Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
30 Years of the Virtual Broomcloset
118 Plays10 hours ago
Jess looks back at his 30 year old fan website. We discuss The Olde Internet.
Quest Quest podcast is Ben Vigeant and Jess Morrissette.
Editing by Ben Vigeant
Show art by Kevin "WilcoWeb" Wallace
Watch us on Twitch!
Ben: https://www.twitch.tv/ps_garak
Jess: https://www.twitch.tv/decafjedi
Give us a review, they help people find this show! Unless you hated it, in which case, don't.
Talk with us on Discord!
https://discord.gg/ve9fqjgPp2
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Borscht Enthusiasm
00:00:32
Speaker
It's ques Quest Quest. The Adventure Game Podcast. How you doing, Jess? Ben, have to tell you, I'm fantastic. And you know why?
00:00:43
Speaker
I am fueled Borscht. All right. All right. Okay. First, and quickly, and I'm Ben PS underscore on Twitch.
00:00:55
Speaker
I'm DK Jedi. Whatever. You don't care about that. Yeah. Okay. like We're getting right into it. We're getting right into it. i I want to know, i was thinking about for this episode, this comes out the week of ah American Thanksgiving.
00:01:09
Speaker
Prime Borscht season. So I was like, commun know by maybe if we don't have food stuff to talk about, we could talk about this, but I know you're a borscht head. I am a borscht head. Yes, absolutely.
00:01:22
Speaker
I am obsessed with it. um i was I was at work today, and I got a text from my wife, and she said, borscht is in the crockpot. And I thought to myself, how can I find a way to leave work even five minutes early ah so I can get Did you Fred Flintstone? Yeah, no, like I was...
00:01:43
Speaker
yeah like i was i was I was speeding down the the interstate at like 90 miles per hour. It's like, I've got to get home. I've got to get
Thanksgiving Traditions and Anecdotes
00:01:53
Speaker
to this delicious beet soup that's waiting for me at home. Like ah like the a cop pulls you over and is is like, a yeah where's the fire? And you you look at and you go, where's the borscht?
00:02:06
Speaker
And he goes, all right. Yeah, that's right. Come on, come on right through. He actually gave me an escort. He turned on his lights and drove me the rest of the way. it like As long as you give me a bowl. not yeah And I said, no way, ma'am.
00:02:19
Speaker
Sorry, pig. You're cool, Jess.
00:02:26
Speaker
That's so cool. I'm just trying to win over the viewers who are listeners. ta Yeah. Yeah. Wow. You, you told that.
00:02:40
Speaker
Yeah. That's extreme, man. god Got his ass. Yeah, but no, I mean, Borscht is wonderful. i mean, let me, have ever told you this story the first time I had Borscht?
00:02:54
Speaker
i' Illuminate me. Tell me the Jess's borscht tales. Okay. So having the this is this will eventually be a big part of my memoir. but yeah But just a sneak peek. Yeah. there There's a local Russian monastery here. A Russian Orthodox monastery with some monks that make like soap and honey and all the things that you expect, you know, like monks at a monastery. They make interesting ales.
00:03:21
Speaker
You know, I'm not sure if they do. They didn't have them when I went. My attendance was they had an open house night for the community where it's like, come in We are going to do a big dinner.
00:03:32
Speaker
We're having like a big Russian feast. And we invite the community in to come enjoy this. So me and and my family and and some friends. now How recent was this? Because I thought this was years ago, but now it's been like 10 years ago. it was like 10 years ago. so yeah, me and me and some friends and my family all roll into this monastery and we get there to discover we are the only people from the community who have shown up to an entire congregation of people who actually attend this Russian Orthodox church.
00:04:06
Speaker
Okay. So we are the only like people not part of this organization, but we are welcomed with open arms. I've never been to a church where you walk in and so like someone in a robe immediately pours you like the biggest shot glass of vodka you've ever seen.
Double Thanksgiving Experiences
00:04:21
Speaker
But this is very much what the monks were doing upon entry at this cool monastery. These monks like to party. These monks. loved to party and yes are you saying that they would flip off uh the the cops too they didn't seem like they gave a flip uh anything yeah i mean all right you know how fire tuck was in congress longboat he just loved spanking the sheriff which is a phrase i use in in my household for something else laughing
00:05:00
Speaker
But yeah, so they I like tried borscht for the first time. It's amazing. And also
Nostalgic Video Game Discussions
00:05:06
Speaker
I repeated a ah constant Jess mistake, which was forgetting that when you- You mistook them ah for ah ah Ukrainians and they it took great offense. It was awkward. no my classic problem, Ben, i don't know if you've ever had this, of thinking that like two halves of a deviled egg doesn't add up to an egg.
00:05:29
Speaker
and therefore eating like 18 halves of deviled eggs I made the which is a constant mistake in my life just like I see deviled eggs and I love deviled eggs and it's easy to convince yourself you didn't just eat like six eggs in a row when you're just really enjoying a deviled egg but the reality is those are eggs And the math starts to pile up.
00:05:49
Speaker
But right the borscht was incredible. And since then, we've had borscht a few times a year. And boy, on ah on a chilly day, there's nothing better. little dollop a sour cream in there. That good, good, ah good, good borscht soup.
00:06:02
Speaker
Yeah. there's a ah very uh there's there's an excellent uh ukrainian restaurant uh here in chicago i went to uh much earlier in the year when it was still quite cold like in february and uh had i had the borscht there and it was out of this world uh incredible um i you know i've never made is it Is it hard to make like i guess you like is it is it just a bunch of shit in the crock pot like you just give it a lot of time essentially yeah well not a lot of time a lot of dill.
00:06:38
Speaker
um
00:06:41
Speaker
Very humorous. Thank you. That's what I was going for. um Yeah. No, I mean, it's, yeah, you just throw some beets, some potatoes, some onions. We used a little bit of beef in this one. We've used pork at other times in there. And just like all the dill in the world. Like you put in as much dill as you think is normal.
00:07:03
Speaker
Then you triple that. and uh you're good to go i mean it was it was just we even used canned beets on this one and it wasn't too bad usually canned beets yeah usually we would use fresh ones but we just use canned ones so you know what very good have you ever uh had a beet hummus No, I love beets though. And I'm now completely intrigued by this concept. It's, it's, it's hummus that you make with beets instead of chickpeas. And what I really like about it, like, first off, it's, it's quite tasty.
00:07:36
Speaker
ah But second off, it's really great at a party because it's like this brilliant, beautiful purple. Yeah. Like it's this bright, like purple dip that you could put in like the centerpiece and then you could put like, care like you could put, like if you're, if you're someone that's kind of interested in, in like kind of making like kind of a, like an image of, of your spread, like, you know, you surround it with like carrots and shit.
00:08:01
Speaker
It looks like a fucking, like a, like a Star Trek, ah like, you know, something they'd have because it's this big beautiful purple dip yeah sounds hard to be gorgeous and it's it's it's it's delicious too yeah no i mean of course i mean it
Listener Email and Space Quest Banter
00:08:16
Speaker
sounds amazing i mean i've had peanut hummus but basically that's just like a poor man's peanut butter yeah yeah this is this is like a a beep nut butter
00:08:29
Speaker
Mr. Beatnut Butter. i don't I don't have any interesting food news ah ah for for this week, but it is that, you know, as i I was saying, like I've been thinking about, like this episode will come out, we're recording a little ahead hi you know early April yeah it's it's yeah it's it's it's just warming up a little bit outside you know i you know
00:09:02
Speaker
So what do you do you do Thanksgiving or do you go down to your your family or your wife's family or or what's who we mix it up normally we go to see my wife's family and a lot of times we'll end up meeting in like some sort neutral location, which is usually like a bad solution. The hostages.
00:09:22
Speaker
That's right. That's right. onm on On neutral ground. Yeah. um I mean, it kind does feel like that at some level, but I mean, that always leads to bad Thanksgiving because you're like in a rental home or like hotel somewhere. gotta be in, it's gotta to be in your, someone's yeah actual house. Not only is it not feel homey, but also just like, you don't have the cooking utensils and pots and pans and stuff you need to make a proper meal. Yeah.
00:09:49
Speaker
in a place like that. So no this year, fortunately, we're going to be home for Thanksgiving and my parents are coming to see us. So we'll get to have the Thanksgiving meal that we love. Ben, what is the best Thanksgiving food? Go.
00:10:06
Speaker
You know, you know, what's, what's really and like, i i don't know if I have an answer. Like, you know, i love,
00:10:19
Speaker
my my mom makes these incredible dinner
The Virtual Broom Closet: Origins and Connections
00:10:21
Speaker
rolls. They're quite i you know mean, that's an honest answer for me, too, is a good roll. Yeah, my mom makes he's really, really good dinner rolls. Like, from scratch, dinner rolls, they, like,
00:10:35
Speaker
She puts them in this like basket, which I think this is the only time that this basket is used. It's wrapped in like, you know, a special cloth. They're nice and warm.
00:10:46
Speaker
You break them open. You put some butter on them. It melts immediately. Like if I'm thinking about Thanksgiving, I'm thinking about those roles.
00:10:57
Speaker
Yeah. Because it's like everything else is good. and And I've had some like really spectacular Thanksgivings. um And for many years while I lived here in Chicago, I did ah Friendsgivings where... Yes, we did a lot of those. I was like...
00:11:16
Speaker
um and i still am of the opinion it's like i'm only traveling back like i don't live like i live a distance from my family so it's like i i was like you only get me for thanksgiving or christmas i'm only coming for christmas uh and then and you want to rack up all those big gifts yeah And then after, uh, and so it was, I would be here for Thanksgiving. I'd fly back for for Christmas. so And then after 2020, I, I switched them.
00:11:47
Speaker
I was like, I'll go back for Thanksgiving and I'll stay here for Christmas. Um, and, uh, and part of that is, is because like, I have such a large family. Like it used to be, be able to get all of us together, um under one roof for Christmas.
00:12:04
Speaker
And now, yeah That is not possible. And we don't even get everybody under the same roof for Thanksgiving, but we get a lot of people. Yeah.
00:12:14
Speaker
We got a bunch of, you know, a bunch of my family and in there. And so that's, that's pretty good. And, but like for, for Friendsgiving, loved, the the The funny thing about Friendsgiving is i loved it, did it for years. It was always like a potluck. We would ah split it up.
00:12:34
Speaker
um And then, ah and like, my favorite thing to do for it was I loved making desserts. I love making desserts general.
00:12:46
Speaker
I love baking a pie. I like making, you know, like brownies and cookies and whatever else. The problem is, is that if you make those for Thanksgiving, ah generally, you're taking most of that back home because everybody is going to be stuffed.
