King’s Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella dropped in 1988 and completely flipped the Sierra adventure game formula by making Princess Rosella the lead instead of King Graham, a first for the series and one of the earliest PC games to feature a female protagonist. Built on Sierra’s new SCI engine, it was a huge leap forward with 256-color EGA graphics and full MIDI soundtrack support that made your Sound Blaster actually earn its keep. The game starts with Rosella getting yanked into the magical land of Tamir to save her dad and grab a magic fruit—classic high-stakes fairytale stuff with a timer constantly looming over you. It’s brutal, quirky, and very “save often or else,” but for PC gamers in the late ‘80s and ‘90s, it was a defining point-and-click adventure that proved the genre could be cinematic before “cinematic” was even a buzzword.