Huge thanks go to Admiral__Jay, The Space Quest Historian, sluicebox, RetroTKS, and TerranRich for their help with this video. 03:00 It is actually possible to enter the sewer without dying, though you have to be quick about it. I wanted to show an example of the fast events without spoiling things that happen later in the run. 03:48 The game font literally does not have any symbols other than these five. 03:53 The developers could have made each symbol equally likely. Instead, they did something more complicated. (All ranges mentioned are inclusive.) 1) Pick a random number between 0 and 2. 2) Pick a random number between 3 and 4. 3) Pick a random number between the two numbers generated from steps 1 and 2. That final number determines the symbol. Thanks go to sluicebox for explaining this to me. 05:27 Grim Dark End has the following to say: "That's MORE than a 'shaver' there, that's a joke based on one of the worst epilators ever made (from the late 80's)... it basically uses a rotating spring to rip hairs out... quickly usually?... It's kind of like a very slow version of hot-wax hair removal. And it's EXTREMELY painful the first few times its used. That version was even more terrifying because it had a horrible tendency to pinch and rip skin. Modern ones use a rotating sort of 'tweezer' system that is a LOT less likely to grab skin, and tends to remove hairs quickly enough to not hurt nearly as much as the primitive versions." 09:20 In addition to the game cycles being as fast as your CPU, Sierra made another change in SCI1.1. The speed slider now controls just your character instead of changing the speed of the entire game. So, counterintuitively, what you need to do in Skate-o-Rama is to turn the speed slider UP so that you have a fighting chance of evading the sequel police. Still, if your computer was too fast, this might not have been enough to solve the problem. 10:58 The first instance I can find of this skip online is from the TAS by c-square from 2011 tasvideos.org/3317S
@@matthewrease2376 The game refers to its various time periods as “sequels.” The idea is that when Roger travels through time, he actually travels around the Space Quest series. The post-apocalyptic era is Space Quest XII, for instance. This is why the time cops are call “sequel police” as well.
@@matthewrease2376 No, I did mean "this sequel" as in, Space Quest XII. The joke in the game is that you're traveling through time as measured in Space Quest sequels instead of years.
That's MORE than a 'shaver' there, that's a joke based on one of the worst epilators ever made (from the late 80's)... it basically uses a rotating spring to rip hairs out... quickly usually?... It's kind of like a very slow version of hot-wax hair removal. And it's EXTREMELY painful the first few times its used. That version was even more terrifying because it had a horrible tendency to pinch and rip skin. Modern ones use a rotating sort of 'tweezer' system that is a LOT less likely to grab skin, and tends to remove hairs quickly enough to not hurt nearly as much as the primitive versions. And yes, the reason I know this is because I use one. After the first several times, it basically stops hurting. The other great thing is you only need to do it every month or two :D
Hah, that's really fun to learn, I'm familiar with the modern style of epilators but the specific reference the game was making was always lost on me! Still not exactly a fun device today though tbh.
The original dialogue was, "this is Epiwhip 357, the most powerful hand hair remover in the Universe and it's capable of shaving your legs clean off." Makes sense :D
I must have been five years old and this game was on the family PC for some reason. It was completely impossible and I remember being terrified when I died. Never got out of the first couple of screens. Now I know it was literally impossible because it was the CD version! I never could figure out the name of the game until just now. Very cool, many very ancient memories coming back. Thanks for making the video
I don't blame you being terrified, the first area has the guy with the headpiece that stares at you and screams to attract a droid, it was pretty freakish.
My first memory of SQIV was at a similar age, but roughly contemporary with the game's release. They had a demo setup at CompUSA with all the latest big titles, probably 10 computers or so - this was shown alongside Monkey Island 1 and Prince of Persia. And so all I knew of this game for the next ten years or so was the beginning section with that jarring combination of the apocalypse and the Energizer bunny. All those years later I started playing with abandonware and ran into speed bugs - I don't think with this game, but I was stuck on Willy Beamish's Chef Childish scene for a few years before I realized what it was by extrapolating from other games. It might actually have been following a walkthrough for SQIV that clued me in to speed bugs affecting the timed events in other adventure games.
@@JH-pe3ro It's such a jarring beginner section! I can remember spending a few hours here and there over the years trying to figure out what game it was, googling things like "top ten scariest adventure games of the 90s" XD I stumbled on this game once or twice during the search, like oh this main character looks right, but oh it's a comedy game?? Oh he's in a mall working at the burger joint? Nah can't be this one!
I remember a time in the late 90s, when this was an issue even for games that just came out, since by that point, the hardware power of typical windows 95 computers could vary a lot.
For all that a lot of it has not aged well at all, I do fondly remember a lot of this as a kid. "Casually glancing at the status bar, you realize you're in Space Quest XII." Some really great lines in there.
It may not reward you but sometimes people just like seeing how good they can get at mini-games like that. People have invented high-score challenges for both Astro Chicken and the burger-making game.
Remember kids, Roger Wilco isn't a criminal for crossdressing. He's a criminal for committing credit card fraud. Know the difference! It could save you from the Skate-o-Rama.
Just go play Ms. Astro Chicken if bad guy with bad gun want to shoot you. He'll think you're cool and leave you alone. Learn that playing video games saves lives...yours!
The only one he actually gets caught for is mail fraud. He gets two androids sent after him (in SQ3 and SQ5) trying to collect on the postage he didn't include in SQ2.
When Sierra ruled the world of adventure gaming. I remember playing this when I was 12, getting farther into the game but thinking "Was I supposed to do that?" Parts of this game had me laughing hysterically. The best was how you could ask for a job at the fast food restaurant in the mall while dressed as a woman, and after being denied for being female Roger will be shocked and call him a sexist pig.
