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"Sabermetrics or SABRmetrics is the empirical analysis of baseball, especially baseball statistics that measure in-game activity. Sabermetricians collect and summarize the relevant data from this in-game activity to answer specific questions. The term is derived from the acronym SABR, which stands for the Society for American Baseball Research, founded in 1971. The term "sabermetrics" was coined by Bill James, who is one of its pioneers and is often considered its most prominent advocate and public face. Early history Henry Chadwick, a sportswriter in New York, developed the box score in 1858. This was the first way statisticians were able to describe the sport of baseball by numerically tracking various aspects of game play. The creation of the box score has given baseball statisticians a summary of the individual and team performances for a given game. Sabermetrics research began in the middle of the 20th century with the writings of Earnshaw Cook, one of the earliest sabermetricians. Cook's 1964 book Percentage Baseball was one of the first of its kind. At first, most organized baseball teams and professionals dismissed Cook's work as meaningless. The idea of a science of baseball statistics began to achieve legitimacy in 1977 when Bill James began releasing Baseball Abstracts, his annual compendium of baseball data. However, James's ideas were slow to find widespread acceptance. Bill James believed there was a widespread misunderstanging about how the game of baseball was played, claiming the sport was not defined by its rules but actually, as summarized by engineering professor Richard J. Puerzer, "defined by the conditions under which the game is played--specifically, the ballparks but also the players, the ethics, the strategies, the equipment, and the expectations of the public." Sabermetricians, sometimes considered baseball statisticians, began trying to replace the longtime favorite statistic known as the batting average. It has been claimed that team batting average provides a relatively poor fit for team runs scored. Sabermetric reasoning would say that runs win ballgames, and that a good measure of a player's worth is his ability to help his team score more runs than the opposing team. Before Bill James popularized sabermetrics, Davey Johnson used an IBM System/360 at team owner Jerold Hoffberger's brewery to write a FORTRAN baseball computer simulation while playing for the Baltimore Orioles in the early 1970s. He used his results in an unsuccessful attempt to promote to his manager Earl Weaver the idea that he should bat second in the lineup. He wrote IBM BASIC programs to help him manage the Tidewater Tides, and after becoming manager of the New York Mets in 1984, he arranged for a team employee to write a dBASE II application to compile and store advanced metrics on team statistics. Craig R. Wright was another employee in Major League Baseball, working with the Texas Rangers in the early 1980s. During his time with the Rangers, he became known as the first front office employee in MLB history to work under the title Sabermetrician.RotoJunkie – Roto 101 – Sabermetric Glossary (powered by evoArticles) BaseballsPast.com David Smith founded Retrosheet in 1989, with the objective of computerizing the box score of every major league baseball game ever played, in order to more accurately collect and compare the statistics of the game. The Oakland Athletics began to use a more quantitative approach to baseball by focusing on sabermetric principles in the 1990s. This initially began with Sandy Alderson as the former general manager of the team when he used the principles toward obtaining relatively undervalued players. His ideas were continued when Billy Beane took over as general manager in 1997, a job he held until 2015, and hired his assistant Paul DePodesta. Through the statistical analysis done by Beane and DePodesta in the 2002 season, the Oakland A's went on to win 20 games in a row. This was a historic moment for the franchise, in which the 20th game was played at the Alameda County Coliseum. His approaches to baseball soon gained national recognition when Michael Lewis published Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game in 2003 to detail Beane's use of Sabermetrics. In 2011, a film based on Lewis' book - also called Moneyball - was released and gave broad exposure to the techniques used in the Oakland Athletics' front office. Traditional measurements Sabermetrics was created in an attempt for baseball fans to learn about the sport through objective evidence. This is performed by evaluating players in every aspect of the game, specifically batting, pitching, and fielding. These evaluation measures are usually phrased in terms of either runs or team wins as older statistics were deemed ineffective. = Batting measurements = The traditional measure of batting performance is considered to be hits divided by the total number of at-bats. Bill James, along with other fathers of sabermetrics, found this measure to be flawed, as it ignores any other way a batter can reach base