Points of Interest from the Space Quest IV and V Beta Versions

Space Quest IV
Space Quest V



Space Quest IV:

A cracked version of SQ4 was leaked several months before SQ4's official release. It is very buggy and impossible to complete without resorting to using debug mode (or exploiting one or two surprisingly helpful glitches). A lot of it is similar to the disk version of SQ4 (Hz. so Good is still Radio Shock, the Monochrome Boys' bikes are colorful rather than monochromatic), but there are still a number of notable differences.



View 700: An inventory item that can only be viewed in-game by using debug mode. It's described simply as "keycard" in the game, and is called "SPcard" in the game's code. It might have originally been obtained from the deceased Sequel Policeman on Estros and used to open the door into the Supercomputer. (added by Blockmaster, 11-15-13)



Cursor 14 is a cursor for the aforementioned inventory item. (added by ATMachine, 2-22-15)


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The first screen that pops up when you run the beta. The "Teleport Number" refers to the number of whatever room in the game you want to start in.

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One of the first screens in the intro. The text is slightly different.

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Vohaul's description of Roger is a mite unflattering.

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The status bar has yellow text on a black background, and the game's name is missing its subtitle.

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The speech in the intro has no outlines, and has lines connecting the characters to their words. There are also no speech portraits in the game itself.

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There's not much dialog in the intro after Roger is escorted out of the bar by the Sequel Police. Vohaul just moves his lips, and Roger Jr. doesn't say anything to Roger after he and the other Time Ripper jump on the Sequel Police.

When Roger and Roger Jr. are flattened against the tank, Roger says "Hey, that the...?" and Roger Jr. says "Listen! There's no time to explain! They've got a bead on our coordinates!" Then he creates the time rip, Roger jumps in without being prompted, and there's no narration after Roger arrives on Xenon.

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The noticeably incomplete Quit window.

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The full score is 69 (stop snickering), and the score never changes during gameplay.

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This message is slightly different than the disk version, which ponders if the slime is "just a friendly scum-puddle looking for a new tasty treat?"

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Two slightly mysterious messages triggered by smelling and licking the sewer floors:

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When you're in the time pod, entering the first row of symbols (left to right) plus the first symbol in the second row takes you to Ortega (there's a similar Easter Egg in the final game). The view through the window of the time pod looks like Xenon, but looking at it gets a message describing Ortega.

You don't die if you try to exit the time pod, though. Instead, you get this message from the narrator:

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Nothing shocking about this message, except that it says "SQ VIII" (8) instead of "SQ XIV" (13), as it does in the final game.

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Arriving on Estros. The time pod's keys are noticeably smaller.

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Zondra is missing her boots during the torture scene. The only other version of the game I know of that contains this error is the EGA version. (The "Wait" cursor's graphic is a fat, gloved hand instead of a watch.)

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There is no crowd outside the software store, even though the clerk talks about it. There's even code for the crowd in the script, and the alien that responds to Roger says "The Two Guys From Andromeda" are signing copies of their latest release, not "The Two Geeks From Andromeda".

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A plea from a programmer in need of a missing animation. (A similar message appears when Roger is booted out after he gets fired.)

The outlines at the top of the screen are the borders for some of the icons on the icon bar, and they frequently got "stuck" on the screen, even if the rest of the icon bar wasn't visible.

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If Roger uses the card on the ATM before getting new pants and boots, his standing sprite suddenly gains boots and pants...

...and his walking animation becomes an animation of a Sequel Policeman shooting!

As if that weren't crazy enough, whenever Roger stands still, he regains his normal sprite, but looks as if he has an extra head.

Strangely enough, it's actually good that this bug exists, since the game will lock up if you try going to the Big and Tall store. You might think that this would render the game unfinishable, since you need to get money from working at Monolith Burger, which won't let you inside while you're barefoot. However, since the ATM bug changes Roger's sprite, this lets you enter Monolith Burger without any compaints from the manager. Fortunately, Roger's sprite returns to its normal appearance after he gets fired.

(Also, the floating objects in the software store's windows aren't moving like in the final game.)

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Dacron Danny and Stunt Flier are in the software store's bargain bin!
These two games are absent from the disk and CD versions, despite still existing in the resource files.

