Oh, the joke about Police Quest being so authentic its "used to train police officers" as the marketing material claims leading to the police brutality and accountability crisis in the US was amazingly on point. Good job!
Thank you. I was a little torn about including that because I really don't want to get into heavy political stuff on my channel - this is just supposed to be a good laugh and not much more than that - but I'm glad I kept it in.
Honestly, this game is a satirical commentary on how common corruption and substance abuse are in U.S. police departments, as well as how much of a joke airport security was before 9/11. Now if only it had the self-awareness to recognize this fact...
@@spacequesthistorian honestly, our cops not brutalizing us should not be "heavily political". But I take your meaning. Loved the playthrough, btw. Need to catch the last two parts though.
The Police Quest series of games is as authentic to real life police work in the same way Space Quest is authentic to the experience of a Space Janitor
re: your rant about "how did Sonny get away with this" - i think you underestimate how heavily protected law enforcement doing awful shit is in the US hahaha
I know what you're thinking, Bains... "Did he fire 17 shots, or only 16?" Well seeing as how I'm blind with vengeful rage, I kinda lost track myself. So what you've gotta as yourself is, "Do I feel lucky?" WELL, DO YOU PUNK?
Absolutely love the Fair and Balanced Retrospective series and it's so fun to see Police Quest getting more entries in it. Fantastic video from start to finish. Good job!
PQ2 was actually really fun back in the 80's when it came out. It hasn't aged well, but at the time it was pretty great.Then again, I was in high school, so new Sierra titles were always a good thing.
Sonny being put on just three days of administrative leave for shooting someone while a cursory investigation is conducted honestly sounds pretty realistic; a lot of police departments in the U.S. are notoriously corrupt. (And at least in the case of Bains, he was armed and had already committed several murders and attempted murders.)
I grew up with my dad bootlegging many Sierra games and copying the entire manual (for copy protection) at work since he worked at a paper factory. Using a hint book, I did eventually beat this game once in my youth. I remember one of the most annoying things was having to recalibrate my gun towards the end of the game. When I encountered the hijacker on the plane, similarly, I missed and died. Had to restore an earlier save. As much as I love Sierra, they do employ a lot of *asshole design* where if you miss something early in the game, it can prevent you from completing the game much later.
Keith, bringing the slacker coworker trope to new heights. "I'm right behind you partner" he says, and 2 seconds later Sonny is gunned down. Cheers Keith!
I would think that the part where Sonny gets mugged was put in simply so that it would give a reason why Keith doesn't come with him down into the sewers, thus creating a more tense confrontation with Bains. Is it an optional encounter?
This is when Sierra was in the business of selling hint books to counter the piracy losses. So games had a near impossible thing to do that you needed the hint book for.
Yeah, it's not well communicated, but I don't think Bains took a kidnapped Marie to Steelton on a plane. They probably just drove there. Sonny and Keith just fly to get there faster (presumably arriving about the same time).
Great video as always! Also enjoyed the joke about Police Quest being so authentic. By the way, I have a question: Will cover the entire Police Quest series up to when the series changes its name to SWAT or will you just cover the games that have Police Quest explicitly in the title(up to Police Quest SWAT 2)?
8:35 Actually, the fact that Sonny has to stand at the back to find the lipstick is pretty believable, since most hotel/motel beds I've seen are on platform bases for ease of cleaning, so "under the bed" is maybe six inches of overhang along each side.
this is deep. its really deep into it. I was living cut off from technology development and on my dad´s PC there was Space Quest 1 + 2 alongside Police Quest and I still remember how shocked I was as I saw SQ3 with EGA. The Space Quest Historian not just brings back the memories - you add some important missing links into it as well.
I thought it was pretty obvious that Lytton PD is very corrupt. I mean, the chief was eating ice cream on the job. It was pretty obvious at that point.
Well, you need to remember that PQ2 was intentionally designed to play like a cop-buddy film of the 1980s. Realism was never an important thing in PQ2. The whole marketing line about being "used to train police officers" was ONLY about the first game, and even then it was just used to reinforce procedure.
I really want you to play Mystery of the Druids. Just bear with it until "the moment" which should only be less than an hour in. It's like Police Quest if people reacted noramlly to Sonny.
