How to get the King's Quest Games
to run in Windows 2000 or XP
by Collector
The original King's Quest (King's Quest: Quest for the Crown)
was written for the IBM PC Jr. with Sierra's AGI
game engine, which was used for all the King's Quest games until
King's Quest 4. During the development of KQ4, Sierra
finished their new engine, SCI
which allowed for higher resolutions greater color depths and full
MIDI (music) support. Shortly after Sierra released the new KQ4
in AGI, they replaced it with the new SCI version. All of these
games were made for DOS, Microsoft's first operating system, though
they were also ported to other platforms, such as the Apple ][ and
later for the Mac.
With the release of King's Quest 5, Windows 3.1 was
available, so there were two versions of KQ5, one for DOS and one
for Windows. Windows 3.1 was just another program running out of
16 bit DOS, so the two versions weren't that different. King's Quest
6 and 7 were written for DOS/Windows 3.1 as well.
Shortly after the release of King's Quest 7, Microsoft
released their revolutionary 32 bit Windows 95. Though 95 had protected
memory (key areas of memory such as where main system files reside
in memory), giving it greater stability than DOS, programs still
could have direct access to the hardware, making it still less stabile
than it could be. King's Quest Mask of Eternity was written solely
for 32 bit Windows (Win32). It was released around the same time
as Windows 98, which was still sitting on top of DOS.
In the early 90s Microsoft was developing Windows NT, a true 32
bit non legacy OS. It had protected memory and handled all of the
calls that programs made to the hardware (programs no longer had
direct access to the hardware.) Though it could still run some 16
bit programs, DOS programs running in NT's DOS emulator couldn't
address the audio hardware, so no sound in DOS games, and NT 3.5,
which had a Win 3.1 type interface, didn't handle 16 bit code very
well. NT 4 (which had a Win 95 interface) handled 16 bits better,
but was still not very compatible with older programs.
NT 4 was replaced with Windows 2000 which has a compatibility tool
to help run old code. It is an improvement over NT 4's backwards
compatibility. Windows XP has its compatibility mode built into
it and is better yet at DOS emulation, but it is still not perfect.
Windows 2000/XP trades some backwards compatibility for a great
deal more stability.
So, what does this mean for our old classics such as the King's
Quest games? The good news is that they will run, but the down side
is that we sometimes have to do a little work to get them to work.
How? Just click on the links below for help with your game.
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