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The clerk's description of his wares is slightly less innocuous than it is in the final game. (Also, his speech animation plays before he talks instead of while he talks.)

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The exchange with Roger and the Sack's clerk is quite different...as is the clerk.

That's right...Maebot used to be Gaybot.

Here's the full exchange between him and Roger (no screenshots, since it's a tad long):

CLERK: **Greetingss, I'm sssir Gaybot, what can I do with... err for you?
ROGER: ***I.. uh.. well...
CLERK: **Looking for the latest in high galactic polyfiber fashion.
ROGER: **Yeah I... uh.. guess so.
CLERK: **Shopping for that ssspecial sssomeone or is thiss for yoursself?
ROGER: **Actually it's for... someone else.. yeah thats it, someone else.
CLERK: **Mmmm I ssee, ssay no more I understand perfectly.. this sspecial ssomeone has the same measurements, I presume?
ROGER: **Uh yeah thats right, how did you know?
CLERK: **Don't worry luv, I have a reputation for keeping a ssecret. Now I have just the thing, it's all the rage.
(picks out dress)
CLERK: **Ssince you are the ssame ssize why don't you try these on, the changing room is here to the right.
(Roger enters changing room)
CLERK: **Ssay, why don't you try thiss on too, it's one of my personal favorites.
(clerk carries wig into changing room and returns to counter, Roger sashays out wearing the dress and the wig)
CLERK: **Oooh you look delicious, you'll... I mean she'll be so pleased!
CLERK: **That will be 60 buckazoids please.
(after Roger pays the clerk)
CLERK: ***Thanks killer, come back soon!

And you thought the tailor in King's Quest V was an overblown stereotype...

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The very informative message you get when you look at Sir Gaybot.

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The LOOK message for the mannequins. "This is a family game", my foot...

You also get these three messages in succession if you try licking the mannequin on the far left:

** Slurp...
** SLAP!!...
** OUCH!!!

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None of the wigs seem to be clickable, so I've never gotten this message (which appears in the game's code):

**After licking the wig you realize that you are truly a disgusting person.

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There are several serious graphic glitches inside the arcade...

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There is no warning screen prior to the Monolith Burger assembly line sequence -- this is the only message that appears.

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The Radio Shock catalog, which I could only access by teleporting there, since the game locks up when you enter the store. It's incredibly buggy and incomplete, and I couldn't buy anything with it. I had to resort to debug mode to get the PocketPal Connector.

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Arriving in Ulence Flats. The text in the status line has turned blue.

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Occasionally, the walkable areas and walk-behinds inside the Supercomputer would go all topsy-turvy, allowing Roger to walk anywhere on the screen.
Naturally, this made getting to the command chamber much, much easier.

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Roger's arrival in Vohaul's inner sanctum. I got nothing.

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Vohaul's insults weren't always that intimdating...

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A mildly amusing error message I got a few times during the outro. "Who Cares" has the scene continue, "Debug" exits to DOS.

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This is the only dialogue there is after Roger saves Roger Jr. Enjoy:

There is a block of code for this closeup that is labelled -- I swear I'm not making this up -- "realyStupidScript".

After this, they shake hands, Roger Jr. opens another time rip, and as before, Roger walks into it without any prompting. After Roger falls through the time vortex, the game cuts to a black screen with a text box reading "THE END".

Then, this appears:

In case you were playing SQ4 and somehow forgot what it was...?

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Text 544 (Everything):
Not an object: $0
Just kidding, Guys!
This file seems to be associated with the screen that shows the closeup of the Supercomputer terminal.

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Text 614 (Everything):
*** You're so STUPID!!!
This phrase is repeated about four times over several otherwise empty text files.

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Text 811 (Everything):
*** about screen
*** this thing can be anything we want. We can do line draws & draw cels, and all the stuff that could potentially make it look like the control panel.
Just a bit of placeholder text for the About screen.

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Script 701:
The Droid-O-Death, somewhat resembling a stripped-down Maytag washer, hovers 15 feet above the surface of the street.
The Droid-O-Death only seems to show up if Roger is noticed by the zombie, so perhaps this message never appears, since the player never gets an opportunity to look at it.

