Apparently the progression of time in the game is supposedly a few months, but they couldn't be bothered with additional content or "a few days/weeks later" pop-ups and crammed it all into a single day.
SQ4 and KQ5 were probably the biggest 🍆 move games Sierra ever made. Codename Iceman gets an honorable mention, but only because the course plotting "mini game" was ridiculous and it was overloaded with action sequences in SCI0 which ...it wasn't good at doing. At all.
Yeah... the "unstable ordnance" was really, really, really, really evil. If it can be picked up without killing you in an instant, it is meant to be used for something. You may miss a key item at the last 10% of the game. You never knew untill you finished the game. In fact, an "unstable ordnance" item could already be used in SQ2 to kill the "Labion Root Monster" / the root labyrinth monster. They must have done this knowingly that SQ-veterans would try to do something similiar. Pure evil.
Sounds like you played the VGA remake of Space Quest II. That one was actually fan-made by Infamous Quests, and they did put in the unstable ordnance as a "tribute" to the one in SQ4.
I've honestly never minded "unfair deaths" in Sierra games, because they're usually VERY entertaining, and I'd had Al Lowe's mantra of "save early, save often" WELL drilled into my skull by the time I got to the likes of SQ4. I found the unstable ordnance bit hilarious, especially how you get points both for taking it and for putting it back. Amusing stuff. And as long as you've listened to Uncle Al you lose nothing. The only thing I found truly "unfair" in this game was of course the damn Skate-O-Rama, and that's more to do with technical issues than any purposeful maliciousness on the part of the game.
I really enjoyed this game, I wish it was longer.. more areas, more puzzles, more quests and items.., there is one area on the loading screen i think they cut from the game that we don't get to visit..
As far as I can tell, there were at least three versions of KQ8 in development at various stages: Roberta's original, the neutered one Davidson & Associates wanted to make, and the one that was actually released which was sort of a hodge-podge of the previous two. It's kind of amazing KQ8 got released at all.
@@spacequesthistorian damn that's a bummer, I remember when i was a kid I used to lose myself in those puzzles for hours in the dimension of death and felt so good when solving them finally.
I have found memories of King's Quest 7 because it was one of the game I got when my mom bought her P1 MMX from a work colleague but I must confess that I never got past chapter 2. Maybe it is my nostalgia speaking right now but if you want a better sierra adventure game with a similar style, play Torrin's Passage instead !
this game first came to my awareness with a noninteractive looping demo of shot scenes in the window of a computer shop in a shopping centre in chiang mai. i didnt realise at first that it was space quest iv, because i was confused by the bar across the top reading "space quest X" or "space quest XII". apart from that, the only thing i do remember from watching that demo was a scene where roger is strapped into a chair, and someone says to him: "i'd like you to learn the meaning of the word PAIN!"... i never ended up playing space quest iv, but thanks to you i now realise that was a rare example of actual truth in advertising. :)
Basically, they dick you over just so you buy their hintbook. These games operate on moon logic and figuring things out without any context given, this is why LucasArts games were always superior. Imagine playing this in 1991 without any help. I've only ever completed KQ1, LSL1 VGA, LSL6 and Gabriel Knight from Sierra, because the amount of dickery in the rest of them is just too high for me.
That's a myth. Scott Murphy (and several other Sierra designers I've met) told me they were never encouraged to make the games more difficult to sell hintbooks.
@@spacequesthistorian Then why are the solutions to all of these games so obscure and why is it so easy to softlock you out of completing them? How are you supposed to figure this shit out, especially back in the day? This is just bad game design on purpose.
@@burgertim7878 You have to remember, there were no textbooks, manuals, or college classes about game design back then. The designers were building on what had come before them. Early text adventures were rife with dead ends and what we would consider bad game design today. But hindsight is 20/20.
Have you played the fan made remake? It's really, REALLY good! There's also fan remakes of Kings Quest 1, 2 and 3, and Quest for Glory 2. The amount of dedication they put into doing excellent VGA remakes of classic games for free is just amazing. Kings Quest 2 is quite a treat as it has a lot more added to it.
The bottle in the cutscene IS RANDOM?!?!?? I thought it was always the green tall one! That’s such GARBAGE Other than that, I absolutely LOVE this game. Hands down my favourite in the series.
