Resurrection: Space Quest V: The Next Mutation
Resurrection: Space Quest V: The Next Mutation
Cleaning up the galaxy…
Resurrection is a regular feature in which we reminisce about a game from way back when. This week, Steve K Peacock boldly goes where… he’s been before… in SPACE QUEST V.
LIKE A sports team, your loyalty will only ever lie with either Star Trek or Star Wars. You can appreciate the other side, praise them on their successes even, but your heart will only ever belong to one. For me, Star Trek wins out over Star Wars, specifically The Next Generation. If that was what the final frontier was like, sign me up.
It was with this in mind that I first came to Space Quest V, the penultimate episode of Sierra’s hilarious – if somewhat punishing – adventure game series. The previous four games had been written and designed by a couple of gents called “The Two Guys From Andromeda” but, after years of collaboration the gents went their separate ways. Mark Crowe stayed on to design the sequel and – like Red Dwarf would do under similar circumstances – this led to a slight shift in the tone of the game.
The previous Space Quest games had been about a reluctant but consistently fortunate hero, Roger Wilco, Space
Janitor. Despite his fame as a saviour of mankind, foiling any number of schemes against them, he was still the lowliest of the low. Space Quest V changes this by giving him aspirations.
Star Con
The game starts with Roger enrolled in the obligatory training academy for your Space Federation du jour. Your first task if to get Roger to pass his final exam, which is an interesting conundrum in that it puts you in the same position as chronically lazy student Wilco himself: neither of you have any ideas what the answers are. Get through the exam and – after falling afoul of arrogant Shatner-double Admiral Quirk – you are gifted your own ship, the SCS Eureka.
Space quest had been a series well known for its comedy. Space Quest V takes a different approach, devoting all the laughs to making a working parody of Star Trek. Once you acquire the Eureka (in interstellar garbage scow) the game almost becomes episodic. Like the official Star Trek games, 25th Anniversary and Judgement Rites, each mission feels like a self-contained story, and each is very much channelling Star Trek in its design.
There are two specifically that have always stuck with me. First of all, the mission with the gynoid. Fans of the series will be aware of the Arnoid, a bounty hunting most-definitely-not-a-terminator-honest android sent to track down and obliterate Roger for a bit of postal fraud he committed in a prior game. Roger saw him off by crushing him inside a giant automated statue. The company – not to be dissuaded – dispatched a second bounty hunter to collect, the gynoid.
During one of your rounds – hoovering up space refuse from the rear end of nowhere – a ship that looks remarkably like the love-child of a Romulan Warbird and a Klingon Bird of Prey de-cloaks and opens fire. Brave captain Roger quickly surrenders, and the gynoid demands he beam to the surface for imminent murdering.
So begins a mission somewhat similar to Kirk vs the Gorn from the original Star Trek Series. Roger has to fashion weapons from a the raw materials available in a forest, and use them to defeat a laser toting, jetpack wearing piece of future-tech. Naturally, he wins, and the gnarled engineer reprograms the gynoid to be an upstanding member of team Eureka.
The second mission has you investigating a ghost colony, getting jumped by a mutant, and avoiding his deadly deadly spit until one of your crew members turns up to save you.
Continues…
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Always my favourite game of the series.