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Sierra Space Quest

Blackthorne

Infamous Quests
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Developer
Joined
Jun 8, 2012
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981
Location
Syracuse NY
Codex 2014 Divinity: Original Sin 2
Space Quest III is my absolute favorite. I remember spending the summer of 1990 playing it, exploring all the worlds you could travel too, and being really involved in it. I beat it relatively quickly, for those days, but I kept playing it and finding new little things. I still absolutely love the game - I'm actually a bit gutted that we never got to finish and/or do our remake of it. We had some cool plans for it, and Lambonius made up some really excellent concept art for it.


Bt
 

Boleskine

Arcane
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Sep 12, 2013
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4,045
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/20...ce-quest-iv-roger-wilco-and-the-time-rippers/

Have You Played… Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers

By John Walker on August 31st, 2017 at 3:30 pm.

sq4.jpg


Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.

Space Quest IV is really, really funny. No, I’m not wrong about this!

If you were to go back to most early 90s Sierra adventures, you’d certainly struggle. The Police Quest games, which I adored, are far, far too fiddly, bogged down with paperwork that somehow can lead to a game over if gotten wrong, the King’s Quest games were saccharine shit, the Larry games weren’t half as funny as your pre-teen self thought they were. And the early Space Quest games are god-awful beyond belief. But Space Quest IV is something different. It’s actually laugh-out-loud funny.

I proved this to myself back in 2009, which I’m horrified to realise is a long time ago already, but at least while still in my 30s.

Space Quest IV is a game with the volume of gags that people misremember the LucasArts games having. This is a game where every single detail on every single screen has had about five jokes written for it, depending upon what cursor icon you click on it. And each voiced by the mellifluous tones of the late Gary Owens. His grandiose delivery of the nonsense made it even funnier than the text alone.

The game’s dreadful in so many ways, not least the daft numbers of ways you can die. But it still features that amazing joke where you go back in time and the game is rendered in EGA graphics, and for that it shall always live on in greatness.
 
Joined
Aug 10, 2012
Messages
5,866
Trying too hard. The Larry games were genuinely funny (and even moreso if you're older, I'd wager - and in something that is rare in comedy, later Larry games were funnier than the earlier ones - Josh Mandel probably had a lot to do with this), Police Quest games didn't "somehow" lead to a game over if you got procedure wrong - procedure was the entire point of the game, and certainly not all King's Quest games were saccharine shit (III was fucking brilliant for the time, as was IV for its scope).

Early Space Quest games were not god-awful at all, unless you're a millenial faggot playing them in retrospect 30 years later. III was especially great. Even the first one was pretty good, if rather primitive.

What the fuck is this guy on?
 

Zarniwoop

TESTOSTERONIC As Fuck™
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Nov 29, 2010
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18,641
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
3 is pretty much universally agreed as the best one.

Although the beginning is not great, once you leave the first ship, the incline begins.

After that, probably VI.

Space Quest IV is the grimdark, post-apocalyptic one, it is undoubtedly the least funny.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
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Joined
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Messages
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The Space Quest games (up through V) are also real visual achievements:
SpaceQuestIII-PiratesOfPestulon-Map.png

Here's III.

That was the one thing I didn't much care for in Brian Moriarty's otherwise fantastic LOOM retrospective, when he claimed that some ugly Zack McKracken background was the pinnacle of EGA adventure art when LOOM came out. LOOM may still be the best, but there were other gorgeous games out there, too (most of the Sierra games looked really good).
 

newtmonkey

Arcane
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Aug 22, 2013
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1,725
Location
Goblin Lair
Space Quest: Chapter I - The Sarien Encounter (MS-DOS)
image.thumb.jpeg.95f75e572f965d0c24810bda1bc91f54.jpeg
I decided to take a break from RPGs and play some adventure games. I was able to complete this in around three hours... after many many deaths, having to go back to older saves, and even having to completely restart once. I went into this mostly blind, but I did have to check for hints a couple of times:


  • First was because I didn't realize you could continue walking east past the initial screen east of your crashed spaceship. I was focusing too much on trying to get the spider droid to follow me and kill the sandworms (which isn't possible).
  • Second was at the very end because I didn't realize you could check the Sarien suit for an ID card (though it makes sense in hindsight).


Otherwise, I thought the game was surprisingly fair. I died a lot, but made sure to save every time I accomplished anything, and also made sure to use good descriptions when naming my save files. I honestly didn't mind the frequest deaths.

There are quite a few "dead end" situations here, but I thought they were mostly fair and obvious either right away or after a short time. However, there are two REALLY unfair bits:


  • Selling the skimmer
    The only thing that sort of makes sense, is that you might think you still need the skimmer (the game makes a point of mentioning it still works), so you'd refuse the alien, then when he makes the next offer and mentions a jetpack, you might think "I could use that intead of the skimmer probably."
  • The shard of glass
    You can't even see it, the game doesn't mention it, and you basically just have to know it's there in order to get it. There is nothing fair about this! Although I went in mostly blind, I did know about this somehow; it's possible I read it in a review or forum post long ago and it stuck in my mind.