I love your style of showing what the scenes could/should look like so seamlessly. Having usually never played these old games it always bugs me not knowing what exactly was skipped in some of these other speed run breakdowns.
omg ... I was a victim on the CD rom glitches when I was a very young man. I thought I was doing something wrong and just gave up ! Was confused when I picked it up again years later and it was so easy. Great to have the answers now :D
Another brilliant video OneShortEye. It’s always a treat to see some of my favorite games from my childhood get a new look and make it that much more interesting. To be part of this one was a privilege. Again, great work, and keep it up.
Another great video, keep it up! A couple things not noted in the video: - the long code you're supposed to input, 6965847669, is ASCII for "EATLE". I suspect it was intended to be "EATME" but they got it slightly wrong... - the way Admiral__Jay avoids the droids in the supercomputer is not the only one, or even the quickest; it's also possible to go left to lure the droid out, head back into the corridor with the lasers, and return as the droid's heading out of the screen. This is slightly harder to execute, but I think it would save time. (Edit: the SQ4 TAS handles the droid in an even faster way, by switching screens at the exact same time the droid does. This is far more difficult in RTA than either of the other strategies, but not impossible.)
Great video! As a note, the problem with the Skate-o-Rama felt really familiar. I remember playing SQ6 and being completely stuck on the first part of the game, unable to continue, not even with walkthroughs. Then, years later I found out that the problem was that I was playing on a Pentium 233 Mhz, which meant that the internal clock of the computer was way faster than the intended 486, so a particular event played so fast, it was impossible to do. What a weird, specific problem.
Yeah, that whole business with the laptop always seemed like it was poorly-implemented, considering you could just trial-and-error your way past the sentry droids. I've never been sure why they had such an extensive puzzle, with components strewn across basically the entire game, but then made it semi-optional. That's such a strange design choice.
Another design choice I was frustrated with is the first time you get in the timepod. Your first instinct is to start pushing buttons, but doing so clears the display. If you don't write down the timecode, you can't finish the game, and there's no feedback to tell you that you did anything wrong.
@@OneShortEye Yeah, that one definitely feels like a playtesting fail. By the 90s, even Sierra had abandoned that level of "let the player screw themselves five minutes into the game" asshole puzzle design. Although I believe that was partially fixed in the CD-ROM version, which (iirc) has a pre-set code for SQXII rather than randomizing it. So you could still accidentally blank it out... but at least you could restart the game, grab the code, then load your old save rather than having to play through everything again.
If you use the PocketPal a second time in the Super Computer, you get a message from Sludge Vohaul that it's your son he's kidnapped. It was even fully voiced in the disk version!
@@OneShortEye That's why my dad taught me to save constantly throughout the game and to leave save games spread evenly throughout the whole game. That way when you get to one of these puzzles, you can go back to that spot pretty quickly.
A copy of this came with the Creative CDROM drive we had with our IBM when I was a kid. Suffice to say I never got past the initial time warp scene and was so frustrated I didnt touch it again until decades later
The game code running way too fast was a common problem back in the day. Properly written games that used the screen timing to sync worked fine with super fast clock speeds, but ones that went for maximum speed without syncing became unplayable (without special tools). One of my favorite games from back then was called "The Incredible Machine", where you had to construct a machine with given parts to accomplish a particular goal like "Put the ball through the hoop". But if you had a fast machine the game would run so fast that you couldn't see where your machine failed, making it unplayable. Here's what that game looked like: ruclips.net/video/dl1LvFDgCio/видео.htmlsi=OVY0MWXoT7ia8mO5
11:10 Another interesting glitch I noticed in SQIV is when Roger is in the arcade room. When the time cops arrive walk down by the garbage can in the center bottom of screen get as close to it as possible. Wait for the cop to walk around the arcade, right when the cop walks up to Roger and begins to speak click the garbage can using the hand icon which triggers the audio to play. The cop will fire his gun, but to my surprise he will freeze allowing you to walk around and jump into the time vehicle. Quick and easy. No running around the arcade avoiding getting shot. I have tested this many times on various OS as I have played this game at least once a year for the past.... 30+ years. Enjoy! Still waiting for Space Ventures!......... I am in my 40's now..... would really like to play it before I die!
I certainly hope so! And I understand the frustration with the gameplay. To a young kid in the late 80s-early 90s, if you wanted anything with a story, games like this were really all that we had. So we learned to live with it.
Oh, I love your videos. I never got to play any of these games, but I've always found them fascinating. But more than that, your videos always calm me for some reason. I have major anxiety issues, so I play this channel's videos in the background when I'm feeling stressed. Maybe that wasn't your intention, but I want to thank you all the same. I hope you'll keep making more!
I'm sorry to hear about your anxiety, but I'm touched that the videos help. I'm always working on something, so there will definitely be more in the future. Keep taking care of yourself; you deserve it.
Despite being born in 2003 this video brought back some weird nostalgia, I watched Dilandau3000's lets plays of the classic adventure games religiously as a kid and now I love these old, janky as hell, games.
He had a laid-back style that was easy to watch and also explained all the weird quirks and annoyances in these games quite well. A great narration style for sure!
If I'm understanding the Skate-O-Rama CD bug properly, basically, the progress in technology and computer speeds made triggering events go ludicrous and made it impossibly hard to complete. Sort of like how the AI in the Microscope Puzzle from The 7th guess became practically all-powerful because computers have become so much better at computing, which meant emulators had to make the processor speed run slower to make it manageable.
That's basically it. The floppy version has no issues with speed. After that came out, Sierra upgraded its engine to SCI 1.1, which is what the CD version runs on. I'm going to quote and adapt an explanation sluicebox gave me: There are two changes that happen to the way time works in SCI1.1: 1. Speed slider now controls YOU instead of the entire world 2. Game cycles are now unthrottled (run as fast as your computer will process them) SQ4's problem is that it was written against the earlier rules, then all the underlying system components that had to be rewritten for the new speed model got swapped in, but the game wasn't reprogrammed to adjust to these. Issue #1 is a problem in some places. But for skate-o-rama, the bigger problem is that it's programmed for your speed being in sync with the world's speed. Now your speed is controlled by a speed slider, but the sequel police delays don't know that! So the solution to skate-o-rama is to turn UP the speed slider so that you go as fast as you can, because all the delays are fixed values that are no longer relative to your speed. But your average gamer had no way of knowing this.
