Space Quest - Collection Series

Space Quest: The Sarien Encounter The original Space Quest game was released in October 1986 and quickly became a hit, selling in excess of 100,000 copies (sales are believed to be around 200,000 to date, not including the many compilations it has been included in). A remake was released in 1991 as Space Quest I: Roger Wilco in the Sarien Encounter. Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge Released in 1987; Roger, with his newfound status of Hero, is transferred to the Xenon Orbital Station 4 and promoted to head (and only) janitor. All is quiet until he is abducted by Sludge Vohaul, who was behind the original Sarien attack of the Arcada. As Roger is being transported to the Labion labour mines as punishment for thwarting Sludge's original plan, the prison ship crash-lands in a nearby jungle upon the planet. Our hero manages to escape his pursuers and the dangers of the Labion jungle and soon reaches Sludge's asteroid base. Once again, it's up to Roger alone to stop Vohaul's evil plan: to eradicate sentient life from Xenon by launching millions of cloned insurance salesmen at the planet. Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon Released in 1989; Roger's escape pod from the end of SQII is captured by an automated garbage freighter. He escapes the robot-controlled scow by repairing an old ship, the Aluminum Mallard (a play on Howard Hughes' "Spruce Goose" and Star Wars' Millennium Falcon). He eventually discovers the sinister activities of a video game company known as ScumSoft run by the "Pirates of Pestulon". Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers Released in 1991; in this installment, Roger embarks on a time-travel adventure through Space Quest games both real and fictional. A reborn Sludge Vohaul from the fictional Space Quest XII: Vohaul's Revenge II chases Roger through time in an attempt to finally kill him. Roger also visits settings from the fictional Space Quest X: Latex Babes of Estros (whose title is a parody of Infocom's game Leather Goddesses of Phobos) and from Space Quest I; in the latter, the graphics and music revert to the style of the original game and Roger is threatened by a group of monochromatic bikers who consider Roger's 256 colors pretentious (or comment on other graphics modes if played in EGA or monochrome). The games Space Quest XII: Vohaul's Revenge II and Space Quest X: Latex Babes of Estros were never actually developed or released as full games, they exist only internally in Space Quest IV. Space Quest V: Roger Wilco – The Next Mutation Released in 1993: in Space Quest V, Roger is now a cadet in the StarCon academy. He graduates (or rather, cheats through the final exam) and is appointed captain of his own spacecraft (actually a space garbage scow). The main plot is to stop a mutagenic disease that is spreading through the galaxy by discovering its source, and fighting everyone that got infected. In the end, the disease infected the crew members of the SCS Goliath, a powerful warship, whose commander, Raemes T. Quirk (a rather blatant spoof of Captain Kirk), subsequently attacks the Eureka. In the end, Roger sacrifices his ship to get rid of the plague – and suddenly, if temporarily, becomes the commander of the fleet's flagship. Roger's cheating is, along with Raemes T. Quirk, an homage to William Shatner's Star Trek character, who cheated on his own Starfleet exam by reprogramming a "no-win" scenario so that he could successfully complete it. In a typical twist of luck, however, Roger's exam scores are still achieved by accident. This entry was the first in the Space Quest series where only one of the two guys from andromeda, Mark Crowe, lead a Space Quest project, due to the fact that Scott Murphy was working on other projects. Space Quest 6: Roger Wilco in The Spinal Frontier Released in 1995, this game was the last to be released in the Space Quest series. Having defeated the diabolical pukoid mutants in Space Quest V, Captain Roger Wilco triumphantly returns to StarCon headquarters – only to be court-martialed due to breaking StarCon regulations while saving the galaxy. He's busted down to Janitor Second Class, and assigned to the SCS DeepShip 86 (a parody of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), commanded by Commander Kielbasa, a Cowardly Lion look-alike whose name is taken from the Polish sausage as well as being a play on the names of both the feline Kilrathi from the video game series Wing Commander and of the character Mufasa from the animated motion picture The Lion King. His voice is a parody of Captain Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation. The main villain in the game is a wrinkly old lady named Sharpei, a pun on the dog Shar Pei, a wrinkly dog. The game's subtitle comes from the final portion, in which Roger has to undergo miniaturization and enter the body of a shipmate and romantic interest. (This segment also provided the game's original subtitle, Where in Corpsman Santiago is Roger Wilco?, which was not used due to legal threats from the makers of the Carmen Sandiego products.) Sadly, once again, only one of the Two Guys from Andromeda worked on this game. This time though, it was Scott Murphy who sat in the director's chair, more or less. Scott was actually a co-director of Space Quest 6 with another Sierra employee, Josh Mandel, who'd worked on many of the behind-the-scenes aspects of Space Quest IV and V, as well as helping create the SCI remake of King's Quest I. Josh actually worked on and created the majority of Space Quest 6, and had to step out when the project was already near completion, and that's when Scott Murphy just stepped in and did the rest.