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Script 611:
*** Toys B Us building.
Wow -- apparently someone working on SQ4 was completely unaware of a little legal trouble Sierra got in regarding the name of a certain droid dealership that appeared in SQ1...

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Text 706 (Line 7):
Your last name might as well be 'Lindsley' now.
Some text from a section otherwise filled with Ulence Flats massages that I don't exactly get.



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Space Quest V:

An early version of SQ5 (version 0.028, to be precise) found its way onto the Internet and was downloaded by many a user. Not only is this version much more bug-ridden than the later version of SQ5, but there are also a lot of interesting differences between SQ5 and the SQ5 beta.

Most of the differences in version 0.028 are errors of punctuation (periods, commas, etc. are missing), and some of the dialogue is slightly different or shorter than the release version's. There are also quite a few spelling errors -- all of the text I've typed here is copied verbatim from the text in the game itself.



The lemur-like animal in the foreground as the bridge simulator powers down in the intro is absent.

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The description of the ship on the right side of the docking bay near Roger's classroom is: "This sleek little beauty is for sale and can be yours for a mere 10,000 buckazoids. Dial 1-503-555-1-GUY and ask for Mark."

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The message that appears when Roger recognizes Beatrice reads: "Omigosh, it's her! The woman from the holodisk in SQ4. Now's your big chance, Roger. Say something witty and romantic."

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After meeting Quirk and Beatrice, Roger doesn't try to warn Quirk about the slipperiness of the rotunda.

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The narration of Roger's exploits after completing the test calls the Eureka the SS Eureka instead of the SCS Eureka.

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Flo introduces herself by saying, "And I'm Flo Qwerty, com specialist Grade 4" instead of "Flo's the name. I'm your com specialist -- Grade 4."

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The red glow in the bridge's ceiling doesn't fluctuate (Jonathon contributed this observation).

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Roger doesn't try out the captain's chair immediately after he trips over it -- the "It was the chair -- honest!" dialogue never appears.

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Flo's description in this version is inadequately punctuated -- It calls her "happy go lucky" instead of "happy-go-lucky" (with hyphens). Fortunately, they fixed this in the release version.

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After Spike is picked up, Cliffy only reports that there are scratching noises coming out of the waste compartment instead of scratching and whining noises.

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The green lights in the three tubes on the left side of the Eureka's engineering section move along the tubes in unison instead of one at a time.

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The description of Cliffy's toolbox spells the Eureka's name "Eureaka".

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The message you get when you clean up the toolbox is "You replace all the tools back where you found them" instead of "In order not to irk Cliffy, you put back the tools where you found them."

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The description of the Habitube is quite different: "Performing maintenance on this specimen container is a tankless job -- just ask Cliffy."

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The description of Spike in your inventory is a little more juvenile -- it describes him as "not completely potty-trained".

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When you talk to Droole after reaching your first destination and ask him about how he got assigned to the Eureka, he tells you that he got "sh*tcanned" after his mistake on the SCS Stupendous instead of just "canned".

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When WD40's ship hits the Eureka with a torpedo, Droole only says that the ship has been caught in "some kind of tractor beam".

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Roger doesn't yell "D'OH!!" when he grabs the dead limb on Kiz Urazgubi.

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The message you get after WD40 shoots out of the pool is worded differently:

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If you try to grab the fruit before poking it with a stick, the message you get is missing a crucial word. The first sentence reads "You can't quite reach this piece fruit."

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Different inventory description of the fruit: "Tough, inedible fruit from Kiz Urazgubi. (What else do you expect from a planet with that name?)"

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The description of WD40's detatched head is a little more descriptive: "You see a round metallic, roughly head shaped object."

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Cliffy's dialogue is different when he gives you the "souvenir" from WD40: "I was putting the Oakhurst Queen back together and I had this piece left over. Thought you might want it."

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You get a harmless error message complaining that it can't find the appropriate message when you try talking to WD40 while Cliffy is reassembling her. Fortunately, this problem was fixed in the release version.

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Droole's comment about taking some time off is slightly different: "Captain, we've been on duty for quite a while now sir, and I think we could all stand some R and R."

