Season V, Episode 9: I Can See What I Was Trying to Do, But I Wish I Hadn’t Done It

We’ve all been there. We’re playing a game from a bygone era — perhaps one we remember fondly — and thinking to ourselves, “Wouldn’t it be great if someone updated this for the modern era?” And then, having thought this, perhaps even out loud, we immediately stop and think: “No, wait. This game is so

Continue reading Season V, Episode 9: I Can See What I Was Trying to Do, But I Wish I Hadn’t Done It

We’ve all been there. We’re playing a game from a bygone era — perhaps one we remember fondly — and thinking to ourselves, “Wouldn’t it be great if someone updated this for the modern era?”

And then, having thought this, perhaps even out loud, we immediately stop and think: “No, wait. This game is so much a product of its time. How would that ever work?”

Daniel Stacey must have thought both of these things many times. As a beta-tester on AGDI’s remake of King’s Quest I, he submitted a test report that largely amounted to him saying, “Look, this is pretty good, but you could have done so much more with the story,” to which the AGDI people said, “Fine. You do it.”

From then on, Daniel has been the lead writer on multiple projects for AGDI — which later went commercial and changed their name to Himalaya Studios — including, but not limited to, King’s Quest II VGA, King’s Quest III VGA, Al Emmo and the Lost Dutchman’s Mine, and the upcoming adventure/RPG hybrid Mage’s Initiation.

Daniel joins us for a frank discussion about the creative process behind taking an existing story that’s barebones, if not to say borderline non-existent (e.g. King’s Quest II) and turning it into a compelling, driving narrative (“I don’t know, I just sort of do it”).

It’s worth noting, of course, that Fred mainly drives this conversation, being the only person of the three hosts who has bothered to actually play both the original and remade versions of King’s Quest II. It is, of course, no less interesting for this reason, because Fred is also operating on about five hours of sleep at the time of this recording, making the proceedings both informative and extraordinarily silly.

Today’s episode is brought to you by the fine folks of Eat Pant Ltd. and is, of course, available on the YubTubs, or in delicious audio-only format at the bottom of this post.

The Patreon exclusive this week is also a staggering 20 minute meditation on the fact that we, indeed, had to get up very early for this. And that it’s all somehow my fault. (It wasn’t.)