Police Quest I - A Fair and Balanced Retrospective
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- Опубліковано 11 лип 2023
- Indulge in the male power fantasy of a delusional beat cop and rise through the ranks to take down a notorious drug baron in the span of a single day.
Watch my playthrough of Police Quest I (Apple IIGS version) on my 2nd channel, @SQHDump: • OFFICER SQH, REPORTING...
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Music from this video available here: spacequesthistorian.bandcamp....
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Further proof that I'm not Technology Connections: I'm told an "8-bit unsigned integer" is actually a value between 0-255.
*Update 07/13/23 - the ScummVM team have patched their SCI interpreter so the music glitch in PQ1VGA will no longer trigger. Sad face. github.com/scummvm/scummvm/pull/4876
Police Quest 2 apparently confirms that Laura Watts (The Narcotics Officer) was the Gremlin.
Yes it makes me like her more lol.
She literally admits it
This game reminds me of how powerful my childhood imagination was free of the grim reailty of experience, i was able to as a very small child being able to get to the stage where i could get into the car (i was also just learning to write i suppose) and get it going, but i could not do anything except crash into things, i was unable to make my hand eye coordination or childs brain get the driving right, i remember day dreaming about all the incredible places i would be able to drive to, i assumed i could get out at any random house and see it, explore the park, go to the mall, buy a donut, solve random crimes, pull over people and get into gun battles, all in glorious fluro pixels, if only i could get the damn car to work. I know now it doesn't work like that, but i miss when my mind worked this way.
Honestly the driving controls were garbage even for adult players and it feels like the game designed driving to be unnecessarily difficult.
There should have been a putting on sonnys persecription lenses hes embarassed about plot@@Strideo1
pretty much 9 year old me
didn't actually get to play again till I was a teenager and discovered the disks at a friends house
fast forward to now I can still finish this game completely from memory
The multiple shifts over the course of a day, Marie getting arrested for soliciting right after being warned about the sting operation, and Jack showing up in uniform immediately after taking a cab home from the bar all lead me to believe that the story takes place over several days without showing the transitions.
Or... or - hear me out - Lytton is a town full of idiots.
Or maybe there are multiple guys named Jack and Sonny really is working back-to-back shifts, hence why he keeps crashing his car (from falling asleep at the wheel).
Hey SQH! Regarding the identity of the chicken prankster, if you look up Laura Watts' file in Police Quest 2, she's described as terminated for pranks. Fun as always, thanks!
Man, I love this game
This is a blast from the past. I played this in 1987. I never got the defendant's bond raised. I always screwed that up. But it turns out that the criminal procedure was either very strange in California in 1987 or the game writer was taking shortcuts to keep Sonny more active. Usually, a prosecutor would be involved in a bail hearing, but Sonny had to do basically everything.😅
It turns out you can get the no bail warrant if you answer the judge's question right. She asks what makes you think the two men are the same person and you have to tell her the tattoo and she will be convinced.
I crack up every time I watch the KQ fair and balanced reviews. Can't wait for this
15:55: To be fair to the criminals, it was 1987. Faces were only a couple dozen pixels in total; most people's hairstyles are their only distinguishing feature.
I'm sure you're working on it, but I just wanted to say I'm really looking forward to the next entry in this. I honestly love the Fair and Balanced Retrospective videos in general.
Thank you! I'm writing the script for the PQ2 Fair & Balanced video now. :)
@@spacequesthistorian Heck yeah! I'm excited for it!
One thing I though was interesting back when the original Police Quest came out was the entirely mundane environments drawn in a Sierra Adventure game style. It made me wonder what my hometown would look like if it was the setting for one of these EGA games.
That would be kind of cool. One way to find out is to take photos from your home town and Photoshop them into AGI resolution. It's obviously not going to look as crisp and beautiful as proper AGI art, but the process is as follows:
- Reduce the photo to 320x200.
