suejak

Bought the Sierra logo shirt! I'm gonna look so hot at the gym.

I've taken impotent stabs at making a QfG3 demake in parser-based SCI, and the "decompiler" seems like it'd be super useful to that end. It's also possible that I have no idea what I'm talking about. It's surprisingly hard to make SCI games... Especially compared to AGI, which a trained monkey can handle pretty well.

It should definitely be left up to player choice. Although I put walk speed on "fast" for AGI games, I don't really change it too much in SCI games. I think there is something to be said for letting a world sink in around you. Slower walking speeds often give you a sense of really moving across a world with volume and distance. It can emphasize the feeling of really trekking through the world, rather than clicking through some backgrounds drawn by artists, especially in games where things can happen along the way. One example is the pedestrians in Freddy Pharkas, or maybe the zombie/bunny in Space Quest 4. If you could just skip past those with an agile double-click, you'd lose the sense of occupying the same space as them... and in Space Quest 4, you'd lose the tension of potential death. Anyway, gimme a walking speed slider or let me choose whether to run or not, and I'm good.

Yeah, I love SQ4. And my favourite part of the game is the mall scene, which is probably objectively the worst-made section in any SQ game. :P There's no motivation or any indication of what to do, and then all of a sudden a deus ex machina in the form of a Sequel Police vehicle shows up when you step on a random pixel in the arcade, which you have no reason to step on unless you read a walkthrough or are wandering around, aimless and desperate to progress. Of course, they will only appear after you've finished a prerequisite laundry list of other arbitrary tasks you didn't know were prerequisites, such as the identity fraud thing. Why did you need that money from the ATM, anyway? You don't know you need the money until you get to Vohaul's fortress, so you have to steal the money before the game will let you leave, then NOT spend the money until later, when you come back...? Check out this vintage hint thread: Ohhh ok. The sushi bar. (?) Of course, it all makes sense in hindsight or when you know the bigger picture or when you read a hintbook, but I think the designers didn't care or didn't think from the perspective of the player. That stuff combined with the bugs and programming (shootout scene that unnecessarily relies on processor cycles, producing a game-ending bug within a year or two) are what I mean by "unpolished".

Hmm, this got me thinking about Sierra stories I actually respect. Gabriel Knight 1, Police Quest 2, Quest for Glory 1-4, King's Quest 6... could make a good thread topic :)

"Story" is hopefully not why we play Sierra games :P If you want "story," you probably are more a fan of Lucas games and/or cartoons (arguably the same thing). (If you want story, play Woodruff <3)

We definitely disagree on this completely. For instance, you start out by saying "unless you take [a remake] and do something genuinely different with a well-known story, it serves very little artistic purpose." Later, you say the remake changes the art style like it's some sort of crime. You say "unless you're adding something, why bother?" Then you say, "SQ1 VGA's art style is completely out of sync with the rest of the series." Which is it? Is it too different or not different enough? The answer seems to be that you just don't like what SQ1 VGA added, because you think it's cheap and corporate -- "lazy" rather than a real artistic product. I definitely don't agree. I think SQ1 VGA is beautiful and has many important contributions -- maybe they're not what Scott Murphy wants, though. Really, I think it's hard to find examples of remakes that don't bring anything to the table -- otherwise, as you say, what's the point? In the specific case of the SQ1 VGA remake, I think the contributions are obvious: beautiful art; an interesting and internally consistent art style (not consistent with "the rest" of the SQ games, but I don't really care about that); great new writing that is leagues better, IMHO FYI, than the original; and an interesting re-interpretation of the gameplay for a new set of input devices. Can you really think of any remakes that contributed nothing at all? It'd be hard and would require some snobbery to determine what is a "worthwhile" contribution. As tends to be the case, I think that people look at the profit motive as somehow destroying artistic merit, which is something I will never agree with. I also find song covers and movie remakes to be inherently very interesting -- arguably moreso than the original works, which is exactly how I feel about Greensleeves and Someday My Prince Will Come. The originals are pretty boring, really, but the variety of reinterpretations is what I enjoy: I love Bill Evans doing Disney songs, Johnny Cash covers tend to be better than the originals, etc. To return to the jazz analogy, do you think standards are somehow inferior jazz? Is it low art to recreate a Disney tune in a bebop styling, adding your own improvisation in proper jazz style? What's even more relevant is that these songs became standards specifically to sell records! The reason they riffed on popular tunes was to become famous and line their pockets (and the pockets of their record labels). Nonetheless, they're my favourite jazz recordings. Anyway, a unique "cheapness" is definitely not something I feel when I play SQ1 VGA. Ironically, it is something I feel when I play the AGI games (cranked out in months on the same recycled engine) or when I play a game like SQ4 (which is unpolished, very clearly written on the fly, and 100% created primarily to cash in on new technology, like KQ5). But I've never tried to pretend like Space Quest was high art, and for that reason, cheap remakes are often just as good as the originals.

