King's Quest II - Romancing the Throne

King's Quest II has one of the silliest stories I've ever had to follow through a joystick. A prince must do whatever it takes. Literally three witches, two princesses, and one cursed man in a nest. All of this so he can marry Rosella, whom he's never met—he just knows she exists. Logic? Unknown category.

If you were managing a medieval dynasty in the mid-eighties, it looked exactly like this. Sierra On-Line decided in 1985 that eight-color graphics and 320x200 pixels would be enough for a sprawling world full of mystery and excitement. You're in a kingdom, supposed to meet Rosella in some tower, and win her heart. Or rather, collect objects that someone demands in exchange for information, which another character takes and returns something you forgot along the way.

The controls are clunky in that old-school way where you type commands on the keyboard. "Go west. Take sword. Talk to witch." Sometimes the game hears what you want. Sometimes it thinks you want to drown yourself in a lake and just goes ahead. The catch is that while you wander around this mythical world collecting stuff, you can easily kill a character you'll need later. The game stays silent about it—you just won't see them anymore and you'll feel like an idiot. Some tasks are locked behind such a convoluted chain of logic that without a guide or trial-and-error, you simply won't get past them.

When did King's Quest II become a legend? It had luck on its side. In the mid-eighties, adventures weren't exactly plentiful, and certainly not ones that would take you on a three-hour journey to the far end of a digital world. The game plays at being epic, it has spirit and graphics that were basically revolutionary on MS-DOS. That hardly anyone plays it today is natural. It's aged like a cheap plastic sword from a secondhand store.

Today it's mainly a curiosity and a test of patience. If you're curious about how game design was thought through in the eighties, or want to see if you could handle graphics that don't matter much when the game is tedious and frustrating, you can fire it up in your browser. But honestly? Grab one of the newer adventures with the same DNA instead. You won't waste your time with this one.