I love how you presented the run in this! It's always super interesting when you go into the version differences. The audio editing is also fantastic! Music choice always seems just right
Happy you enjoyed it! Any music not from the run itself was re-orchestrated SQ music by The Space Quest Historian, who was kind enough to let me use it.
I think this might be the only floppy disk game I've ever watched someone speedrun Love the channel, by the way. Found you from the King's Quest video.
13:24 MAN I love when games let you use your Numpad when there is one in game, it's a no-brainer. Deus Ex spoiled me with this feature because everytime there is a keypad in a game, I instinctively reach for the numpad. Sadly it's extremely rare for games to implement this.
Glad you enjoyed it! I learned a lot too in researching this. Big thanks go to sluicebox for explaining the copy protection and the integer overflow. Dude is a wealth of knowledge.
I love your videos. They are always to the point, informative, and never spend too much time on any facet, while still managing to explain everything in great detail. There are no inserted ads, and the video ends once it's done everything it wanted to. This is a perfect example of how videos should be made imo.
Wow, this answered a 31 year old painful memory of never getting passed Skate O Rama. Earlier today I tried to play this again on Steam but it's so unfair and ridiculously difficult I gave up after ten minutes stuck in XII and watched this instead.
I loved this game as a kid. I remember being stuck in an arcade for months and couldn't progress, these games were incredibly hard before the internet. Eventually I triggered the right event somehow and moved on. It took me about a year of playing it off and on but I completed it.
one of my most nostalgic games of all time. my Dad was a computer programmer so our home PC was always top-spec...I spent YEARS in the skate-o-rama, trying absolutely everything I could, restarting the game, clicking on every object on every screen preceeding the galleria but could never beat it. in consequence I have so much fondness for the first half of SQ4, it's one of my all time favourites 👍
I remember there was a phone number you could call to get help. That's what I did. My family didn't have long distance so I had to use a pay phone (those still existed back then) and put in a ton of quarters.
I love how i, a brazilian with terible english, can understand every single of your videos, after months i still dont know how i get here, but iam so glad i did
loving your videos man, great stuff :) unrelated but your MI video inspired me to start running monke islands, i've always loved the games but did not know about this community at all
That's awesome! Glad to see someone inspired to start running. Loved your Crimson Diamond runs, and it's great that you're so active on the SA discord.
10:02 I actually had NO idea about the speed clock thing. I played all the Space Quest games back in the day and simply thought SQ4 was impossible. I never came close to finishing it.
Hehe not "shave"! Epiladys (?) basically had a spring wrapped into a loop like you see (I think that was pretty accurate); the spring rotated and ripped your hair out. They were horrific.
Sooooo.... you're actually telling me that the evil skate-o-rama ZAP ZAP YOURE DEAD that caused me to almost fucking break my computer back in the day is actually unbeatable on a DX4 100MHz that I had when I first played the game... FUCK MY FUCKIN LIFE...
09:54 Oh man. Mo'Slo. I remember having to use that one for a different Space Quest. The VGA remake of Space Quest 1 to be precise. I was unable to lead the Spider Droid to the Orat so I would instead pick the two of them off individually, which required me to sacrifice my water and then die of dehydration because the processor speed determined Roger's chances of survival in that heat. I also needed it to sneak past the chef in Willy Beamish, and it made the gym sequence in Leisure Suit Larry 3 less tedious.
Even though I randomly played a few sierra games at a friend's house once. This game was the first one I ever bought and seriously played right around its release. I loved it and soon owned every Sierra game I could get.
Thats great man, I remember the time I had an Amiga and when this game came out it was clear that most adventure games were becoming more the territory for Harddisc and PC owners...the loading times and disk swapping...
With very few exceptions, the Amiga versions of games are always slower. But there is one runner, Milktoast / Amigaruns, who makes it their mission to only run Amiga... for some reason lol
This feels SO validating! I was crushed i couldnt figure out how to beat the CD version on my brand new computer 🤦♀️im glad i never called the 1900 hint line at $1 / minute!
The mall, the mall, the mall. Oh this place has bugs galore on the floppy version. You can first enter it in a impossible state because there are several objects that may not spawn in 😲 my first mall experience was one of these, where the atm card does not spawn and I had no idea I had missed an item either.
Every time someone mentions Space Quest, I check the Kickstarter page for the spiritual successor. Currently around 9 years overdue for many many different reasons. 9 years is also the amount of time between the first SQ and the sixth one.
Wow, talk about nostalgia! Space Quest was a gaming obsession of mine growing up... still have all my original boxes, disks _and_ the little cheat books that you'd buy from Sierra if you wanted _any_ chance of completing the game back in the 90's. I really enjoyed the zero hand-holding and quirky, self-aware humour & storylines in old RPGs because they encouraged you to understand the dev's mindset as much as the narrative... you'd get a feel for their twisted logic & it was twice as satisfying when you solved something because of it. Plenty of hours spent cursing those same devs though, when you got stuck at a scene requiring pixel-perfect execution! 😂
Ahh, Space Quest, I remember playing the first one back in 1986.... I own all of them, on floppy disc, them and Kings Quest, Hero's Quest (Quest for Glory, they had to change the name for copyright reasons), Police Quest.... I loved all of those games from Sierra.
So happy to see you're still making these! Myself, I booted up SQ4 alone as a child, far too young, and was terrified by the drumming energiser bunny... I took it to be an especially lethal Sierra death-monster and immediately quit the game. (Imagine if I'd made it into the sewers, where there *is* a lethal Sierra death-monster!)
