Every adventure games fan has heard of the Space Quest series by Sierra On-Line. Every self-respecting gamer has played at least one of its six parts. And every hardcore adventurer has not only finished all Space Quest titles, but was also monitoring the Space Quest community, played a fan-based game called Space Quest: The Lost Chapter and was intrigued when Space Quest 0: Replicated was released.
Revind back to 1984. Sierra On-Line published a game called King’s Quest. It was a revolutionary adventure game, in several aspects. First of all, it offered an interactive 3D environment. You could walk not only to the left and right, but also up and down, hide behind items or be blocked by them. Second, it was one of the first graphic adventures. Ever since the original Zork games, Infocom was ruling adventure gaming. In order to make their titles unique, other developers, most notably Telarium, introduced graphics, even though they kept Infocom’s text-based interface. These games offered a static picture, and you had to move around by typing in commands. Sierra has pushed the envelope a little further. It created the AGI (Adventure Game Interpreter) engine, which allowed the gamer to move his character across the screen by using the cursor keys. There was still place for text commands, though. The gamer needed to type in all actions, such as “take stick” or “use bomb”.
In 1987, Sierra released an onslaught of games based on this engine. In addition to the King’s Quest series, three new ones were introduced: Police Quest, Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry. The engine was retired in 1989, after Manhunter: San Francisco was published. Altogether, AGI spawned sixteen games. It was replaced by the SCI engine, which still used word commands, but also featured mouse support. The first published SCI game was Leisure Suit Larry 2 in 1988.
The AGI engine didn’t die, though. Fan-based hack utilities, and later whole compilers were released for numerous platforms, and the AGI development community has been thriving ever since. Various teams started new projects, and a few undertook the task of creating unofficial sequels and prequels to existing games. However, the old series contained some of the best-written games ever, and matching them would be an almost impossible task. Especially Space Quest was full of gentle humor and parody, which made it the most popular of all the quest series (with the exception of Quest for Glory, thanks to strong role-playing features, such as character development and fighting). I am pleased to announce that my worries proved unfounded. A small team of fans led by Jeff Stewart has created a Space Quest game that easily matches the official titles in gameplay, sound and graphics. While a little shorter than the official games, Space Quest 0: Replicated is a must-play for every serious adventure gamer.
Gameplay
The game thrusts you into the role of Roger Wilco, a janitor on a space station. When you wake up from a nap, you find that someone has killed everybody on the station and destroyed the laboratory where scientists were growing clones. As the story progresses, you’ll find out about an immense clone army that a mad scientist, Vohaul, is preparing to unleash on the unsuspecting people. It’s up to you to save yourself and the universe as we know it.
The game takes full advantage of the AGI engine. This means that a text parser is used for your commands, and there is no mouse support. Unlike The Lost Chapter, however, this game does a much better job with the parser. While there are a few instances when you need to use a specific word, the parser recognizes a number of synonyms, making it even less frustrating to use than the one in the first official Space Quest game. To make life easier for the gamer, every room also offers a detailed description of all important items, so that you have no problems naming them. I still remember a number of puzzles in the official games that I found impossibly hard, because they involved various objects that I could not recognize due to the low graphic resolution. This was not the case here, though.
The puzzles are of a much better grade than those found in the first two Space Quest games. Most of them are logical, and you’ll have enough information to solve all of them when the time comes. Unlike early Sierra games, you’ll be even required to combine items in your inventory, which allowed the designer to use a larger variety of puzzles. The game is also much more tightly written than Sierra’s games, and it is nearly impossible to get into a dead end because you didn’t pick up a certain item twelve screens ago.
However, Replicated also suffers from the one thing I hated in the official games – instant death. I lost the count of how many times I fell into holes, got impaled by spikes, poisoned by plants or simply shot in this game. Usually, you don’t get any warning until it’s too late. This got very frustrating, as I was forced save the game every minute, and in the case of an untimely demise of my main character, I had to wait for the final death screen, then type in “Restore game” and then select the proper saved file.
The other problem with gameplay is its length. It is considerably shorter than the official games. Where I spent over a week of gaming to solve Space Quest I, it took me only two long afternoons to finish this title. To make matters a little worse, the humor is not up to par with the official series. The writer of this game was trying very hard, and managed to make it very funny at the beginning, but over time the jokes became simple easter eggs, and after a dozen of instances of seeing an item from the Star Trek or Star Wars series, even those got tiresome.
Overall – 7
The game makes a great job of evoking the feel of the old series. In some cases, it improves on its original. The puzzles are much more logical, and you get just enough hints to solve them. The interface is as good as it gets. The story is almost flawless, and is perfectly integrated into the Space Quest continuum. However, the game is little on the short side, and replicates my main complaint about early Sierra games: dying here is far too easy. On a personal note, I was not fully satisfied with the main character, either. I remember Roger Wilco to be the biggest coward in the universe who solved all problems only by accident, while trying to run away from danger. Here, he is not only pro-active; he even has a few heroic moments. He is not the guy I would identify with.
Graphics – n/a
While the game is a graphical adventure, I can’t use the same rating system I use for modern games. Replicated offers 16-color graphics and a 320x200 resolution. The graphics are perfect at what they are supposed to do – portraying a prequel to the Space Quest series. To do so, the designers were forced to use rather primitive graphics, which are no match for later Sierra AGI games, such as the Manhunter series. For the sake of consistency and nostalgia, however, I am glad these old-fashioned graphics were used.
Sound – n/a
As with the graphics, I cannot rate the sound, either. There are a few catchy tunes and extra sounds, but they all emulate the original PC speaker quality. They are consistent with the early official titles. I enjoyed the sound very much, but it can’t be compared with new games.
Replay value – 8
Let me start by saying that the game is free. As such, the initial value is very high. If you are an experienced adventure gamer, you get around 10 hours of entertainment; if you are relatively new to adventures, you get even more out of it. In the tradition of Sierra adventures, the game also offers points for various actions. While the maximum count appears to be 101 points, some players have reported scoring up to 106 points. I finished the first game with 86 points, and went right back to try to get the full count. This is a great incentive for replaying the game, so be prepared to spend up to a week with a title.
Overall – 7.5
Space Quest 0: Replicated is one of the most pleasant game surprises of the summer. While many big-name games fail miserably, this small (less than 800kB) title does a great job copying the gameplay, graphics and sound of old Sierra adventures. It is very well written, and tighter controlled than many retail games. You can’t beat its price, either. Every adventure gamer should go and download it right now, not only for nostalgic reasons. The game can be found here.
