STREETS OF XENON (feat. Danny of Game Grumps) | Space Quest IV pt. 1

[@timtwoface]

I know it's six years later but considering my love for this series in the 80s and 90s, your deep dives into the Space Quest lore is amazing. Thank you for your awesomeness. PS SQ2 was the first Sierra game...amd computer game ..i ever played. It was packaged with "Helicopter 3D" and "Thexder". I also loved Thexder.

[@spacequesthistorian]

Thanks very much for watching these. They're pretty old at this point (and a bit cringe at times, at least to me) but I'm happy people are still finding enjoyment in them.

[@timtwoface]

@spacequesthistorian I haven't seen a deep dive into my favourite adventure series like this since, like, ever. Can't believe I didn't come across this many years/Space Quests ago. Glad I awoke from my escape pod deep sleep to sicover these, finally. And no that doesn't mean I feel like I'm living in a garbage freighter now.

[@Okurii]

Gotta love the random energizer bunny that decided to show up. Also the jump in graphical quality from SQ3 to SQ4 is amazing, I didn't grow up during this era of games but I still manage to be impressed by the capabilities of these games.

[@spacequesthistorian]

Yeah, I've often wondered where that bunny came from -- as in, why it's just wandering around the streets of Xenon like that.

[@Mr_Top_Hat_Jones]

@@spacequesthistorian The Energizer bunny started as a parody of the Duracell bunny. Then, for whatever reason, the damn thing became massively popular. So, Sierra parodied the Energizer bunny, which itself was a parody of the Duracell bunny.

[@toxotesarcher7287]

danny is great but I have to say you are REALLY nice to listen to! i have anxiety problems so a chill voice + pleasant and intelligent ramblings makes for a relaxing distraction ! you have a wonderful personality and it will be nice seeing your channel grow :D

[@spacequesthistorian]

+Meaky Harper That means a lot to me. Thank you. My wife has anxiety problems as well, so I know what a shithole that can be.

[@toxotesarcher7287]

Space Quest Historian Aww :( i hope she stays in good health then! 💜

[@spacequesthistorian]

Thanks. Yeah, it really opened my eyes on a number of things.

[@Terezar]

I still get a little misty eyed hearing Gary Owens voice on these games. Such a shame we lost him. He was so excited to be working on SpaceVenture, and he wanted so much to see it through.

[@spacequesthistorian]

+Terezar Yup, a damn shame. Fuck you, diabetes!

[@MagusMarquillin]

I've been wondering, did Gary record any material for Space Venture before he died or was too early for that? Can we expect to hear him to some capacity when it's released?

[@spacequesthistorian]

+Magus Marquillin Sadly, no, he didn't. He recorded one promo, but no dialogue for the game itself.

[@Terezar]

The promo was hilarious though

[@terrasilvershade5678]

I watched Dan's playthroughs of Space Quest 1-3 and he introduced me to you. He's a sweetheart and I'm excited to get to experience all of the space with you

[@spacequesthistorian]

Dan is indeed a sweetheart. Glad to have you on board!

[@JRCOBRA]

This was the first Space Quest game I ever played. Took me and my brother forever to find that sewer grate.

[@spacequesthistorian]

+JRCOBRA Yeah, it's weird that that's the *only* sewer grate you can go into. I guess the hint is it's a slightly different color than the others and doesn't have multicolored gunky water running out of it?

[@jessicaregina1956]

You can actually play the whole game with the unstable ordnance if u pick it up when u come out the sewer

[@spacequesthistorian]

Yup. That's kind of a weird oversight, isn't it?

[@wrsavilleiii]

When my Opah passed away, I inherited the computer he and I built. I upgraded it enough get DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 on it. Along with the computer, came SQIV that was the 5-1/4" floppies. This was the first Space Quest I beat without a walk-through. This one holds a special place in my heart.

[@ryanharvey1125]

After playing through the glorious game “Loom” , I came upon this gem of a game. 1 of my all time favourites. #1. Full throttle #2. Loom #3. Space Quest IV

[@AidanMillward]

Having another watch through of the series. At a certain point in the hologram story there’s a slight portion of Vohaul’s theme in the music as it goes “dark”. The theme you hear when you first meet him in Space Quest 2.

[@spacequesthistorian]

Yup, they also use that theme every time Vohaul appears - during the intro, and the "meanwhile, back in SQ12" cutscene.