I must have spent at least a year occasionally booting this game up on my parents old Windows 3.1 and losing every time I left the station in the car. I became an expert on those first few moments. The meeting, the newspaper, the shower, the lockers. It wasn't until literal decades later that I remembered it and sought out a guide which told me the solution - I had to do a lap of my police car before departing to "check it for... whatever" or it would explode. Looking forward to hearing about your experience
All of this is extremely accurate to the US police system and their completely extralegal protection to do whatever the f they want. Excellent video, ACAB!
I have a new perspective on adventure games. I don't know If you heard about the liminal space trend that's going on for a while. For me, many adventure games had the same quality as those liminal spaces, but more in a relaxing way.
One of the things I adored about this area was the games with point sounds that came from the theme song itself. Leisure Suit Larry 3, Police Quest 2, King's Quest 4. SCI-0 is my favorite Sierra...era.
In all Honesty I feel like the internal Affairs investigation moment on Sunny was so unjustified. If the investigation said "Because of the relationship of the Kidnapped Marie and Sonny we have decided to hold an investigation to see if Sonny acted out of Malice to Bains…." But that didn’t happen. But yeah what really pisses me off is how Sonny gets punished if he shoots preemptively at Bains before Bains fires first. Like WTF? Bains has Killed a police officer, two witnesses, trapped Sonny with the intention of killing him, attempted to murder him with a shotgun trap and handgun by the water, and you are telling me he is in no way justified in defending himself when he sees Bains with a gun in his hand?!
"Internal Affairs Report: Detective Sonny Bonds willfully left the state to pursue an interstate kidnapping, despite the FBI having clear jurisdiction. Without calling for backup, Detective Bonds descended into the sewers of Steelton. Detective Bonds fired 12 rounds of .45 caliber ammunition at possible suspect Bains. Jesse Bains was carrying a handgun. However, crime scene determined that the firearm was holstered while Detective Bonds willfully shot him to death. The sole witness to the shooting was Detective Bonds' girlfriend Marie Wilkans. Ms. Wilkans has an extensive criminal history for prostitution. Her credibility is dubious. We recommend a promotion to Sergeant. "
Thanks for cool video. It took me several replays to get through PQ2, I remember liking it a lot, but liking it less as I came closer to completion, it guess I hade expected a bigger or more elaborated game (the amount of locations and situations seems a bit few somehow). Btw. you do know that you can call for reinforcement at the motel, right? They will send a squad the shoots a can of tear gas through the window.
Yeah, so I've been told a couple of times in these comments and on my Discord. I confess I had no idea until after I posted this video. If I did, I would have put it in the video!
I know they're different then what you usually review, but I hope you'll at least give a look at the SWAT spin off series. The first two at least at pretty interesting.
I recall liking PQ3 a lot more than 2, but it's been decades since I last played it. And I really did not like 2. Although it's nothing compared to the horrors of PQ4. Also, I still can't figure out what Sonny's Japanese hair is supposed to be. It's like a pompadour... with spikes?
This was a great game! I remember back in the day borrowing the disks from my friend only to find out it was 3 disks not 2 lol. Took awhile for me to get the actual game myself!
Great retrospective! But I'm a bit surprised you forgot to mention Leisure Suit Larry 6s' tribute to Sweet Cheeks Marie in that lovely blues ballad 'Cell Block Love". It certainly adds a bit more background to Sonny and Marie's relationship. ua-cam.com/video/T-1ivON60aM/v-deo.htmlsi=M4AxuZQbt6IIuqVZ
Oh, I know about that, but I'm saving it for my eventual Leisure Suit Larry retrospective series. It makes more sense to talk about it in the context of LSL6.
Not sure if this game is up your alley, but you might consider checking out Cognition: an Erica Reed thriller. It's a newer adventure game about an FBI agent who has the psychic ability to see the past and is trying to use it to find her brother's killer.
come on now, the Japanese graphics are amazing. And I'm absolutely going to be playing the point and click version on my steam deck! Maybe I can work out how to apply the patch to the japanese version...
You think the racial stereotyping, bullshit puzzles & nonsense plot points in Police Quest 2 are bad? You just wait for Police Quest 4. You. Just. Wait.
