Space Quest II: Vohaul’s Revenge
Space Quest II was released in November of 1987, the first sequel to the popular game Space Quest, Chapter I: The Sarien Encounter.
Not unlike the first game, we find our friend and semi-hero Roger Wilco working as a Sanitation Specialist on Xenon Orbital Station 4. (No good deed goes unpunished in Roger’s world.) When Space Quest II opens it finds you, Roger, actually working for a change, sweeping surfaces and cleaning crevices outside the Orbital Station. The adventure begins with you being paged on your nifty wrist mounted chronometer / telecommunicator / horoscope dispenser. You, as Roger, are ordered inside by your boss to come in and clean the most recently arrived shuttle. Apparently, someone on the last trip did not enjoy an optimum level shuttle flight experience and expelled their latest meal. Roger, of course, must go inside and clean up the mess. (Don’t worry, you don’t have to see it, and to those who may have wanted to, sorry. Really? You wanted to see it?)
Well, you as Roger follow your orders and enter the station, but not before letting yet another broom float away. (Not again! You’ll be hearing about this one too.) Once inside, you must remove your spacesuit and switch into your normal uniform. While there you check out your locker and its contents. In most adventure games, take anything that isn’t plasma-welded down It’s amazing how much stuff you can hide away in those wonderfully stretchy (not mention slimming) expando-pockets. Load ’em up. Once ready, it’s time to head to the shuttle bay. When you arrive and enter the shuttle to locate the formerly confined used meal you are surprised by someone who does not wish you well. You are knocked unconscious, taken hostage and transported to a secret lair of an evil villain. All evil villains have secret lairs. They’re so cool! This one is the work of Sludge Vohaul and his henchmen.
The first order of business is for you to meet the bloated visage that is Sludge Vohaul. As is common with evil geniuses, he details his plans for you. After he delights in letting you know of your apparent destiny you are transported down to the planet of Labion where you take a ride with two of Vohaul’s goons to begin your life sentence of hard labor in his apparently lucrative orium mine. Meanwhile, he continues with his plan to infest your home planet with cloned life insurance salesmen. Yikes! He’s a bad man.
Surprisingly, along the way as your two guards bicker about something, the little transport vehicle runs out of fuel and crashes to the ground from just above the tree line. A surprising stroke of good luck has you using them as landing cushions. Once again, you’re free to go about finding a way to save your butt. It’s time to check out the scene and get moving before anyone else shows up. Meanwhile, the clock’s ticking away and you need to save your planet from a fate worse than death, and it won’t be easy!
The video doesn’t answer one of the things about Space Quest I’ve wondered about most….how did Slash Vohaul, the scientist from Space Quest who was concerned about possible misuse of the Star Generator, become Sludge Vohaul who turned the Star Generator over to the Sariens? I pieced it together as, the good Slash Vohaul was turned into the evil Sludge Vohaul by a science experiment gone wrong (Vohaul indicates this in SQ2 when he is testing his minaturizer out on Roger) and then decided to betray the Star Generator to the Sariens. This is the case?
Oh another thing. Nobody in the commentary explains what the code written on Vohaul’s hand “SHSR” means. I actually figured out that if you alphabetically move each letter forward by one, “SHSR” becomes “TITS”. I thought this might just be a coincidence until Takari Freak on her Let’s Play of SQ2 showed me that “TITS” will also abort the clone launch when typed into the computer. Nice 😉
Space Quest II was the (playable) one I COULD NOT BEAT. It wasn’t until ca. ’03, when I finally gave up in desperation and did the unthinkable; that’s right, I used a walkthrough. I was not ashamed of it at the time, but it bothered me for years after that, and, two years ago, when needing an excuse to keep my aunt’s old Pentium II she gave me, I decided to try it again, realizing (rather swiftly) that all my memories of how the hell to beat the game were flushed down the metaphorical crapper that was my memory, replaced with LOADS of role-playing games. Once again, it was a challenge, but this time, it was totally worth it.
One thing I remember quite distinctly thinking about SQ2 as a child was just how different it was from every other SQ game. SQ1 explored planets, 3 explored planets, 4 time AND planets… every single one had you traverse space (among other things), but not SQ2. Instead, this break from the formula stuck you on a single sucky swamp planet (Dagobah Simulator 1988?), and you had to survive this wilderness, make it up to a nearby secret base, and, well, I probably shouldn’t spoil the plot any more.
My point is, this bothered me as a kid, and, judging from the rest of the sequels, I wasn’t alone in this criticism. What I didn’t see as a child though was that, behind this difference, was an excellent exhibition of adventure game puzzles, some of the most iconic I’ve seen to this day. The green goo of death trap in the hall of the secret base, the stupid bear that traps you, the dark underground maze, that goddamned blue squid…thing, all of it were presented in a quality I have not seen in other Sierra adventure games (except maybe KQ5. But that game has greater faults than a break from tradition, and I’m sick of that f***ing owl’s voice…even if I DO want voices), nor have I from the competing LucasArts games.
Those of you who are curious about this series, who never had the chance to play them 20-30 years ago, or who just learned about it after an extensive Wikipediagasm after watching Pewdiepie play a demo of something strange like an adventure game without HP or collecting more resources, I highly suggest you don’t let this game, SQ2, pass you by. Yes, it has its own directions the others did not follow, but it’s still very much worth your time. And if the survival element is just too much for you, don’t worry; an epic sequel is just around the corner.