besides a hit. This led to the creation of the On-base percentage, which takes walks and hit-by-pitches into consideration. To calculate the On-Base percentage, the total number of hits + bases on balls + hit by pitch are divided by at bats + bases on balls + hit by pitch + sacrifice flies. Another issue with the traditional measure of the batting average is that it does not distinguish between hits (i.e., singles, doubles, triples, and home runs) and gives each hit equal value. Thus, a measure that differentiates between these four hit outcomes, the slugging percentage, was created. To calculate the slugging percentage, the total number of bases of all hits is divided by the total numbers of time at bat. Stephen Jay Gould proposed that the disappearance of .400 batting average is actually a sign of general improvement in batting. This is because, in the modern era, players are becoming more focused on hitting for power than for average. Therefore, it has become more valuable to compare players using the slugging percentage and on-base percentage over the batting average. These two improved sabermetric measures are important skills to measure in a batter and have been combined to create the modern statistic OPS. On-base plus slugging is the sum of the on- base percentage and the slugging percentage. This modern statistic has become useful in comparing players and is a powerful method of predicting runs scored from a certain player. Some of the other statistics that sabermetricians use to evaluate batting performance are weighted on-base average, secondary average, runs created, and equivalent average. = Pitching measurements = The traditional measure of pitching performance is considered to be the earned run average. It is calculated by dividing the number of earned runs allowed by the number of innings pitched and multiplying by nine because of the nine innings. This statistic provides the number of runs that a pitcher allows per game. It has proven to be flawed as it does not separate the ability of the pitcher from the abilities of the fielders that he plays with. Another classic measure for pitching is a pitcher's winning percentage. Winning percentage is calculated by dividing wins by the number of decisions (wins plus losses). This statistic can also be flawed as it is dependent on the pitcher's teammates' performances at the plate and in the field. Sabermetricians have attempted to find different measures of pitching performance that does not include the performances of the fielders involved. One of the earliest developed, and one of the most popular in use, is walks plus hits per inning pitched (WHIP), which while not completely defense-independent, tends to indicate how many times a pitcher is likely to put a player on base (either by base-on-balls, hit-by-pitch, or base hit) and thus how effective batters are against a particular pitcher in reaching base. A more recent development is the creation of defense independent pitching statistics (DIPS) system. Voros McCracken has been credited with the development of this system in 1999. Through his research, McCracken was able to show that there is little to no difference between pitchers in the number of hits they allow, regardless of their skill level. Some examples of these statistics are defense-independent ERA, fielding independent pitching, and defense-independent component ERA. Other sabermetricians have furthered the work in DIPS, such as Tom Tango who runs the Tango on Baseball sabermetrics website. Baseball Prospectus created another statistics called the peripheral ERA. This measure of a pitcher's performance takes hits, walks, home runs allowed, and strikeouts while adjusting for ballpark factors. Each ballpark has different dimensions when it comes to the outfield wall so a pitcher should not be measured the same for each of these parks. Batting average on balls in play (BABIP) is another useful measurement for determining pitcher's performance. When a pitcher has a high BABIP, they will often show improvements in the following season, while a pitcher with low BABIP will often show a decline in the following season. This is based on the statistical concept of regression to the mean. Others have created various means of attempting to quantify individual pitches based on characteristics of the pitch, as opposed to runs earned or balls hit. Higher mathematics Value over replacement player (VORP) is considered a popular sabermetric statistic. This statistic demonstrates how much a player contributes to his team in comparison to a fake replacement player that performs below average. This measurement was founded by Keith Woolner, a former writer for the sabermetric group/website Baseball Prospectus. Wins above replacement (WAR) is another popular sabermetric statistic that will evaluate a player's contributions to his team.Fangraphs: WAR Similar to VORP, WAR compares a certain player to a replacement-level player in order to determine the number of additional wins the player has provided to his team. WAR values vary with hitting positions and are largely determined by a player's successful