00:13:02
Speaker
Like nobody, nobody is having like, you know, a ton of turkey and all these appetizers and blah blah blah and then at the end it's like and here's like three different pies was gonna say especially if there are multiple pies everybody's like i will have the tiniest sliver of the pumpkin pie that can be considered a sliver of pie and like a little bite of this apple crumbly thing and half of that's gonna sit on their plate probably at the end yeah yeah i mean it's tough it's it's always tough you know and And I forget what friend made it, but I also have like a recollection of ah somebody making mashed sweet potatoes with like candied pecans mixed in. And like the texture and the sweetness of those pecans was always my favorite. yeah anyway yeah
00:13:56
Speaker
Anyway, yeah. I love Thanksgiving, but I used to have the ultimate racket for Thanksgiving. We had some friends from Canada that we would do friends, Canadian Thanksgiving. And you see the advantage there is you get two Thanksgivings. It's like having divorced parents. It's everything you ever dreamed of at the holidays.
00:14:15
Speaker
Um, we would get the friends giving for, uh, Canadian Thanksgiving a few weeks early and then roll right into real Thanksgiving. Do they do the Turkey? I've never actually thought about this. Do they do like, what is, what is the,
00:14:29
Speaker
What is the, like the, the main platter for Canadian Thanksgiving? Is it also Turkey? I would assume. Our friends did a very American Canadian Thanksgiving, but that could have been a gesture of kindness to us.
00:14:44
Speaker
Uh, they didn't want to frighten us away with their strange, uh, exotic foods. Otherwise it'd just be poutine and like Tim Horton's donuts. I'm thinking. yeah was i'm' I just pulled up something ah from ah Reddit, which is always correct. Yes.
00:15:02
Speaker
ah And ah the top rated ah answer ah to the same question was everything is the same, but no green bean casserole. Well, that's a shame because that is my, if I'm being honest, best.
00:15:14
Speaker
After rolls, which are the best answer, green bean, and I want a trashy green bean casserole. I just want like green beans. You want the nasty ones? Cream of mushroom soup and French's onion. I like the, you know, just basic. like I've had good green bean casserole made with love and care and fresh ingredients, and they're good.
00:15:36
Speaker
But deep down my heart of hearts, I want that. I want that like, you know, green bean casserole grew up with. So about, uh, uh, so about two Thanksgivings when I was a kid, I would get two Thanksgivings because my mom, uh, who, uh, at the time was a nurse.
00:15:55
Speaker
Um, she would always work Thanksgiving, uh, like she would always work it. And so we would always celebrate Thanksgiving on that weekend.
00:16:06
Speaker
Um, um, And it was never like, it was never, it was just like, yeah, all right. No, we're just doing on Saturday instead of Thursday. Not a problem. um But then like what would happen is I would just go over to other people's Thanksgivings.
00:16:18
Speaker
It's like, oh, yeah you're not, you're not doing Thanksgiving today. Do you want to come along? Oh, if I have to. Yeah. i mean, and so I would get two Thanksgivings within the space of two days.
00:16:31
Speaker
ah wow. Wow. yeah
00:16:35
Speaker
what So wait, what what's, is it is it dinner rolls for you? I think if I'm, I don't like to say that answer. Like, I feel like. I don't like to say it either. It feels so boring.
00:16:45
Speaker
And it's true. I mean, if you ask me right now, like you could have one bite of Thanksgiving, a really good bite of a fresh out of the oven roll is probably what would choose. That sounds amazing.
00:16:55
Speaker
ah Yeah, no, I think I'm. if I'm being completely honest, it's the roles. If I'm giving my, like, I'm trying to impress somebody answer. And Ben, I wouldn't do that to you. wouldn't big league you with my answer. I'd probably say green bean casserole, but yeah.
00:17:10
Speaker
Are you, uh,
Forum Development and Community Reflections
00:17:11
Speaker
how, like, how, how are you on stuffing versus potatoes? We usually have both. Yeah. I,
00:17:22
Speaker
I mean, I'm probably more of a stuffing guy of the two, but neither one is my favorite component of a Thanksgiving meal. Here's the thing is that I think I am more a potato man, but you only ever get stuffing at Thanksgiving.
00:17:42
Speaker
This is true. This is true. And so I have to like, so it's like, I think I like potatoes more, but stuffing uh, or, or dressing, if you want to be more technically correct, because generally we do not, we don't stuff it stuffing in a Turkey. It's not safe.
00:18:02
Speaker
ah Yes. Uh, uh, but, uh, like stuffing, ah is it's like I have it because it's just like, well, when else am I going to have ah bunch of toasty bread mixed with nuts?
00:18:17
Speaker
Yeah. No, this is true. i mean, like, here's the thing. Mashed potatoes. they're coming back at Easter. You're going mash potatoes. Just like, you might even have my Christmas. They're coming back, you know, just but any, anytime. I love it. I go out to dinner. I'll mash potato any day of the week.
00:18:36
Speaker
You give me a potato. I can do the twist. Do the twist. Now tell them me. Yeah, no, I'm sorry. You were saying? I was saying, what have you been playing? Oh my gosh, Ben.
00:18:47
Speaker
What have I been playing? This afternoon, was back on my retro handheld bullshit. What about the Amber Nick? I got the Amber Nick out.
00:18:58
Speaker
I was busting it out and having little bit of fun. I was playing...
00:19:04
Speaker
a game that find kind of fascinating, kind of love. It's one that I've played through before, but it's been years and years. i was playing The Death and Return of Superman for the Super NES, which came out.
00:19:18
Speaker
Totally unfamiliar with this. Okay, it's 1994. It's based on the famous Death of Superman storyline. It's basically a side-scrolling beat-em-up. It would have to be a beat-em-up. And you play as all the four fake supermen who showed up to protect Metropolis after Superman died.
00:19:40
Speaker
Oh, that's cool. Yeah, you can be like Superboy, the Metropolis Kid, the Eradicator, Cyborg Superman, Steel, I guess was the other one, later played Bash, Kill O'Neil in the film Steel.
00:19:56
Speaker
You can be any of those four guys. What's interesting about this to me is I think it is like... Hey, it's a fun side-scrolling. It's got some beautiful graphics for the 16-bit era.
00:20:07
Speaker
But what I love about it the developer one Blizzard Entertainment. Oh, so this is a Blizzard game, weirdly. But then the publisher is Sunsoft and Acclaim.
00:20:21
Speaker
Great. Can you imagine a stranger mismatch of a company known for quality products being published by Sunsoft and Acclaim, who are not like is like an area.
00:20:35
Speaker
Are you telling me that Acclaim has ever put out a poor game? I mean, yeah.
00:20:43
Speaker
Didn't they make one? Didn't they adapt Mortal Kombat for consoles? Is that them? Is that I don't know anything about Mortal Kombat. Just last week, Ben, you were like, oh, I have my PhD now in Mortal Kombat. I spent $39.99 on this collection. I spent $49.99. Oh, well, then you should really know what you're talking about.
00:21:04
Speaker
But no, no, obviously claim was well known for Yeah, it's satisfying in that way that all side-scrolling beat-em-ups from the mid-1990s are all equally satisfying. You know, it's hard to sort screw up that genre if you have decent-looking character sprites and cool abilities, and this game has those things.
00:21:28
Speaker
It's an ass looking game. I'm looking. All right.
00:21:37
Speaker
cover. Absolutely. You got a bloody Superman with fist. Yeah, that's Doomsday's fist punching through there. the The creature who kills Superman. And then i spoiler looked at... Whoa.
00:21:53
Speaker
And then I looked at a screenshot here, and it looks exactly like what thought it looked like. Yeah. No, I mean, this one's straight down the middle. It is not throwing any curveballs at you at all, but...
00:22:07
Speaker
Like I said, it's a really fun game. think you even hear it in my mind. Like, I've never played this, but I know exactly how it sounds. Like the SNES, like kind of, like tune.
00:22:19
Speaker
Like I I just know everything about this game. I know. Imagine the sound effect of punching somebody because I bet you can really hear that too. Yeah, I mean, it is exactly what you think. I've clicked here, it looks like it looks like there's an elevator level, of course.
00:22:35
Speaker
Mm-hmm, gotta have that. Now, here's a question. Does this have, like, a steep, like, early, like, in the first level or two, not too hard, and then, like, a vertiginous difficulty jump?
00:22:53
Speaker
So you keep renting. Not as bad as like if it were a coin op. The fact that this wasn't adapted from a coin op at least means it doesn't have that how can we make you plunk quarters difficulty spike. But it does have enough of one that you're probably unlikely to beat it overnight without some skip.
00:23:13
Speaker
without some like cheat codes and you know extra lives and things like that. you know In a world of save states, like all of these sorts of games, it's like 40 minute long game.
00:23:25
Speaker
So I just pulled up the YouTube long play and started to play it for a little bit. You wanna know what? I was absolutely right. I was exactly correct on how this game sounds. Now, I do think it's one of the games where the Genesis version sounds very different. Oh, for sure.
00:23:43
Speaker
It probably sounds better. Yeah, the Genesis chiptune sound is very different from Super NES. I always prefer Super anyne NES just because it's what grew up with. Well, but you grew up with the Genesis, that's why.
00:23:53
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, Ben does what just don't, as we like to say around here. That's right.
00:24:01
Speaker
Ben, what have you been playing? I just picked up Luminous Arise. Oh. The new version of the great puzzle game Luminous.
00:24:17
Speaker
Have you ever played Luminous? No. So, Luminous is, if you're unfamiliar, it was the PSP launch title.
00:24:28
Speaker
It is a, like, you know, someone at Sony was like, well, you launch a new portable, you gotta have a Tetris. Gotta have a Tetris.
00:24:39
Speaker
have a Tetris. gotta have my Tetris. And so, uh, Luminous was, um, I mean, you know, is a, uh, like a match for a game where you, and it's kind of hard to explain.
00:24:58
Speaker
Um, But it's like essentially it's as simple as there are are two colors. You get blocks of ah four, which can be, you know, combinations of those two colors you want to match for.
00:25:13
Speaker
So straightforward so far. And then there is a line like kind of scanning across. Mm hmm.
00:25:30
Speaker
rid of, like, the squares that you made when it scans across. So you get bigger combos if you build up more before the scan hits it.
00:25:40
Speaker
So you actually have, so it's not that it immediately like, you know, collapses and scores, it's that you can build combos and stuff like that as the scanner is coming by.
00:25:54
Speaker
And also it's like, if you get enough for the scanner, then you get like, you know, multipliers for the next scan that comes through.
