When I started the game, the credits started rolling. When the credits stopped you just started playing. It isn’t before you can speak to King Edward that you know what your mission is (Getting a chest, a mirror and a shield). The story in the game is quite short and it only contains on page of text, making it very short.

You start as Sir Graham, just outside the castle and when you met King Edward, he tells you that you must go on a quest, because King Edward is dying and if you manage to complete this quest you will inherit the throne and also because your kingdom is weak and poor and if you get these 3 things, your kingdom will become strong and wealthy. You have to get a magic mirror which can tell the future, a magic shield which protects the bearer from any mortal harm and a magic treasure chest that is always filled with gold coins. There isn’t much more of a story in this game. A part the makers could have spent a lot more time on.

The graphics are like the regular Sierra game graphics at that time (like in Space Quest 1, Leisure suit Larry 1 and Police Quest 1). The graphics isn’t that bad even though they dent to interfere with the game play.

The game play was okay, with some nice puzzles, but like in so many Sierra games, it can become quite annoying. You can die and if you die and haven’t saved for a long time and die, you have to go back to the old save and do all the things you just done all over. This can be very annoying. Also there are things that try and kill you if you enter the map where they are, and there the witch is by far most annoying.She got me probably a dozen times. I also noticed that if you enter another screen and there is a tree where you entered, you will get stuck in the tree and that is quite annoying.

There isn’t much sound in the game, some music when you die and when you accomplish great achievements. There isn’t much more sound or music in it.

This game could have been far worse than this but also a lot better. There wasn’t really a story and you had to figure out most times what to do on yourself and there wasn’t a real story that helped you do it. The game play was sometimes annoying, but not at all as annoying as in games like Space Quest 1, and it was a lot easier to avoid dieing. This is a great classic though and if you do want a classic then you should get it.

2.5 out of 5

Ah… Space Quest in the days when you could call your character whatever you liked – before you were always “Roger Wilco”. Space Quest back in the days where the emphasis was on the tricky puzzles and not the humour. Space Quest in the days of the “typical” Sierra RPG. It comes as no surprise that Space Quest is, very much, a typical Sierra RPG of the time.

For those of you who’ve seen Police Quest or Kings Quest, you’ll know what I mean. You walk a character around the platform-style level using the arrow keys (pressing the direction you’re already going in if you want to stop). If you’re not close enough to things, you can’t interact with them. That’s the graphical element of the game. The rest of the game is all conducted in text entries you make in the form of commands to your character (e.g. Pick up rock, kill dwarf, etc.).

Some people like the old-style text-RPGs and I often find them entertaining, except for those irritating moments when there’s something you’re SURE you can do, but you’ve got to find the right way to express it first. Especially when you have a blinkered writer who only puts in the entry “Look at console” rather than “Use console, use computer, use keyboard, type, etc. etc.” assuming that everyone will intimately know the working’s of the programmer’s mind. If they don’t, hey – why are they playing the game?

During Space Quest, I found myself stuck for 10 minutes at one computer screen trying to work out what I was supposed to do. “Push button, press button, use button, look at button”. I tried “press switch, turn knob, use thing” everything that I could think of to describe the action of pushing a button. My friend suggested that since the button is labelled “Open Door”, why not type “Push open door button”. He was right. Then again, he failed dismally at using any of the vital computers because he didn’t think of “look at console”.

Space Quest, I am convinced, was play-tested only by the people who wrote the game. They tested whether it was physically possible to go from start to finish – not whether it was actually possible for someone who’d never seen the game before to complete it. Sierra also love to make their puzzles complicated, which really doesn’t help. Nowhere is there a handy syntax list of available commands, or any indication of what you’re actually supposed to be doing. You just keep on trying until you go insane, get forced to resort to a walkthrough or burst a blood vessel after dying yet again after doing the slightest thing wrong.

Did I mention the start of the game? You’re on a ship invaded by aliens (who walk around randomly and kill you on-sight, your only warning being that you hear footsteps, which doesn’t tell you from which direction) which is about to blow up (you have about 10 minutes to escape)…but you don’t know it’s about to blow up – and the only way you can get out is to wait in a room for at least half a minute for a wounded scientist to appear. You don’t know he’s coming, so what would possess you to wait in a room doing nothing for half a minute if the ship is counting down to explode?

