CONQUESTS OF
THE LONGBOW
Thirty years later Conquests of
Camelot may look rudimentary, and it
sadly never got a VGA upgrade like
many of Sierra’s other early
adventures. But it was one of my
most formative PC gaming
experiences, and not just because it
taught me to save constantly. My dad
and I played it together, and for me it
ignited a passion for games with
storytelling and puzzles before I
understood adventure games were a
defined genre. Years later, when he
upgraded the family PC to a Pentium,
I got an IBM 486 of my very own and
spent hours playing LucasArts
adventures like Sam & Max and
Indiana Jones & the Fate of Atlantis.
Camelot also taught me that
people went onto the internet and
wrote FAQs with the answers to
puzzles I could never solve myself. I
printed out a guide and followed it to
lead Arthur through Jerusalem and,
at long last, claim the Holy Grail. The
lesson about prayer didn’t stick,
though. I’m still a heathen – I just
know not to trust castle gates.TOP: Wonder how
Lancelot got into this
predicament...adventure to get lost in once I’d worn
out my tape of Disney’s The Sword in
the Stone. I didn’t read The Once and
Future King until years later, so
Conquests of Camelot was my main
introduction to knights Gawain and
Lancelot and the legend of the Grail.
Marx’s writing has a classical flavour
to it, more approachable than TH
White’s novel but still steeped in a bit
of Ye Olde English. It’s not tedious
like Police Quest or as silly as most of
Sierra’s other adventures but still has
a wry streak, like the text parser
asking “Your bidding, M’Lord”.
Conquests of Camelot ambitiously
tried to capture everything that
would go into a classic Arthurian
quest, including a jousting contest, a
sword fight against a mighty Saracen,
and magic riddles. The action scenes
were as clunky and frustrating as
you’d expect from an adventure
game in 1990, but I didn’t know any
better at the time – and neither did
Sierra, really, which had only
released one game in the Quest for
Glory series at that point.A year after Camelot,
Christy Marx wrote and
directed a follow-up
adventure about Robin
Hood and his merry men.
Longbow was widely
praised as an even better game. It
smoothed over some of Camelot’s flaws,
like its action scenes, trading them for
less-clunky archery. Most notable, though,
was the new art direction. Camelot was
criticised in 1990 for looking dated
compared to other contemporary
adventures. Longbow, released just a year
later in 1991, is both more detailed and
more expressionist. Other than the low
resolution, the art still looks great today.
IT AMBITIOUSLY TRIED
TO CAPTURE EVERYTHING
THAT WOULD GO INTO
A CLASSIC
ARTHURIAN QUEST