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Space Quest 6 Fun Facts > This page contains everything you wanted to know about Space Quest 6 and then some!


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Behind the Scenes
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Space Quest 6 Fun Facts
Josh originally wanted to call the SQ6 documentation "Janitalia: The Magazine of Space Janitors", but management wouldn't let him, so it was changed to "Popular Janitronics". In the words of Leslie Balfour, "Josh is a very bad lad".

The music played in Sharpei's Quarters is the exact same music played whenever the evil genie appears in King's Quest 6.

In the basement of Orion's Belt, to the far left there's a spider on one of the pipes in the foreground. Click the HAND-icon on it. It will fall screaming to the floor. This can only be done ONCE per game.

When the game was in development (and Josh Mandel was still on the project), the Marketing Director was a bit concerned about the DeepShip 86 being formed as a jockstrap. He tried to get Josh and Scott to turn it into a "normal" ship, but they ignored him. Then, when the first advertisement for SQ6 comes out, what picture did they use? The DeepShip jockstrap!

Deepship insigniaThe insignia of the DeepShip 86 reads "DEEPSHIP 86", and below that in small types, "LSL6 BFD". The latter part means "Leisure Suit Larry 6: Big Fucking Deal".

One of the random exit-messages of the Windows version is "Aren't you glad your middle name isn't Lawrence?" This is actually a poke at designer Josh Mandel, inserted by a programmer, whose name currently remains unknown. The reason: Josh's middle name is Lawrence.

The only replicator code, that produces a response, is the Bjorn Chow code from the Space Quest 6 demo. (Number 7469410)

To the joy of many Space Quest fans, Gary Owens was once again contracted to do the voice acting of the game's narrater after having done a great job on it for Space Quest 4.

Scott has a short argument with the "director" of Space Quest 6 in the game. The argument can be found in the contractor's office in cyberspace. BEFORE taking the number card, look at them. It doesn't work AFTER you've taken the card. Scott says: "I also played myself in a brief discussion/argument between the director (played by William Hall) and the writer (me). I even (lamely) did my lines in French and German for the dubbed versions. (Ugh.) To those of you who speak either of these language, I apologize for it."

In the bridge section of dialogue, there’s a tiny bit where Roger’s voice actor (out of character) mumbles something about messing a line up and wanting to try it again. It’s not a real knee-slapping blooper, but it’s amusing nonetheless.

There’s a fairly humourous line in the Cyberspace office that must be a result of “interacting” with one of the deceased people in some way, though it doesn’t seem to show up in the actual game. The Narrator says: “Guess this guy never quite recovered from KQ7. He’s getting a bit moldy…”

 

Scott Murphy and Josh Mandel - The Andromeda Slip Up
Josh Mandel was the original designer of Space Quest 6, but when the game was nearing completion he had to leave the project because of management problems. Scott Murphy took over from where Josh had stopped. This had several major influences on the project as a whole:

Some game's puzzles were extremely hard to figure out. For instance the Inner Body part of the game was extremely hard and obsecure. Josh did an enormous amount of research for it. But when Scott took over as designer, he didn't placed the much-needed hints into the game that Josh had in mind. This certainly explains the impossible complexity of the tiny time pills for instance.

The marketing guys market the games as a "Scott Murphy solo job" (as can be seen on the rear box). As Scott Murphy himself tells us: "The 'solo job' thing I honestly had no clue about until I got my packaged copy of the game." Also, the Popular Janitronics documentation that came with the game only gave Josh writer credits when in fact he had designed the whole game.

Josh Mandel explains the copyright protection: "It was designed to be present on one of the disks in Singent and Nigel's place, paired with a wonderful comic strip that I still hope to include in an SQ game some day. The only reason it wasn't is that Scott didn't understand the function of the comic strip and let that part of the design slide. It was in a conversation I had with him a few weeks before the game was due to be finalized, in which I asked him how the comic was coming along, and he said they'd never gotten around to it. I asked him how anyone was going to know how to solve the Datacorder puzzle, and he yelped, "$h-t! Is THAT what that was for?" They hurriedly got it into the documentation. If it hadn't been for that phone call, there wouldn't have been any clues at all. So once it appeared in the documentation, people kinda assumed it was copy protection. It wasn't. But that might not have stopped Sierra from TELLING people it was, just to be contrary." A funny note: Sierra didn't supply the Datacorder puzzle answers in some versions of the game, which pushed Sierra to release the "copyright protection" after many people complained they couldn't solve it.

Josh Mandel wrote Doctor Beleauxs' office, the Ascend-o-Pad (which actually has an overflooding of messages) and the entire DeepShip. One of Josh's favourite hobbies is to write those small humerous messages and if you look carefully, roughly all these scenes have different messages to all the icons. The rest of the game (with a few minor exceptions) was written by Scott Murphy and it's clear that he isn't very big on writing those messages. While on the subject, here's a fun fact: Josh's game, "Callahan's Cross Time Saloon" (Legend Entertainment) is about the size of a 1000 page novel. And that's dialogue ALONE, narration messages unaccounted for. Auch!

Beatrice Wankmeister was originally supposed to have a minor role in Space Quest 6, which involved a quick conversation between her and Roger. When Scott Murphy took over the project, he left that scene out, partly because both him and Josh felt, that this whole Beatrice-thing had taken a turn for the worse.

The ending for SQ6 was originally supposed to have been entirely different. It involved the beaches of Polysorbate LX with Stellar and Roger riding on the back of a gigantic horseosaurus, in a sort of romantic setting. They come across a statue, which indicates that Polysorbate LX is much more than meets the eye. For it quite clearly resembles.... Well, actually, that's the reason why it's not in the game. Josh and Scott couldn't decide what it should resemble.

And last but not least: Scott Murphy made a colourful statement in a message board years ago: "Scott (that being me) didn't understand A LOT about Space Quest 6 and STILL doesn't. That's a game that should have been aborted when Josh left. I am about as far from proud as someone can be about their work where Space Quest 6 is concerned. The way it's appearing to me from what I'm hearing from others, I should've called it a career after Space Quest 3! Someone just shoot me PLEASE!!! I would but I don't have a gun handy. Email me and I'll be glad to provide directions to anyone who does!"

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All original content (c) 2018 Brandon Blume & Troels Pleimert. All Space Quest related material (c) by Sierra Entertainment.