Songbook #27 - Quest For Glory Theme
Instrumental
Theme From Query For Glory
Mark Siebert
Come a hero from the East
Free the man within the beast
Bring the child from out the band
and drive the curser from the land
Like pretty much every other guy I've met my age, I played video games a lot when I was a kid. My grandfather got me an Atari 2600 one year. That was the only video game console I ever had, but most of my friends had the original NES and it wasn't uncommon for us to rent a game and play it all weekend. More importantly. I had a computer from about the fifth grade onward and through various illicit means I acquired a ton of different games. My favorite gaming company was Sierra Online, and my favorite game of all is without question the original Hero's Quest, which allowed you to play as a fighter, as a magic user or as a thief. Pretty standard stuff in retrospect, but it was the first time I had seen it and I played it more or less constantly. This game was designed by Lori & Cori Cole and was later renamed to Quest For Glory due to trademark issues.
This was just after sound cards became routinely available with computers, and I didn't have one. As it happened, even with computer speaker sound the theme for Hero's Quest is burned into my mind. It was written by Sierra mainstay Mark Siebert. You can listen to the theme on this website devoted to Sierra's videogame music. Or you can watch the entire introduction of the original version of Hero's Quest here; the iconic bit that's locked in my memory starts at about the 30 second mark.
When I originally got this game from my friend Ryan I didn't have a hard drive, so I flipped the ten 5 1/4 floppy discs from drive to drive to play the game. Disc 1 was startup, Disc 2 was new character creation, Disc 3 was the town of Spielburg, Disc 8 had to be in the drive to load saved games, etc. This wasn't so bad, but when the sequel Quest for Glory II came out I needed to get a new computer because my old computer only had 512K, and it needed an astonishing 640K. A nice chunk of my bar mitzvah money went to a new computer, complete with a sound card, a hard drive and a VGA monitor. Now I was living large.
Unfortunately, after the first two games Sierra opted to release the third installment as a point & click interface. Although the story was still solid and the different characters types were far more differentiated, it wasn't as much fun. The fourth game was also point & click, but worse was that it was poorly tested and had some serious bugs that made beating it a matter of loading and reloading save games and hoping the bug condition didn't happen at a few critical points. I never actually beat that one with all the character types due to that hassle.
Finally, the fifth and final episode came out. I own a copy, but I've never played it. I'm afraid to; the reviews were not positive. On the other hand, there is definitely a part of me that wants to know what happens to the hero, and to Rakeesh and Erasmus and the many other well developed NPCs. Maybe I'll play it with Ryan when I visit him some time.
Tracklist
#1 - Welcome to the Jungle
#2 - Runnin' Blue
#3 - Cryin'
#4 - Mr. Jones
#5 - Blinded by the Light
#6 - Piano Man
#7 - Romeo & Juliet
#8 - Ecstasy
#9 - Seasons of Love
#10 - Red Sweater!
#11 - Insomniac
#12 - It Had to Be You
#13 - Cabaret
#14 - Psycho Killer
#15 - All Along the Watchtower
#16 - When I'm Up
#17 - Alcohol & Pills
#18 - What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted
#19 - Sweet Jane
#20 - Screenwriter's Blues
#21 - Oh My God
#22 - Another First Kiss
#23 - Bonus Tracks
#24 - Corey's Coming
#25 - Jessie
#26 - I Want to Hold Your Hand
#27 - Quest for Glory Theme
Theme From Query For Glory
Mark Siebert
Come a hero from the East
Free the man within the beast
Bring the child from out the band
and drive the curser from the land
Like pretty much every other guy I've met my age, I played video games a lot when I was a kid. My grandfather got me an Atari 2600 one year. That was the only video game console I ever had, but most of my friends had the original NES and it wasn't uncommon for us to rent a game and play it all weekend. More importantly. I had a computer from about the fifth grade onward and through various illicit means I acquired a ton of different games. My favorite gaming company was Sierra Online, and my favorite game of all is without question the original Hero's Quest, which allowed you to play as a fighter, as a magic user or as a thief. Pretty standard stuff in retrospect, but it was the first time I had seen it and I played it more or less constantly. This game was designed by Lori & Cori Cole and was later renamed to Quest For Glory due to trademark issues.
This was just after sound cards became routinely available with computers, and I didn't have one. As it happened, even with computer speaker sound the theme for Hero's Quest is burned into my mind. It was written by Sierra mainstay Mark Siebert. You can listen to the theme on this website devoted to Sierra's videogame music. Or you can watch the entire introduction of the original version of Hero's Quest here; the iconic bit that's locked in my memory starts at about the 30 second mark.
Click to viewWhen I originally got this game from my friend Ryan I didn't have a hard drive, so I flipped the ten 5 1/4 floppy discs from drive to drive to play the game. Disc 1 was startup, Disc 2 was new character creation, Disc 3 was the town of Spielburg, Disc 8 had to be in the drive to load saved games, etc. This wasn't so bad, but when the sequel Quest for Glory II came out I needed to get a new computer because my old computer only had 512K, and it needed an astonishing 640K. A nice chunk of my bar mitzvah money went to a new computer, complete with a sound card, a hard drive and a VGA monitor. Now I was living large.
Unfortunately, after the first two games Sierra opted to release the third installment as a point & click interface. Although the story was still solid and the different characters types were far more differentiated, it wasn't as much fun. The fourth game was also point & click, but worse was that it was poorly tested and had some serious bugs that made beating it a matter of loading and reloading save games and hoping the bug condition didn't happen at a few critical points. I never actually beat that one with all the character types due to that hassle.
Finally, the fifth and final episode came out. I own a copy, but I've never played it. I'm afraid to; the reviews were not positive. On the other hand, there is definitely a part of me that wants to know what happens to the hero, and to Rakeesh and Erasmus and the many other well developed NPCs. Maybe I'll play it with Ryan when I visit him some time.
Tracklist
#1 - Welcome to the Jungle
#2 - Runnin' Blue
#3 - Cryin'
#4 - Mr. Jones
#5 - Blinded by the Light
#6 - Piano Man
#7 - Romeo & Juliet
#8 - Ecstasy
#9 - Seasons of Love
#10 - Red Sweater!
#11 - Insomniac
#12 - It Had to Be You
#13 - Cabaret
#14 - Psycho Killer
#15 - All Along the Watchtower
#16 - When I'm Up
#17 - Alcohol & Pills
#18 - What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted
#19 - Sweet Jane
#20 - Screenwriter's Blues
#21 - Oh My God
#22 - Another First Kiss
#23 - Bonus Tracks
#24 - Corey's Coming
#25 - Jessie
#26 - I Want to Hold Your Hand
#27 - Quest for Glory Theme