Sound Blaster Drivers - When DOS Games Need Them

The Sound Blaster cards, before the software configurable 16s and the AWE32s, are for the most part are fine if you just install them in a system and note the hardware settings.  While they came with installation and program disks, games usually don't care whether those programs are installed or not.  All the game wants to know is that the settings are correct.  Some require the user to input those values in an install program, others autodetect the values and some just assume that the card uses specific values and fails if those values are not set.  Most games are fine with a SET BLASTER variable in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file, such one that looks like this for the Sound Blaster 16 :

SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6

With the Sound Blaster Pro and Sound Blaster 16 the installation disks provide very useful utilities for setting the mixer.  The power-on-default mixer values are somewhat quiet, so the preset mixer values provided by these utilities allow these cards to output at a higher volume.

However, there are games that require some files off the installation disks.  The two files that may be needed are SBFMDRV.COM and CT-VOICE.DRV.  SBFMDRV.COM is a Resident FM Driver, CT-VOICE.DRV is a Loadable Digitized Sound Driver.  Typically, a SET SOUND= variable with the installation path of the Sound Blaster installation or the directory where these files can be found is sufficient.  However, games requiring SBFMDRV.COM may require it to be loaded before starting the game.  The Adlib Sound Card Disks contain an equilavent file called SOUND.COM.

It is important that the CT-VOICE.DRV is matched with the card or a superior card with which it is intended to work.  Thus a CT-VOICE.DRV for a Sound Blaster Pro 1.0 will not likely work with a Sound Blaster 2.0.

Finally, there is at least one game that requires the Resident CMS Driver, CMSDRV.COM to be loaded prior to beginning the game.  The original file will work fine with a real Game Blaster but not a Sound Blaster with CMS chips.  In that instance, the CMSDRV.COM file from the Sound Blaster 1.0-2.0 Install Disks must be used.  Here are the list of games that require these files or come with these files :

SOUND.COM OR SBFMDRV.COM
Don't Go Alone
Hoosier City
Kingdom of Syree III: Black Magic, The

PGA Tour Golf

Romance of the Three Kingdoms II

Solar Winds
Yendorian Tales: Chapter 2
Words of Jesus

CMSDRV.COM
Miami Vice

CT-VOICE.DRV
Breakin (Shareware)

Elfland

Eye of the Storm
Innocent Until Caught
Pizza Connection (German original only)
Prehistorik
Stick Fighter 1 & 2
Titus the Fox?
The Clou
Traffic Department 2192

It is important to note that some games have one of these files statically linked or embedded in their files.  Jill of the Jungle is an example of this.  JotJ embeds Creative's SBFMDRV.COM in its EXE files, and the 1.0 version of the game will only produce music on a Sound Blaster, not an Adlib card, even if you don't want digitized sounds.  JotJ supports a basic Sound Blaster and none of the more advanced features of the SB Pros or 16s.  Versions 1.2(b), 1.2(c) and 1.2(d) support a pure Adlib  for music, but with the music you will hear only PC speaker sound effects in 1.2(b) and 1.2(c) and no sound effects in 1.2(d).

Here is a list of all versions of the drivers mentioned above, and for the Sound Blaster, I indicate which versions came with a particular card's install disks :

Adlib SOUND.COM versions :
1.00 or 1.10
1.20
1.30
1.51 (by far the most common)

Creative Music System CMSDRV.COM versions :
3.10  - CMS/Game Blaster Required
3.20A - Sound Blaster Required

Sound Blaster SBFMDRV.COM versions :
1.11  - Sound Blaster Card Version (SB 1.5)
1.22  - Sound Blaster Card Version (SB MCV)
1.30  - Sound Blaster Pro Stereo Version (SB Pro 1)
1.30B - Sound Blaster 1.5 and 2.0 Version (SB 2.0)
1.32* - SB Pro 2 / SB Pro MCV Version (SB Pro 2)#
1.32* - SB Pro 2 / SB16
1.33  - SB16 / SB Pro 2 / MCV Pro 2 (SB16)
1.34  - SB 1.5 / SB 2.0 / MCV 2.0 (SB 2.0 late)

# - will refuse to load on a Sound Blaster 1.0-2.0.

* - There are two versions of this driver, one dated February of 1992 and one dated October of 1992.  The February 1992 driver (7,276 bytes) supports stereo playback, the October 1992 (7,191 bytes) driver does not.

For the .COM files, running the file will reveal the version number.  The CT-VOICE.DRV is not self-executing and most versions do not have a version number, at least not in plain-text format, when viewed with a hex editor.  Thus file sizes are used to distinguish the versions.

Sound Blaster CT-VOICE.DRV versions :
SB1.0 - 2,377 bytes
SB1.5 - 2,493 bytes
SBPRO1 - 5,014 bytes
SB2.0 - 3,894 bytes
SB2.0 - 31,866 bytes 4.01 (late)
SBPRO2 - 5,108 bytes
SBMCV - 3,894 bytes (one byte difference from the SB 2.0 version)
SB16 - 18,560 bytes
SB16 - 31,842 bytes 4.05 (late)

Tutorial - DOSBox and Floppy Disk Game Installation

Usually I do not write specifically about DOSBox because my main interest is real hardware, but DOSBox is an invaluable tool for anyone into retro-PC DOS gaming.  DOSBox can play just about any DOS game, and can certainly play all the widely-known classic games.  One of its lesser-acknowledged strengths is its ability to install games from floppy disks, or more usually, from floppy disk images.  In this entry I will describe the ways DOSBox can install games off floppy "disks".

If you have floppy disks, your first task should be to make floppy disk images.  Of course, you can mount a physical floppy disk drive directly with DOSBox, but relatively few people have floppy drives connected to modern systems these days.  Floppy disks should be preserved, so I would always first image the disk, then install it.

A program like Winimage works for unprotected DOS-readable floppy disks, and the resulting image files have a .ima extension.  On older hardware, I use a free program called img2dsk.  If you read original floppy disks in a Windows machine, you should enable write protection on the disks otherwise Windows will make (usually harmless) changes to the first sector of a disk.  Winimage and other simple disk imaging utilities only understands what DOS understands, so you will not be able to make useful backup copies of any game with disk-based floppy protection.  Fortunately, this is almost never a problem with games that were released on high density floppy disks, since no game (except for Lemmings 2 : The Tribes) released on high density floppies is known to use disk based protection.  Hopefully the images will not contained damaged files, but a disk imaging program should be able to report any errors.

Always dump a disk to its right size.  Regular disk images are sector dumps and will dump all the formatted sectors on a disk, whether there is anything in the sectors or not.  Remember that 5.25" double density disks have a hub ring and a rust brown color to the recording media while 5.25" high density disks have no hub ring and a shiny black finish on the recording media.  3.5" double density disks only have a hole on one side of the disk while 3.5" high density disks have a hole on either side of the disk.  The size of the files should be able to tell you what kind of disk is being used.  160K, 180K and 320K disks are usually copy protected.