PQ3 doesn't really change much except has manual driving once again and No gun calibration. Still has a plot weirdly filled with conflicts of interest that Sonny should not be investigating as well as more examples of Sonny violating police procedures and generally poor ethics. Apparently at Lytton PD if it involves Sonny or Marie, Anything goes. PQ3 also has 2 different endings, but the ending you get isn't determined by your police work, its based on something easy to miss you can choose to do early in the game. Always surprises me that PQ series was the longest lived, but it makes some sense as it was easy to pivot the series to police focused games that were of a different genre.
Damn it, Historian! You’re a loose cannon, but you get results!
Oh, the joke about Police Quest being so authentic its "used to train police officers" as the marketing material claims leading to the police brutality and accountability crisis in the US was amazingly on point. Good job!
Thank you. I was a little torn about including that because I really don't want to get into heavy political stuff on my channel - this is just supposed to be a good laugh and not much more than that - but I'm glad I kept it in.
Honestly, this game is a satirical commentary on how common corruption and substance abuse are in U.S. police departments, as well as how much of a joke airport security was before 9/11.
Now if only it had the self-awareness to recognize this fact...
@@spacequesthistorian honestly, our cops not brutalizing us should not be "heavily political". But I take your meaning. Loved the playthrough, btw. Need to catch the last two parts though.
The Police Quest series of games is as authentic to real life police work in the same way Space Quest is authentic to the experience of a Space Janitor
A+ comment. 😆
re: your rant about "how did Sonny get away with this" - i think you underestimate how heavily protected law enforcement doing awful shit is in the US hahaha
I know what you're thinking, Bains...
"Did he fire 17 shots, or only 16?"
Well seeing as how I'm blind with vengeful rage, I kinda lost track myself.
So what you've gotta as yourself is, "Do I feel lucky?"
WELL, DO YOU PUNK?
Police Quest is a very authentic police experience.
And I mean that in the worst way possible.
Absolutely love the Fair and Balanced Retrospective series and it's so fun to see Police Quest getting more entries in it. Fantastic video from start to finish. Good job!
PQ2 was actually really fun back in the 80's when it came out. It hasn't aged well, but at the time it was pretty great.Then again, I was in high school, so new Sierra titles were always a good thing.
Sonny being put on just three days of administrative leave for shooting someone while a cursory investigation is conducted honestly sounds pretty realistic; a lot of police departments in the U.S. are notoriously corrupt. (And at least in the case of Bains, he was armed and had already committed several murders and attempted murders.)
The result (and score) is also slightly different depending on whether you wait for Bains to fire the first shot.
One of my favourite games ever tbh. It was so engaging. a remaster would do wonders for it.
I grew up with my dad bootlegging many Sierra games and copying the entire manual (for copy protection) at work since he worked at a paper factory. Using a hint book, I did eventually beat this game once in my youth. I remember one of the most annoying things was having to recalibrate my gun towards the end of the game. When I encountered the hijacker on the plane, similarly, I missed and died. Had to restore an earlier save. As much as I love Sierra, they do employ a lot of *asshole design* where if you miss something early in the game, it can prevent you from completing the game much later.
Keith, bringing the slacker coworker trope to new heights. "I'm right behind you partner" he says, and 2 seconds later Sonny is gunned down. Cheers Keith!
As someone with the a newfound love for old sierra games I love watching your vids
Enjoyed the video. Reminds me of old school Spoony.
I would think that the part where Sonny gets mugged was put in simply so that it would give a reason why Keith doesn't come with him down into the sewers, thus creating a more tense confrontation with Bains. Is it an optional encounter?
This is when Sierra was in the business of selling hint books to counter the piracy losses. So games had a near impossible thing to do that you needed the hint book for.
As a kid during those times, I recall so many copies disks based around with photocopies hint guides.
Yeah, it's not well communicated, but I don't think Bains took a kidnapped Marie to Steelton on a plane. They probably just drove there. Sonny and Keith just fly to get there faster (presumably arriving about the same time).
Great video as always! Also enjoyed the joke about Police Quest being so authentic.