- Reduce again to 320x160 (ignore aspect ratio, nearest neighbor), and then back to 320x200 to get that chunky pixel look.
- Reduce color depth to 16 colors.
- Ta-da!
Really enjoyed this one, and the editing was great!
Did you watch it faster than everyone else?
Found SQH thanks to you OneShortEye!
Ah yes, the only Sierra "Quest" series I've never played before. I'm looking forward to this very neutral and unbiased review.
As someone who's played this game, I feel like pointing out that the part where you have to take a lap around your car is not a joke. That's a required step.
My body is ready to do whatever it takes to get out of this speeding ticket.
Police Quest 1 was my first Sierra Quest game so it holds a dear spot in my heart. You get points for showing me that poker trick but you said Lytton must have a thriving attorney and law business consortium while zoomed into the game LITERALLY telling you Hoffman/Taselli got an "out-of-town, hotshot lawyer"
One of my all time favorite PC games. 9 out if 10
Confirm. An excellent Sierra outing, superior to most AGI.
We had this game as kids, and we didn't have the manual but we somehow managed to make it a good 1/3 of the way through it up until the drug deal somehow. Trial and error, and boredom are a hell of a thing I guess.
This was an amazing retrospective! Your editing and cutaways are so on point too. Hilarious 😂
Such fond memories of the sierra games as a kid. Especially police quest 1 and space quest 3. Ahh Sonny bonds
"The Chicken Reel" was used instrumentally as incidental music in a lot of old Looney Tunes cartoons set on farms or featuring chickens, so that's probably the context for both this usage and the Astro Chicken bit.
Yeah, I've gotten a fair few comments that the music was "from Loony Tunes cartoons" before my Discord peeps discovered the whole thing about The Chicken Reel. My Discord are awesome people and they make me look smart for my videos. 😊
man, your editing has improved so much over the years. i've always enjoyed your channel, but it's so, so slick now. really amazing work
Thank you very much! It takes a bit longer to make but I think it's worth it, and I'm glad you think so, too!
Howling at every crash. That was a good bit
Haha, thank you! This isn't even close to how many times I actually crashed the car. I posted a playthrough of the Apple IIGS version on my 2nd channel (youtube.com/@sqhplays) - it has a crash counter. Mind you, this was the second time I played through the game (I'd already finished the PC version), and I still crashed nearly 40 times. 😂
I will say I really do like PQ 1-3 (PQ 2 is a personal favorite)...perhaps it says something about how much I love male power fantasy, but PQ 4. You have fun with that.
Police Quest 4 is definitely one of those “what were they thinking?” kind of games. I know hindsight is 20:20 and everything, but them working with the chief who botched the LA Riots response was asinine even back at the time. It is an interesting time capsule at those sensibilities, at the very least.
I've noticed a lot of people here really fucking hate cops.
PQ4 is one I have in my collection but have never bothered to play
@@jasonmetcalfe4695 you aren’t missing much. It’s not bad if you wanted a dragnet point and click. But police quest it ain’t.
I kinda hate to admit this, but Police Quest 1 is my favorite of the text parser type Sierra games. Something about it just fits my brain. No moon logic puzzles, just procedure you can follow to accomplish tasks.
Really loving the new format mate! great episode!
Yes! I remember this game, but you remeber it much better than I!
Love this review!! Always enjoyed these games as a kid. Looking forward to the next one!
Cheers, man! Working on it! :)
You got me into Space Quest, what an amazing series that was!
Police Quest is a very unique series that has a lot of problems, but it's an interesting look into the minds of real police officers.
@@churchofthelambofsat Yeah I've got that also, I might give it a try one of the days.
I think it says something that of all of Sierras protagonists the most popular one isn't the enforcer of a governments control of the population, or the member of an archaic form of hereditary authority, it's the space age blue collar worker who was just trying to get through the day of doing the labor nobody else wants to do
@@Feasco I thought it was the 40 year old virgin.
