From 2010 to 2014 Richard Cobbett wrote Crapshoot, a column about rolling the dice to bring random games back to light.
You have the right to watch the above video. You don’t have to laugh, but any chuckling or guilty grin can be taken and used against you. If you don’t have a sense of humor one can be provided. Everything else assumes that the TV show “Castle” is an accurate representation of police procedure.
Unnecessarily long “show” notes!
So there we go. I’ve had a few requests for Police Quest recently and thought it would be fun to try one of these again. Yes, I’ve done Police Quest 1 before, but it didn’t seem logical to leave it out because of that. There are also new jokes, I promise.
So more detailed notes, snippets and other bits of information that didn’t make it into the video, or could use extra detail. I should start with, no, of course I don’t hate the series. I really like Police Quest 1 VGA. I think it’s a fantastic remake that adds a lot of character to a game it often missed (compare the writing about Sweet Cheeks and Dooley in the clips). It’s very, very silly, in the cop-fever-dream way I’ve talked about before, but in a very sympathetic way.
It’s full of frustrations, complaints about low wages, never getting respect from people… but also daydreaming like Sonny saving Marie from her decidedly casual life of bed hopping, or getting caught up in big undercover operations and the like instead of just chasing cars and assholes books. Despite all the procedures, it never feels special realisticbut it still feels like an ‘inside’ game in attitude, focus and direction.
It’s just a shame the series didn’t launch a year or two later, when there would have been more of a chance for a returning cast rather than removing almost everyone from every game. Police Quest could have so easily taken on a neighborhood feel, with you bouncing between different people in each case and getting to see different sides of the characters. Oh yeah. C’est la vie, I guess.
As for Police Quest 2, there is a difference between ‘bad game’ and ‘game I don’t like’, and I see PQ2 as the latter. It’s caught between two worlds, and the crowds irritated me more because of that. There’s a particularly bad scene, which I mentioned in a deleted segment in the video, that only exists to mess up your gun’s alignment and make you recreate a whole puzzle.
The actual story isn’t that interesting either, because you really don’t have a handle on drama. Bains is out for revenge, and while you can bet he’ll come back for Sonny, a flight to another city really defuses that. And while we’re on the subject of defusing things, why the hell do the terrorists have a… time bomb hijack a flight?
However, Police Quest 3 usually stinks. The premise of a murderous cult isn’t terrible, but associating it with the Bains clan was a mistake (a non-canonical book takes it a step further by making Morales Bains’ half-sister), and they actually do surprisingly little of that. then burning their own stuff, committing suicide and finally surrendering. Morales shouldn’t even have been remotely involved, though, and needed much, much better writing.
To make her work however, the actual Lytton PD needed to be more developed — a place where that kind of personality could fester, as opposed to a place where everyone reads reports that say things like “Borderline Sociopath” and just say, “Yep. That’s our Pat!” And even that really gives this largely empty building with a few apathetic cops in it too much credit.
So, on to some cool stuff that got removed for various reasons, mostly bad line text that I couldn’t save. First there was a Japanese version of Police Quest 2, and it’s… awesome. Overall, not much has changed, but it’s worth checking out to compare and contrast. Press HG101 to do just that. Try not to scream at the sight of the new boss. He’s… quite a bit. Yes.
Second, something I had never noticed before. Gordon Brown is a fictional journalist.
Third, I had a bit more about the authorship of the games, although that’s more interesting considering the number of hands it went through. Al Lowe did an uncredited redesign/polishing that I mentioned in passing (and he goes into more detail about it in this book). Essentially, Walls’ first draft had something of a problem: it was written from the point of view of someone for whom police training was deeply embedded, which wouldn’t work very well in the wider market. Lowe’s job was to get it in shape, and while I don’t know where Walls ended, Lowe started, or indeed someone else on the team had their own input, it’s hard not to watch the game we’re watching. and see more than a few fingerprints on it. The nudity is something I can’t recall ever seeing in a non-porn game before, but it could have enlivened a few.
As an excerpt: “Jim had written this whole story, the programmer had implemented it, but without the things Jim wouldn’t have thought of, that’s why it was impossible to play! You’d be in a situation and say ‘what would I do? do?” And Jim has a tremendous wealth of knowledge of police work, and he’d say, ‘It’s obvious!’ Well it’s obvious to you because you’re trained as a police officer So the big project that summer was to go through and come up with all kinds of hints, some sort of dialogue and radio commands that would allow you to figure out what you had to do for God’s sake!”
In retrospect, the programmer may have thought, “I’ll do what Jim says…and add some nudity for kicks.”
(When I shot the recording, I said you could have Sonny strip “anywhere.” That’s not quite true – you can’t get around characters like Helen. But still. The woman who catches him when he happens to be with a towel out of the shower is Laura, a homicide detective, and the prankster of the station, which makes Sonny’s death a little odd at the time, since she’s probably the least likely person in the whole building to cause trouble, but it’s probably better that he becomes Towel Cop. the option, he would indeed have been Towel Cop. Laura is the one who put the chicken in the office, and from Police Quest 2 she has “retired” after getting caught. Too bad. Just like a couple of the characters, she had potential, even if the general level of writing prior to PQ3 was terrible, and didn’t improve that much after that.)
The Abominable Man Enough has appeared in Crapshoot form before. Walls didn’t design it, it’s just from the company he left Sierra to work for. Tsunami Games/Media is honestly not a real loss to the industry. At some point, we’ll be able to watch Blue Force or Police Quest: Open Season here, but it won’t be for a while. Need a break from police and robbers right now.
Music from the games, including the full version of Cell Block Love from Leisure Suit Larry 6, can be found in the Quest Studios archive. There are plenty of Let’s Plays available from the entire series. If you prefer to play the games, Police Quest 3 is very janky these days, but 4 remains a very solid – albeit ultra finicky – tactical shooter. Who made it? Small company called Irrational. You’ve probably never heard of them.
And that’s enough for now. Back to text next week. I’m not sure when there will be another video, but if people enjoy it, there will probably be another one soon. If you missed the last few, they were on American Laser Games (Space Pirates, Mad Dog McCree, Who Shot Johnny Rock and Riana Rouge. As always, apologies for my many, many mistakes. Learn as I go, and there’s a lot to learn.