Supple Towel Cuddle

Roberta Williams is a crinkly cunt.

What did I do this week?

Funny you should ask. Dave Jesteadt, do you remember King's Quest 7? You should remember it kindly, as I did up until this past week. Recently, I went to GameStop thinking I'd just be getting myself a little sum'm-sum'm for my Nintendo DS--Yoshi's Island or Ninja Gaiden or something. But Yoshi's Island was a little too costly and Ninja Gaiden wasn't even out yet, so I turned to the bargain bin to see what I could see. And lo and behold Roberta Williams' King's Quest Collection, games one through seven, for a mere ten American dollars! I actually didn't buy it when I saw it, but returned several days later on a whim, bought it, tested out Virtua Fighter for the PS3 cause they had it out for demo, and then went home and installed my 7 favorite King's Quests. There was an 8th one, too, you see, but it fucking sucked so they opted to leave it out of the collection. This deceptively makes it seem like Sierra has good decision-making skills, but trust me, they fucking don't.

So I start a new game and I name it Dana. In a matter of minutes, I'm re-engrossed in the role of Valanice of Daventry as she is trying to rescue her lost daughter Rosella from some troll king. Later it turns out that the Troll King who kidnapped her daughter is an imposter working for the malicious sorceress, Malicia, and the real Troll King is locked in a coffin in the Boogeyman's hideout. As you can see, the plot is quite complex. Or, by today's standards, retarded. But while this should have been a cue for me to stop playing and just live on with the unsoiled memory, I had loose ends to tie up.

For you see I never truly beat King's Quest 7 the first time I tried. My copy of the game had this terrible glitch where every time I tried to crawl under the floorboards in Malicia's house, it would freeze up and crash a few seconds later.

To some degree of good fortune, there *is* the chapter selection menu which permits one to start anywhere in the game--even right before the climactic confrontation betwixt Malicia, Rosella, Valanice, the Troll King, the pseudo-Troll King and some guy I can see on the back of the box who hasn't really been introduced yet--however all of this comes at the cost of missing entire chunks of the story. Also, should you start at the beginning of, say, Chapter 3, there will be certain things you'll have to do that, really, had you actually just played that far into the game, you wouldn't have. What I mean to say is, I did technically beat the game by just skipping the whole going-under-the-floorboards scene, but it didn't sate my imagination.

This King's Quest Collection was to offer me retribution. A chance at closure. But no sooner than I get through the first chapter do I realize: FUCKING crumbly crap cakes!! There's no Save feature!! Ahhhhghhhhhh. And so I had to go out on a limb and just hope it was an autosave kind of game; I X'ed out of the window. It was late, so I went to sleep. I came back to the game the next morning, hoping to continue on in my Quest a little bit before school started. But of course, it turned out *not* to be an autosave kind of game. Begrudgingly, I started a new game called DanaB and I just skipped right to Chapter 2.

Chapter 2 puts you in the shoes of Rosella, this wannabe Guybrush Threepwood with long blond hair and a blue princess dress. Pretty gay. But you're in the trolls' underground lair so the gayness is more or less negated by mud baths and sulfur mines and a dragon. I got all the way through it with little hassle and was finally thinking I was on my way to resolution.

Chapter 3 brings you back to Valanice's story, where it left off in Chapter 1. She has to feed a prickly pear to a giant one of those really poisonous desert lizards with the fat tails--I can't think of what they're called--and then enter a majestic forest. The majestic forest is unmistakable in its majesty due to rainbow colored trees, a dried up river of life, and a talking deer who used to be king of the forest when he was human. Once you figure out that shit, you go into a town with a poodle as its mayor and you fuck around with puzzles until Chapter 4.

But let me specify one particularly shit-laced puzzle. There is a shop in the town that looks like a cutout of a building like you'd see on a movie set--you can even see the two-by-fours supporting it in back. It's called the Faux Shop and if you try to walk through the door, you'll just end up behind it, of course. To substantiate the logic, there's no one in the whole fucking town OR forest who's like "listen you MUST GET INTO THE FAUX SHOP." So really once you've gone through the door and wound up behind it you just go "oh, well that was dumb of me." And you never try it again. But as it turns out, you have to pick up the salt crystals by the pool by the statue by the cave that was guarded by the giant desert lizard. Not only do you have to pick them up, but you have to USE them on Valanice. Like to make her eat them and have her go "Ooh, that's *salty*." And then you can go inside the Faux Shop. Like actually inside, where there's a room and a salesman and stuff you can trade for. There is no explanation, ever.

