Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge
Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge is an adventure puzzle comedy game developed and published by Sierra On-Line in 1987 for Apple II, Atari ST, and DOS, and later ported to Amiga, Apple IIgs, and Macintosh. It is the second game in the Space Quest series and uses the AGI engine.
My cousin had Space Quest II back in the late 1980s, and we played it on his Tandy 1000]. He first showed it to me to show off the cool title music, which I agreed was pretty awesome. He hadn't yet got very far in the game, just enough to get to the surface of Labion. Together, he and I started drawing up a map and trying various commands, and got about halfway through the game. Then, one weekend, when I came to visit, they had beaten the game. My cousin and I walked through the game again, so I could beat it too, and, with my uncle's help, we beat it with a score higher than before.
Contents
Status
I do not own this game, but I have beaten the DOS port.
Review
- Overall: 5/10
- Best Version: Tandy-1000
Good
- The game has a lot of hilarious dialogue. Much of it is laugh-out-loud funny.
- The rooms are very well drawn despite the poor resolution of the PCjr.
- The game comes with a nicely made comic describing the interim between Space Quest I: The Sarien Encounter and the start of this game.
- Unlike many other Sierra adventures, the game doesn't suffer from an abundance of agility mazes. There is really only one, and you only have to navigate it once.
- The title song, modified slightly from the first game, is still quite nice.
- Several of the puzzles are pretty clever and offer multiple ways to solve them. And, following tradition, the more ingenious solutions are award more points.
- The shrink ray sequence is really clever.
Bad
- The game has a few walking-dead scenarios, but most of them don't let you get very far before making it clear you've missed something.
- Other than the wonderful title song, the game is pretty lacking in audio.
- The game suffers from the typical Sierra mentality of punishing the player with death for pretty much every action except the correct one. However, Space Quest II has such funny death messages, a lot of the time I didn't mind.
- The gem is easily passed up, but necessary to beat the game.
- On the ports to computers like the Amiga and Apple IIgs, none of the graphics or sound are reworked to take advantage of the superior hardware.
- The story's plot, that Vohaul is going to ruin the Earth with an army of insurance salesmen robots, is too silly.
Ugly
- Nothing.
Media
Box Art
Space Quest II uses the same art for all ports just with minor changes to the layout to signify the platform or publisher. It uses a photograph of well-made diorama. I like the shape of the lettering, and the lighting is great, but the salesmen pods are kind of lame.
Documentation
Maps
Links
- mobygames.com/game/space-quest-ii-chapter-ii-vohauls-revenge - MobyGames.
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Quest_II - Wikipedia.