Sunday 15 January 2012

Game 6: Space Quest I - Introduction


Cue ear piercing yet nostalgically epic sci fi music

Finally, after playing through three King’s Quest games, I get the chance to play one of Sierra’s other classic adventure series...Space Quest! Before I get into it I’ll state up front that I’ve completed the first three Space Quest games previously, so I unfortunately won’t be approaching them as a first timer. As with King’s Quest however, I haven’t played them for over a decade, so I don’t expect to completely waltz through them. For some reason, I can remember parts of the first and third games, but nothing at all about part II. I assume that’s due to the graphical improvement that took effect for part III making it memorable, but we’ll see whether the part II void means anything in the coming months (it’s possible I played it during my early nineties alcohol discovery period). Anyway, what’s Space Quest all about and how did it originate?


The original IBM Compatible / Tandy box. Classy isn't it!

It was customary for Sierra employees to begin their game development careers working on King’s Quest games with Roberta Williams before gaining the opportunity to try their hand at producing their own franchises. Scott Murphy (programmer for King’s Quest II & Black Cauldron) and Mark Crowe (graphics for King’s Quest II & Black Cauldron) were the first to take the plunge. To this point, Sierra seemed to be stuck in the mind frame that adventure games needed to have a medieval setting, but Scott and Mark were determined to break the mould. Their game would be purely science fiction, would have a large dose of comedy injected into it, and the main character would begin the game as a lowly janitor. To prove that their idea had legs, they created a four room demo and pitched it to Sierra co-founder Ken Williams. He obviously liked what he saw and gave the duo, which would soon be known as the Two Guys from Andromeda, the green light.


The Two Guys from Andromeda

The back-story goes something like this: The sun of the planetary system known as Earnon is slowly dying, causing the orbiting planets to grow cold and the food to run out. Scientists on the planet Xenon have developed a device called the Star Generator which they plan to use to convert a lifeless nearby planet into a new sun. The device is held on the starship Arcada, which is where our lowly janitor is situated. Unfortunately, space pirates called the Sariens catch wind of the Star Generator and immediately invade the Arcada, intending to turn the device on Xenon itself, thereby destroying all life there, and taking full control of Earnon. While the Sariens board the Arcada and begin killing the crew, the janitor (named Roger Wilco as a reference to Roger, Will Comply) is having one of his customary snoozes in the broom closet and avoids being executed. You begin the game right after Roger exits the closet to find destruction all around him.


You get a good feel for the humour of Space Quest right from the intro.

Anyone that’s played Infocom’s interactive fiction game Planetfall will recognise the similarities between it and the starting point of Space Quest. In Planetfall, you play a mop wielding employee (Ensign Seventh Class) who performs labour aboard a spaceship (S.P.S. Feinstein), before a series of catastrophic events (explosions) cause you to eject in an escape pod which crash lands on an alien planet (Resida). In Space Quest, you play a mop wielding employee (janitor) who performs labour aboard a spaceship (Arcada), before a series of catastrophic events (alien invasion) cause you to eject in an escape pod which crash lands on an alien planet (Kerona). No points for originality then, but Scott and Mark did have plenty of their own ideas to bring to the mix, and the visual element that Sierra’s Adventure Game Interpreter brought to the table made what otherwise appeared to be a mere clone a style all of its own.


Infocom's Planetfall was clearly an influence on Space Quest

Utilising the same technology as the King’s Quest series meant that Space Quest was easily accessible to fans of the former, with all the delights and limitations that the AGI engine brought with it. Once again the graphics are limited to sixteen colours and sound is restricted to the PC’s internal speaker. After King’s Quest III had introduced strong copy protection through the use of spell recipes that were only available in the manual, Sierra continued the practice by having certain required coordinates and codes only found in the Space Quest manual. Just to be clear, I’ll be playing the original game, albeit the slightly improved version 2.2 that was released in 1987, not the 1991 remake that included 256 colours and soundblaster support, not to mention a point and click interface. I think I’ve crapped on enough, so it’s time to put my space suit (or is that a janitor's suit) on and save the universe!


It's time to save the universe!

11 comments:

  1. Hey, just wanted to drop you a line to let you know that I'm one of probably many CRPG Addict readers that is stopping by :) I'm still catching up on posts, but I'm liking them so far. I've noticed that you're emulating CRPG Addict fairly closely, but I like that you tailored a rating system both to the different genre and your own thoughts on what's important about these games.

    Just like with RPGs, there are many adventure games I have and haven't managed to get around to over the years, so it's nice to both feel nostalgia for good games I have played, and to see what I've missed in the games that I haven't.

    I've added your RSS feed to Google Reader and will follow along once I've caught up. Good luck in your quest!

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  2. When I first played SQ1, I never got off the ship. I spent ages wandering around, getting shot by Sariens. Some time later, I managed to get to Kerona, but it wasn't until years later than I finally finished the game (and now I've completed both the original and remake a couple of times). There were some really difficult bits, and plenty of easy ways to die!

    One thing I meant to ask in the previous post, will you be playing the fan-made remakes (when you get to the appropriate year)? Or are you sticking to the original games only (where available)?

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  3. Hi!

    I've found your blog after chet mentioned it in his' and loved it inmediately... I've been a fan of adventure games since Space Quest III and Quest for glory after that, so I think I'll have a real blast from the past reading your blog.

    BTW, playing these games years ago with a VERY limited knowledge of english (i'm spanish)was really challenging... still remember being stuck for weeks in the maze room of Hero's Quest 1 until I found the word "pull"... ahhh memories!

    Jose

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  4. I'm looking forward to catching up with some old favorites here. Really looking forward to Hero's Quest series and Simon the Sorcerer among all the other games I missed out on. Most of the computer games I got to play were bought by my dad, and I didn't have much say in what he got, not that I would really have known what to ask for though.

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  5. @Andy_Panthro: I'm pretty set on just following the wikipedia notable graphic adventure games list. The remakes aren't on there so I guess I won't be covering them. I feel like I need to draw the line somewhere.

    I'd like to play them some day though and by the time I get through the 200 plus games for this blog I would have forgotten the solution for those games. :)

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  6. @Zenic Reverie: I've never played any of the Simon the Sorcerer games so that's something I'm very much looking forward to.

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  7. I love both the original Space Quest 1 and the remake, but the remake has one thing which automatically makes me enjoy it more. The inclusion of the Widget. Space Quest 1, Leisure Suit Larry and Police Quest all have annoying compulsory gambling parts, with SQ1 having the added bonus of being DEATH SLOT MACHINE. Enter typical save, play, restore mechanics when ever you played these parts.

    At least the other two had games which weren't based solely off luck.

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  8. They made a book out of Planetfall. It was....odd.

    I've heard latter Space Quest games were famous for all the hilarious ways you could die, and fans would try and find all of them. Didn't these same poeple go on to do Police Quest?

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  9. Next in my series of 'I thought your readers and you would enjoy": Metefilter talks about Space Quest: http://www.metafilter.com/112677/Thanks-for-Playing-As-Usual-Youve-Been-a-Real-Pantload

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  10. I remember the title music on the PC and its one ear-hurting note frequency very well :) Much later, I discovered that all Sierra AGI adventures have much better Tandy sound. If you're playing with Dosbox, you can enable Tandy sound by setting "tandy" as video card setting. This works for all Sierra AGI adventures, although this tipp may come a bit to late :)

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