If you do not have floppy disks or images, it is much harder to find them than "full" installs of games.  Disk images are generally unadulterated, they have not been cracked and can be used to install alternative features to the standard installed versions found everywhere else.  Some games like Wing Commander require a reinstall off the disks to select Tandy or EGA graphics when the standard install or CDs with the game just have a VGA-only installation.

Now that you have some images of your floppy disk install disks, you need to mount them so DOSBox can find them.  There are three ways you can do this.  First, in Windows you can use a program like Virtual Floppy Drive 2.1, which will mount a DOS-formatted disk image of any regular size and emulate one to two floppy drives.  If A:\ is your emulated drive, in DOSBox, you would use mount a a:\ -t floppy.  The benefit to this method is that you can load new floppy disks just by double clicking on them once Windows associates the .ima extension with VFD.  The author of VFD 2.1 doesn't like Windows Vista or 7 or 64-bit Operating Systems, but other users have found way around the program's limitations. There are workarounds, namely signed 64-bit drivers for VFD.   The answers can be found here : http://superuser.com/questions/183335/how-to-create-a-virtual-floppy-drive

If you cannot or will not use VFD or another program like it, DOSBox can mount floppy images directly, but it is a complex process, at least in the official 0.74 version.  If using the latest or recent SVN, the process is much easier.  http://www.emucr.com/ has good basic builds of the current SVN, so let's start with the SVN method. The IMGMOUNT command in SVN supports multiple floppy images, just like it does with CD images in 0.74.  DOSBox, however, does not mount files that do not conform to the 8.3 filename convention, so lengthy descriptive filenames will need to be condensed into disk1.ima, disk2.ima and so on.  Here is a sample mounting command in the [autoexec] section of dosbox.conf :

imgmount a c:\dos\images\disk1.ima c:\dos\images\disk2.ima -t floppy

Images can use an IMG or IMA extension, but each image file must have the full path on the line for it to be recognized.  It does get kind of tedious with a game like Discworld, which came on 15 disks (versus one CD-ROM).  With this method, you can install a game to an ordinary mounted folder.

Some games have installers that do not work with DOSBox's DOS, but will work with MS-DOS.  Dynamix games just don't like DOSBox when it comes to floppy installs.  DOSBox emulates enough PC hardware that you can use it as a virtual machine for MS-DOS or PC-DOS.  I generally see no need to use DOSBox as a virtual MS-DOS machine because getting EMM386 to work is tricky and MSCDEX needs ATAPI emulation not found in the standard SVN.  But for those tricky floppy installation programs, it can be very useful and certainly beats using real hardware and copying floppy drive images to back to real blankdisks.

You will need a hard drive image, and you can make your own with a program called BXIMAGE or  download one from here : https://sites.google.com/site/dotalshoff/games/dosbox  I would not use a disk image size of more than 528,482,304 bytes because you cannot easily make it bootable with DOSBox.  This is not coincidentally the old 520/504MB limit caused by the lowest common denominator between Int 13 and ATA/IDE hard drive size support.  You will also need floppy images for a version of MS-DOS or PC-DOS.  5.0 is the minimum version I recommend, but MS-DOS 6.22 is the most up to date version of pure DOS commonly used.  If you use MS-DOS 6.x, you should install the utilities off the Supplemental Utilities Disk, as they contain some utilities used in some weird game installs that were previously included in DOS 5.0.  Floppy images can be found if you look hard enough.  I do NOT recommend using FreeDOS, since many game installers rely on quirks of MS-DOS that have not been emulated well with FreeDOS.

Assume your hard drive image is named hdd-520mb.img and your MS-DOS 6.22 floppy images are msdosd1.img, msdosd2.img and msdosd3.img.  Here is how your dosbox.conf should look :

imgmount c c:\dos\images\hdd-520mb.img
boot c:\dos\images\msdosd1.img c:\dos\images\msdosd2.img c:\dos\images\msdosd3.img

Note that with the BOOT command, the extension must be .IMG, .IMA will not work.  The file hdd-520mb.img is already partitioned and formatted, so you need not use FDISK and FORMAT to prepare the image file.  Just use the install program or use the SYS command to make the drive bootable and copy all the commands over to c:\dos in DOSBox.  Ctrl + F4 will switch the active disk image.

Ordinary disk images cannot be booted, so you will need an MS-DOS boot disk with the version installed on the hard drive to start the process.  With the boot disk named msdosbd.img, The [autoexec] section may look like this :

imgmount c c:\dos\images\hdd-520mb.img
boot c:\dos\images\msdosbt.img c:\dos\images\disk1.img c:\dos\images\disk2.img

After the boot disk boots, use Ctrl + F4 to switch to the first game disk image and install away.

BOOT should be the last command in the section.  In order to transfer the installed files from the hard disk image to a regular mounted hard drive using a folder on your real hard drive, start with lines like these in your [autoexec] section :

ver set 6 22
imgmount c c:\dos\images\hdd-520mb.img
mount d c:\dos\games

The VER set command will allow you to use MS-DOS 6.22's XCOPY command to copy whole directories from the hard drive disk image to your mounted real folder.  Regular DOSBox does not have an XCOPY command, so with regular DOSBox you will need to manually recreate the directory and subdirectory structure with the md command.  With XCOPY, use the /E switch to copy over subdirectories.

One remaining issue is that you cannot IMGMOUNT floppy images and BOOT to a hard drive image at the same time.  You need to BOOT the MS-DOS boot disk and the disks you wish to install.  The hard drive image becomes a receptacle to hold the installed files, which you can transfer later.

The 8-bit TMS9918 "Not Quite a Standard"

Released in 1979, the Texas Instrument TMS9918 Video Display Controller chip or its derivatives and successors was used in an enormous number of home computing devices, starting with the unsuccessful TI-99/4.  It was the nucleus of devices as varied from the MSX computers to the Colecovision and the Sega SG-1000.  The base design called for a common 8-bit CPU, some ROM and RAM, a 3-voice sound chip and some IO.  For the CPU, the 8-bit Z-80 processor, running at 3.58MHz, was by far the most common used.  For the sound chip, the TI, Coleco and Sega systems used a TI SN76489 3-voice PSG while the MSX standard called for the slightly more capable AY-3-8910 chip.

The resolution of the VDP chip is fixed at 256x192, there are 16 colors available in its palette, the text mode uses 40x24 pixel tiles, two of the graphics modes uses 32x24 pixel tiles and the other graphics mode uses 64x32 pixel tiles.  The chip supports 32 one-color sprites on the screen at a time with no more than 4 sprites on a line. The chip  requires 16KB of Video RAM, which is on a separate bus from the CPU RAM.  RAM in those days was at a premium, so main CPU RAM was often smaller (256 bytes for the TI 99/A and /4A, 1K for the Colecovision).

