Space Quest I: The Sarien EncounterSpace Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge
Space Quest III: The Pirate's of Pestulon
Released: October 1986, November 1987, March 1989
Publisher: Sierra
Platform: DOS, Mackintosh, Amiga
Type: 3-D Graphic Text Adventure
Graphics: Narly
Game Play: Narly
Originality: Narly
How many hours I’ve wasted: Narly
The Nostalgia Factor: Narly
Tied in 6th place in my list of favourite video games are the original first three games in the Sierra Space Quests series.
Ahhh, Roger Wilco… how I miss mis-adventuring with you on all those 8-bit graphic planets. I enjoyed many Sierra 3D adventure games during the late 80’s and early 90's such as Police Quest and Kings Quest, but the Space Quest series has always been my favourite and I still have a serious soft spot for them.
Tied in 6th place in my list of favourite video games are the original first three games in the Sierra Space Quests series.
Ahhh, Roger Wilco… how I miss mis-adventuring with you on all those 8-bit graphic planets. I enjoyed many Sierra 3D adventure games during the late 80’s and early 90's such as Police Quest and Kings Quest, but the Space Quest series has always been my favourite and I still have a serious soft spot for them.
 |
| My brother and I playing Space Quest II** |
For the unititated, 3-D Graphic Text Adventure gaming was exceedingly popular in the late 80's and early 90's*. These games built on the earlier non-graphic text adventures that became available with the explosion of affordable personal home computers in the early 1980's.
These adventure games were a challenging and fun way to burn up your free time back then. The main point was to move your character through the simulated 3-D enviroment, avoiding death (or sometimes for fun, deliberately seeking it out), while typing in rudimentary commands to examine, take and use items you picked up along the way. My parents actually approved of these games as they felt all the typing and puzzle solving was "educational". They clearly never saw us deliberately walking poor unsuspecting Roger Wilco into the metal shredder (and various other traps) to "see" what happened.
My first introduction to these games was actually though my uncle who had just purchased Space Quest I with a new Tandy 1000. I remember being particularly impressed that it was in colour. After my uncle had given up on Space Quest I, he kindly lent it to me and my brother. We got stuck at the same point in the game that he did. We needed to somehow push a box up against a wall to climb into a vent. We tried every variation on that word: container, crate and so forth. In frustration we saved up our pennies and bought ourselves the hintbook. We were rather unimpressed to learn that the only word associated with the object in the game code was "trunk". What kind of hostile aliens bring a "trunk" into space?
Despite this, we now had our thirsts for this type of game whetted and we learned that there was in fact a whole host of theses games available from Sierra. Since this was a couple of years before I started working, my brother and I formed a financial alliance and scrapped together over the course of six months enough money ($79.00) to buy Space Quest II. We did the same when we learned that Space Quest III had been released. Not much later I got my first job (at a local video store*) and started making weekly visit to Radio Shack (which at the time was the only place in town that sold video games).
Unfortunately, by the release of Space Quest IV, the minimum system requirements had long been exceeded on our poor old IBM XT clone. I would have to wait many years for the advent of the internet and dos emulators to complete the series.
25 years on, I still enjoy going back and replaying these games (the 8 bit soundtrack is pretty darned catchy too). While they're not quite as challenging as they once were (while I can't remember what I had for dinner last night, I can still remember everything I need to do to complete these games including that in Space Quest I, I need to pilot Roger's spacecraft to sector HH to rendezvous with the Sarien warship Deltaur), I still enjoy marching poor trusting and unsuspecting Roger into that metal Shredder.
Visiting the planet Ortega without your thermal underwear is fun too.
*By "popular" I of course mean, it was popular amongst the few thousand people playing games on PC's back in 1987.
** Note the XT and the TRS-80 Model 100! The "headphones" my brother are wearing are in fact, noise dampening ear muffs. I have no idea why he was wearing them. Perhaps he found the 8-bit sound annoying... or my suggestions.
 |
| For when you got stuck... a $15.00 hintbook! |
Despite this, we now had our thirsts for this type of game whetted and we learned that there was in fact a whole host of theses games available from Sierra. Since this was a couple of years before I started working, my brother and I formed a financial alliance and scrapped together over the course of six months enough money ($79.00) to buy Space Quest II. We did the same when we learned that Space Quest III had been released. Not much later I got my first job (at a local video store*) and started making weekly visit to Radio Shack (which at the time was the only place in town that sold video games).
Unfortunately, by the release of Space Quest IV, the minimum system requirements had long been exceeded on our poor old IBM XT clone. I would have to wait many years for the advent of the internet and dos emulators to complete the series.
25 years on, I still enjoy going back and replaying these games (the 8 bit soundtrack is pretty darned catchy too). While they're not quite as challenging as they once were (while I can't remember what I had for dinner last night, I can still remember everything I need to do to complete these games including that in Space Quest I, I need to pilot Roger's spacecraft to sector HH to rendezvous with the Sarien warship Deltaur), I still enjoy marching poor trusting and unsuspecting Roger into that metal Shredder.
Visiting the planet Ortega without your thermal underwear is fun too.
*By "popular" I of course mean, it was popular amongst the few thousand people playing games on PC's back in 1987.
** Note the XT and the TRS-80 Model 100! The "headphones" my brother are wearing are in fact, noise dampening ear muffs. I have no idea why he was wearing them. Perhaps he found the 8-bit sound annoying... or my suggestions.
Comments
Post a Comment