Thayer's Quest (RDI 1984)

[GameVidLive]

"You blew it, Thayer, into the endless honeycomb for you!"

LOL.

[vidstrika22]

first interactive cartoon movie?

[TheDabeavis]

@vidstrika22 Dragon's Lair was the first one

[ctdsnark]

@sygo7g I was 21,and it confused the heck out of me!

[F1sTDaCuFFs]

Was one of my fav. Back in the day

[BadIdeaSociety]

I grew up in the arcades of the era and, for the life of me, I have no recollection of the game. How many units went live during the release? I mean, I heard that Stern Electronics only built 50 Cliff Hanger machines and there were TWO in my local video arcade at the time. I do not remember Thayer's Quest.

[Umma6umma]

@BadIdeaSociety Thayer's Quest was made as a conversion kit for Dragon's Lair and Space Ace. There were no dedicated cabinets made.

[CrashNicker]

Actually, Thayer's Quest is the PREQUEL of Shadoan, not only event-, but date-wise as well, actually. According to the history of making Thayer's Quest from Digital Leisure's DVD port.

[alanlovedog]

telling that whenever someone speaks you only see the back of their head - far cheaper to animate.

[Kizor]

Oh hey. Thanks for an unintrusive and correctly spelled narrative.

[MapleBedas]

I had Kingdom and Shadoan (Thayer's Quest) for CD-I system. These games were amazing. I loved them.

[roozie11]

1:15 saw a dsi 2:01 saw a dsixl 

[Lancewright12]

This was a concept meant to extend the interactive properties of games like Dragon's Lair. The dialogue heard from behind in most cases was decidedly based to minimize animation costs... There was no Flash then. And, this game was rumored to be a part of a laser disk interactive game console costing $2,000. The idea was right, but the technology to make it affordable was not.

[mgabrysSF]

God the animation is so cheap 90 percent of the dialogue happens off camera. I didn't know reaction shots were so important for all the talking backs.

[MonoAzul]

I like that voice synthesis a lot. Now I want to make a piece of music that uses samples like that.

[NintendoArielle]

That robotic voice is so primitive and creepy. Also, Thayer's face looks hilarious at 6:27 when he's underwater. XD

It must've been interesting to experience this at the time, though. Just think of how far we've come in technology! ;p

[senorverde09]

I believe RDI had it's own in-house team of animators but not sure about the voice actors.

[F2sT]

classic. game was sick.

[iwatcher69]

I remember the coin up game had that fukced up keyboard setting.

[Fajjani]

Those "spells" suck. What about "Fireball" and stuff like that? And what kind of a fucking Wizard relies on temporary spells to use magic?

[nebby6]

For advanced speech synthesis, check out Space Fury (a game that pre-dates this one by three years). It would be nice to find out who did SEGA's speech synth work in the early years, as it's still some of the world's best.

[bentpreacher]

oh hell yeah! "you are beginning to annoy me!" Space Fury rocks!! Big-headed one-eyed mutants! Thayers quest stunk...same as dragons lair, symbol pops up on screen and push the corresponding key. Pc version is the same,without the disturbing voice.

[9sunskungfu]

I saw this game way back in 1987,the keyboard had become so worn out that the letters were no longer illegible,so u really couldnt play it,but i still liked to look at it

[AntichristDemoncore]

somebody who knew the button layout should have put a piece of tape above the buttons to let ya know

[Paperclown]

haha.. a HUGE thanks for posting this. Never played the game, just always seen ads for it in the dragon's lair packages.

The Pop-Up Video comments was an awesome touch.

[AMOKIAN]

I was a kid in the arcade when they rolled this machine into

to arcade BRAND NEW!

WOW!!

I haven't seen it since.

[RowanAthikson]

LOL @ 6:24

[stephenknowlton]

Four... Four... no, I said Four.

Why didnt they just record voice overs for the stupid computer voice?

[fullmetal2405]

because this was made in the mid 80's before the technology existed for arcade games.

[Gamingtrevor]

"You Just Died. You have another life left"

Thank you Mr. Hawkings, but what are you doing in my game???

Seriously, pretty cool looking game, but I probably wouldn't get into it. I liked Dragon's Lair, as it required watching and paying attention to the actions on screen. This seems like a glorified video version of the choose your own adventure books...

[GELTONZ]

I'd kinda say it's the other way around. Thayer's Quest came first but was basically unfinished (as you pointed out). It was later re-released on other systems as Kingdom: The Far Reaches. Then, MUCH later (1998), Kingdom II: Shadoan was released and contains the rest of the game.

[GELTONZ]

Ah wait, SUPPOSEDLY (according to GameFAQs) Kingdom II was released on CD-i in Europe only in 1991 and received a PC release in 1996.

[littlevince104]

It sounds like a robot.

[Hotshotter3000]

A very, very old robot. Last I heard, the latest ones don't have voices that sound like that.

[Umma6umma]

What's really funny is, I put my full name in, and it asks if it can call me by my first name!

I should try and see what it will do if I refuse...

[neofluffy]

Can you post a "speedrun"? do you have kingdom II? If so can you post it? Sorry to come at you like this...just dying to see them!

[vidmonger]

Now Thayer's Quest was really interesting.

The talking interface was creepy.

But I got used to it. It was worth

every token. :)

[Umma6umma]

I remember playing this in the arcades and being plenty confused!

[KingPhantomLives]

Also, who are the voice actors for this game, because I recognize a few of them.

[KingPhantomLives]

What the hell is that voice saying at the beginning?

[Umma6umma]

It's asking me to spell my name.

[surlyirishman]

can you post the death scenes?

[spudw2k]

Ask and you shall receive...I'm compilling the scenes and will post a link when it's done. :)

[lbjb247]

I think you can get this or its sequel on DVD.

[bhaktakun]

"You can get the collection on DVD"?

What's it called?

[lbjb247]

I'm not sure. I know it's avalaible from some guys called digital leisure, they're the ones who released dragon's lair and space ace on DVD as well as other old games