performance and their amount of playing time. = Quantitative analysis in baseball = Many traditional and modern statistics, such as ERA and Wins Shared, don't give a full understanding of what is taking place on the field. Simple ratios are not sufficient to understand the statistical data of baseball. Structured quantitative analysis is capable of explaining many aspects of the game, for example, to examine how often a team should attempt to steal. Related rates in baseball Related rates can be used in baseball to give exact calculations of different plays in a game. For example, if a runner is being sent home from third, related rates can be used to show if a throw from the outfield would have been on time or if it was correctly cut off before the plate. Related rates also can aid in determining how fast a player can get around the bases after a batted ball, information that helps in the development of scouting reports and individual player development. Momentum and force Momentum and force is a similar application of calculus in baseball. Particularly, the average force on a bat while hitting a ball can be calculated by combining different concepts within applied calculus. First, the change in the ball's momentum by the external force F(t) must be calculated. The momentum can be found by multiplying the mass and velocity. The external force F(t) is a continuous function of time. Applications Sabermetrics can be used for multiple purposes, but the most common are evaluating past performance and predicting future performance to determine a player's contributions to his team. These may be useful when determining who should win end-of-the-season awards such as MVP and when determining the value of making a certain trade. Most baseball players tend to play a few years in the minor leagues before they are called up to the major league. The competitive differences coupled with ballpark effects make the exact comparison of a player's statistics a problem. Sabermetricians have been able to clear this problem by adjusting the player's minor league statistics, also known as the Minor-League Equivalency. Through these adjustments, teams are able to look at a player's performance in both AA and AAA to determine if he is fit to be called up to the majors. = Applied statistics = Sabermetrics methods are generally used for three purposes: # To compare key performances among certain specific players under realistic data conditions. The evaluation of past performance of a player enables an analytic overview. The comparison of this data between players can help one understand key points such as their market values. In that way, the role and the salary that should be given to that player can be defined. # To provide prediction of future performance of a given player or a team. When past data is available about the performance of a team or a specific player, Sabermetrics can be used to predict the average future performances for the next season. Thus, a prediction can be made with a certain probability about the number of wins and losses. # To provide a useful function of the player's contributions to his team. When analyzing data, one is able to understand the contributions a player makes to the success/failure of his team. Given that correlation, we can sign or release players with certain characteristics. = Machine learning for predicting game outcome = A machine learning model can be built using data sets available at sources such as baseball-reference. This model will give probability estimates for the outcome of specific games or the performance of particular players. These estimates are increasingly accurate when applied to a large number of events over a long term. The game outcome (win/lose) is treated as having a binomial distribution. Predictions can be made using a logistic regression model with explanatory variables including: opponents' runs scored, runs scored, shutouts time at bat, winning rate, and pitcher whip. Recent advances Many sabermetricians are still working hard to contribute to the field through creating new measures and asking new questions. Bill James' two Historical Baseball Abstract editions and Win Shares book have continued to advance the field of sabermetrics, 25 years after he helped start the movement. His former assistant Rob Neyer, who is now a senior writer at ESPN.com and national baseball editor of SBNation, also worked on popularizing sabermetrics since the mid-1980s. Nate Silver, a former writer and managing partner of Baseball Prospectus, invented PECOTA. This acronym stands for Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm, and is a sabermetric system for forecasting Major League Baseball player performance. Simply put, it assumes that the player's careers will follow a similar trajectory to players that they are similar to now. This system has been owned by Baseball Prospectus since 2003 and helps the website's authors invent or improve widely relied upon sabermetric measures and techniques. Beginning in the 2007 baseball season, the MLB started looking at technology to record detailed information regarding each