I remember in 3rd grade (mid-80's) my school had a mandatory typing class. I was the only kid (or adult) to notice that when I used the newer computers, I typed 55 WPM, and when I used the old computers, I typed 80WPM. I realized there was "something funny" with the way computers kept track of time, and nobody understood why I always wanted the older ones. I wasn't gonna tell them.
There's something honestly kind of interesting about watching some adventure game speedruns when they're so vastly different to most genres of games when so much of their gameplay tends to be fixed as far as how a player can progress.
I don't know these games and I don't much care for speedrunning, but your videos are really well done and entertaining as hell. Liked and subscribed, keep it up! =D
Played SQ3, 4 and 5 back in the day. I can't remember but it was probably a collection CDROM or something. 3 and 5 I loved and completed on my own. 4 I hated with a passion, due to that skate-o-rama section, which I actually completed once, but never figured out what I was to do right after. Thanks for the video. Now I know I basically didn't miss anything by not completing it.
If only so many of these LucasArts point and click games didn't have nonsense puzzles, fast timed events, and pixel hunting. I recently completed Sam and Max: Hit the Road. I loved it, and now want to play more point and click adventure games. I already know I need to prepare for a nightmare and strict adherence to a guide if I want to. I only needed to use a guide occasionally with Sam and Max. Great video, I enjoy Speedruns of games that are so different to what we have now.
my 486 had a turbo button I could turn off slowing it down to a 386, but I dont remember getting past the burger job... I think ill give it another try. nice explanations.
great video!! I don’t know if there’s anything interesting about Space Quest 2 speedrunning, but if there is, I’d love to see a video from you about it! Played it recently with my dad and it’s a fun one lol
There's only one thing about the SQII run that I think is interesting. By setting the DOSBox cycles to max, it's possible to skip getting the berries, and thus you can skip the tentacle monster maze. www.speedrun.com/space_quest_ii_vohauls_revenge/run/ywq9pkpy Other than that, it's like KQI and KQIII (if you've seen those videos), where the aim is to find the most efficient zips. Oh, I guess there's one more thing. You can type "cheat" to instantly win the game, so there's a meme category where multiple people have "beat" the game in 1 second or less.
This game often gets flack from people for various valid reasons, but it was the first game my family bought for our first home computer and it will always have a special place in my heart. Thanks for the great video.
I can certainly understand that. I still have a soft spot for King's Quest V, since it was one of our first PC games, even with EVERYTHING wonky with it.
The time travel and general wackiness meant that when i took an earbud out while listening to this and accidentally skipped to the KQ3 video, I initially didn't realize I was on a different video.
Huge thanks go to Admiral__Jay, The Space Quest Historian, sluicebox, RetroTKS, and TerranRich for their help with this video.
03:00 It is actually possible to enter the sewer without dying, though you have to be quick about it. I wanted to show an example of the fast events without spoiling things that happen later in the run.
03:48 The game font literally does not have any symbols other than these five.
03:53 The developers could have made each symbol equally likely. Instead, they did something more complicated. (All ranges mentioned are inclusive.)
1) Pick a random number between 0 and 2.
2) Pick a random number between 3 and 4.
3) Pick a random number between the two numbers generated from steps 1 and 2.
That final number determines the symbol. Thanks go to sluicebox for explaining this to me.
05:27 Grim Dark End has the following to say: "That's MORE than a 'shaver' there, that's a joke based on one of the worst epilators ever made (from the late 80's)... it basically uses a rotating spring to rip hairs out... quickly usually?... It's kind of like a very slow version of hot-wax hair removal. And it's EXTREMELY painful the first few times its used. That version was even more terrifying because it had a horrible tendency to pinch and rip skin. Modern ones use a rotating sort of 'tweezer' system that is a LOT less likely to grab skin, and tends to remove hairs quickly enough to not hurt nearly as much as the primitive versions."
09:20 In addition to the game cycles being as fast as your CPU, Sierra made another change in SCI1.1. The speed slider now controls just your character instead of changing the speed of the entire game. So, counterintuitively, what you need to do in Skate-o-Rama is to turn the speed slider UP so that you have a fighting chance of evading the sequel police. Still, if your computer was too fast, this might not have been enough to solve the problem.
10:58 The first instance I can find of this skip online is from the TAS by c-square from 2011 tasvideos.org/3317S
I'm assuming when you said "come back to this sequel later" you meant sequence?
@@matthewrease2376 The game refers to its various time periods as “sequels.” The idea is that when Roger travels through time, he actually travels around the Space Quest series. The post-apocalyptic era is Space Quest XII, for instance. This is why the time cops are call “sequel police” as well.
@@matthewrease2376 No, I did mean "this sequel" as in, Space Quest XII. The joke in the game is that you're traveling through time as measured in Space Quest sequels instead of years.
@@OneShortEye ah
Q1
That's MORE than a 'shaver' there, that's a joke based on one of the worst epilators ever made (from the late 80's)... it basically uses a rotating spring to rip hairs out... quickly usually?... It's kind of like a very slow version of hot-wax hair removal. And it's EXTREMELY painful the first few times its used. That version was even more terrifying because it had a horrible tendency to pinch and rip skin. Modern ones use a rotating sort of 'tweezer' system that is a LOT less likely to grab skin, and tends to remove hairs quickly enough to not hurt nearly as much as the primitive versions.
And yes, the reason I know this is because I use one. After the first several times, it basically stops hurting. The other great thing is you only need to do it every month or two :D
Thanks for the insight! I'm putting that in the pinned comment.
I was about to say. Yeah, its a fairly fitting form of torture.
Hah, that's really fun to learn, I'm familiar with the modern style of epilators but the specific reference the game was making was always lost on me! Still not exactly a fun device today though tbh.