THERE. ARE. FOUR. CELLS.
u cray z bro 😂
🤔
Indeed there are, Jean-Luc
These are great as always. Keep it up man.
Thank you, my friend! Still using the audio setup you provided me, by the way, and it still sounds great! I'll have to do something about the plosives, though, but that's on me and my mic positioning.
Ooh Boy seriously cannot wait for this. :)
Oh man. This is so good. Been looking forward to your fair and balanced retrospective of PQ1
Thanks for making this video 🎉🎉
Crashing every 5 seconds in a squad car was how I remember playing this game.
Thanks so much! Glad you liked it! 😁
You got a good sense of humor mate! Glad the algorithm recommended your videos
Thank you! Glad you found your way here.
It’s a crime these vids don’t have more views. These are great!
I love how you run into things and die several times. Mirrors my playthrough of the game as a kid lol. Glad I always went with the good 'ole Sierra game playing mantra of "save early, save often" every time I played after learning my lesson in King's Quest I.
HHahhaaaa.. I remember how brutal the driving was 😅
"Hoops McGee" is Slam Dunk Donnie. Big thumbs up for pointing out how terrible the driving is. Jim Walls hated the driving in the EGA version too. 15/10 commentary though.
I don't know if it's because I've only played this game once, 10 years ago, or that it's not King's Quest, but you seemed more fair and balanced to this one - still a wise-ass of course, but a _fairly_ fair one.
(Although complaining about the amount of stuff that appears to happen in a single day could apply to so many other adventures, even after Gabriel Knight implemented day chapters. ) 😏
I didn't _exactly_ find it a chore to play - reading the manual is weird these days, but I think that's appropriate for something even approaching a cop simulator well before in-game tutorials were a thing. It's a unique experience, and I actually like the driving with this map.
Always walk around your car before driving, at least in the police yard (the most unsafe and uncleanly place there is) failure to do so will cause your tires to erupt in anarchy (I think Dooley shoots our tire with a sniper rifle if we don't perform the check 😅).
It be nice if the consequence of rule breaking were less then the game terminating for reasons Jim Walls doesn't try to justify, like getting demerits and a slightly altered ending Black Cauldron had already done something similar, but more like Longbow would later do. Really, this is a very scripted game with an illusion of freedom - understandable as it's early Sierra trying new things, it's a tad annoying, but it's also sort of fun, and as you say bat-sh!t surreal sometimes.
Now, I've got to finally play the other Jim Walls games, if I'm to watch your retrospective.
The astro chicken song isn't the astro chicken song?
My life has been a lie all along.
Ah, the fun times I had with this game. Still one of my most favorite series in the Sierra line-up. Most likely because games in a more 'realistic and contemporary' setting were so very rare. The game has it's weak points, but the manual reading was one of the things I actually enjoyed, it was nice to read more about police procedures. Unlike the quick function key car speed switching required to move around the city. Not to mention the freeway on ramps...
Have been waiting for this since KQ8 video premier where you said that you are going to do police quest. Great job!
Great video!
Ah, so nice to have these "fair and balanced" reviews back. It's been ages since I played this one, although for some reason I really liked it as a kid. Mostly for the driving, I think.
Thank you! I can't wait to make more. It feels good to be back. :) This is the first time I ever finished Police Quest, so I came into this fresh. The driving honestly didn't bother me that much - not much different than other precision-navigating parts in other Sierra games - but if I hadn't found the glitch to skip the poker games, this video might never have happened.
@@spacequesthistorian BTW, just as a suggestion: how about covering Tsunami's "Blue Force" as part of this series, since it's basically Jim Walls' unofficial PQ4? Not many people know about it.
(Plus, while it's pretty mediocre, at least it's not as painful as the actual PQ4.)
@@jasonblalock4429 I was actually planning on it!
@@spacequesthistorian Nice!
I've been looking forward to this for a while, well worth the wait. I really like the vtuber model thing and the writing and editing are as funny as ever, excellent stuff
Thanks so much!
