Troels Pleimert

Also, underwear money no bueno. Don't give me yer filthy drawer dollars, mate. No shorts shillings. And you can forget all about pesos of the pants.

I was playing a bit of Anastronaut II the last time I, uh, had time to play a game. It's challenging -- drops you right into a darkened room with a visible timer counting down from 15 minutes right off the bat. It's also really pretty, very well animated, and fully voiced. And it's got some very Space Quest-y humor to it. I did, however, get massively stuck on a tricky anti-gravity puzzle and haven't gone back since. The old grey ones don't do well with three dimensional thinking.

The late, great Douglas Adams loved the parser and famously compared (or at least had someone writing for his website compare) point-and-click games to the literary equivalent of banging two rocks together. But, then, he also wrote what I would deign the quintessential parser game -- Infocom's Hitchhiker's game -- where you literally get into arguments with your computer over how to proceed. The man knew how to toy with conventions. His much-touted reintroduction of the parser in Starship Titanic? Ehh, not so much. Nice effort, but it really just reacted to a comparably short list of recognized words in a sentence -- probably because every response had to be voiced by an actor. I actually quite like how Leisure Suit Larry 7 reintroduced the parser in a p-n-c environment by having you click on the noun and then optionally typing in the verb. I wish more games had done this.

@JimmyTwoBucks: Ah, yes, good point about "the ART of looking up hints." Because once I've had to look up a hint to solve a puzzle and it turns out it's something I never would've thought of, or if the solution was just unfair (e.g. relying on pixel hunting), then I will be more predisposed to look up hints as I play the rest of the game -- because, in my mind, I KNOW the game isn't playing fair. ;)

Awesome! Sarien space pirates for hire! Do they do children's parties?

More Brits, wooo! I think drslashvohaul was getting lonely.

I've been using Space Quest music for my podcast in every episode and so far no peep. I think Activision has slowly learned their lesson about raising a fuss against creative fan communities.

Thanks, man! Joe recorded those specially for the podcast and he only recorded the chapters that Dan and I selected. What you hear is all there is. :) I would LOVE to hear Joe run through the novels in their entirety, but he did it in his free time and for free, so I wouldn't presume that he'd want to give up his evenings for it. ;)

I still use walkthroughs when I'm stuck and frustrated at a game for cockblocking my progress when I just want to see the story unfold. Some games use puzzles as an integral part of the story that moves the narrative forward; some delight in just putting up outlandish roadblocks to hinder your progress as much as possible. GK2 is a great example of a game where the puzzles are so expertly tied to the narrative that you always (barring the odd museum visit and wolfy-closing-doors sections) know what is expected of you. Contrast that to a game like Discworld where you're just never sure what the fuck you're supposed to do, and even when you accomplish something it usually feels like you just stumbled upon the solution by accident. I only used a walkthrough sparingly for GK2 when I couldn't wrap my head around the wolfy arcade at the end, or when I couldn't get that damn chapter 4 to finish. Discworld, on the other hand, I realized I'd have to play all the way through with a walkthrough, and I just gave up. I can get very impatient sometimes. ;) The odd-one-out here, I think, are the Take 2 FMV games Ripper and Black Dahlia. If I hadn't used a walkthrough for those games, I'd probably still be stuck in them. And it's not because of bad puzzle design; this is simply because the games are too smart for me. Toughest game I ever played? Woodruff and the Schnibble of Azimuth. Anyone who claims to have beaten that game fair and square is either lying, a genius or French. :)

I'm behind Brandon 100% on BBT. Don't like it one bit. As for sci-fi comedy, the twin threat of Red Dwarf and Futurama is enough to send me into paroxysms of ecstacy.

Let me know if the Datacorder puzzle gives you any shit. ;)

And then goes on to say that SpaceVenture is going to be rubbish, that she has lost faith in the Two Guys, and that their presence on social media is somehow detrimental to their fan base and good name. I just don't see it as anything other than a backhanded slap that reads between the lines as, "You guys used to be great because I didn't know anything about you. Now that I do, I am disappointed for undisclosed reasons, and I'm pretty sure the new game will suck even though I know nothing about it, because social media will spoil the whole story and, also, hashtags suck."

Yaay! Someone's always been a kidder, and I think we know who it is. ;)

This is pretty much what happened with the Escape Factory sequel they were planning. Yeurgh.

Okay, I'll grant you that. SQ6 was, honestly, a bit buggy. If you compare it to the previous games, that is. The most grievous of which being the "ComPost Crash" (or the Error 57 crash), which occurs if you try to use the correct item on the ComPost on a machine that's slightly too fast. But, then again, it was toying with the cutting edge at the time, and there was a lot of upheaval at the company at the time, so it's possible that Quality Assurance just suffered.

Had to leave a comment on the article. It baffles me beyond belief.

Excuse me? Excuse me again? I think the author of this article has really grievously misunderstood something. SpaceVenture is not going to be a modern action game. It is going to be an adventure game.

