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

So the little guys slingshot you to death for sequence breaking like that? Hehehe. "Take that, guy who didn't free our friend and abused a FAQ to get here!"

I can imagine that'd be a real bitch for someone who thought they could continue through the game without saving that alien, though.....not that too many would make it that far if they didn't.

Yeah, the game is set up to have you help the pinky and in return the little alien "shows you" how to pick the berries and rub them on you to get past the swamp... Though it took a friend of the family to tell us that is what was going on. We always just wondered what the hell the little guy was doing right before he ran into the water...

Ok, so I got the missing pictures I needed and I managed to get Space Quest 3 working so, full steam ahead!

Alright Roger is off of Labion, he's got a ship and he's getting out of here!



Just several more hours (years?)of this and we should be somewhere...



Roger struggles with the controls, even attempting to shut down the ship, but nothing seems to work:



Guess like Roger has to save himself and his world again... But where to start?

Next time, exploring the asteroid, meeting new friends, mucking things up!

Coming up: more heart-pounding terror along corridors in a ship! This one actually terrifies me to this day. It was pretty scarring to a lad o' 6 or so. =(

Also, back on the graphics subject: the cockpit interior is really amasing.

I mean, considering how plain SQ1 was, look at the lighting on some of these screenshots. I'm not going to say that it all holds up because Roger's sprite looks like ass and always did, but some of these backgrounds are things the artists can be proud of.

Yeah, it really is amazing how much these guys were able to do with so little!

Looking around it looks like Roger was 3 options... go west, east or south (down). Down right now is a bad option and you'll see why when we cover deaths... West or east lead to the same screens, so it doesn't really matter which one you take:



An elevator! Let's read all about it:



Just a little sampling of the odd and quirky text you can find in these old Sierra games if you look hard enough for it... Roger pushes the 3rd floor button (there is no second?) and heads down... I just realized for the first time that the floors are arranged in reverse the top one being 1st and the bottom one being the 5th, huh...



Walking down the corridor Roger notices that the interior design here is a little drab and repetitive, he'll continue to notice this as he explores the asteroid:



Further down the corridor Roger finds a door and eagerly opens it, unreasonably thinking that behind it he'll find freedom:



Not quite, but Roger picks up the familiar tool and finds its presence comforting... and then continues down the corridor till he reaches another elevator and heads down to the 4th floor:



Wandering down the corridor Roger comes upon another closet and in it finds:



Roger picks it up... He can't think of any scenario in which it will be useful, but he knows he's in a Sierra game and so everything he finds he knows he will need at some point! Back down the corridor he comes upon:



This is going to be different...

Roger holds his breath and plunges into the men's room:



GROSS! as Roger notes that this is a unisex bathroom! He does notice though that his bladder is starting to hurt, and heads into the one empty stall:



GROSS again... There is no way Roger is using this bathroom, he'll just have to hold it... He does grab some toilet paper though, never know when it could come in handy. You exit the bathroom and head down the corridor again, into the elevator and down to the 5th floor:



Unlike the other floors this one seems to be some sort of prison level? Oh well, another closet let's see what it has for us:



Roger grabs the wastebasket and then picks up the overalls:



Roger grabs the lighter and departs

As Roger heads down the corridor, one of the jail cells begins opening!



Roger picks up his pace, he's learned his lesson and is no longer look for friends in all the wrong places! He gets a glance of the beast over his shoulder as he runs for the elevator:



Roger enters the elevator, slams the one button the doors close just before the strange creature was able to join him in it! Close one, Roger!

Back on the first floor, Roger heads down south to explore the last level (the 2nd) of the asteroid:

Please let me know if and how you figured out this next puzzle all by yourself?

Roger heads down the stair from the landing platform to find himself:



Ok... We'll just go to left then:



... I mean the right:



... Or just wait here for awhile:



Awww, come on! Can't a janitor get a break? This is quite the predicament!



What to do... What to do... Let's see what do I even have in my inventory? Jockstrap? No. Glass cutter? No. Wastebasket? No. Toilet paper? No. Glowing Gem? No. Plunger? Plunger! That just might work:



and now Roger is free to move about the corridor:



Roger heads down the west end of the corridor:



Okay, so we won't go to the west! Crap! It seems there's more of those damn robots to the east as well! What do we do?

Maybe it has something to do with the sprinkler system that appears to be only on this one level of the asteroid?

We'll find out next time!

Inspired by the sprinkler system, Roger decides to commit a little arson. He fills his wastebasket full of toilet paper, drops it on the ground and uses his lighter to set the whole thing aflame:



The hosing seems to have done a number on those robots too:



Roger heads to the east, as odd unexplained feelings keep him from exploring the western end of the long corridor:



Well, Roger's made it into Vohual's sanctum sanctorum but the mad scientist has managed to shrink Roger down to insignificance!

Falling off the Landing platform:



Falling off the walkway to the elevators:



Going to the second floor and falling into the pool:



Using the plunger too soon:



Getting too close to the floor waxer:



Using the lighter in the bathroom:

Getting to close to an inmate:



Getting too intimate with a released inmate:



The terrible thing about this is that the game lets you walk a few screens before anything happens... Making you hope against hope that there was no death involved just an awkward moment between you and an Alien

Setting a fire after freeing a wallbot:

It's been awhile since I did one of these.

The key to the cage:



The rope:



The stone:



The plunger:



The glass cutter:



Toilet paper:



A lighter:



The wastebasket:



The wastebasket after I fill it with TP:




That is it for items, folks! There's only one more and I'll just show it to you in the narrative! We're getting close to the end here!

I figured out the plunger-wall eventually, but it was just trial and error (and a lot of deaths, wondering how to get around it, I think).

