The first adventure game that grabbed me

After my dad passed away, I spent a lot of time with my uncle. He had a 486 computer, an SVGA monitor, and a CD-ROM. This was in 1992.

I would visit his home and often played gams on one of his extra computers. An errant 286 or whatever was laying around. But occasionally I got to sit at his computer and play a game. King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow was one of them.

From the very beginning, the 3D rendered scene in the intro, the voice acting, and the gorgeous sprites grabbed me. I fell in love with the non linearity of the game. Early on you come by a magic map and it opens up multiple islands you can visit.

Knowing what I know now, this is not as open world as it seemed at the time. But this was such a departure from other adventure games in that you not only had the option to get a glimpse of these places, but you actually had to visit them to gather items. I had previously been able to play a bit of King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella on an Apple II computer at school, but as anyone who ever had one of those fleeting opportunities knew, there was simply never enough time to truly make much progress in the few minutes we were given.

Whether you were trying to trick the gnomes on Wonder Island, or bypass the traps on Beast's Island, or maybe trying to climb the cliffs of logic (also known as the cliffs of copy protection).

I often had to wait until my uncle finished doing his work before I could play. During those times I would pour over the manuals and other included extras. It was during one of those sessions that I noticed the Guide to the Green Isles had several hints in it. Including an image of a brick wall where it talked about the Minotaur's Maze... and not only that, but the dark bricks and the light bricks showed the path through the maze! To this day when I talk to super fans of the game, I have yet to find anyone who knew about this hint. I suppose most folks just got through it using trial and error.

It was this attention to detail I loved so much.

The fact that the game had multiple endings just made it seem even more vast.

To this day, on the eXo discord server, I use the Samhain character as my avatar. Going to the underworld to bring your love's parents was noble. But you could only accomplish this by making the devil himself cry (or in this case, the less Christian oriented Samhain).

I still go back and replay this game every few years, including the recent AGI demake.

I adore so many adventure games, but this will always be the first one that truly grabbed me. Without it, I am not sure there would be an eXoDOS pack. Or any other eXo packs for that matter.

The games are only half the story. Our personal connection to them is the other half. I have written this as the first story for this website. I truly look forward to gathering the stories of others, and preserving the experiences we collectively shared.