Space Quest I: The Sarien Encounter

Specifics

FIRST RELEASE:	1986-01-01
DEVELOPERS:	Sierra On-Line
PUBLISHERS:	Sierra On-Line
GROUPS:	Space Quest Series
GENRES:	Adventure, Adventure: 2D animated
PLATFORMS:	IBM PC, Apple II, Macintosh, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, Apple IIgs
ENGINES:	AGI

Game menu

General

Light-years from Earth's solar system the people of the galaxy Earnon have been struggling to maintain the precious balance of life. The sun of Earnon is slowly dying. The planets grow cold. Food is no longer plentiful. Life will soon become impossible to sustain.
The scientific community of Xenon devised a plan to convert one of Earnon's lifeless planets into a new Sun. The effort was centered around the development of a device called the Star Generator. The Star Generator would be capable of igniting an otherwise useless planet into a raging ball of flame.

An expedition set out aboard the starship Arcada to successfully complete development and testing of the Star Generator. The Arcada is now returning triumphantly to Xenon with the fully operational Star Generator.
Unfortunately the Arcada gets hijacked by the Sarien race. Everybody on board the Arcada is killed and the Star Generator taken into possession by the evil Sariens. Can you, the janitor of the Arcada escape the ship and avoid the Sariens to execute their evil intentions with the Star Generator?

Designers Mark Crowe and Scott Murphy had previously worked together on The Black Cauldron and started working in their free time on a space-themed adventure game. After having designed the first 4 rooms of the game, Ken Williams gave them a green light to proceed with the project. Originally it was titled "Star Quest", but that name was replaced by Space Quest before release since "Star Quest" was already in use by another company. It was first released in October 1986 for $49.99 and had several updated versions throughout the first 2 years. The first few years it sold well over 100,000 copies, a smash hit for its time, and it was included in several collections throughout the nineties.

Space Quest I uses Sierra's Adventure Game Interpreter (AGI) and was remade in 1991 with VGA graphics, the text-parser replaced by a point-and-click interface, and with the AGI engine replaced by Sierra's Creative Interpreter (SCI).

Collections and compilations

This title is also included in:

Space Quest 1+2+3
Digital download

Space Quest: Collector's Edition (a.k.a. Roger Wilco Unclogged)

Space Quest: Collection Series

External links

- Space Quest 1 at SpaceQuest.net
- Space Quest 1 (AGI) at SierraHelp
- Space Quest 1 (AGI) at MobyGames
- Space Quest 1 at Wikipedia