Love that your alien persona is getting some well deserved screentime!
Had a fun time climbing the mountain that is Adobe Character Animator's learning curve, but I think it's paying off. Thanks!
Loved this!
Oh man you gotta do a Fair and Balanced video on GOLD RUSH :)
I got eaten by a gator in that game. So many random deaths.
I am also down for this
Yay! My first adventure game, on CGA RGB mode. Rough. As for poker, like LSL1, you can savescum it by saving after each hand.
Well, yes, but that still means you have to play poker. 😅
Given how cop / action movies were at the time, it's a not a bad story at all. I'm surprised how much adult stuff they managed to put in the game. That streetwalker thing is especially surprising. Yeah, Sonny does stuff that is questionable, but that's what makes him less of a typical protagonist. Cool video overall. I bounced off PQ years ago because as you mentioned, it's a chore and now I wish I didn't.
Come to think of it, Sonny having no house or life outside of his police work might explain why he's such a bad driver: He keeps falling asleep at the wheel from working back-to-back shifts with only the occasional coffee break.
7:42 Missed that metal bonk the first time and got a good laugh out of it. 😄🚓
12:02 is that trophy on the bookshelf the droid you buy in Space Quest 1 that helps you fly to Sector HH? 👀
I don't think it's intentional, but I can definitely see the resemblance!
8:54 Apparently the whole "Gremlin" scenario is based on something Jim Walls said actually happened while on the force, INCLUDING the molting chicken prank.
I wonder how much of some of the plot elements, as well as the various people you pull over early game, are based off moments from Jim's career.
On topic of chickens, I've heard several cops are big fans of "Super Troopers" and report that it's an accidental documentary
I remember playing this in elementary school... KQ and SQ we could figure out, but none of us knew anything about the law/police/rules of the road, so it was constant failure. 😂
Even with the manual and a walkthrough, it was constant failure for me as well. 😂
Of the 5 main series that Sierra put out, I feel that this one gets the least amount of attention. I'm interested to see if the SQH liked this game better than the King's Quest Series.
If you want, I can give you a pretty likely educated guess, based on my experience playing through 1-4 for the first time this year.
Do you think you'll ever play Codename: Iceman? It's hell on Earth, but the soundtrack is worth it.
Yes. I plan to do all the Police Quest games (excluding the SWAT games) as well as Blue Force and Codename: Iceman.
@@spacequesthistorian nice! I still need to play Blue Force myself.
Fair and balanced as always, loved it!
Journalistic integrity is my middle name!
@@spacequesthistorian "Space Quest J.I. Historian"
I actually think people generally give Police Quest a disservice. Sure, the subject matter is very much of its time and in a world where the police are always good people (more or less), but it does a lot of things which are actually pretty unique. For instance, it's one of the few early adventure games where despite having relatively few locations, there actually is a linear narrative going on. Virtually every other Sierra series (until Gabriel Knight) has it where the story advances with the locations -- each location is pretty static. However with Police Quest there's all kinds of changes. Look at the number of scenes in the jail or the various departments of the station. Even the coffee shop! Something which makes Lytton feel a little bit more alive than the other games where each room feels like a puzzle. Also this at least tries to give some character development even if it isn't particularly well done. Take Space Quest, does anyone in it actually show any kind of progression? Do we know anything about the other characters at all? Not really, they're all stand-ins. Even Sludge Vohaul is a cardboard cut out. Whilst PQ tries to have some stories.
The big problem with PQ is that it is all just procedural and doesn't really have any puzzles. But I'm not sure that's a bad thing in principal - it's just a different way to do an adventure game. Not a huge distance away from some modern adventure games really. Of course, there's the other issue that it is written by a cop and it shows: very idealistic and middle American. But that kind of kitsche Americana is all over Sierra outside of SQ. But it's kinda interesting and refreshing to look at that kind of world now and then -- really having much more in common with cop shows than reality.