The chips biggest weakness going forward was its lack of support for hardware scrolling.  Scrolling in a game was usually by tile, 8 pixels.  This is not smooth and scrolling looked jerky on these machines.  While this was not a huge issue in the late seventies and early eighties, where one-screen videogames were the norm, when sidescrollers and vertical shooters became popular, the systems with the bare TMS9918 looked jerky.  Smoother scrolling could be done in software, but this was rarely attempted due to the performance penalties incurred.

The TI-99/4 used the TMS-9918, whereas the TI-99/4A used the TMS-9918A.  The "A" version of the chip adds support for graphics mode 2, which is what most games used.  Both systems only had 256bytes of RAM, which was an extreme hinderance for programmers.  Unlike most other machines, this system had a 3MHz 16-bit TMS9900 CPU.  However, only the system ROM and first 256 bytes of RAM were accessed in 16-bit on the TI computers, any official RAM expansions were accessed in 8-bit form.  The programmers usually had to obtain more RAM from the Video Memory, the access of which was terribly slow.

The Colecovision used a 3.58MHz Z80 and a TI SN 76489 sound chip.  It had 1K of RAM, 8K of ROM.  The home computer version, the Coleco Adam, added 80KB of RAM, 32KB of ROM, a keyboard and a dual cassette tape recorder.  The Adam used a 6801 to handle all the additional IO.

Sega's SG-1000 and SG-3000 used the standard VDP and 3.58MHz Z80.  It also uses the TI SN76489 but provided 8K for the CPU RAM.  Sega added support for hardware, doubled the sprite limits, allowed for colorful sprites and a 64 color palette in its VDP upgrade first seen in the Sega Mark III/Master System.  A YM-2143 FM Upgrade was also released for this system.  Sega eventually allowed a palette of 4,096 colors for the VDP variant in the Sega Game Gear.  The VDP of the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis extended this even further, but the original modes no longer work.  By that time the Z80 had been relegated to sound coprocessor status and the TI sound chip was secondary to the Yamaha 4-op FM OPN2 YM-2612.

The Spectravideo SV-318 and SV-328 were the models upon which Microsoft based the MSX standard.  The SV-328 came with 32KB of ROM, half for BIOS and half for BASIC, and 64KB of RAM.  The SV-318 is compatible but has only 16KB of RAM.  They use an Intel 8255 for IO handling and an AY-3-8910 for sound processing duties.  These machines successor, the SV-378, is only slightly different but fully MSX compatible and uses different, MSX-compatible, cartridges.  The MSX had no chance in North America, but did see success in Japan and in some European countries.  While MSX machines could offer 8-64KB of RAM, most offered at least 32KB.  RAM could upgraded beyond 64KB.

The MSX2 standard called for the V9938 VDP variant to be used.  This upgrade allowed for 256 colors, 80-column text modes, 16/256 color paletized modes, more colorful sprites and hardware vertical scrolling.  It required more Video RAM, 128KB.  Some systems also had support for more than 64KB of CPU RAM.  Horizontal hardware scrolling had to wait for the MSX2+ and the V9958 VDP.  The MSX2 and MSX2+ standards still called for the Z80 at 3.58MHz to be used.  Some MSX2+ machines had the YM-2143 OPLL (MSX-Music) chip.  The MSX turbo R was the last iteration of the MSX line and used an R800 @ 7.16MHz as the main CPU with a Z80 for compatibility and had 256-512KB of RAM.

In addition to MSX-Music, there were other musical upgrades for the MSX machines.  MSX-Audio used the Y8950 chip, which was an improvement over the YM2143 and the Adlib OPL2 YM3812 chip.  Certain of Konami's cartridge games had a SCC or SCC+ chip, which could use small waveforms.  Moonsound was a sound board that was released late in the MSX's life and used a YMF-278 chip.  Yamaha built in the equilavent of a FB-01 into its CX5M MSX System.

All the above systems have at least 16KB of Video RAM, all support the Atari-style 9-pin joystick port (often with support for a second button) and all support cartridges of some type or another.  Other systems with the TMS-9918 or its derivatives and similar architecture include the CreatiVision, Memotech MTX, Sord M5, Tatung Einstein and Tomy Tutor/Pyuuta.

King Kong and Frankenstein's "Other" Appearances in Japanese Sci-fi Films

Toho, the Japanese film studio and king of Japanese Giant Monster films, made two fully licensed movies with King Kong, King Kong vs. Godzilla in 1962 and King Kong Escapes in 1967.  It also made two films about Frankenstein's monster, Frankenstein Conquers the World in 1965 and War of the Garguantuas (Japanese Tile : Frankenstein's Monsters: Sanda vs. Gaira) in 1966.  For the former, Toho studios licensed the character from RKO Studios and for Frankenstein Conquers the World it licensed the distinctive Jack Pierce designed Frankenstein's Monster look from Universal.

While Godzilla had been introduced to the world in 1956, two years after his Japanese debut, King Kong and Frankenstein's Monster were of an earlier generation of movie monsters.  King Kong was released in 1933 and Universal's Frankensteinin 1931 (the latter appearing in six subsequent Universal films).  The films were highly regarded in the 1960s and 1970s and the characters were far better established in much of the movie-going world than Godzilla and other Japanese movie monsters.

Godzilla and other Japanese films were released in different countries at different times.  While Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again were generally released with those or similar titles across the world, when it came to Toho's later films, all bets were off when it came to the naming game.  West Germany, in particular, rarely gave Godzilla the title credit the film itself intended.  Instead, the distributors came up with a variety of creative titles for the films released in that country.

