King's Quest V Speedrun History 

"He has to be rescued from danger at several points. The only useful thing the owl does is inadvertently saving Graham's life from a spell near the end of the game."

@@sanderbos4243 Which he does by... putting himself in mortal danger. Well, at least he's *consistent* if nothing else... (he gets points for not having long unskippable dialogue I guess but loses it by making you wait for him to lazily fly in at times)

when i first saw this game i legit thought cedric was a double agent of the wizard. to be honest i wish he was, and also i wish his saving graham wasnt accidental but him actually warming up to the guy and changing sides

Well if it’s true then that’s what Wikipedia is meant for…. Someone goes on and writes what’s what….. (?)

They did Cedric so wrong. Barn owls are powerful birds of prey. They are cautious enough, but certainly not as timid and cowardly as Cedric. A better mechanic for him would have been to make him an adjustable character. Cedric could literally have been the initial difficulty. Based on that he could have given anywhere from strong to weak hints making him useful.

out of context it sounds like some kind of exual inuendo

Hang on, hang on. That was something Douglas Hoffstadter told me about Fermat’s Last Theorem. I’ve got it written in a margin somewhere,

Strong work. Beautiful reference.

If it ever gets found it better be called “Urquan’s Last Skip.”

thats exactly what came to mind :)

Great Bach reference. I read about that in Godel Escher Bach as well.

He's probably busy with the Doctrine Wars.

hopefully well and alive, though until he pops back up we'll never know

He's fighting in the Time Wars. We'll get Time Dracula soon!

I hope he's seen these speedrun histories.

@@ZorotheGallade Someone spoke the words

bro, i'm wondering too, maybe he found a way to skip like half the game, we may never know while hes gone. maybe its a hardware mod which is banned in some games, who knows

Sierra silenced him

@@KittyTheKat441 Just like they did with the Kings Quest reboot.

he died and take the secret to grave with him

Holding onto tech? Fuck that guy.

Not when you’re speed running.

Drugs Death Wife and kids

Big DOSBox eliminated competition

He touched grass & realized The Truth

Glad you feel vindicated. :)

I had beaten the original french floppy disk version in the nineties on a Pentium Computer with Windows 95, so it was possible with the original version. But I've never completed the game I had downloaded on "Abandonware-Lost Treasures". Maybe that version has a problem or is not compatible with our modern computer/ or Dosbox ?

That’s interesting… I’m pretty sure I didn’t play the first version. I have a vague memory of playing it on the Amiga, but KQV came out at the end of the Amiga era, and I don’t remember what computer we had afterwards. I remember installing the game (as an 8yr old, so foggy memory) using 10 5.25” floppys. I played a version without Cedric voice (the superior version). That’s all I remember. I did play it again as an abandonware, between 2005-2010 , and it worked. So it got fixed somewhere along the way (prolly by sluicebox, who fixes everything Sierra related) 🫡

I'm also from Québec and King's Quest V french version was also the first King's Quest I have played! And I didn't have the manual so I couldn't pass the copy protection but I remember that I found a way to skip it with the witch hut hahaha.... but sadly... at the end of the game, when Graham transform into a rabbit.... I couldn't finish the game... the rabbit animation was in an infinite loop and the game soft lock there... it was so frustrating because it was literally the last few clicks before the end! I had to wait for the collection edition to finally see the end ;)

I played all these games without guide, but I did use help, but it came from magazines. yes old skool paper magazines. People would actually write letters with help requests, waiting 1-2 months for the answer to be punished. Meanwhile we would just play other games. Around 1991 I also got a modem and could call BBS and they often had walkthroughs, but that was cheating. But by that time I was so good at Sierra games that I could often finish most of them on my own (and the point and click versions were easier) LSL5 and QFG3 were my favourites. Sadly I have to admit that I pirated most of them, as my family was not wealthy enough to buy many games at such high prices.

Sick reference

He's a great guy. What's even cooler is that he (briefly) returned to speedrunning after this video and now has the CD WR.

@@OneShortEye That's awesome!

Same still subbed

I was in Paw's livestreams when he was practicing runs for KQ5. It was so much fun!

