Space Quest I.
| Space Quest: Chapter I - The Sarien Encounter | |
|---|---|
| Studio |
 Sierra On-Line
|
| Publisher |
Sierra On-Line
|
| Senior Developer |
Scott Murphy Mark Crowe |
| composer | Marc Crowe |
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
October 1986 |
| platform | MS-DOS , Apple II , Apple IIgs , Mac OS , Amiga , Atari ST |
| Game engine | Adventure Game Interpreter (AGI) |
| genre | Adventure |
| Game mode | Single player |
| control |
Keyboard and joystick (PC) Keyboard and mouse (ports) |
| medium | diskette |
| language | English |
| Current version | 2.2 |
| copy protection |
|
Space Quest: Chapter I - The Sarien Encounter , mostly abbreviated to Space Quest I , is a graphic adventure published in 1986 and the first of a total of six parts of the successful Space Quest series, which was produced by Sierra On-Line and ran from 1986 to 1995 was also published itself.
The plot about a space caretaker, conceived by developers Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe , parodies contemporary themes and stars of the entertainment industry, especially science fiction such as the Star Wars and Star Trek films. In reviews, the game received very poor ratings, both for technology and the story told. Regardless of this, the game developed into a great sales success for Sierra On-Line and is now considered a classic.
action
At the beginning, the player has the option of specifying his own name or any name for the hero. The name Roger Wilco, which will later be used for the entire series, is only used if an entry is not made.
The game begins when the hero is doing his job as a caretaker on the scientific space station Arcada. There is a new kind of star generator on board, which has the ability to transform a planet into a sun. With his help, scientists from the planet Xenon hope to save their home system Earnon from destruction, whose sun is slowly going out. The system's planets are already getting colder and food supplies are running low. The star generator is to be tested on the edge of the earnon system when Sarieners - notorious space pirates - board the Arcada and take the device for themselves. The game uses an idea from the movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan . There a “Genesis device” intended for accelerated terraforming falls into the wrong hands and endangers the “United Federation of Planets” as the ultimate weapon in the hands of extremists.
Since the attack took place during a short nap of the hero in a storage room, it initially went unnoticed by the attackers and can - if the player makes the right decisions, especially if the game indicates that it is the sound of steps hear - save with an escape capsule from the destruction of the space station. Unfortunately, the escape capsule crashes on the desert planet Kerona. There, our hero must endure a series of wilderness adventures before he can leave the planet. So he must z. B. destroy a spy drone of the Sariens and - on behalf of an insect-like alien race - kill a monster named Orat on the planet's surface. He later reaches the Ulence Flats settlement, where he wins so much money by gambling in the only bar that he can buy a used spaceship and a navigation robot from the local dealer. In the bar he also receives information about the whereabouts of the spaceship on which the star generator is located, whereupon he decides to snatch it from the Sariens.
With cunning and skill, our hero succeeds in infiltrating the Deltaur, the spaceship of the Sariens, and activating the self-destruction sequence of the star generator. Before the Sarien spaceship explodes, our hero can leave the ship alive. He is then celebrated as a hero on the planet Xenon and receives the Golden Mop as a token of eternal gratitude for his heroic deeds.
particularities
The game offers a multitude of variants to let the character come to death - mostly without warning, sometimes for very banal reasons, sometimes due to spectacular events: a careless step on a cliff, insufficient intake of drinking water, monsters or laser beams. The demise of the hero is sarcastically commented on, depending on the type of death, so that the end of the character and consequently the failure of the player still offers some entertainment value. Nevertheless, it is advisable to make active use of the option to save the game status at any time.
Far more annoying than the frequent death of the game character, critics of the game describe the deliberately built-in dead ends. In several situations, the game makes it possible to forego taking along objects that are crucial for the game or to lose them again through rash decisions in the game, without a possibility of returning or an alternative solution without the object being provided. The game action can be continued for some time, but it can no longer be successfully completed. So it is e.g. For example, it is not a good idea to leave the ignition key in the glider in Ulence Flats, as the glider will be stolen in this case. Selling it to the dealer is a mandatory prerequisite for getting a spaceship again. The same goes for the player who accepts the dealer's offer to buy too early. A jetpack that you need later can only be obtained by haggling over the price of the glider.