The original dialogue was, "this is Epiwhip 357, the most powerful hand hair remover in the Universe and it's capable of shaving your legs clean off." Makes sense :D
It's hard to note in the game, but she says that the razor is capable of shaving his legs "clean off". Not his hairs, the actual legs. Yeouch.
I must have been five years old and this game was on the family PC for some reason. It was completely impossible and I remember being terrified when I died. Never got out of the first couple of screens. Now I know it was literally impossible because it was the CD version! I never could figure out the name of the game until just now. Very cool, many very ancient memories coming back. Thanks for making the video
Glad you liked it!
Wow. Now I really feel old. I played Space Quest 1 when I was 5
I don't blame you being terrified, the first area has the guy with the headpiece that stares at you and screams to attract a droid, it was pretty freakish.
My first memory of SQIV was at a similar age, but roughly contemporary with the game's release. They had a demo setup at CompUSA with all the latest big titles, probably 10 computers or so - this was shown alongside Monkey Island 1 and Prince of Persia.
And so all I knew of this game for the next ten years or so was the beginning section with that jarring combination of the apocalypse and the Energizer bunny. All those years later I started playing with abandonware and ran into speed bugs - I don't think with this game, but I was stuck on Willy Beamish's Chef Childish scene for a few years before I realized what it was by extrapolating from other games. It might actually have been following a walkthrough for SQIV that clued me in to speed bugs affecting the timed events in other adventure games.
@@JH-pe3ro It's such a jarring beginner section! I can remember spending a few hours here and there over the years trying to figure out what game it was, googling things like "top ten scariest adventure games of the 90s" XD I stumbled on this game once or twice during the search, like oh this main character looks right, but oh it's a comedy game?? Oh he's in a mall working at the burger joint? Nah can't be this one!
"Dependent on processor speed" is a swear word among retro PC gamers.
Do you want to go through the door? Try harder then. Maybe half a press is enough
Oh? You want to walk fast?
TIME TO GO AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT
I remember a time in the late 90s, when this was an issue even for games that just came out, since by that point, the hardware power of typical windows 95 computers could vary a lot.
There's an offender I can think of from *2003*
@@JoelChenFa an a press is an a press. You can't say it's only a half
For all that a lot of it has not aged well at all, I do fondly remember a lot of this as a kid. "Casually glancing at the status bar, you realize you're in Space Quest XII." Some really great lines in there.
Love how Astro Chicken, just a useless time waste side game, has become the key component to speed running the game.
It may not reward you but sometimes people just like seeing how good they can get at mini-games like that. People have invented high-score challenges for both Astro Chicken and the burger-making game.
It was an absolute joy and privilege to be part of this one. I've been a OneShortEye fan for a long time and his videos are infuriatingly well made. 😂
Thank you again for all your help! This was a lot of fun to work on, and I loved what you gave me.
Maybe, but I bet he's never kidnapped and imprisoned royalty. Celebrate your successes! ;-)
I feel like i'm cheating on summoning salt.
@@JoelChenFa There is absolutely room for both. Summoning Salt is awesome but he rarely (if at all?) covers adventure games.
I’m just happy that there’s room in this world for a “Space Quest Historian”
Remember kids, Roger Wilco isn't a criminal for crossdressing. He's a criminal for committing credit card fraud. Know the difference! It could save you from the Skate-o-Rama.
Just go play Ms. Astro Chicken if bad guy with bad gun want to shoot you. He'll think you're cool and leave you alone. Learn that playing video games saves lives...yours!
The only one he actually gets caught for is mail fraud. He gets two androids sent after him (in SQ3 and SQ5) trying to collect on the postage he didn't include in SQ2.
Nay, he's stunning AND brave
Man I loved those old SQ games. This is fun, thanks for showin me that people are speed running this.
Yo, what a nice surprise! Been a fan of your work since forever dude, just keep at it and take your time!
i liked 5 better gameplay and story wise.
When Sierra ruled the world of adventure gaming. I remember playing this when I was 12, getting farther into the game but thinking "Was I supposed to do that?" Parts of this game had me laughing hysterically. The best was how you could ask for a job at the fast food restaurant in the mall while dressed as a woman, and after being denied for being female Roger will be shocked and call him a sexist pig.
I love your style of showing what the scenes could/should look like so seamlessly. Having usually never played these old games it always bugs me not knowing what exactly was skipped in some of these other speed run breakdowns.
omg ... I was a victim on the CD rom glitches when I was a very young man. I thought I was doing something wrong and just gave up ! Was confused when I picked it up again years later and it was so easy. Great to have the answers now :D
I was not aware of the The Space Quest Historian but he is everything I needed him be.
I'd like to think the Sequel Policeman at the arcade gets pulled aside by the owner for trying to harass a paying customer.
After which the owner promptly gets lasered.
Another brilliant video OneShortEye. It’s always a treat to see some of my favorite games from my childhood get a new look and make it that much more interesting. To be part of this one was a privilege. Again, great work, and keep it up.
Thank you again for contributing your run and for answering all of my questions!
Space Quest XII: The writer's barely disguised fetish.
Don't you mean Space Quest X
@@estebson what part of latex babes of estros is fetish stuff. i don't get it.
Oh yeah, everyone wants that post-apocalyptic Tyrannical A.I. Dom.
@@calemr Its true. I've seen the way people talk about SHODAN.
Sexy women in swimsuits isn't really a fetish.
Another great video, keep it up!
A couple things not noted in the video:
- the long code you're supposed to input, 6965847669, is ASCII for "EATLE". I suspect it was intended to be "EATME" but they got it slightly wrong...
- the way Admiral__Jay avoids the droids in the supercomputer is not the only one, or even the quickest; it's also possible to go left to lure the droid out, head back into the corridor with the lasers, and return as the droid's heading out of the screen. This is slightly harder to execute, but I think it would save time.