00:26:05
Speaker
And it's great. It's hard. It is definitely a pretty like,
00:26:15
Speaker
It takes me a little while to really rewarm my brain. Oh, I'm bad. Back up into, like, Tetris I can pick, you know, I can pick up immediately and I'm in, I'm in it.
00:26:27
Speaker
I'm in Tetris. But Luminous takes me a little while to do that. maybe it's just because I didn't have a PSP. So I only played Luminous like later and I didn't play it as this is the launch title for this expensive portable I just purchased, so that means I'm going to play this a million times, you know?
00:26:51
Speaker
Yes. Maybe it is a little more intuitive if I had it in my bones. In the same way that Meteos, because I got a DS instead. Meteos, I have that ability, which was the DS's We have to have a Tetris game.
00:27:08
Speaker
I mean, this is probably, mean, for me, the only portable ever owned was the original Game Boy, and absolutely, yeah, that's why Tetris is the only game like this that my brain can comprehend in any way.
00:27:20
Speaker
I'm looking at this, though, and Luminous Arise has some really gorgeous, trippy graphics. So that's why it's trippy, psychedelic kind of cool stuff.
00:27:32
Speaker
So Luminous Arise is, they also were the people that did Tetris Effect, which you have you played Tetris Effect?
00:27:44
Speaker
Ooh, don't know if i have, which you know what Tetris Effect? Because Tetris Effect is essentially Tetris with a great music and trippy visuals. Oh, wait, I did. i was trying to remember which, like, more modern Tetris I played.
00:28:01
Speaker
Maybe I did play that one. You should get that next deep sail. Oh, yeah. You have not. I played this one. Yeah, I know. This is the one did play. I can't keep the Tetris series straight. And so So hard to follow the lore. Yeah.
00:28:13
Speaker
And so Luminous Arise is essentially just Tetris Effect, except it's Luminous. like And so it's like, you you go through and you you match up enough and then you move on to whatever the next song and the next, you know, like weird trippy thing is. And like Tetris Effect, it has a vr mode, which I've poked around in.
00:28:39
Speaker
It's great. If I had to describe the visuals in one word, it'd probably be, I'm going to say Lynchian.
00:28:49
Speaker
Well, I'm not even going to dignify that because we have an email. yeah Oh. QuestQuestPodcasts at gmail.com.
00:29:00
Speaker
The email is titled SpaceQuest. We've been talking about that lately. It is, and it begins. To whom it may concern, I am over 30 years old. Uh-oh.
00:29:18
Speaker
Congratulations. So are we. With regards to Space Quest and its place in the canon, something has always that has always stood out to me is how it is somehow a parody of a genre that has yet to be fully established.
00:29:36
Speaker
As you mentioned, it is the second Quest game, and yet it toys with many of the conventions of what existing Sierra games were, and also the ones to come.
00:29:48
Speaker
This isn't always obvious, I think, to those of us over the age of 30. Yet too young to have played the game when it came out, which is another element of these older games that fascinates me.
00:29:58
Speaker
How different generations take something different out of these titles. Parentheses. I'm much closer to Ben's age than Jess is. So a lot of what he said resonated with me in this regard.
00:30:11
Speaker
You know, many people say that to me constantly. I mean, we don't encourage people to send us emails telling us which one of us they like better, but if you want to, we're open to read them.
00:30:25
Speaker
we're we're not saying like better just saying resonated all the Jess heads out there please get your emails and quest quest podcast gmail.com and say why you think my points are better yeah Ben heads quest quest podcast at gmail.com or if I resonate yeah anyway it uh it continues anyway final comment if you've bothered to read this far this is not that long uh I think Mark Crowe peaks in Space Quest 2
00:30:56
Speaker
This is bold. I like this, though. I like this. It looks incredible, so I'm not going to disagree. um ah Whatever other faults people might have with that masterpiece.
00:31:09
Speaker
Parentheses. And I will performatively choose not to understand those complaints for the purposes of this email. Close parentheses. That game is. Game is gorgeous.
00:31:22
Speaker
be able to do what he does with so low a resolution and color your correct spelling. ah that was That was in parentheses. ah and And I wanted it. So, Collure, you know, so that with the C-O-L-O-U-R.
00:31:42
Speaker
Ah, the Canadian spelling. All right, now yeah now, do you think we're we're getting a little bit of the the famous dry British humor, O-U-R, with that he typo'd correct?
00:31:57
Speaker
I mean, I've never known... I've never known this emailer Gareth to engage in humor.
00:32:08
Speaker
I've never known him to be a humorous person. So yeah, would surprise me if this was meant to be. So C-O-R-E-C-T spelling, close parentheses.
00:32:23
Speaker
The color palette is truly remarkable. Kind regards, Gareth. Yes, Ben resonates with me more. Oh, really? He put that part in. He put that in. He put that in. he put that in Wow.
00:32:37
Speaker
Does he say anything below that about me? PPS. No. Oh, wow. That's odd. Strange. Okay. Well, there you have it, I guess. PPPS.
00:32:50
Speaker
I anticipated Jess's comments, so it's not Well, I have known Gareth for a really long time.
00:32:58
Speaker
ah So that does check out. Yeah, that that's good. Gareth, thank you so much for sending that in. You're correct. People who are out there on the internet saying bad things about Space Quest 2 should be ashamed of themselves. So, all right, Jess, let's do it We have to we have to ah clear the air.
00:33:14
Speaker
Oh, man. We have to close the loop? And... Yeah, I think it's time because we didn't have an answer to this last week ah because last week, ironically, was recorded a day after two weeks ago.
00:33:31
Speaker
if you Yeah, you might need a pencil and paper for that gang, but just trust us. The timeline makes sense here. oh But we didn't have. So, you know, there there was this grand mystery.
00:33:45
Speaker
there's this grand mystery jess and i both believed that uh in one of the space quest collections in the the uh manual in the little cd jewel in the jewel case yeah booklet uh under the entry for space quest 2 it said what jess It said essentially that Space Quest 2 feels more like Roberta Williams on a particularly funny day.
00:34:13
Speaker
It's how it describes the vibe of Space Quest 2 in this manual that we both believe to have held in our hands and read with our human eyes. I have such a clear memory this. Yes.
00:34:24
Speaker
I remember thinking myself, I will never forget this moment that I read this.
00:34:30
Speaker
This is indelibly linked into my memories now. So, so Jess, uh, uh, what have you discovered? Uh, did you find, which, which space quest, uh, manual, what collection, uh, this was in?
00:34:44
Speaker
have consulted our community and I have consulted the space quest historian. Um, So we, i you know, i jokingly have referred to you ah that saying you're the Space Quest historian, but this is the definitive.
00:35:00
Speaker
Yes, the real Space Quest historian. are good friend Trolls, who tells me apparently i am the origin of this quote from my website, Roger Wilco's Virtual Broom Closet. It turns out that given the launch date of this website, I may have originated being mean about Roberta Williams on the internet.
00:35:24
Speaker
And I feel very guilty about this. I may be being mean about space quest two as well. Like I'm the, I'm possibly patient zero for both of these incorrect trends.
00:35:36
Speaker
Well, uh, you know, thank you. ah you know, it's time for you to sit down and listen. yeah I owe Roberta Williams an apology. yeah ae Now, ah you know, and that's a really interesting fact about your website, ah the Virtual Brune Closet, ah celebrating 30 years.
00:35:55
Speaker
ah But we're not here to talk about the virtual broom closet today like you know i just had to close the loop on that you know yeah yeah yeah yeah like you know if we were talking about your website the virtual broom closet like if that if that's what we were talking about today that might have been interesting to i guess like a segue but that's not what we're here to talk about today we're here to uh talk about shivers too No, come on, Jess. I'm not going to... First off, we would have to talk about Shivers 1 first, or I think it's called Shivers.
00:36:28
Speaker
um Shivers chapter 1. The Shivers encounter. ah But no, no, no. Today... I didn't, I didn't, you know, all these weeks passed, like, you know, I, I prepared, I played, you know, return of the phantom and I played ah lighthouse, the dark being, and I played spell caster, one-on-one sorcerers get all the girls or whatever.
00:36:53
Speaker
um But, but this time, you know, after, and, and every time you're like, I want talk about space quest. want to talk about space quest. So this time i went ahead and I played a space quest of Roger Wilco and the time rippers.
00:37:10
Speaker
And ah you know, so I'm, I'm, I'm actually, here's a question for you. Yeah. So wait, it's so space quest four is space quest for Roger Wilco and the time rippers. Correct.
00:37:30
Speaker
Yes. And that's in reference to the massive cartoon like Roger Wilco on the box. Yes. But we have that same big Roger Wilco on ah five and sixes boxes. They're not.
00:37:47
Speaker
ah like Space Quest V, Roger Wilco and the next mutation or Roger Wilco and the Spinal Frontier. Correct? I mean, I've seen it rendered that way, but also it's like, I mean, these games, like the titles are I don't know. Very funny.
00:38:10
Speaker
i mean, there i well I mean, I think even as like, like are the time rippers, the sequel police, are they Roger Wilco? wait a minute yeah but There aren't time rippers.
00:38:21
Speaker
Well, nobody, but anyway, anyway, but I mean, but, but and so we're going to like, played all of space quest for a game. I don't care for it, to be honest. And, uh, uh, but I, I played it and, uh, and then I played it again.
00:38:37
Speaker
I played the EGA version, which like, you know how, because ah like, you know, like some of the, the, the SEI Sierra games, they just had like a filter, some sort of something. It just kind of auto EGA. Yeah. Like a graphics driver that like downscales it or whatever. yeah But like the, um the space quest for version is a completely different version, which they redrew in 16 colors.
00:39:04
Speaker
Yeah. You know what's interesting about that? Yeah. Like, On my website, Roger Wilco's Virtual Broom Closet. Which we're talking about today. No. I have that section, the evolution of Space Quest, where like I trace like a little bit of the history of the series, and i use like different images of Roger's sprite, his character's sprite, as it evolves through the series.
00:39:24
Speaker
And ah because when I created the website, the only version of Space Quest 4 I had access to was the 16-color EGA version buts For all these many years, for 30 years, the yeah sprite from Space Quest IV is actually the 16 color version instead the 256 color version on my website, Roger Wilco's Virtual Broom Closet.
00:39:43
Speaker
Celebrating 30 years online. So I'm looking here at Space Quest VI. It is Roger Wilco in the Spinal Frontier. Yes. And I have seen Space Quest V referred to as...
00:39:53
Speaker
roger wilco and the next mutation i maybe in the next mutation it's it on wikipedia it is referred to as space quest 5 roger wilco uh like m dash the next mutation which uh citation needed on that m dash i mean like when i was working on my website roger wilco's virtual room fine what ah No, I mean, no ben we don't have to talk about the broom closet.
