Troels Pleimert

This. Very this. Also live streaming of events that can be archived for future viewings.

Just for that, I think I'm gonna wear pajamas to the SpaceVenture wrap party.

I don't think Space Quest would work as a first person narrated game, actually. But Larry, sure.

There's a chance we might. No one can say for certain now, though.

I think Josh Mandel is a brilliant writer and it was good to see him and Scott bring back the sarcastic edge that was sort of lacking from SQ5. That being said, I think the game took some liberties with the SQ style that didn't seem to mesh fully with the established structure of previous SQ games. For a long time it eluded me what that actually specifically was, but now I think I've deduced that it's got something to do with the narrative structure itself. Roger and the narrator are more of a team now, as opposed to previous games where the narrator was this omnipotent figure making fun of Roger. And Roger is no longer the path-of-least-resistance character who just wants to get out of the situation he's in, but instead takes an active role in deciding to escape the DeepShip and track down Stellar's kidnappers. It was a different flavor of Space Quest, then -- not a bad one, mind, but still it didn't seem to live up to fans' expectations. Josh wanted to shake things up a bit and not just give fans more of the same, and on that note I'd say he definitely succeeded.

Haha, ohhh, no. In fact, I was hoping you could give me some indication of how things have been going at Priapic Mountain since you took over? :)

It's not really a question of whether they want to or not. Yes, they do want to do another Space Quest game. The rights are tied up at Activision, however, and money isn't what's going to get the rights or a license released to them. It's seeing whether the SpaceVenture becomes a success or not that's going to be the deciding factor for Activision.

The tunnels are interesting from a technical perspective, in that Scott Murphy had to hack the AGI engine in order to achieve the "glowing gem only illuminating the area around Roger" effect. But from a gameplay standpoint I'll never forgive that section for making me repeatedly crap my pants as a kid.

Hey, guys. I guess I owe you some sort of explanation. You may have noticed there was no Space Quest Historian podcast episode on the 19th, and that's a shame because I'd really pumped it up and I was really excited to throw it out there. All will be explained (somewhat) in the upcoming episode, which will come out this Wednesday. Fear not (or, well, depending on your disposition, tremble in your booties); the podcast will go on. March 5th, I'm back on the subspace air for your listening displeasure.

Back in the day, there was talk of turning Tex Murphy: The Pandora Directive into a movie titled "Black Sun Ascending." It never happened, unfortunately. Also, yes, Phantasmagoria really is terrible. :) But it's the fun kind of terrible; it's one of those games that is completely unaware of how terrible it is, making it that much more fun. It's basically Mystery Science Theater fodder in a CD-ROM format.

Least favorite area: I'll second the underground tunnels on Labion in SQ2. Fuck that squid monster!

It's hard for Space Quest-obsessed people like us to pin down what makes each Space Quest game better than the other. So I've tried stepping out of my subjective navel-gazing and offer this handy guide: SQ1: Play if you like being marooned on desert planets. SQ2: Play if you like being marooned on jungle planets. SQ3: Play if you like hopping around planets and playing arcade sequences. SQ4: Play if you like hopping through time and being in constant mortal danger. SQ5: Play if you like hopping around planets while solving a mystery of conspiracy and bossing people around. SQ6: Play if you like hopping around planets, then some chick's inner organs.

It depends on what kind of game you're playing. Most LucasArts games are narrated in the first person, i.e. the main character is describing what's going on around him. I've always found this type of narration slightly distracting, as it seems to me like the character is either muttering these observations to him/herself, or there's some sort of fourth-wall-breaking where we as the player is the only entity capable of hearing these things. I think the Tex Murphy games did the first person narration a lot better, in that we as the player are privy to Tex's private thoughts -- the narration in the Tex Murphy games (Under A Killing Moon / The Pandora Directive / Overseer) is narrated by Tex's thoughts, rather than him describing stuff out loud. The Sierra games use a third person narrator, which I think works better as a story-telling device for adventure games, to be honest. Think about it -- if someone walked into a room and started describing all the objects in the room out loud, wouldn't you want to call the nearest asylum and see if they might be missing an inmate? Now, if there's character dialogue, sure, I'm all about floating text. Although I think character portraits (like SQ4CD) work just as well. And the even more intimate "full-screen character portrait" (GK1 or QFG4) work even better, because it feels like you're actually in the conversation.

What's the word I'm looking for? Oh, that's right. LOL.

Yes, excellent point. Spoony's playthrough of Phantasmagoria II: A Puzzle of Flesh remains one of my all-time favorite roastings. :)

Added this to my "watch later" list. I can't wait to get red-hot about it. ;) But seriously. I love Yahtzee. I know he loves adventure games and that his shtick, as Brandon says, is to be overly critical of everything. I'm sure, deep down, he loves the game; otherwise, why would he play it in the first place?

Everybody seemed gung ho for the idea, but the logistics were just hell. I'm not sure if it's still in the works, or if we're waiting for some sort of divine intervention.

A fucking crime, that was.

SQ5 was supposed to have a CD-ROM talkie version (the hint book says it's underway), but then Dynamix ran into financial trouble and decided to push ahead with new projects instead of polishing up old ones. Consequently, that CD-ROM talkie never happened. It would've been interesting, though. Actually, IQ Adventures were working on a VGA remake of SQ3. Steven Alexander, CEO of IQ, talked about that in one of the episodes of the Space Quest Historian podcasts. Unfortunately, for the reasons above (time and money, basically), they decided to forge ahead with original content (Quest for Infamy) instead of working on SQ3VGA. When you finish SQ2VGA, you do get a few glimpses of what the VGA remake of SQ3 would've looked like. The original plan was actually to include a fully playable part of SQ3 as a bonus of SQ2VGA, but the lads never got around to finishing it.

This is fantastic, Akril! Love it! So much detail; so much great stuff.

It really was great. :) I especially enjoyed the "lost voice files" in SQ6. "Okay, I'm done now." "I let you ride the worm!"

Ah! Well, cheers. It's always interesting to hear people's voices. Text only gets you so far. :)

I think there's a bigger issue being neglected here and that's one of trust. Even if he withdrew completely from the public eye and let someone else steer the ship, just the fact that he has previously dealt in some shady business practices (thinking specifically of the finagling-funds-for-Tom-King scheme here) would make it hard to accept anything coming out of a company where he is employed as kosher. I mean, they'd basically have to make it part of the marketing campaign at this point: "Trowe only packed the boxes! No shady deals were involved in the making of this game!"

It mirrors the extent of their imagination, I think. ;)

One can only hope this was mandated by some stern legal advice. He did call us all "trolls." I thought I was the only "Troels" in our midst.