(Edit: the SQ4 TAS handles the droid in an even faster way, by switching screens at the exact same time the droid does. This is far more difficult in RTA than either of the other strategies, but not impossible.)
eatle
Great video! As a note, the problem with the Skate-o-Rama felt really familiar. I remember playing SQ6 and being completely stuck on the first part of the game, unable to continue, not even with walkthroughs. Then, years later I found out that the problem was that I was playing on a Pentium 233 Mhz, which meant that the internal clock of the computer was way faster than the intended 486, so a particular event played so fast, it was impossible to do. What a weird, specific problem.
I've never played these games. But it's rad because you explain the plot as the run goes on. So it's like a cool little story. Very rad.
Yeah, that whole business with the laptop always seemed like it was poorly-implemented, considering you could just trial-and-error your way past the sentry droids. I've never been sure why they had such an extensive puzzle, with components strewn across basically the entire game, but then made it semi-optional. That's such a strange design choice.
Another design choice I was frustrated with is the first time you get in the timepod. Your first instinct is to start pushing buttons, but doing so clears the display. If you don't write down the timecode, you can't finish the game, and there's no feedback to tell you that you did anything wrong.
@@OneShortEye Yeah, that one definitely feels like a playtesting fail. By the 90s, even Sierra had abandoned that level of "let the player screw themselves five minutes into the game" asshole puzzle design.
Although I believe that was partially fixed in the CD-ROM version, which (iirc) has a pre-set code for SQXII rather than randomizing it. So you could still accidentally blank it out... but at least you could restart the game, grab the code, then load your old save rather than having to play through everything again.
@@jasonblalock4429 I just tested it, and the CD-ROM code is randomized as well.
If you use the PocketPal a second time in the Super Computer, you get a message from Sludge Vohaul that it's your son he's kidnapped. It was even fully voiced in the disk version!
@@OneShortEye That's why my dad taught me to save constantly throughout the game and to leave save games spread evenly throughout the whole game. That way when you get to one of these puzzles, you can go back to that spot pretty quickly.
Ooh another OneShortEye video? Must be a good day
A copy of this came with the Creative CDROM drive we had with our IBM when I was a kid. Suffice to say I never got past the initial time warp scene and was so frustrated I didnt touch it again until decades later
The game code running way too fast was a common problem back in the day. Properly written games that used the screen timing to sync worked fine with super fast clock speeds, but ones that went for maximum speed without syncing became unplayable (without special tools). One of my favorite games from back then was called "The Incredible Machine", where you had to construct a machine with given parts to accomplish a particular goal like "Put the ball through the hoop". But if you had a fast machine the game would run so fast that you couldn't see where your machine failed, making it unplayable. Here's what that game looked like: ruclips.net/video/dl1LvFDgCio/видео.htmlsi=OVY0MWXoT7ia8mO5
This channel is such a gem. One of my very favorites on youtube.
11:10 Another interesting glitch I noticed in SQIV is when Roger is in the arcade room.
When the time cops arrive walk down by the garbage can in the center bottom of screen get as close to it as possible. Wait for the cop to walk around the arcade, right when the cop walks up to Roger and begins to speak click the garbage can using the hand icon which triggers the audio to play. The cop will fire his gun, but to my surprise he will freeze allowing you to walk around and jump into the time vehicle. Quick and easy. No running around the arcade avoiding getting shot.
I have tested this many times on various OS as I have played this game at least once a year for the past.... 30+ years. Enjoy!
Still waiting for Space Ventures!......... I am in my 40's now..... would really like to play it before I die!
These videos are so interesting, despite the fact that I despise these games gameplay-wise. I hope you will be creating more of them for a long time.
I certainly hope so! And I understand the frustration with the gameplay. To a young kid in the late 80s-early 90s, if you wanted anything with a story, games like this were really all that we had. So we learned to live with it.
Your videos are so insanely good. It is literally up there with summoning salt. Please keep up the amazing work!
That's very high praise, thank you.
Oh, I love your videos. I never got to play any of these games, but I've always found them fascinating. But more than that, your videos always calm me for some reason. I have major anxiety issues, so I play this channel's videos in the background when I'm feeling stressed. Maybe that wasn't your intention, but I want to thank you all the same. I hope you'll keep making more!
I'm sorry to hear about your anxiety, but I'm touched that the videos help. I'm always working on something, so there will definitely be more in the future. Keep taking care of yourself; you deserve it.
They're still relatively easy to get a hold of and try for yourself. It's never too late to create your own personal experiences with them.
literally rewatched all your content yesterday, glad to see a new upload from you!
Despite being born in 2003 this video brought back some weird nostalgia, I watched Dilandau3000's lets plays of the classic adventure games religiously as a kid and now I love these old, janky as hell, games.
He had a laid-back style that was easy to watch and also explained all the weird quirks and annoyances in these games quite well. A great narration style for sure!
If I'm understanding the Skate-O-Rama CD bug properly, basically, the progress in technology and computer speeds made triggering events go ludicrous and made it impossibly hard to complete. Sort of like how the AI in the Microscope Puzzle from The 7th guess became practically all-powerful because computers have become so much better at computing, which meant emulators had to make the processor speed run slower to make it manageable.
That's basically it. The floppy version has no issues with speed. After that came out, Sierra upgraded its engine to SCI 1.1, which is what the CD version runs on. I'm going to quote and adapt an explanation sluicebox gave me: There are two changes that happen to the way time works in SCI1.1:
1. Speed slider now controls YOU instead of the entire world
2. Game cycles are now unthrottled (run as fast as your computer will process them)
SQ4's problem is that it was written against the earlier rules, then all the underlying system components that had to be rewritten for the new speed model got swapped in, but the game wasn't reprogrammed to adjust to these.