[@mortymer001]

the mouthing along and acting you did was great haha

[@mortymer001]

trivia too

[@spacequesthistorian]

+Max Bretzfelder The mouthing-along is how I always play this game. ;)

[@ArtistontheBorder]

I was unlucky enough to have the 8 floppy disk Amiga 500 version. It took insane times to load. The Xenon scene was basically all I played, never figured out how to get out of there.

[@spacequesthistorian]

Making my way through comments I missed during AdventureJam... Haha! Oh man, I used to be so jealous of my friend's big brother who had an Amiga back when all we had was a Commodore 64. I would probably have felt differently if I'd seen him play KQ5 or SQ4.

[@DarkSoul4242]

Oh, I didn't know that little tidbit about Roberta Williams and the color cycling effect... (Which also got some use in QfG1 afterwards for the waterfalls) I like your videos because they not only play through all the fun bits of the games, they also explain how to get the best out of them (the NewRisingSun patches, the digitized voice for Roger in SQ3, etc...), plus the additional trivia and creator stories. I'll also add that I learned what "unstable ordnance" was at that time, just like you. I had to ask my dad, who laughed his ass off when he saw exactly why I was asking. :D

[@spacequesthistorian]

+Stephane Lapie Thanks so much! Really glad you enjoy my ramblings. :) I'm learning a bunch during these playthroughs as well. Just goes to show you can brand yourself a self-styled "expert" (or Historian, or whatever), and these games will still find new ways to surprise you. E.g. being able to have MT-32 music *and* digital sound in SQ3.

[@merlinyesreally]

Outstanding episode. In regard to factoids regarding this series, and possible hesitation to share it with the masses... Dude. Bore away. It's fascinating to learn this information.

[@spacequesthistorian]

+TheOnlygCrusher I can be incredibly boring, but I'm happy you enjoy that. :D

[@justdeath96]

Watched Dan's playthrough of Space Quest 3 (enjoyed it) and then he gave a shout out to you (Space Quest Historian) on Dead Rising 2 made me have to watch (I rewatch a lot of their episodes). I know that was months back, but I thought it was time to give this channel a look. I watched your playthroughs of Space Quest 1-3 and enjoyed your commentary. Love the knowledge you give about Space Quest during your playthroughs. I liked how you made comparisons in this Space Quest. The Space Quest series is fascinating and hope to someday just sit down and play it, but will keep watching your playthrough (and watch your other playthroughs on the channel). I know this is long, but I just enjoy watching your Space Quest playthroughs.

[@spacequesthistorian]

+justdeath96 Thank you! That's very much appreciated. Glad to have you on board :)

[@BridgeToGantry]

Terrific. Just terrific, the absolute best of all the SQ series in my humble opinion, and is just about to get dissected and heavily scrutinised. That's my 'tube viewing sorted out for a while. Excellent work Mr Historian.

[@spacequesthistorian]

+Dave Terabyte If by "dissected" and "heavily scrutinized" you mean "pathetically fawned over," then yes, that is exactly what's going to happen! :D

[@BridgeToGantry]

I'd prefer "an affectionate homage", but we can go with your thing!

[@spacequesthistorian]

+Dave Terabyte Yeah, alright. ;)

[@chowdown]

I always liked the status line gag with the title "Space Quest XII - Vohaul's Revenge II". Weirdly and coincidentally enough, Star Trek Into Darkness could be called "Star Trek XII: The Wrath of Khan II", with the exact same "sequel" numbers.

[@nerdfreed9345]

Commenting just to comment. This one is the one I'm the most excited for and I'm already loving it. The sound, the graphics. I can't wait to see all the new things. Keep it up my space nerd!

[@spacequesthistorian]

+Nerdfreed Thank you for the comment! I do indeed love the comments, and that's no lie -- so even a comment just for comment's sake is appreciated! :)

[@biglos9d]

Dude, your facial reactions during the dialogue are pure fucking gold. You had me rotflmao'ing.

[@biglos9d]

This version of the game was a long time coming! I had both floppy and CD versions (and the... ugh... Windows 3.1 version) of the game and always wondered why they made those graphical changes to them. Always loved the Gary Owens narration.

[@derosiflo6524]

Biggest thank you for the hard work you did for us :D you're our hero, I can assure you that.