Chapter 4 was one of my favorites back when I first played the game cause Rosella is stuck in this little haunted village a lot like what you'd find in Nightmare Before Christmas. Some of the characters are even just blatant rip-offs. It's still cool, even playing it now. But the awesomeness was short-lived this time around. I got almost to the very end of the chapter and just held my breath for about 10 straight minutes cause I was right to the part where I had to climb under Malicia's floorboards. You can imagine the suspense. Ten years of waiting and it was finally my turn to sneak up into her fucking house. I moved the vine, I dug the hole, I climbed under the house, I sprayed the guard dog's nostrils with pungent defoliant, and just like that I was home free.

For the first time in my life, I was looking at Malicia's bedroom. Of course, I used this opportunity to explore every nook and cranny of the place. Eventually, after lovingly listening to everything Rosella had to say about every noun in the home, I found the secret contraption that Malicia had stolen--and which was the reason for my having broken in at all. And, with one last affectionate look at the room, I tried going back out through the floorboards. But whoopsy daisies, Malicia catches you and vaporizes you if you go out that way! So I reloaded the game tried exiting through the front door. Of course the front door is the unexpected way out! What a tricky, tricky game. But whoopsy daisies, Malicia's guard gargoyle smells you out and kills you if you go out the front door. So I try the floorboards again, but faster than before. Alas, I still get vaporized. I try again and again and then I try the front door again and again and FUCKING HELL I'M STUCK. I'm even worse than stuck because the fucking walkthru online simply says "exit through the floorboards and put on the black cloak once outside." No you CAN'T put on the fucking cloak because you are DEAD if you go out that way. So I'd only managed to get a few minutes further into the game than I had ten years ago.

Roberta Williams, author of the King's Quest series and co-founder of Sierra, I hope the guy from American Psycho does that thing where he shoves broken glass and cheese up into your vadge and then tries to cram a habitrail in there too but when it doesn't fit he pours acid over your cooter flesh till it gives way enough for the tube to fit and then he puts a ravenous rat in the open end and it runs up and eats into the cheesy gore until only its tail is sticking out of your nookie and then the psycho removes the habitrail and the rat gets swallowed up like a reverse birth and you writhe in otherworldly agony until the psycho cuts you in half with a chainsaw and in your last dying moments you see him wave the lower half of your body in your face and the rat pops out of it and it gets to live and YOU DON'T

But I figured out that there's this flower you have to pick up before you go into Malicia's house. You don't use it at all--in the house or outside of it--but if you don't have it, the game will lock you in. None of the walkthrus will tell you this, and in fact nothing anywhere in the universe will tell you this, but it's just how it is. I just found out by giving it a try. I trudged my way through to Chapter 5.

In Chapter 5, you're Valanice of Daventry again. And you're still looking for Rosella. You actually make it through the swamp near the majestic forest and wind up in the Nightmare Before Christmas town where Rosella just was. You talk to the two people that won't kill you on sight and they're like "oh man you just missed her!" And you do some shit, like usual, and then you get to the part where this one little boy chases a black cat across the screen. He drops a lit firecracker on the ground. Of course, no idiot would go pick up a lit firecracker and put it in his/her pocket, so I didn't either. I just walked away and hoped it'd go off and maybe set some new part of the story into action. But no matter how long I was gone, the fuse just wouldn't quit sparkling. So I thought "okay this is one of those plot-holes that King's Quest will let me get away with." I picked up the firecracker.

And seconds later: BubbidaBOOM--dead. I reloaded the game, but it had autosaved WITH THE FIRECRACKER IN MY POCKET. (Note: The game DOES autosave, but only right before you die. That way you can retry the puzzle from a new angle and hopefully survive.) So I reloaded and reloaded and reloaded but I exploded within seconds every time. The walkthrus offered me no asylum from the chaos: "Pick up the firecracker and bring it to the crypt 2 screens away. It may go off from time to time as Valanice is walking, but don't worry because you can always just start again. Keep trying." I kept trying. I kept dying. This game is actually not beatable. How in god's name it was ever published, I don't know. It's just not right. It's just. not. right.

That's what I did this week. If I'm not capable of sustaining a normal human conversation with you before I just start beating you savagely, it's Roberta's fault, not mine.

Posted by suppletowelcuddle at June 17, 2007 3:35 PM