Back before computer and gaming consoles were able to almost look like real life, programmers had to be a little more inventive. We were all using 286 machines (if you could afford them as they were really expensive) around 1986 when Space Quest was released by Sierra. Role playing games up to that point where largely text driven and since very few people even had computers, there wasn't much reason for game companies to release them.
Space Quest was a bit of a gamble for Sierra, but after King's Quest sold relatively well, they decided to give Sci-Fi a go, and it was extremely (for the time period) successful.
Look at those amazing graphics! Believe it or not this was all really amazing to us in 1986 but you have to keep in mind that prior to this we had been subjected to far worse on home consoles such as the Atari 2600. The fact that you could save your progress was mind-blowing to us. It seems silly now but very few people knew anything about computers back in those days. My father was a database engineer and we had a computer at home so I was one of around 100,000 people that got this game. 100,000 copies sold was considered a great success back in those days.
Space Quest was such an achievement that the very next year, Space Quest 2 was released.
The graphics didn't improve at all and were still very pixelated. This game was considered very difficult because it was meant to be. You would find yourself impossibly trapped and since there was no internet, and i don't even recall there being a cheat guide, you and your friends would ponder what it possibly could be that you were missing. This interfered with my middle school education for sure.
We had to wait 2 years for Space Quest 3 to hit the shelves and of course all of us rushed to the store to get it. Sticking with their humorous storylines, Sierra ran the legal gauntlet by using a lot of imagery and even nearly the same names as Star Wars copyrighted material.
This was the last installment of the 80's and by the time Space Quest 4 was released computers had increased in power and popularity dramatically.
At this point in time computers were still not something that just any house would have but I would guess that there was easily 10x as many of them in existence for personal use. The internet was still in its infancy so games like this were still very popular among a certain crowd. It was nearing the elimination of pixels at this point and just like the other games, it was largely driven by finding certain items and activating certain switches in order to progress. However, now the games were driven almost entirely by using a mouse instead of keyboard commands.
There was also widespread use of "easter eggs" in this game including some cheeky moment where you play Space Quest 10 inside of 4. 10 was never developed and there are some nerds out there that occasionally try to create their own.
Space Quest 5 was another foray into copyrighted material that somehow managed to not get sued as well. It is an obvious parody of Star Trek and even the name of the game "The Next Mutation" is an obvious ripoff of "The Next Generation." Raemes T. Quirk is a character in the game as well. This game was just like all the ones before it in its gameplay, and since times were a changing in 1993 the series, and Sierra as a company in general were starting to lose market sustainability.
Space Quest 6: The Spinal Frontier was the last official Space Quest game to be released. As a final hurrah they made what I consider to be quite a good game, but a type of point and click game that was dying in popularity. Sierra themselves had moved to developing more action style games and even though this title ended up selling 1.2 million copies, the series was never returned to. 1995 was a very defining year for Sierra in an overall sense.
Sierra probably chose a good time to exit the market and the company was sold for around 1.5 BILLION dollars in 1996 and from that point forward, with rare exceptions, the "new" Sierra Online company, with rare exceptions, released games that were negatively reviewed and sold very poorly.
While in theory the company still exists in some form or another. The Sierra as I knew it back in the 80's and 90's is dissolved.
It was a fun time to be around gaming and watch it evolve and today these games are seeing somewhat of a reemgence and lots of fan-created spinoffs can be found all over the place - all for free of course.
Space Quest 6 is probably the most playable by today's standards and it can be emulated for free here
