Game 6: Space Quest I - Won!

Roger Wilco Journal Entry 2: "Who would have thought? Roger Wilco, the former janitor of the Arcada, saves the planetary system from the Sarien’s evil plot. After barely surviving the skimmer journey to Ulence Flats, I then sold the skimmer for 30 buckazoids with a jetpack thrown in. I knew I needed a lot more money than that however, so I played the pokies and amazingly won enough cash to purchase my own spacecraft and a droid to go with it. I’d overheard some guy at the bar crapping on about an exploding planet in sector HH, so I figured that’s where the Sariens must be. I flew there and used my jetpack to get onboard their ship where I managed to enter the self detonation code into the Star Generator and escape in a shuttle before it exploded into a million pieces. I’m a hero on Xenon and they even gave me a golden mop as a reward! Best...day...ever!!!"

I’ve completed Space Quest I in just less than three hours, but there’s no way anyone playing for the first time without cheating would be able to do so. After the struggles I had in the first half, there were two or three more really very difficult parts to the game in the second half that my memory thankfully assisted in pushing me down the right path. Before I get into that stuff, my last post left off with Roger about to get in a skimmer and travel to Ulence Flats. It’s certainly worth noting that the way this journey is represented is through a racing style (well, dodging anyway) action sub-game. It’s the first example of an action section I’ve come across in an adventure game if you ignore Below the Root which was really a platform game with adventure elements. All you have to do is move the skimmer left and right to dodge rocks. If you hit around four or five of them, you’re dead. My first attempt to get through it met with a very quick end as I was running the game at the Fast speed setting. After setting it to Slow (I guess this is a form of cheating, but the section gets old really quickly at higher speed), I made it through relatively easily.

Most of the hits I took occurred when I tried to take screenshots for the blog. The things I do...

As soon as you arrive at Ulence Flat you are confronted by a salesman asking if you’d accept 30 buckazoids for the skimmer. If you accept this offer, I don’t really see how you could finish the game, but I’d love to hear from anyone that knows any different. If you decline his offer, he will appear later with another more inviting one, which is the 30 buckazoids plus a jetpack. I only remember bits and pieces from the first time I played the game, but one thing I do remember is that this is what caused me a lot of trouble. Since you need the jetpack a fair bit later in the game, it’s pretty unreasonable to expect any player that accepted his first offer to realise that’s where they made a mistake. As soon as the guy made the first offer, my instincts told me not to accept it, so I assume the pain I went through the first time round is still stabbing me somewhere deep in my subconscious mind.

Ulence Flats: A bar, a space ship store and a droid store. What else could you need?!

The poker machine sub-game is done quite well, although having the ability to save after every big win kind of makes it only a matter of time before you get enough buckazoids to buy a spaceship and a droid. It’s typical of the game, given its penchant for killing Roger as many times as possible, that if three skulls come up on the machine, it instantly disintegrates you with a laser. It’s not the first case of gambling to appear in an adventure game, as I first came across it in Déjà Vu, with similar results (use the small amount of cash you have to win enough to last the rest of the game). Amusingly, different performers appear on stage in the bar where the poker machine is, including ZZ Top playing one of their recognisable tunes. The band actually sued Sierra for putting them in the game without their permission, as did Toys R Us after Sierra named the droid store Droids R Us. Interestingly, the game company clearly didn’t care, as they used both ZZ Top and Droids B Us (notice the small change) in the remake a few years later, and even made a parody of the Toys R Us mascot Geoffrey Giraffe.

It's like the Cantina Bar in Star Wars, except with ZZ Top cranking out Sharp Dressed Man

Once you get everything you need and fly to the Deltaur, it’s only a matter of time before you save the day and are rewarded with the golden mop. Well, it is if you were fortunate enough to meet the scientist way back on the Armada to get the cartridge which contains the detonation code for the Star Generator and accepted the second offer of the salesman with the jetpack thrown in. Otherwise you’re screwed! What I’m about to describe to you pretty much sums up the tone of Space Quest. After entering the Sarien’s ship, which is called the Deltaur, you very quickly arrive in a laundry with a message telling you that footsteps are approaching. Given the dryer is the only item of any note in the room, the logical thing to do is to hide in it. A Sarien crewman walks into the room but doesn’t see you tumbling round and round in the dryer, so departs. When you get out of the dryer, you’ve miraculously changed clothes from your spacesuit into a Sarien outfit complete with helmet, meaning you can wander around the ship without drawing attention.

