King's Quest IV: A Fair and Balanced Retrospective 

I have maintained that KQ4 is a horror game, as much as it is a fantasy game. It's almost survival horror in how relentlessly dark it is, and how dreary it is, how almost every single thing in the game is out to kill you horribly.

Did I mention that I absolutely love the new format? Your humor is just spot on for me. Great job so far. Hope you keep making more :)

You find out later that Edgar was actually kidnapped by Lolotte as a child and that form that Genesta transforms him into at the end is actually his true form....then, they pretty much cut out all of Edgar’s backstory from KQ7, so the only way you would know that is if you read about it in supplementary books (official strategy guides, etc)

Very late to the party, but I will note that the Magic Mirror was a jerk to even King Edward in the backstory of King's Quest I. In the backstory, it was noted Edward had no heir. The mirror told him that he would have a son and that caused Edward to do anything to do so -- including surrender the three treasures (for example, in one case, give the shield to the EVIL dwarf for a quack remedy for his sick wife which ended up killing her). So your theory has quite a bit of merit to it.

“Drunk dialing magic mirrors” 😂 Yet another reason I can’t wait to play the game you’re currently writing. Top material as always mate, thank you!

"mount unicorn horn first" 🤣

Wow, I didn't know they had a cheaper version of KQ4 where they just re-used the day art with only minor tweaks for night... the day/night scenes thing was pretty much a selling point on the box! It was such a weird game.

This channel is sick. I used to love playing all of these Sierra games back in the day. I played this one when I was in 4th grade. For some reason we had it in the classroom. My uncle gave us his PC in like 95 when he upgraded and we had 5,6,7 plus some Leisure Suit Larry and other stuff.

You really don't seem to like the KQ series very much. All the more reason to appreciate these videos. As usual, you've been a real hoot! 😏👍

I liked the part at the end with the Easter eggs. I never played KQ4 so that was all new info for me!

The stairs!!! Those wooden stairs took my friend and I more than a week to figure out.

IV was the most aggravating of the series and I remember nearly punching the screen of my Apple II-GS with my 11-yr-old fist. The whale tongue, sheesh. And Roberta's stupid smug face when she kills you.

You don’t have to type “jump” 15 times; the F3 key or the spacebar will bring up your last command.

"Four little words, 'youre not close enough,'" gave me MASSIVE flashbacks to Future Wars. Although that one tried to be cheeky with "come a little closer!"

@22:35 Eat the fruit yourself....wait, so daddy Graham never wakes up? Sounds like the ultimate good ending to me!

While I joined because I enjoyed the nerding out over the good qualities of many adventure games, I'm thoroughly enjoying the sarcastic exaggeration of the worst qualities of King's Quest. And while I am a fan of fantasy, it's true that a lot of it tries to wave things off with moon logic

No idea ghost guards were such big fans of Michael Jackson's Thriller! The more you leam

This reminds me why this was my favorite game in the KQ series. None of the KQ games are fantastic for puzzles, but 4 was the first one that MADE SURE you did things in order by having these secret-envelope puzzles. While Ron Gilbert will rightly point out that the backwards puzzle is a bad puzzle, I'd say the greater crime is leading the player by the nose without giving them the opportunity to think.

Note to self, never fuck with Roger Wilco or any of his friends.

Another Fine Video from the King's Quest Historian!!! Lol. Great job SQH, on to KQ5 King Graham searches for Hemroid Relief!

This is the only KQ game I was able to complete without a hint book.

I'm absolutely loving these

King's Quest IV has always been my favorite game of all time. Sure, part is nostalgia (OK, a LOT of it is due to nostalgia), but in spite of its flaws, I still think they did a great job with what they had. I love the dark horroresque aesthetic. Even to this day, I fantasize about creating a game in the same vein as KQ4. Maybe one day I will...

World’s slowest heart attack

>magic fruit that will cure anything this would have been the perfect spot for a Freddie Mercury spot

I just discovered that if you open Pandora's box while the goons are flying in to grab you, it.... breaks and closes the game. At least while running in Windows 3.1. I haven't tried it in Scummvm or Dosbox. It holds for about 10 seconnds after the "Okay, but you'll be sorry message", then tries to play the next cutscene. At which time, it flashes to monochrome and then shuts down. Not at all helpful lol, but I thought that was an interesting tidbit for someone who regularly likes to find new ways to break his Space Quest games. Also if I haven't said it yet, I love your channel! Keep up the great work. I can't wait for your Police Quest 2 retrospective.

