Climbing Up the Whales Tongue Pt. 1

Recently, DOS turned 30. If you already know what DOS is, congratulations—  you're either old, or a nerd. I don't mean that facetiously, as there's nothing wrong with being either of those things (regardless of what is generally implied). However, if you don't happen to be young and/or cool, DOS (Disk Operating System), according to Wikipedia, is an acronym which is descriptive of a family of related operating systems which were used heavily from 1981, through the 1990s and even until around the turn of the century (yes, MS-DOS was incorporated into early versions of Windows, so it still counts). 

While this may sound boring, especially given the relative graphics quality of games for 16-bit operating systems when compared to today's standards, many of the games made for DOS systems were anything but.

Growing up, my family somehow always managed to have a computer. Though this is now fairly standard, and PCs a bit more accessible, it used to be quite a big-ticket item. Not in the "color TV" kind of way, but more in the "new car" kind of way. My family was never particularly wealthy, but my parents were determined that my brother and I would be technologically literate from an early age (and thus be able to provide free IT Helpdesk services over the phone later in life), and so it was that we acquired a used Tandy 1000, and a handful of assorted games I'd never heard of, all revolving around a family in some kingdom called "Daventry".

To be honest, when I was given first pick of which game to play through first, I didn't care very much. Even at the time, I knew that these "King's Quest" games were probably not going to be considered very cool, as they did not involve an SNES, or characters fighting, jumping, or racing. Truthfully, I was a bit relieved, having not shown much of an aptitude for platformers in their earliest days. I made my selection based on the box art: "King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella" was the most recent entry in the series, so I figured it would probably be the least uncool of the lot. Plus, there was a girl on the cover, which notched it up slightly in my esteem, as I'd only just gotten the news that Samus from Metroid turned out to be a girl. Yes, before the internet, spoilers were much fewer and further between.

I reluctantly began the game with my father, not expecting much from it, but also not wanting to make him feel as though the pains my parents took to secure a computer for our home were pointless. However, after a few hours had gone by, both my dad and I were so sucked into the story that we made a pact not to play again until after dinner the next day, for fear that one of us might miss something crucial.

Over the course of the next handful of years, though my family would move many times, my dad and I would play through almost all of the King's Quest series together. I didn't talk much about it to friends, particularly as a teenager, because I assumed that the rest of the world considered these games to be paltry and unchallenging. As console gaming sprouted more colors and polygons (I tend to think of the fifth generation of consoles as their promising-yet-awkward adolescent phase), the pull became overwhelming. I gradually drifted towards my brother's N64, and later the PS2, and generally dismissed my former penchant for point-and-click adventure as some sort of gaming adolescence of my own.

I Goldeneyed, I Final Fantasied, and I Silent Hilled. I blew up monsters, Nazis and zombies. I got the BFG, and I utilized it with gleeful abandon. I maintained my staunch hatred for platformers, dying repeatedly and swearing in two different languages, depending on who was in earshot and how much they might care. It wasn't until much later, when I had been spending most of my time on Minecraft (with a brief break to play through Limbo in two sittings- which I feel is tantamount to someone who actually LIKES platformers playing through in one sitting), that I suddenly felt an intense craving for King's Quest.

Perhaps it was combination of nostalgia and the wandering through Minecraft's blocky open world (which looks a lot like how I would imagine Rosella's world, from Rosella's perspective), or the fact that I recently lost my dad which made me want to investigate the possibility of picking up the King's Quest games again, and trying to figure out how to make them run on a modern OS. After all, I'd had plenty of experience with virtual machines. I'd just never really bothered to find out if anyone had built a DOS VM, because honestly— why would I ever need one? 

Luckily for me (and I am clearly late to the party for only having discovered this a few months ago), there is DOSBox, and it is the shit. I've successfully installed and re-played KQ IV-VII (well, except for IV, which I had to put on hold because I am stuck inside the stupid whale and keep sliding off his slimy-ass tongue). It is also possible to do this with KQ 1-3, though these have been re-made by ADGI, which has updated the graphics (but not so much that the nostalgia factor is gone), and ported all three games to the current generation of operating systems.

In any case, I've thoroughly enjoyed playing the King's Quest series again. It is particularly amusing for me to note my younger self's perception of the games as being "too easy", as they didn't require much skill in the way of movement, because in reality, these games are actually quite difficult. Some of the puzzles are maddeningly tricky, while others are so convoluted as to be absurd. In many of the earlier chapters, it is possible to access and become trapped in areas of the game without having the objects necessary to complete the puzzles associated with each area. Infuriating! This might be considered by modern audiences to be a flaw in the design, but to fans of classic gaming, this is merely another gameplay mechanic. 

However, this is something I'll delve into a bit further next week, because as of right now, I've been stuck in this gross whale for weeks on end. Tonight's the night. I'm gonna scale this lingual lump and bust out. Give me liberty, or give me death!

Honestly, it's probably just going to be a lot of death. And swearing.