Space Quest I - HH sector - puzzle solving story

[Iliya]

Year - 1991. Location - Zlatograd, Bulgaria. Me and my friend Todor Kumanov are playing Space Quest I. We reached Ulence Flats. We did everything there. All we didn't know was the sector that the droid ask. We tryed everithing, exept many times talking in the bar. These times there was no internet, walkthroughs and hints. Especialy in the most southern bulgarian town - Zlatograd. So we decided to use a DOS program PC-TOOLS to view the files of Space Quest. What is in there?. This file is a long string of understanduble things like "2@$^54 64 @63%464563 dj46$%^kj45l$%j 6644@#lkj6". But after hours of searching, sudenlly we came across some understandable words like "use", "talk", "buckazoids","orat" and e.t.c. Then something appeared "HH". We didn't know what is it, but we knew that it is something important. So we try it and...YES! It was the sector. Few hours later we reach the end of Space Quest I.

That was my story of solving HH sector puzzle. I hope that this story will turn back the time of 90's  - the good old adventure times.

[Darth Mandarb]

A great trip down memory lane ...

I too remember the horrors of trying to figure out sector HH!  So much so that when you said "...was the sector that the droid ask." I mumbled, "HH of course!" Still remember it after all these years!

We actually got in BIG trouble (my brother's and I) because we'd call the Sierra hot-line to get hints (and it was a 1-900 number). They had this computer system set up where you'd call "Press 1 for King's Quest, Press 2 for Space Quest..." we called it so many times I believe it cost my parents about $50 for us to finish the game!

Thanks for the nostalgia!

[nihilyst]

Oh yes, thanks. I just got remembered of The Colonel's Bequest. Me and my friend played it and tried to find all the secrets without a walkthrough. Finding the Bible under the church's floorboards was a great feeling. Then we decided to take a look into the game files. One of them had some text in it, and there were some words about bodies and basement and stuff. We thought: Huh? What basement? So we tried and tried to get there, died many deaths while trying to reach the basement via the chute. It never worked until one evening we found out about the secret passage in the hedge garden. We fetched the lantern and progressed through the tunnel and finally found the basement. Really, I have never had the same feeling again like when we found this last room in the game we hadn't yet discovered (plus the inner chamber of the crypta you could reach from the basement).
Too bad newer games don't give me this kind of atmosphere. Perhaps I'm just too old.

[Radiant]

Year - 1991. Location - Zlatograd, Bulgaria. Me and my friend Todor Kumanov are playing Space Quest I.

I think that's the earliest instance of Sierra's habit of requiring the manual to complete the game - not because of copy protection codes, but because the manual contained crucial information. In this case, the coupons, which hinted at the fact that you need to buy drinks until you overhear this.

I recall that earlier AGI games had a legible WORDS.TOK file, which would indeed contain HH as a word. In later games, this file would be encrypted (in even earlier, pre-AGI games, the entire game script was legible, but AGI already encrypted that).

[Alarconte]

I remember when my big brother lost my Galactic Inquirer from Space Quest V, where is the sector codes for travelling in the space in the game.

I had to wait to the information age to access the codes by illegal way and can finish the game :'( xD

[Nikolas]

I remember Bard's Tale I - Tales of the unknown (dated 87 or something, not the new one). Back then I was 9-10 years old and knew next to nothing about English...

So at various points of the game there was this "magic mouth" which had some riddles. Ridiculous riddles right now "I am born of light and defeated by it", or something to that terms... But back then it was IMPOSSIBLE for me to solve them!

So, as expected, I opened with... some kind of DOS notebook (which I can't remember right now it's name but it wasn't WYSIWYG) and I saw the hell... Exactly like kinanev describes: ^&*(^$^£%^£$ ^%*&^%$"% ^$%*&*^£%^$"^$£%! £$^ %^& ^$%*& shadow, door, circle, $%&^%*^ etc...

Tried them and it worked!

And then I went a step further ahead: I tried to change a few monsters names. Orc became Nik! And the game became... corrupted to say the least!

Good thing of this? The local smith started having those amazing items, and although the game was almost non playable, I managed to buy "the master key", which incidently opens all the doors in the game, but is not to be found until 1 level before the end. Got the key, saved my characters, recopied the saved copy of the game (because I had the original disks, and the advice from the game was to copy into new disks, just in case... ah... how times changed), but kept the same characters and found myself getting into myriads of places that I couldn't get thus far!

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

We actually got in BIG trouble (my brother's and I) because we'd call the Sierra hot-line to get hints (and it was a 1-900 number). They had this computer system set up where you'd call "Press 1 for King's Quest, Press 2 for Space Quest..." we called it so many times I believe it cost my parents about $50 for us to finish the game!

Hah!  My best friend and I called the Lucasart's hint line a few times while we were playing Secret of Monkey Island 2 because some of the puzzles were rather silly.  I remember having trouble specifically with winning the spitting contest because of the proper drink combinations.  Lucasart's hint line was particularly odious because it had long delays between the button menus, was still charging 5/min for these delays, and didn't even give out direct answers!  They literally made me wade through about 10 EXTREMELY vague hints before I figured out what to do on one puzzle, like 'what do pirates do for fun?'

Talk about a scam.  I bet they made millions just from hint lines back then.

[skuttleman]

I bet they made millions just from hint lines back then.

This is probably why they make fun of the hint-line later in that game (in the jungle). MI2 ruled.

[Iliya]

I didn't know that Sierra and Lucasarts had a Hotline?

I bet they made millions just from hint lines back then.

This is probably why they make fun of the hint-line later in that game (in the jungle). MI2 ruled.

[Radiant]

I didn't know that Sierra and Lucasarts had a Hotline?

It's not like they advertised that in every single game...

[cosmicr]

My worst (best) memory of SQ1, is the first time I actually completed it. I had been playing it for weeks, and anyway, one night after school I had a friend over and he was watching me play. My mum comes in and tells me I have to take the rubbish bins out before I do anything else. I was like 'yeah okay later' but of course she got angry and made me do it. But the part I was up to in SQ1 was right at the very end when you get in the ship, I didnt realise I was nearly finished.

So I go and take the trash out, and when I get back there's my friend, sitting at the computer with a big grin on his face and tells me "I finished Space Quest!". I got so angry. He continued playing whilst I was outside and finished the game. I told him no, he didnt finish it I did, but to this day he says he was the first to finish SQ1. Grr just thinking about it makes me angry. All my hard work so he could take the glory.

[Zufub]

He end this game, but you give him way to do it next time take your friends with you, or they will "complete" game again