@spacequesthistorian one of the dick moves you may have overlooked is when you find a secret code to SQ3 only to discover you took off your Thermalweave underwear at some point
Between this and the (even more egregious) KQ5, it feels like Sierra was really trying to overcompensate for the perceived lower difficulty of point-and-click vs. the older parser games by having as many dick moves as possible.
I don't know, there's plenty of dick moves/cul-de-sacs in Gold Rush, King's Quest 4 and Larry 2, I think it just comes down to each designer, how much development time was crunched, and yeah to some degree adjusting to the new engine.
not really sure what the modders intention was here... on the one hand all this work to make her barechested... but its not really... a porn mod? Likeokay she fucks larry which is odd he usually doesn't get the girl XD.... but everyone reacts like her tits are disgusting? Why... and what is with this ending...
I think if you save the game, then restore it, the time code will be on the display again. Also, the code seems to be determined when you start the game, at least that was my experience. That means that any restored games from the previous session will yield the same code.
That's true, the codes are generated at the start of the game. But if you didn't have a save from before you bagged the first time pod, then you're screwed. And given that you have limited save slots, it's quite possible that first-time players would have saved over those earlier save games as they progressed.
I would add getting the correct pocket pal port, after escaping what is the worst part of the game, having you backtrack to get the correct port really didn't add anything to the game but be annoying.
I got 🍆ed pretty bad with one you didn't mention, the laser beam security - probably most people don't get this one. I don't recall if I was unable to get to Space Quest 1, or I didn't figure out to light a cigar right then - I fear it was the latter - but as you showed, there a good chance players won't be able to get the whole code for SQ1, it would follow this might happen to them. Anyway, I figured I had to brute force my way through the laser beams, with trail and error. Obstinance? Perhaps, but in my defense I got through the first ring on the first try! All it took was (I think) 7 5 3, and since that was a straight diagonal line, I figured there must be a pattern for every one! Nope, apparently just the 1st one. I think I got electrocuted hundreds of times with that mindset, but I eventually DID get through it! And not too long after figured out what the cigar was for - 😱🤬🤬 lol. Oh that was frustrating monotony, but still hella satisfying to get to a new area! You know, I put poor Indiana Jones through the same crap opening the final door into Atlantis. Couldn't work out the puzzle, even though the prior disc combinations were really easy. At least that one wasn't a death trap, but &^(# it took _forever!_
So excited to see this one!! Space Quest is one I’ve always peripherally orbited around, and learning about it from your channel has been entertaining and informative! Random, but I also truly appreciate the great subtitles with your videos :)
Thank you! As a non-native English speaker myself, subtitles are very important to me. I try to add them to as many videos as I can, although long videos with unscripted content (like podcasts or livestreams) unfortunately take too long (and I can't rely on automatic transcriptions to get them right).
That "Original time code is already punched in" is actually a very clever puzzle... for like a developer room or a super-secret easter egg. For the Golden Path? Goddamn, Sierra... just... goddamn!
Speaking of developer room, there is the "room removed for legal reasons" that is, ironically, completely inaccessible unless you're playing a fan patch. And there are also at least two easter egg codes: the fairly well-known Space Quest III time code and the lesser-known "I Love Lunacy" one. spacequest.net/sq4/eastereggs/
I never saw any of those as dick moves. Sierra forced you concentrate and think. These games were meant to take a lot of time. A lot of saving and retrying.All your allowance went into buying a game, so we made sure to enjoy every bit. I used to take a few months on a game. There was nothing else to do. You were either in the street with your friends, or you did homework, or play your latest game. Usually took me a few months to save up for a game like this.
There is one other code that's always consistent: the one that takes you to Ortega - all the top buttons left to right, followed by the first middle one. I always found it weird that he didn't still have the underwear. After all, you can try to remove the underwear in SQ3, after getting off Ortega, but Roger will decide not to, for comfort reasons.
Years later after owning a Tandy and Space Quest 1 and 2, my brother got a faster new computer. We found the CD version Space Quest 4 in the bargain section of Media Play and of course we said we have to get this. We got to the Skate o rama, and the computer was too fast and we could never beat it. Years later I finally did with dosbox turning down the cycles.