Original game (EGA version)
development
The two developers Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe had previously worked on other Sierra on-line adventure games, such as: B. King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne , published in 1985. The first collaboration was their contribution to the Walt Disney Studios commissioned and 1986 under the direction of Al Lowe developed The Black Cauldron . Space Quest I was the first game that you were responsible for in terms of design and implementation. After discovering that they were both enthusiastic about science fiction and had a comparatively quirky sense of humor, they tried to convince Ken Williams , the co-founder and CEO of Sierra On-Line, of their idea of programming a funny space adventure next. The topic was new for Sierra, who had concentrated on puzzles with child-friendly seriousness in a medieval fairytale world with the King's Quest series or on behalf of the Disney Company. With a demo over four virtual rooms, Williams was finally persuaded by the "Two Guys of Andromeda", as the developer duo jokingly called themselves, to approve their project.
As with the other adventures published by Sierra On-Line in these years, the game engine Adventure Game Interpreter (AGI) was used. In October 1986 the game was first released for the PC . In the same year a port appeared for both the Apple II and the Atari ST . In 1987 versions for the Amiga , the Apple IIgs and the Apple Macintosh followed . The different versions were identical in content. There were only differences in graphics and sound.
A year later, at the same time as the sequel was published, the first part was also slightly revised. The version of the first game, available from 1987, was no longer based on AGI V2, but already on the improved V3 and received not only small text additions but also new Easter eggs .
technology
The PC version relied on EGA graphics, displaying 16 colors in a resolution of 200 × 160 pixels. Sound cards were not supported. The sound was output via the internal system loudspeaker . For the Tandy 1000 and PCjr equipped with a sound chip , the game contained a three-part sound. When porting to Apple IIGS, it was decided to support its powerful Ensoniq ES-5503-DOC. Compared to the original version, various sound effects and a 15-part soundtrack have been added. Only the version on Apple Macintosh differed significantly in appearance from the other ports, as there was only a monochrome graphic.
The game uses a 3D pseudo graphic that enables the player to move his character in rooms and landscapes both in front of and behind certain objects placed accordingly in the picture. The figure is controlled via the screen using the arrow keys on the keyboard , but it can also be done with a joystick . In the later ports to other systems following the PC version, the game also supports the mouse as an input device for moving the character.
Commands are entered in text form (e.g. take rock, press button) and are interpreted by a parser . The game contains an action part, in which the hero flies over the surface of the planet with a hover glider and has to avoid rocks.
reception
With over 100,000 copies sold, the adventure was a huge commercial success. Regardless of this, individual testers judged extremely negative. In ASM, Bernd Zimmermann described the adventure, which ranks in the upper price range with a purchase price of DM 85, as "programming insolence" after testing the Atari ST version. The story seems like a “wet and happy round table”, the graphics are weak and poor in detail and the parser is miserable. The American Compute !, judged “one of the better new adventures” to be more positive, however, referring to the version for Apple IIGS from 1988, which has already been revised and enhanced with more detailed sound.
Remake (VGA version)
| Space Quest I: Roger Wilco in the Sarien Encounter | |
|---|---|
| Studio |
Sierra On-Line
|
| Publisher |
Sierra On-Line
|
| Senior Developer |
Scott Murphy Mark Crowe |
| composer | Ken Allen |
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
August 1991 |
| platform | MS-DOS , Mac OS , Amiga |
| Game engine | Sierra Creative Interpreter (SCI) |
| control | Mouse and keyboard |
| medium | diskette |
| language | English |
| copy protection | Request information from the manual |
development
In 1991 Sierra On-Line released a remake of the game for PC, Amiga and Macintosh with improved graphics and controls. Some of the puzzles have also been modified, and individual new scenes and texts have been added. The name of the game was now, adapted to the naming of the more recent titles in the series: Space Quest I: Roger Wilco in the Sarien Encounter .
technology
The remake version of the game for PC relied on VGA graphics with 256 colors in a resolution of 320 × 200 pixels and supported the Sound Blaster , which has meanwhile become the standard sound card in the PC, and the Roland MT-32 . The text parser has also been replaced by a point-and-click control. Sierra On-Line used the Sierra Creative Interpreter (SCI) as a development tool for the remake version of Space Quest 1 .
reception
The sales of the remake were below expectations, so Sierra decided not to revise and remake the second part of the series. However, the reviews of the remake from game testers were much more positive than the original game. Amiga Joker , for example, praised the plot as "strange and funny" and gave the PC version a rating of 80%. There were deductions of 72% for the Amiga version, insofar as Roger “has a strong resemblance to a sleepwalker” on home computers without a built-in accelerator card .