Your KQ videos have become my go-to when there's nothing interesting on my youtube page.

As someone who actually tried to play this game in 1988, I pretty much relied on the Sierra BBS to get anywhere. Very poor puzzle design. It is my opinion that Ken Williams realized the extent to which Sierras games were getting pirated before KQIV and decided to milk the hint book sales (which were selling like hot cakes) by making the games impossibly difficult.

Tight video SQH

Ok, I'm at 25:40, haven't seen the answer. The music made me think of either climbing a mountain or being at a waterfall.

I played this right when it came out. There WERE hints and walkthrus on BBSs, as well as the 1-900 line to Sierra which I called once to figure out how to get out of the whale, and that wasn't a simple answer, so wasted like $20 on the 4 minutes or whatever (parents weren't happy!). But hey, there were hints then!

The hidden bridle stumped me for over a month back in 1988. I jumped through all the right hoops: the fishing pole, the whale escape, and the dolphin whistle. I just missed the bridle. I eventually realized that I must have missed something in that sequence as all those steps failed to provide a single new item or story impacting event.

Great video!

Hahaha. These Kings Quest videos are hysterical. Looooooove it

NICE video - fun stuff

You should definitely sprinkle some random VIPER jump scares in your videos from now on.

We have the technology to improve KQ4. Increasing the "close enough" distance, altering the RNG, removing the inverted stairway controls, having the 1989 backgrounds but with 1988-style night versions, all of that. We can do that. We can even have Genesta give you the fruit if you forgot it and your only punishment is an incomplete score. What's stopping us, really?

Heh. Regarding your little mirror theory, this isn't even the last time it'll send someone off on a quest. Yep, there's yet another mirror-ex-machina to come! And the next time it appears it will bring with it the power of... THE POP SONG! (dun dun *dduuuunnnnn* )

What is left of their mad max medieval county with most of the towns people dead, they even did cover up the only means of water in the town. The people left alive must be so happy he is on his death bed. It's been like this for 17 years of a king who has the means to print endless money, the towns people should be living large not dead and dying!

30:15 what's the secret code for?

While your past KQ episodes seemed to be going for low hanging fruit and hyperbole (making it unclear what is meant as comedy and what's your in good-faith arguments), for the Perils of Rosella you do make a lot of valid critiques - things I've noticed before but often gloss over thanks to nostalgia and enchantment. Because we know the game so well now we know how to avoid the dead-end situations by heart, and (some of us) were pretty forgiving of this somewhat common game philosophy back in the day. Because the game was so charming, we forgave it when it fucked us violently, with Roberta's sweetly smiling face always at the end - honestly, did she not know any better or was she a secret sadist? And some of that charm was the dangerous, and genuinely terrifying, situations we had to get through, however obtuse the solution was - I mean that Troll cave, and the Ogre's house, and those Jaws homages did have my heart in my mouth, and I'll remember that fondly.

Is "VIPER" going to be the new "WORDS"?

I absolutely lost it here: 17:28 lol

I was under the impression Red and Blue were helping Genesta get to Rosella. After all, her aim for teleporting Rosella was a bit off. (Maybe that's how the DeepShip 86's transporter works: Fairy magic!)

This is the best one yet 🤣

Any chance on doing this for Leisure Suit Larry or Police Quest? It would be a real hoot.

Very entertaining! I don't know how I had the patience to finish this game multiple times as a kid. But there's a third thing that will drive you bonkers - playing from floppy disks. There were 9 of them and you often had to swap through several of them to load a screen. Sometimes more than once (insert disk 2, now 8, now 4, now back to 2). It was so painful to not have a hard drive. Also I think I had that submarine game you briefly showed (around 23:43)! I'd love to know the name of it if you remember.

What’s the score counter in the corner for?

09:00 -- 100%, the most accurate statement about KQIV, like, ever. Watching your vid invokes mixed feelings for me; mostly a mixture of equal parts mild curiosity & absolute blinding rage. Why rage? This game is full of cheap *gotcha!* nonsense which kills and/or greatly inconveniences you, for seemingly little to no reason at all. It's also possible to essentially softlock your playthrough by saving 'too often'. There are many other reasons I detest KQIV, most of which are glaringly obvious in your video. Fuck this game, for real.