Japanese Title (Translation)	U.S. Theatrical Title	German Theatrical Title (Translation)
Gojira	Godzilla, King of the Monsters	Godzilla
Godzilla		Godzilla
Gojira no gyakushu	Gigantis the Fire Monster	Godzilla Kehrt Zurück
Counterattack of Godzilla		Godzilla Returns
Kingukongu tai Gojira	King Kong vs. Godzilla	Die Rückkehr des King Kong
King Kong vs. Godzilla		The Return of King Kong
Mosura tai Gojira	Godzilla vs. the Thing	Godzilla und die Urweltraupen
Mothra vs. Godzilla		Godzilla and the Primeval caterpillars
San daikaiju: Chikyu saidai no kessen	Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster	No Theatrical Release
Three Giant Monsters: The Greatest Battle on Earth
Kaiju daisenso	Monster Zero	Befehl aus dem Dunkel
The Great Monster War		Command from the Dark
Gojira-Ebira-Mosura: Nankai no dai Ketto	Godzilla Versus the Sea Monster	Frankenstein und die Ungeheuer aus dem Meer
Godzilla, Ebirah, Mothra : Big Duel in the North Sea		Frankenstein and the Monsters from the Sea
Kaiju shima no kessen: Gojira no musuko	Son of Godzilla	Frankensteins Monster jagen Godzillas Sohn
Monster Island's Decisive Battle: Godzilla's Son		Frankenstein's Monsters hunt Godzilla's Son
Kaiju Soshingeki	Destroy All Monsters	Frankenstein und die Monster aus dem All
Attack of the Marching Monsters		Frankenstein and the Monsters from Space
Gojira-Minira-Gabara: Oru kaiju daishingeki	Godzilla's Revenge	No Theatrical Release
All Monsters Attack
Gojira tai Hedora	Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster	Frankensteins Kampf gegen die Teufelsmonster
Godzilla vs. Hedorah		Frankenstein's Battle against the Devil's monsters
Chikyu kogeki meirei: Gojira tai Gaigan	Godzilla on Monster Island	Frankensteins Höllenbrut
Earth Destruction Directive: Godzilla vs. Gigan		Frankenstein's Hellspawn
Gojira tai Megaro	Godzilla vs. Megalon	King-Kong - Dämonen aus dem Weltall
Godzilla vs. Megalon		King Kong - Demons from Outer Space
Gojira tai Mekagojira	Godzilla vs. the Cosmic Monster	King Kong gegen Godzilla
Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla		King Kong vs. Godzilla
Mekagojira no gyakushu	Terror of Godzilla	Konga-Godzilla-King Kong - Die Brut des Teufels
Counterattack of Mechagodzilla		Konga, Godzilla, King Kong – The Spawn of the Devil
Sora no daikaiju Radon	Rodan The Flying Monster	Die fliegenden Monster von Osaka
Rodan the Giant Monster of the Sky		The Flying Monsters of Osaka
Chikyu Boeigun	The Mysterians	Weltraum-Bestien
Earth Defense Force		Space Beasts
Bijo to Ekitainingen	The H-Man	Das Grauen schleicht durch Tokio
Beauty and the Liquidman		The Horror creeps through Tokyo
Uchu daisenso	Battle in Outer Space	Die Bestie aus dem Weltenraum
The Great Space War		The Beast from Space
Mosura	Mothra	Mothra bedroht die Welt
Mothra		Mothra threatens the World
Sekai daisenso	The Last War	Todesstrahlen aus dem Weltall
The Great World War		Death rays from Outer Space
Yosei Gorasu	Gorath	Ufos zerstören die Erde
Suspicious Star Gorath		UFOs to destroy the Earth
Kaitei gunkan	Atragon	U 2000 - Tauchfahrt des Grauens
Undersea Battleship		U 2000 – Submarine Voyage of Horror
Uchu daikaiju Dogora	Dagora, the Space Monster	X 3000 – Phantome gegen Gangster
Space Monster Dogora		X 3000 – Phantoms vs. Gangsters
Furankenshutain tai chitei kaiju Baragon	Frankenstein Conquers the World	Frankenstein - Der Schrecken mit dem Affengesicht
Frankenstein vs. the Subterranean Monster Baragon		Frankenstein – The Terror with the Ape Face
Furankenshutain no kaiju: Sanda tai Gaira	The War of the Gargantuas	Frankenstein - Zweikampf der Giganten
Frankenstein's Monsters: Sanda vs. Gaira		Frankenstein – Duel of the Giants
Kingu Kongu no gyakushu	King Kong Escapes	King-Kong, Frankensteins Sohn
Counterattack of King Kong		King Kong, Frankenstein's Son
Gezora, Ganime, Kameba: Kessen! Nankai no Daikaiju	Yog: Monster from Space	Monster des Grauens Greifen An
Gezora, Ganime, Kameba: Battle! Monsters of the South Seas		Horror Monsters are Attacking
Wakusei daisenso	The War in Space	Der große Krieg der Planeten
The War in Space		The great War of the Planets
Gojira	Godzilla 1985	Godzilla: Die Rückkehr des Monsters
Godzilla		Godzilla: The Return of the Monster
Gojira vs. Biorante	Godzilla vs. Biollante	Godzilla, der Urgigant
Godzilla vs. Biollante		Godzilla, the Primordial Giant

You may notice that King Kong and Frankenstein appear very frequently in this list of German titles, more often than the name Godzilla.  Apparently for King Kong Escapes, the distributor felt free to add the Frankenstein name to the title for even more marquee value.  However, not until Godzilla vs. Megalon did the German distributors find the courage to use the King Kong name for a movie without King Kong in it.  Thus Jet Jaguar and Mechagodzilla are renamed King Kong in the last three Showa Godzilla movies.  Continuing with the reappropriating of the names of monster movie apes, in Terror of Godzilla, Titanosaurus is renamed "Konga", presumably from the 1961 British film of the same name.  The remake of King Kong by Dino De Laurentiiis was being made and shown around the time when these films were being released in West Germany, which may explain the change from Frankenstein to King Kong.  These "King Kong" and "Frankenstein" films were released by Constantin Film.  

The Germans were not the only country to use the King Kong name when the real King Kong was not in the movie.  The Italian title for Destroy All Monsters was Gil Eredi di King Kong, or The Inheritors of King Kong.  This actually does make a kind of sense, as Godzilla and later films owe a large creative debt to King Kong.  The movie posters do show King Kong, however.  Again, for Terror of Godzilla, the Italians distributed "Distruggete Kong! la Terra e in Pericolo" or Destroy Kong!, Earth is in Danger.  King Kong is the only monster featured on the contemporary film poster.  Titanosaurus is renamed "Titan Kong" in the dubbing.  

For Godzilla vs. the Thing, the Italians renamed the film Watang! Nei Favoloso Impero del Mostri, Watang! The Fabulous Empire of Monsters.  Godzilla is still called Godzilla in the film, "Watang" refers to Infant Island.  Godzilla has been renamed Gorgo in the title when Italian distributors re-released Son of Godzilla in the late 70s to coincide with a showing of the British classic Gorgo.  Also, for Spain the film Godzilla vs. Megalon became Gorgo y Superman Se Citan en Tokio, Gorgo and Superman Fight in Tokyo.  According to my source, Jet Jaguar was dubbed Superman and Gigan became Gorgo.  Like in the Italian case above, the distributors also had the rights to the real Gorgo film and some episodes of Super Giant, which was renamed Superman in Spain.  At least the European distributors had enough sense not to try and rename Godzilla to "Gorgo" or "Watang" or something else.  In the United States, the distributors renamed Godzilla to "Gigantis" for the second movie and the box office rewarded them in an appropriately stingy fashion for that blunder.  

