Space Quest I (EGA) Play Through

[Tawmis]

So I started Space Quest I (EGA) for my next video. I've already died a number of times.

There's a few times, already where I've thought, "How did I ever pass this game?"

Picking up the glass is not intuitive. It just appears to be broken glass and not visible on the floor as something you might want to pick up.

Then the command to use the glass on the beams - it took about 15 different attempts of "using the effing glass on the effing beams" to finally get it to work.

Also the rock you put on the geyser (not a big deal, it's one screen away) is not super obvious.

But the big one? When you reach the alien inside the cave - and he punts you out if you can't understand him.

Nowhere is it even INDICATED you have ANY form of translator. It's not in your inventory. So why would you even think you have it?

So I went in - he spoke gibberish and punted me out.

I just typed "turn on translator" after I'd been punted.

And it said, "You turn it to the right and the light goes green."

WTF?

I have a translator?

Restored to before I went in - turned it on - and spoke to him.

Now I am on the orat hunting quest!

[Collector]

You mean EGA like this?

[Tawmis]

You mean EGA like this?

Sorry, "AGI"

[MusicallyInspired]

The Gadget you get from the Airlock along with your Flight Suit on the Arcada is the translator. If you examine it it tells you it has the words "DIALECT TRANSLATOR" on it.
As for the glass, it's not an intuitive puzzle in modern gaming conventions, but back in the day coming off of text adventures (and I say this as someone who grew up at the tail end of parser games) I gotta imagine people were used to typing in as much as possible. I was watching a blind playthrough of SQ1 just a few weeks ago and the guy amazingly had the foresight to go all the way back to the pod after reaching the beams to search everywhere just in case he missed something, finding the glass and the emergency kit. It was really impressive. He beat SQ1 quite easily considering (and he hadn't played many Sierra games if any). And interestingly, when he got to SQ2 he had a much harder time lol.

[Tawmis]

The Gadget you get from the Airlock along with your Flight Suit on the Arcada is the translator. If you examine it it tells you it has the words "DIALECT TRANSLATOR" on it.
As for the glass, it's not an intuitive puzzle in modern gaming conventions, but back in the day coming off of text adventures (and I say this as someone who grew up at the tail end of parser games) I gotta imagine people were used to typing in as much as possible. I was watching a blind playthrough of SQ1 just a few weeks ago and the guy amazingly had the foresight to go all the way back to the pod after reaching the beams to search everywhere just in case he missed something, finding the glass and the emergency kit. It was really impressive. He beat SQ1 quite easily considering (and he hadn't played many Sierra games if any). And interestingly, when he got to SQ2 he had a much harder time lol.

Ah! See - that explains how I probably beat it many times before; but today, I just picked it up (and forgot to take the time to look) - because of the dreaded:

"You think you hear footsteps!" every so often. Aliens zapped me once on the ship (I was in a hall and nowhere near the exit side or an elevator)

So when you watch the playthrough of mine (if you do) - inside the ship, you can see I am typing about looking around - because I knew there was glass for those damn lasers. But for the life of me couldn't figure it out. And when I got out of the ship, the glass looks intact on the window (though seen cracked from the inside). So I kept playing thinking it'd come back to me - and it eventually did. When I reached the beams, I was like, "Son of a... I bet the glass is on the outside not the inside." (Which is odd, because force of impact being forward, you'd think glass would break INWARD not OUTWARD - although, I guess one could say the impact shattered the glass; and the momentum then carried it outward) But as someone who has wrapped a car around a tree, the glass normally breaks inward.

[Tawmis]

And Space Quest I EGA AGI has been defeated.

Will edit it all together to upload to my channel then off to Space Quest ][.

[Tawmis]

Here we are several days later, due to the odd issues I was seeing when rendering...

It does pixelate, because I had to increase the size to fit - but it is what it is. Oddly enough the "text" looks sharp. It's just the rest that seems to blur a bit (note - this is due to resizing; the actual export in its native size looks sharp!)






There's a nod to MI, when he mentioned the Translator in this thread. I do a look gadget - which says what it is - and I type "So that explains the translator."

I had forgotten that SQ1 - and I think it's the first to do this? - you can F4 items to see them like look commands.

[Tawmis]

And now Commentary version -