As shown in the screen above, I wasn't able to get a perfect score. I checked a walkthrough after to see what I missed, but instead was pleased to find that the game actually has multiple solutions for some puzzles. Nice!

---

Anyway, I mostly had a great time with this one and it is one of the very few point-and-click adventure game I've ever completed (Legend of Kyrandia, Call of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Comet, Loom, The Secret of Monkey Island, and Quest for Glory [if that counts]).
 
Joined
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Messages
4,088
Location
Chicago, IL, Kwa
Well-done newtmonkey! I agree that SQ1 is overall an unusually fair Sierra game for its time (my recollection is that SQ2 is not however, so who can say how intentional the fairness was). Are you planning to play the sequels?
 

Neuromancer

Augur
Joined
Jun 10, 2018
Messages
1,238

The shard of glass
You can't even see it, the game doesn't mention it, and you basically just have to know it's there in order to get it. There is nothing fair about this! Although I went in mostly blind, I did know about this somehow; it's possible I read it in a review or forum post long ago and it stuck in my mind.
The funny thing is, you can "use" the shard of glass later even if you didn't collect it.
Seems there is a bug in the game, that it doesn't check if the shard of glass is in your inventory. (At least this was the case in the version I played.)
 

Norfleet

Moderator
Joined
Jun 3, 2005
Messages
12,250
SQ4 is absolutely full of instant gotcha death
Dying is the entire point of a Space Quest game, though. The entire appeal of the game is finding out all the ways to die. If you just played the game straight through without dying, it would be boring.
 
Joined
Jul 4, 2015
Messages
917
Popping back in here to say I really love Space Quest. I feel, and it’s just my opinion but in terms of artistic value, Space Quest and I suppose also Gabriel Knight and Quest for Glory were the best Sierra series. Subjectively SQ was the jewel in their crown. Still waiting on SQ7.
 
Joined
Jul 4, 2015
Messages
917
The Space Quest games (up through V) are also real visual achievements:
SpaceQuestIII-PiratesOfPestulon-Map.png

Here's III.

That was the one thing I didn't much care for in Brian Moriarty's otherwise fantastic LOOM retrospective, when he claimed that some ugly Zack McKracken background was the pinnacle of EGA adventure art when LOOM came out. LOOM may still be the best, but there were other gorgeous games out there, too (most of the Sierra games looked really good).

What’s your opinion on 6, visually
 
Joined
Jul 4, 2015
Messages
917
3 is pretty much universally agreed as the best one.

Although the beginning is not great, once you leave the first ship, the incline begins.

After that, probably VI.

Space Quest IV is the grimdark, post-apocalyptic one, it is undoubtedly the least funny.

I actually feel IV - VI represent the best part of the series. I’m not particularly a fan of the first two, III is good. SQ1VGA is a favorite though
 
Joined
Jul 4, 2015
Messages
917
Trying too hard. The Larry games were genuinely funny (and even moreso if you're older, I'd wager - and in something that is rare in comedy, later Larry games were funnier than the earlier ones - Josh Mandel probably had a lot to do with this), Police Quest games didn't "somehow" lead to a game over if you got procedure wrong - procedure was the entire point of the game, and certainly not all King's Quest games were saccharine shit (III was fucking brilliant for the time, as was IV for its scope).

Early Space Quest games were not god-awful at all, unless you're a millenial faggot playing them in retrospect 30 years later. III was especially great. Even the first one was pretty good, if rather primitive.

What the fuck is this guy on?

Josh Mandel was basically, in my mind, like Sierra’s MVP. Maybe I’m overvaluing him, but he really did amazing largely unsung work on a lot of different games and series. Larry, SQ4 (he wrote large parts of Xenon, the Galleria, other parts), Freddie Pharkus. He did the awesome remake of KQ1.

I mean, Sierra had a lot of incredible people, but he was definitely up there.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
The Space Quest games (up through V) are also real visual achievements:
SpaceQuestIII-PiratesOfPestulon-Map.png

Here's III.

That was the one thing I didn't much care for in Brian Moriarty's otherwise fantastic LOOM retrospective, when he claimed that some ugly Zack McKracken background was the pinnacle of EGA adventure art when LOOM came out. LOOM may still be the best, but there were other gorgeous games out there, too (most of the Sierra games looked really good).

What’s your opinion on 6, visually
I don't like it. It didn't upset me as much as Kyrandia 2->3, Simon the Sorcerer 2 -> 3D, QFGIV -> V, or CMI -> EMI, but I don't like it.
 

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