00:40:18
Speaker
Oh, no. Fine. We'll talk about the broom closet. I played that fucking game three times. I played the Amiga version as well. How was that? Bad. i mean, it's not the best space quest. No.
00:40:31
Speaker
It's not the top three space quest. No, no. Well, no. I was saying the Amiga version. Oh, I was just saying Space Quest 4 or if, um you know, that's a that's a. ah All right. Let me take a look. all right. So I'm now Space Quest.
00:40:46
Speaker
I've played better games.
00:40:51
Speaker
um All right. We're going to talk about ah ah Roger Wilco's virtual room closet version 3.0. 30 years. Where's the evolution of, I want to see this because this is actually making me think of something. That's going to under Articles and Humor.
00:41:07
Speaker
Articles and Humor. ah this is That is going to be under Next Steps into the Space Quest Universe. Okay. I see it here. This is one the original launch features. I love this. Oh, wow.
00:41:20
Speaker
I love this page. Oh, yeah. The evolution of Space Quest because this is straight up. Like this page, you you have not touched. like you Not touched since.
00:41:37
Speaker
It says 1996 on the bottom. It says this page is maintained by decaffeinated Jedi and is copyrighted. Yeah, so don't steal this. And what's also great about this page is is that it has, like, the really identifiable, um like, the back button, like, return to this page. Yeah.
00:42:00
Speaker
That blue grayscale. Oh, this page. All right. so also, it refers to Space Quest 7, the unreleased product.
00:42:13
Speaker
um which is, uh, all right. Anyway. Jess, let's, let's, let's talk about, let's talk about, uh, uh, 30 years of the virtual broom closet.
00:42:27
Speaker
We're, and i don't know if you know the answer to this, were you, do you know if you were the, the first Sierra fan site? i I mean, you certainly were around it.
00:42:37
Speaker
I believe that. I mean, what I can tell you, like, this is when the broom closet launched in 1995. This is like at a point in history where like at a point you still had to submit a link to Yahoo and get it approved to appear in the Yahoo search directory.
00:42:54
Speaker
Yeah. And at the time that the broom closet was approved for listing in Yahoo, it was the only Sierra fan site on the internet in Yahoo. And the only one that I'd ever found.
00:43:07
Speaker
um i there There certainly wasn't any other one that I came across. So as far as I know, the Broom Closet was the first Sierra fan page. It may have been the first fan page for an adventure game as far as I know I think that a lot of the gaming sites at the time I wouldn't go so far as to say it's the first video game website by a long shot but a lot of what you did see were things like archives of doom wads and websites more like wave files
00:43:38
Speaker
Yeah, and things of that sort. You know, I think less maybe like a fan site and more of like a collection of resources to go with games like Doom and Wolfenstein and things like that.
00:43:50
Speaker
I think this is relatively early for a more fan-ish style fan site. I do think it's the first Sierra fan site to go on the internet. I am. ah So the earliest on archive.org.
00:44:05
Speaker
that the virtual broom closet, i ah it it has a 1997. Wow. it It only, like, I don't know how much, like, the the internet archive, like, if it if even, i I mean, it looks like it can go back, like, it does have, ah before that, like, 96, but it doesn't look like i they they have a, oh, let me see.
00:44:35
Speaker
Yeah, nothing in 97, nothing in, like, the earliest it has is February 7th, 1998. Oh, wow. Yeah. And ah this website looks really cool, Jess.
00:44:47
Speaker
um Yeah. No, I mean, it's always been a beautiful website designed in all the best 1.0. right. So it's 1995. It's November of 1995. Yeah. Yeah.
00:44:58
Speaker
so it's ninety ninety five it's november of ninety ninety five yeah i so I, you know, i this is, this is a story that I've heard, uh, you know, I think you've talked about on your stream and maybe even a little bit on, on this podcast, but, you know, what, but what, what, what's the story? How, like, where what's the origin here? How'd, how'd we get here?
00:45:23
Speaker
So in November of 1995, I was in my freshman year of college. And I think like for context here, I had never been online before I got to college. Like literally the first time I'd never able to dial into a BBS.
00:45:42
Speaker
There were no local BBS is where I grew up. My parents weren't about to let me spend long distance to dial into a BBS. I desperately wanted to be on the Sierra network, but that wasn't about to happen either. he Expensive.
00:45:54
Speaker
Crazy expensive, especially if you're dialing long distance for an access number. Yeah. ah So I've never been CompuServe or anything like that. ah So literally on my like college campus orientation tour, they took us to a computer lab and sat us down and I used my login and fired up like Netscape or, or maybe Mosaic at the time. Oh, wow.
00:46:19
Speaker
And accessed the web for the first time and started searching around to see what was there. And I was just fascinated by this, you know, just like be able to go to like, think i would like the Smithsonian's website, which is like a page with a gray background and a couple of pictures of like the Hope Diamond or something like that. And that was the extent of the web page at the time. But I loved this and I was fascinated by it.
00:46:43
Speaker
And i immediately just decide I have to make a webpage. I need to have a page on the internet. And what i decided on pretty quickly was it's like I'd grown up loving Sierra adventure games and space quest six was still a relatively new game. actually hadn't beaten it yet.
00:47:01
Speaker
Uh, when I got to college my freshman year. Um, and I just thought it's like, ah, you know, I think there's some fun stuff that could be done with a website about space quest. So I went out to my local bookstore, B Dalton, uh, uh, in my mall,
00:47:18
Speaker
Uh, I picked up a copy of HTML for dummies and just started teaching myself the basics of HTML coding. And then just a few months later in November, I'd written all these walkthroughs. I'd started write articles like that evolution of space quests and some other things. Those are some of the like early launch material. I think that was dated 96, but I think I'd originally posted it when the site went live in 95.
00:47:43
Speaker
ah and just launched the site. And it was sort of like, i don't know if you anybody's ever go to read this. i don't know if it's for anyone else. I kind of liked just this opportunity to teach myself a weird new skill with no sense of what might come from did So it is interesting to me looking at um the like the articles and in humor ah page, because this this really makes me...
00:48:13
Speaker
like I, I like, because, you know, as somebody that also was on the internet in, uh, the like, uh, late nineties, like starting in the late nineties, um, we're very active. Like, I mean, we had prodigy and, uh, the CR network like that before, but I started making websites that,
00:48:39
Speaker
um in 1999 and it's uh you know like on geo cities and like my first website was the service called 50 free megs oh i remember that because i saw that i was like well that's a lot of that's a lot that's a lot of megs that's that's a shitload of megs um And, you know, I made, that's where I put my ah sliders fan site.
00:49:07
Speaker
I'm not kidding. And. um Professor Arturo's virtual broom closet. Yes. It was called professor Arturo's virtual broom closet. But. You know, I bring that up to.
00:49:21
Speaker
Specifically say that it's like looking at like the articles and humor. This really kind of unlocks. Like, it's like, this is what a lot of. websites at the time were comprised of like beyond like we were also talking about it's like you would have like a lot of fan sites you know from my recollection would be you go to a page and it would have like a bunch of um like wave files and then like a bunch of really grainy like non-animated like gif images like from the tv show then
00:49:57
Speaker
But then like beyond that, then it would just be like, well, I have to put stuff here. You know, it's like, what I going to put here? Yeah. And, and so like, you know, it it was stuff like this where like, I'm looking at the, the articles in humor and what love about this is that you haven't really, touched a lot of these, like you haven't really modified, really modified, some of these in, uh, almost 30 years also.
00:50:28
Speaker
Yeah. And um so it's like, you know, I'm looking at ah here, one of these called ah casting call. Yes. ah Again, an original launch feature of the website.
00:50:42
Speaker
And yeah, and and casting call. like it it is just so it's like welcome to casting call this page brings to you my casting choices for a hypothetical in bold space quest movie please note i say hypothetical as of right now was this was that there initially or did somebody send you a weird email someone sent me a weird email that is a clarification as of right now there are no plans for a space quest motion picture this you know that's still true as of right now there's
00:51:18
Speaker
still a chance i stand by that um But, but yeah, so it's like you list off and um like, you know, you, you, you list off like who would cast. i I wouldn't go for Dwight Schultz for, for Roger Wilco. I mean, I guess I see it. It's wrong. Yeah. No, that, you know, I said Jeff Daniels, which at that point in history could have been fun.
00:51:41
Speaker
yeah Jeff Daniels would, would you, yeah, I think Jeff Daniels would be ah pretty good. I just saw a photo of Anthony Hopkins with his head shaved. So I picked him as sludge foe hall. yeah it's just like yeah he's bald yeah that's right and where else you gonna find a bald guy in uh in hollywood yeah yeah it's like i balter here so it's like you're where you gonna also get uh the other famous bald man and hollywood are you gonna call patrick stewart too yeah um
00:52:11
Speaker
I mean, this one, like this feature again, I mean, this is like super early stuff. And I think yeah like looking back at this myself, because I've been updating the site as probably a lot of our listeners know for its 30th anniversary, adding new content for the first time in decades and really kind of getting back into the groove of writing a fan site, which has been fun. But this is one of those original launch things. I was thinking to myself, it's like, how, like,
00:52:36
Speaker
in a world where there weren't a lot of these fan sites yet, like I was trying to think like, why do I think a casting call was something to go on there? And I think for me, like if I really think back, a lot of what I was doing with the broom closet early on was inspired by sort of my love of magazines.
00:52:55
Speaker
I think growing up, yeah like I was an avid magazine guy. And like at the time, like the three magazines, I think that shaped my life more than anything. were probably, i was a kid who'd had like a subscription to Entertainment Weekly since I was 12 years old.
00:53:10
Speaker
I was an avid reader of air Entertainment Weekly. ah Wizard, The Guide to Comics, which was a huge ah comic book ah magazine during the like speculator comic book boom of the 90s.
00:53:22
Speaker
This casting call is directly ripping them off. I mean, this is like 100% every issue. Before there was such a thing as superhero movies coming out every few months, every issue of wizard would have a casting call section that would just be like, if we had to make a green arrow movie, this is who we put in green arrow, the movie.
00:53:40
Speaker
So this is stolen straight from them. And then interaction. I mean, I was just obsessed with interaction and kind of just thinking it's like, well, I love these magazines and I love these sorts of little features that these magazines do.
