Space Quest V: The Next Mutation - IBM PC (1993)
American Cover
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Space Quest V
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Space Quest V
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It took him a total of three games, but Roger finally found his way home to Xenon after the conclusion of Space Quest IV. Apparently finding little purpose in being a janitor, he enrolls in the StarCon Academy, where he still spends most of his spare time napping in the closet. After attempting to take his final exam (full of goofy multiple choice questions), a freak glitch in the computer grading system promotes him to Captain and awards him his own vessel. It's technically just a garbage scow, complete with a crew that more or less hates his guts, but it's a step up from mopping floors, right?
The trouble begins when Roger intercepts a transmission from Commander Raemes T. Quirk and Ambassador Beatrice Wankmeister, the woman whom, according to Roger's son back in Space Quest IV, will eventually bear him children. Their ship has been attacked by a militant group of deformed mutants, who wish to inflict their own terrible fate on the rest of humanity. Naturally, it's up to Roger and crew to not only save the galaxy, but woo Miss Wankmeister and prove that he's more than just a lowly screw-up.
Like Space Quest III, you get to take command of the starship from the commander's chair (which makes a rude noise every time you sit on it.) There's a bit more freedom here, with a slightly larger galaxy, although navigation requires referencing the faux tabloid included with the game, acting as copy protection. New and exclusive is the Command icon - a speech bubble with an exclamation point - used for issuing such orders, although they're mostly restricted to your crewmembers and the teleporter. The Smell and Taste icons are sadly absent.
Space Quest V feels remarkably different from its predecessors, for a number of reasons. For starters, it was developed by Dynamix, which had recently been acquired by Sierra. They were known for other adventure games like Heart of China, Rise of the Dragon, and The Adventures of Willy Beamish, but it was their first (and only) title using the SCI engine. Additionally, Scott Murphy had left the company, and the designed rested solely on Mark Crowe. Josh Mandel also had little to do with the game, and their absence definitely makes an impact. Space Quest V is still funny, but it's lacking much of the biting sarcasm - and freakishly dark deaths - that made the previous games so amusing. But the biggest bummer is that Space Quest V was never released on CD, so there's no voice acting, outside of a few brief sound clips stolen from The Simpsons. Apparently Sierra and Dynamix weren't in the best financial shape, and the disk release underperformed at retail, so management couldn't find a justification to dub the game. Truly a pity.
That's not to say it's a total waste though - the humor is just a bit more low key. The whole game is obviously a pretty huge Star Trek parody, mostly because The Next Generation was popular at the time. The first task in the game is to pass the class final exam (which Roger hasn't studied a bit for, of course) and some of the multiple choice questions are quite chuckleworthy, even if it's not as astounding as the bargain bin from Space Quest IV. If you wander through the halls of the academy long enough, you can find Obi-Wan and Darth Vader dueling in the distance. If you pay attention to various screens, you can find animated versions of classic arcade games like Missile Command and Pong. It's also features some outdated references to telecommunications company Sprint, who sponsored the game. You overhear some guards talking about switching telephone plans, and all communications aboard the ship end with the Sprint logo.
At one point, you adopt an Alien-style facehugger whom Roger lovingly names Spike. There's also another run in with the killer bounty hunters from the Gippazoid Novelty Company - they're still angry about the vending machine from Space Quest II, and further infuriated by the destruction of the Terminator Arnoid from Space Quest III. This time, though, it's a female, unintentionally foreshadowing the third Terminator movie. This move is either halfway clever or creatively lazy, depending on your viewpoint, but at least defeating her is less frustrating than the similar encounter way back in the earlier game. The action segments are generally minimal, and even the mini-game - an overly long game of Battleship against Captain Quirk - is optional. Too bad there's no playable Astro Chicken games.
Even though it's not quite as funny, Space Quest V almost makes up for it in other areas. The narrative as a whole is much more focused, and it feels less like Roger is simply stumbling through various situations until the game decides to end. Speaking of which, Roger is a much more fleshed out character. In the previous games, Roger only spoke a few lines, with much of the humor coming from the narrator, but here, our hero comes off as clumsy, yet well meaning and likable hero. The secondary characters - sarcastic pilot Droole, man-hating Flo, and cranky engineer Cliffy, and even nemesis Captain Quirk - all have more personality than is typical of the series. The art style has changed from the other VGA games too, with more of a retro comic book feel, which fits in with the cheesy sci-fi theme. So even though it's not nearly as off-the-wall as some of the other games in the series, Space Quest V is still another fine adventure.