[@spacequesthistorian]

+DerÖsiFlo Absolutely my pleasure. Can't wait to play more! :D

[@DavidXNewton]

Tell all the anecdotes that come to your mind, even if it causes every episode to be three hours long :) It's fascinating listening to what you know about the background behind these games. Gary Owens' pronunciation of the 'a' vowel is definitely weird and I'm not sure what part of America it's from - but otherwise here he speaks very good English for an American ;) That zombie. Sorry - "cyborg". This game wasn't part of my childhood but I can see why it scared so many people, particularly as it was the herald of inescapable death. One of my friends told me the first time he played it, the game happened to crash there and he was stuck staring at its decayed face in an eternal loop of screaming before he eventually had to reset the machine. By then he was scarred for life.

[@spacequesthistorian]

+DavidXNewton Gary Owens may have one mildly amusing speech impediment, but he is by far the best narrator in the history of narrators. Of course, that's just my opinion. ;) Eternally screaming Xenon cyborg truly sounds like the stuff of nightmares!

[@SlicedToast1]

Not going to lie, the 1st time I saw one of those Cyborgs, the scream alone made my 10 year old self run out of the room. If it weren't for the help of my father I don't think I would have ever beaten this game. Shout out to you dad

[@-Tristan-]

That guy walking around in the streets was and is, still horrifying. Despite, I like the dark and mature graphics style, in the 80s and early 90s, this was, not only a bit, over the top.

[@Sephex]

That story of Roberta Williams was something else. Yeah, how dare a game with a sci-fi setting gets something slick looking over a series with a medieval setting! It's a shame she couldn't keep her ego in check. Anyway, I don't want to leave on a down note, so great work as usual! It's cool to see such effort to bring something new to a let's play of this series.

[@spacequesthistorian]

+Sephex Heh, well ... KQ *was* the flagship product of Sierra, so you could argue she was sort of within her rights to demand it. And it is admittedly hearsay -- I don't know firsthand from Roberta exactly how "pissed" she was -- but the way Scott tells it, she was none too happy. :)

[@Sephex]

Space Quest Historian Ah, okay. Thanks for further clarifying!

[@richardperspective]

You didn't have to be a foreign kid to be 'what's an unstable ordanance' first time playing this thing! Ah, Gary Owens. Such a shame we never got that SQV talkie.

[@spacequesthistorian]

+ProbablyRichard Good to know! The game more or less implies that I'm an idiot for not knowing (which is par for the course when playing Space Quest). So I just took it as read that I was, in fact, an idiot. ;)

[@Tach0012]

I was lucky enough to have a Soundblaster/CD-ROM combo when this came out so I've only ever seen the CD version. I had no idea the graphics were different on the disk version. Loving these playthroughs. :)

[@spacequesthistorian]

Thanks! Yeah, they're subtle differences, but they're there.

[@ShadeMeadows]

The only SQ I ever played, and never finished it~ 😅

[@racer927]

Grabbing actors straight from the offices wasn't uncommon back then. Most of WestWood's talent was in-house from Joseph Kucan (casting director) playing the iconic role of Kane to Frank Klepacki (soundtrack composer) being an extra like the cyberwarrior in the Nod ending of Tib Dawn or the Soviet sentry that gets assassinated by an Allied spy (played by Joe Kucan) in Red Alert.

[@orinokonx01]

I've been wanting to play through the series again recently. On real hardware mind you, but honestly the biggest hurtle for me was the fact that SQ4 and SQ5 have such bad timing issues, I wasn't sure what I could do. I'll need to check out these patches! They certainly seem promising so far!

[@spacequesthistorian]

If you're playing SQ4 CD-ROM on original hardware, NewRisingSun's patch is a must. Otherwise, you'll be spending a lot of time with software like MoSlo or Turbo, which may sometimes crash the game if it runs out of base memory. If you're playing the disk version, however, you should be fine - there are no timer bugs in that version.

[@kaelside]

Hells yeah! My fave SQ game :) Will you be detailing the various graphical differences between the versions? Now would be a good time to mention that I'm sure a few of us here agree that you'd make a great narrator for a remake. All we'd need is some sort of hashtag...

[@spacequesthistorian]

+Manil Chiba I'll try to point out the bits where there's a graphical difference, but I might miss a couple. Some of the changes are very subtle. Haha, very nice of you to suggest I'd make a good narrator. I could never do Gary Owens' job, though! (I do, however, have a standing offer from Infamous Quests that they'd build a version of their SQ2 remake if I ever supplied them with my voice.)

