Games of my childhood always have a sweet spot with me, and this whole collection has been one of my favorites. My father introduced me to King's Quest when I was young and he bought the first 4. I remember the rather unique official cheat books which required a special marker to make the invisivle ink to appear.

But to talk of this collection, the first four were originally text driven games. meaning that you have to type in commands like "Look at woman," or "rub lamp." The first three were then later re-worked with updated graphics (but still rather dated compared to today's games). Starting with 5, gameplay shifted a little, instead of being text driven, they became what is now called "point and click."

This collection is the story of how King Graham's family came to be, basically a preface to the more recent version that has come out, in whcih Graham recalls the stories of his youth, before he became king of Daventry. The first game in this collection covers the story of how Graham became kind. The second is about Graham finding a wife. The third seems a little odd when started, but it is about the lost children of Graham and their return to Daventry. In the fourth game, Graham, getting old, falls ill and his daughter, Rosella, undertakes a quest to find a way to heal Graham. The fifth game ties back to the third, the son of Graham, Alexander, having escaped the clutched of an evil magician, has brought upon daventry, the wrath of the magicians brother. It it up to Graham to find his now missing castle and family. The sixth installment ties into the fifth. Smitten by the beauty of Cassima, the princess that Graham rescued while restoring his family and kingdom, causes Alexander to search for her. The final game finally touches upon the queen Valance and Rosella, their rocky relationship of overprotective mother and rebellious daughter, and their way back to Daventry after being magicked away from home.

The games seem to work well on my computer, running Windows 10. I do have issue with alt-tabbing out in order to check the manuals for clues as to what to do in a few of the games. Back in the day, Sierra made games that had DRM imbedded in the manuals. What appears to be flavor text is really actually important, least you die is quite awful ways. This is the only difficulty I have with the collection. Alt-tabbing on my machine, causes the program to scrunch over to the left of the screen and in rendered in shades of gray.

There is one game missing in this collection, but it's somewhat of the black-sheep of the franchise, The Mask of Eternity. It was only set in Daventry and was panned as an awful game because of bugs, glitches, and graphic rendering issues. Of the old games, thsi is the one I have yet to play and have a slight curiosity in it. I udnerstand GOG does have it for sale, but it's bundled with the last game.

How to Get KQ Collection Working on Windows 7

Download this patch:

http://www.sierrahelp.com/Files/Patches/KingsQuest/KQCollectionDBUpdate.exe

Set it to install to "C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\King's Quest Collection" or wherever Steam saved your KQ Collection files.

This program will patch the Steam version of KQ Collection to run through Dos box, and I can confirm it makes the game a joy to run on Win 7 64bit.

Cons:

* You will have to run the game through the Dosbox shortcuts that the patch creates; the Steam launcher won't work.

* Your in-game mouse cursor will become black and white where it is otherwise colored.

THEY FINALLY FIXED IT... YEARS AFTER BUYING THIS.. NO MODERN OS SUPPPORT... THEY EVEN TOOK IT OFF THE STEAM STORE FOR A YEAR OR TWO (EVEN THOUGH I HAD ALREADY MADE MY PURCHASE) GOG galaxy or wahtever the ♥♥♥♥ has had a proper version of this available for quite some time now. i logged in randomly to my steam account and saw that after years of zero support or patches i randomly got an 'update' for it that was suddenly downloading... i quickly rushed to see if they fixed the support so it would open in a dos box. boom. it was fixed, thanks steam... oh and i checked the store page to see if it went back up... sure enough.. it's back up. Can't wait to relive these classics. This seriously made my day.

SOLVED!
http://steamcommunity.com/app/10100/discussions/0/611701360816561388/

After years of wanting to play and running into one issue after another trying to get it to load I was finally able to find a solution for Windows 7 x64 and even Windows 8.

It ran all the updates and I'm able to launch the games in their old 16-bit Windows glory using ScummVM (Sierra's patch already is able to detect if you have it and set it up proper for the game, good on you Sierra!)

Full CD quality with video's for KQ6 and KQ7 (only way to play and because I did years ago it's why I couldn't pick it up for so long).

The games were great then and are great now, so the review is less about a game you can google about and more a nod to Sierrahelp's patch that Steam doesn't install for you.

No need to limit Colors on your entire system to 254. No need to tweak. Just open the new folders made.

(for me)
D:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\King's Quest Collection\KQ6
And double click the "King's Quest 6 Win.exe" (or make a shortcut ;-) )

Boom! Playable.

Great blast from the past.

Most of the people who do not recommend this game are saying it is unplayable or does not work. If they would read the store page or knew how to use google to find the fix their review would be more positive.

Classic game that has such replayablity... I played this as a little munchkin and I still love it today.

10/10

None of the games work on my pc. (Windows 7 corei5) The original game is replaced by the 1990 vga remake, but that doesnt matter because none of it runs anyway. Viewing the forums shows many many people with the same problom. Buy the GOG versions instead. Stay away from this trashy non-port.

King's Quest 1 was the first game that impressed me deeply and made me notice videogames as a medium and format with vast potential to go infinitely beyond the arcades of its time, in which you just played an eternal repetition trying to reach a good score. Not that I am against this kind of game, hell I still play a lot of stuff like that to this day, but we couldn't just stop there and KQ's contribution was paramount for this.

The feeling of adventure and fantasy that the series provides - especially 1, 3, 5 and 6, and yeah I played them all - is unparalleled, and Roberta Williams' huge sensibility to transpose the magic feel of fables and folk tales to the games is definitely something to be noticed. Somehow makes you see things with children's eyes again, with that mixture of curiosity, excitement and awe.

Small note on the compatibility topic: simply apply the patch that can be found on Sierra's help page (you can easily find it around here, the community hub and the forums) and they all work perfectly.

What can't I say about King's Quest? I was near about raised on adventure games, and this was a big one. I didn't really appreciate it as much as a kid as I have on my recent replayings of the series. The one thing I will mention in regards to this collection, though, is that there are bugs that occur because this game was not built for newer systems. You can find the patches for it at http://www.sierrahelp.com/Patches-Updates/Patches-Updates-Games/KingsQuestUpdates.html. Alternatively, you can purchase the collection from GOG.com. They have it split into three sections, 1-3, 4-6, and 7-8, and 8 isn't included in this collection. I have yet to determine if this is a good or bad thing.

I'll also mention that AGDI made a wonderful remake for the original King's Quest to give it icons like KQV and KQVI had, and they did a big storyline overhaul for KQII that even included the original voice actor for Graham. They also did an update to KQIII with a little bit more story to it, as well as the icons. You can find them at http://www.agdinteractive.com/.

I have owned these games on steam for around 5 years and they still don't work... buy at your own risk!

Finally did good and fixed this collection on Steam after nearly 10 years. All games now work without the need for 3rd party programs and ♥♥♥♥. Some of the greatest adventure games out there, my favourites being the 5th and 6th installments.