pitch that is thrown in a game. This became known as the PITCHf/x system which is able to record the speed of the pitch, at its release point and as it crossed the plate, as well as the location and angle of the break of certain pitches through video cameras. FanGraphs is a website that favors this system as well as the analysis of play-by-play data. The website also specializes in publishing advanced baseball statistics as well as graphics that evaluate and track the performance of players and teams. In popular culture * Moneyball, the 2011 film about Billy Beane's use of sabermetrics to build the Oakland Athletics. The film is based on Michael Lewis' book of the same name. * The season 3 Numb3rs episode "Hardball" focuses on sabermetrics, and the season 1 episode "Sacrifice" also covers the subject. * "MoneyBART", the third episode of The Simpsons 22nd season, in which Lisa utilizes sabermetrics to coach Bart's Little League Baseball team. See also * Analytics (ice hockey), the ice hockey equivalent * Advanced statistics in basketball, the basketball equivalent * Fielding Bible Award * Kyle Boddy, founder of Driveline Baseball * PITCHf/x * Pitch quantification * Sports analytics * Statcast * The Hardball Times * Theorycraft * Total Baseball by John Thorn and Pete Palmer * Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame? by Bill James References ;Notes External links * The Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) * This Guy's Quest to Track Every Shot in the NBA Changed Basketball Forever – Wired, Mark McClusky, 28 October 2014 Category:Baseball culture Category:Baseball statistics Category:Baseball strategy Category:Bill James Category:Sports science "
"Logo of Space Quest Space Quest is a series of six comic science fiction adventure games released between 1986 and 1995. The games follow the adventures of a hapless janitor named Roger Wilco as he campaigns through the galaxy for "truth, justice and really clean floors". Initially created for Sierra On-Line by Mark Crowe and Scott Murphy (who called themselves the "Two Guys from Andromeda"), the games parodied both science fiction properties such as Star Wars and Star Trek (the theme song itself is a parody of the Star Wars theme), as well as pop-culture phenomena from McDonald's to Microsoft. The series featured a silly sense of humor heavily reliant on puns and wacky storylines. Roger Wilco, a perpetual loser, is often depicted as the underdog who repeatedly saves the universe (often by accident) – only to be either ignored or punished for violating minor regulations in the process. Development Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe, who had already worked together on the Sierra game The Black Cauldron, wanted to create a humorous science fiction adventure game. They also wanted it to star a janitor (a choice possibly inspired by the mop-wielding main character from Infocom's humorous sci-fi text adventure Planetfall). Murphy commented that "Sierra was in a mindset where everything was medieval and it was all fairly serious. I wanted to do a game that was more fun. We even liked the idea of 'fun death'! I mean, if the player is gonna die or fail, they should at least get a laugh out of it. So we came up with the idea of making death amusing. Let's face it, most adventure games involve a good deal of frustration for the player. But we felt that if we made failure fun, to an extent, you might have players actually going back and looking for new ways to die, just to see what happens!" Crowe noted, "We wanted to do two things for the player. One, we wanted him to feel as if he were in a movie, where he could just sort of kick back and enjoy the scenery. We also wanted the player to feel as if he really was the character on the screen." Although skeptical, Ken Williams gave the idea a shot. Scott and Mark created a short demo, which ended up becoming the first four rooms of Space Quest I, at which point Ken gave the project a green-light. Both Space Quests I and II were developed in Adventure Game Interpreter, Sierra's own programming language. Space Quest III was written in Sierra's Creative Interpreter (SCI), which had 3-D capabilities. Space Quest IV marked an evolution in terms of graphics by increasing the number of colors from 16 to 256 colors. Roger Wilco Roger Wilco is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Space Quest series, introduced in Space Quest: The Sarien Encounter in 1986. Roger is a bumbling if well-meaning everyman character, a spacefaring janitor who has a tendency to attract trouble and stumble into dangerous or interesting situations. Despite saving the universe on multiple occasions, he seems unable to gain any respect from society, and works as a "sanitation engineer" (in one form or another) throughout the series. The character's name is a reference to voice procedure, one of many puns in the series (it means "receiving you, will comply"). The first two Space Quest games allowed the player to choose the character's name, which defaulted to Roger Wilco if left blank. This feature was later removed in the remake of the first