For the past few years I’ve been chipping away at the Sierra adventure game series for the retro section of UK magazine Games™, and the tradition continues in issue 135 with Space Quest. On newsstands now!
The original Guys from Andromeda, Mark Crowe and Scott Murphy (pictured here on vacation in Yosemite), along with “new guy” Chris Pope, gave me really great interviews for this piece — so great that even after finagling two extra pages out of the magazine I still couldn’t fit it all into the feature.
The piece focuses on Space Quest with just a brief discussion of their new Kickstarted game, which meant that most of Chris’s interview didn’t make it in. So, I’ve included his answers below the jump for completeness.
Space Quest was the first Sierra series to debut after King’s Quest, and the idea for it was born when Mark and Scott, working together on The Black Cauldron, started riffing on “wouldn’t it be funny if?” scenarios that would never make it into the high fantasy, family-friendly world of King’s Quest. They built a 4-room demo set on a Sarian space ship, convinced Ken Williams to take a chance on a sci-fi game, and the rest is (Andromedan) history. Hearing their making of stories gave me a new appreciation for this series and made me really excited for SpaceVenture!
A great moment in adventure gaming history
Issue 135 is on sale in the UK now, or you can buy the print mag online or get it digitally. As an added incentive, this issue also has a nice piece by Ron Gilbert on his thoughts about LucasArts’ closure.
Read on for the interview with Chris Pope!