Retrospective: Lord QuestMeet Dale Koppenhaver, sometimes known as Lord Quest, founding father of the adventure genre. The genius behind the successful Journey Quest series in the ’80s and the Tough Cop Adventure trilogy in the ’90s, Koppenhaver hasn’t released a game in the eight years since his underwhelming Expedition Banana and the Quest Salads sold only 87 copies./SeanbabyCGW: Thank you for this rare interview. How did you get the name “Lord Quest”? Dale Koppenhaver: Lord Quest was just the first nickname I gave myself that people actually
called me.
CGW: Is that why you’re crying? DK: No! No. Sometimes I test out puzzle solutions in real life before I put them in a game. In my new piece, the player needs to protect his headband from being snatched off his head by vultures, so I was seeing if I could secure it to my forehead better with mayonnaise. A little bit of it is running into my eyes. That’s all. CGW: Sounds like a hard game, but we’re sure our readers won’t want spoilers. Tell us some about how you got started in the industry,
Mr. Koppenhaver.
DK: Please, call me “Lord Quest.”
CGW: Fine.
Lord Quest: Out of nursing school, my roommate, Ted, and I, Lord Quest, decided to take
our love of reading and combine it with our love of typing. We created our first game:
Quest Adventure. It was purely text, but players were so imaginative back then, we barely
had to even write descriptions...which was good, because between the two of us, weonly knew 18 adjectives. And four of them
meant “lonely.”
CGW: After that, you revolutionized the genre by adding graphics….
LQ: Well, I noticed that everywhere I looked, I saw things. Everywhere. So why not add that
element to a game?
CGW: Which led to the Journey Quest series.
LQ: Right. And Journey Quest’s graphics took gameplay to a whole new level. Now, not only
did players have to figure out what to do with the bucket, they had to figure out that it was
a bucket.
photo 1 Dale broke into the industry with his text-only hit Quest Adventure.
photo 2 Sayeth Lord Quest, “Journey Quest was one of the first games to
integrate puzzles with solving.”
CGW: That thing was a bucket?
LQ: As technology got better, we could make the quests even more challenging. For example,
in Journey Quest IV: Curse of the Missing Water Pipe Valve Quest, time actually passed in the
game. It actually changed from night to day. This added tremendous possibilities to puzzles.
Even if the player figured out to make the key by throwing the kitten and the bar of soap into the ceiling fan, they might not know when to do it.
CGW: And still, there was the challenge of the player having to recognize the strange object outside the barn to be a ceiling fan.
LQ: Exactly! But we knew we were running out of things we could do with doing things, so we
added humor. We were really proud of BonerBalls Quest, which was not only humorous, it
was the first game for adults only. It incorporated mature situations previously unimagined in
gaming. And its sequel, Poop: The Game, took it to an all-new level. “FART!” Hahaha, sorry,
I was just thinking back to one of the puzzles where the game’s main character, Poop: The
Character, had to sneak past a security guard after a chili-eating contest. Hahaha!
CGW: You paved the way for many of today’s developers. What can we look forward to in
future Lord Quest projects?
LQ: Actually, I may take a break from PC gaming. With all these flashy movie tie-ins like
Timecop, American Gladiators, and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York...it just seems that the questing market is dead.
CGW: Blame 1993’s Last Action Hero?
LQ: That and, well, [gamers] just aren’t as sophisticated as they used to be...not as smart.
I know there are still some gamers out there eager to test their wits in a quest for...I mean,
back then, you used your brain. You had to think to put the tuna cans under your armpits
to trick Scentor into thinking you were a fish.
CGW: It was an act reserved for the intellectual
elite.
LQ: Are you going to eat that?
CGW: That’s a pencil./
“WE KNEW WE WERE RUNNING OUT OF THINGS WE COULD DO WITH DOING THINGS, SO WE ADDED HUMOR.”