game. Roger is originally a janitor from the planet Xenon of the Earnon system. We first meet him as the janitor and sole survivor of the scientific research ship Arcada, which was overrun by the apparently hostile Sariens. After several extremely deadly adventures and a bit of janitorial work, he enters the StarCon Academy. Graduating in Space Quest V, he is promoted from a janitor to captain of the garbage scow SCS Eureka. He also meets Beatrice Creakworm Wankmeister, with whom he becomes romantically involved. In Space Quest 6, his spot in the limelight ends as he is busted back down to janitor and assigned to the backwoods of the cosmos. It is revealed in the time travel tomfoolery that is Space Quest IV that Roger would eventually marry Beatrice and that they would have a son (Roger Wilco Jr.) As Wilco now owes his life to his son, this must happen. Beatrice is absent from Space Quest 6, but she is mentioned in the game's closing credits and by Roger himself. We also learn that by Space Quest XII, when Roger Jr. is a young adult, Roger will be "unavailable" for some reason. The details are never disclosed. While Roger retains his basic appearance and sustains no lasting damage from his swashbucklings and repeated near-mutilations, his hair begins the series brown and changes to blonde in the upgrade between parts III and IV. (The same has happened to fellow adventure protagonists Guybrush Threepwood and Devon Aidendale, in Devon's case to the other direction.) While this retcon is never addressed in the game itself, it spawned a full-fledged fangame, Space Quest: The Lost Chapter. Including him on the 2004 list of "top ten working class heroes", Retro Gamer opined that "for a hero that Ken Williams (co-founder of Sierra) was initially unimpressed with, Roger Wilco has become a classic cult figure."Retro Gamer, p. 35. Games = Space Quest: The Sarien Encounter = The original Space Quest game was released in October 1986 and quickly became a hit, selling in excess of 100,000 copies (sales are believed to be around 200,000 to date, not including the many compilations it has been included in). It was remade and re-released in 1991 as "Space Quest I: Roger Wilco in the Sarien Encounter". = Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge = Released in 1987; Roger, with his newfound status of Hero, is transferred to the Xenon Orbital Station 4 and promoted to head (and only) janitor. All is quiet until he is abducted by Sludge Vohaul, who was behind the original Sarien attack of the Arcada. As Roger is being transported to the Labion labour mines as punishment for thwarting Sludge's original plan, the prison ship crash-lands in a nearby jungle upon the planet. Our hero manages to escape his pursuers and the dangers of the Labion jungle and soon reaches Sludge's asteroid base. Once again, it's up to Roger alone to stop Vohaul's evil plan: to eradicate sentient life from Xenon by launching millions of cloned insurance salesmen at the planet. = Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon = Released in 1989; Roger's escape pod from the end of SQII is captured by an automated garbage freighter. He escapes the robot-controlled scow by repairing an old ship, the Aluminum Mallard (a play on Howard Hughes' "Spruce Goose" and Star Wars' Millennium Falcon). He eventually discovers the sinister activities of a video game company known as ScumSoft run by the "Pirates of Pestulon". = Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers = Released in 1991; in this installment, Roger embarks on a wacky time- travel adventure through Space Quest games both past and future. A reborn Sludge Vohaul from Space Quest XII: Vohaul's Revenge II chases Roger through time in an attempt to finally kill him. Roger also visits Space Quest X: Latex Babes of Estros (whose title is a parody of Infocom's game Leather Goddesses of Phobos) and Space Quest I; in the latter, the graphics and music revert to the style of the original game and Roger is threatened by a group of monochromatic bikers who consider Roger's 256 colors pretentious (or comment on other graphics modes if played in EGA or Monochrome). The games Space Quest XII: Vohaul's Revenge II and Space Quest X: Latex Babes of Estros were never actually developed or released as full games, they exist only internally in Space Quest IV. = Space Quest V: Roger Wilco – The Next Mutation = Released in 1993; in Space Quest V, Roger is now a cadet in the StarCon academy. He graduates (or rather, cheats through the final exam) and is appointed captain of his own spacecraft (actually a space garbage scow). The main plot is to stop a mutagenic disease that is spreading through the galaxy by discovering its source, and fighting everyone that got infected. In the end, the disease infected the crew members of the SCS Goliath, a powerful warship, whose commander, Raemes T. Quirk (a rather blatant spoof of Captain Kirk), subsequently attacks the Eureka. In the end, Roger sacrifices his ship to get rid of the plague – and suddenly, if temporarily, becomes the commander of the fleet's flagship. Roger's cheating is, along with