I remember enjoying making an early attempt at a 'Rogue Quest' and also an attempt at 'Space Quest IV' which was more like something like 'Fool's Errand', so yes, Space Quest I and II are the games that I remember. "It's just a flesh wound. You'll live." My quotes Space Quest is the quintessential 16-bit game, an unheralded classic of the era. The space-traveling adventures of Captain Quirk and his crack team of commandoes—Captain Corvus, Lt. Vance and the inestimable and bizarrely-named Lester—was, for me, the quintessential 16-bit game of its day. There was no better-known or greater-billed adventure in the 16-bit era, and no better-balanced mix of humor, action, story and gameplay. In my book, the series represents the pinnacle of the 16-bit era, and remains a high water mark in the history of adventure gaming. Space Quest is, for me, the only game with a plot, characters and situations that, in some ways, have improved upon with age, and it’s the only game whose creators have remained with its spirit, rather than trying to capitalize on its success. While other games have attempted to recapture its spirit (with varying degrees of success), few have even come close. I’ll let Roger Ebert have the final word on Space Quest and its place in history. Roger EbertThe Scoop: The latest adventure in a series that has been around for 25 years may well be the best one. Space Quest: So says Roger Ebert, who reviews Adventure Quest, a video game in which players, by entering a cave, discover a “mysterious and deadly cavern,” where they must navigate the dangerous pathways and puzzles to find out what happened to the missing crewmen of a space ship called the Falcon. Yes, this is the same Roger Ebert who reviews video games, who is one of the few people on Earth with the necessary gravitas to speak with any authority on that field. And this is the same Roger Ebert whose opinion I have often disagreed with but whose opinion I have always trusted. And he has praised Space Quest, saying: “There are not a lot of very good video games, or rather, most are better when they’re played than when they’re described. Space Quest 1 and 2 [the first two of a planned trilogy] are exceptions to this. The game begins in your living room and proceeds in a non-stop chain of adventures. It’s amazing. (In what universe? What space? Where are we? What would happen if a black hole sucked us up? Where do we go next?)” I know very little about the video games Roger Ebert has reviewed. This is hardly surprising, given his almost complete lack of knowledge of anything cultural other than movies and popular music. A case in point: Roger Ebert once reviewed “Moby Dick.” If you want to know what this means, you will have to read his review yourself. I agree with Roger Ebert. I agree with Roger Ebert about the greatest game of all time. It is Space Quest. But I don’t agree with Roger Ebert about what you should do next, even though his review is a masterclass in how to write a game review. Roger Ebert urges the player to experience what he has done himself. He urges the player to go into the cave himself and see how it’s done. That’s not going to happen, because there’s a cave, and the cave is the game. The cave is exactly like it looks on the page. Space Quest looks like it has been cut and pasted into the game, with a few items and characters missing. Space Quest is a space ship with no crew. It is always in a cave, and can never leave the cave. The cave is the game. We’re the only people who ever play this game, and we get what we get. Roger Ebert wants to convince us that he has really visited the cave, as if we need his permission to do so. But we’ve already got the permission; we’re not allowed to leave, or enter any other cave. The cave is the game, and the cave has no doors or exits. You can’t enter it again. Or can you? The cave isn’t really a cave. It is a space, that, for some reason, you can never leave. There is always a wall, no matter how much you dig or cut, or whatever you do. This is what Roger Ebert thought he was playing. Space Quest is a closed world, with no way in, no way out, no way out the cave, and no way in the cave either, because it is not a cave. There is no space. It is the game. Roger Ebert was a child again, having the time of his life. Roger Ebert likes cutscenes, and thinks that games should contain them. Roger Ebert thinks games should have dialogue. He thinks that games should have story. This is wrong. The stories of most games are all the same: You go into a space ship, and you blow something up, or crash it into something, or you fight the other guy, or you climb a mountain, or you find something of value, and so on. There’s no plot in most video games. There’s no story. There’s only the game. It’s great fun to play video games. I’ve played plenty of games myself and I’ve had plenty of fun playing those games. You don’t need to give them a plot in order to enjoy them. The most fun games are the ones where there’s no story. Games without a story are the games where I can play the fastest and best, and where there’s nothing left to learn after I’ve started, so that every minute I spend in the game is a joy. That’s what this is. Space Quest is an un-story, because there is no story to be told. Roger Ebert makes the mistake of thinking that Space Quest is a story, when it really isn’t. It’s a world, an environment, a backdrop. It is a game, and the only game there is. Every game must be played in this environment. You can’t just play Space Quest. The game must always be played in Space Quest. Space Quest is a world. This world is the game. A game is a world, in which no one is in and no one can be in. Roger Ebert had the right idea, he was just on the wrong planet. When Roger Ebert writes that he is pleased to have played a game that isn’t actually played, I think he is quite wrong. If I wanted to be entertained, I would have played that game too. The only people who are allowed to play that game are those of us who find this world a strange, beautiful, interesting, fascinating, un-game world. The only people who are allowed to play the game are those who have already played the game, who have entered the cave, who have spent many many hours playing Space Quest, in and out of the cave, and who have watched Roger Ebert play Space Quest in and out of the cave, in a manner that he thinks must follow the rules of a story, and who has found, for their own amusement, that the cave doesn’t work like a story. Space Quest is not a story, but it is a story. Space Quest has a story, one that is told within the game. Space Quest is a story that Roger Ebert is now writing, having finished playing. This is what happens to Roger Ebert when he plays Space Quest, for the first time. Roger Ebert’s review is a review of the world Space Quest is. Space Quest is the game that no one is allowed to play. But Roger Ebert has no idea that Space Quest is a world, because the experience is so unfamiliar to him, that he can’t think of Space Quest as a world at all. He thinks that Space Quest is a story. The only people who could play that story are those of us who have already played it. He thinks that Space Quest is a game that has a plot, and that needs dialogue. This is why Roger Ebert has the right idea, and this is why the game is the most fun when no one else has played it. When nobody else has played it, it is the most fun. This is also why Roger Ebert thinks that it isn’t fun for him, that it’s boring, that he gets nothing out of Space Quest but a few cutscenes and a lot of talking. This is also why Roger Ebert only plays Space Quest for a few hours, and then goes home. Roger Ebert is not only wrong, he is wrong about his own games. Games aren’t stories, they aren’t narratives, they aren’t linear, they aren’t linear narratives, they aren’t linear narratives that need dialogue. The only plot in games that I can think of, which is of course a flawed game design, and not something I would recommend to anyone, has to be the story in Space Quest, a game which has no plot. So, Roger Ebert can’t think Space Quest is a story, because Space