00:53:54
Speaker
And a lot of this early broom closet content is me basically saying like, well, I need new content after I've written walkthroughs. I can't just say the website's done. So it becomes like, how can I create, you know, more stuff about space quest in addition to just the, the basic facts of it all. And that's, that's sort of the Genesis, the things like casting call evolution of Roger Wilco. i mean, that's,
00:54:18
Speaker
that's like another wizard magazine thing. It's like, you know ah a little feature where they're like, this is how Batman's costume has evolved since he debuted in 1938 or whatever. I'm, I'm looking ah like, so I'm looking at this version of the website from, um,
00:54:34
Speaker
uh like from the archive.org from from 1998 and there are a couple one of them like there's uh fester's picks which that didn't that that hasn't survived um what was fester's picks fester's picks is um a like it's written uh fester bladz's voice okay it's like how do you my name is bladz fester bladz you may remember me um And then ah it's just kind of a like a list of like ah recommendations ah of like media that someone that likes Space Quest also like.
00:55:15
Speaker
And so ah it recommends Stationfall and Planetfall. Uh-huh. Recommends Mystery Science Theater and Red Dwarf. Spaceballs, Hitchhiker's Guide, and the works of Peter David, among other things. There's some other stuff, too.
00:55:32
Speaker
Interesting. It's just funny. Like, I'm really kind of stuck on this, like looking at this, because it's also, it's like, you have a little fun doing the the voice here. How old were you? 19? Yeah, 18, 19. yeah eighteen that Yeah, yeah.
00:55:46
Speaker
like oh god that page still exists on the website uh it's just not leaked from anywhere anymore oh it's funny oh wow there it is uh yeah you know and now like uh yeah like it's because i remember in addition like you know at the at the time ah i knew about I knew about virtual broom closet, and then there was, ah like, I guess later, it must have been later on, i would probably say, like, 97, 98. There was, like, this ah King's Quest ah website that I would check from time to time. think it was, like, called, like, the King's Quest. Like, I don't remember.
00:56:31
Speaker
My main recollection of that website was that it was red. was checks out which i think like the background was like this was bright red like every page was bright like it was bright red and i think the text might have been yellow or green um but and another cool thing here ah on this uh 1998 version is it uh this has a ah patch for doom that uh adds the sequel police and Yes, I believe that still exists in the current iteration iteration of the Brim Closet. Oh, good, good. Yeah, don't worry, that's still there, everybody who wants who hears that and wants to download it, as well as skins for The Sims for Roger B. and Stellar. Oh, we didn't have that in 98, I don't think. No, no, not yet. Will Wright and I hadn't collabed on that yet.
00:57:20
Speaker
But, like, so, okay, so you sit down. Did you have, ah like, so you're like, all right, well, I'll get working on the walkthroughs. Um, did you, did you have the, um, like, uh, the, the space quest, uh, like collection on hand or like, did you already have all, all six of them? Like you said, you just bought six.
00:57:44
Speaker
I believe at this point I did have the original 15th anniversary collection, like the one in like the handsome classy blue box, uh, like the bluish gray box, uh,
00:57:56
Speaker
I had that one and which sort of replaced all of my original discs, uh, for the space quest series. And then of course, space quest six wasn't in that collection yet. So I had that as a, Oh, right. yeah standone Yes. Oh, I know that, that classy one. It has that very heroic looking Roger Wilcox on the box. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's, it's my favorite, like one of my favorite Sierra boxes. I really love that one.
00:58:19
Speaker
It's got that very classy logo, the King's quest box. version of that as well is quite good has a great King Graham logo on like a maroon baroon box but those 15th anniversary collections look real nice but yeah i had one of those and then I mean part of the reason this thing takes until November to launch is I didn't want to launch it without a space quest six walk through on the page on the page because I figured that's probably if anybody's gonna find this thing they'll be looking for hints for space quest six which was a very new game at the time
00:58:51
Speaker
So ah love what delayed it was I had to figure out how to beat space quest six, which there weren't walkthroughs for on the internet yet. So I could then write my own walkthrough for it and upload it to the internet.
00:59:03
Speaker
Um, so it was like, I have to first solve space quest six with no help. And then I can write a walkthrough and then I can launch my website. So I was like, I was like cramming space quest six.
00:59:16
Speaker
And
00:59:19
Speaker
i i'm I'm noticing the you you've cleaned up. I'm comparing. I'm having a lot of fun here comparing the versions of the website. ah You you did a like a grammar pass ah like you cleaned up the like you you rewrote.
00:59:35
Speaker
um'm I'm looking at the Space Quest six walkthrough on the one. all no here it tens at the bottom I wonder, ah yeah does does this reveal any ah the thoughts of the author, it which is not on the the copy that you'd find, by the way, if you go to ah the 30th anniversary. This is like gotcha.
01:00:00
Speaker
I'm gotcha. Gotcha journalism. It says, at the very bottom, it says, all caps. Now, the game is, all caps again, finally over
01:00:13
Speaker
three exclamation points. No tea, no shade. ah yeah. No pink lemonade. Um, yeah, I guess, uh, that feels about right. That was probably how I was feeling. Oh,
01:00:27
Speaker
Because I had been like, I did not get through Space Quest 6 easily. And I was playing it the wrong way. I think probably it colors a little bit of my perception of Space Quest 6 to this day. The fact that I was just like, I've got to finish this thing so I can finish my website.
01:00:42
Speaker
You were, yeah, you were literally playing it specifically. Like this was... the like the stopper i want to also i'm and maybe this was reference in reference to the uh uh uh files like it says here uh on it it says walkthroughs are available for the entire space quest series some are self-compiled and others have been called from other sites oh interesting yeah i don't remember that that doesn't sound like something i would do
01:01:14
Speaker
Um, you know maybe there's a, there's a, uh, a credit here, but that's what, that's what it does. Well, I, I, I would stand by that. I'm, uh, I'm sending you the link.
01:01:26
Speaker
Oh no. You know, I, uh, it's funny right now. I'm actually riding a walkthrough for the first time in like 30 years for Space Quest Vohal Strikes Back as I'm playing through it.
01:01:39
Speaker
After I finished my streams, I'm like adding a section to my walkthrough. And now that I've finished that game on stream, I'm going to have like my first new walkthrough in decades.
01:01:50
Speaker
Oh, this is interesting. Yeah, i wonder if I um wanted to think I probably updated most of these since then. But yeah, this is, ah this is fun. Yeah, I don't remember this at all. The, um, all notes.
01:02:02
Speaker
that looking at the ones from the this this iteration of the page, the Space Quest 1 through 5 walkthroughs are like,
01:02:15
Speaker
they ah they're like better organized and like kind of cleaned up and sectioned off. And the Space Quest 6 one is is a little more kind of,
01:02:29
Speaker
messy and it also has like little uh little asides and more editorializing in the course of the walk it has a little editorializing which i i i have to um what's weird you know i'm like writing this walkthrough now and i'm realizing it's like i never used walkthroughs because i didn't have access to them as a kid while i was playing this so when i wrote a walkthrough for the broom closet originally They're kind of narrative in the way that I wrote them, which is interesting. Like I'm kind of trying to like tell the story of the game while giving you the walkthrough for it. Now that I'm writing this new one for Vohal Strikes Back, the 2011 fan game, what I'm finding is that here in the year 2025, Jess wants an efficient, straightforward, easy to read, like bullet point style walkthrough. You keep to the voice. You have to keep to the voice.
01:03:23
Speaker
I know, but I'm just like, God, it would be such a pain in the ass to try i use one of these walkthroughs to get through a game. but ah But yeah may yeah, it makes me think it's like, as I'm looking back at some of these, maybe I do need to go back and, and ride it in, in more of this style. maybe is is more fun This space quest six walkthrough from this archived version of, of ah your page. I just sent you the link.
01:03:52
Speaker
ah Because it does have like those little asides. um There's like, so ah it, you know, I'm, I'm reading here. Get the screwdriver off the ground in the plank off the I beams, go inside the building parentheses.
01:04:06
Speaker
Ah, windows even haunts you in computer games. Oh, wow. This is fascinating. Yeah, i don't. This version definitely feels like it was written. This is the first draft.
01:04:19
Speaker
As I go. I'm literally like taking notes. of I probably have like notepad open or something and writing this. because yeah this like I'm comparing it with the version that's there now, and it could not be.
01:04:33
Speaker
more different. Like the version that's there now is pretty polished. Yeah. it's very It's very nice and clean. Oh, yeah. And this is this very much feels like stream of consciousness walk through writing this. I mean, I even got bad, like grammar and like, they aren't complete sentences. stare at things all over the place. This is me.
01:04:55
Speaker
I've got churn this thing out and launch my stupid website. It's like, God damn it. I need to finish this shit. Like, yeah, absolutely. um oh it hold on it says at the bottom special thanks to the gamers hole on this walkthrough oh so maybe i borrowed from maybe this maybe have a maybe this isn't a jess i don't know maybe is my whole memory of this flawed is this is this like roberta williams on a funny day
01:05:29
Speaker
This could be, I mean, clearly my memory of the broom closet, I'm an unreliable narrator of my own story. The way I remember this 30 years later is it was space quest six to help me up. But maybe it was just, maybe I gave up and just use this.
01:05:43
Speaker
What if that's what happened? Maybe that's how I finally launched it. Well, if gave up, I'm beating space quest. You reached out to the gamers hole. Yeah. I was just dipping into the gamers hole.
01:05:55
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, no. So yeah, I guess that would explain why it's not as good as the as the current walkthrough. So who knows? It has a very, very different.
01:06:09
Speaker
It is very, very different. Okay. I'll tell you, I would never put a period before a parenthetical in a sentence and there's a lot of that in this original gamers whole version so yeah i bet that i was trying to get this ready and eventually just gave up and said i'm gonna have to publish someone else's walkthrough until i can write my own like which was apparently years later now uh so okay so you're you're running this this uh fan uh website and you either wrote or uh made a deal to get
01:06:44
Speaker
Well, you credited, you credited your friends at the gamers hole. Yes. I, you know, you have to play the gamers toll to get into the gamers. Yeah. I jokingly said to you, when we were chatting earlier, or I was like, there's going to be a lot of gotcha journalism.
01:07:02
Speaker
Now it turned out there was, but, but I have been, i just gotcha. Now that's a classic Ben. Gotcha. Um, so you have this website, you have, uh, the, the walkthroughs, then you, you start to populate it with, ah you know, kind of, uh, like cute little features. Um, I'm looking here. I don't know if this is, uh, there's, uh, the monolith burger, uh, website is, is this on the, uh, let me, let me take a look. It's still there. It's still around today. Great.
01:07:34
Speaker
Basically unchanged. Yeah. Like all these little, like all these little, you know, like, you know, tiny little things, the super like, oh, this really, this really, really takes me back. um But when, when do you get in touch? Like, when do you hear from somebody from Sierra, um either friendly or unfriendly? Because I know you had both.
