suejak

When has Anita ever demanded that someone's speech be squelched, particularly with reference to a game's content? Some people always say she "forces her opinion down your throat," but YouTube doesn't work that way. You have to go and look at the video yourself, of your own volition.

Haha, that one is the easiest to check because it's right next to the spores. Sadly, it doesn't cause a knock-out :( Nor does the other nonlethal fall by the big tree one screen to the right...

SQ6 logo reminds me of the old Interplay logo... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjHC4EBJsAA

Yeah, there's this flippant idea that outsourcing causes a loss of artistic legitimacy. Maybe it's hard to suss out in explicit terms from individual people, but it's obviously there. I suppose I also disagree (as a separate issue) with the premises that it matters what the Two Guys wanted, that it matters what "the original team" (?) would have done with a VGA version that had far more staff than just 2, or that it matters what the "consistent style" of the series is, which again I would argue has never existed. Space Quest 4 and Space Quest 5 feel like night and day stylistically -- probably, and crucially to this discussion, due to the change in teams for each game since Space Quest stopped being a two-man show. Taking Space Quest 4 as the VGA standard of the series, you're left having to explain why everything about Space Quest 5 was a parody of Star Trek TOS, why it was so cute and bouncy, why it suddenly adopted this comic book (and cutscene-heavy) style, etc. The answer is pretty obviously: Dynamix. Interface aside, Space Quest 5's art style has a lot more in common with Willy Beamish than it does with SQ4. One point that probably sets me apart from others on this forum is that I don't especially respect the artistic will of Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe. I'm really not a Guys from Andromeda fan, per se; I'm a fan of Space Quest in all its incarnations, including fan games, remakes, riffs, etc. In my opinion, some of the fan games are better than some of the canon titles.

So my point is that all the 30 assumptions you made in that post are prejudicial in nature, whether they' re "just true" or not ;) ("Team" in scare quotes is a perfect example of the kind of thinking I'm talking about.) Moreover, I don't think it's hard to know all the source material -- it's more a question of whether you personally believe they had a right to riff on Space Quest or not, and apparently you don't. Fair enough.

The thing is it's not "racial" prejudice at all -- it's "here" (wherever) versus "elsewhere," and the prejudicial idea that "elsewhere" makes stuff on the cheap and without passion, due to assumptions about the relationship between art and the mechanisms of global capitalism. In other words, the idea that outsourced, "factory" art is inferior to "real," homegrown art.

This isn't really a road I enjoy going down, but it's not "racism" per se. You're also confusing me with JimmyTwoBucks. Anyway, it's about prejudice -- i.e., an artistic project contracted out to faraway non-English-speaking foreigners is akin to American Eagle making its American goods in Chinese sweatshops. But it's not racism, because the issue isn't about the race of the people involved. I don't like bringing up such heavy-duty real world concepts in such a trivial context. Frede: nobody thinks you're racist. :wub: I personally think you're snarky and hypersensitive, but that's ok -- I've got a Super Nice Guy veneer on anyway because I'm trying to believe that this community is as pure and friendly as Troels is and portrays it as. I want that community to exist <3

Oh man, I don't think anyone said it was "racist". :wub: We'll have to agree to disagree about how the comment works on the reader, given the apparent multitude of intuitive interpretations. I was really surprised to find that you run this site after running into you so often at the DoubleFine forums ;)

Using contractors is lazy? I dunno, I don't buy that at all... "Some random Koreans" certainly sounds like mockery to a native English speaker's ears. The idea that the series has any sort of real artistic consistency also isn't something I would ever agree to. Anyway, I'm glad we can all agree that it's beautiful.

"Creative peak" is a tough phrasing because they were always creative. My personal favourite Sierra period is late parser SCI through early VGA, so 1989-1994. In games terms, LSL3/SQ3 to about QfG4 would easily be my favourite period. In terms of impact, Sierra was easily the most influential studio of that era. I think it's more accurate to say that they were the most influential studio for their entire existence until about 94-95, when FPS started to dominate the market and Lucas took over the mantle of adventure games. Of course, they still went on to publish industry-changing titles like Half-Life and critical classics like Arcanum, but those aren't really Sierra titles. They just transformed into a big corporation is all. They started out as a small group of reasonably talented, fun people, then they got rich and started trying to buy up all the good talent on the market (Dynamix, etc). 1. Lori and Corey Cole, because the Quest for Glory series is simply the best thing that Sierra ever made. 2. Josh Mandel, because I think I just click with his style. Everything he's written has really been great, especially Freddy Pharkas. 3. The two guys would have to be tied for third. 4. Jane Jensen. I think it will be a minor publishing label that is revived with a limited scope every now and again.