My original inspiration for this article was the recent Blu-ray release of Ghidrah the Three-Headed Monster in Germany.  This movie is the only Japanese Godzilla Film Blu-ray release in 2013 anywhere in the world.  The movie apparently was never released in West Germany theatrically.  The current German distributor has given the title "Frankensteins Monster im Kampf gegen Ghidorah", Frankenstein's Monsters in a Battle against Ghidorah.  Either Frankenstein's name is still often used for monster or horror movies in Germany, or the distributor is trying to evoke memories of the old films, as the West Germans may have remembered them. In this film, according to the title at least, apparently Godzilla, Rodan and Mothra were all created by Dr. Frankenstein.  The Blu-ray is subtitled and not dubbed and presumably faithful to the Japanese, where Frankenstein is not in the dialogue.  Otherwise, Frankenstein may be a generic word in German for fantasy, at least when the word Monster follows it.  It is curious that while Frankenstein may have been a German scientist, the book which introduced him was published by Mary Shelly, an Englishwoman.  (Also compare the embrace of Dracula in post-Communist Romania by Irish author Bram Stoker).

Frankenstein was often, via dubbing, inserted into the plot.  For a movie like King Kong Escapes, it was easy enough to rename the villain from "Dr. Who" to "Dr. Frankenstein."  For other films the connection becomes a bit more tenuous.  In Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster, in the German dub the Red Bamboo are working for Frankenstein.  In Son of Godzilla, the Kamacuras and Kumonga are said to be Dr. Frankenstein's creations.  Similar conventions may occur in later films.  Godzilla vs. the Thing was released very late theatrically in West Germany, in 1974, so by that time Godzilla's name apparently had sufficient marquee value to displace Frankenstein's.  I guess no one thought to rechristen Mothra.  

The 8-bit Home Computer Bait and Switch

Back in the early 1980s, home video game consoles and home computers were competing for consumer dollars.  Home computers, Commodore's in particular were advertising that they could do so many more things than just play games, which they could do very well.  Dad could do the home finances, mom could keep her recipes, and the kids can learn with educational programs and write out their reports on a word processing program.  Thus the consumer saw home computers on retail shelves.  The most consumer friendly in terms of features and price included at first the Atari 400 and (barely) 800, the Commodore VIC-20 and 64, the TI 99/4A and the Tandy Color Computer.  Apple's expensive computers were mainstays of the hobbyists, educators and some small businesses, while IBM's even more expensive computers were almost exclusively purchased by business users and software development companies.

Even home consoles began getting into the act.  The Odyssey2 had a full set of keyboard keys.  The keyboard was a membrane keyboard and utterly useless for serious work.  The Intellivision and Colecovision and 5200 had numberpads.  Mattel developed two keyboard peripherals but failed to market them properly.  Mattel also released the underpowered Aquarius computer, which had little success.  The 2600 gave some lip service to programming by releasing a pair of programming controllers and a BASIC carrtridge.  The results were unimpressive due to the severe limitations of the 2600 hardware.  Coleco also released the Adam computer, which was a Colecovision upgraded with a keyboard and cassette drives.  It was not a success.

Unfortunately, the idea never of the all-in-one computing device quite meshed with the reality.  All of these systems were designed to display on home TVs.  None had an 80-column text mode, making it difficult for people to do serious word processing.  All IBM PCs had 80 column text and Apple's machines either had it built-in or was upgradeable.  The keyboards on many of these machines were far from typewriter quality, and none had a built-in numberpad.

Once the novelty of typing a book report wore off, little Johnny probably went back to handwriting them.  It must have been no joy to have to type a report on these mushy keyboards connected, via an RF switch, to a fuzzy TV.  As this took time, his work would probably have been relegated to the small secondary TV if the family had one.  Back in the early 80s, having two color TVs in an average American family was something of a luxury, so he would have to do his work on the smaller B&W TV.  Often this would occur on the kitchen table or on a small desk not designed for a computer.  Printing the thing in quality sufficiently legible for the teacher would often be a slow, noisy and frustrating effort with the dot matrix printers of the day.  If he got a disk read error or the power went out, his draft report would be gone in an instant!  Did I mention the slow speeds of the disk drives and tape drives available for the 8-bit machines?

Business software of any quality was slow to be released on these machines.  VisiCalc and WordStar were seldom seen.  RAM expansions beyond 48 or 64K was unsupported due to the lack of a standardized method   IBM's PCs could expand themselves naturally to 640KB, and once Lotus 1-2-3 became popular this became very important.  The Apple IIe could officially expand itself to 128K and unofficially (but simply) could enjoy much more RAM.

One great advantage that many of these computers had over IBM and Apple were in their graphics and sound capabilities.  Apple's graphics were born of the 70s and IBM's CGA didn't impress anyone. The Atari machines could produce 256 colors, and Commodore and Texas Instruments computers produced sixteen solid and distinct colors.  For arcade-like games, these machines also supported hardware sprites.  With these 8-bit CPUs, having hardware sprites really improved performance in games with moving objects on the screen compared with the more business oriented computers.

Another advantage was that these machines had sound chips built in.  The sounds of the arcades, including background noise, sound effects and short themes could be reproduced much better than the internal speaker of the IBM and Apple machines.  Lengthy music in computer games only became widespread in the late 80s, but music teaching and composing programs like Music Construction Set and Bank Street Music Writer were very popular.

Finally, these machines usually shared some peripheral compatibility.  The joysticks of the Atari 2600 worked in all Atari machines and in Commodore's VIC-20 and 64 and the TI 99/4A.  Except for the CoCo, which used analog joysticks, joysticks were a well-supported and easy to program for interface.  IBM and Apple did not release standard joysticks for most of their systems, and they were analog when most games released at that time preferred digital controls.

Even if the promise of the computer as a the universal appliance remained elusive, the more affordable computers were great for playing games.  Companies like Activision survived the home video game crash by turning their development efforts from video game consoles to computer systems.  Electronic Arts fully embraced the Atari 8-bit machines and later the Commodore 64 and were very successful.  Most companies had ports for most of their games for the Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, IBM PC, and later the Atari ST, Commodore Amiga and the Apple Macintosh.  In the United States, however, by the late 1980s all the game developers knew that the IBM would be the future and devoted their development efforts firmly or solely on that platform.

Killer Computer Gaming Apps

There are many successful games, and many great games.  Some games are so successful that they helped establish the gaming suitability of a particular home computer, were extremely influential or have withstood the test of time.  For each home computer system, I have selected one game which fits the following criteria :

The system had to have some measure of success

The game was successful game that sold many units

The game was widely acknowledged to be a groundbreaking game or one of the best available for that system

The game was ported to many systems, remade or has fan sites or is still remembered today

Most of these games were original to the computer indicated.  All were released fairly early in the computer's lifespan.

Apple II - Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord

This game really helped bring Role Playing Games to home computers.  Programs were made how to hack this game and beef up your characters.  Sir-Tech released a program called Wizprint to print out your character's statistics.  Defeating its copy protection was frequently the subject of computer magazine articles.  

TRS-80 - Zork: The Great Underground Empire

Separate versions of Zork were released for the Model I and Model III , but this system was the first home microcomputer to receive a version of the mainframe game Zork.  All subsequent interactive fiction games would be judged in relation to this game.  