Raemes T. Quirk, an homage to William Shatner's Star Trek character, who famously cheated on his own Starfleet exam by reprogramming a "no-win" scenario so that he could successfully complete it. In a typical twist of luck, however, Roger's exam scores are still achieved by accident. = Space Quest 6: Roger Wilco in The Spinal Frontier = Released in 1995, this game was the last to be released in the Space Quest series. Having defeated the diabolical pukoid mutants in Space Quest V, Captain Roger Wilco triumphantly returns to StarCon headquarters – only to be court-martialed due to breaking StarCon regulations while saving the galaxy. He's busted down to Janitor Second Class, and assigned to the SCS DeepShip 86 (a parody of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), commanded by Commander Kielbasa, a Cowardly Lion look-alike whose name is taken from the Polish sausage as well as being a play on the names of both the feline Kilrathi from the video game series Wing Commander and of the character Mufasa from the animated motion picture The Lion King. His voice is a parody of Captain Jean- Luc Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation. The main villain in the game is a wrinkly old lady named Sharpei, a pun on the dog Shar Pei, a wrinkly dog. The game's subtitle comes from the final portion, in which Roger has to undergo miniaturization and enter the body of a shipmate and romantic interest. (This segment also provided the game's original subtitle, Where in Corpsman Santiago is Roger Wilco?, which was not used due to legal threats from the makers of the Carmen Sandiego products.) = Space Quest 6: The Spinal Frontier Interactive Demo = The demo for Space Quest 6 is actually a short game unto itself. It uses the SQ6 engine and takes place aboard the SCS DeepShip 86 but is a stand-alone adventure. The ship is taken over by Borg- like invaders called the Bjorn, and Wilco must defeat them. = In-fiction future sequels = In Space Quest IV, Roger travels into both the past and future of the game's timeline. Even in-game characters are conscious of living in a video game, and refer to eras with sequel numbers, not temporal units (such as years), even though specific years are named elsewhere in the Space Quest canon. Portions of the game took place in the time frames of the following "sequels": * Space Quest X: Latex Babes of Estros (a reference to Infocom's Leather Goddesses of Phobos): In this timeframe, Roger or his son, Roger Jr. had had an undetermined affair with Zondra of the Latex Babes, which he ended abruptly. This timeframe contains the planet Estros and the Galaxy Galleria space station mall. * Space Quest XII: Vohaul's Revenge II: In this timeframe, Vohaul's consciousness has been uploaded in the Xenon Super Computer and infected it like a virus. He took over the planet and is sending his minions back in time to kill Roger Wilco. An underground resistance is formed against him, including his nemesis' son, Roger Wilco Jr. These games were never actually created, and only exist within the plot of Space Quest IV. Scott Murphy has stated that he did intend to use these titles if the series had made it that far and the storyline still permitted it. = Roger Wilco's Spaced Out Game Pack = Budget software including several mini-games taken from the Space Quest series. Including hoverspeeder, Monolith Burger maker, and Ms. Astro Chicken. = Planet Pinball = Planet Pinball is a series of three Space Quest IV themed pinball boards in Take a Break! Pinball. The boards include; Level One: Planet Xenon in the Beginning, Level Two: Spaced Travel, Level Three: Reformation Day. = Hoyle Book of Games = Roger Wilco appears as an opponent in Hoyle's Official Book of Games, Volume I. He has conversations with the other opponents, talking about his adventures in the first three Space Quest games. Roger Wilco is trapped in the Hoyle game, and is trying to find a way to escape back to his game world. Roger Wilco returns in Hoyle 3, along with bad guy characters, Arnoid and Vohaul, but the characters are limited to talking about the game itself. Roger also appears as an opponent in Hoyle Classic Card Games, the fourth game in the series. Again interaction is limited to the game only. Cancelled games = Space Quest VII: Return to Roman Numerals = Sierra tried on several occasions to revive the series for another episode, with a working subtitle of The Return to Roman Numerals, since the previous game was titled Space Quest 6, not Space Quest VI. Development of Space Quest VII was underway in 1996 when Sierra released The Space Quest Collection, which consisted of Space Quest I through 6 and included a brief trailer of Space Quest VII (consisting of Roger strapping a giant rocket to his back and using it to push himself forward on roller skates in a scene reminiscent of Wile E. Coyote). Little was released regarding story line, interface, et cetera, although there was speculation that the game would introduce a multiplayer aspect. Scott Murphy said during development that Space Quest VII would contain some 3D elements, but would not require the use of a 3D