Everything about Adventure Game Interpreter totally explained
AGI (
Adventure
Game
Interpreter) was the development tool used by
Sierra Online to create their early
adventure games.
The first
King's Quest game originally used a language named Game Assembly Language, or *.gal, by its designer, Arthur Abraham. When its main designer left, Sierra was unable to complete the game, which had been intended to showcase the technology of the
IBM PCjr.
IBM "donated" its product, AGI, to Sierra to allow development of
King's Quest to continue.
When it debuted in the mid-1980s, AGI was innovative and made impressive use of the technology available at the time. Later versions were adapted to use 16-color
EGA graphics.
By the end of the 80s, however, AGI's 160×200
resolution began to show its age and couldn't compete with newer engines such as
Lucasfilm Games'
SCUMM, which featured
mouse support. In 1990, Sierra abandoned AGI and started using the SCI (
Sierra's Creative Interpreter) engine for their adventure games.
The AGI system was originally designed for the
IBM PCjr and
clones. In the 80s it was also ported to other platforms, and some games were released commercially on the
Apple II,
Apple IIGS,
Apple Macintosh,
Amiga and
Atari ST. Although there's a
Sega Master System version of King's Quest and an
NES version of King's Quest V, it's highly unlikely that they use the AGI software system.
List of AGI games
This is a list of Sierra games made in AGI (roughly chronological order). Note that there have been fan companies and other individuals who have produced usually shareware or 'unofficial' AGI games.
* King's Quest IV was simultaneously produced and published in both the AGI and
SCI formats. The main advantages of SCI are a higher resolution (320x200 rather than 160x200 in AGI), sound card support, mouse support, and a more versatile scripting system. Sierra supposed that contemporary low-end systems would be unable to run the SCI version, thus requiring a 'lighter' version of the game. However, sales figures proved them wrong, and the AGI version was quickly discontinued. Because of its rarity, the AGI version could be considered a collector's item. Note that sound card support is here distinguished from support for the Texas Instruments sound chip featured by the PCjr and early models of the
Tandy 1000 series, which has capabilities beyond the standard IBM "PC speaker" hardware and was well supported by AGI. (Tandy 1000s have the chip because the 1000 was originally planned as a clone for the PCjr.)
Related software
AGI Studio
is an open source program that lets users create games that are based on the AGI engine. AGI Studio is designed for Windows. There is a version for Linux called QT AGI Studio (formerly Linux AGI Studio).
DAGII is an AGI game engine recreation by David Symonds. It can only play games that are built into its database, and the compatibility isn't high. It is still under development, and runs well under Linux/Unix and Mac OS X.
GBAGI is an AGI game interpreter for Game Boy Advance.
JAGI is an open source AGI game engine recreation by Jens Christian for Linux. It isn't very advanced, but it's very portable.
MEKA was the first AGI game engine recreation available to the public. The name is an acronym combining the last names of the authors (Joakim Möller, Lance Ewing, and Peter Kelly), and the word Adventure. It is open source and is only available for DOS.
NAGI is an open source AGI game engine recreation for Linux and Windows that's mostly complete and has additional features such as mouse support.
Sarien (Sierra AGI Resource Interpreter Engine) is an open source game engine recreation that can run AGI games. Sarien works on Dreamcast, GP32, Linux/Unix, and Windows. It has merged with ScummVM, now being one of the several engines supported by it.
ScummVM recently gained support for AGI games by merging the Sarien code. ScummVM works on a wide variety of platforms including AmigaOS, Dreamcast, GP2X, GP32, Linux/Unix (BSD and several others), Mac OS X, MorphOS, Nintendo DS, Palm OS, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Windows, Windows Mobile/CE and SymbianOS.
WinAGI Game Development System is a new development system that allows you to create AGI based games. It includes many significant tools and features that can't be found in AGI Studio. AGI game creation is made significantly easier with WinAGI.
See also
Avis Durgan
Sarien
ScummVMFurther Information
Get more info on 'Adventure Game Interpreter'.
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