A stroke of genius you say!? It's not exactly the sort of thing you can plan to happen.

It’s completely silly stuff, but you just can’t help but have a good belly laugh and accept it. In the end that’s what Space Quest is all about. Entertainment! It certainly succeeds on that front, which is probably why the game and series gained such a huge following (it has sold over 200,000 copies, not including the many compilations it’s part of). It also must be why so many pushed on despite some really very nasty puzzles that would otherwise make it too frustrating to finish. I’m looking forward to playing the second game in the series, but not as much as I am to playing something I’ve never completed previously. Thankfully, the next game on the list is Black Cauldron, another Sierra game, but one I’ve never even seen. I’ll get straight into that as soon as I give Space Quest I a PISSED rating. Should be interesting...

194 out of 202 and a golden mop. I feel adequately rewarded for my efforts.

Game 6: Space Quest I - The Hilarity of Death

Roger Wilco Journal Entry 1: "What a shitty day! Just when everything was finally going to plan (cruisy job, free travel), I find myself caught up in some villainous scheme having to save the planetary system. I don’t have much idea about how this Star Generator gizmo works, but these Sariens clearly wanted it. They’ve killed everyone on the Arcada to get it, but somehow I managed to get away in an escape pod. Now I’m stuck on some strange planet called Kerona, where I have to avoid death at every turn. Thankfully I’ve just made contact with some aliens that seem rather friendly, and after killing a really ugly monster called Orat, they’ve offered to assist me with transportation. It’s a good thing too, as if the data I took from Arcada is correct, the Sariens are going to use the Star Generator to destroy Xenon and all its inhabitants. I don’t know what I can do to stop them, but I have to try! Damn it...I don’t get paid enough to do this!"

I’m ninety minutes into Space Quest and really enjoying it. My previous experience with the game is definitely helping me get through it pretty quickly, but that’s not to say it’s easy. In fact, there have already been two instances where I’ve been totally stuck, and had to restore back to earlier save games, realising I’d missed something. The first thing to mention is that the game jumps from location to location much quicker than any of the King’s Quest games, so there really isn’t any need (or benefit) to drawing a map, despite the manual suggesting you do so. There are only a handful of screens on the Arcada before you rocket off to Kerona, where there are only a handful of screens before you go underground, and so on. For this reason, the game feels a lot more linear than the King’s Quest games where you spent the first hour wandering the land looking for items, but that does allow the plot to play out in a more satisfying fashion.

It's no Tie Fighter, but it will do

Apart from the science fiction setting, the main difference between King’s Quest and Space Quest is the comedy. Nothing is taken seriously in Space Quest and I find myself chuckling regularly at the stupidity of it all. The Two Guys from Andromeda understood very well that adventure games can be frustrating, particularly when your character dies every few minutes, so with this in mind they put a lot of effort into making the player’s failures enjoyable. Whether it’s being bounced like a basketball and then eaten by Orat or blown into a thousand bits by a Sarien Spider Droid, the deaths and the game’s mocking messages that come after them are both grotesque and funny. Even though I’ve played the game before and know how to avoid the majority of places and things that can kill Roger, I’ve still died plenty of times already, including around thirty seconds after starting. It’s credit to the developers that you not only happily restore and try again, but you do so with a big smile on your face.

Orat may not be pretty, but he sure got game!

The game does however suffer from a lot of the same flaws that marred the King’s Quest games, but that’s not surprising given it’s using the same technology. That being said, the main issues I’ve had so far have been to do with game design rather than the technology itself, suggesting the creators didn’t think these elements were broken to begin with. Of particular note, the overly difficult line of sight challenge that made finding the key on the closet in King’s Quest III so difficult returns in Space Quest. If you “look at pod” after crashing on Kerona, but are standing on the left or right side of it, you get a message saying “the pod seems to be semi-destroyed”. Yet if you’re standing directly in front of it when you type the command, you get “A glimmering catches your eye. Upon closer inspection you see that a piece of highly reflective glass has broken out of the pod window”.