01:08:03
Speaker
Yeah, it happens early on, like surprisingly early on. Like I launched this website in November, toward the end of November.
01:08:14
Speaker
And somehow a month later, I had heard from, got an email from Josh Mandel, a friend of the pod, yeah Josh Mandel, which is amazing. The idea that it's like,
01:08:30
Speaker
I knew who Josh Mandel was. I love Josh Mandel's games. I like, but I read and reread his articles and interaction and thought he was just the funniest person alive.
01:08:41
Speaker
And I'm home for the holidays back at my parents' house and have no access to email at home because we don't have the internet yet at home. So I'm doing what any normal person would do, which is I'm calling a friend of mine on the phone, asking him to log into my account and read my email to me because I'm curious. I've gotten any interesting Space Quest emails. so This sounds like somebody explaining like a party line to me.
01:09:08
Speaker
It really is. I mean, it's like, that's how you check your email when you're home for Christmas in 1995. So I like my friends reading through these said, okay, you got an email here from Josh Mandel. like, wait, what's that?
01:09:20
Speaker
And he's like, opens it up. And it's Josh just basically saying, it's like, Hey, I found your site and I really liked it. And he shared a few like little insider bits about space quest six that I didn't know. Cause at the time, like,
01:09:33
Speaker
the development of these games was a complete mystery to anyone beyond what we were told in interaction, which it turns out was slight had a slight pro Sierra bias. That's interesting. You know, I, I, that's been my primary source for Sierra facts for all this time. Well, I'm sorry to tell you, ben but you'll notice very seldom that they criticize a Sierra product. and I'm sure they criticize Hunter hunted or something, right?
01:10:04
Speaker
but They didn't even diss the first version of Outpost. I was just, yeah, yeah. They just talked about how great the patch was. um Yeah. So, and this kind of blew my mind at the time. And I ended up, of course, doing what any like 18 year old kid would do in this situation, which is just bombarding Josh Mandel with emails, like begging him to tell me anything about space quest six and about working at Sierra and everything. And then,
01:10:34
Speaker
In like the months that would follow over the next year or two, first, uh, Scott would reach out and then later Mark eventually got in touch with me, uh, Scott Murphy and Mark Crow, the two guys from Andromeda, uh, reaching out to say, Hey, we really like your website. Thanks for, thanks for doing this. Thanks for loving these games that we made.
01:10:54
Speaker
And i was really in heaven. I mean, this, uh, I, I can't, this will be shocking to anyone who knows me today, but boy, I was a real Sierra nerd. Uh, then I've outgrown that I'm a much cooler guy now.
01:11:07
Speaker
Uh, but the idea of getting to send emails back and forth to these people whose work I love so much was just, uh, it didn't seem real and then the fact that they were willing to do interviews i mean josh even wrote a couple of little features for the website um and just all of them so generous with their time so willing to you know put up with my nerdy ass just fantastic yeah um was was josh the very with so it was was josh the first person
01:11:40
Speaker
Josh was the very first. That you interviewed? um You know, that's a good question. I think Josh was the first interview that I had along the way. I'm pretty sure that that he was ah was the earliest.
01:11:56
Speaker
And then i think from there it was Scott, maybe Leslie Balfour. and And Mark has always been ah little shyer. I didn't get a chance to interview him until 2001. A Jess Odyssey.
01:12:07
Speaker
ah jess odyssey Yeah, i'm i'm I'm looking at this this interview of Josh. ah September of 2000. Okay, so that was a little bit further down the road. Yeah, he'd reached out very early on, but it would be a little bit later before.
01:12:22
Speaker
ah So actually, I guess probably the Scott Murphy interview might predate that. So maybe, again, I'm just wrong. It's more your gotcha journalism. Yeah, you know, listen, I like, you know, it came it came to me.
01:12:38
Speaker
Yeah. No, this is tough. You know, I'm actually looking back and I'm remembering because, i mean, I've been looking at this website a lot lately, but now I'm like kind of following through with you.
01:12:49
Speaker
And I'm looking at this interview with Scott Murphy from 2001 called Catching Up with Scott Murphy. And I remember this was... ah this was a tough one. Yeah, this is 2001.
01:13:02
Speaker
two thousand and one So, you know, Scott had been fired along with basically everybody else at Oakhurst two years earlier. And I think that he was still pretty bitter about the way everything went down with space quest seven and Sierra and stuff in general.
01:13:18
Speaker
And I remember we conducted this interview by email. I sent him questions and he sent me back answers. And it's really kind of like, I think back on this and I feel kind of bad because at this and Scott's like, I don't think my interview is funny.
01:13:32
Speaker
was like, it's great. It's funny. It's good. It tells us stuff about the series. We didn't know. It's like, it's great. So don't think it's funny. Do something to punch it up and make it funnier. so hey that's Fun facts. I added these fun facts into the margin, which are just like weird little fake bits of trivia.
01:13:49
Speaker
Like, you know, Scott Murphy earned a spot as starting center for the Los Angeles Lakers in 1985 before blowing out his knee in a preseason practice. and other bits like that i remember thinking it's like oh man i hate that scott doesn't feel like this was a good interview because i thought it was wonderful i thought it was like terrific stuff and him asking me to punch it up i was like no scott ah you don't want this and this is what came out of it like just some really i was wondering about the the fun facts on this yeah what are these doing here Yeah, no, that was like me trying to like, yeah, to to give give some jokes in here that he felt were necessary. So yeah, that's that's what I came up with.
01:14:31
Speaker
But no, i mean, the fact that the creators of this series were willing to talk to me, I mean, and the fact that most of them are still talking to me today um is kind of mind blowing. Yeah, no. They're talking to me right now. I have them in my headset.
01:14:44
Speaker
Wow. What are they saying? They told me not to speak to you about it. ah Okay, that's fair. Now, um, so, you know, this, I, I'm, I'm really like and, and then when did you open up the forum?
01:15:06
Speaker
You know, i don't know exact date on that. I'm going to say probably the forum comes along around 97, 98, if I had to take a guess.
01:15:20
Speaker
um So it launches a few years after. Like, I'd had a guest book, like every website before this. let me see if ah Let me see if this is ah captured by the...
01:15:33
Speaker
um by archive or not. doesn't I know it was definitely up and running by 2000 in a primitive like web board for forum where it was just like a single page with some threaded message replies and stuff and then turned into like a full forum with like categories and subfolders and stuff like that later. so I think 99, 2000 is probably the answer now that I think about it.
01:15:55
Speaker
And ah so the the the subspace channel I'm looking here now, I'm looking at ah December 15th, 1998, November 1st, 98, with the broom closet ah less than one month from its third birthday, the subspace channel message form is back with all kinds of new bells and whistles.
01:16:15
Speaker
but That sounds like something would write. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, now i When did like I, I, you know, and I, and I posted on it ah briefly um was, Ooh, and you have your ICQ number on this.
01:16:31
Speaker
How else would you contact me? That's still good. You can, you can reach out right now and ICQ. Oh, Oh, oh um when did when did how how did that develop when did like you know because you're still friends you know we're were you were just talking about trolls uh who yeah know who you met uh like the space quest uh historian like he was a very active letter rider is someone i met on the subspace channel whoa and then behind this door is wilco web but no kevin what are you doing here
01:17:08
Speaker
um you know, like when, when did go from, it's like, Hey, I made this thing and I had like this guest book and like, you know, people were writing on this.
01:17:19
Speaker
When, when did you notice that it became a community? That's a good question. You know, i think that like there was a sense of that, I think growing just in terms of like,
01:17:31
Speaker
as this sort of web ring of space quest websites emerged. Cause there was like a point early on in this history where there were probably like 25 active space quest sites on the internet. Somehow they were all posting updates and and creating content and stuff like that, which is crazy to think about nowadays.
01:17:54
Speaker
But, I think there a little bit of a community there. There were a lot of emails that went around and like, we were all trying to help each other out and contribute to each other's websites and hype it up when one of us did something cool. So there's really a sense of like, how can we just grow this into a big thing? And then I think once web forums became a thing, initially the subspace channel, I believe was hosted offsite at a different website.
01:18:19
Speaker
And then eventually when I figured out how to like, install my own CGI based web forum. I moved it to my host and started my own, but yeah, a little bit of that community was there even before the social space channel, but it definitely began to grow while we started to realize, i mean, we had people that were definitely regulars there. I think for a lot of us, myself included, it was the main place that we sort of socialized on the internet. And I mean,
01:18:47
Speaker
it was ah very active forum. I it had, think it was extremely active. I remember ah its peak. I think it had like a thousand or so registered members. That's crazy. And, you know, certainly not all of those were daily posters, but it's the sort of forum where, you know, you might get,
01:19:05
Speaker
20 topics posted a day across various categories. And it also had a hints and tips section that people could come in and ask for hints and get feedback. And that was very active. A lot of people who couldn't solve something and the walkthroughs or or need a smaller hint or had tech support problems.
01:19:23
Speaker
So you had a lot of people coming practically, but also just, we had sort of a ah general discussion forum that, you know, we talked about movies and television, music and stuff like that, that we liked. And I think that's where a lot of that community grow out of.
01:19:36
Speaker
Grow out was just a bunch of kind of nerds with a similar interest getting to know each other. It was certainly the first online community that I was part of. I posted on a few other forums. I was a big TrekBBS.com guy. Oh, TrekBBS.
01:19:49
Speaker
Yeah, I was all over that. That's an internet classic. Yes, yes, yes. i i I'd be curious to know if my account still exists there or if Trek BBS still exists. Trek BBS feels like Mount Rushmore, you know? like yeah absolutely. i evolve All right, there's an easy way to find out.
01:20:10
Speaker
if Trek PBS still exists. And of course it still does. It's still, let's see if it still looks exactly the same. It doesn't look exactly the same. Ah, bummer. Ah, bummer. There are there like, I'm looking here and I'm seeing like posts as recent as like 13 minutes ago.
01:20:32
Speaker
Yes. Like Trek. And I'm willing to bet. I'm, I would, I would, Put down that there's, if, if you spent a little bit of time, Jess going through Trek BBS, uh, right now, you would probably find like you would like, it would, it would mostly be like, Oh, I don't know who this person talking about Voyager is. Oh, I don't know who this is. i don't know. I'm going to tell you. and then you get person i know exactly who this is.
01:21:01
Speaker
Oh my God. The person who made the most recent post in general Trek discussion 18 minutes ago. um know that person. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, no, it's very, yeah.
01:21:11
Speaker
and First time I've probably been there in like 15 years and literally the first post in the main forum is by a person I know. Yeah. Do you speak future? Um, now.