I looooooooove remakes. Sometimes I think people like Scott may misinterpret remakes as attempts to "improve" the original, like fixing up an old car. This isn't true at all, although I suppose opinions differ. It's a reinterpretation and/or riff, like a performance of a jazz standard. It's like rendering the Mona Lisa in pixel art. Did anybody accuse Coltrane of just rehashing "Someday My Prince Will Come" in a bebop-esque style? Probably. But jazz standards are also one of my favourite types of music too.

Same! My favourite Sierra comedy games (SQ, FPFP, Pepper's, etc.) have always had Josh Mandel on the writing team. I'm not sure I have many complaints regarding SQ6, to be honest. First of all, I don't think there is a coherent "Space Quest" at all (fan myths call SQ3/4 the real deal, but it's all arbitrary anyway), and moreover I really enjoyed the Information Superhighway, the ship interior, even Polysorbate... The writing is really hilarious and it's the only other game with Gary Owens on the mic! SQ5 remains my probably favourite of the series, but I enjoy a good SQ6 run as well. How old are you, OP? I was born in 1986, so that meant SQ1 VGA and SQ5 were my first two Space Quest games. That might have an effect on my opinions.

I would have assumed all of us grognards bought through DRM-free GOG.com :)

You played through the whole game three times to complete it once?

I realized while browsing Twitter that I really like Scott Murphy's voice too. While he's not a "professional," I think he has the timbre and attitude to make a good Two Guys narrator.

Wow, Tom Bergeron has an awesome voice for this sort of game! Very full and professional. I would love to be mocked and jeered by him. Neil Ross I mostly remember from FPFP, but Tom Bergeron has a much more Two Guys feel to him.

Yeah, same. Gary Owens is irreplaceable. Regarding potential successors, another voice I always liked was that of Neil Ross.

A sad day for pantloads everywhere :(

I guess we'll never know? All I know is that DOS Nostalgia also thinks the early Space Quests and the entire Sierra Discovery series are "bad," and he can't discuss them without painting his own (negative) emotions all over the dialogue. Now I know that he's also "nostalgic" for these things and that's why he devotes his life to being a cranky online museum curator, but I've disagreed with him enough about everything under the sun to feel like there might be some goodness in something he hates. He also thinks Doom is the best game ever made, while I've barely played Doom since 1994 and never made it far past the first level. Probably not my soulmate.

Hmm, it's too bad there's not someone better doing an English LP of that game. DOS Nostalgia has passion, but he's incredibly negative all the time. He says the game is bad or unfunny, and that really makes it hard to get a feel for the game through the thick cloud of his preconceptions. You end up with a better sense of his angst than you do of the game itself. Hopefully another bilingual Russian speaker can do the game more justice someday.

I liked the French/Russian/generic-European Let's Play of Pete Toleman's game. Did not like Pete Toleman's singing. Not exactly "helpful" or "useful" feedback, but Pete Toleman should bring that European Let's Play guy back.

Yeah, the music parts are so great. I hope they put out more videos like this for DOTT, as well. But Grim really has incredible music. My favourite part of the vid I linked is where the studio guy suggests an awesome change that really works. EDIT: Fixed the link...

Is anybody else really excited about the Grim Fandango remaster? God, it just looks so good... :wacko: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4rOgZ3RINE

Incidentally, my GOG copy of Space Quest 3 had the "Where am I?" line working... O_O

http://spacequesthistorian.com/ Oh, welcome :P EDIT: Also, each podcast has one of these, which you'd probably find informative and helpful for picking out which casts to listen to.

I think the problem is finding the bridle on the boat, despite there being no visual representation of it...?

Great work!!

Brrrrrrr-eat-o Meal - Cryogenically frozen mystery meat shipped from the furthest corners of the universe into the nearest corners of your stomach! So fresh it may be alive. Uacamole - Special zero-G dip.