Troels Pleimert

You're welcome, Johnathon! ;) Wait, "good clean fun ..." Were you one of those guys complaining about the language in my videos? ;) Ok, serious now. Oddly, I remember Kiz Urazgubi being one of those I got really quickly, but, again, Ulence Flats -- the more obvious of the two, I think -- eluded me for DECADES. For (somewhat) obvious reasons, I never knew Kerona was a beer until Scott told me back in the FAQ days.

As for a time, I'd really like for it to be next weekend. But sadly, my Saturday is booked. We could still do it Sunday evening (meaning Sunday morning for you Americans), but that means, once again, that the Australians are stuffed.

No one has ... Yet. ;) And yes, the fear is that pcj would just mop the floor with us. That's why I suggested we 'sign up' for different events. I mean, he can't possibly be good at ALL of them, can he? Also, Jess -- Google has opened up for simultaneous YouTube-streaming in my country. So now you don't have to host. Unless you reqlly want to. :)

I can just see the Kotaku headlines now. "Space Quest fans: Why you shouldn't support these drunken, belligerent, foul-mouthed space losers. Video proof!"

I enjoyed Broken Sword, but I really think it's been way overhyped -- and Revolution seem to be incapable, or unwilling, to do anything else these days but to milk that dead cow for all it's worth. I bought the "Director's Cut" for my Wii and the added stuff was absolutely abysmal. I really wanted them to do a sequel to Beneath a Steel Sky, one of my all-time favorite games ... but sadly, it seems Charles Cecil won't do that because he didn't invent that. (Dave Cummins, the creator of Steel Sky, had a massive falling out with the company just after the release of Steel Sky. Pity.)

I didn't get that until you pointed it out! Never too late to learn, I guess. :)

Dat Engineer joined the brainstorm and we had a few more ideas for events. Stooge Fighter Slug-Out Who can hold out the longest without the cheat code? Burger Flipping Burnout Time trial on the burger arcade sequence in SQ4. No cheating, people! Speed needs to be at least halfway up, and no using the keyboard! Crest Cleaning Yeah, we could time trial the crest cleaning. Or we could make it REALLY interesting and crest clean with SQ5 set to EGA mode! You can barely see the crest! ;)

Chrono2012 and I were brainstorming ideas for a Space Quest Olympics on #sq just now. Here's a few other ideas for events: Spider Droid Survival Trial Once the Spider Droid crashes on Kerona, we start a timer. Then you just have to stay on the ground level and avoid that sucker for as long as you can. Remember to keep drinking water. (We might have to use the debug mode to give us unlimited dehydrated water.) Sudden Death Skimmer We can have a multi-tiered survival trial on the Skimmer sequence (EGA version, since that one has four clearly defined speed settings). Contestants purposely hit rocks until the skimmer is just about to fall apart; then it's a trial to see who can reach Ulence Flats without dying. Once you complete it at one speed level, you advance to a higher speed. Super Computer Droid Party See who can survive the longest in the Super Computer being chased by the security droids. I have a feeling this event would be over very, very quickly. ;) Arnoid Dodge Get the Arnoid Annihilator to chase you in SQ3, then see how long you can survive with his ass on your tail. The scorpazoids could make this very, very interesting. So how to prepare for events? Well, since save games won't work with different versions of the games, maybe we should just chime in on what events we would like to compete in. Then it would be up to the contestants to have save games ready before the Hangout for their chosen events. I'd love to play the Skimmer trial. And Astro Chicken. I would probably suck too bad at the Super Computer droids to be of any use there. And I think I've had my fill of Skate-o-Rama for this lifetime. ;) Any ideas for events, or what events you want to compete in? Let 'er rip.

It's no secret that I played Space Quest obsessively as a kid -- and a kid with a very tenuous grasp of obvious humor at that. So it's time to air out some embarrassing laundry and hope some of you will do the same. ;) Any jokes in Space Quest that you didn't "get" until much, much later in life? For instance, it took me the longest time to get the joke in "Ulence Flats" ("flatulence"). Yeah, I know. NOW it's pretty obvious. But when I was a kid, I just thought it was a cool sounding name. Anyone else had moments of replaying the games as an adult and going, "Wow, how did I miss that?" :)

SQ6 turned out the way it did because, according to Josh Mandel, fans were eager to have Roger back to his "old self," bopping around planets on his own. So naturally, he didn't do any of that. ;) But if SQ6 had turned out to be a direct sequel to SQ5, in the sense that Roger stayed aboard the Goliath and now had a crew to boss around -- a crew that respected him, if you can believe that -- I think it would quickly have painted itself into a corner. That would imply that every game up until that point had just been a build-up to Roger becoming a careerist in StarCon. What's next, Roger as an admiral, pushing papers?