accelerator card. Due to poor sales of Grim Fandango, a high-profile adventure game by LucasArts, there was a perception that humorous adventure games were no longer viable, so when Vivendi took over Sierra, Space Quest VII was cancelled. This project was eventually restarted in 1999, and pitched to management, but ultimately did not have enough support to continue within the company. Few details are known about the SQVII relaunch, save that there was one very ardent supporter, who later left Vivendi. = Space Quest = Another Space Quest began development by Escape Factory for the Microsoft Xbox video game console in 2002, entitled simply Space Quest. This attempt at creating a new Space Quest was announced on February 7, 2002. Development proceeded for almost a year and a half before the project was cancelled. According to Space Quest 6 designer Josh Mandel, the SQVII designers were forbidden from using story elements from the original Space Quest games or from even playing the games. This is disputable, since other sources claimed the developers had played the games before. Website FYI.com, also claimed that this "gutted" SQVII would not have been an adventure game at all and would have been released only on game console platforms such as the Xbox rather than the PC. Since then the Vivendi's Product Manager Bruce Goodwill, has confirmed that the title was going to be released only on console platforms. The game was planned as a departure from the main Space Quest series, rumors it starred a new character named "Wilger", although Roger Wilco was playable (as seen in a production video). Though it would have maintained a comedic theme in space, no plan was made to connect it to the original series. It was cancelled around 2003. Collections * The Space Quest Trilogy: Roger Wilco – The Other World Series (1992) – a collection containing Space Quest VGA, Space Quest II and Space Quest III on floppy disks. * The Space Quest Saga (1993) – This collection contained games I (VGA remake), II, III and IV all on floppy disks. * The Space Quest 15th Anniversary Collector's Edition (1994) – Released for Sierra's 15th anniversary, this contained games I-V and Roger Wilco's Spaced Out Game Pack, plus a video featuring the Two Guys from Andromeda and a complete history of the game series. It also contained a few foreign language editions of some of the games. There is also a secret bonus program giving the strange history of the World Famous Talking Bear. * Roger Wilco Unclogged (1995) – All the above, plus a humorous "Inside Space Quest" video, but without the Two Guys video * Space Quest Collection Series: Starring Roger Wilco (1997) – All six games, plus a preview of episode VII. * Space Quest Collection: A Long Time Ago in A Janitor Closet Far Far Away (2006) – Released by Vivendi Universal Games and contains all six games (only the VGA remake of SQ1). * Space Quest 1+2+3 & 4+5+6 collections (2010) – Two collections on GoG.com, minus the VGA remake. = Collection bonus material = * Funseeker's Guide to Eastern Madera County * History of Space Quest * Inside Space Quest = Fall 2006 releases = Vivendi Universal has re-released the Space Quest Collection (originally named Space Quest Compilation) that is compatible with Windows XP. The collection was released September 15, 2006.More info can be found at Sierra's Space Quest Collection The Space Quest games were made compatible by the licensing of DOSBox, a free program that allows users to play old DOS games on Windows XP. Valve's digital distribution platform re- released the XP/Vista compatible Space Quest Collection on July 23, 2009. It is so far unavailable in Australia and New Zealand. Promotional items Space Quest merchandise included the Space Quest III VHS tape and pin, Space Quest 6 mug, calling card and patch and an autographed picture of Roger Wilco. Books and comics Two strategy guides were released that contained novelizations of the first five games from Roger Wilco's perspective. The first of these included The Space Quest Companion by Peter and Jeremy Spear. The book is similar to Peter Spear's The King's Quest Companion and The Official Uncensored Leisure Suit Larry Bedside Companion. The first edition covered the first four games (with a preview of SQ5), and the second added the fifth game. It was written from the perspective of Roger Wilco sending journals on disks back into the past, so that his adventures could be made into video games so that his great grand parents (x-times removed) would have a chance to meet each other and fall in love through their mutual love of the games. Thus by inspiring the game designers to create the games, he insured his own future existence. Each story began with Roger's daydreams and his fantasies of marrying Cornucopia Agricorp and later Beatrice Wankmeister. The other was The Official Guide To Roger Wilco's Space Adventures by Jill Champion. It is similar to her The Official Book of Police Quest. It came in two editions as well. The book contains two interviews with Roger Wilco (one just after events of SQIV, and the other after SQV). The novels themselves are