Police Quest is a series of computer games produced and published by Sierra On-Line between 1987 and 1993, composed originally by four adventure games designed by Jim Walls, himself a former policeman. In 1995, Daryl F. Gates Police Quest: SWAT was released, but dropped the increasingly less popular adventure game genre, replacing it by a tactical simulator. Altough this and the tactical RTS SWAT 2 still carry the Police Quest name, both are considered to belong to a different series, the SWAT Series.

Games in the series

Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel

Released in 1987 using Sierra's AGI parser engine, Police Quest casts the player as Sonny Bonds, a simple policeman of the fictional town of Lytton, California. Assigned to traffic duty, Sonny's path soon gets crossed with Jessie Bains, a major drug dealer, after he responds to what looked a simple car crash, but turned to be an homicide. As the game progresses, Sonny is assigned to detective and undercover work, tracking clues that might lead to the whereabouts of The Death Angel.
The game is the most realistic of those developed by Sierra by the late eighties, and featured many puzzles where proper police procedure is required to succeed. It had IBM PC, Apple II, Amiga and Atari ST versions. It can also be played on a GBA using GBAGI. A SCI 1.1 enhanced version was released in 1992.

Police Quest II: The Vengeance

After tracking and arresting Jessie Bains, who would be convicted for 99 years for several crimes, Bonds was permanently promoted to the detective division. He started dating his old highschool sweetheart, Marie Wilkans, who helped him in his undercover work in exchange of having her prostitution charges dropped. However, a revenge-bent Bains soon escapes from prison after killing a guard and threatens both happiness and lives of Sonny and Marie.
The 1989 sequel, developed with Sierra's new SCI engine focus more on detective than traffic policeman work, while keeping the same realistic setting. While in the first game the player had to know the proper procedures of arresting an individual and writting a ticket, in Police Quest 2 proper evidence collecting takes most of the focus on the games' puzzles. It was released for the IBM PC, Apple II, Amiga and Atari ST

Police Quest III: The Kindred

With Baines dead, Sonny and Marie got married. Now assigned to lead the highway department, Sonny has to deal with both rampant crime, Marie, who has been stabbed in a shopping mall parking lot, and a cartel operating in Lytton.
Released in 1991 for SCI version 1, it is completely mouse-oriented. After this game, Jim Walls left Sierra by unknown reasons (altough an argument with Ken Williams is one of the strongest possibilities), and was replaced by SWAT founder Darryl F. Gates. It was only released for the IBM PC and the Amiga.

Police Quest IV: Open Season

After Walls left, Darryl F. Gates was given the task of continuing the series, which broke completely with the previous game. The player was no longer cast as Bonds, but as John Carey, and the action was no longer in Lytton, but in real-life Los Angeles. Carey, a LAPD homicide detective whose best friend was killed in the line of duty has to investigate a series of murders with no apparent connection.
Using the final SCI32 version, the biggest difference visually is the use of scanned photos as backgrounds (unlike the hand-drawn scenarions used before) and character sprites of higher quality. It was released in 1993, for both IBM PC and Macintosh.

Afterwards, the series evolved to different genres in the SWAT Series.

External links

Brief history of the series