King’s Quest

King's Quest: Quest for the Crown (aka King's Quest) is a 1983 adventure game, originally published for the IBM PCjr simply as King's Quest. It is part of the King's Quest series of adventure video games. The story and the general design of the game was developed by Roberta Williams.

The game was originally released simply as King's Quest; the subtitle 'Quest for the Crown' was added to the game box in the 5th rerelease (1987), but did not appear in the game itself. The 1990 remake was renamed King's Quest 1: Quest for the Crown (King's Quest I on the box).

In the original version on PCjr (1983), the story was simple. The Kingdom of Daventry is suffering from recent disasters and hardship. King Edward calls his bravest knight, Sir Grahame, to his throne, and tells him he has heard of three legendary treasures hidden throughout the land that would end Daventry's troubles. If Grahame succeeds he will become king. In later releases, knight's name was changed to Graham.

In the later 4th release IBM PC/Apple II (1984) and repackaged 5th release (1987) the backstory was greatly expanded:

The Kingdom of Daventry is in serious trouble, after its precious magical items have been stolen from Castle Daventry. King Edward the Benevolent lacked an heir. A sorcerer promised to help the queen bear an heir, if they gave him their mirror that tells the future; looking in the mirror, the king and queen saw a vision of a young man becoming king. Thinking it was their own future son, they gave the mirror to the evil sorcerer. Alas, it was a lie and she had no heir. Years later, as the queen was sick and dying, a dwarf showed up promising to give a plant's root that would cure her illness, if only the king would give him the 'shield that protects its wearer against danger'. The king agreed. The dwarf gave the plant's root to the king, and departed. However the dwarf had lied to the king, and the queen fared worse and died. Sometime later the king looked for a new queen. One day, he rescued a beautiful young Princess Dahlia from the land of Cumberland. However, on the night of their wedding, she was discovered to be really an evil witch, and she stole the 'chest that is always filled with gold' from the treasure and flew out of the castle on her broom. In time, the castle fell into ruin. Knowing that he had to save the kingdom, King Edward sends his bravest knight, Sir Graham, to retrieve the lost treasures. Because he had no heir, if Graham should succeed, he would become the next king.