In my second session playing Space Quest 1 I was a lot less enthusiastic about the game than when I started out. Even though the constant deaths makes me feel like I’m playing Dragon’s Lair, or better yet Space Ace (although I’ve never played that one), I can see the merit of them in this game. They’re quite fun and maybe even better than the constant “I can’t use that item in this situation” phrases you get in other point-and-click adventure games that follow Ron Gilbert’s rules of adventure games.

Another rule that Space Quests violates is the rule about forgetting to pick a thing up. And this one’s much more serious and detrimental to enjoying the game.

The first time I encountered this was when I had to play the slot machine to get money to buy a space ship. After trying 30 to 40 times to earn money through the slot machine and getting nowhere, I started to think that I needed to cheat. But there seemed no way I could do that. So ultimately I resorted to the internet for a solution. Turns out that I needed a magnet to cheat the machine, and that I had to pick that up in one of the first screens in the entire game! Aargh!
Although playing it all over again proved less time consuming than playing the slot machine had been, it was annoying.

The second time was when I had to avoid the aliens aboard their ship. I needed a pocket knife that I had to pick up right after I’d escaped the space craft from the beginning. It was in the kit from the pod which wasn’t even there anymore after the crash. I guess that it being not in the same spot anymore after the crash was supposed to be a hint of some sort, but in the VGA version at least, it was very hard to spot against the background. And what makes it worse, is that there’s another item next to it that you also need to pick up and that one shines as it catches the light. So that totally makes you only look at that item and not at the other one you need.
Very frustrating!

One positive experience about replaying the game over and over again is that you get the opportunity to smell things that you forgot to smell the first time around. Like smelling the pool of goo in the caverns. That’s a hoot!

So now I’m back at the alien space ship with a pocket knife. I’m dreading the next thing I forgot to pick up. It makes you not want to think about solutions to puzzles, because there’s constantly the fear that it’s not a puzzle you can solve because you simply haven’t picked up the right items.
Here’s to hoping that the next game in the series is better designed than this one.