Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon

The Good
the Two Guys from Andromeda has brought us a fine addition to the ever-popular Space Quest series. In Space Quest 2, Roger Wilco entered the asteroid of his arch nemesis, Vohaul, and thwarted his plans to infest his home planet, Xenon, with genetically-engineered life insurance salesman, and in the process, shut down Vohaul's nervous system. He then escaped by a pod and slumbered in its sleep chamber. Space Quest 3: The Pirates of Pestulon picks up right where the previous adventure left off. While the pod was cruising driftlessly through space, another pod controlled by robots beams up Roger's pod, and the robot pod crash-lands in a nearby junk freighter. Roger's first mission is to find a ship so that he can escape this pile of junk.

But that's only half the plot. You see, Roger later discovers a hidden message inside a video game that the two guys themselves have landed themselves in trouble by ScumSoft, the evil pirate software company whose headquarters are on the planet Pestulon, hence the game's subtitle, but only if he wins the game. Roger must make a dash for Pestulon and rescue the two guys from ScumSoft, but to do this, Roger must play a series of mini-games at several stops. More on these shortly.

Like Leisure Suit Larry 2, King's Quest IV, and Police Quest II, SQ3 was designed using Sierra's old SCI0 engine, where the player must use the arrow keys to control Roger around and type commands into a text box in order to perform actions like picking up an object and talking to someone. A menu provides the ability to get help; save, restore, and restart games, or quit SQ3. Like Sierra's older games, there is the so-called "boss" key, which is an option inside the game that you can select when your boss is in the same room as you, and allows the game to behave like an application until you press another key. Sadly, in this game, pressing the "boss" key will tell you that it won't function.

Unlike the previous SQ's, there are quite a few planets to explore. This includes Phleebhut, a planet where he meets a terminator sent by the Gippazoid Novelty Co. to assassinate him for failing to pay for the Labion Mating Whistle back in SQ2, and is the planet where he exchanges his glowing gem for three items at the World-O-Wonders. Then it's off to Ortega where he discovers Pestulon and blows up the force field surrounding it, as well as Ortega.

As I said earlier, to complete his mission, travel around the SQ universe for the planet that holds the two guys, Roger must play a series of mini-games and win, and the first game he must play is Astro Chicken, where the object is to guide a chicken to safety as you direct it to land on its pad and nowhere else (without exhausting its feed), or else the chicken blows up and loses one of its lives. Then when Roger manages to rescue the two guys at ScumSoft, he gets treated to a game where the object is to beat the ScumSoft employer in a robot suit. If that wasn't enough, he has to play Star Wars with ScumSoft's ships in the game's finale.

The graphics are highly detailed than those in SQ1 (the AGI version) and SQ2, meaning that they were done in 16-color EGA, and the game has support for various sound cards such as the Adlib and the Roland MT32/LAPC1. I heard that SQ3 sounds good if you have the Roland. I just brought a soundcard that emulates the MT32, so when I ran SQ3 with MT32 enabled, it sounds great.

The Bad
I didn't really like Astro Chicken, partly because it wastes more of your time trying to win just to get further through the game, when you can spend that time exploring the rest of the SQ3 universe.

The Bottom Line
SQ3 is much better than the previous Space Quest's because of its colorful graphics and excellent sounds. Not to be missed. ****

The Good
This game had it all for me, the theme, the environment, the characters, the puzzles and the entertainment level was very high. This is the first of the Space Quests to use the improved interface used in games like King's Quest 4. Its graphic and sound enhancement was warmly welcomed by Space Quest fans.

This game was extremely fun and it wasn't too difficult to figure out. Flying to different planets, exploring them. Pretending to be a janitor (it was a far stretch :), dodging and evading a crazy robot that is trying to kill you and some in-game arcade games like Astro Chicken all are apart of what makes this a great game.

I remember this game also had one of the highest possible points available in any of the Quest series. Somewhere around 730 points possible which conveyed the length of the game. Pretty long for those games.

The Bad
There wasn't anything I didn't like about this game. I don't believe there were even any pesky in-game copy-protections thrown at us like Sierra usually did. It was an all-around great space cruisin' adventure game.

The Bottom Line
If you liked any of the Space Quests, you would love this one. Definitely my personal favorite of all the Space Quests. I give this game a high rating and recommend it to anyone interested in classic PC gaming.

The Good
Roger Wilco is not more than the average guy. In fact, he' less. Being a janitor on a spaceship is not what I would consider a promising career. To make matters worse, he crashes in a junkyard, is wanted by some weird post-science fiction female Terminator and dies on every possible occasion. It's fun. As long as you don't forget to save regularly, at least. Space Quest III is a funny game with all sorts of little allusions to other science fiction characters.

The Bad
A Sierra adventure is a deadly trap for its characters. And it's not much fun to see Wilco being ripped to pieces for the 99th time. The music is nerve wracking from today's point of view. But that applies to most games of that decade.

The Bottom Line
The game is a combined graphic/text adventure: You have to type in your instructions, and in case Roger Wilco gets what you want, he executes your order. And dies as often as possible. What makes up for this, is that Space Quest III is really funny. So take your time, turn off the music and stockpile some tranquilizer. Or you will go through the roof after Wilco's first dozens of deaths