written as Roger's running monologues during his adventures. The first edition covers SQ EGA to SQIV, and the second edition covers SQI remake to SQV. The novel of SQ1 in the first edition is based on the original SQ1, and the version in the second edition is based on the remake of SQ1. Adventure Comics (a division of Malibu Comics) released three issues in 1992 of a comic based on Space Quest I under the name The Adventures of Roger Wilco. The first was written by John Shaw and was in full colour. The other two were written by Paul O'Connor and were black and white. The print run was very small and the books are very hard to find now. Fan-made games The series has remained popular with Sierra fans, and several fan sites are still active and maintain a community dedicated to the games. There have been several attempts to create a Space Quest fan game, such as the now-canceled SQ7.org project, and several fan games have actually been released. Games set in the Space Quest universe: * Space Quest 0: Replicated – a prequel to Space Quest I. * Space Quest: The Lost Chapter – set between the second and third games. * Space Quest IV.5: Roger Wilco And The Voyage Home – set between the fourth and fifth game. * Space Quest: Vohaul Strikes Back – an original hi-res installment set after Space Quest 6. * Space Quest 2 Remake: Vohaul's Revenge – a remake of Space Quest 2 in the style of Space Quest IV, developed by Infamous Adventures. * Space Quest: Incinerations – another original hi-res installment, with a more action-oriented approach in the traditional adventure genre and with a modern sensibility. According to Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Incinerations "completely re- imagines the whole Space Quest series as a sci-fi action thriller, focusing hard on character and drama while still managing to be just as tongue-in-cheek and funny as anything else that bears its name." * Space Quest Minus 1: Decisions of the Elders – a hybrid combination of old-style AGI graphics with icon-driven interface. Games influenced by Space Quest: * Cosmos Quest – Adventure game influenced by Space Quest. Legacy An action/adventure Space Quest game was planned for the Xbox, but was canceled. Thy Dungeonman II, a text adventure game from the creators of Homestar Runner, uses cover art that depicts the title character holding a mop in the same way Roger Wilco does on the Space Quest box art. He is also described as a "custodial knight" and the mop is also used to defeat enemies in a maze portion of the game. SpaceVenture On April 14, 2012, Mark Crowe and Scott Murphy announced they had reunited and were planning an original adventure game set in space. They established a new game development company called Two Guys from Andromeda for that purpose. Co-founder of the company Chris Pope (dubbed as "Space Pope" from fans) works to operate its marketing and interact directly with fans as well as Executive Producer. A Kickstarter project was launched to fund the development of the new game or SpaceVenture, with plans to feature the voice of Gary Owens (narrator of Space Quest IV and 6), prior to his death in 2015. As of June 13, 2012, they achieved their goal of $500,000 eventually raising $539,768 from their Kickstarter campaign, and have begun work on the game. As of September 2012, enough funding has been achieved to enable them to translate the game into German, Spanish, French and Italian. The game acts as a spiritual successor to the Space Quest series, including the use of a blue- collar worker (now a repairman rather than a janitor) as its protagonist. The hero in this case is named "Ace Hardway" after the home improvement chain Ace Hardware. Another character is "Cluck Y'egger", after test pilot Chuck Yeager. He is a chicken superhero based on the Astro Chicken running gag in the Space Quest series. The game will be rendered in CGI, but a "retro graphics" feature has been proposed. In June 2013, it was announced that there would be a playable Alpha demo at the 2013 San Diego Comicon. In January 2014, the game had a projected late 2015 release date.January 1, 2014 SpaceVenture Update. In October 2015, the Two Guys of Andromeda promised to continue development and to release the game in November 2016.September 30, 2015 SpaceVenture Update. The game remains in development, but has still (as of July 2020, over eight years after reaching its funding goal) not been given a release date. On June 2, 2019, an update was released on the Two Guys from Andromeda Twitter and Kickstarter pages revealing the box art for the game. On July 31st, 2020, a complete beta was released to Kickstarter backers.https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spaceventure/two-guys- spaceventure-by-the-creators-of-space-que/posts/2909932 See also References Category:Activision Blizzard franchises Category:Adventure games Category:Science fiction comedy Category:Comics based on video games Category:Sierra Entertainment games Category:Video game franchises Category:Space opera video games Category:Adventure games set in space Category:Video game franchises introduced in 1986 "