It makes for an interested digital archaeology story, though

May 29, 2024 9:28 AM

In late 1987, Sierra On-line released Space Quest II: Chapter II: Vohaul's Revenge, sequel to the previous year's very popular Space Quest: The Sarien Encounter. Written using their Adventure Game Interpreter (AGI) engine, SQ2 would go on to sell over 100,000 copies, earning an SPA Gold Medal and seating itself as 4th in Sierra's top 5 best sellers.

In 1988, updates to the AGI engine prompted print runs of SQ2 versions 2.0D and 2.0F. Decades later, it would be discovered that the MS-DOS 720k floppies for those releases accidentally had a little hidden extra - about 70% of the source code files for the AGI engine itself.

posted by hanov3r (11 comments total)

Great stuff - I dig software archaeology.
posted by whatevernot at 10:06 AM on May 29 [1 favorite]

I have a boxed copy of this somewhere. I bought it out of the bargain bin at a toy store in 92 or 93 because it could run on the junky old cast-off computer that was allowed to live in my bedroom.

This was my first Sierra adventure game and I bounced sooooooo hard off of it. The only thing that brought me any joy was discovering that on the first screen you could just walk right off the edge of the space station and float away. Surely deaths in Sierra games are best appreciated when you no longer give a crap about actually playing the game.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 10:07 AM on May 29

My friends and I were big fans of the Sierra AGI games (King Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest and the underrated Manhunter series) but we were universally terrible at them. We would crowd source information in order to solve them so in those pre-Internet days there was a lot of "hey my American cousins said if you did this and this you can get past that part in Space Quest..." Good times. For whatever reason we didn't like the later Sierra Creative Interpreter (SCI) games as much.

Interesting to read about this bit of digital archaeology, there's probably a lot of untapped stuff to be discovered. Obviously ridiculously niche. I'm glad there is a shout out to Norton Utilities hex editor. I spent a lot of time with that bit of software messing with my save game files.
posted by Ashwagandha at 10:29 AM on May 29 [4 favorites]

I have fond memories of Space Quest 1. Like exciting and re-entering the cantina until we got the good band playing or the team work it took to have one person walk around the table while another frantically types "GET GRENADE" before the droid came back.

I'm glad someone else remembers Manhunter. I recall the concept was a bit goofy but the story was really compelling
posted by flyingfox at 10:45 AM on May 29 [2 favorites]

https://archive.org/details/msdos_Space_Quest_I_-_The_Sarien_Encounter_VGA_1991 is apparently the playable VGA port.... in my head these are typing teachers, helping you learn to type "GET KEYCARD" faster and faster. It'll take me a minute to get my head around the cursor cycling through walk, look, take, talk, smell?, and whatever else those icons mean.
posted by adekllny at 11:09 AM on May 29 [1 favorite]

This is a really neat piece of software pentimento! I was a little young for the early Sierra games, and my main memory is trying (and failing) to get anywhere at all with them on my cousin's PC, but that introduction to the graphical adventure genre pointed me toward the (much friendlier) Lucasfilm/Lucasarts games and a genuine lifetime of enjoyment.

I've been meaning to go back and play the Sierra games that I never made it through before, but I have a feeling they don't hold up so well as playable artifacts.
posted by uncleozzy at 11:10 AM on May 29

Some mad fans made a remake of SQII with Sierra's VGA-style graphics and engine, which is pretty impressive and I'd highly recommend checking it out if you've got an interest in these old adventure games.

SQII is the first adventure game I remember playing. First attempted it on an old IBM XT clone that had Hercules (monochrome) graphics on an amber display of all things, but I'm pretty sure I didn't beat it until my teenage years when things like GameFAQs made hints/walkthroughs more accessible (and I had a hand-me-down 486 and a color monitor).
posted by Aleyn at 11:29 AM on May 29 [1 favorite]

A lot of these can be played via the ScummVM emulator (including on a lot the retro handhelds that have come out the last few years which would have blown my mind as a kid) should you have an interest in revisiting or discovering these oddball DOS era games.
posted by Ashwagandha at 12:28 PM on May 29 [1 favorite]

Yeah I recently picked up a Miyoo Mini Plus, great little piece of kit that quickly became my pocket Impossible Mission (C64) machine. Haven't done much with ScummVM on it yet but I think a revisit of some of the Sierra AGI games is in order. Manhunter in particular, never finished either of those but I remember being intrigued by the premise.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 12:39 PM on May 29 [1 favorite]

I'm honestly shocked the floppy kept the data for that long. At some point it just starts to degrade down.
posted by jmauro at 12:51 PM on May 29 [1 favorite]

Space Quest was great. Such creativity. I had no idea games could be that way when they came out, super exciting stuff. The cheeky humor and graphic work for the time...chef's kiss.
posted by tiny frying pan at 4:35 AM on May 30