Look, I know it makes sense that I wouldn't see it from the side, but...

Considering you absolutely need this piece of glass to get through the underground section, and have no way of returning to the surface once you’re down there without it, that’s a pretty harsh puzzle that surely would have caused a few Rubik’s Cubes to be thrown across the room in disgust back in the late eighties. One of my other Sierra pet hates that returns for Space Quest is the way NPCs appear randomly when entering screens. It’s fine that Sariens are sometimes there to shoot you in sections of the Arcada while other times they’re not, but having a character that you actually need to talk to (the dying scientist in the library) appear only occasionally gives luck too much of a place in a game that should be based around problem solving (and the occasional use of reflexes). I realise that you don’t have to get the cartridge to finish the game (I don’t think I ever saw the scientist the first time I played the game), but it sure makes it easier and less confusing.

Where were you in 1992? In fact, where were you the last three times I walked through here?

While on that subject, I mentioned in my introduction post for the game that there are combinations and codes that are only available in the manual. Well, as much as I was led to believe that was the case by articles on the net such as Wikipedia, that hasn’t turned out to be the case. I was surprised to find that there’s nothing of the sort to be found in the manual, and that everything I’ve needed (including the name of the cartridge and the Star Generator activation code) can be found in-game. I seem to recall needing coordinates when travelling through space later in the game and I can only assume I need to keep an eye out for those too. Anyway, I’m keen to get back to it. I’ve just been given a skimmer by the aliens on Kerona and am about to travel to Ulence Flats to try to get myself a spaceship. If all goes well, I’ll be back tomorrow with a Won post. Even if that’s not the case, I’m sure I’ll have a few humorous disasters and death scenes to report on.

You are obviously in need of a body of some sort.

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!

Game 5: King's Quest III - Final Rating

I really don’t know what sort of rating King’s Quest III will end up with. On the one hand, it does try to take the series somewhere fresh, with new characters and elements, but on the other hand, the interface and technology behind it all are pretty much identical. There’s no point pondering any longer, let’s see what happens...

Puzzles and Solvability
Hmmm...I think the game should be punished in this area, for the simple reason that quite a few puzzles are really only solved through mere chance. They may seem logical after the fact, but the thought processes required to solve them the first time round just don’t have much of a place in adventure games for good reason. Only seeing the key on the cabinet if you’re standing far enough away from it, reaching Daventry by ship only by waiting fifteen minutes doing nothing, and teleporting past the Abominable Snowman through random chance, are the types of puzzles that require luck (or unnatural perseverance) to solve. Adding a real time element to the game was certainly brave, but I think the fact this feature wasn’t used again speaks volumes. As for the rest, well the majority of puzzles are solved through the use of spells, so the major part of the game revolves around collecting ingredients and following the manual rather than doing any sort of real thinking. All things considered, I’m giving it a 5.

70 of the 210 points are gained by simply entering the recipes directly from the manual.

Interface and Inventory

Both the interface and inventory are almost identical to the way they were in King’s Quest II. There are not many places where the horrible stair climbing nightmares take effect. The stairs in Manannan’s house do unfortunately suffer from this however, which can be torture when you’re trying to get back to your room to hide items under your bed and the wizard is due back any second. The biggest change comes from an item rather than the interface itself, with the magic map allowing you travel quickly around Llewdor to anywhere you’ve been previously. Many fans criticised this for making this part of the game too easy, but given how difficult it is to find the map in the first place, I think its ok. The only real noticeable change for the negative is that the “look” command doesn’t give you very much detail this time round. After the progress made between games I and II, it’s disappointing that the game moved backwards, making you look at things very specifically to get any useful details about your surroundings. Wouldn’t it have been nice to go into Manannan’s bedroom, type “look” and be told that there’s something shiny on the top of the closet. It was 5 for part II, so it’s 5 here.

Forcing the player to use the keyboard to navigate this path multiple times is nasty!