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...As is his dialogue as he and Flo rush to the transporter: "Let's party! Last one down to the station is a rotten swinefalcon ova!"

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In the Spacebar, Roger threatens to kick Quirk's tailpipe into the next quadrant. I guess the designers thought "aft side" would be a little less vulgar.

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Klorox II is mispelled Clorox II throughout the game.

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All that the mutant says before he starts launching mucus globs at Roger is "Try and dodge my death loogies, Monkey Boy", to which Roger replies, "Get off me!! And get a dermatologist." The loogie dodging sequence also quickly fades out, then in again after each successful dodge -- a little disconcerting.

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The mutant's last words are "Look to the west...secret path...". Roger doesn't say "What a bunch of gibberish!" in response to him.

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The last description of the Primordial Soup canister is "If found, contact Genetix at coordinates 41666".

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As Roger is plummeting to his death in the escape pod, the conversation between the aliens watching him is somewhat different. Crumpella says, "I wish I had never bought Rexx Nebular" when Slep tells her to make a wish, and he says nothing in reply. This is a badly disguised jab at the Microprose adventure game Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender, which came out around the same time as SQ5 and is quite similar to Space Quest. However, Crumpella's wish was changed in the final version of SQ5 before Microprose got wind of this.[Added 1-24-08]

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Now for the infamous messages fired after the transport accident on Genetix:

"The probability of an insect flying into the transporter field at the exact moment of beamout is approximately 1,365,500,012 to 1 against."
"The odds of a transporter feedback overload during beamout are calculated at 2,069,432,112 to 1 against."
"The likelihood of both of these events occurring simultaneously is about equal to the probability of your computer monitor suddenly jumping up off your desk and smacking you on the head."
"But as the Xenonions of Roger's home world are fond of saying: "Doc Premis Wilco Whoopsie" which translates roughly to "If it's going to happen to anyone it will happen to Roger.'"
(I personally think this text kicks the release version's text in the proverbial hindquarters.)

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Roger is a little less composed when he manages to contact Flo on Genetix:

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The Projects section of the Genetix computer is really bizarre -- instead of telling the player about Primordial Soup right away, it has a table of contents listing various other projects such as "Project Out of Sight Out of Mind" and "Operation Urban Releaf". The first project, "Project Overkill, says this:

"**After repeated experimental trials and the expenditure of several billion Buckazoids, we been unable to dtermine if the light DOES stay on when the refrigerator door is closed.
Keep going"
After this paragraph, there is a block of gibberish made up of five-letter words like "isput", "tatqu" and "aliqu", with the occasional "Keep going" line between paragraphs. There is a section for each of the projects, but the contents of all of them save "Project X" (Primordial Soup) are the same gibberish. The Primordial Soup entry is quite fragmented as well.

Quirk's full name in this version is James T. Quirk, according to the Genetix computer. The designers changed his first name to Raemes for the release version.

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After she is cured, Beatrice asks Roger, "OK but I've got one question. How'd I get this tattoo?"

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When Droole says that they need to try taking over the Goliath after Beatrice is cured, Roger scoffs, "And pigs might fly out my butt!". "Pigs" was replaced with "space monkeys" in the release version.

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Cliffy's request for Roger to come to the lab to look at his plans for boarding the Goliath is pretty bland in comparison to the one in the release version.

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The only safe section the Goliath is different in this version! In the release version, it's the section second closest to the engines, in this version, it's the section directly adjacent to them (which you can't select in the release version).

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When Flo contacts Roger after the Goliath's crew is saved, the beeping that the communicator makes has subtitles -- the words "beep beep!" appear on the screen twice, first in small, then larger fonts.

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The first message you hear when you are beamed back aboard the Eureka after the blob comes into being is "***Captain get up here quick! The puckoid mass is attacking the Goliath!" (Puckoid? Sounds like a monster that plagues ice hockey rinks.)

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When the blob escapes the compartment, the message that appears is "***Yeeuuck! The giant, undulating blob has burst through the trash containment hatchway! You're in deep doo-doo now!...literally!"

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There is no closing text -- the game just jumps directly to the credits.



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