Issue #1 is a problem in some places. But for skate-o-rama, the bigger problem is that it's programmed for your speed being in sync with the world's speed. Now your speed is controlled by a speed slider, but the sequel police delays don't know that!
So the solution to skate-o-rama is to turn UP the speed slider so that you go as fast as you can, because all the delays are fixed values that are no longer relative to your speed. But your average gamer had no way of knowing this.
Always looking forward for your speedrun documentaries. Keep up the great work!
Thanks for watching!
My favorite game creator from my childhood plus the dulcet tones and sly wit of Shorty makes me very happy. A real pantload indeed.
Great video sir!
Glad you liked it!
I love how you presented the run in this! It's always super interesting when you go into the version differences. The audio editing is also fantastic! Music choice always seems just right
Happy you enjoyed it! Any music not from the run itself was re-orchestrated SQ music by The Space Quest Historian, who was kind enough to let me use it.
I think this might be the only floppy disk game I've ever watched someone speedrun
Love the channel, by the way. Found you from the King's Quest video.
Amazing video, reallly liked it, the way you talk, the attention to details, really loving it
Glad you liked it!
I remember watching the retsupurae of this years ago- it got me into dos games. I've always loved watching people play this game. Great video!
I have never played Kings Quest, or Space Quest, but... Man... I love this channel...
I love this series. The comedy of it had me tickled every time. This explains one of my childhood mysteries as to why it was so darn difficult.
16:58 I understood that reference.
13:24 MAN I love when games let you use your Numpad when there is one in game, it's a no-brainer. Deus Ex spoiled me with this feature because everytime there is a keypad in a game, I instinctively reach for the numpad.
Sadly it's extremely rare for games to implement this.
Your videos are always so good! I somehow learn something new with each one!
Glad you enjoyed it! I learned a lot too in researching this. Big thanks go to sluicebox for explaining the copy protection and the integer overflow. Dude is a wealth of knowledge.
I love your videos. They are always to the point, informative, and never spend too much time on any facet, while still managing to explain everything in great detail. There are no inserted ads, and the video ends once it's done everything it wanted to. This is a perfect example of how videos should be made imo.
Wow, this answered a 31 year old painful memory of never getting passed Skate O Rama. Earlier today I tried to play this again on Steam but it's so unfair and ridiculously difficult I gave up after ten minutes stuck in XII and watched this instead.
I loved this game as a kid. I remember being stuck in an arcade for months and couldn't progress, these games were incredibly hard before the internet. Eventually I triggered the right event somehow and moved on. It took me about a year of playing it off and on but I completed it.
one of my most nostalgic games of all time. my Dad was a computer programmer so our home PC was always top-spec...I spent YEARS in the skate-o-rama, trying absolutely everything I could, restarting the game, clicking on every object on every screen preceeding the galleria but could never beat it. in consequence I have so much fondness for the first half of SQ4, it's one of my all time favourites 👍
I remember there was a phone number you could call to get help. That's what I did. My family didn't have long distance so I had to use a pay phone (those still existed back then) and put in a ton of quarters.
this is awesome, i love watching how they do things like these
As someone who's never played these style of point-and-click adventure games, this game's humor actually might make me check it out.
Space Quest IV was my favorite game as a teenager. I bet I’ve beaten this game more than any other I’ve ever played.
Thanks for the nostalgia!
I love these Sierra point and click videos, please never stop making these!
I love how i, a brazilian with terible english, can understand every single of your videos, after months i still dont know how i get here, but iam so glad i did
Glad you're enjoying them!
Maaaan another OSE video. Keep up the amazing quality my man, love it!
Glad you enjoyed it!
loving your videos man, great stuff :) unrelated but your MI video inspired me to start running monke islands, i've always loved the games but did not know about this community at all
That's awesome! Glad to see someone inspired to start running. Loved your Crimson Diamond runs, and it's great that you're so active on the SA discord.
10:02 I actually had NO idea about the speed clock thing. I played all the Space Quest games back in the day and simply thought SQ4 was impossible. I never came close to finishing it.
Hopelessly addicted to this channel
Hehe not "shave"! Epiladys (?) basically had a spring wrapped into a loop like you see (I think that was pretty accurate); the spring rotated and ripped your hair out. They were horrific.
I like that they were self-aware about the copy protection. Like they know it's a hassle, but there's still a reason for it, so it's kind of needed.
Sooooo.... you're actually telling me that the evil skate-o-rama ZAP ZAP YOURE DEAD that caused me to almost fucking break my computer back in the day is actually unbeatable on a DX4 100MHz that I had when I first played the game... FUCK MY FUCKIN LIFE...
I get so excited when I see a new upload from you.
So happy that you upload. I was thinking: damn. Whens He gonna Upload again, and today is my Happy day !
Oh MAN my Saturday morning coffee just got SO much better.
11:17 Ms. Astro Chicken became the prophecy of Flappy Bird.
3:25 "Luke, I am your shuttle" *labored breathing*
09:54
Oh man. Mo'Slo. I remember having to use that one for a different Space Quest. The VGA remake of Space Quest 1 to be precise.
I was unable to lead the Spider Droid to the Orat so I would instead pick the two of them off individually, which required me to sacrifice my water and then die of dehydration because the processor speed determined Roger's chances of survival in that heat.
I also needed it to sneak past the chef in Willy Beamish, and it made the gym sequence in Leisure Suit Larry 3 less tedious.
I just wanna say, games like this were absolute peak for pixel art. Just gorgeous backgrounds, especially in SQ12.
Ooooh it’s a great day a new OneShortEye video!
11:18 Bad guy with the bad gun is a Ms Astro Chicken fan and thinks you're ok, and just here to play.
Even though I randomly played a few sierra games at a friend's house once. This game was the first one I ever bought and seriously played right around its release. I loved it and soon owned every Sierra game I could get.
Wadda bunch of weirdos speedrunning old-school point-and-click adventures...