The game is now considered a classic. It was still contained in numerous game bundles , some of which were only released many years later, and is still available as a download together with the other parts of the Space Quest series, for example from Steam or GOG.com . This is why new reports or game reviews have occasionally appeared long after publication. Their basis is usually the technically improved remake, no longer the original version.
Trivia
In the first two games in the series, “Roger Wilco” appears as the name for the hero only if the player does not make use of the option of entering a name of their own choosing at the beginning of the game. In the remake version and later parts of the series, the name is fixed, the player is no longer offered any input options. The first name "Roger" comes from the radio alphabet of the US Army ( Joint Army / Navy Phonetic Alphabet ) from 1941 and was used for the letter R, which in this context for "received" (English for "received") stands. The surname “Wilco”, on the other hand, is a standard phrase from aeronautical radio and is an abbreviation of “I will comply” (English for “I will comply”). In radio communication, however, there is no conceivable situation in which it would make sense to send both immediately one after the other. The combination of Roger Wilco does not suggest a connoisseur of radio language, but rather an amateur or bungler.
The idea of the hero as a space janitor was not entirely new. It follows the modest "Ensign seventh class" of the spaceship "SPS Feinstein" from Planetfall , a text adventure developed in 1983 by Steve Meretzky at Infocom . The game appeared in stores with a box cover depicting an astronaut with a bucket and a mop.
The game contains many references to famous science fiction films and books. The Ulance Flat settlement and the bar are reminiscent of the desert planet Tatooine from the film Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. In the remake version of the game, a shuttle from the TV series Star Trek: Next Generation is parked in front of the bar . Characters from the book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams are also parodied. A depressed droid in the armory of the Deltaur spaceship is very reminiscent of "Marvin the Paranoid Android".
As guest appearances in the bar, the Blues Brothers are on stage and ZZ Top play their hit song “Sharp Dressed Man”. In the remake version of the game, Madonna also appears in a costume known from her music video for Like a Virgin . However, the unauthorized use of ZZ Top led to a legal battle between the band and Sierra On-Line, so the band had to be removed from the game. In the later remake version of the game, however, the appearance of ZZ Top is included again. Another legal dispute occurred with the toy retailer Toys “R” Us , who had sued Sierra On-Line for the name Droids-R-Us used in the game for a chain of stores across the galaxy for used robots. Sierra then changed the name to Droids-B-Us . The lawsuit was unsuccessful. The remake version of the game not only uses a font for the used robot shop that is very similar to the official logo of the retail chain, the Toys-R-Us mascot , the giraffe Geoffrey, can also be seen on the side of the building .
successor
- Space Quest II: Chapter II - Vohaul's Revenge (1987)
- Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon (1989)
- Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers (1991)
- Space Quest V: Roger Wilco - The Next Mutation (1993)
- Space Quest 6: Roger Wilco in the Spinal Frontier (1995)
Web links
- Space Quest series at MobyGames (English)
- Roger Wilco's Virtual Broomcloset (English)
- SpaceQuest.Net - The Ultimate Space Quest Fansite! (English)
- Podcast by game journalists Gunnar Lott and Christian Schmidt on the Space Quest series [1]
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Hendrik Busse: Classic Tests: Space Quest - The Sarien Encounter . In: Adventure Corner , February 5, 2009, accessed on June 11, 2018
- ↑ Bernd Zimmermann When the lights went out . In: ASM , No. 1 special edition, 1987 ( digitized at kultboy.com ), accessed on June 12, 2018
- ↑ James V. Trunzo: Space Quest - The Sarien Encounter . In: Compute! , Issue 99, August 1988, p. 70 ( digitized version from Internet Archive ), accessed on June 12, 2018 (English)
- ↑ Space Quest: The Sarien Encounter . In: Amiga Joker , special issue No. 4, 1993 ( digitized at kultboy.com ), accessed on June 12, 2018