Tamir, a family of hydroacoustic stations which Soviet naval ships were being equipped with in 1940s and later on.

15:42 are those the Greek Fates?

Omg it was even worse than the dark rumours I heard about it. Hilarious :)

14:57 it just soft locks you? Is there no way to reload?

"..and off (he/she/they) fucks." is my favorite SQH phase. I pop every time.

13:47 they already did the work though, how would removing it save them any money?

I was surprised how big the sprite of Rotella is, compared to kq1-3.

While I enjoy watching you play these memorable games (games of my childhood 30 + years ago). I'd like to see you play Police Quest series or Quest for Glory. How much would that take in dollars? I will give you 50 bucks to play and make a video.

"Handsome" Edgar is one of the worst things I've seen. Ever.

The NewRisingSun patch that allows Sound effects on the PC version were taken from the Amiga version so there's that. I thought you were going to mention the Amiga version too, but man, loving these reviews. You gotta do this for the other "Quest" games too.

What happens if you open Pandora’s Box instead of bringing it back?

The biggest surprise / laugh of this video was when I thought you will comment on the Thriller rip off but went on instead to praise KQ4 music as more memorable. Very good video overall, I'm enjoying the series. I'm glad you didn't make it into 4 hours of gameplay commentary or something like that.

How did anyone finish this game first in order to tell everyone else how to?

Another why question: Why are there so many songs about raiinbows and whats on the other side?

Ah yes the dreaded you are not close enough I saw that message too many damn times playing a Sierra game

Stairs!

I noticed in KQ5 one of the towns men sounds alot like Roger Jr from space quest 4, Stuart Moulder. But there is another actor named Mark Seibert who has the credit "man in town" on imdb. A little something you probably could add to your KQ5 video. I didn't notice the voice similarity until recently. Oh also in SQ3 there is a venomous scorpozoid so... free one on me mate.

I think you could do the same style for the Police Quest series and have it work very well. :)

If you already got the fruit, why do you need to do Loltte’s quests?

Mmmm, play through this title every year and while there are some elements I don't like (the stupid randomness of the trolls, shark and unicorn), I consider it a masterpiece myself.... but it's good to see a different opinion, because indeed, from a storytelling standpoint it is, ehm, not as strong as my mind will try to make me believe it was :-) I can't recall having any problems with finding the bird with the worm though, but that's probably because I immediately know what to do when it's there.

15:09 do they warn you about this in any way?

Yo I'm gonna be honest bruv. This is the funniest vid of the series also there are some small details i didn't know about this game. You really don't leave any stone unturned in this series which is both awesome af and madlad af to. All I knew was the agi ver exists and the beam me up reference. I'm a bit shocked I got through this game with no biggie. I'm a completionists with collectables who scans alot of shit in areas I get this strong feeling where there maybe a no point of no return or a suspicious area.

Re: the animation an how they move Rosella to get down and all that, I think this is why so many egos in such games are male is that a dress adds so much complexity!

What happens when you bring the unicorn to the witch

KQIV is the 2nd best KQ game after KQVI

VIPER!

Edger also wanted to eat Rosella....if you know what I mean.

Kings quest may have originally been arbour fairy tales and generic fantasy but by this game its clear that fairy tales cross mythology is what they are going for. About the stairs, its an sci game use the mouse. It was probably designed and tested with the mouse which would explain why it sucked navigating with keyboard. The agi version is a curiosity. I'm curious about how it was developed. Did they just port and tweak the sci artwork to agi or did they just redraw everything. The agi version's use of dithering is interesting as unlike sci its not an agi engine feature. all the dithering had to be drawn in manually. Seems like it would have been done more for artistic effect than false colours (agi pixels are too big for that to work well0

"What is this music?" Well, it's Sierra's very carefully disguised version of Thriller... which would have been more fitting for the zombies in this one, really. My least favourite thing about this game is that when King's Quest 7 came along and Valanice is demanding Rosella get married, Rosella doesn't immediately turn and go 'Yeah, no, I'm calling in my marker from King's Quest IV.' And that's assuming she already called in the 'tried to feed me to a dragon' one between sequels, because if not I think she's got her independence until at least King's Quest X: Valanice Finally Does Something Useful.

