Crazy Nick's Software Picks: King Graham's Board Game Challenge

Crazy Nick's Software Picks: King Graham's Board Game Challenge

MS-DOS - USA - 1st edition.

Developer Sierra On-Line Publisher Sierra On-Line Published 1992-??-?? Platforms MS-DOS Genres Board game, Strategy Series Crazy Nick's Software Picks, King's Quest

Crazy Nick's Software Picks: King Graham's Board Game Challenge is a strategy video game developed and published by Sierra On-Line in 1992 for MS-DOS. It was part of the Crazy Nick's Software Picks series of budget computer games, as well as the King's Quest series. This particular title includes a rendition of backgammon and checkers. Each features a few game play variants. It was created using the Sierra Creative Interpreter engine.

Personal

When my cousin got the King's Quest: Collector's Edition in 1994, this game was bundled in with it. I remember playing it at the time and always losing to the AI because, at the time, I had never played backgammon before, and rarely played checkers. On 2020-05-29, I tried playing the game and beat the expert difficulty AI at both checkers and backgammon on my first try.

I don't own this game, but I have beaten it.

Review

4	5	5	4	4

Best Version: DOS

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• The game competently enforces the rules for the games, and also includes variants which you can adjust in the settings.
• I like how King Graham emotes how he's feeling during particularly good or bad moves.

Bad

• The AI isn't particularly bright. I'm not a very good backgammon or checkers player, but I was able to beat the expert difficulty AI in both games without much trouble.
• Although the games have a couple tunes and sound effects, it would have been nicer if there were proper background music.
• I would have appreciated a little customization to the game play. Perhaps different types of checkers and dice as well as alternate backgrounds.

Ugly

• Although it would have been trivial to implement, the game doesn't support two-player mode.

Media

Box Art

The box art is about what you would expect from a budget release: garish. It has some primitive boards of checkers and backgammon, an ugly painting of Graham, and bright eye-catching text.

• 

  North American box.

Documentation

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  Advertisement for Crazy Nick's Software Picks.

Videos

Longplay - Average difficulty.

Representation

Strong female character?	Fail	There are no women.
Bechdel test?	Fail	There are no women.
Strong person of color character?	Fail	There are no people of color.
Queer character?	Fail	There are no queer characters.

Links