Thayer's Quest

Description

Thayer's Quest was a laserdisc adventure game released by RDI Video Systems in 1984 as a game for their Halcyon console, computer and laserdisc player, but was later released as a conversion kit for Dragon's Lair arcade consoles when the Halcyon's high price tag damaged its appeal.

The player controls Thayer, an apprentice magician on a quest to recover the five magical relics that make up the Hand of Quoid ("kwod") before the evil wizard Sorsabal can find them and cement his rule over the five kingdoms. During the game, Thayer only visits three of the kingdoms and finds their relics.

The game was fully animated like Dragon's Lair but required more than simply choosing when to fight or which way to dodge in accordance with the animation. Instead the player had full control over Thayer's movement to different areas and was required to find and use a variety of magical objects to overcome enemies and obstacles like in most later graphic adventure games.

A sequel incorporating the rest of Thayer's journey was planned, but the company went bankrupt before it could be completed. In the mid-1990's, Thayer's Quest was released to home computers and CD-based consoles titled Kingdom: The Far Reaches, with the characters' names changed (Thayer became Lathan Kandor, Sorsabal became Torlock, etc., because creator Rick Dyer thought the original character and names were "too 70's") and additional animation and puzzles. In 1998 Kingdom 2: Shadoan was released, including the final two kingdoms and the final battle with Torlock. In 2005 the original Thayer's Quest was released as a DVD video game by Digital Leisure, Inc. (true to the original Halcyon version) and could be played on an ordinary DVD player using the remote control. Thayer's Quest was also released for CD-ROM by Digital Leisure, Inc.

Thayer's Quest was one of the first games that had user-enterable content via a keyboard on the front of the coin operated unit. Text entered into the game was also spoken through early 8-bit voice synthesis. Due to many parent complaints of their children entering obscenities that were then spoken by the machine, and also the sometimes slurred early voice synthesis that was mistaken for offensive language, Thayer's Quest ended up being banned in several arcades.