Commodore PET - Temple of Apshai

Although Apshai was originally released for the TRS-80, this platform has so few notable games that I decided to put it here.  Mainframe-style dungeon crawling brought to the home computer.  

Atari 8-bit - Star Raiders

No more advanced looking or sounding game was released in the 1970s.  This is what stores displayed when demoing the Atari computers.  

Commodore VIC-20 - Gridrunner

Jeff Minter's brand of game, the frenetic paced arcade-like game, begins here.  

Sinclair ZX-81 - 3D Monster Maze

A groundbreaking 3D maze game, notable especially for a system with no color and no dedicated sound hardware.

IBM PC - Microsoft Flight Simulator

Showed that there was some advantage to using an 8088, as this version ran much faster than the versions on other home computers.  Also famous as a compatibility tester for PC clones.  

TI 99/4A - Tunnels of Doom

While the TI software library is rather limited, this gave a first person maze perspective for exploring the dungeon and a third person perspective for fighting monsters before Ultima III.  

Commodore 64 - Impossible Mission

"Another visitor...Stay awhile, stay FOREVERRR..."  One of the best non-sidescrolling action adventure games ever made.  

Sinclair ZX Spectrum - Jet Set Willy

According to the BBC TV Movie Micro Men, this game gave Sir Clive Sinclair fits because it seemed to him that people weren't taking his cheap computer seriously.  Did it really matter when the game helped him sell sold millions of his little home computer?

BBC Micro - Elite

Pioneered the 4x Space Exploration Genre, one of the very few British or European computer games to cross the pond stateside in the 1980s.  

TRS 80 CoCo - Dungeons of Daggorath

Oh be still my beating heart.  Real time 3D dungeoneering providing some extremely intense gameplay.  

IBM PCjr.& Tandy 1000  - King's Quest

Graphical adventure games are invented, helping to keep Sierra Online from bankruptcy.  

Apple Macintosh - Dark Castle

Very popular adventure game for this platform, showed that even the monochrome Mac could play games.  

Atari ST - Dungeon Master

Most Atari ST owners had a copy of this game.

Commodore Amiga - Defender of the Crown

Another "Wow" game, the sort of software that Commodore should have included with every Amiga sold.  

Apple IIgs - Will Harvey's Zany Golf

The IIgs had very few exclusive games, but this one is superb and was widely ported.  

PC Clones - King's Quest IV & King's Quest V

The first was a very persuasive in persuading people to buy or upgrade to the 286, EGA, a sound card, and a hard drive, the second helped drive 386 sales and VGA cards.  KQIV originally came on an insane, for the time, nine disks.  

M.U.L.E. - The PC Port on Real Hardware

1985 was the last year that IBM was known to have published any games for its IBM PC family.  It had seen games as one of the things that consumers could do with their PCs, and had released Microsoft Adventure at the launch of the original IBM PC Model 5150.  However, by 1985 IBM no longer looked to the home consumer market as a primary market, and thus the number of games it published dwindled to nothing.  One of the last titles it published was a port of Electronic Arts and Ozark Softscape's classic M.U.L.E.  This port was ported by K-Byte Software and released very quietly.  In fact, until 2012, no one had probably played it for 15 years.  It remained a mystery and completely unavailable until someone opened up a box of old IBM games, found it, became aware of its significance and allowed it to be cracked and distributed.  The story is recited here : http://www.worldofmule.net/tiki-index.php?page=IBM+PC  Others have analyzed it for differences between it and the Atari 400/800 original and Commodore 64 port, read here : http://bringerp.free.fr/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=166  In this port I will discuss how it actually plays on the systems it was intended for.

Speed

M.U.L.E. for the IBM PC requires 128KB of RAM and a CGA card.  It only supports PC speaker sound and music and one physical joystick.  The cover explicitly lists the IBM PC (Model 5150) IBM PC/XT, IBM PC Portable and IBM PCjr. as supported systems.  Note that it does not mention the IBM PC AT, which was released in 1984 and used a 6MHz 80286 CPU.  This game is speed sensitive and the game will probably run to fast on the AT, which is roughly three times as fast as the PC or XT.  Running on more modestly upgraded or faster systems, like a V20 IBM PC, XT or PCjr. or a Tandy 1000EX, SX or HX at 7.16MHz will not give such a noticeable effect on speed to make the game unplayable.

On the packaging, there is no explicit mention of the IBM Personal Computer AT.  This is probably not an oversight, as some other IBM released games from 1984-85 explicitly included the AT in the list of supported systems on the box.  The AT was released in 1984 and thus its omission was almost certainly intentional.  (K-Byte does not seem like an outfit that could afford an AT).  The game adjusts its speed for a PCjr., so if you have an exotic speedup method in your PCjr. (V20 is fine), the game will probably run too fast.

Graphics

IBM PC with CGA on an RGB Monitor

On an IBM PC, XT or 100% compatible system with a CGA card, the game will use the 320x200 Mode 4, Palette 0 (cyan, magenta, white) in low intensity with a bright white background/border.  While the game is playable on an RGB monitor, it was clearly meant to be connected to a TV or color composite monitor.  Instead of stripey cyan and magenta graphics for the four players and their plots, composite color gives brown-gold, orange, red and light blue.  It seems clear that a late CGA card was intended because the text (white/light gray against bright white) on a real color composite monitor or TV is almost totally illegible with an early CGA card (without adjustments to the brightness and contrast).  EGA and VGA cards probably will not display the intended colors.

IBM PC with Old CGA on a Composite Monitor 

It was a long-standing myth that this game was either released solely for the PCjr. or took advantage of the PCjr.'s advanced graphics and sound capabilities compared to the IBM PC with CGA and PC Speaker.  The sound is exactly the same on either the IBM PC or PCjr.

IBM PC with New CGA on a Composite Monitor

On an IBM PCjr., the game uses a 320x200 resolution four color mode with colors similar to CGA.  The bright white background is the same, but the RGB colors are now light cyan, light magenta and white.  The pixel patterns are not the same as with a non-PCjr., but still show that the game was meant to be displayed on a color composite monitor or TV.  The PCjr. artifact colors the programmers chose are not as distinct as on a CGA card, there are two shades of magenta or purple and two shades of cyan or blue-green to choose from.


IBM PCjr. with an RGB Monitor

Control

This section requires a digression.  When M.U.L.E. was released for the Atari home computer systems in 1983, officially it could only run on the Atari 800 with 48KB of RAM.  The Atari 400 was not easily upgradeable to 48KB (but when upgraded was indistinguishable from an 800 to software) and the 1200XL, 600XL, 800XL and later machines only had two joystick ports.  For the Atari original, there was no keyboard control of the characters.  At least one joystick was required, and a pair of paddles could be used by two players in the auctions.  If there were fewer joysticks than human players, the players had to share the joystick for each player's main turn.