MP3s Download here
Starcon Academy
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Space Quest V
Space Quest V
Space Quest V
Space Quest V
Space Quest V
Space Quest V
Space Quest V
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Space Quest VI: The Spinal Frontier - IBM PC / Mac (1995)
American Cover
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Space Quest VI
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Space Quest VI
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Even though Roger saved the galaxy (again) at the end of Space Quest V, his violation of several StarCon regulations leaves him to be stripped (literally) of his rank. Furthermore, there seems to be some kind of conspiracy to kill Roger, leaving him to be kidnapped while on shore leave. He's saved by his compatriot, Corpsman Stellar Santiago, who seems to have a thing for him, but Roger insists of remaining loyal to Beatrice (who doesn't actually appear in the game.) Roger begins to question these feelings after Santiago sacrifices herself to save him during another attempt on his life. Eventually he discovers that she's still alive, somewhere, and sets off on an adventure to rescue her. When he finds her, he can only save her by miniaturizing himself and diving inside her body. The Incredible Journey-style setting of the final portion of the game is where the game gets its subtitle, "The Spinal Frontier", although the working title was "Where in Corpsman Santiago is Roger Wilco?", before Sierra changed it to avoid potential legal issues with Broderbund and their Carmen Sandiego series.
The sixth and final Space Quest game features SVGA graphics, featuring cleaner visuals and the occasional computer rendered animation. That being said, it's still not quite on the level of Kings Quest VII, which almost approached Disney style quality. While the visuals are crisp, they're too sterile compared to the bright, hand painted visuals of the previous VGA games, and while they may work as a sci-fi setting, they're a bit dreary for something that's supposed to be a comedy. Some of the character artwork is decent, but the artwork for Roger (and Corpsman Santiago, in particular) are pretty ugly. For some reason, other than a few close-ups in key cutscenes, it removes the character portraits during dialogue. Perhaps the developers thought they were unnecessary since the sprites are so much more detailed, but it still creates a disconnect between the characters, especially in areas where it's too small to see them. The interface now takes up the bottom third of the screen, leaving the view a bit more cramped than usual. And for the most part, the music is only memorable when it's being obnoxious.
There are still a bunch of amusing parodies and throwbacks to previous games. You'll find a drunken ET sleeping in a liquor store, who will happily show you his glowing finger, if you try to talk to him. (You can also pull his finger for expected results.) You'll come across a shady Blade Runner-style character who's too lazy to do his own job, and an Alien stalking a lone female spacefarer. There's a mini-game called Stooge Fighter 3, featuring Lar Man, Coiley Joe, and Big Mo. And unlike other Sierra mini-games, it realizes that it plays poorly, and the only way to win is through cheating. One of the most amusing screens is the theater marquees that change every time you re-enter the screen, which consist of over several dozen parody titles. And "cyberspace" in the Space Quest universe apparently consists of little more than a variation on Windows 3.1. At the beginning of the game, you'll run into a drunken Elmo Pug, the wiener kid at ScumSoft, as well as Fester Blatz later on, both from Space Quest III. Roger even keeps some of his mementos from previous games in his quarters, and there are some amusing references to both that stupid owl Cedric from Kings Quest V and the cheesy love ballad from Kings Quest VI.
These moments might induce a smile, or maybe even a small chuckle, but Space Quest VI otherwise severely lacks in the comedy department. The plot is a bit on the dark side, and despite the amount of dialogue, not much of it is really any funny. Gary Owens returns as the narrator, but when he's not given anything interesting to say, it doesn't add up to much. There aren't any particularly amusing death scenes, either, although you're now given the option to "Try Again" if you haven't saved recently.
It also doesn't help that the puzzles are some of the most frustratingly convoluted of anything in the series. Many of them feature numerous tedious steps and involve picking at nearly everything in the scenery to see if you can interact with it. Some of the usable items are so small or so hidden that you can often get stumped just because you couldn't even see it. This is particularly bad at the beginning, where you're not given any real direction. At one point, you need to solve a puzzle by taking apart an electronic device, replacing some chips, and flipping some switches. There was supposed to be a comic book strip in-game to tell you how to do this, but was removed from the final product. Instead, it was printed in the manual leaving many to believe that it was meant to be copy protection - which didn't make much sense, since this is a CD-only game in an era before CD burners became prolific. Furthermore, some copies of the game, including many of the compilations, don't come with the necessary documentation, requiring that you use a FAQ to complete it. And this is just in the first area of the game! The final sections in Stellar's body are just as frustratingly designed.
