Why (almost) No One Runs this Game | King's Quest III Speedrun History

King's Quest III remains the least explored speedrun of the main series. And there are several, very good reasons for why that is. Today, we'll discover why almost nobody runs this game, and hear the stories of the few who defied the odds. This is the history of King's Quest III speedrun world records.

00:00 Introduction
01:46 BillBull, the first runner
04:55 The Dreaded Eagle
07:50 A Pirate's Life
09:15 Ocean Man
12:43 Chuck and Lumo
16:15 Praying for RNG
18:17 A Challenger Appears from the North
21:29 Eight Seconds
24:22 Smash Like if You've Been Kidnapped By an Evil Wizard
27:10 Heart Conditions, etc.

Special thanks to BillBull, ChuckGrody, Lumophile, and SantaClaus for their time and invaluable information.

BillBull

ChuckGrody

Lumophile

SantaClaus

Attribution

The Games: Summer Challenge (1992) / Longplay PC DOS 4K
Old Nerd Playing Old PC Games
Video game footage used under CC BY

Santa Head image

Ocean Man Instrumental provided by Rapwned

King's Quest Redux Soundtrack used with permission from Brandon Blume

Analog TV Noise Distortion pack by Michael Freudenberg - Film Masters

Snow falling Video
James Cheney

Santa's Song

[OneShortEye]

Notes and Addenda

00:00 Here, I'm focusing on Any% runs of the main series DOS games. There are certainly King's Quest games with less activity than KQIII, like the Sega Master System version of KQI, the Infamous Adventures remake of KQIII, or the Amiga version of KQVI. Clarifying all of this seemed like too much in the first ten seconds.

00:15 There are really six runners if you include categories besides Any%, though that activity is minimal: RetroTKS (ScummVM) and myself (unsubmitted Doge%).

07:38 There are, in fact, some few cases where you do need to use prepositions, like "put dough on desk" during the spell casting. But, in the majority of cases, these can be omitted.

09:00 The timer starts when you board the ship. Since runners have to grab the box, grab their inventory, and walk to the balcony, they technically aren't doing "nothing" for the full 14 minutes, but it's close enough.

08:20 Here's an additional bit of information about the boat (which doesn't factor into any WRs), courtesy of SantaClaus: "If you waited for Manannan to leave on a journey, an additional rule applies: once you board the ship, Manannan won't appear until the seconds on the game clock show "04 (after the first "04 on the ship he can appear at any time). This makes it easy to dodge Manannan just by boarding the ship at a good time; for example, if you board the ship with the game clock at 0:10:05 you have a whopping 59 seconds to get the box, drop it in place, jump up, climb the ladder, open the chest, get back your stolen possessions and head into the safety of the stern without needing to worry about Manannan at all."

13:50 There's also a 100% category that was routed by BillBull. To date, no one has completed a run.

[erinnguyen]

I feel like a literal evil wizard that appears and kills you for spending longer than 8 seconds on any given screen is absolutely perfect for a speedrun game lol

[KevTyGaming]

Update: Santa managed to bring his time down to sub 19 minutes as of 2 days ago. The absolute madman.

[NotOnLand]

I like to imagine Santa's voice actor not knowing a thing about speedrunning and being like "RNG? Viable zips? Wtf does this even mean? Ho ho ho whatever, it's a gig!"

[LucarioredLR]

7:16
King's Quest 3 may not have the "oldest game where you can pet the dog" title but it sure does have the "oldest game where you become a catgirl/catboy" one

[acepedro]

Santa's speedrunning skills come from delivering gifts to children all over the world in just one day.

[Wolf]

Shout outs to Santa's voice actor, he really give it his all

[Alex-musm]

them: struggling to decide how to spend their 14 minutes of wait time
twilight princess low% speedrunners: being able to do an entire day's worth of errands, eat 3 full meals, and sleep before their 24 hour wait time is up

[fen]

To give you an idea how we used to do it in the old days; I played Kings Quest 4 when I was about 12. I played that game for years, usually dying because the in-game 24 hour timer would run out (or night would fall without the needed items) At which point, you have to start all over again. We had a duotang FILLED with paper maps, clues, quotes, lists.. Anything to give us an edge in a time before the internet. And even with my parents help, we never finished it.

[joels]

The first time I played through KQ 3, I got to Daventry without defeating Manannan. He kept appearing and killing me during the boat trip, so eventually I realized he couldn’t appear while I was in the crow’s nest. I hid up there, waiting for the boat to make land, then I quickly jumped off the ship. Once in Daventry, he never appeared. I guess I was secretly doing a speed run on my first attempt 😯

[eugenezaretskiy]

The Santa Claus voice-overs... both of them.... amazing. Thank you.

[aitan]

Love runners like Santa. The type of people who have the passion, intuition, and dedication to really push a category

[hrpang]

You know, Santa Claus is like the ultimate speedrunner. What do you expect from the man who can give gifts to children all over the world in one night?

[TonkarzOfSolSystem]

12:14 They didn't just reuse the screen, it's the exact same location. Alexander is in Daventry at this point in the game.

[bd]

I have to say, trying to play this game back in 1986/87 as an 11 year-old, without the benefit of online walkthroughs, with only me and my dumb friends trying to work out what to do, was brutally difficult. The spell-making was very punishing. I was finally able to turn the wizard into a cat, but I honestly don't remember if I encountered anything beyond that.

[holden]

Escaping Manannan was one of the most intense gaming experiences I had as a kid. It truly felt like you were creeping around the house and could be discovered at any moment.

[gamerman]

"That's 14 minutes of doing nothing"

Desert Bus Speedrunners: "Am I a joke to you?"

[tylociraptor]

As a non-speedrunner, and as someone who really only sees the hobby through videos about it and about specific runners.... I love that we can have names like xX420BlazeItXx or "Santa Claus" like.... y'all got range.

[ZXGT]

6:26 1/8 chance of getting the feather only between 2-14 seconds
Game once you get it : Ok.

Perfection

[buzzlightyearpfp]

honestly some of these mechanics feel like they could be really cool in a... better designed game. NPC's having specific schedules and routines, and the complex spell casting system really makes it feel ahead of its time