IBM PCjr. on a Composite Monitor

The Commodore 64 only had two joystick ports, and its port of MULE did not support paddles.  Thus, players three and four had to use a pair of keyboard keys during the auctions, and the joysticks had to be shared during the player's main turns.

The IBM port only supported one joystick, notwithstanding the IBM Game Control Adapter could support two joysticks with a Y-splitter and the IBM PCjr. had two distinct joystick ports.  Unlike the Atari and Commodore versions, it did not require a joystick to play the game.  If you did not have a joystick, the arrow keys could be used to control the player during his or her main turn.  Only the main four cardinal directions could be used, the "diagonals", 1, 3, 7 and 9, do nothing on the PC keyboard.  The PCjr.'s keyboard has no numberpad, only dedicated cursor keys.

For the auction phase, the keyboard controls for each player on the IBM PC are as follows :

Player -  1  2  3  4

Up     - F1  W  O  ↑

Down   - F5  X  .  ↓

On the PCjr., the keyboard controls are different, due to the differing layout of the PCjr.'s keyboard :

Player -  1  2  3  4

Up     -  W  Y  [  ↑

Down   -  Z  B  /  ↓

There is a game crashing bug when selecting joystick control with four planeteers.  The Alt key is pressed to determine which player will use the joystick.  However, if players 1-3 use the joystick, the game will not allow you to press key to select player 4.  Player 4 must use the joystick in this case.

This game was designed for the IBM PC 83-key keyboard.  On the 83-key keyboard, Player 1's auction up key, F1 is above the down key, F5, by one key, just like the keys for Players 2-4.  On a 101-key keyboard, F1 is three keys to the left of F5.  This arrangement simply does not work well with three other people.

The keyboard handling takes some getting used to.  The Enter key corresponds to the joystick button.  When doing anything requiring a button press like selecting a land plot, beginning your turn or installing a M.U.L.E., it is best to hold the button down until the game acknowledges the input.

The Alt key functions essentially as a speedup key in the game.  It can end auctions after everybody has bought and sold what they can.  It can bypass the summary screen and the chance animations.

The Esc key acts as a pause key.  Unfortunately, it will cause the game to freeze on a Tandy 1000 90-key keyboard.  If you are going to play M.U.L.E. on a Tandy 1000, I would advise using the joystick and setting the speed machine to slow (if an EX, HX, SX or faster) at boot time.  On the Tandy 1000 90-key keyboard, the Esc key is right below the F1 key, making it too easy to press if you are controlling Player 1.  The composite colors on a Tandy with an RCA video jack (TX or earlier) will look different than on an IBM PC with a CGA card.

Finally, the game can be saved in progress by pressing Ctrl-Q.  This does not appear to be a feature of the earlier versions.

Playing King's Quest and King's Quest II Booters

The original King's Quest and its sequel, King's Quest II : Romancing the Throne were originally released for the IBM PC platform as self-booting copy-protected disks.  They could not be read by DOS, did not require DOS to run and could not install themselves to a hard drive.  Sierra released King's Quest in 1984 and King's Quest II in 1985.  They were the first games to use Sierra's Adventure Game Interface (AGI) engine.  Eventually with the releases of King's Quest III : To Heir is Human and Space Quest : Chapter One : The Sarien Encounter, Sierra allowed its games to be copied to and run off hard drives.  Each game would need the original first floppy disk, the key disk, to pass the copy protection check and decrypt the executable.

King's Quest - IBM PCjr. Copyright Screen

King's Quest - IBM PCjr. Title Screen

King's Quest - IBM PCjr. & Tandy 1000 In-Game Screen

The booter versions of King's Quest I-II and The Black Cauldron did not use drop down menus or status bars.  To check your score, you go into the inventory screen.  The Escape key pauses the game.  They have a certain minimalist charm about them that their later DOS conversions lack.  They are also friendlier to older hardware since they only require 128KB of RAM.  The DOS conversions require 256KB of RAM.  King's Quest came on one PC booter disk but two DOS disks.  This wouldn't be much of an issue for owners of most PCs in 1987 when the conversions were marketed, but users of 128KB Tandy 1000s and PCjrs would be in need of an upgrade.  Sierra's disk routines are probably faster than Microsoft's.

King's Quest - IBM PC Copyright Screen

King's Quest - IBM PC Title Screen Composite Color Mode

King's Quest - IBM PC In-Game Screen Composite Color Mode

Another issue is with drawing the graphics.  With the booters on a slower machine, the game draws the vector outlines of shapes then fills the color and finally draws the objects.  This was changed for the DOS conversions as this gave some clues to the puzzles.  In the AGI DOS games, the screen draws itself fully then copies itself into the video buffer.  This may look, on a slower machine, as though the image were drawn from the top down.

King's Quest - IBM PC Title Screen RGB Color Mode

King's Quest - IBM PC In-Game Screen RGB Color Mode

King's Quest was released four times in the booter format.  The PCjr. version was released first, and the first release came with a full keyboard overlay for the chiclet keyboard.  A second release was only released with a strip for the "function" keys, as the replacement keyboard no longer had space in between the keys for the overlay.  Since the PCjr. was not the great success Sierra and IBM hoped for, Sierra converted it to the IBM PC.  The manual was much more ornate, the goofy illustrations from the PCjr. box and manual were gone, the story was more serious and more clues were given.  Finally, once the Tandy 1000 was released, Sierra released a version that would work with that system, which had graphics and sound capabilities virtually identical to the PCjr.  A separate reference card would accompany the PC and Tandy 1000 releases.

King's Quest - Tandy 1000 Copyright Screen

King's Quest - Tandy 1000 Title Screen

Each release is only supposed to be run on its own system.  The Tandy 1000 version may run on a PCjr., but there may be graphics errors at the command line.  The PCjr. version probably will run on a Tandy 1000/A, but only those with 128KB of RAM.  The PC version requires a CGA card and looks best when displayed on a color composite monitor or TV.  It will only switch to the RGB mode on startup, so you will always see the Sierra logo in black and white on an RGB monitor.  The sounds are downsampled for the 1-voice PC Speaker.  It will run on a Tandy 1000, which has excellent CGA compatibility, but the composite colors will not look correct.  It probably be playable with an EGA or VGA card, but palette will probably use light cyan/light magenta/high intensity white and a black background instead of green/red/brown and a blue background.  Use the DOS version instead.  The PCjr. will probably show major graphical errors if it tries to run the PC version.

King's Quest - DOS Title Screen

The PCjr. and PC versions of King's Quest allow the player to use the joystick at any time after starting the game.  The Tandy version requires the player to press a button on the joystick at the title screen to use it in game.  The PC and Tandy versions were programmed when 4.77MHz was the only speed available, so joystick calibration may be difficult or impossible when playing the game at a higher speed.  However, Graham's walking speed does not really increase when the game is run at a higher speed, but he will walk less slowly when walking on a screen with animated objects on it.  The PCjr. version is very sensitive to system speed, and eventually (in theory) the machine may be so accelerated that the game will play too fast.  Considering the slow speed of the 128KB PCjr., a slight uptick in the system speed would not be unwelcomed by most players.

