Roger Wilco (Space Quest)

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Roger Wilco Senior (right) chatting with Junior (left).

Roger Wilco is a fictional character, the protagonist in Sierra Entertainment’s Space Quest adventure game series. His name is a pun on voice procedure. The first two Space Quest games (though not the remake of the first) allowed the player to choose the character's name, and the selection defaulted to Roger Wilco if left blank. Roger could be described as an everyman, but he could just as easily be described as a bumbling halfwit who continuously, if inadvertedly, attracts trouble. However you choose to describe him, Roger's heart is in the right place: he has saved the universe on multiple occasions.

Roger is originally a janitor from the planet Xenon of the Earnon system. We first meet him as the janitor and sole survivor of the scientific research ship Arcada, which was overrun by the Sariens. After several extremely deadly adventures and a bit of janitorial work, he enters the StarCon Academy. Graduating in Space Quest V, he is promoted from a janitor to captain of the garbage scow SCS Eureka. He also meets Beatrice Creakworm Wankmeister, with whom he becomes romantically involved. In Space Quest 6 his spot in the limelight ends as he is busted back down to janitor and assigned to the backwoods of the cosmos.

It is revealed in the time travel tomfoolery that is Space Quest IV that Roger would eventually marry Beatrice and that they would have a son (Roger Wilco Jr.) As Wilco now owes his life to his son, he can't not. Beatrice is absent from Space Quest 6, but she is mentioned in the game's closing credits and by Roger himself. We also learn that by Space Quest XII, when Roger Jr. is a young adult, Roger will be "unavailable" for some reason. The details are never disclosed.

Space Quest 6 was the last SQ game Sierra published, and it currently seems highly unlikely that another in the series will ever be "officially" released.

[edit] Adventurer hair swap

While Roger retains his basic appearance and sustains no lasting damage from his swashbucklings and repeated near-mutilations, his hair begins the series brown and changes to blonde in the upgrade between parts III and IV. The same has happened to fellow adventure protagonists Guybrush Threepwood and Devon Aidendale, in Devon's case to the other direction. While this retcon is never addressed in the game itself it spawned a full-fledged fangame, Space Quest: The Lost Chapter.