http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/kings-quest … yonder/techinfo

http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/quest-for-g … of-war/techinfo

http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/space-quest … ippers/techinfo

Cool! Would a plain VGA 320x200 card (first ever VGA cards) work? What are some of the heaviest games a fast 386 can play? Are these the ones?

As those links indicate, you could run those games on a much, much slower machine if you wanted to – but everything would move very, very slowly and you'd have agonizing load times.

Jorpho wrote:

As those links indicate, you could run those games on a much, much slower machine if you wanted to – but everything would move very, very slowly and you'd have agonizing load times.

I remember trying out Quest for Glory IV on a 486DX 40 and it was nothing to write home about. The game ran well but you couldn't use max walking speeds from the game settings. That one requires a 386, so I bet it would be unplayable on that. Guess I belong more in 486 land.

computergeek92 wrote:

...Space Quest IV...

... How well would they run on a 386 at 33MHz or 40MHz?

My MPU and MT-32 are hooked up to my 386 rig, and SQ4 CD-ROM version plays just right on it.

As such I wouldn't expect trouble with any of the Sierra SCI1 games.

All the games you mentioned in your original post were released between 1990 & 1992 and will run fine on a 386DX-40 with VGA graphics (they were the SCI1.x versions).
In terms of sound, apart from the standard Adlib, Sound Blaster & Pro Audio Spectrum support, most of these games were originally written to support the Roland MT-32 for MIDI playback (some of these also supported the additional sound effects of the CM-32L, notably Leisure Suit Larry 5). However, Sierra did later on release patches to provide General MIDI support for most of their SC1.x games.
Most games released after 1992 were written on General MIDI based hardware, with the Roland SC-55 being the most popular (but still provided MT-32 support via rearrangement of the instruments).

Quest for Glory IV was developed on the SCI2 version and, like most games developed on this and subsequent versions, will yield better performance on a faster 486 based PC (486DX-33 to 486DX2-66, with VLB graphics).
What I've picked up is that it wasn't always necessarily the speed of the CPU, but the speed of the CD-ROM drive (for CD-ROM titles) that slowed things down (a good example would be movies in Space Quest 6).
If you have enough hard drive space, then you can just copy the CD-ROM content (audio files and movie files) to your hard drive and point the files to the location on your hard drive (by editing the resource.cfg file in the installation folder on your hard drive).