Space Quest 6: Roger Wilco in the Spinal Frontier is a point-and-click adventure game created and released by Sierra On-Line in 1995. It is the sixth and last game in the Space Quest series. Like the earlier games, it includes many jokes and imitations of science fiction movies, books, and other media.
Plot
The game starts with Roger Wilco being tried for his actions in the previous game, Space Quest V. As a result, he is demoted to the position of a second-class janitor on the SCS DeepShip 86.
Later, Commander Kielbasa of the DeepShip gives the crew a break on the planet Polysorbate LX. Meanwhile, an elderly woman named Sharpei plans to harm Roger. She wants to use Roger's body to help her live longer as part of her plan to achieve immortality.
Roger is saved multiple times by Stellar Santiago, a humanoid alien who is both a friend and a romantic partner to Roger. Eventually, Sharpei captures Stellar and tries to use tiny robots called nanites to move her mind into Stellar's body. Roger uses technology that makes objects very small to shrink himself and stop Sharpei's nanites from inside Stellar's body.
The game ends with Roger and Stellar reunited. Stellar mentions that Roger has a "next assignment" waiting for him.
Development and release
Space Quest 6: Roger Wilco in The Spinal Frontier used the SCI32 engine version 2.100.002. This allowed the game to display Super VGA graphics with 256 colors at a resolution of 640×480. Unlike other SCI games, it did not have a pull-down menu at the top of the screen. Instead, it used a "verb bar" window at the bottom of the screen, similar to the SCUMM engine used by LucasArts. The graphics style was more cartoonish than earlier games, and included many 3-D images. Gary Owens provided the narration for the game.
This was the final game in the Space Quest series. After defeating the pukoid mutants in Space Quest V, Captain Roger Wilco returned to StarCon headquarters. He was then court-martialed for breaking StarCon rules while saving the galaxy. The game’s subtitle refers to a part of the story where Roger must shrink and enter the body of a shipmate and romantic interest, a humorous copy of the 1987 movie Innerspace. The original subtitle, Where in Corpsman Santiago is Roger Wilco?, was not used due to legal issues with the creators of Carmen Sandiego. The romantic interest created a new challenge for Roger, as she was a friend and not the mother of his son, as described in Space Quest IV.
Josh Mandel designed most of Space Quest 6, with Scott Murphy acting as a creative consultant. Mandel left the project before completion due to conflicts with Sierra. Sierra asked Scott Murphy to finish the game and later promoted him as the sole creator, despite his objections. This change caused some puzzles, especially in the later parts of the game, to be poorly designed due to poor communication. In a 2006 interview, Mandel expressed disappointment with the uneven puzzle design. He mentioned that a comic book CD in Nigel’s room, which contained hints for a puzzle, was cut from the game. He felt this was a significant loss and was upset that the puzzle hints were placed in the manual, which confused players.
Sierra On-Line created a special CD-ROM version of a demo for Space Quest 6. It was included with Sierra’s Interaction Magazine, PC Gamer Disc 9, early copies of Phantasmagoria, and possibly other media. The demo had a story unrelated to the main game and featured full voice acting by the game’s actors (early versions had limited speech). The demo begins with Roger Wilco floating in space, cleaning a viewscreen while others relax. Suddenly, a cube-shaped ship resembling an Escher cube appears and beams two toaster-headed mechanoids, the Bjorn (a parody of the Borg from Star Trek), aboard. The Bjorn turn the crew into lemon sorbet, except Roger, who hides. Roger must find a way to restore his crew and drive off the invaders.
Reception
According to Sierra On-Line, total sales of the Space Quest series reached more than 1.2 million copies by the end of March 1996.
A critic for Next Generation said that Space Quest 6 was very similar to the first five games in the series, except for the specific puzzles included. The critic gave the game three out of five stars and wrote, "If you liked the first five, you'll want this. If not, you probably aren't even reading this review." Gary Meredith from PC Gamer US wrote that Space Quest 6 was "not the best of the Space Quest series," as it regressed in graphics and voice recordings compared to earlier games. He also criticized the game's narration, noting that he had disliked it in Space Quest IV. However, Meredith believed that Space Quest 6 would still appeal to fans of the series.
Space Quest 6 tied for third place in Computer Game Review's 1995 "Adventure Game of the Year" award category. The editors noted the game's "good voice work" and "very nice animation," and praised its humor.