[@kaelside]

Gary Owens will always be a legend :) But that offer sounds good!

[@metalmario991]

I recently downloaded the patch for superior graphics and text & speech together. However, I only got the latter and I bet I didn't get the gameplay touch-ups either. The graphics were unchanged so I don't know if I installed the patch wrong or if I got the wrong patch. Any advice?

[@zombiefacesupreme]

I've never been past the mall because my computer was always too fast! I can't wait to see what happens.

[@ryster1300]

Do you plan on showing us other disc scenes from the game for substantial areas maybe? From the example you gave us at the beginning I actually enjoy the disc version. The fog under the tower gives it a huge sense or distance and to me just takes my breath away with a sense of dread and importance.

[@spacequesthistorian]

+ryster1300 Yes, I am going to point out the differences as I go along. There aren't *that* many, and some are so subtle I might gloss over them by accident. But the major ones I will point out.

[@ideamissing]

YOU: Jesus, every time something happens, 10 to 20 trivia stories pop into my head ME: Yeah, that's why I tune in every week! You just put your finger on one of my favorite things about this series!

[@spacequesthistorian]

+ideamissing Thank you! At least one person isn't bored. I'm-a keep doing it, then. :D

[@TheInkPitOx]

My favorite of the series. I have some of the dialogue memorized even. I think regarding "dash" it sounds like a slight Midwestern accent.

[@spacequesthistorian]

You and me both (with the memorization). I couldn't tell you how many times I've played this game over the years. The quotes are etched permanently into my memory. Also, cheers on the accent clear-up -- I've often wondered why he pronounced it that way!

[@bredmond812]

This is one of my absolute most favorite games. I'm pretty sure my version didn't have audio. Maybe it was just my sound card? I'm sure there was sound effects and music though.

[@hamishfox]

I finally understand why this game was so impossible as a child

[@gilm0075]

A worthy rival to SQIII for best SQ game. I was one of the unlucky ones to buy it on CD. Never beat it until much later.

[@spacequesthistorian]

+gilm0075 I got it as part of the first Space Quest Collection CD. Luckily, at the time my PC was "slow enough" to run the game without too much hassle. Then I upgraded ... whoooooah.

[@gilm0075]

I actually first ran it on the Windows 95 emulator on my 2nd generation original blueberry iMac in 1998. Come to think of it I don't remember, if it was the skate-o-rama in particular that was giving me trouble, now I am not sure I got past the copy-protection, because I bought the CD as "jewel-case" only since it was cheap. Thanks ebay. So yes, the copy protection is SO good that even if you buy the CD 100% legally you still can't play.

[@JasonZeppelin1]

Love the trivia!

[@spacequesthistorian]

Thank you! :D

[@TheInkPitOx]

"I'm not gonna curse" Yet the guy doing the LP curses a lot.

[@spacequesthistorian]

Yep. Danny is too sweet. ;)

[@mortymer001]

I play a lot of these type of games but I always find myself having to look up stuff or getting stuck until a friend walks in and easily makes the leaps in logic to solve whatever puzzle im stuck on. Is there some kind of tip or secret to figuring out the goofiness of it all? im currently playing Day of the Tentacle and this happens to me often

[@spacequesthistorian]

+Max Bretzfelder Heh, sorry to hear that, mate. There are some recurring tropes in adventure games that, after you've played a bunch, you can spot a mile away. Day of the Tentacle does have some pretty wild stuff going on, primarily because it's quite non-linear. There are so many puzzle chains going on at once, it can be tough to keep track of what your goal is.

[@ShadeMeadows]

Wait. Bunny or Hare? Are they the Same? AND THAT ALIEN PUKES ACID!

[@spacequesthistorian]

I'm a whale biologist, not a lagomorph biologist.

[@theonewhohonks9675]

At the end of this episode you mention Roberta Williams being upset about the color cascade. On a scale of 1 to "You need to reload a save because you died in a stupid way insulting your boss again, Roger" do you know how bad the fallout was?

[@spacequesthistorian]

Having only heard one side of the story (Scott Murphy's), I can't really speculate as to how pissed Roberta was. It wasn't like there was any fallout, though. Scott maintains that throughout his time at Sierra, Roberta was someone he confided in when things got rough and that she was a great source of comfort. So I doubt there was any personal beef going on.