The alien is something in my nightmares still, since I spent a lot of time wandering around those corridors trying to figure out what to do. Once it's released, it's out there til the end of the game, and I remember running for the elevators so many times. -.-

But.. it's weird that the baby burst out of you so quickly. When I played, it wouldn't burst out until very near the end of the game just before you reach the escape shuttle! which makes a big difference.

A request for SQ 3: when you use an item or do something clever, can you paste what your command line was? Not in a screenshot, just above/below the relevent shot, i.e.

Like old IF, sometimes the trick with these early Sierra games is just figuring out the damn syntax you need, and I think it's worth highlighting in an LP.

That ode to the Alien movies would've been pretty awesome if I hadn't seen that (IMO) better ode in the Spaceballs movie one too many times.

Roger getting crushed into a compact corpse by a single punch from a (presumably ape-like) alien's fist is pretty neat, though.....as is the acid/plunger deal.

Can do!

The only two things I remember about Space Quest II for years were the SECRET WORD and that terrifying fucking alien. I played the game with my cousin when I was like six and that thing scared the hell out of me.

I'm pretty sure I worked out the plunger on my own. I used to think the alien was timed to release in Vohaul's room for maximum dramatic impact.

What was to the west, past the robots?

Unlike to the east where the wall slides up allowing you to pass. The wall on the west is just a wall and you can't go any further that way.

We left Roger in the lurch last time, in the process of being miniaturized by Sludge Vohaul:




Roger is in luck though, Vohaul put him in a glass jar and he just happens to have a glass cutter on him:

> use glass cutter

We'll see what consequences Roger's action have had in the next post!



Roger doesn't progress to the west for fear of running into Vohaul which leaves him only one option to crawl into the nearby vent:

> climb into vent



> read sign



Roger moves over to the button (it's the read thing behind the pump (which moves up and down?!)) and pushes it:

>push button

Roger crawls out of the vent:



Now that the disgusting sac of flesh has collapsed Roger feels safe enough to move westward:



Roger heads over to the switch and:

> pull switch



The little screen is asking us Enlarge or Shrink, Roger:



Hopping along Roger types in "enlarge" and then moves back to the glass case:



Back to normal size, Roger notes that the clones are missing and that one of Vohaul's monitors, the one on the far right, is blinking. Also, the fat man appears to be lying all over the floor, another body for Roger to search, he gets close to the body and:

>search body



No loot? Boo! Those 4 letters might be important though. Roger takes a closer look at the screen:

>look screen



Since he's only got one code he types it in and crosses his fingers!



Victory! Roger has managed to save his planet from the horror of relentless salesmen! That GENERAL STATUS has Roger worried, though he doesn't quite know what either one of those words mean, anything being CRITICAL can't be good though... The only way out seems up the stairs:

Roger investigates the box and finds inside an oxygen tank and mask, which he takes and then puts on, recalling the external condition of the asteroid:



>use oxygen mask



(I think this the first instance I can think of in a Sierra game where they try to express distance in a single screen, as Roger turns the corner, which you notice is obscured, when he walks into view again he is smaller. They use the effect again in the next screen)



I also like how that second tube screen has the asteroid as red, a subtle reminder to the player that everything is not well here.

Exiting the tube leaves Roger here, if he walked to the east he'd end up back at the elevator screen (I'll show you in a bit) so he heads west, where he walks through a series of corridors:



That doesn't look friendly! You'll also note that I've already typed in the next command, as we now have to turn around and run away from this mechanical menace, hiding in the external tube, so that it passes us before we can go further down this corridor (though we won't we just need enough time to open one of those escape pods and get into it before the robot gets us.) Speaking of such, what is that thing anyway?

Back in the external tube:



After the enlightening commentary and warning by the game (which also informs that Roger has slipped back on the mask) Roger turns around and exits the tube and heads westward. He is soon followed by the Marrowmatic:



Again, I've typed my command in beforehand, as the robot doesn't give you much time to open the pod and get in it, in fact I've never cut it closer:

> get into escape pod



> push launch



The game goes through the countdown til reaching zero:



WooHoo we beat the game! It's over! Thanks for watching folks, we will see you back here for... Wait a second! I don't have a perfect score! What'd I miss? Find out next time in the shocking conclusion to Space Quest 2!

Roger and I both thought we'd beat this game to a pulp but the score and this warning destroyed our illusions:



>look around



>open chamber



250 out of 250! That is more like it! And we've come to the end of Space Quest 2! I've got to show you the remaining deaths and where the escape pod corridor leads to, but it's pretty much done! Thanks for following and stay tuned for Space Quest 3 (arguably the best game in the series).

That's it? Vohaul is as easy to kill as going inside his life support system and pressing a button? You'd think he would've had the sense not to shrink Roger down small enough to get into his life support, or at least make it harder to turn off than just one button press. This is an adventure game, though; Vohaul deserved death for his oversight. What a dumbass. XD

And yes, I know he comes back in Space Quest IV. I read the HG101 feature.

This was great! SQ II was my first Sierra game and it was fun to read through it again.

re: Vohaul: I really like the death solution, it feels clever and unusual. Just not something you typically see. I don't know if they were spoofing/homaging something there, or if it was just Two Guys.

There's a special place in my heart for games which display a high degree of attention to detail. That sort of thing makes an inordinately strong impression on me.

Waiting around in the Glass Jar:



Falling off Vohaul's desk:



Visiting Vohaul while tiny:



Shrink yourself again instead of returning to normal size:



Falling off the Stairs or Platform:



Take too long stopping the clone launch:

Don't bother wearing the oxygen mask in the exterior tube:



Take too long to get off the asteroid (not actually 40 minutes):



Play with the MarrowMatic:



Take too long getting into the sleep chamber:



And that is it folks! In a few days I'll be starting up Space Quest 3! Any requests or suggestions on how it is played?