As kids playing the floppy version my sister and I didn't have any real problems with the Skat-o-rama. Sure it was annoying and we needed a few tries before we figured it out but it was quite doable so yeah not really a dick move. Don't remember if we wrote down the SQXII Time Code the first time., I'm thinking I went back to an earlier save game to get the code when I realised I needed it.The streets of Xenon were the part of the game that caused us the most trouble. Pretty sure the unstable ordinance was added to the game so the start game walkthrough in the manual could tell you save your game, get the unstable ordinance and get you killed before telling you to restore your game and not do that again. I have no idea what lesson the walkthrough is trying to teach new players, it just seems like a joke that didn't work or maybe some poor attempt at screwing pirates who didn't have the manual with the start game walkthrough. One Minor dick move in the game is the death you get if you try to go down the escalator you come up after arriving at the Galaxy Galleria. Way to punish the player for exploring without signposting that you can't go there.The game could have given you a message that you can't return to the ship instead of killing you.
Oh the joked worked, and it's perfect shining example of the space quest death legacy! I don't think it was for pirates, the walkthrough is just for new players having trouble, it's not expected most will use it, I think it says as much.
To me, Space Quest IV was the poster child for the 1990s nightmare of non-standardized PC hardware specs. One of our family computers was ... some model of a Tandy 2500, and one of the pack-ins was a "demo" of SQIV (functionally more of a trailer showing off the prologue cinematic; no actual gameplay) -- the VGA graphics were amazing for the time, but when we purchased/installed the full game (and IIRC, for the _same computer)_ we just COULD NOT configure the game to replicate the sound quality we heard in the demo. At some later point we did acquire/install a proper sound card and it was all good from there, but still.
Heck, even the symbols for the timecodes themselves are a bit of a dick move. Why couldn't they just be letters and numbers? Not only do I have to write down codes, I have to write down all these weird shapes and patterns that will take longer to jot down than if a timecode was "B5GK8". And make sure I do it clearly enough that I don't confuse some of the more similar symbols later.
I was stuck on the Skate-O-Rama section for years, and yes, I had the CD-Rom version of the game. This was before the age of the internet, so I couldn't get any outside help. Despite that, I was doing the right thing, I went to Skate-O-Rama to escape the Sequel Police, but I could never escape them. Once I actually did get to the top of the arena, but when I came back down, the game wouldn't let me leave the screen. I had no idea what was wrong, I just assumed I wasn't doing the right thing, but it turned out it was just a terrible bug the game had the entire time. I wasn't able to beat the game until many, many years later. All because of that game ruining bug.
Yup, and that's why that section is so infamous. You had no way of knowing it was due to the speed of your computer unless you got on the internet circa 1995 and hung around on Space Quest message boards. There were DOS utilities like MoSlo and the ironically named Turbo that could slow down your computer and thus make the game beatable, but... again... where were you supposed to know that from?
I believe we ran into this issue on occasion too -- SQIV wasn't the only Sierra game where having too fast of a cpu actually broke Sierra's engine in one way or another, I remember a few examples from Quest for Glory: - In QGF1 (VGA), dueling with the Weaponsmaster was utterly unplayable above ~25Mhz or so because his actions were processed at raw cpu speed. - In QGF4 there was ONE specific screen (required for progression) where the game just crashed outright if your PC loaded it too fast.
@@spacequesthistorian Yeah I think I found out about the bug from an AOL message board. I can't remember exactly when I finally beat the game. Thinking back on it, honestly, the game should have never had a "physical exercise" to get passed the Sequel Police in the first place. Action sequences in graphic adventures always suck. It should have been a puzzle using item(s) instead.
@@EnigmaHood Action sequences may suck (you certainly wouldn't be the first to think so), but it's worth remembering that Space Quest invented those. SQ1 was the first Sierra game that "used the position of the character as part of the puzzles" (e.g. dodging acid drops and the Skimmer sequence). In fact, Space Quest games have always been keen to switch up the adventure game formula and throw something unexpected at the player. (And I happen to know for a fact that SpaceVenture does the same.)
@@spacequesthistorian I think Black Cauldron could claim 1st place on that score, they had one of those dodge boulders as you climb the castle wall, after you swim past the alligators - so thrilling. Scott Murphy was a programmer on that one, so I suspect it was him either way - and the skimmer was a little more specialized arcade. I (usually) always liked them as a change of pace, even if I had to die and restore _so_ many times.
