Space Quest V: The Next Mutation, Episode 3: The Search for Soup
100:00 Starting Soon ("Ataraxia" by Aaron Hodges-Boyle)
06:08 Beginning
16:15 Bumbling My Way to the Soup Thermos
28:40 Laying in a Course to the GENETIX LAB STATION!
33:35 Better the Vincent Price Treatment Than the Jeff Goldblum Treatment!
40:15 Fly Roger Gets Clever
56:27 Captain Fly and His Loyal Crew
1:05:20 Backtracking and Re-Infiltrating Genetix!
1:14:50 Thawing Out Beatrice
1:23:50 Helpless Before the Goliath
1:27:40 Learning to Bravely Hide from the Goliath
1:43:15 Infiltrating the Goliath!
Things are coming to a head in Space Quest V!
I start out convinced that the errant soup thermos on Klorox II is the key to tracking down the source of the Pukoid mutations. I can't quite remember the dying message of the colonist and how it seemed to suggest a way to said soup thermos. Well, it turns out that I can figure this out through the classic method of clicking wildly, and eventually Roger exits left on the screen to the left of the thermos and somehow emerges right next to it. We find the coordinates to the secret laboratory of the Genetix corporation, and we're off!
Once there, Roger finds himself trapped in an homage to The Fly, although it's blessedly the original Vincent Price version and not the Jeff Goldblum version (Space Quest loves its incongruously horrible deaths, but 90 full minutes of Roger slowly losing everything that makes him Roger while desperately bargaining with an uncaring universe would've been a bit too much)! Eventually, we work things out, learn about Genetix, and uncover a potential fix for Beatrice.
With his lady-love-to-be saved, there's nothing left for Roger and the crew of the Eureka to stop the Goliath from spreading the Pukoid menace before it reaches Xenon! Before we can do that, I have to go back to Kiz Urazgubi to finally put two and two together with the cloaked ship and the extra WD40 part that Cliffy gave me (long story short: we acquire a cloaking device!).
This session wraps up just as we're reaching the climactic moments of the game, with Roger infiltrating the Goliath! As a master of suspense, I'm now taking a short break from Space Quest V because the next two weekends were promising for me to start my Leisure Suit Larry playthrough in the guise of my drag persona Jaymee Rose! We'll wrap things up with Roger's latest adventure in early March!
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This playthrough was originally broadcast live on Twitch, beginning February 1, 2025 at https://www.twitch.tv/58dreamstreet
*Starting Soon theme*: "Ataraxia" by Aaron Hodges-Boyle. Aaron's got a wide catalog of "video game music to study or fall asleep to" over on his Bandcamp page: https://aaronhodges-boyle.bandcamp.com/!