King's Quest VI - All Game Overs

This video shows all the distinct ways to lose in King's Quest VI. It is a massive quality upgrade to the previous series I put on YouTube 13 years ago. No one has pointed out any ways I missed in all that time, but to be sure I also scanned the game's database and couldn't find any material that suggested a hidden method, so I strongly suspect this is all of them.

0:00:00 - Introduction and Explanations
0:01:42 - All Islands (Drowning)
0:07:47 - Isle of the Crown
0:09:13 - Isle of Wonder
0:25:58 - Isle of the Sacred Mountain
0:30:41 - The Catacombs
0:44:25 - Isle of the Beast
0:47:35 - Isle of the Mists
0:51:51 - Realm of the Dead
1:04:16 - Castle of the Crown (Magic Paint)
1:15:35 - Castle of the Crown (Beauty's Clothes)
1:32:51 - Did you know?
1:34:00 - Endgame

Raw footage version: https://youtu.be/QvUjoMcWqVM

Why is the video so long?
Unlike the other King's Quest games, this one was written by Jane Jensen, who is a prolific writer with a penchant for long conversations and cutscenes. Instead of fighting it, I played into it, often showing an extra scene before losing to set up the context. So although it removes some redundant parts from the old series, it's still about 15 minutes longer.

Why does the video go all the way up to 4K?
Video encoders always try to blend pixels together, which messes up the look of games at this resolution. So careful upscaling was done to preserve the blocky pixels and thus the game's natural appearance. The math forces the footage to take up a very specific size on the screen. There should be enough room for you to see the text, but I recommend watching on as high a setting as you can, and it probably shows better on desktop.

Game version and footage
The footage is taken from the Windows 3.1 version which has the enhanced interface and portraits. For the most part, the video capture is natural to the gameplay, but is often edited slightly to improve viewing experience, such as smoother transitions between the clips, or paused to allow a full sound effect to play if it would normally cut off. Notably, the guard's line cuts off at "Tickets oh-" when you enter the Underworld, so the full line is edited in.

Music
The music was recorded on my Roland SC-8820, which includes four soundfonts: the SC-8820, the SC-88Pro, the SC-88, and the SC-55. Pre-recording the music allowed me to edit the footage in the way described above without disrupting the music. It also allowed me to select which soundfont I wanted for each piece, which was usually either the 8820 or 88Pro, but sometimes I preferred one of the older fonts. For example, I picked the SC-55 for the Isle of Wonder gnomes due to its goofy tone. However, editing the music in separately meant I had to do everything manually such as volume ducks when someone speaks.

Images
The background and many of the icons show high resolution images from KQ6. The Windows 3.1 version comes with a file named KQ6ART.AVI, which is a slideshow of most of the backgrounds of the game with a higher resolution (512x365) than the ones from the original DOS game (320x190). Perhaps these were initially meant to complement the upgraded interface and portraits, but I'm not sure. You can browse all the images here: https://kingsquest.fandom.com/wiki/KQ6_development

Two other images are from the physical Guidebook that comes with the game.

Clarifications

The way Regions and Events group clips together is more important than the labels and images themselves. For example, obviously the spider is what kills you in both the "Spider Web" and "Black Widow Spider" Events, but the two death messages require two Events, so the labels and art are merely aesthetic.

All Actions within an Event have the same Game Over message. That does not mean all Events have different Game Over messages.

The rules break down a bit in the castle. Technically, the Actions could be condensed into one Event for each path, but that seemed a bit boring.

With the exception of the Beast Curse, all audio narration from the black Game Over screen is missing from the game. I can't tell if this is a design decision or a production bug, so I edited it into this version but left it out in the raw footage version.

The skeleton key doesn't perfectly fit any of the three categories on the "Did you know?" screen. I would explain why I put it where I did but this description already hits the limit.

The Magic Map dead end is attained by trading it in just before rescuing Beauty, leaving you stranded on the Isle of the Beast. I figure this is a design bug, but it still counts.

I use the terms "unwinnable" and "dead end" interchangeably.

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Видео King's Quest VI - All Game Overs канала shadyparadox