Two Guys from Andromeda

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"Two Guys from Andromeda" is an alias for the designers of the Space Quest series, a popular series of adventure games published by Sierra On-Line. The two guys consisted of Mark Crowe, who created most of the music and visual art in the early games, and Scott Murphy, who was the bearded programmer.

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[edit] Scott Murphy

Scott Murphy was first hired in "dealer returns" and eventually ended up running Sierra's entire support department. During the mid-80s, Scott spent some time working QA, and was able to get in touch with the people that made Sierra's games. When he saw the programmers working on The Black Cauldron he knew immediately that he wanted to be a programmer. After some pleading, Ken Williams added Scott to the Black Cauldron team.

Since his departure from Sierra On-Line, Scott had been reclusive and rarely (if at all) spoke to the media or press about his past with Sierra. Little is known about his current status, though it is known he no longer works in the game industry. He had virtually been silent in the past 10 years. His last known interview was in 2006, in which he spoke quite candidly about his volatile relationship with Sierra and at-times difficult partnership with Mark in creating Space Quest.[1]

[edit] Mark Crowe

Mark Crowe was hired in 1983 and first used his illustration skills creating packaging and game documentation before moving onto early Sierra releases like Winnie the Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood and King's Quest II.

[edit] The "Two Guys" are formed

Scott and Mark's first project together was the Black Cauldron. Mark was already creating graphics for the game when Scott was added as a programmer. Scott slowly became the only programmer on the project: "I put in a lot of free time over a summer spending nights out at his house debugging Black Cauldron. And then I ended up being the only one working on it. After a while, Ken and Al Lowe bailed out on me. So I got Black Cauldron shipping, and I was hooked."

After Black Cauldron was finished the "Two Guys" wanted to work on an idea of their own, a science fiction story starring a janitor named Roger Wilco. After proving their idea could be fun, by creating a four room demo, Ken Williams let them finish the game. That short demo became the beginning of Space Quest I: The Sarien Encounter. Space Quest I was the first game that Scott and Mark used their pseudonym.

The first four games in the series were designed by both Crowe and Murphy. After Space Quest IV, the team split up, and Space Quest V was designed solely by Mark Crowe. Space Quest 6 was designed by Josh Mandel, although later work on the project was done by Scott Murphy, making Mandel the "third guy from Andromeda".

There were also rumours of a "Gal from Andromeda", Leslie Balfour (a.k.a. Apollonia Jones), who was the co-designer with Scott Murphy on the cancelled Space Quest VII project at Sierra. In Space Quest III, the "Two Guys from Andromeda" enter the Space Quest universe as internal game characters. They appear as unwilling employees of a game company where they created the games Astro Chicken and its sequel Ms. Astro Chicken. They are forced to work at ScumSoft by the Pirates of Pestulon until Roger Wilco rescues them. Roger brings them to Earth where Ken Williams hires them to work at Sierra, creating the Space Quest series.

When appearing as the "Two Guys", Crowe and Murphy wore mohawk wigs, sunglasses and animal-like snouts (which were presumably Andromedan attributes). The game package for Space Quest III included a cardboard Andromedan snout. Neither Crowe nor Murphy appeared in the Andromedan disguise in the last two games' packaging; it may be that they no longer considered themselves "guys from Andromeda" since the team had disbanded.

[edit] Source

  • The History of Space Quest, included with the Space Quest Collection Series.

[edit] Sightings

The "two guys from Andromeda" made a few cameo appearances here and there in other Sierra games. For example, in Quest for Glory I, the guild master mentions that he had recevied help fighting antwerps from "two strange foreigners" who "said they were from Andromeda, and they sure were strange." In the Sierra game Conquests of the Longbow: The Legend of Robin Hood, the two guys are present at the Fair, trying to think of a good name for themselves ("two guys from Notingham? nah")

[edit] References

  1. ^ Cris Skelton (Adventure Classic Gaming) (2006). Scott Murphy interview.

[edit] See also

v • d • e
Space Quest series
Video games
Minigames
Developers
Sierra On-line · Dynamix · Two Guys from Andromeda