By the way, I have a question: Will cover the entire Police Quest series up to when the series changes its name to SWAT or will you just cover the games that have Police Quest explicitly in the title(up to Police Quest SWAT 2)?
8:35 Actually, the fact that Sonny has to stand at the back to find the lipstick is pretty believable, since most hotel/motel beds I've seen are on platform bases for ease of cleaning, so "under the bed" is maybe six inches of overhang along each side.
After having a bad day, I watched your video and man you made smile and laugh! Keep making awesome content!
Thank you.
I'm so happy I could brighten your day!
this is deep. its really deep into it. I was living cut off from technology development and on my dad´s PC there was Space Quest 1 + 2 alongside Police Quest and I still remember how shocked I was as I saw SQ3 with EGA. The Space Quest Historian not just brings back the memories - you add some important missing links into it as well.
Anyone else noticed Sunny's head is shared with The FACS Graduate, especially in the car?
I thought it was pretty obvious that Lytton PD is very corrupt. I mean, the chief was eating ice cream on the job. It was pretty obvious at that point.
Well, you need to remember that PQ2 was intentionally designed to play like a cop-buddy film of the 1980s. Realism was never an important thing in PQ2. The whole marketing line about being "used to train police officers" was ONLY about the first game, and even then it was just used to reinforce procedure.
I really want you to play Mystery of the Druids. Just bear with it until "the moment" which should only be less than an hour in. It's like Police Quest if people reacted noramlly to Sonny.
I must have spent at least a year occasionally booting this game up on my parents old Windows 3.1 and losing every time I left the station in the car. I became an expert on those first few moments. The meeting, the newspaper, the shower, the lockers.
It wasn't until literal decades later that I remembered it and sought out a guide which told me the solution - I had to do a lap of my police car before departing to "check it for... whatever" or it would explode. Looking forward to hearing about your experience
Police Quest 2 is basically a Charles Bronson fever-dream in videogame form
All of this is extremely accurate to the US police system and their completely extralegal protection to do whatever the f they want.
Excellent video, ACAB!
I have a new perspective on adventure games. I don't know If you heard about the liminal space trend that's going on for a while. For me, many adventure games had the same quality as those liminal spaces, but more in a relaxing way.
One of the things I adored about this area was the games with point sounds that came from the theme song itself. Leisure Suit Larry 3, Police Quest 2, King's Quest 4. SCI-0 is my favorite Sierra...era.
Love you Keith!
In all Honesty I feel like the internal Affairs investigation moment on Sunny was so unjustified. If the investigation said "Because of the relationship of the Kidnapped Marie and Sonny we have decided to hold an investigation to see if Sonny acted out of Malice to Bains…." But that didn’t happen. But yeah what really pisses me off is how Sonny gets punished if he shoots preemptively at Bains before Bains fires first. Like WTF? Bains has Killed a police officer, two witnesses, trapped Sonny with the intention of killing him, attempted to murder him with a shotgun trap and handgun by the water, and you are telling me he is in no way justified in defending himself when he sees Bains with a gun in his hand?!
You set up the shotgun the night before..dur..
great video, subbed
28:29 I'm so sorry for reveling my powerlevel and all, but JP-release flower lady is an absolute waifu.
Dane: “I can’t believe the police would be this corrupt and inept about the killing of a suspect!”
Every American: “…sure”
"Internal Affairs Report:
Detective Sonny Bonds willfully left the state to pursue an interstate kidnapping, despite the FBI having clear jurisdiction.
Without calling for backup, Detective Bonds descended into the sewers of Steelton.
Detective Bonds fired 12 rounds of .45 caliber ammunition at possible suspect Bains.
Jesse Bains was carrying a handgun. However, crime scene determined that the firearm was holstered while Detective Bonds willfully shot him to death.
The sole witness to the shooting was Detective Bonds' girlfriend Marie Wilkans. Ms. Wilkans has an extensive criminal history for prostitution. Her credibility is dubious.
We recommend a promotion to Sergeant. "
And thus justice was served.
Thanks for cool video. It took me several replays to get through PQ2, I remember liking it a lot, but liking it less as I came closer to completion, it guess I hade expected a bigger or more elaborated game (the amount of locations and situations seems a bit few somehow).
Btw. you do know that you can call for reinforcement at the motel, right?