Well, whether you liked StarCon or not is probably a matter of personal taste. It's in the series now; it's been in two games. We can't deny it. We just have to deal with it. Like many others here, I thought it worked well for one game for satirical purposes, but it's turned into kind of a dead weight around the series, in my opinion. If anything was going to be done with StarCon post-SQ6, I think Datadog did it best -- turning StarCon into a borderline fascist, militaristic shithole that was just about to collapse under its own weight. :)

All true. A Skate-o-Rama-off sounds like it could be fun. Actually, we could just have a little Space Quest Olympics. Events include "trying not to swear while playing Astro Chicken," "time-trial Skate-o-Rama" and "Team Battle-Cruiser." The latter involves one guy playing Battle Cruiser (SQ5) while the rest of the Hangout make unhelpful suggestions. ;) Well, the next thing we should figure out is when this joyous occasion should unfold. What time next week would be good for you? Remember, there's a time zone difference to take into account, so we have to plan this carefully.

SQ4 started the Bea plotline, but had no mention of StarCon or that she was an ambassador of anything. :) I liked it better when Xenon was an autonomous world who gainfully employed incompetent janitors. Also, you have to wonder, if Xenon was a part of a gigantic federation of worlds, what was the point of that harebrained Star Generator scheme, then? Why were they left to fend for themselves? Couldn't they just have asked StarCon for help?

Well, that depends on your definition. It may not be an aggressive organization, but they do play with ranks and hierarchy: commanders, captains, lieutenants, admirals ... That sounds pretty militaristic to me. :)

Maybe we should just call this the 4th Hangout. The 3rd could be like Leisure Suit Larry 4. We were all there, but none of us can remember what happened. ;) We lost 9 minutes!

Well, er, that's actually a pretty good question. Because even if it was a retcon to imply that "NucleoTherm Hazardous Substance Containment Services" (the guys who shot off the Arcada) was really a bit player in StarCon all along, Roger never had a position within the fleet before he became a captain. That would imply that he went to the academy, and he didn't do that until SQ5. Or maybe it does. I always thought StarCon was a bit of a mistake, though, really. It worked great as a satire of Starfleet, but tying the whole Space Quest universe up in a federation of planets makes very little sense, in my opinion. It certainly wasn't implied that Xenon was part of any militaristic fleet back in The Sarien Encounter, and how far does StarCon stretch, anyway? Just the galaxy of Earnon, or all the way to Andromeda?

Whoops! That was an honest typo. (The dishonest ones are the ones to watch for.) I can't quite figure out how to change it, though.

2GFA = Two Guys From Andromeda. :) Thanks very much! You should be able to see the post even if you're not a G+ user (it's a public post). But here's a screenshot nonetheless:

This looks great! Really looking forward to the full game.

There's been some talk in the Twittersphere lately about rekindling the long-lost art of the Superfan Hangout on Google+. So I'm gonna throw this one out in the open and see if we can't collectively cook up something special. For instance, what should we do? At the first Hangout, we played Space Quest. At our second Hangout, we played the fan games. (Well, we tried, anyway.) I had the suggestion of using G+'s "shared sketchpad" function, where we could post pictures and draw a nice little tribute to The Two Guys. (Fred's worried that it'll devolve into a penis-drawing competition. I hope we can show a bit more class than that. ;) ) We could also do a roundtable thing where we show off some of our Space Quest skills. Like, if we got Kevin Wallace in the room, we could turn the spotlight on him for 10 minutes so he could show off his mad Astro Chicken skills. Or we could all watch in awe as PCJ speedruns SQ3 in 6 minutes without dying. Or we could take turns to see who could beat the Skate-O-Rama in the fastest time. Maybe a Skimmer challenge. Just off the top of my head here. And then there is the question of guest stars. Who could we conceivably get to hang out with us, and who would you most like to hang out with? Having Scott Murphy in the first Hangout was a real treat, and one I know we would all like to see repeated. ;) We tried to get Mark Crowe to drop by the second Hangout, and he was up for it, but couldn't make it due to, you know, making the SpaceVenture. I would personally love to see The Space Pope drop by and shoot the breeze with us fans, since he's just as obsessed a fan as we are. Having big fan personalities like Vonster D Monster in there, or a reappearance from Chris Ushko, would be really ace as well. As for us fans, I would dearly love to see Kevin Wallace (Astro Chicken FAQ writer), or Chris Geroux (creator of Eureka Trash Pickup, Pinkunz on Patrol and Orat Soccer), or Christian Giegerich (German superfan extraordinaire). And I know Irishmile is jumping at the chance. ;) There is also the small matter of when, exactly, we could have this glorious "reunion." By and large, everything's up in the air. Let me know what you think.

Corey looks like he's just been through a wind tunnel. ;) Joking aside, awesome news. I know a lot of people have been dying to see a new QfG-style game.

I admit, I miss the chaos, too. There has been some casual chat on Twitter about a 3rd Superfan Hangout, though. And maybe the new Living Concept Art will put a little fire into us. :)

I've been playing the Back to the Future game by Telltale on my Wii. Other than that, I finished SQ2VGA again a week ago with Leonard - in one sitting. That was a blast.

Haha, that was great! How long did that take you to do, anyway? (And yes, I left a comment on the video itself. ;) ) (Also, I reposted this on the 2GFA Google+ page. Hope you don't mind.)

Completely unrelated, but I love your avatar, @tomimt. Beneath a Steel Sky was, and still is, my all-time favorite adventure game right after Space Quest.