[@epicpotatofiend]

Played it on a 586dx166. Damned robot at the beginning area killed me in no time at all.

[@spacequesthistorian]

+Epic Potato Yup, that oughta do it. I played it on my beloved 486DX/2 66MHz machine, and had to slow it down for that as well.

[@ThommyofThenn]

I thought the "zombie" cyborg was a random 90's tourist at first. Then the cutscene starts..

[@derosiflo6524]

Wonder how fast/unfair the "fuck your fast PC" version would be today

[@spacequesthistorian]

+DerÖsiFlo Can you even install DOS on a modern PC? It wouldn't recognize any of the peripherals in it.

[@derosiflo6524]

Space Quest Historian let's say if the PCs back then would be fast as today :D

[@spacequesthistorian]

+DerÖsiFlo You'd get zapped by the Droid-o-Death as soon as Roger fell out of the time warp. :D

[@Actimus123]

Others have said it too but I will repeat it. I'm really interested in seeing more comparisons of the graphical differences between the cd-rom and disk version. At least any dramatically different parts would be great to see.

[@spacequesthistorian]

+Angry Sun Your wish will be granted!

[@danielfavini6154]

love these playthroughs so much, the second best thing right after re-playing them myself, sometimes even better due to little bits and bobs i've never encountered myself "back in the days" ;) quick question, you mention a roland mt32 emulator. while i actually still own a cm-32l from back then, i would assume it would become a pain to install that. is there an emulator you can recommend that works well with these old games?

[@Geno2733]

I never really paid attention to the hologram until now... It seems all of humanity was doomed because of one guy finding Leisure Suit Larry. 👍

[@MagusMarquillin]

Speaking of Technological firsts, wasn't space quest also the first to incorporate arcade sequences? Maybe Roberta didn't care cause King's Quest and her games (save for the end of phantasmaoria) never really took that on, even though they became common in many Sierra games.

[@spacequesthistorian]

Yup, Space Quest I had the first arcade sequence in a graphic adventure game. Or, as they put it, the first game where "the placement of the on-screen character was part of the puzzle" (e.g. avoiding the acid drops, the Skimmer sequence, hiding from the cleaning droid aboard the Deltaur).

[@MagusMarquillin]

Well, avoiding random encounter baddies like droids by strolling to the edge of the screen is more borderline arcade and it at least existed since King's Quest 1, mainly in AGI and SCI0 games, after that Sierra went more with scripted sequences, but I missed that random aspect - SQ4 here still has a bit of it. I was talking more of mini-games like the sand skimmer, Nukem Dukem Robots, or maybe climbing the castle in Black Cauldron - these became a Sierra staple, Conquests of Camelot and Quest for Glory are full of them - course you don't play _fantasy games_ :).

[@mikkosimonen]

Space Quest IV gets a fairly low score from me due to its reliance on two types of adventure game puzzles I don't like that much: information and flag. Let me explain this. I find that puzzles in adventure games can be put into several categories. I will demonstrate the main three through a classic adventure game problem: getting through a door. 1. Object Puzzle: to get through the door, you must find a key that unlocks it. 2. Information Puzzle: to get through the door, you must enter a password. 3. Flag Puzzle: to get through the door, you must go to a different place and pick up a banana and return to the door which will now be open. The weakness of information puzzles is when the information is constant, so you can skip any actions you'd need to take to learn the information on a later playthrough. SQ4 has several items you only need to access unchanging information: the gum wrapper, the hintbook, the cigar and matches, and the pocket computer. You don't need any of these items to finish the game. The weakness of flag puzzles is that you are presented with a problem that you can't actually solve, you just need to do something completely unrelated and the problem will solve itself. There's a sequel police guarding the entrance to the computer core on Xenon. Without the guard, you could actually finish the game without ever time traveling. The only way to get rid of him is to just back later when he isn't there anymore for some reason.

[@spacequesthistorian]

Okay.

[@nothosaur]

I'm looking to buy the Space Quest series. Do have a suggestion on what reto computer to buy that is compatible with the Space Quest Collection ? Thanks!

[@spacequesthistorian]

Honestly, you're going to run into all sorts of trouble with timer issues when running games like SQ4 and SQ6 on original hardware. If you just want to play the games, I'd stick to a modern pc and just play them through DOSBox or ScummVM.

[@smithgdwg]

I miss the Aluminum Mallard.