Story and Setting

I guess Roberta Williams deserves some credit for changing things up for King’s Quest III. Instead of merely following the next adventures of King Graham of Daventry, the player finds themselves in the shoes of the enslaved Gwydion, in a land called Llewdor. Early reviews criticised this move, suggesting the game felt separate to the series its name suggested it belonged to, but I guess these critics would have had egg on their faces, as they clearly didn’t play through very much of the game. It turned out Roberta had a plan all along, and things come together quite nicely in the end. That being said, Llewdor doesn’t really feel all that different to Daventry, which isn’t surprising given the colours and illustration techniques are unchanged. There isn’t as much of the fairy tale storytelling found in part III, with the three bears being the most obvious inclusion, and with foes such as Medusa and the Abominable Snowman making an appearance, the game has a slightly darker tone all up. I kind of prefer that, so I’m giving the game a 6 in this category.

Daventry has been invaded by a three headed dragon and you give me a small stone!?

Sound and Graphics

Sound effects are unchanged from the previous two games, so there’s not much to say about that. Moving Al Lowe away from music into a designer role had a negative effect when it comes to the tunes in the game. King’s Quest II had a bunch of easily recognisable tunes showing up at appropriate times whereas King’s Quest III has none of these. I believe its Al’s wife handling the music after his promotion and while she doesn’t disgrace herself, I can’t say any of its particularly memorable. The graphics and animation use exactly the same techniques as the previous games and while Manannan’s house has some nice details, once you move out into Llewdor, the world looks extremely familiar. If I weigh up the increased graphical detail with the lower musical standard, I’m forced to give part III the same as part II, which is once again a 5.

The dragon looks heaps better than the one in part I. I'd say on par with Skyrim!

Environment and Atmosphere

As with King’s Quest II, the third game in the series wraps around from north to south, but the west and east have boundaries (more specifically the desert to the west and the ocean to the east). Given the magic map allows you to travel anywhere you’ve been previously by clicking on that location on the map, I think Roberta and co. missed an opportunity to remove the wraparound effect altogether. It certainly makes Llewdor feel small (particularly as it’s made up of only twenty screens outside Manannan’s house) and doesn’t give any suggestion that Gwydion is exploring only a small portion of a larger unseen land. As previously mentioned, the tone of King’s Quest III is slightly darker than the earlier games, but it’s still kid friendly despite the fact the main villain kidnaps young boys and kills them on their eighteenth birthday. Nothing much has really changed, so 6 it is.

Many criticised the magic map but I thought it was a nice addition.

Dialogue and Acting
I know I’m sounding like a broken record here, but the fact is King’s Quest III does very little to evolve the adventure genre (if you ignore the time element which was considered a failed experiment). As with the first two games, there are very few occasions where NPCs actually talk to Gwydion and a lot of the “dialogue” is narrative or overheard conversations. It is all done in a very similar style to the previous games, which means very basic descriptions and twee use of language. I can’t say anything stands out in particular, so I’ll cut to the chase and give this a 4.

It’s a 52 for King’s Quest III, which is not as high as I was expecting prior to playing. The general feeling in reviews around the net suggest this entry to series was groundbreaking and one of the best, but I can’t ignore the frustration caused by bad design and deviant (if not illogical) solutions to puzzles. Perhaps my scores are a bit skewed by the fact I’ve played these games before and it’s possible I would have a completely different outlook if I was experiencing them for the first time. I guess we’ll never know! Onto Space Quest we go...

Game 5: King's Quest III - Won!

Gwydion Journal Entry 2: “So much has happened since I last wrote! I’ve travelled further than I ever thought possible, and I’ve made sure that nasty Manannan will never abduct young boys ever again. After learning a bunch of spells from his laboratory, I managed to turn him into a cat, giving me the time I needed to really explore this land. I found an Oracle in a cave who told me about my parents in Daventry, who just happen to be the King and Queen! Unfortunately, she also told me that Daventry has been invaded by a three-headed dragon, and that each year this monster demands the sacrifice of a young maiden. This year that maiden was to be my very own sister Rosella! Obviously I couldn’t let that happen, so I took a ship to Daventry, journeyed through the perilous mountains (that abominable snowman will forever give me nightmares!) and eventually used my new fandangle spells to defeat the dragon. I saved my sister in the process and met my mum and dad in their castle, making this unquestionably the best day of my life!”