You're right that the PQ world feels more alive than other Sierra games of the time. It definitely tries to be more of a story and less of a "game," for better or worse. In that sense I can applaud the ambition, but I'd be lying if I said it made for a compelling gaming experience.
@@spacequesthistorian Oh totally. It is a really flawed game, particularly with its tendency to kill you if you do any part of the procedure slightly off from what the manual says. And the driving... *shudder*
Though I do find it interesting and as a kid, I would have loved it in spite of its flaws. I do wish they got a better designer to work with Jim whilst keeping the general feel of this. The sequels get slightly better as games but go in their own weird directions, and much, much more of a TV cop show feel.
Cool find about the astrochicken music origin
Gotta give credit to my SQH Discord denizens for that one. They did a good chunk of the research for that.
*GOOD GOD, HE'S ANIMATED!!!*
The game in no way suggests that Sonny has a customer relationship with Pixel Tits (Sweet Cheeks), in fact, when you're in a hotel room with her close to the end of the game he flat out refuses to sleep with her, insisting that it wouldn't be proper. By the end of the game they start dating and she finds herself another job.
It kinda does at the jail cell and at the Wino's bar when she says "I hope you'll come see me again" or something to that effect, but I guess it's open to interpretation. Which is why I said it was "heavily implied."
Not to mention that she keeps macking on him like she's trying to administer CPR. My guess is that Sonny's refusal to jump her bones in the hotel room is because he's a bit distracted with, you know, drug lords and poker and shit.
All I'm saying is, either they're REALLY good friends (and likely more), or Marie has real trouble respecting people's personal spaces.
top kek.
great content.
6:42 You should have knocked over the bikes, Space Quest IV (or is it I?)-style.
Even as a very young child with a poor grasp of English, I understood that it was implied it didn't all take place the same day!
Gremlin was Laura, as far as I remember. It is revealed somewhere along the game, my memory is too rusty to recall when.
I'm playing through PQ2 now. In the police department's computer system, it says Laura was fired (or maybe just suspended? I don't remember) for being the Gremlin. Anyway, numerous commenters on this video were quick to spoil the Gremlin's identity before I even started playing PQ2. 😅
Great video
Thank you!
Great content dude. I thought this game was amazing back then, but I needed help finishing it. But sadly, not much Sierra has aged well.
I love how no matter what series you do, you will always find an excuse to use the digitized sounds of Space Quest IV, V, and VI.
I have a whole folder of them ready to go. Would be a shame not to. 😁
@@spacequesthistorian
Battlestations! [DING!]
Battlestations! [DING!]
Battlestations! [DING!]
I cant believe i beat this game as a kid without any hints etc in the
Ah, the first Quest game I ever finished. Took me forever to safely arrest Jason Tasellli and his tattoed nipple. Game was a bit of an eye-opener for an 11 year old, needless to say. :D
The return
24:20 this looks and sounds like the cartoon "not so fast" by pilotredsun.
Never heard of it but I'm sure you're right. 😅
Who can afford a house or an apartment when all your money goes to replacing squad cars you keep ramming into curbs
It'll always be "Theme from Astro Chicken" to me
Yeah, me, too. It's etched into my brain at this point.
I can’t help but think of the Tiny Toon cartoons, even when seeing Astro Chicken
This should be good.
Was hoping you'd already uploaded the next video in this series. Bummed you havent
I'm... sorry, I guess?
@@spacequesthistorianits cool
@@TwoGunToast Thanks.
Oh boy I have not seen this game in over 30 years.
An 8bit unsigned integer holds a value between 0 and 255 since the computer represents 0 as a positive integer. 2^8 is 256 and since 0 has to exist, the range is 0 to 255.
Yes. See pinned comment.
Now I'm curious what your "Fair and Balanced Retrospective" would be for "Jones in the Fast Lane."
That's an interesting idea, actually. I might have to put that on my list.
Thank you.
No, thank YOU.