Ouch! Looking at that screen, I guess I can't blame him too much. It's not nearly as obvious as it could be. Notes and maps were also essential Sierra gaming tools.

i dunno, i think if you're not already inherently nostalgic for the series, they're really hard to enjoy. I grew up playing them, but from a gameplay standpoint, they are objectively pretty terrible. So much of it is deciphering unfair, illogical puzzles, while there are SO MANY SCREENS you need to enter, but which will randomly and instantly kill you for no reason other than bad RNG. I distinctly remember when LucasArts came along with Maniac Mansion between KQ 3 and 4 -- it was a smack-yourself-on-the-forehead revelatory moment for ten year old me: "oh my god, Kings Quest games suck!" Maniac Mansion fixed so many problems with KQ games that I didn't even realize existed -- stupid staircases of death, terrible text parsing, frequent unwinnable states, random deaths due to no fault of the player, and puzzles that had zero logic whatsoever and were practically impossible without a strategy guide. In LucasArts games, you could still die, but it took work. You had to do something INCREDIBLY dumb (such as steal Weird Ed's Hamster, explode it in the microwave, and then give the exploded hamster parts back to Weird Ed). Those games didn't punish you with death for every attempt at exploration, or every incorrect guess at reading the programmer's mind the way Kings Quest games did. The punishment for being wrong was simply you would not progress. You'd be stuck, but you could keep trying other things. Meanwhile, KQ would nuke you on the spot and then make fun of you. Or worse, not tell you that you screwed up until 6 hours later when you get to the end and realize you can't win. if you're looking at getting into retro adventure games, i'd recommend Maniac Mansion, Zac McKracken, or the Monkey Island series. They're just a lot more fun overall. And that's coming from someone whose earliest, fondest memories are of working my way through the first 4 Kings Quest games.

I reccomend the redux for the first 3, if you dont want difficult gameplay.

weird seeing you here cue

I wonder if there are funny Speedrun subs to cover...

Working on it! They take a while to make, but I always have something in-progress. Happy to be able to help you relax.

Man, what luck! It's been so long, I can't remember how we eventually figured that out. It still doesn't make sense to me.

You'll never forget that feeling you got when you realized you'd beaten that part and would win! I'm sure you remember how great it was :)

@@daffers2345 I sure do, especially since I was with my dad

RNG is hated by every speedrunner, but I have found that it does make for engrossing narratives in the history of records, because overcoming it requires extraordinary efforts and persistence.

Sadly I think SOME space quest games have rng as less of a factor, so would come down to routing and execution and skips. You've got me curious though... Space quest 6, just the placement of that robot at the start, or the endy runner or the drunk programmer, just how random are they...

Thanks for the high praise! I'd love to do as many of these as I can. The challenge is finding the games where the speedruns tell a good story. The next big video is probably going to be KQVI, which has a lot of runners, glitches, and discoveries made throughout the years. A lot of the Sierra games, as great as they are, are underplayed as speedruns. For those, there's not much of a story besides, "Then, a year later, someone else ran the game, doing the exact same thing, just a little faster." Still, I look forward to seeing what I can find. I know davidtki and mrprmiller have done a ton of work on the Quest for Glory games, so there might be something there. The Monkey Island runners are also really active, so eventually something from that series might be on the table.

We'll forgive him.

Someone really should StopKekShrek while they still can, I think.

If I remember right, KQV was the only game he ever ran. In fact, after this video came out, he came back and had WR for a while.

dream zipped to 10M subs

He’s pandering to children which isn’t a long term plan unless you learn to adapt. Dream is a fad imo and won’t matter in 5 years. A video like this is timeless. I’d take 10,000 real appreciators over 15 million people who don’t give a shit but that’s just me. Edit I think this channel will get more than 10000 real fans

Glad to see this video and channel has gotten more attention since, still underrated of course

are you really human?

@@dartoney hoot

Graham watch out! A poisonous snake!

I'm glad I'm not the only one that likes him.

Anyone aware of any updates?

Thank you for your kind words! Glad you enjoyed it.

My experience was very similar. We played the floppy version and I didn't hear the voice acting until I was an adult. Looking back, the game has a lot of objectively bad puzzle design, but I loved (and still have a soft spot) for the world and its characters. I think it's a beautiful game.

Thanks for the kind words! It's been a crazy week. It looks like posting this video boosted a previous video, and that's driven a lot of views. I'm just thankful to be here, and happy these stories resonate with people.

That's extremely high praise! I appreciate that. I definitely have plans to do more.

It's too bad he's not still around. The guy did a lot for the community, and I wish him nothing but the best. I also agree about hiding tech. If you are into QFG, you should check out the QFG Speedrun Discord, even if you don't plan on speedrunning anything. the folks there are super nice.

@@OneShortEye For sure watching the vods he was a pioneer so he deserves the praise. Sure I'm down to check out the discord. Is there a place that has a link for it?

@@substylee3129 discord.gg/pqJgCj3

It's all rng, that's part of running

Thanks for the sub!

@@OneShortEye You deserve it, man, can't wait until your channel gets big!

I hope that's not the case, too. We know from his speedrun.com profile that he logged in last year. Other than that, we just don't know. I like to imagine he's living his best life.

King's Quest V was either the first or second adventure game I ever played as a kid (I still can't remember the timeline exactly), so this series has a special place in my heart. I'm glad you enjoyed looking back.