Sierra On-line Teaches Typing: Let's Play King's Quest III

You can't see it well here but the wizard is shooting little bits of lightning that become the credits:



Then we get to the story... Hey! Where's King Graham?




Vital Info:


(large enough for you to read)

Released October 1, 1986 for MS-DOS, Apple II, Apple IIGS, Amiga, Atari ST, Mac, and Tandy Color Computer 3 computers.

The game came originally on 3 5 1/4" disks or 2 3 1/2" disks

Despite having disc based copy protection KQ3 required the player to transcribe lengthy bits of the manual into the game, under a time restraint, from a manual that had numerous spelling errors.

KQ3 was not as well received by the press and gamers as it's forebearers. People were advised to purchase KQ1 instead because it was substantially easier than KQ3.

Just so you know what we're getting into here.

Yay~! The one I actually played! I was very young at the time, so mostly got through by interrogating my older brothers about the game, though they never beat it either. I really loved having to sneak around Mannanon to get anything done, and the whole system of having to avoid getting caught by him when you used whatever opportunities you could get to try to sneak in progress...

I guess I shouldn't say much more; I'm looking forward to this!

Ah, number III! The parser always seemed a little more intelligent in this one, well compared to II at least.

What's the negative color image of nostalgia called? (Olive-tinted glasses?) That's what I feel for this game. I imagine if I had no history with KQIII and tried it out today I would find it kind of intriguing, kind of frustrating, finicky, and obtuse, and ultimately not worth wasting too much time on, but I would leave feeling a little bit sad and curious about what I was missing by not making the effort to solve its puzzles.

But I do have a history with this game. This game hurt me when I was young. And I hate it! I HATE IT SO MUCH!

I look forward to your contributions! I played this game when I was already in highschool and with a a handy guide right beside me, one that included the proper spelling for the spells.

Sadly, I missed out on experiencing this game in all its "glory"

Show me on the paper doll where the bad game touched you.

Funny. This was my most-anticipated early King's Quest when I started getting into the series (I started with V, VI, and VII). Mostly because it was the most called-back-to game in the series by those three. I never got the chance to play it in its original form, but I did get to play a fan remake that made it a mercifully point-and-click adventure with no need to manually type out long incantations. Good thing, too; I don't think I would have tolerated the original version well after the glory that was KQ6...

It's a shame you didn't get started til V you just barely missed the best King's Quest!

The beginning of this game was always too stressful for me to work past. Maybe I'll fire it up alongside this LP and finally properly make my way through it.

What?! Sweep the kitchen floor?! Gwydion's got too many cupboards to rummage around in and off-limits basements to explore to waste time on menial tasks! Manannan is a huge jerk! Next time he poofs in to be a dick, Gwydion should punch him in his big stupid face! Let the bastard make his own damn poisoned dinner!

A certain whale's tongue makes me disagree with your assessment there. Though I will say that KQ4 is my favorite of the pre-point-and-click era. Much like 6, it suffered from very few moon logic puzzles.

After what KQ2 put me through, I was ready for anything when I started KQ3.

And again when I re-started.

And again.

And again.

And goddammit I keep running out of time SCREW YOU MANANNAN!

(Ma-nah-nannan! Doot dooooo doot doo doo! Ma-nah-nannan! Doot dooooo doot doo! Ma-nah-nannan! Doot doooo doot doo doo! Doot doo doo! Doot doo doo! Doot doo doo! Doo doo doo doot doo doo doo doo!)

You can't get ye flask!

pfft one physical puzzle that with a mouse isn't even that hard to do. Rather that than figure out a pie to a yet face or cheese powered machine. =P

Easily my favourite of the first three... but, then, I was a pretty good typist and we had the hint book at school with the proper spells. I think this was the last KQ I played on the old engine, which had its drawbacks (no pausing of the action while typing) and benefits (you could queue up an action in advance - which comes in handy here for stuff like Medusa)

But it's a really great concept - the quest is far more focused (rather than Graham's "find three (x)" style of quests, this one you know from moment one what the hell you're supposed to be doing) and there's some clever ways to move around the countryside. The geography also feels a bit more varied in this one - there's some height changes. It's a bit less "fairytale mashup" than before, as well.

The randomness annoyed me more than anything else, with things like that @#%@# eagle feather. But I'm sure we'll get to that.

From a modern perspective, this one holds up a lot better than the first two. Sure, it's hard, but it's hard in a very approachable way, since as long as you've got a manual you've basically got a shopping list of what you need to solve every puzzle and it's then a matter of going A->B->C (in rare cases).

Check out the back of that box. Now you know where the idea for the Videlectrix Guys came from!

Roberta Williams just lacks a luxurious mustache.

I'm sure someone with even the slightest abilities in photoshop, no I mean Paint, can fix that.


The problem of course being that most people didn't have the hint book and that manual had errors. I should dig up the manual though and see what it says in it. To see how much direction it gives the player. I always wondered how people were supposed to know they needed to escape from Manananannaananann by learning to cast spells...

FWIW, I checked with the friend I got the game from in the first place (this was one of the famous 3.5" games that I snared for free to play on dad's old notebook) and he was able to beat it with just the original manual, so... yeah, sounds like it might have been an issue with an initial shipment more than anything else, but even then, I don't recall reports of running into problems with it (at least on the IBM version - for all we know, there could have been version-specific bugs). And this game was pretty freaking huge for its time, so you'd think that more people would have run into something like that.