To be fair, the "rank up in one day to tke a drug baron" while not exactly coherent with the advertisement of "realism, oh" and a fairly bland the power fantaisy is kind of understandable on accout that otherwise there wouldn't be much of a plot to go on. Yes, I suppose a much more character oriented and more down to earth plot could have been writen but I don't think it would hve sold all that we'll then. (Would be a much better fit now to a ertain small audience). I wouldn't also hold the whole thing taking place in a day againt the game because frankly this kind of time comprehession where action takes lace in an apparent single day/night when it's implied to be across days weeks or month is fairly common in video games.
To be clear I mostly entirely agree with most of your points, just puting in perspective some bits. The way I see it, police quest is better seen as ...a product of it's time, the late eighties and early nineties, when TV made cops cool, with no cellphone footage to show you how they really are on the field, when anyone with 'former police/military/whatever experience" though they could be a writer and the crack panic of the eighties was rocking suburbia.
"Fair & Balanced" is meant sarcastically.
Sweet Cheeks. That is all. SWEET CHEEKS.
Maybe her last name IS Cheeks. Marie Cheeks.
This has better graphics than Starfield.
Poor Sonny, lol.
Around 2014, it became a national embarassment when it was publicized that several states still allowed police having sex with prostitutes (as part of their investigation, wink wink). Hawaii and Oklahoma banned the practice in 2014. The last state to ban the practice was Michigan in 2017. I presume California banned the practice decades earlier, as there was no mention of them recently.
The robot guy has a point - you really don't seem to like ANY of the games you play.
Why play them if you don't enjoy them?
The robot guy and I are joking. If I didn't enjoy this, I wouldn't be doing it. :)
No Sonny! You're better than her!
Thanks for doing my first, thus favorite, adventure game. I will admit though I didn't enjoy the video as much as your other ones since the linear nature of the game gave you less of a chance to use your razor sharp sarcasm like in SQ, due to your knowledge of the game and dead ends, or in KQ where you have a lot of moon logic and dead ends. But that is not your fault and you can blame the game for that.
As always loved it and thanks for letting us relive the memories of our old games. And your editing is always top notch!
Thank you very much! 😁❤️
So, basically, Police Quest is 80's version of GTA?
Never bothered to get on the freeway.
You never have to. I think it's just there to mess with you.
It's so weird to think that this is where the SWAT games came from.
Troels, do more SCUMM games!!!!! Indy 4 screams for a bit of Pleimert!
That's one of my favorite games. It is a brilliantly designed game, so if I did a video on it, it would primarily consist of me gushing about it.
@@spacequesthistorian Sounds fair and balanced to me ;)
Shoot carol in face lol
Coffee was taking too long.
2 is more of the same, with a chain-smoking partner thrown in. There's also a "Save the Pretty Damsel in Distress" scenario where Bains escapes and kidnaps Marie. I'd like to think that SQH will like PQ2, but I doubt it.
Copaganda the Game! I remember playing this with my friends. We never beat it cause we kept finding ways to kill the cops and got distracted.
based younger you
The best one is to just strip naked. That still cracks me up.
So, where's the PQ2 video? Scrapped the idea? Or is it coming - any eta?
Love the montage of your lack of driving.... err Sonny's blatant disregard of proper vehicle driving etiquette at the beginning.
Haha, thanks. There's a Let's Play of my playthrough of the Apple IIGS version on my 2nd channel (youtube.com/@sqhplays) and it has a crash counter. It was my second time playing through the game and I still crashed almost 40 times.
@spacequesthistorian yeah, I had already watched those and the live stream of the playthrough before that. Good stuff as always.
I had it on the Atari ST (along with all the other Sierra games of the era) I enjoyed it, but like most Sierra games back then, they did make you want to be able to kill your self more than once.... in real life! The fast pace of the video was great too, unlike the fucking games!
I prefer police quest ii my all time favorite lol
I'll get there. :)