I love it! 😁 - looking forward to more episodes!
Thats great man, I remember the time I had an Amiga and when this game came out it was clear that most adventure games were becoming more the territory for Harddisc and PC owners...the loading times and disk swapping...
With very few exceptions, the Amiga versions of games are always slower. But there is one runner, Milktoast / Amigaruns, who makes it their mission to only run Amiga... for some reason lol
One of my favorite games of all time. I don't know how many times I've replayed this gem !
I love that there is a speed running community devoted to the sierra games.
This feels SO validating! I was crushed i couldnt figure out how to beat the CD version on my brand new computer 🤦♀️im glad i never called the 1900 hint line at $1 / minute!
The mall, the mall, the mall. Oh this place has bugs galore on the floppy version. You can first enter it in a impossible state because there are several objects that may not spawn in 😲 my first mall experience was one of these, where the atm card does not spawn and I had no idea I had missed an item either.
Dear OneShortEye,
Make videos more often please.
Sincerely,
Chris
Dear Chris M,
I'm trying!
Sincerely,
OneShortEye
Every time someone mentions Space Quest, I check the Kickstarter page for the spiritual successor. Currently around 9 years overdue for many many different reasons. 9 years is also the amount of time between the first SQ and the sixth one.
I am a very patient backer of SpaceVenture myself.
Wow, talk about nostalgia! Space Quest was a gaming obsession of mine growing up... still have all my original boxes, disks _and_ the little cheat books that you'd buy from Sierra if you wanted _any_ chance of completing the game back in the 90's. I really enjoyed the zero hand-holding and quirky, self-aware humour & storylines in old RPGs because they encouraged you to understand the dev's mindset as much as the narrative... you'd get a feel for their twisted logic & it was twice as satisfying when you solved something because of it. Plenty of hours spent cursing those same devs though, when you got stuck at a scene requiring pixel-perfect execution! 😂
Ahh, Space Quest, I remember playing the first one back in 1986.... I own all of them, on floppy disc, them and Kings Quest, Hero's Quest (Quest for Glory, they had to change the name for copyright reasons), Police Quest.... I loved all of those games from Sierra.
So happy to see you're still making these! Myself, I booted up SQ4 alone as a child, far too young, and was terrified by the drumming energiser bunny... I took it to be an especially lethal Sierra death-monster and immediately quit the game. (Imagine if I'd made it into the sewers, where there *is* a lethal Sierra death-monster!)
The guy didn't wanna shoot you while you were gaming, but wasn't patient enough to wait for you to finish.
I remember in 3rd grade (mid-80's) my school had a mandatory typing class. I was the only kid (or adult) to notice that when I used the newer computers, I typed 55 WPM, and when I used the old computers, I typed 80WPM. I realized there was "something funny" with the way computers kept track of time, and nobody understood why I always wanted the older ones. I wasn't gonna tell them.
There's something honestly kind of interesting about watching some adventure game speedruns when they're so vastly different to most genres of games when so much of their gameplay tends to be fixed as far as how a player can progress.
20k subs already, keep going!
I don't know these games and I don't much care for speedrunning, but your videos are really well done and entertaining as hell. Liked and subscribed, keep it up! =D
yo great vid man. gotta love speedrun breakdowns
Glad you enjoyed it!
These vids you put out are amazing. Love the style! Keep it up!
Glad you enjoyed it! Great profile picture, by the way. Grim Fandango is tied with The Longest Journey as my favorite adventure game.
Great run & analysis video! Thanks for uploading!
Played SQ3, 4 and 5 back in the day. I can't remember but it was probably a collection CDROM or something. 3 and 5 I loved and completed on my own. 4 I hated with a passion, due to that skate-o-rama section, which I actually completed once, but never figured out what I was to do right after.
Thanks for the video. Now I know I basically didn't miss anything by not completing it.
If only so many of these LucasArts point and click games didn't have nonsense puzzles, fast timed events, and pixel hunting.
I recently completed Sam and Max: Hit the Road. I loved it, and now want to play more point and click adventure games. I already know I need to prepare for a nightmare and strict adherence to a guide if I want to. I only needed to use a guide occasionally with Sam and Max.
Great video, I enjoy Speedruns of games that are so different to what we have now.
OneShortEye upload? You love to see it
wow! this is the hardcore of gamers wanting to play their games. respect 🙏
my 486 had a turbo button I could turn off slowing it down to a 386, but I dont remember getting past the burger job... I think ill give it another try. nice explanations.
@15:37 is an Easter egg that I must have missed from the olden times. KQ SQ LSL is a reference to King's Quest, Space Quest, and Leisure Suit Larry
great video!! I don’t know if there’s anything interesting about Space Quest 2 speedrunning, but if there is, I’d love to see a video from you about it! Played it recently with my dad and it’s a fun one lol
There's only one thing about the SQII run that I think is interesting. By setting the DOSBox cycles to max, it's possible to skip getting the berries, and thus you can skip the tentacle monster maze. www.speedrun.com/space_quest_ii_vohauls_revenge/run/ywq9pkpy
Other than that, it's like KQI and KQIII (if you've seen those videos), where the aim is to find the most efficient zips.
Oh, I guess there's one more thing. You can type "cheat" to instantly win the game, so there's a meme category where multiple people have "beat" the game in 1 second or less.
8:08 What a piece of dingeling indeed! 😂
Awesome video! Really enjoyed it.
This game often gets flack from people for various valid reasons, but it was the first game my family bought for our first home computer and it will always have a special place in my heart. Thanks for the great video.
I can certainly understand that. I still have a soft spot for King's Quest V, since it was one of our first PC games, even with EVERYTHING wonky with it.
The burger minigame was my favorite part of this as a kid.
The time travel and general wackiness meant that when i took an earbud out while listening to this and accidentally skipped to the KQ3 video, I initially didn't realize I was on a different video.