[@ddantuffil5681]

I tried to play this game long after the DOS days on CD, and i think the RNG was tied to CPU cycles, and the dry eyed cyborg showed up within 2 seconds on every screen he could.

[@spacequesthistorian]

The CD version is all shades of messed up. Your best bet is to play it in ScummVM - or, if you're feeling adventurous and want a super deluxe experience, apply the NewRisingSun patch (see: spacequest.net/sq4/patches)

[@spacequesthistorian]

@@ddantuffil5681 No, "the giraffe lays egg at sunset but only if you squint" would have been a random reply. 😏

[@jahzito4343]

Hi Mr. Historian, i wanted to do that rising sun patch with a german floppy and a english cd version (from GOG, but i cant find a german cd version), changed the CRC Checksums in the batch and the patch ran succesfully... unfortunately the games text is now also english... an idea how to manage that? problably i do need the german cd version, right? maybe i could replace a file?

[@jahzito4343]

and btw, play SQ from the beginning, never did before, only played 4 + 5 in the past... its very cool, and your videos are also very good and very helpful...

[@jahzito4343]

i just played the floppy version, my surgery at the game causes it to crash... so f**k it... ;)

[@spacequesthistorian]

I'm sorry, I can't help you with the NRS patch in different languages. It's only meant to work on the English version, as far as I know.

[@helgijacobsen1497]

i use to own this game on amiga 500

[@spacequesthistorian]

32 color mayhem. Nice! Fun fact: There's actually a spoken line in the voice file of the Monochrome Boys berating Roger for being in 32 colors (instead of 256 colors, like in the DOS version).

[@averybrown4547]

Looks like any timer is unlimited in my mom's laptop

[@Proatgtag]

Weird, but for some reason, at the end of the video, there appears to be the sound of someone typing on a keyboard. You can hear it after the Patreon credits play. I don't think I've heard that before. SQ4 is an interesting game, and I understand that it is most fans' favorite. But as I've stated before, it's not one that I enjoy as much as others. Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to your playthrough and learning more about the games. Are you going to mention the SQH podcast at all? Are you working on a new season, or is it the podcast still on hiatus? I haven't been able to keep up with social media lately, so I apologize if I missed an announcement or anything like that. I look forward to more, as always, my friend!

[@spacequesthistorian]

+Josh Henry Haha! The typing sound at the end was me forgetting to cut off the audio track. It wasn't intentional. Good thing it didn't pick up me scratching my ass or anything. ;) I've already mentioned I had Bob Siebenberg on the SQH podcast, I think. But nah, haven't specifically plugged it or anything. And the podcast is still on hiatus. Waiting for SpaceVenture to get a release date, so I can have the 4th season of the podcast coincide with it.

[@Proatgtag]

That makes sense. Will the adventures of the SQH and Cyber Cedric be returning, or was that only for the 3rd season?

[@spacequesthistorian]

I think we can safely assume we haven't heard the last from CyberCedric.

[@LORDSofCHAOS333]

You know denny 👍 dats pretty sweet for you .

[@spacequesthistorian]

Danny's a Space Quest fan. Gave me a big boost by mentioning me on the Grumps channel. Really sweet guy.

[@LORDSofCHAOS333]

Space Quest Historian yhe danny is a chil dude

[@Calculon1712]

You should see how they converted the game to the Amiga oh boy was that bad that was when Sierra stopped caring about that system especially with other Sierra VGA games at the time apart from KQ 6 which Revolution Software converted

[@spacequesthistorian]

+rl1712 I've seen those conversions. And also SQ4 in EGA mode. It's hideous. Mark Crowe himself stated they did not really give a shit about the EGA version - and I suspect the same went for the Amiga version. I didn't know Revolution did Amiga conversions for Sierra. Wow!

[@Calculon1712]

Space Quest Historian yeah they only did KQ 6 and it was the best Sierra port for the Amiga all the others were done in house. It was always rumoured the reason for the bad ports was cause of the high level of piracy for the Amiga so Sierra made them look shit on purpose as they were starting to abandon support to focus mainly on PC

[@spacequesthistorian]

+rl1712 I wouldn't be surprised. The games were starting to become too complex to run well on Amiga hardware, and Sierra weren't interested in anything less than cutting edge.

[@DosGamerMan]

Did they use an earlier take of the game or something for porting to the cd version?