01:21:23
Speaker
Yeah, that's the post. Yeah. I believe that is author Christopher Bennett, who has written a few Star Trek novels through the years after getting his start. He he joined, uh, looking at his account, he joined in March fifteen of 2001.
01:21:37
Speaker
That's perfect. like Yeah, no this sounds right. He has a 24-year-old active Trek BBS account. And because this BBS system is incredibly revealing to people's business, I can tell you that Christopher, at the time of recording, is currently viewing the thread titled The General Knight Rider Thread, which I'm guessing is a thread at this BBS to talk about the TV series Knight Rider.
01:22:04
Speaker
um But... Yeah, I mean... Shout out, Christopher. ah hope you enjoy Knight Rider.
01:22:12
Speaker
uh... The general Knight Rider... ah
01:22:19
Speaker
Oh, it's, it's there. I guess they're making a night Raider movie. um Oh, wow. wow And in any case, so how long did the subspace channel run? How, how, how long did, was that there?
01:22:34
Speaker
You know, it stuck around, i believe until probably about the time that I stopped update. Like I kind stopped updating the website circa 2000.
01:22:48
Speaker
I finally stopped like 2004, but I'd mostly stopped by 2000 on the initial run. 2004, 2005 is probably like the last updates to it. Maybe even earlier than that.
01:23:00
Speaker
ah But the subspace channel survived that whole time and then a little bit longer. ah But once... like the website wasn't being updated once interest in SpaceQuest started to decline, once there were other meeting places on the internet, including the SpaceQuest.net forum, it kind of fell into disrepair. It wasn't being moderated.
The Decline of Online Forums and Digital Archaeology
01:23:20
Speaker
it started getting hit by spam.
01:23:22
Speaker
And then eventually whatever software is running like PHP BB or whatever the bulletin board was, eventually some sort of update to the web server broke it and it just sort of ceased to exist at that point so it really fell into disrepair and eventually just died uh along the way which is a shame i hate that you know it's something that looking back you don't i hesitate to call myself like the steward of that community but I kind of got it bummed out about space quest and sort of moved on and kind of left it, uh, uh, left it there, uh, unattended.
01:24:02
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, you know, that, that is like, because also, so what, what year is that by that's like, I'm thinking like, I know that was still updating the site. Like,
01:24:19
Speaker
when I got married in 2003, cause I uploaded like photos of myself at Sierra headquarters. Uh, and, uh, I think there were updates maybe through 2004 or so. And then I bet the broom closet probably quit working by 2000. I'm sorry. The subspace channel quit working by 2005 or 2006. And that point,
01:24:36
Speaker
so and ah at that point their start like 2005 and 2006, you're starting to, to see like, you know, mega forums and yeah stuff like that, like kind of pop up and, uh, you know, like, so, and like, when does like dig? and Yeah. I mean, like we're hitting them because like something awful has already been going on for a bit at that point, but starts in 99, 2000.
01:25:07
Speaker
ninety nine two thousand Um, and that was like, but then dig, which was like, uh, you know, uh, like, which was enormous for, for a time.
01:25:22
Speaker
ah and, and some of those other ones, like, I, I just remember, like, because I like just speaking for myself, I wonder, like, there has to be a discipline of like,
01:25:36
Speaker
You know, is is somebody doing internet archaeology beyond like, like, like in an academic way, like not in There must be. Like, find this interesting. know who it is.
01:25:48
Speaker
Yeah, I don't, there must be. I mean, it's not like research I'm familiar with. Yeah. There are too many people like... probably have, especially I think your generation, if you go just a few years earlier, right.
01:26:02
Speaker
Who I think have to be so steeped in internet culture and their brains so rotted by it that they're bound to be academics who are doing some serious research on this sort of digital archeology. It has to be out there. I'm fascinated by it because it's like,
01:26:18
Speaker
You know, when when the communities that I was in you know, in my sliders and forums and and stuff like that, Farscape forums, things like that.
01:26:30
Speaker
Professor Arturo's subspace channel. Yeah, yeah. ah Dargo's subspace channel. Like, when we were in them, and and let me know if you, you know, if if you felt the same way, it just kind of felt like those would just be there forever.
01:26:44
Speaker
Yeah. And like, even if like people stopped posting there, which I knew would happen, um, at least and on some level, because I remember like being there for like forums that did kind of die out, but like, it always just felt like that, that would all be there. And we would all like, you know, we would all kind of always like, that would all always be there.
Modern Platforms vs. Old Internet Culture
01:27:07
Speaker
And uh now you know that's all gone and like i mean not entirely like you know trek bbs is still there and there's you know uh a lot of stuff uh preserved by archive.org and all that but it not only um
01:27:26
Speaker
um like, you know, do a lot of those websites no longer exist or like, you know, have kind of imperfect archiving on archive.org. Like, you know, it doesn't, it didn't collect all of one. It's hard to archive those like CGI and PHP driven yeah platform. So you might get like the main page, but none of the actual links to the messages work or it's incomplete in the way it does. Yeah. But like, it was also like,
01:27:56
Speaker
it It is, i you know, an entire way of interfacing with the internet just doesn't exist anymore. And like, right it it does, like, yes, there are still people making websites and there are still like, you know, kind of You know, like there's a, that I, for yeah there's Neo cities.
01:28:18
Speaker
Yeah. And I'm sure there are modern softwares to run a bulletin board, know, just like what I used back in the early two thousands. I mean, i even thought about this briefly when I was sort of like dusting off the broom closet was like, does what's up a new message for him? Like, what if I just had like a new subspace channel, but then it's like,
01:28:40
Speaker
I don't know that those sorts of communities barely existing more. Do I want to babysit that community? And, you know, you already have a discord, uh, I have a discord. Yeah. I mean, at some level, and I mean, discord's not the same. No, a discord is like, it's hard to pin down other than, you know, just sort of the, the more conversational style of it. Whereas, you know, a good forum post, maybe several paragraphs long, if you're doing it properly, I believe.
01:29:06
Speaker
Um, You want to know something that has really been lost? What? Is that it was all so much more cringe. Oh God, it was. And I want to be clear here.
01:29:19
Speaker
I'm not even joking. Like a lot of the early internet was so much more earnest and embarrassing. Yeah. I mean, my tone and I'm like, I'm constantly calling myself like, you know,
01:29:37
Speaker
the custodian of the broom closet and taking on like this character. And I'm like, I think back and, you know, I'm calling everyone who visits the site and uses the subspace channel space cadets, like, you know, like howdy duty has his peanut gallery or something like that. And, um, you know, I remember in the forums, I signed off every message, like best wishes, exclamation point, Jess,
01:30:06
Speaker
And to a point that like that became like a gimmick that people joked about and everything. It's just like, I didn't care. Like I kind of had this like, goofy over the top, like, I don't know, like what I imagined almost be like, ah you know, my job is to be like the Stanley of this community. Like nobody loves Marvel comics more than me. And I'm here to like, make my excitement infectious for all of you people. there was If was going for it.
01:30:34
Speaker
posted like that on you know blue sky or threads or you know anything like that who people would justifiably be like those are some of the most obnoxious affectations I've ever seen in the world yeah and like if I'm posting like big news space cadets I'm streaming space quest 2 tonight be sure to hop in your rocket and speed on over to twitch like people would be muting me left and right yeah like that is yeah but that's i there's something fun about that and i mean i really was trying to just like cultivate i think part of it was i was just like that's a fun way to talk like i'm i'm someone who's there to hype this this bunch of games that i like yeah but also it's i think i sort of saw it's like you know i didn't ever imagine becoming like a figure in this community but it's also like well now i i kind of
01:31:26
Speaker
you have a role to play in it of kind of being like the, the spokesperson for, you know, this fan community that I, that built around these games. When, when you started talking, uh, earlier, um,
01:31:41
Speaker
when, when we were chatting, like, uh, like before the, the re-release of the, the website, we're not re-release, but like the update of the website, you, you said a thing that you were doing was you were trying to emulate that voice again.
01:31:57
Speaker
uh, like, you know, you, you wrote this new letter, like the 2025 letter from, from, uh, custodian. Um, What was it like for you to revisit that voice?
01:32:10
Speaker
How did it feel? what i don't think I quite got there. Did you dislike it? Like, what what was it? I don't think I quite got there, first of all. Like, I think that 2025 letter from the custodian that's sort of a retrospective of the 30 years that posted – um I don't think I quite got back to that fan-ish tone, but I tried to i tried to emulate
Rekindling Passion for Space Quest and Old Internet
01:32:33
Speaker
it. It's weird because most of my writing now is academic writing, which is a very different sort of thing. should You should bring that to your academic writing.
01:32:41
Speaker
ah should I should. you know i should. good at Today I'm going to talk about the disillusion of Soviet Union. yeah That's right. No, why not? um Yeah, but...
01:32:55
Speaker
The Berlin Wall fell like a force field separating Roger from... Yeah. I will say, like... yeah but i will say like that 30th anniversary letter, which is very self-indulgent and it's very like waxing nostalgic, uh, and everything else.
01:33:18
Speaker
It's a little cringe. I think in the way I want it to be cringe, like this is a letter as much for me as it was anyone who might actually read it. But have to say, trying to get back into that mode of, of thinking about space question, writing about it again, sort of like in Stanley Excelsior mode.
01:33:37
Speaker
Uh, was really nostalgic like i i got this is going sound corny readers, uh, quest quest podcast at gmail.com. If you want to make fun of me for this, but got a little weepy Ryan it. Cause the whole time I'm just thinking it's like, Oh my God, I'm like back in my dorm room in 1995. And I'm with my roommate, Seth and Corey that I don't, I don't see anymore. I haven't seen Seth in 25 years. You know, I still chat with Corey, but we haven't,
01:34:13
Speaker
like hung out face to face and forever. And I still have all these relationships of people who some they're still in my life and others that I've been removed from for years now. And it just very much put me back in that space in like a way that was Weirdly touching to me because think as silly as it is to say a lot of important relationships in my life at one level or another, you know, sort of spun out of this website.
01:34:45
Speaker
ah You know, people who are still an important part of my life today are people that ah sort of met in this first online community I was part of. So, yeah, it was amazing. it was fun to try to get back into that mode and it was nostalgic in sort of a good way. was like, it was a ah good little weepy moment as I'm sitting there riding this thing and sort of thinking back on what this was like. So yeah, it's, uh, it's been a fun exercise. Like I've, I think, I mean,
01:35:17
Speaker
I've loved the space quest series. there There's a reason why it was the game I chose to focus on when I made this website. But i think, forcing myself to think and write about space quest again, more than I have in decades has kind of reignited a lot of my passion for the games too. So that
Preserving Internet History and Concluding Thoughts
01:35:37
Speaker
part's been really fun. I think that thinking about this stuff has helped me get back a little bit of that excitement I had when I was 18, when I thought these games were just like the coolest thing I'd ever seen.
