at to the same target as what the Cd based version does. Ex (C:\program files\Sierra\King's Quest Collection (TM) ). And bam the games should work without any problems.

[Collector]

That is just sad. I was looking at the Steam forum and all of the problems that the VU forum got hit with after the release of the 2006 collections are repeating again on the Steam forums, only in spades. Oh well, Steam was warned. Little do they care for their customers.

The "Program Files" location is going to cause problems for many Vista users. The should try something like "C:Sierra\King's Quest Collection" instead. If I could see what files are there I could easily modify the patches to work perfectly.

Edit: the patch that they found is just the KQ7 v1.4 to v2 patch. It is an older patch that has issues. If anyone here has a Steam account, could you post on that board to let them know that there is a patch for the collection, not just KQ7?

[Tawmis]

See this is why, if I had money, I'd buy it from Steam also - just so that I could help and work with Collector - to get these things working. It's a shame that anyone should not be able to play the Sierra classics... whether Steam sucks or not for not accepting the help, from Collector and Qbix, it sucks that the customers should have to suffer.