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YMMV / King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow

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  • Accidental Innuendo:
    • When Alex pulls out the Magic Map: "Alexander feels a strange pulling sensation."
    • Old Bill Batter, the Vision Gnome. "By all that's beautious, fair and sightly, four morons do I sleep with nightly!"
  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • This was invoked in the Guidebook of the Land of the Green Isles regarding the Isle of Wonder. The wacky and surreal landscape was at one point stated to be the creation of a wizard as a present for his child; an island that came to life to console a princess who was kidnapped and placed there; or simply that the creator of the Universe took a break from the serious business of creation to indulge a sense of humor.
    • How smart is the Minotaur? It's clearly skilled enough to kill Alexander if he's unprepared, and the fact that it can both talk and appears to be sacrificing Lady Celeste on an altar hints to an intelligent, if cruel, creature. However, like a bull, it can be distracted by a red cape (or scarf, in this case)
    • What was it that made Beauty so eager to stay for eternity with the Beast? Did she simply wish to escape the torment of her Wicked Stepmother? Did she fear her stepmother would do worse than simply work her to the bone and berate her? Did she do it because she felt pity for the Beast? Was it because Alexander was the only person who was truly kind to her after her father's death?
  • Awesome Music:
    • The 90's-tastic Award-Bait Song "Girl in the Tower", composed by Mark Seibert and performed by Bob Berghold and Debbie Seibert. How kick-ass is that?
    • The rest of the soundtrack by Chris Braymen is one of Sierra's best. The whole soundtrack was also a showcase for the Roland Sound Canvas, which happens to be the basis for the software synthesizers included in modern versions of both Mac OS X and Windows. Yes, General MIDI music can actually sound great. Some of the best tracks include the spooky Night Mare's theme, the deep thrums of the Druid's Grove, and the warm Oracle's theme.
  • Epileptic Trees: The Black Cloak Society is mentioned precisely once in the game, in an easily missed optional letter in the harder route through the game. Nothing much is ever explained about the BCS, yet fan theories run wild about it.
  • Even Better Sequel: This game was received with rave reviews, is generally regarded as the highest point in the franchise, and perhaps the only one that can be enjoyed at face value today. It is also the only entry written by Jane Jensen rather than series creator Roberta Williams. Unsurprisingly fan games like The Silver Lining are more inspired by VI than the earlier entries.
  • Fan Nickname: The Cliffs of Logic are often known by fans of the King's Quest series as "The Cliffs of Copy Protection".
  • Good Bad Bugs: While the riptide will kill Alexander if he walks too far from the beach, there are gaps. It's possible with some time and dedication on the Isle of Wonder to wade far enough to the right to zone into the next screen over. Alexander will enter the screen seemingly still submerged up to his waist in water even while moving on dry land.
  • Idiot Ball: Alexander in the final confrontation with Alhazred.
    • In the golden path, he gets his hands on Shamir's lamp but, rather than order the genie to imprison Alhazred in the dungeons, he simply commands Shamir back into his bottle.
    • In either path, he stands there doing nothing while Alhazred walks up and pulls a sword on him, despite Cassima explicitly warning him about Alhazred's sword.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • "Alexander feels a strange pulling sensation."
    • MMAAGGICC SMAAAAAAAAAAAAPP!!
    • "Tickets Only! Neeeeeeext!"
    • "Don't jaki the run!"Explanation
  • Most Wonderful Sound: The chime for solving a puzzle.
  • Narm: For whatever reason, Cassima has unique voice recordings for her Say My Name / Big "NO!" in response to the different ways that Alexander can be killed in in the final battle against Alhazred. Some of them, like if Alexander gets blasted by Shamir after catching up to Alhazred or if he takes too long to hit him after Cassima stabs him in the back, are really good, especially for their time. The others... well, Dull Surprise is an understatement.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Where to begin...almost being burned to death as a Human Sacrifice, the Minotaur with his ghastly altar, the catacombs and their Death Traps. The Faux Death (if you don't know it's fake), and the entire Land of the Dead. Play this and King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella with the lights on.