Will you do a let's play of KQ4 remake? Also, KQ4 the text game, you should make like Mazes and Stairs as Stairs quest 2. I think in KQ9 you would find out Edgar forced you to marry him via drugs magic. No way she be fine with all he did to her. Who was shipping toes two? I think no one! Maybe the full untold story redeems him?

Is the Peacock also RNG?

Honestly I'd probably eat Rosella too.

VIPER!!!

Everything is RNG? Fuck that.

What is it about the Fantasy genre you hate?

I think the Random encounters were part of a tradeoff between too many moon logic puzzles. Compared to the others, there were fewer do things because you can puzzle vs actually giving you some sort of hint, on what you need to do. Granted I said fewer not zero, (who the hell would drop a solid gold ball into a pond!). But for the most part things made some sort of logical sense. However in 1980's logic, if you are going to spend $60 for a game, that came with 8 floppy disks. You better get a good run out of your purchase. So lack of as many moon logic, they put in random encounters, to make sure you question yourself if you really should be there, or try again. The wonders in Space Quest III is that made the player to want to find ways to kill themselves, so the play time was extended by purposely trying to get yourself killed, vs. just walking onto the screen at the wrong time.

24:26 It's both hilarious and cringy to see you save after every time you move on the tongue while knowing you're on the wrong side to do it.

So I've played KQ4 recently in the AGS "KQ4 Retold" version, which makes it point-and-click and allows dead end/timer deactivation. It also fixes a lot of other things (RNG seems better, stairs are a hell of a lot more forgiving, etc), but apparently all of the _other_ nonsense is so brutal that nobody seems to mention one other extra "fuck you" the game throws at the player -- without going ahead and trying to swim off the pier for no reason at all, you will have NO IDEA that Genesta's island even exists. This is, of course, a bit of a problem if you do try and swim but get caught by the whale first (in the original or in Retold with dead ends still active) because you don't have the feather, so fuck you! The MT-32 score is great (although between the two mega-cruel KQs I vastly prefer the MT-32 score to KQ5, just listen to those themes on Mordack's island! but KQ4's score is really good also) and I do love the overall scenario being sort of a morally inverted KQ1 (bring three treasures except now it's making the world a worse place), but I agree that the way they tried to set this up comes off as a bit contrived, leaving you feeling less like Lolotte is forcing you and more like the game is forcing you. Considering KQ4 also has a real-time thing going on, I have a feeling they were originally planning to have Lolotte drop in on you Manannan-style to make sure you weren't fucking off, but at some point this was dropped and left a bit of a narrative gap there. BTW, with the zombies... apparently it's not actually _meant_ to be possible without the scarab. If you do somehow manage, you will get to the mummy in the crypt, which WILL kill you (no way around that has been found yet), and the game's message outright starts with "How did you get here without the scarab?", making it seem like the zombies (including the one at the door that ONLY appears if you don't have the scarab) were meant to just end you way earlier if you don't have the scarab. (According to one video, it turns out to be barely possible by abusing how much faster Rosella digs at the fastest game speed, knowing your graves in advance, getting good zombie RNG and some clever manipulation of where you're walking into each screen from. It's still so hard that it's clearly not intended.)

Laughing my ass off.

Thank you for doing these my man. Not only are they entertaining, they are educational. It's amazing to me that I had so much nostalgia for such an atrocious game (entire series of games, really). It's amazing what the veneer of time does to your memory. Nobody could get away with this awful nonsense these days, but back then they were superamazing! I'm off now to staple my balls to my car door ... toodles!

KQ5 may not feature the mirror, but it *does* feature a cat-wizard's vengeful brother.

Why is Alexander still wearing those ratty clothes??

I loved kq3 as a kid so was a little but hurt when you roasted it but kq4 was the turd of the the original 6 watching you roast this pile of shit was hilarious and entertaining thanks for the vids awesome stuff

Why is everyone’s skin so pink?

This is definitely the KQ game I had no fun playing at all when I was a kid...

Please everyone realize that SQH is just making jokes about the plot here. don't make some remake trying to explain everything, you will only make it dumber. KQ functions on fairy tale logic. It is kind of its defining characteristic.

This is probably my least favourite of the original six. Despite the more advanced graphics, I found the setting of Tamir to be incredibly boring and monotonous, especially in comparision to either Kolyma or Llewdor. Not to mention it feels a LITTLE too much "fairy-tale", to me (the whole rivarly between the good and bad fairy)