The joystick was a very useful method of control for the AGI engine.  With the keyboard, one press of the key would make your character move until he hit an obstacle.  A second key press would be required to get him to change direction or stop.  With the joystick, the character will only move when the stick is manipulated in the direction past the dead zone.  When the stick is stationary, the character will not move.  This is extremely useful when crossing screen boundaries, as your character will not proceed blindly into a chasm, river, lake or into the hands of a monster.

Diagonal keyboard movement was added to the PC version via the number pad.  (The PCjr. has no number pad on either of its keyboards.)  This is especially convenient with the stairs leading up to the land of the clouds.  The original PC keyboard did not have dedicated arrow keys, so the character moved in eight different directions by the numberpad.  The Tandy 1000 version requires you to use the inverted-T arrow keys to move in the four cardinal directions (Up, Down, Left, Right).  Keys 1, 3 and 9 on the numeric keypad of the Tandy 1000 keyboard work to move your character diagonally, but key 7 does not (at least on my Tandy 1000SX).  Also, numeric keypad keys 2, 4, 6 and 8 do not move your characters in a cardinal direction.

In order to save with the booter versions, you will need a separate disk.  You must type the command "copy disk" (without quotes), which will make a play disk.  The game will allow you to save up to 26 games on the play disk, and each save is identified only with a letter.  The DOS conversions allow you to type in a description for your save, but for the booters you should keep a sheet handy.

King's Quest - Booter Interface

King's Quest - DOS Interface

King's Quest - DOS Menus

There is no "Greensleeves" in any of the booter versions, just an unremarkable fanfare tune at the title screen.  The enchanter uses a different graphic in the booter versions, in the DOS conversion he uses the King's Quest II graphic.  The monster theme from King's Quest II is reused in the DOS conversion for all the monsters in King's Quest DOS conversion.  The alligators in the booter versions are green but cyan in the DOS conversion.  The in-game sound is mostly sound effects or repeating notes when a monster appears on the screen.  The copyright screens and the "Grahame" name for the character in the PCjr. version are about the only noticeable visual differences between the three versions.

The PCjr. did not have separate function keys, so the number keys were pressed into service (without pressing Fn).  The PC and Tandy versions also use the number keys above the letter keys for the functions. King's Quest II used the function keys instead of the number keys (Ctrl + number for the PCjr.)  The numbers are a bit different from the eventually conventions which the DOS conversions and other DOS AGI games used :

Key    Function      (DOS Conversion Key)
1/F1 - Sound on/off (F2)
3/F3 - Save Game (F5)
5/F5 - Restore Game (F7)
7/F7 - Restart Game (F9)
9/F9 - Repeat Last Command (F3)

King's Quest only required one 360KB disk but the DOS conversion requires disk swapping with two 360KB disks.  You use Disk 1 for Daventry, inside King Edward's Castle and climbing up the Golden Egg Tree.  You use Disk 2 for the inside of the Woodcutter's Hut, Witch's House, after you enter the well and until you exit the cave, in the Land of the Clouds including the beanstalk and stair climbing screens, and the Land of the Leprechauns underground screens.

Its sequel, King's Quest II always came with two disks.  King's Quest consisted of a total of 77 rooms, but King's Quest II boasted 93 unique rooms.  King's Quest II supports the PCjr., PC with CGA and Tandy 1000 with one single version.  King's Quest II had three booter versions, 1.0W, 1.1H and Tandy v1.00.00, the latter two presumably including bugfixes.

King's Quest II - IBM PCjr. & Tandy 1000 Title Screen

King's Quest II - Credits

When the game is first booted, it will ask for Disk 2 just after asking whether the user wishes to use a joystick.  It will use Disk 2 for the introduction and the whole of the Kolyma overworld, including building interiors (Grandma's house, Dwarf's house, Hagatha's cave, Church and Shop) and the exteriors of Dracula's castle.  Disk 1 is used for Under the Sea, on the Mountain Top, inside Dracula's castle and for the Enchanted Land.  This cleverly minimizes disk swapping.

King's Quest II - IBM PC Title Screen Composite Color Mode 

There is no Space Quest Easter egg on the Mountain Top in the booter version, and the sign in the forest just south of where you find the stake discusses the Black Cauldron, not King's Quest III and Space Quest. King's Quest III - To Heir is Human is mentioned at the end of the game.

King's Quest II - IBM PCjr. & Tandy 1000 In-Game Screen

King's Quest II - IBM PC In-Game Screen Composite Color Mode

King's Quest II - IBM PC In-Game Screen RGB Color Mode

King's Quest II requires you to prepare a save disk using the "init disk" or "format disk" commands.  If you have a two disk drive system, it will save to drive B:.  Drive B: can be a 5."25 Double Density or 3.5" drive Double or High Density drive, and the game will have no problems saving to a Double Density disk.  I do not know if a high density 5.25" drive or high denisty 5.25" or 3.5" disks will work, but I have doubts.  This save disk cannot be read by DOS.  Again twenty-six saves using letters are allowed.

One welcome innovation in King's Quest II is the addition of walking speeds.  By typing "slow", "fast" or "normal" at the command prompt, your character's speed will increase or decrease.  "Slow" is very useful for stairs.  Fast helps you traverse across the land with very acceptable speed.  Slow and normal walking/animation speeds are not system speed dependent, but fast is.  Thus if you play this game on a Tandy 1000TL/3, which uses a 10MHz 286 CPU, you may find it a bit too fast more often than on a 7.16MHz 8088 Tandy 1000SX.  The DOS conversion adds a "Fastest" speed, which is not constant with the system speed, unlike slow, normal and fast for that version.

Compared with the DOS conversion, the music in the King's Quest II booter is very loud and much slower in tempo.  On a Tandy you may want to boot to DOS first, disable the internal Tandy 1000 speaker, reboot using Ctrl-Alt-Del and use the external speaker where you can control the volume if you do not have a headphone jack (Tandy 1000/1000SX).

When played on a PC or generic clone, you can switch between the composite and RGB modes in-game with Ctrl-R.  However, the game will not respond to that until you begin a game, so the introduction will always show in black and white for RGB monitor users.  With a generic PC using an EGA or VGA card, the RGB mode should work properly.

The need to wait for the disk to load each screen brings a different kind of playing style to these games. Unlike playing the game on a DOS computer or DOSBox that offers instantaneous loading times, the disk accesses force the player to try everything they can think of in each room.  It also allows the player to take in the scenery of each room, low resolution it may be.  Sometimes waiting, sometimes paying attention to detail may be the key to solving a puzzle.