01:35:49
Speaker
So yeah, ah this was, it was fun trying to figure out how to do this again. And then trying to figure out it's like, well, if I were making this website in 2025, world where like, you know, you can have video and a world where you can like easily get ahold of scanned documents and you can get high resolution images and transparent PNGs.
01:36:20
Speaker
but right Like what could I do differently? And that's been fun. Like thinking it's like, Well, if i pick up the broom closet where it left off, you know, 25 years ago, now it's 30th anniversary.
01:36:33
Speaker
What does new content look like? And I've had a lot of fun kind jumping that forward. It's like, yeah it's like fan games are such a part of this community. Now I need to figure out how to incorporate fan games more meaningfully into this website. So create a new section for that publications, like just every,
01:36:49
Speaker
review an article about space quest i could find it's like slap them up on the website once by a time that would have been compatible with dial-up bandwidths and other things like that it's like sure yeah why not have ah review of space quest 6 from like the kalamazoo gazette or whatever um so yeah that's that's been really fun i was trying to think it's like well if I had all of this sort of modern internet at my disposal 25, 30 years ago, what sort of content I've created then tank trying to just sort pick up where, uh, where old me left off.
01:37:27
Speaker
Yeah. Oh man. I, you know, going to say this, uh, this discussion of the, the old past internet has made me, made me feel quite nostalgic and a little, a little sad. Yeah. What's past.
01:37:44
Speaker
It really, I mean, and but yeah as I've tweeted, or not tweeted, I've skeeted about this in in recent weeks. And as people have like drifted in to to see that, you know this site's still there. Like I've seen so much, you know, it's like people just call me. Maybe people that never saw the site before. It's like, oh, missed this internet. Or God, HTML 1.0 is you know, it was just amazing. I wish the internet still looked like this and just comments like that. And I think there is a lot of nostalgia and it's something that I've been really lucky. I mean, part of the story of the broom closet is it's been hosted on this server, w i w.org for pretty much its entire existence, which is just a server owned by a friend of mine, Chris, uh, just like a server. He's kept running for 30 years now. And, uh,
01:38:32
Speaker
and The fact that it's made to be online continuously and that all this content that I wrote when I was 18 is preserved means that it's sort of been able to stick around when you GeoCities closed and when most people eventually quit paying for the web space that hosted websites from this era. So I kind of love that it still has that old vibe. And it's good to know, even people don't have any nostalgia for SpaceQuest or this site necessarily, that kind of like me, and it sounds like kind of like you, this is an era of the internet that
01:39:09
Speaker
that we kind of miss because it doesn't exist anymore. It's like, now, if you want to find out about space quest, you go to Wikipedia, you go to maybe the space quest, Omnipedia, which is their wiki aside. Uh, you know, you, you could chat GPT and he says, chat GPT, what's space quest.
01:39:26
Speaker
And it tells you a very accurate summary of it because it's a great website. It's got it all. Yeah. Why would you use Google anymore? yeah Um, and if you do, Google's got AI to tell you what it is too. Oh, perfect. Um, yeah, but yeah,
01:39:39
Speaker
I do like, I'm the same way. I wish there was more of this. You know, a site that still is around that while it's in a more modern form, I think captures a lot of this same vibe that comes along just a year or two after the Broom Closet. If you've ever been to the Monkey Island Scum Bar,
01:39:58
Speaker
that seems That sounds familiar. Yeah, the Monkey Island Scum Bar has been around, I bet and it's 29 or 30, or 29 or 28 years at this point. It launched not long after the Broom Closet, so it's coming up on big anniversary too.
01:40:11
Speaker
It's more modern looking now. Yes, yes. But it is very much cut from the same cloth. And certainly if you um you saw it back in the 90s and early two thousand it looked and felt more like the same kind of fan site that the room.
01:40:35
Speaker
I probably am thinking of a mix and mojo. And I believe this is part of the mix and mojo yeah network. Because i I, I remember checking mix and mojo like every day.
01:40:48
Speaker
yeah oh yeah. Yeah. You gotta go there for your Lucasarts news, but this side, yeah. I'd like mine has been pretty much consistently updated through that whole period. Yeah. yeah to I mean, I recharged for 20 plus years. Um, just I could come back with the area of the international house of Mojo.
01:41:06
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's a fantastic site. I mean, it's, and one that, uh, you know, I think Captures a lot of that same spirit and one that I've always enjoyed. um So, I mean, there are sites like that out there still, but there aren't a lot. Fan sites just have been goggled up by fandom.com and, and, or just simply ceased to exist.
01:41:31
Speaker
Which is a shame. Yeah. Everybody should make a fan site. Our friend Mike would say everyone should have a website. That's true. You know what? They're right. but Yeah. Yeah. uh this yeah i i'm i'm just still stuck on like you know the the like you know you decide that you're gonna make this website and then you're like all right well walkthroughs of course and then well i gotta to have other stuff so i'm gonna write you know fester blatz's uh recommends space balls and plant yes
01:42:07
Speaker
Like, you know, that that that just feels so correct ah to me. that That is exit like, you know, like that just feels like, well, I have to. it's It's ninety it's it's the the mid to late 90s and I'm a college student. I have access to the internet. Of course, I'm going to make a website.
01:42:26
Speaker
yeah no i mean yeah i'll figure it out i'll just make it up as i go yeah i mean and that's that's definitely the vibe uh that that i it was just sort of like throw stuff against the wall and and see what sticks as as part of that and you know a lot of it is is pretty cringe nowadays like i read things that uh that i wrote uh That's like, Oh, I don't know if I would have, uh, I don't know if I would have written it quite like that now. Uh, but I kind of liked that too. I like that. They're cringy bits of the website that are a little embarrassing in hindsight.
01:43:06
Speaker
And, uh, yeah, I mean, it's, it's funny to think about. Yeah. Just trying to figure out what content is. Like, I remember someone brought this up the other day. They pulled up a internet archive version, I think of the website and they're like, what's going on here. The website is called, uh, B Wank masters, virtual broom closet. And there's a logo with B Wank master at the top, Rogers, girlfriend and destined wife instead of Roger. It's like, what was going on? Why was this website called B Wank masters, virtual broom closet for a few months? Right.
01:43:37
Speaker
And the answer was, have to keep doing content. I have to have new things. yeah So I created this whole meta storyline where it's like, Roger has been kidnapped by Sludge Vohal.
01:43:51
Speaker
I think I remember this too. And until... Oh, it probably would have been like 97, 98. Probably not then. Probably not. Yeah. But the idea was, it's like, I just told the story. It's like, Roger's been captured by Sludge Vohal and B has taken over the site until he can be rescued.
01:44:08
Speaker
So for a few months, just like everything on the site was written in like a different voice to the best of my ability. I changed the color scheme, the graphics, everything. And then a few months later, I brought back Roger and it's like, Roger's been rescued. Be be saved him from Sludge Vohal and everything's back to normal. It's just like, that is, looking back, like what a weird thing to do.
01:44:32
Speaker
i'm trying But I think it's just driven by this idea. It's like, once you got walkthroughs, you got to start getting a little creative about how you make this website you know, interesting. And that was my answer. There weren't really rules on how to do that. So I was like, yeah, I'll just do like a little meta level storyline about the website.
01:44:50
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Why not? Why not? Yeah. It's weird. and It was fun. It was a, it was a chance for a nerdy kid who desperately wanted an audience for anything he had to say or write or do.
01:45:05
Speaker
you know, like just trying to cultivate that audience by doing whatever he could to entertain ah bunch of nerds just like him. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
01:45:16
Speaker
Like, yeah. You know, I'm, I'm sorry because now I'm just looking at these monkey Island websites. No, it's a really good monkey Island website. Isn't it? Like I'm telling you it is a, it's a fantastic site. It was always one those sites that i thought it's like,
01:45:33
Speaker
okay, I kind of wish, like, if I could start the broom closet over fresh, I might still some of their approach because it's it's really streamlined in some ways that, yeah, the broom closet grows, like, I just keep bolting shit onto it.
01:45:46
Speaker
Yeah, the longer it lasts. Looking at some of these pages, like, it will swap back into the old ah version. Like, there's pages that are in the 1.0 framework. There are pages that are in 2.0, like...
01:45:59
Speaker
It's also, and I loved this little joke, it just says at the bottom, still optimized for 800 600. Great, great joke. um And it is. i Yeah, no, that's not, it's technically not a joke. But, um...
01:46:14
Speaker
All right. We are, we're, we're, we're, we're just about wrapped up in this, this will, this ends by the way, forever. This ends ah space quest month.
01:46:26
Speaker
That's right. Next month we start leisure suit Larry month. We're going to begin with leisure suit Larry in the land of the lounge lizards, work our way through leisure suit Larry, looking for love in all the wrong places, several wrong places, actually. Then we'll move on to leisure suit Larry three.
01:46:40
Speaker
won't.
01:46:43
Speaker
there's no luxury for oh that's yeah i'm gonna find it um no i think you'll be surprised but uh yeah we're gonna we're gonna take a break from uh space quest for a bit and uh we haven't we haven't talked about let me take a look i don't we've been talking about space quest for so long i don't even remember ah what our our list of like uh uh potential oh man i yeah our our uh uh okay Yeah, there's a couple ah couple good ideas in there for for our future ones.
01:47:17
Speaker
Anyway. are You heard it here first. There are two more episodes left of Quest Quest. We have two ideas. There are two ideas in our little document. So we're going to have to start working on that.
01:47:28
Speaker
ah You don know what? Neither one of them are. Space Quest 4. Sorry, Space Quest 4. You'll have to be covered in the 35th anniversary of the virtual broom closet. All right. But thank you so much for listening to quest quest.
01:47:39
Speaker
And, uh, you know, I really enjoyed this conversation today. Oh, thank you, buddy. I mean, I feel self-indulgent allowing myself to be interviewed on my own podcast at some level, but,
01:47:50
Speaker
it's fun to get to talk like again i've thought more about the broom closet and space quest in the past month or so than i have in 25 years yeah and that's been that's been really fun it's great to look back at it uh if you have any memories or anything else you'd like to say uh old grudges yeah old I don't want to hear those. yes like I'd love to hear from all my enemies that made through the, I didn't talk about them, but all the haters come at me. Okay. Well, if you're a hater and want to come at Jess, uh, quest quest podcast with gmail.com. You can also leave us a five-star review, even if you're a hater.
01:48:30
Speaker
Um, and, uh, join us next week when we discuss space quest four.