Sadly, Space Quest did actually have all the ingredients for a really great game. Sure, the interface was bad (and they didn’t get that sorted out until Space Quest 5) and it was exceptionally complicated and difficult, but the ideas were there…and once Sierra realised that the humour was what made the game great, not the difficulty of the puzzles, they were onto a winner.

Graphics: 5/10: Typical Sierra RPG graphics of the time. Blocky, expressionless, slow-moving sprites. Difficult sometimes to tell what objects are in a room.
Sound: 3/10: Even though digital sound was around in other games, Space Quest uses the internal sound card. There’s nothing special at all about the sounds, but because it has the Space Quest theme, it gets a 3.
Gameplay: 0/10: Honestly, give me the monkey who wrote the interface and I’ll introduce him to a queue of people who want to shoot him for making the game almost unplayable.
Originality: 9/10: A very original idea, which later went on to the comic mastery which was Roger Wilco – rivalling Monkey Island.
Long-Term Interest: 1/10: After you’ve completed it, you’ll never want to go back. Most likely, unless you’re really determined, you’ll never get past the second (or even the first) section of the game.
Overall: 3/10: Typically difficult Sierra RPG which really ruins a great idea.

Note: This game was originally made in 1986, the VGA version was released in 1990.

Space Quest 2 was released as quickly as possible following the success of Space Quest 1, which has been something which has always surprised me. I never got on well with the first in the series, cursing the unresponsive text-based interface and general feeling of “what AM I supposed to be doing?”. Nevertheless, I began playing Space Quest 2 with an open mind. Which lasted for about the first 5 minutes.

The introduction is more impressive than in SQ1, and sees you (still not Roger Wilco, yet…) sweeping a hangar and, when disturbed, letting your broom fly into space (okay, the graphics of that weren’t great, but it made me laugh. What’s that, 3rd time this week?). My heart soon sank, however, when I saw that the same interface was back. The graphical-movement, text-interaction interface which Sierra never quite managed to master. The game is, in layout, just like the first – only with a different storyline and slightly more thought-out graphics.

So, I thought, I’ve got to leave the hangar. First thing I did was step onto what looks like a platform to the right…and fall off the spacecraft to my death. Dying is usually the thing I do most frequently in Sierra games, and it never fails to annoy me. Reload the game, this time making sure I step EXACTLY onto the platform. Down I go into oblivion once again. Three tries later, I’m now convinced there has to be another way. That thing on the roof looks promising…but how do I get there? Accidentally, I find out that I’m wearing magnetic boots and can walk up the wall (as if walking up the wall is the first thing you’d try). My initial hope that Sierra might at least give you an idea of what you’re supposed to do vanishes.

Still, I’m at the thing on the roof and I walk across it. Nothing. I walk back across it. Nothing. I wait on it for a few seconds. Nothing. Cursing, I consider whether or not to call up my friend (as two heads are better than one) when I suddenly end up in the next room. Sierra always value large amounts of patience, despite never giving you any indication if what you’re doing is right or wrong.

After that shaky start, I continue through the game without much of a hitch. A mysterious kidnapping from an old enemy in SQ1 ends me up on a strange planet, where I’ve managed to escape and people are looking for me. I start to remember the horrors of SQ1’s first level and, yes, here we are again. Killed if you get seen and left with no idea of where you’re supposed to go or what you’re supposed to do. Oh, by the way, there’s a concealed pit in the landing area for you to fall into and die. Why is it there? No reason…just another thing to kill you, as if the game wasn’t hard enough already.

Cursing, I eventually shut the game down and proceeded once more, this time armed with my friend at my side (who had the walkthrough, in case we got drastically stuck). After completing the game, getting utterly foxed by the interface or incredibly obscure puzzles no less than five times, I was left with the same feeling as SQ1. What a great idea – if only Sierra had put more time into getting people who’d never seen the game before to play it, and then look at where they got terminally stuck and why.

