King's Quest V (NES) Playthrough
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Published 2022-01-14
In this video I finish the game with a perfect score of 260 points. I also show quite a few of the death scenes over the course of the playthrough.
Originally released in 1990 by Sierra On-line for PCs, Roberta Williams’ King’s Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! was a landmark of sorts in computer game development. It was the eagerly anticipated follow-up to their bestselling 1988 game King’s Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella (the first commercial PC game to support the Adlib soundcard), and KQ5 laid claim to a few important gaming firsts of its own: it was the first "real" CD game that conformed to MPC standards, the first to be fully voice-acted, the first to use digitized hand-painted backgrounds, and it was the first game to cost more than $1 million to produce. Calling it ambitious would be a quite an understatement, but apparently all of that paid off since it sold in massive numbers for its time.
The story starts out something like this: One day as King Graham of Daventry is taking a stroll through the forest, the evil wizard Mordack appears and summons a whirlwind that whisks away the poor guy's castle with his family still inside.
As Graham flails about in despair, a talking owl named Cedric announces that he saw the whole thing go down and that Mordack is the one responsible. Cedric then throws some glitter on Graham and flies him to the land of Serenia to seek the help of the doddering but well intentioned wizard Crispin. After a bit of a chinwag, Crispin kicks Graham out of his house, thrusting him into the lap of adventure!
Go forth dauntlessly, King Graham! Badger innocent people into giving up their most prized possessions! Pie a wampa! Get eaten by a bear! Awkwardly intimidate an underage slave girl before propositioning her with jewelry and a tender promise! All this and more awaits within this warped and twisted world. (I'm not kidding. Seriously.)
King's Quest V plays like most Sierra games of the early 90s did: you explore the world through an icon-based interface and most of your time is split between chatting with locals and picking up everything that's not nailed down as you attempt to solve a slew of obtuse inventory-driven puzzles. These puzzles often rely on trial-and-error and moon logic, so you're treated to all sorts of classic Sierra death scenes, too. If you're a fan of NES adventures like Princess Tomato, Shadowgate, and Deja Vu, you'll feel right at home with this one.
I remember being amazed when I saw advertisements for an NES version of the game. I played the PC version a ton - it was actually the game that got me hooked on the genre - but of all the computer games out there, I couldn't wrap my head around how they'd chosen to adapt the most cutting-edge multimedia showpiece of the era to the NES. How could something like that possibly work?
As dismal a prospect as that sounds, the NES rendition (or demake, if you prefer) of this PC classic does an admirable job at keeping the story and the gameplay intact despite the heavy concessions that had to be made elsewhere. Novotrade managed to smash a game that originally shipped on ten 3.5" floppy disks down to fit on a 512K cartridge, and they did so without cutting any meaningful content.
All the puzzles, characters, environments, and the lion's share of the game's text made the transition, and the mouse controls have been adapted about as well as possible to the NES pad.
The graphics and sound are clearly the weak links here, but for as harsh as the game tends to be on the senses, the end result is still pretty extraordinary. Small objects can be hard to make out at times, the music sounds awful and the dialogue portraits are comically ugly, but it still feels like King's Quest V, and it still feels like way more than the NES should be capable of.
I really used to love King’s Quest V, and as mangled as the NES version looks, I appreciate how well it managed to capture the heart and spirit of the original. I thoroughly enjoyed making my way through this cart again!
(Random note: the game plays with thick black bars around the screen so I cropped them out. The aspect ratio is still correct.)
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
NintendoComplete (www.nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!
All Comments (21)
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For as much as it'll scar your eyes, this demake of King's Quest V pulls off something that really shouldn't have been possible on the NES. Super impressive!
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I have this for NES. I'm 40 now. So much nostalgia!
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"Ah. Life giving water. Nectar of the gods. Graham can now feel strength flowing within him."
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I have a real soft spot for NES adventure games. Something about them is more appealing to me than their superior PC versions.
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lol i didnt realize there was an NES port of this game. i had the CD ROM version of this game as a kid and i loved it. We even called the sierra hint line and got the hint book that needed the red filter glasses to read lol
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Amazing how much game they could fit on a little NES cartridge. Like this was high profile CD title and they more or less got everything on there. Sure it's missing the CD Audio, Synthesized Speech, and SVGA Graphics. But they didn't cut out the gameplay or levels. I've seen ports of other games that went from comparable hardware that cut more out.
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I love how arbitrarily the peasants will just murder a king. Sneak into a kitchen? That's a murdering.
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Thanks for playing this on the NES. I remember trying to play this game when I was a kid. Didn't really get that far.
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How come this isn't one of the more well known NES games? Afterall, it's amazing how long it is and that they managed to keep all of the story and gameplay in it.
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I didn't have home access to a PC until 1999 and had next to no knowledge of anything outside Atari, NES and Genesis (and arcades, of course) when I was a kid in the 80s, so when I first played Maniac Mansion and Shadowgate (I can't remember which was first), it was like a whole new world had opened up to me (where it's flesh became my key). In fact, I remember thinking Maniac Mansion was like that game the kid Tom Hanks plays in the movie Big and being really excited because that game seemed so cool. Man, I wish I had had the chance to rent this one, but alas it never appeared in my area. I'd have absolutely loved it. Years later, my mom rented me a SEGA CD (yeah the whole unit) along with a couple of games for Thanksgiving break and Secret of Monkey Island was one of them. Hey, this is like Maniac Mansion! Thanks, mom!
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I had no idea this existed. Really interesting. I had the original DOS version on 5 1/4" floppy.
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I can't believe this game worked on the NES! I loved these on the PC.
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he estado buscando este juego desde que tengo memoria, lo tenía a la edad de 7 años, en inglés, yo hablo español, no entendía nada en ese momento y era uno de mis objetivos a cumplir, el poder encontrar, jugar y pasar este juego, gracias por subirlo <3
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Thanks cool game!
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This is how good Konami was. If there was one company to take on the difficult task of porting an advanced PC game (for the era) like KQV to the 8-bit NES and doing an admirable job of it, it was them. This is as faithful a reproduction of KQV is as possible for the NES. Imagine if LJN was responsible for the port!
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I love the sound font in this.
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Nostalgia 😢😥😭
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A lot of effort has been put into producing this game. I have it think i only played it once tbh
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I can't believe I actually beat this as a kid.
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excellent graphics considering the capabilities of the console!