SQ3, actually. But, admittedly, that changes with the weather. ;)

Well, it's not called Sci-Fi Quest ... ;) *pokes Collector's bottom with a stick*

Gareth absolutely nailed it right there. Especially this bit: *standing ovation; wipes single tear from eye* Gameplay is constantly evolving its user-friendliness (and taking some odd missteps here and there, sure - I mean, shit, look at the Virtual Boy - what the hell was that?), but by and large we're getting to the point of "playing games" on the computer or console is as easy to pick up and enjoy as "playing games" in a playground is.

Yaaaay! It was such a treat working on Serena and I'm so glad that people are enjoying it. The response on Steam and in (most of) the reviews has been overwhelmingly positive and we're digging all the crazy interpretations of the story that people are churning out. It's been one of the most rewarding creative experiences I've ever had.

Gawd, I hate this new "quote post" system. I can never seem to "break" quotes into small pieces for easy commenting. Oh well. Re: Larry criticism. I agree, a lot of it came from a mindset that did not appreciate adventure games for the storytelling medium they were, expecting unlockable achievements and a degree of reflex-twitching, since that's what's considered an "adventure" game these days (survival horror, Zack & Wiki, Tomb Raider, etc.). I don't think the Reloaded game helped matters much, however, by sticking very stringently to the original, going so far as to copy mechanics that were, shall we say, annoying to begin with. The money system where you can get irrevocably stuck in a taxi-cab and have to restore to a previous point? Having to play the slot machines to increase said money count for no other reason than being able to buy some stuff in the convenience store and having enough money to travel around the game world? Despite the addition of some puzzles that weren't in the original and what I think is a pretty good conversation system, it still really did feel like a throwback instead of a forward move. And I'm not saying that's a terrible thing at all, but in terms of appealing to a larger, more mainstream demographic, a lot of eyes were on Larry to take adventure gaming into the future, and instead it stuck to its nostalgic roots - and perhaps a little too closely. I think that criticism of the game is deserved. There were a lot of things you could've done with a remade Larry 1 that would have kept the spirit of the original but taken it in a new direction (yes, unlockable achievements could have been one of them). Okay, that's Larry. Re: the comment about "getting over a time when big budget adventure game releases were common." I don't think that's the sentiment Fred and the guys were going for at all. If anything, yes, we do want adventure games to break into the mainstream so we can see them get the same big-budget treatments that current AAA titles enjoy. Not to replace action/strategy/whatever games. But it would be fun to see true adventure games get back into the good graces with the mainstream gaming public, perhaps attract new players that aren't much into "gaming" but would rather read/watch movies, and share the spotlight with whatever the kids are playing these days. I was recently interviewed for a podcast (in Danish, sadly) about where "gaming" is going these days - it was hosted by a group of cultural intellectuals who preferred reading and watching movies to "playing these video games." So they'd gotten hold of Grand Theft Auto 5 and Flower and played those as "representative of video games today." And they brought me in as one of two guests for a bonus episode (the other was the lead programmer from IO Interactive) to talk about game development today. But it quickly escalated into a talk about how many people are turned off by video gaming because of its lack of emphasis on storytelling and its predelictions towards quick reflexes or technology showcasing. I think modern video games are just coming out of their "puberty" now and we're starting to see a greater focus on storytelling, even in those AAA titles that are still all about blasting everything in sight. That suddenly leaves a spot open for adventure games to reclaim its heyday before Doom made it all about technology and turned computer/video gaming into a competitive sport instead of a culturally viable alternative/evolution of literature. And that's what I hope to see. I very much doubt that there are any adventure gamers who feel we should "get over" the heyday of the 90's, but we need to be willing to share the spotlight with other genres and realize that there is an audience out there for every type of game - even people who didn't realize they were "gamers" until someone showed them that it's not all about massacring zombies or driving really fast.

This. Very this. :)

Well, Sierra was a pretty cool place to work until Ken decided to take the company public and then sell it. A Sierra 2.0 would probably harken back to the old creative and free-spirited days. Uh, in theory, at least. It probably wouldn't have been such a fun prospect after all with you-know-who in charge.

I see what you're saying about Roger's character development. You're right; he didn't have to save The Two Guys in SQ3, but he did, anyway. And they left a distress message just like Stellar does in SQ6, so Roger's really just a sucker for those. ;) I will, however, unnecessarily reiterate that SQ5 and SQ6 weren't created by The TWO Guys From Andromeda, and I still feel Roger's character changed slightly - and somewhat unexpectedly - in those games. But, okay, we know from SQ2's comic book that Roger really digs being called the hero, so maybe it's not such a big stretch after all. One thing that does irk me is that Roger and the narrator are now aware of each other in SQ6 as opposed to all the other games where Roger is completely unaware of the narrator's presence. I didn't feel like that kind of fourth-wall-breaking was well-suited for Space Quest. But I might be in the minority there, as evidenced by how there's plenty of fourth-wall-breakage going on in a number of the fan games.