[@spacequesthistorian]

Nope -- they rewrote a good chunk of the engine. This was standard Sierra practice at the time. Practically every Sierra game from that era uses some specially rejiggered version of the engine. SCI was constantly being retooled.

[@NexebNoXV]

Yeesh, Roberta Williams sounds like a tough person to have as a boss...

[@spacequesthistorian]

+NexebNoXV I hope I don't make her out to be a terrible person. She wasn't. Scott told me he often leaned on her when the stress of the job was getting to him.

[@derosiflo6524]

The Hype is real bitches! The game is longer than SQ3 or?

[@spacequesthistorian]

+DerÖsiFlo Oh, much longer. :)

[@derosiflo6524]

Space Quest Historian grrrrreat

[@spacequesthistorian]

+DerÖsiFlo And a lot tougher, too.

[@mrcampbell7674]

When I click the link for the "Superfan Hangout with Scott Murphy" it says that "Video is Private" :(

[@spacequesthistorian]

Yeah, that's weird. I think it may have been tied to an old Google Plus account that has since been closed. I can't seem to find it in my library anywhere.

[@donwald3436]

Has it been confirmed that the CD version was an enhanced floppy version? It almost sounds like they took a pre-release of the floppy version and recorded voices for it.

[@spacequesthistorian]

Not sure what you mean. The CD-ROM version of SQ4 came out a year after the disk version and many of the assets were redrawn for it. It's not a "pre-release" of the disk version, or even the regular disk version with voice-overs. If you want a look at an actual pre-release version of SQ4, there is the leaked beta: kzbin.info/www/bejne/f3rKc4l8j52od7s

[@donwald3436]

@@spacequesthistorian Just a theory for why the CD version was worse.

[@spacequesthistorian]

@@donwald3436 Ah, I see. No, in their eyes, this was an improvement. 😊

[@ShreddingFinn]

Once they lost the text parser, they lost everything that made them unique. Why not develop the text parser into some AI entity that can really talk back and understand complex commands

[@Feasco]

nah

[@Darthhelmet86]

It isn't like SQ4 is the only Sierra game to use CPU timers...it isn't the only one to be broken at the time thanks to that. Why they kept doing it I am baffled by, it lead to clear problems and it wasn't needed.

[@spacequesthistorian]

+Darthhelmet86 It's not the only one, and not the firsy nor last. But it strikes me as particularly odd in SQ4's case because *the disk version was working fine!* Someone went in and *purposely reprogrammed* the damn thing!

[@DarkSoul4242]

I was wondering about that for the longest time : could it be they were trying to develop the CD and floppy versions at the same time, and some changes did not get merged over? That was the only explanation I could find that made some amount of sense, because the alternative you mentioned, that someone deliberately used a CPU timer, and messed with the graphics (ending with the floppy getting BETTER graphics), was just too insane.

[@Darthhelmet86]

The change in graphics was on purpose. I believe the internal reason was they wanted people to feel they still got something special and different if they stuck with the floppy and missed out on the voices. It isn't just SQ4 that has differences between them. Using the CPU timer is also something they did more than once, it was no mistake. Most likely the floppy uses it too but has better protections to stop it going too fast and breaking the puzzles.

[@MagusMarquillin]

Take your time with these Troles, tell your interesting histories, look around and hear Gray's epic flavor text, and - speaking of flavor - for glob's sake lick some streets and sniff some zombie-cyborgs! This game is much shorter if you don't stop and smell the vomit, like a boss janitor.

[@spacequesthistorian]

I need to get some more licking and sniffing into these videos, you're right.

[@G00berella]

Are you going to show the hidden message a programmer left in that room next ep?

[@spacequesthistorian]

+Marty Dmf The holiday snapshot easter egg? Ohh, yes. :)

[@frequenco5545]

Can you elaborate on the "heads rolled" for the color-cycling 'advanced' feature? Was Roberta really that pedantic in insisting new techniques being introduced in King's Quest first? To the point of people getting actually fired?! That seems a bit.... excessive.

[@TheInkPitOx]

Did you say you were foreign? Also, the ordinance was mocking adventure game fans who like to pick up anything that is pointed out.

[@spacequesthistorian]

Yup, I'm from Denmark. The unstable ordinance is such a delightful dick move, isn't it?

[@while.coyote]

here is a coupon for one free comment

[@spacequesthistorian]

Redeemed!