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Comment by brandall10 | Hacker News Reader

Space Quest III was my first Sierra game and it definitely has that hold. But so many of their games from that period really were so special, Police Quest II, LSL III, Hero's Quest in particular I ended up playing roughly together.

There was something really magical about those text driven EGA Sierra games. To me it was a goldilocks level of emotional/creative connection between Infocom and the later point and click VGA variants.

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I bought Space Quest II and III on the same day, back in 1989. I think it was on a Saturday morning, and by the end of the next day, I'd already finished Space Quest III. But Space Quest II took a lot longer, more like 2 months to finish. Having lived the game for longer, my memories of SQ2 are fonder.

I remember playing SQ2 on a "laptop" my dad brought home from work. It had 4 shades of dark blue and shimmered like crazy when anything moved. What a cool experience.

That's wild. Never played II but I do know it's regarded as a classic.

What do you feel the difference was for you? Just did a quick google and this person puts both on the level of the hardest Sierra games: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-1XyI72hvY

SQ2 is only “hard” because of all the inane unwinnable situations it puts you in. Didn’t help an alien at the beginning of the game? His friends are going to murder right near the end. Forget to search your locker at the second screen of the game? Unwinnable. That’s not even mentioning the long pixel walking maze the game makes you do twice.

SQ3 was actually fun and fair. I don’t remember a way to make the game unwinnable, it let you backtrack to get items or mercy killed you on the spot.

I can't remember what the specific puzzles in Space Quest II were that I got stuck on. I think the first one was probably still down on the planet. And I can't say for certain now why I was able to finish SQ3 so quickly. I guess things just seemed to flow. I certainly finished SQ3 quicker than any other Sierra game I played, by quite some margin. The others took at least a few weeks, if not months.

This was obviously back in the days before the Internet, and I hadn't yet discovered BBS boards either, so it was just me and my brother trying to work it out.

That's amazing you guys got through that game so quick with no outside help. They did sell hint books that started off blank with a marker to uncover the hint. I got one for most games I played. As a rule I'd get stuck on some part for more than an hour, come back a day later, and still be stuck, then I'd uncover a hint. Generally using it a half dozen times to get through a game.

https://www.sierragamers.com/hint-books/

Fun fact - Sierra made more $$ on hint books for the first LSL than the game itself due to piracy issues.

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