The Space Quest series has never been perfect when it came to difficulty, pacing, or puzzle design, but you'd figure that with five previous installments, the developers would've learned some lessons. Instead, they've taken all of the worst aspects, exacerbated them, and stuck them in a game that fails to truly bring the funny. Perhaps this is due to a result of management issues - a large majority of the game was designed by Josh Mandel, who left the project before completion, leaving Scott Murphy (the other guy from Andromeda) to pick up the pieces. The result is a game that really could've used some editing to polish it up, resulting in an unfortunately mediocre experience.
Before Space Quest VI was released, Sierra created a demo for distribution on promo CDs. Unlike most of their demos, this one is not only playable, but consists of a storyline that didn't exist in the full game. The evil Bjorn (parodies of the Borg from Star Trek) has invaded the Deepship 86 and turned everyone, except Roger, into piles of sorbet. You can download the demo here.
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Space Quest VI
Space Quest VI
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Space Quest VI
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Fan Games: Space Quest: The Lost Chapter and Space Quest: Replicated
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Sierra games have inspired a whole slew of would-be game developers to try their hand at their own adventure titles. Although many have been announced and are still works in progress, there are currently only two completed ones - Space Quest: The Lost Chapter and Space Quest 0: Replicated. Both run on the AGI engine, with the former running in DOS and the latter running in Windows.
Space Quest: The Lost Chapter takes place between Space Quest II and III, as Roger's escape pod crashes on the surface of another jungle planet. Although some of the sprites show improvement over Sierra's games, the puzzles are absolutely infuriating, and the writing could've used some serious polishing, as it's filled with spelling errors and grammatical issues. It's an amateur effort, and it shows.
On the other hand, Space Quest 0 shows quite a bit more professionalism. It begins much like the first Space Quest game, with Roger being the lone survivor of a brutal invasion, and escaping with his life. In his adventures, he needs to track down the mysterious blue skinned alien chick that he sees at the beginning of the game. The puzzles are much more logical than even Sierra's better games of the era, and the plot and locales, while hardly original, are still pretty decent. It still suffers from some annoying locations - once you escape, you need to swim through a series of tunnels filled with deadly coral, and coming too close will kill you, which is just as bad, if not worse, than the tentacle mess from Space Quest II. But in spite of this, it's pretty decent for a fan game and definitely worth checking out.
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Space Quest: The Lost Chapter
Space Quest Episode 0: Replicated
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Comic Book
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Roger Wilco was (very briefly) the star of his own comic book series, published by Adventure Comics. The three issue series is vaguely based on the first game, The Sarien Encounter, although the events are drastically reinterpreted. The first issue is in color, but the other two are only in black and white. You can find full scans at Space Quest.net.
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Comic Book Cover
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Compilations
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The Space Quest games have been collected numerous times over the years. Some of these were simply disks for all three games tossed in the same package. In 1994, Sierra issued The Space Quest Collection on CD, as part of their 15th Anniversary celebration. This included Space Quests I (EGA and VGA) - V, in addition to a video and a history of the series. A year later, they published the "Roger Wilco Unclogged" collection, which has the same basic contents, but included the Take-a-Break Pinball games and had a different video. The year after that came the release of the Space Quest Collection Series, which included all six games, along with a "preview" of the ill-fated Space Quest 7. Finally, ten years later, in 2006, Vivendi released the Space Quest Collection, which includes all six games on a single DVD, except it's missing the EGA version of Space Quest I. It also includes a licensed version of DOSBox so these games can be played in Windows XP.
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Roger Wilco Unclogged
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Cancelled Space Quest Games
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One of the Space Quest compilations promised an exclusive look at Space Quest VII, which was intended to be a multiplayer game. Alas, according to various financial and management issues, the game was cancelled before it got very far off the ground.
Years later, after Vivendi Universal bought Sierra, the new management decided they wanted to resurrect some of their own properties. Some of these included new games in the Kings Quest, Space Quest, and Leisure Suit Larry line. The only game that was release was Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude, for the consoles and PC. Although its bawdy humor was intact, all of the adventure game elements were removed in favor of lousy mini-games. Looking at this example, it's a good thing that the intended Space Quest game was cancelled, because it probably would've been a bastardization of the original series.
Some fans put together some efforts to make a Space Quest 7 with the help of Josh Mandel, but that seems to have fallen through the cracks.
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Space Quest 7 (fanmade) Promo
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Take a Break Pinball
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Take-A-Break Pinball is a Windows based pinball game developed by Dynamix. All of the tables are based off Sierra/Dynamix properties, including Kings Quest, Stellar 7, Willy Beamish, and of course, Space Quest. There are three Space Quest tables, all based on various locations from Space Quest IV.
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Take-a-Break Pinball
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