Any Sierra Old School Quest Games Java GUI suggestions?

Hi
In Grade 11, I had a staggeringly cunning plan to make my own Sierra styled quest game for a big capstone school project. I loved Kings, Space Quest, and they were why I became obsessed with programming, really. I didn't know anything about data structures, optimal memory use, and it was Mhz and MBytes back then.
I did pretty well with one of them in 640x480 Turbo Pascal.
Now that everything has sped up and there are no more memory concerns, making one of these should be straight forward. I want to make the one I was about to make.
I want it to have the King's Quest 1,2,3, GUI feel, 320x200 pixel size feel, but a matrix of elongated blocks (it's probably bigger, with their bigger-than-single-pixels scenery), sometimes smoothed, 16 colors, RGB. In Java. I'll have to structure my own GUI to be like a 320x200. Any paint(..) code? in a big window?
Should I just make a Graphics Object and do a loop for X and Y rows for each screen, and make a character out of the same?
Should I draw each scene back buffered, or make sprites? Other thoughts?
Are any of you Mark Crowe, Ken Williams, or Scott Murphy?
In this Kings Quest 2 Youtube, you can see the full screen feel I am aiming for.

Here

Thanks