Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon is a 1989 graphic adventure game created by Sierra On-Line. It is the third game in the Space Quest series. In the game, players take on the role of Roger Wilco, an ordinary space janitor who helps rescue two computer programmers from a bad video game company. Critics gave the game good reviews, and it helped Sierra's series become more successful. A sequel called Space Quest IV was released in 1991.

Plot

Space Quest III is set in a universe that humorously copies famous science-fiction stories like Star Trek and Star Wars. The game follows Roger Wilco, a simple janitor who has saved his home planet twice from danger. After the events of Space Quest II, Roger is in frozen sleep inside an escape pod drifting through space. An automated garbage ship picks up the pod, and Roger wakes up. He must find a way to leave the ship and discovers an abandoned spaceship, the Aluminum Mallard, in the garbage hold. After fixing the ship, Roger escapes the freighter.

On the desert planet Phleebhut, Roger meets an android that looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger. The android was sent to stop Roger for not paying for a whistle in the previous game. Roger outsmarts the android and takes its invisibility belt.

At an orbital Monolith Burger station, Roger plays an arcade game and finds a hidden message. It says the game’s programmers, called Two Guys, were captured by ScumSoft, a harmful video game company on Planet Pestulon, which is ruled by Elmo Pug, leader of the "Pirates of Pestulon." Roger learns ScumSoft plans to use the programmers to create bad games for the galaxy. He decides to rescue them and travels to a lava moon orbiting Planet Pestulon to disable a shield generator. On the planet’s surface, Roger uses his invisibility belt to sneak into a base and finds a disguise in the form of janitor overalls.

Inside the company, Roger locates the Two Guys but is caught by Elmo, who forces him into a robot battle using giant machines inspired by the Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots game. Roger defeats Elmo and escapes with the Two Guys. After fighting ScumSoft’s spaceships, the group discovers the ship’s warp drive is broken. After fixing it, they accidentally travel through a black hole into a parallel dimension and arrive near Earth. Roger gives the Two Guys to Ken Williams, president of Sierra On-Line, and leaves Earth after being refused a janitorial job.

Gameplay

The PC version of the game includes support for mouse movement and a much better text parser. At the time the game was released, mouse movement was not very advanced, so the character named Roger cannot automatically move around obstacles. Instead, he stops when he hits a barrier. Computer mice were still new technology back then, and Sierra, the game's developer, made significant improvements to mouse movement in later games.

Astro Chicken is a small game included in Space Quest III. The goal is to land a chicken safely on a trampoline. The way the game works is similar to Lunar Lander, but if the chicken hits the trampoline too hard, it bounces back without harm. Reaching a high score shows a secret message left by the Two Guys from Andromeda. The music used in Astro Chicken is based on "Chicken Reel," a traditional folk song often heard in cartoons. Sierra released Astro Chicken as a free version to help people try Space Quest III before buying it.

Development

Space Quest III was created using an early version of Sierra's SCI engine. This game is different from earlier games in the series because players can no longer choose the main character's name. From this game onward, the character is called Roger Wilco, a name that was used as the default in earlier versions.

The game includes music created by Bob Siebenberg, a drummer from the band Supertramp. It was one of the first games to support a new type of sound card called the Sound Blaster. Sound effects in the game use digitized audio, such as Roger saying, "Where am I?" during the introduction. These effects are available in the Tandy, Amiga, and Macintosh versions of the game. However, due to an error in the audio driver, players using the Sound Blaster card on IBM PCs could not hear these effects.

The game includes a scene at ScumSoft, where parody versions of Sierra's president, Ken Williams, and director of operations, Rick Cavin, are shown as overseers using whips over software developers in cubicles. This scene was designed by Murphy to mock the negative trends he noticed at Sierra at the time.

Space Quest III was released on March 24, 1989.

Several fan attempts to remake the game were canceled over the years. In 2003, a non-playable VGA demo was released. In 2023, a fan remake titled Space Quest 3D was released.

Reception

C&VG gave the Atari ST version of Space Quest III a score of 83%, calling it "enjoyable and addictive." Dragon magazine gave the game 4 out of 5 stars. The Macintosh and PC/MS-DOS versions also received 4 out of 5 stars. Compute! magazine praised the game's graphics and the sound effects from the computer's sound card, saying they were the best in the series. STart magazine also praised the ST version's graphics and sound. While noting that Space Quest III was "essentially a text adventure" with challenges like guessing the correct words and needing to reload saved games often, the magazine described it as "not-too-difficult" and suitable for those new to adventure games. Computer Gaming World gave the game a positive review, mentioning improvements in the game's visuals and action scenes compared to earlier versions. In 1989, the magazine awarded it a Special Award for Achievement in Sound. In 1996, it listed the player's body parts being sold at a butcher shop as number 2 on its list of "the 15 best ways to die in computer gaming."

The editors of Game Player's PC Strategy Guide gave Space Quest III their 1989 "Best PC Adventure Role-Playing Game" and "Best PC EGA Graphics" awards.

John Scott of Games International called the game "Brilliant! The graphics are super." He also said the musical soundtrack was "the best I have yet encountered in any computer game." He noted the game's humor, saying, "sometimes it's warped, sometimes cruel, but it's always funny." He criticized the long loading times for each screen and the computer's tendency to prompt a disk change before the save sequence finished. However, he gave both the gameplay and graphics an excellent rating of 9, saying, "I think you'll like this. I did. A lot."

According to Sierra On-Line, combined sales of the Space Quest series reached more than 1.2 million units by the end of March 1996.