    • Trying to stop the wedding (in both endings) is a different kind of horror. Imagine walking in on the person you love most in the world, just as they enthusiastically pledge themselves in marriage to someone else. And when you attempt to stop the ceremony, they order your death.
  • Once Original, Now Common: The CD-ROM version was one of the first to feature Hollywood voice acting, a practice that is now routine. The fact that these were Hollywood actors saying the lines was a big thing, even though a viewer more used to higher standards (among them an actual voice acting industry) hearing the bland uninteresting acting might find it a little weird how this game was so big. This was also of the first games to have a song about it. In the age of soundtracks and licensed music, this is also much more routine.
  • Polished Port: In 1993, a PC CD-ROM adaptation of the game was released for both the MS-DOS and Windows 3.1x versions, and besides the voice-acting and mouth movements in character portraits that had been absent in the floppy diskette version on MS-DOS, the Windows version had high-resolution graphics and enhanced character portraits with surprisingly accurate mouth movements, blinking eyes, eyebrow movements and mood changes.
  • Porting Disaster:
    • While the Amiga version is one of the better-regarded ports of Sierra games, it shows how far the PC's graphics and sound capabilities had outpaced the Amiga in the early '90s. It's also missing most of the cool intro due to the Amiga's limited disk space.
    • Most fans consider the DOS CD-ROM version available from GOG.com to be this due to the use of the standard low-resolution character portraits. Fortunately, GOG later replaced the DOSBox version with ScummVM, which does use the Windows CD version. It was also possible for any reasonably technically proficient user to point ScummVM at the game directory and play the Windows version that way.
  • Tear Jerker: The incredibly detailed description of The Lord of the Dead seeing his life in the magic mirror.
    The mirror's surface swirls with darkness for a moment, then fills with images even blacker. Reflections of despair, of wailing souls, of shackles colder and more immutable than any forged by man, of a world of thirsts that can never be quenched. Alexander feels the mirror tremble in his grasp and is glad that he cannot see its face, but the Lord of the Dead is transfixed to the mirror, to the screening of his life. Things long forgotten are once more uncovered: his enslavement to this throne while still a man; the years of watching misery and horror and growing ever more numb to it; the seep of his own humanity; the slow growth of a new thing altogether which became that which he is now. His is an existence that has no possibility of redemption, no end.
  • That One Level: The Catacombs. Unwinnable by Design moments are the norm in King's Quest titles (and Sierra titles in general), but the Catacombs tend to be really mean about it. You'll need to have four specific items before entering - the brick, the tinder box, the hole in the wall, and the red scarf - or the catacombs become impossible to complete (and you're locked in, so it's impossible to backtrack and grab the items). Not that the game gives you any hints whatsoever on the items you need. The game provides one tiny mercy in this regard - if you have all four items when you talk to the Winged Ones, you'll be sent straight to the catacombs; if not, you'll be sent back to the beach and given one last opportunity to prepare (and whether you have the requisite items or not, the next time you return it's off to the catacombs with you) - but if you're playing the game for the first time, it's impossible to know this is the case. Add into this that the catacombs include an obtuse floor puzzle and are a labyrinth of criss-crossing corridors which include some rooms that immediately kill you upon entering (once again, with no prior warning as to their presence). Oh, and you have to fall into what looks like a death trap to proceed (so if you're quick with the reload button, you may wind up stuck with no apparent way forward). Yeah... for a lot of people who played this game in the pre-internet days, the catacombs were where the game ended.
    • The Guidebook contains a poem with the needed clues to solve the floor puzzle, as well as a map of the Catacombs marking the death rooms, but it was extremely easy for players to overlook both of these resources.
  • Tough Act to Follow: One of the possible reasons King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride isn't as beloved as this game, due to the lack of involvement by Jane Jensen. Jensen's next project, Gabriel Knight, averted this, becoming a strong contender with this game for "best adventure game of all time."

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