I’ve completed King’s Quest III as expected, but there were a couple of difficult challenges that kept me at it for much longer than I anticipated. As I mentioned in my last post, I’d already collected the vast majority of items needed to cast all the spells found in the manual, so I set about casting as many as I could while Manannan was sleeping. Remembering that the way to defeat Manannan was to turn him into a cat, the first thing I did was create the Transforming Another Into a Cat cookie, crumbled it into the porridge I stole from the three bears’ house, and gave it to him when he woke up demanding food. With him out of the way, I kind of figured completing the rest of the game would be fairly straight forward. Not so! From here on in the game is really quite challenging, and not really in a good way I’m afraid.

And good riddance you cranky old bastard!

After meeting the Oracle, and therefore gaining my true quest and getting the final ingredient I needed to cast the last spell, I convinced the captain of a ship that had very conveniently made port at Llewdor to take me to Daventry. Of course, as is the way in stories like this one, these sailors turned out to be pirates, and I soon found myself held captive below deck. Getting above deck wasn’t an issue, and I gained plenty of information by spending time with the rats on the ship, due to having cast the Understanding the Language of Creatures spell. I could even make all the pirates fall asleep using my Causing a Deep Sleep spell, but this resulted in a Game Over message, as there was no-one left to steer the ship to Daventry. I must have spent around an hour and a half trying different things on that ship, but I couldn’t find any way to get off, or any items that might be useful. Obviously I’d figured it out previously as I’d finished the game years ago, but my memory wasn’t giving me anything useful. I was downright stuck!

So I take it the rats have used the same Language spell I have?

The solution is going to sound ridiculously obvious! I simply had to wait (literally) for the ship to travel all the way to Daventry before making the crew fall asleep. This would have happened much earlier, had I not been killed several times through desperate experimentation, but since I’d been reloading over and over again, the fifteen or so minutes that needed to go by for us to arrive at the destination simply never occurred. It was mere chance that I walked away from the game for a few minutes in frustration and then came back to find a "Land ho, Captain" message on the screen. I can’t think of another adventure game that makes you simply do nothing for fifteen minutes as a solution to a problem, and I have to wonder how many players have torn their hair out in frustration, seemingly having nowhere to go and nothing to do. I’m sure that the feedback that Sierra got for these time based puzzles (not knowing that Manannan is ever going to leave the house at the start of the game can create a similar reloading scenario) made them decide not to run any future games in real time.

Ninety minutes of frustration could have been avoided by doing...nothing!

Further challenges awaited me both prior to getting off the ship (you have to jump!) and then in the mountain range that separated the ocean from Daventry castle. Without going into great detail, King’s Quest III went from seeming pretty straight foward to being frustratingly illogical half way through, a sentiment proved very nicely once the you find yourself confronted by the abominable snowman. On entering a particular screen in the mountains, the snowman charged at me and killed me. When I reloaded and entered the screen numerous times, eventually he just wasn’t there (a stupid technique I’ve been forced to use in all three King’s Quest games), but then he reappears with the same result on the very next screen! Finally I reached a screen where no matter how many times I entered it the snowman would kill me within seconds. I decided to try my Teleportation spell, only to find myself teleported way back to first mountain screen.

For a creature seen by few, the Abominable Snowman sure shows up a lot when I'm around!

It would have been very easy to assume that teleportation therefore wasn’t the solution to the problem, but as it turns out, the teleportation effect is random. On my second attempt, I was teleported to a screen I’d never been to before, with a message congratulating me on evading the snowman. This sort of puzzle can be extremely difficult to solve if you’re unfortunate enough to randomly teleport backwards multiple times. I wouldn’t blame anyone for giving up on that idea at that point, even though it’s the only way to progress in the game. Anyway, these frustrations aside, defeating the three headed dragon turned out to be pretty simple (use the spells I haven’t yet found a use for), and the game ending manages to be reasonably satisfying (tying part III to the first two games nicely) while being ambiguous (the game simply stops with King Graham’s feather hat being thrown in the direction of Gwydion and Rosella). The title of King’s Quest IV (The Perils of Rosella) gives me a good idea who catches the hat, and despite the flaws found in part III, I’m very much looking forward to playing a King’s Quest game I haven’t played through before. I’ll need to get through a few other games first though, not to mention apply the PISSED rating to this one.

205 out of 210. I've got no idea where the missing five points are this time.