Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon
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| Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon | |
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| Developer(s) | Sierra |
| Publisher(s) | Sierra |
| Designer(s) | Mark Crowe and Scott Murphy |
| Engine | SCI |
| Platform(s) | DOS, Macintosh, Amiga, Atari ST |
| Release date | 1989 |
| Genre(s) | Adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
| Media | 3.5" Floppy Disk or 5.25" Floppy Disk |
| System requirements | 8088/8086 CPU, 512KB RAM, CGA, EGA, Hercules, MCGA, Tandy/PCjr, or VGA graphics, Adlib, Game Blaster, IBM Music Feature Card, PC speaker, PS/1 Audio Card, Roland MT-32, Sound Blaster, Tandy DAC, or Tandy/PCjr sound card |
| Input methods | Keyboard, Joystick or Mouse |
Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon was released on March 24, 1989, and was developed using an early version of Sierra's SCI engine.
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[edit] Plot
Roger Wilco's escape pod from the end of SQ2 is floating in space until captured by an automated garbage freighter. Roger's first task is to repair an old ship found there, the Aluminum Mallard (a play on the Millennium Falcon) and leave the scow. However he will meet some difficulties, as the Arnoid the Annihilator (an Arnold Schwarzenegger-like android terminator) hunts him for not paying for a whistle in SQII. He eventually discovers the sinister activities of a video game company known as ScumSoft run by the "Pirates of Pestulon".
Pestulon, a small moon of the volcanic planet Ortega, is covered in soft, moss-like vegetation, and dotted with twisted tree-like growths throughout. Elmo Pug, the CEO of ScumSoft, has abducted the Two Guys from Andromeda and is forcing them to design their awful games. Roger somehow gets inside the supposedly impregnable ScumSoft Sea of cubicles and rescues the two programmers. In the process, Roger must fight Elmo in a game that combines giant Mecha-style combat with Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots.
[edit] Technical details
Space Quest III featured music composed by Supertramp drummer Bob Siebenberg, and was one of the first games to support the new SoundBlaster sound card. PC versions of the game now supported mouse movement and a new, heavily improved text parser.
Space Quest III also featured a mini-game called Astro Chicken, which was not necessary to complete the game, but getting a high score revealed a hidden distress message that the Two Guys had programmed in. A variation on a folk song known as the Chicken reel[citation needed] was used as the Astro Chicken theme music in this and subsequent games.
The Tandy 1000 series of computers support digitized sound via the Tandy DAC. When played on a Tandy 1000, Roger Wilco can be heard saying "Where am I?" in the introduction, and the rest of the game features digitized sound effects. This use of digitized sound effects, as well as the "Where am I?" speech are also present in the Macintosh version of the game.
[edit] Reception
UK magazine C&VG gave the ST version a score of 83 %, calling it "enjoyable and addictive".[1]
[edit] References
- ^ Campbell, Keith (September 1989), “Space Quest III”, Computer and Video Games (no. 94): 68
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