By James Hanback
If you were ever into mid-1980s computer gaming, you might know about a little graphical computer adventure game called King’s Quest. At the time, the game was developed and distributed by a company known as Sierra On-Line. King’s Quest was a role-playing adventure game, which meant that your goal as player was to guide the main character, Sir Graham, through the three-dimensional computer-generated Kingdom of Daventry. You walked Sir Graham around Daventry (and beyond) by using the keyboard. You made him perform other actions by typing verb and noun combinations or phrases like “take mirror” to gather items you would later use to solve puzzles that eventually (hopefully) enabled you to solve the game’s ultimate objective. Sometimes the game’s interpreter couldn’t figure out what you were telling Sir Graham to do, and those were the times that you’d need to get creative.