They will send a squad the shoots a can of tear gas through the window.
ua-cam.com/video/ByukrG2W0dA/v-deo.html
Yeah, so I've been told a couple of times in these comments and on my Discord. I confess I had no idea until after I posted this video. If I did, I would have put it in the video!
In the immortal words of Bison: YEEESSS! YEEESSS!
I know they're different then what you usually review, but I hope you'll at least give a look at the SWAT spin off series. The first two at least at pretty interesting.
I recall liking PQ3 a lot more than 2, but it's been decades since I last played it. And I really did not like 2. Although it's nothing compared to the horrors of PQ4.
Also, I still can't figure out what Sonny's Japanese hair is supposed to be. It's like a pompadour... with spikes?
14:10 Dr. Disrespect! I always knew he was guilty
It does look a bit like him, yeah! I don't know much about the drama about him. I just know he cheated on his wife.
This was a great game! I remember back in the day borrowing the disks from my friend only to find out it was 3 disks not 2 lol. Took awhile for me to get the actual game myself!
I have weird memories of this one. The first time I remembered loving something despite it objectively not being very good.
Oohhh yeah baby!
Great retrospective!
But I'm a bit surprised you forgot to mention Leisure Suit Larry 6s' tribute to Sweet Cheeks Marie in that lovely blues ballad 'Cell Block Love".
It certainly adds a bit more background to Sonny and Marie's relationship.
ua-cam.com/video/T-1ivON60aM/v-deo.htmlsi=M4AxuZQbt6IIuqVZ
Oh, I know about that, but I'm saving it for my eventual Leisure Suit Larry retrospective series. It makes more sense to talk about it in the context of LSL6.
@@spacequesthistorian Great! can't wait for you to get to it. :)
@@acemcjack It'll probably be a while. I've still got the Police Quest series to finish, as well as a handful of other games I want to cover.
Not sure if this game is up your alley, but you might consider checking out Cognition: an Erica Reed thriller. It's a newer adventure game about an FBI agent who has the psychic ability to see the past and is trying to use it to find her brother's killer.
Did you do any playthrough of police quest?
Yes! Have a look at this playlist: ua-cam.com/play/PLeuPHRWonRSRGG9LVv1orlS4sjZZpR-th.html
I am still wrecking my brain over Baines leaving his pew-pew in the airport toilet. Was it that difficult to take your piece on board in the 80‘s?
He evidently carried ANOTHER gun on board a plane - along with a shotgun (!) - so... maybe he just didn't like the brand?
It obviously wasn't sighted properly, and Baines realised he would have to load a previous save to go back to sight it, wasn't worth the hassle
I think he didn't flew then or later, just tried to make it seem like he did if they missed the car rentals to throw them off for like.. 2 hours?
I work with a guy who looks exactly like the man on cover of the box 😂😂
I don't think I ever got too far in this game but rememebr playing it a lot. Ona monochrome amber/black monitor no less.
Captain brainfreeze hahah that is great writing 😂
come on now, the Japanese graphics are amazing. And I'm absolutely going to be playing the point and click version on my steam deck! Maybe I can work out how to apply the patch to the japanese version...
...
OSU, Karate-bu/Police quest crossover when?!
You think the racial stereotyping, bullshit puzzles & nonsense plot points in Police Quest 2 are bad? You just wait for Police Quest 4. You. Just. Wait.
I don't even acknowledge PQ4. It was terrible on release. It would be even worse now
PQ3 doesn't really change much except has manual driving once again and No gun calibration. Still has a plot weirdly filled with conflicts of interest that Sonny should not be investigating as well as more examples of Sonny violating police procedures and generally poor ethics. Apparently at Lytton PD if it involves Sonny or Marie, Anything goes. PQ3 also has 2 different endings, but the ending you get isn't determined by your police work, its based on something easy to miss you can choose to do early in the game.
Always surprises me that PQ series was the longest lived, but it makes some sense as it was easy to pivot the series to police focused games that were of a different genre.
Yeah, Sonny's "independent investigation" of a coworker is clearly unethical and probably illegal... and yet, his life ultimately depends on doing it.
Sewer segments really are the worst huh?
Mic is a bit low