Who better to clean up space than Janitors? Space Quest I, II, III

In addition to the melting, Ortega has many death options for the suicidal like:

Being seen by a Scumsoft Man



You can fall of a ledge



Cross the shaky bridge with a thermal detonator



Fall of the Generator



Or fall into the it

Attempting to vault over the lava with a thermal detonator, a classic this one, one of our customer favorites:

Is there a time limit to get off Ortega?

I've stayed around before and nothing happened... The earthquakes merely seem to have taken out the bridge... I'll try it out tonight and report back

"YOU ARE BRAVE, WARRIOR, BUT STUPID!!"

Wow, that lava bath pic is extra morbid there. Awesome stuff.

How are you able to pole vault with the detonator? I thought you used that to cause the earthquake that led to the rock bridge falling down.

There's a whole box of them you can just take another one on your way down from the shield generator

I like how the death windows have snarky little title bars. I love title bar humour.

Here I am, sitting in my space ship, antsy as anything to go check out that pirate moon!

Oh wow. I just noticed that. Now I need to back and read the entire thing over again.

We last left Roger as he hurtled at light speed toward the pirate moon, pestulon



Roger lands the ship and looks out of his cockpit at the strange landscape before exiting the Mallard

>look window


>stand

>push red



>look around



It doesn't matter which way you go from the ship, they all take you to this cutscene



>look door



No way, Roger is getting in there without being noticed... good thing he looted the android corpse for a kick ass invisibility belt

>wear belt



>enter building



>look around



Roger stops gawking and quickly enters the door



>look around



Roger pushes the button on the wall and descends into the Scumsoft complex, which appears to be a long circular hallway...



(dig those hi-res graphics folks, this scaling is cutting edge stuff right there! (I believe Sierra did something like this with KQ4, as well but I don't remember any other of their games doing it and I don't really see the rational for it either))

KQ 4 had larger sprites in general but nothing as detailed as this, and I don't think the false-3D in this section is elsewhere in their catalogue.

I realize this is a bit late, but when it occurred to me before, I didn't actually have Space Quest IV installed.





Nice to see that the Sierra tradition of fatal Easter eggs continued. And here's hoping for an eventual SQ4 LP, to compliment these three.

Note that you only die if you step outside after punching in the appropriate code to travel to SQ3.

I do not envy the person who decides to try and get SQ4 to run on a modern system. Its programming ties the animation frame length to execution cycles - so today the animation runs thousands of frames a second. This makes the time-dependent puzzles in the game a little tricky.

Or rather, the inappropriate code for going anywhere else. That Easter egg is accessed by entering one of the inappropriate codes for the place you're SUPPOSED to go first once you get the Time Pod, most of the time.

So I noticed while running it in DOSbox on a simulated 486/SX100 environment. I barely got to the Time Pod, thanks to the "send Sequel Policeman in x + (random number) cycles" code on each screen. Honestly, what idiot was still coding based around CPU cycles in 1991? It was obvious that it was a bad idea as far back as the latter half of the 1980s.

What about DOSBox, couldn't that be used to get around this problem? Interestingly, I think that the PC port of FF VII does something similar during the motorcycle chase before you leave Midgar. I could barely manage it on my PIII, which was somewhat over-spec for the game, so I imagine that it must be totally unplayable on modern computers.

EDIT: Apparently DOSBox is not the way!

EDIT AGAIN: Hey, is it just me, or does the ScumSoft logo over the doorway look pretty similar to the old SSI logo? Maybe there's some sort of game industry in-joke happening here.

You can manually adjust CPU cycles in DOSbox, so.. as long as you're running it through that, no problems.

You have no idea.

Eh heh heh... guilty as charged.

Granted, I was in high school and writing in HyperCard. But a few of my creations from that era totally suffer from that problem - in particular I made one adventure game that had a timed escape sequence from an exploding space station near the very end. Oops.

That is correct. >:| Perhaps you could enlighten me?

Me either... though I imagine its some sort of adventure game genre in-fighting

update coming later today

Roger takes in the hall



Seeing as it seems to be circular Roger heads clockwise (towards the screen) The first door he comes to seems to have some sort of lock



Roger looks it over (I don't have a screen capture?) and its a keycard slot and some sort of facial scanner. Roger doesn't have anything to deal with that so he continues onward



I know this looks just like the elevator door that Roger walked out but you'd be wrong! Roger walks in and

>look around



>wear coveralls



Roger walks out to check out his spiffy (new) threads



Roger continues down the hall until he comes across another door, this one on his right and not requiring keycards and facial scans, he heads in



to cubicle hell!

Huh, now Roger's got to be careful here, if he passes a trashcan without doing his janitorial duty the accounting staff here will know he's a fraud, like so:



So, let's try to avoid that. Roger starts on the left, and he'll be using this handy tool to help:



I don't think I was ever able to catch a pic of Mr. Garbage in action... basically roger holds it over the garbage can and there's a little flash and the trash disappears. Roger heads west

Roger empties the trash can in front of them and then moves to inspect the conspicuous photo

>look



>look picture



>take picture

Roger heads over to the copy machine

>copy picture



and then returns the photo back to the wall

>hang picture



Roger weaves through the cubicle maze, emptying trashcans along the way



Roger finally makes his way north of the accounting department to find himself in programming



"whips? Damn production cycles really are hell!"

>look around



Roger heads into Elmo's cubicle

>look around



Good advice! Roger empties the trash and then heads out to the east



>look around



Okay so now Roger knows how to get off this planet and has half of what he needs to get through that door, now he just needs a keycard and directions to the parking lot...

As you can see, the entire Pestulon sequence is one big Take That to other developers, particularly Microsoft. Having a little in-joke teasing SSI is just the beginning.

Well Roger can only stare at the parking lot for so long, back inside... What's this Elmo isn't in

>look around



Time to riffle through his things

>look desk



Hmm... locked his desk? Who actually does that? No matter he left the most important thing behind

>get keycard



Roger weaves back through the accounting department and heads to that door with all the security



>use keycard



Not unexpected

>use picture



And we are in!



>look around



>push button



>look jello



Think Roger, Think!

>eat jello



Welp, I'm out of ideas...

>use mr. garbage (yup, Mr. Garbage)



I wonder what Roger wins?

But, when Roger tries to leave



Hmmm hard to get off this platform without any bridges...



"Plan, what's that?"

..."uh-oh"



Let's get it on!

Elmo drones on but Roger is itching for a fight! Show that uppity nerd who's boss!



Oh and you can't save either



FIGHT!



Imagine many more scenes of me punching Elmo's robot... It's really hard to push ctrl-f5 and the punch /block buttons at the same time... eventually (I think I had to restart the fight 10 or so times) Roger is victorious



Let's Get Out of Here! Warp Speed Eat my astral dust trail Scumsoft!



Or not...

While Roger (and we wait for something to happen)



And next time the shocking, stunning conclusion to Space Quest 3!

Lucasarts replies to the Two Guys:

Ironically, I'm pretty sure LucasArts hasn't charged $20 or less for a computer game since the early 90s...

It made the recurrance of that line in the special edition even funnier.