On the plus side, SQ2 has a fair amount of humour and there are moments when you have the great feeling of the game being challenging enough to make you think, but not so hard that you can’t puzzle it out at all…ever. It has its moments of that feeling far more often, but real die-hard Space Quest fans or, for that matter, RPG players who grew up on text-based games and know all about how to say “press the button” in a hundred different ways until they find the right one will probably enjoy the game a lot. If you don’t fall into the above categories, don’t expect too much and you won’t be disappointed.

Graphics: 6/10: Sierra sorted the problem of clarity and it’s now easier to tell what objects are. Other than that, the graphics are a bit of a let down in their blocky and blobby nature.
Sound: 3/10: Marginally better than the first, but still utilising the internal sound card when there were games out there making use of wave and midi formats. Weird.
Gameplay: 2/10: Far too many frequent moments of “what am I supposed to be doing?” and the interface just doesn’t make the game easy or rewarding to play.
Originality: 7/10: Nothing much different from the first in the series, which was disappointing, although the Space Quest idea itself still had a lot of aces up its sleeve.
Long-Term Interest: 3/10: The funny moments might make you want to play the game more than once to see them again, but since completing the game itself is such an uphill struggle you may never even get that far.
Overall: 4/10: Some improvements on the first, but a real let-down to the other games in the series.

I guess before I get started I should say i’m prejudiced against Sierra adventures, in fact I have a natural dislike of any point and click adventure games in which it is possible to die (gimme Lucasarts all the way baybee!)

With that said, Space Quest 3 isn’t too bad at all.

The game carries on from SQ 2. Having escaped in a cryo pod from Vohaul’s asteroid he is picked up by an automatic garbage ship.. and so our next adventure begins.

SQ 3 was the first in the series to use Sierra’s AGI system, which among other things added mouse control to the game. It makes playing quite a bit easier now that you dont have to rely solely on cursor keys and the parser (which is still present BTW).

This is the first Space Quest game that I enjoyed playing, and although it retains many of the previous games flaws (such as an annoying habit of killing you with little or no warning) it improves on them in many areas.

I remember I helped my sister buy a computer for the business that her and her husband ran. It was a top of the line 486 with 16mb ram, and a CD player… yes can you believe it, it had a CD player.. and this was no wimpy sx system but a dx. That system rocked. At the same time they bought that computer I got my very first CD-ROM game. Space quest 4.

This game was not only sweet on the graphics, but the thing would talk to you. It had voice I kid you not, real life voice on it. I remember playing this game for hours. It was funny, it was neat to look at, and did I mention it talked to you? Well about a month ago my granddad in-law gave me the full collection of space quest games he found in a bargain bin. First game I went to on that was space quest 4, and would I be disappointed after all these years, and after all this advancement in games? No way. The game is still very cartoon like, and still very funny. There are easy puzzles in it, there are hard puzzles in it. If you are a space quest fan you will especially like the little sequence where you travel back to space quest one and play on the old EGA graphics.

The point and click is easy to use, and the only draw back with the voice is that the narrator does get a little annoying after telling you for the tenth time that you can’t click there. The death sequences are fun to go through, and the story is up to space quest standards.

I have played all space quest games many times now and this one is still my favorite of all of them. You will not be disappointed on this. And though this download may not have the voice (don’t know if it does or not) you will still laugh at this game. And another thing that makes it great is that any one of any age can play it. Nothing crude nothing obscene just good clean fun.

I give this game a four out of five on the paully scale.

After his adventures through time in SQ4, Roger Wilco is back as a cadet in StarFleet Academy (Star Trek spoof alert eh?).

This is by far my favourite game in the series, the graphics are great, the humour is not too subtle, but not too in your face (for the most part anyway) and I loved piloting the star ship – a great idea IMO.

I do have a few gripes though, the humour can be a little groan inducing at times (Captain Quirk… riiiight) and some of the arcade sequences are tiresome.

A great adventure game IMO, but suffering from the same flaws that I associate with most Sierra adventure games.

Get it.