Methinks Wikipedia isn't the most trustworthy source in the world on this one.

Anyway, the superior overall design more than makes up for it.

I'm not using that as a reference I'm using my original experience with the game, albeit through a friend, where we kept messing spells up. It wasn't until his mom got him the Companion Guide that we were able to sit down and beat the game.


Gotta to love those Companion Guides.

The KQ Companion was among the best guides ever. It gave its walk-through in the form of an interview.

This is also my favorite of the original trilogy (and since I haven't played IV or VI, that also makes it my favorite King's Quest game). The world is just so much more coherent than the previous games. Characters have relationships (albeit superficial) with each other and there's a lot more thought put into the world's background (the animal conversations and such).

And Mannanan was a genuinely scary villain. My young age helped, but every time he showed up I was petrified - did I hide all incriminating items? did I make it back to a safe area in time? did I reset all incriminating evidence? Will I be able to do all his chores? (for some reason I wasn't able to figure out how to properly feed the chickens until after I had beaten the game.)

I also played this game on the Mac, so I had no trouble with the instruction booklet/spell mechanic. There were no typos in the spells and I think the speed was throttled down so you had just enough time to type in the spell, check to make sure you hadn't inadvertently added any typos, and press return before you suffered an ill effect for not performing the spell correctly. It was a fun feely for the game and it was very clear that you'd have to complete each of the spells to have a hope of escaping (or at least it was to my young mind)

That said, it was still an early Sierra adventure. It was filled with a few annoying random elements (getting the eagle to appear, not getting caught by the three bears, etc.). It had some instances of Roberta Williams moon logic. It had plenty of places you could use up or neglect to pick up a vital item and thus be horribly screwed much later on. And it had those stupid "navigate the hazardous terrain" areas like the cliffs, the mountain path to Mannanan's, and the stairs to the laboratory (goddamn I hate that cat!)

I'm not even sure if I asked them, but my parents bought me the hint book a few months after getting the game and I never would have finished it without it. I managed to defeat Mannanan (and thus get the pirate ship to show up) without it, but was not able to figure out all of the spells (especially the one necessary on the ship).

Still, this is the first Sierra game that I found fun to play through even with puzzle solutions. So looking forward to it.

The ship is actually more annoying to me than anything else in the game. Just not a well-thought-out sequence there.

The best thing about this for me was that you sort of had to plan EVERYTHING out. Knowing you had 25 minutes - less the two or three required to climb back up to the house and hide everything - meant the game was more about efficiency than anything else.

They were also pretty good about writing in alternate uses for the spells - most of which wound up with spectacular death, but at least they tried to be a bit more anticipatory.

Oh yeah, the deaths in KQIII could be as good as Shadowgate (and with more graphic panache)

I'm getting hints at where I should focus the LP...

Real LP coming soon...


Sorry about the delay, but you know, having a life and such...

Ah KQIII, I'm pretty sure it was the second game of the series that I played, the other other being KQV. I'm pretty sure it had the updated point and click interface, but I'm not 100% sure.

Still, unlike KQV I didn't feel cheated by some of the solutions with this one. I was able to work a lot of things out by myself, though I still hated the boat. It took forever and ever just waiting. Apparently the map would have shown the trip but I never looked....

if it had an updated interface than it was one of the remakes...

Hurry up, or we'll combine this with the Princess Maker LP.

Gwydion only spent a moment standing in the foyer before his master shows up and orders him to one of the five unpleasant tasks the boy must do over and over and over (the others are feeding chickens, feeding Mannanan, sweeping the kitchen, and dusting the study).

I know how you guys love reading paragraphs of description text, so I made extra sure to include it in this LP!





After taking in the foyer as much as possible Gwydion heads up stairs. (I tried to look at the portrait but PARSER wouldn't let me!)



Pink? Bad ass wizard and decks his own room out in pink? Methinks the wizard is hiding something... Anyway Gwydion cleans out the chamber pot and heads back into the hall.



Real scary Mannanan, I know you slip on a pink 4-poster bed, surrounded by lacy pillows and your collection of my little ponies. Why was I ever afraid of you? Why are you hiding your true colors? (I bet the international league of evil wizards has a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.) Gywdion checks the digs out in his own room before he heads up the final set of stairs:



The first item we pick up in the game is a pair of fly wings folks! One person's trash is another man's treasure... I suppose?



Manannan doesn't like Gwydion to possess anything so he heads back to his room, on the way encountering the wizard's cat. Gwydion grabs it, eventually, tears some of it's hair off (the pc speaker sound effect is great, really) and then heads into his room to hide his stash under the bed, just like you did as a kid!



Okay, Gwydion show us the rest of this hell-hole:



The study, dining room, and kitchen



A journey to one of SF's greatest gay bar's, Badlands, you mean? Be FIERCE Mannanana-man!

With Gywdion's repressed master out of the way, he know has the opportunity that ever great hero indulges in: pilfering other people's things! Gwydion head's straight up to the ol' bear's bedroom and starts riffling through his things.

Next time: More stealing and getting out of the House!