What's interesting to me about complaints of the VGA being farmed out to Koreans is that the core of the remake is still the Two Guys. It's almost entirely just a cosmetic reinterpretation. To adapt Troels's metaphor and put it in more normal terms, it's like a cover of a Beatles song. I'm reminded of Johnny Cash's cover of "Hurt," which is often considered superior to the NIN original (arguably even by Trent Reznor). Now, the VGA remake of Space Quest is definitely not that good, but it's still a cover. I've always enjoyed this sort of re-interpretation. Jazz has a whole sub-genre of "standards": classic songs from Tin Pan Alley or older (even medieval in the case of something like Greensleeves) that are then taken up and reinterpreted through another's lens. Even if the case here is a cash grab using anonymous contractors, the contractors' perspective was honestly an interesting one.

Hmm, I was hoping for a fun thread about why the VGA version supposedly sucks, because I've always really liked it :) That's really all...

I gotcha! It just reminds me of the last Hangout on Youtube, where everybody in running from the spiderdrone in VGA except PCJ :)

Hahaha, I love how European and confused this community is. The poll is intentionally nonsensical because there seems to be an overwhelmingly anti-VGA vibe here, as I picked up from the Sierra Superfan Hangout vids ;) I don't want my clear favourite to lose the poll in a landslide... Anyway, I'm not sure why that didn't get across, but we'll just let that one go, lol. More importantly, it's nice that the only two identifiable assholes here are now at each other's throats :D

Well, I've liked your post for now, but I'll probably unlike it later just to make you feel empty inside.

I disagree! SQ1 VGA is the classic. I also edited the poll after your vote, ha!

Time to settle this question once and for all: Which SQ1 version is the best, and why? Straight-up, I prefer VGA. I love the AGI engine and I love parsers. I even made an AGI game when I was 12: Monkey Man and the Quest to Kick Some Balls, set in the Ulence Flats bar and starring characters both new and familiar to Space Quest fans. Yet I undeniably prefer the VGA remake. It is the one I remember admiring the box art for in the store. It's the one whose 60s film-style trailer sucked me on an old demo disc. It has personality and it looks amazing. The Deltaur is a rad-looking giant mantis that locks on predatorily to the Arcadia. The interior of the Deltaur is beautiful and suspenseful. The bar has seriously rockin ZZ Top music, and you can even talk to the patrons. You don't even have to savescum to rake in the cash at the slot machine. All the portraits give the characters new personality. Running from the spider droid is way more fun with a mouse than it is with arrow keys. Killing the orat looks awesome, whether you do it with the spider droid or the bottle of dehydrated water, because the orat looks so awesome, and the little orat part that comes out looks awesome, and everything is awesome. I'm sure there are hundreds more great things about the VGA version, but there are too many so I forgot. People say the AGI parsers offers more freedom, and they're probably right. But it also offers more Ugly, and a lot more Sorry, I don't know what a Plunger On The Wall is.

lol, somebody should pull a PCJ and be the only person playing the remake. Personally, I prefer the VGA remake. Yeah that's right. You gotta problem with that? Huh? Huh?

I enjoy it! I'd like it more if it were less about community members and more about the Space Quest / Sierra universe, though. Your plans to explore other Sierra universes sound extremely cool. I look forward to those chapters.

I love Tim and I think he's hilarious. Double Fine games always have that spark. However, Double Fine is a poorly run company. They don't know how to manage anything at all, and they're too nice to find real business people to work for them.

Something about Gary Owens saying, "It's your spent spore, Roger" seems more like an LSL line...

The exciting follow-up mystery is whether this is included in the re-make! :ph34r:

Oh dear God, Cluster Blucket or whatever was fucking hilarious :lol: :lol: :lol: The smear of Fester Blatz was incredible lol EDIT: Also really enjoyed your metal rendition of the World-o-Wonders theme. Best one I've heard.

God I love these podcasts! I could listen to you talk about Space Quest for hours... wait, I've done that... Was weirded out to hear myself on the latest episode, but only in a slightly awkward way! Next time I have feedback I'll record it ;)

Hmm... I definitely agree that the more populated / civilized areas tend to be more fun. I also liked a lot of the atmospheric areas of SQ5, a game I love playing again and again. StarCon, Genetix, the wiped-out colony, the Space Bar, the planet where WD40 chases you around... This was the height of Sierra adventure games for me, with perfect art, music, and gameplay. I also really liked the data archives in SQ6. I didn't like Labion in SQ2 until the beautiful underground areas with the pools. Reminded me of the... beautiful cave areas of QFG2, haha. Something about Labion was just too passive. Too much man-vs-environment and not enough sentient life. Too much stuff just waiting for you to walk into it. That's about it, I guess. Most of the areas in SQ are designed very poorly, but most of them are fun to explore. The mall in SQ4 is a great example. It's a fun place, but it's piss poorly designed. You have no motivation to do most of what you're required to do, and then the Sequel Police don't show up until you step in a specific spot in the arcade you have no reason to step into...