King's Quest IV: The Perils Of Rosella
From King's Quest Omnipedia
This chapter is the only one in the King's Quest series (disregarding the unofficial KQ2 (AGDI) remake) where the action takes place during a specific and limited amount of time— the events of the game cover about 24 hours. In fact the game, much like King's Quest III, had a real time clock and time would pass even if the player wasn't solving puzzles. Some activities must be completed during the day, while other puzzles can only be solved at night, and solving certain puzzles would cause the clock to skip ahead.
[edit] Story
King Graham has suffered a heart attack and is on the brink of death. The good fairy Genesta contacts his daughter Rosella through the Magic Mirror and offers her assistance. Genesta then teleports Rosella to the land of Tamir, where she learns of a magical fruit that can heal her father. However, Genesta herself will be unable to teleport the princess back to Daventry, and die if her magical talisman— stolen by her evil sister Lolotte— is not returned.
Rosella must win Lolotte's trust by performing three tasks for the evil fairy; Rosella must bring a Lolotte a Unicorn, a Magic Hen and Pandora's Box so she may rule the world. Fortunately, Lolotte's son Edgar develops a crush on Rosella and will aid her when Lolotte imprisons her for the wedding. She must then defeat the evil fairy to recover the talisman and return home to Daventry.
It is possible to complete KQIV without retrieving the magical fruit, but failure to do so leads to a tragic ending.
[edit] Remake
This game was simultaneously produced and published in the AGI and SCI engines. The AGI engine was used in all earlier Sierra adventure games, the SCI in all later ones. The main advantages of SCI are a higher video resolution (320x200 rather than 160x200 in AGI), sound card support, mouse support, and a more versatile scripting system.
The AGI version was made because Sierra supposed that contemporary low-end systems would be unable to run the SCI version and would require a "lighter" version of the game. However, sales figures proved them wrong and the AGI version was swiftly discontinued. Because of its rarity, the AGI version could be considered a collector's item. The Apple II version had improved sound compared to the PC AGI version
The two games are identical in gameplay, except that the SCI version was updated with some additional parser responses. However, AGI version 2.0 contains the famous "BEAM ME" easter egg (which transports Rosella to a Star Trek-esque room with the development team present.) This easter egg is neither present in any SCI version nor in AGI version 2.3. Other differences include a few differences in geography such as extra bushes in a few screens in the AGI version.
