Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon

aka: SQ3, Space Quest 3, Space Quest III: Die Piraten von Pestulon
Moby ID: 142
DOS Specs

Description official descriptions

Narrowly escaping the events of Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge, Roger Wilco's escape pod floats through space. As just another metallic item of junk, it's soon picked up by an interstellar garbage hauler. Waking up in a pile of trash, quite familiar for this janitor-turned-hero, Roger Wilco must somehow escape. Once given access to the rest of the galaxy, he'll soon find himself having to avoid a collections cyborg for payments overdue, dealing with the corporate prison of software company Scummsoft, and having to digest the greasy food from the galaxy's finest hamburger joint.

Space Quest 3 is a graphical adventure. The mouse is functional for movement and inventory access, however the game primarily relies on a text parser for specific commands and manipulation of objects on screen. In addition to the regular gameplay, there are also various mini-games, such as a simple non-scrolling arcade game Astro Chicken, as well as a radar screen representation for ship-to-ship space combat.

Spellings

  • מסע בחלל III שודדי החלל של פסטלון - Hebrew spelling
  • שודדי החלל של פסטלון :III מסע בחלל - Hebrew spelling

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Credits (DOS version)

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Reviews

Critics

Average score: 81% (based on 25 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 126 ratings with 12 reviews)

A beginning of a new era

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. ****

DOS · by Katakis | カタキス (43102) · 2003

Best Space Quest of the series! Roger Wilco at his best!

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.

DOS · by OlSkool_Gamer (88) · 2004

The first graphic adventure I played

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

DOS · by Isdaron (715) · 2001

[ View all 12 player reviews ]

Trivia

Advertisement

The "Two Guys from Andromeda" (Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe) made a special video-appearence in a humorous (and quite a bit silly) Space Quest III promotion film. The short clip was allegedly recovered in the year 2000, and is now downloadable from several sources on the internet.

Astro Chicken

The irritatingly awkward Astro Chicken game features a irritatingly catchy, dubbed by fans "the Astro Chicken theme" (imaginative, huh). But this piece of music wasn't actually created for this game; it first appeared in the first Police Quest game, when someone planted a chicken on Sergeant Dooley's desk.

After winning the Astro Chicken, you are given a hidden message, written in the Galactic Alphabet. For those of you who can't be bothered to decode it, here's what the message says.

``` HELP US! WE ARE BEING HELD CAPTIVE BY SCUMSOFT ON THE SMALL MOON OF PESTULON. AN INPENETRABLE FORCE FIELD SURROUNDS THE MOON. IT MUST FIRST BE DEACTIVATED. IT'S ORIGIN IS UNKNOWN TO US. SCUMSOFT SECURITY IS ARMED WITH JELLO PISTOLS. WE'RE COUNTING ON YOU WHOEVER YOU ARE.

                       TWO GUYS IN TROUBLE

```

When you retrieve the decoder ring and use it to decode the message, one would think that the game would automatically decode it for you.

Death

Very early on in the game, in fact on only the second screen you come to (depending in which direction you walk), there is a piece of metal that, if you try and pick it up, causes you to cut yourself open and bleed to death, without any warning what-so-ever! This classic over-the-top death seemed to be nodded too in the literature to several LucasArts releases, with wording along the lines of "we don't believe you should die every two minutes for merely trying to pick up an object".

DOS version

The PC version of Space Quest III features digitized sound effects in the Sound Blaster or Tandy DAC (TL/SL) sound modes. The majority of these sound effects were actually recorded from the Roland MT-32 version (with a few exceptions such as the the brief speech in the opening sequence).

Supported music devices

The original version supports various music devices, with the most unusual being the Casiotone MT-540 and CT-460 MIDI keyboards. Space Quest III may well be the only game that ever used them. The keyboards feature MIDI input and output ports and can be connected to the PC just like other external synthesizers. The setup program for the game also contains instructions on how to set them up for playback. Support for these keyboards and some other devices was removed in later versions of the game.

Gags

If you eat the "Big Belcher Combo" at Monolith Burger, when you go to leave Roger will come back in, green in the face, and bring it back up.

Glitch

Before performing this trick, be sure to save your game. Now, this is a neat little thing that I discovered. After you've killed the Terminator, go back into Fester's shop on Phleebut and WEAR HAT after buying it. After leaving his shop, before the computer automatically takes the hat off, begin walking in another direction. By doing this, you're stuck on this screen and can walk anywhere. For instance, attempt to walk off the right side of the screen. Once you disappear, go up and around Mog's foot. You should be able to walk on the sky, through the leg and on the roof of the shop. I'm guessing that this is just a glitch in the game. I've never been able to fix it once it happens.

Plot hole

The terminators in SQ3 and SQ5 come after you for not paying for the Labion Terror Beast Whistle. However, those of us who bought the game when it first came out know that the included coupon specified that the Whistle was free.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack for Space Quest III was composed and arranged by Bob Siebenberg, former drummer for the popular band Supertramp.

Speech

This is the first Space Quest game to make use of digitized speech, although it's only in one small part of the game. During the game's introduction you can hear Roger say "Where I am?"

References

  • When you first arrive to Monolith Burger, the USS Enterprise (from the original series) warps out of there.
  • There's a TIE fighter (from Star Wars) in the garbage ship. However, it's been renamed to a bow-tie fighter from the cologne wars (the original movie mentions the Clone Wars).
  • Also in the garbage ship, the ship Jupiter 2 is from the old Lost in Space series.
  • Fester has a postcard from Arrakis in his shop. Arrakis is the planet from the movie Dune.
  • There's a small signature hiding in the introduction sequence. The pic where the droid is monitoring the escape pod - in the right lower corner, there's a signature reading "Crowe" (as in graphic artist, Mark Crowe).
  • "Monolith Burger" is also one of the places in Socket City, where you can work and eat, in Sierra's Jones in the Fast Lane.
  • Near the start try typing in "put gem in mouth" and you'll get a message that says "That's only helpful in SQ II" In Space Quest II, you needed to put a gem in your mouth in order to get through a certain section in the game.
  • The logo for Scum Soft is a spoof of the logo for Strategic Simulations Inc, which was a popular software company back at the time that Space Quest III was released.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • October 1989 (Issue #64) – Special Award for Achievement in Sound
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #2 Best Way To Die In Computer Gaming (the own body parts will be sold by a butcher after death)
  • ST Format
    • January 1990 (issue #06) – Included in the list 50 Games of the Year
    • January 1991 (Issue #18) – #5 Best Adventure Game in 1990

Information also contributed by B14ck W01f, Erik Niklas, Jayson Firestorm, Mickey Gabel, Philip Kuhn, Ricky Derocher, Stargazer, William Shawn McDonie, WizardX and theclue

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Related Sites +

  • Hints for SQ3
    These questions and answers will help you solve the game without spoiling it for you.
  • ScumSoft HQ
    The ScumSoft Headquarters
  • Space Quest Network
    One of the largest Space Quest pages in existance - with lots of trivia, tips, downloads and very much anything else you can ever find about Space Quest on the internet!

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 142
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Andy Roark.

Amiga added by POMAH. Atari ST, Macintosh added by Terok Nor.

Additional contributors: OlEnglish, nullnullnull, Mirrorshades2k, Servo, Jeanne, Jayson Firestorm, Shoddyan, Stargazer, Crawly, 6â…ž of Nine, Patrick Bregger, Ingsoc, Jo ST, theclue.

Game added May 27th, 1999. Last modified January 20th, 2024.