Space Quest V: Roger Wilco – The Next Mutation

Space Quest V
Developer: Dynamix Publisher: Sierra On-Line Platform: DOS Released in US: February 5, 1993 This game has unused music. This game has unused text. This game has debugging material. This game has a notes page

This page is rather stubbly and could use some expansion. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue this article?

Captain Kirk Roger Wilco vs. The Borg the space mutants.

To do: Revisional changes (later version makes Captain's Log "type" its words, adds a skip for EGA users in the crest cleaning game even if there's no EGA driver shipped with the later version, adds copyright to title, etc.). There's a prototype out there with extensive amounts of early dialogue that contain an abundance of spelling errors; another site covers that.

Clipped Title Theme

The last 20 seconds of the title theme is never fully heard as it cuts to the Captain's Log section mid-song. On slow computers (386), you can barely hear a few seconds of it before it fades out.

Unused Graphics

Quirk's sprites for his confrontation with Roger in the Space Bar contain an unused face, alongside sprites that likely would've been part of a wiggling-eyebrows animation.

The canister of Primordial Soup found on Klorox II has a complete set of sprites for the cursor, the inventory window, and the quick item access window, implying it was once planned to be picked up by the player.

Unused Text

Captain, I'm sorry--but the ambassador is dead.
Captain, the ambassador died from plot complications. We were unable to find a cure for the mutations in time.

Although the above text is unused, these are for two deaths that actually still remain in the script files. The intent was for them to be triggered if you left the transporter room and sat in the captain's chair without putting Bea in the cryo chamber after Thrakus, and without curing Bea after getting Spike's message at Genetix respectively. However, the game locks you in the transporter room which results in these scripted messages being orphaned code.

{You didn't complete your mission in time! You're fired!}

This appears in the Eureka script as a debug message for TrashRunsTimer, but never appears in the game. Presumably the death associated with this was removed to reduce pressure on the player.

Uh oh! Looks like you're going to have company in a minute, Roger.

Grouped with the other messages in the Goliath maze, are text of Roger being discovered by a Pukoid. According to the official hintbook, you'd have to avoid Pukoids above you while in the subfloor. This is not in the final game and the fact it made its way into the hintbook suggests it was cut late into development.

ARRRG! You nailed my ship, you twerp! You won't be so lucky next time.
Nice try, trashman, but you're just out of your league.
Eat that, wimp!
|f3|BOOM|f| Baby!
Try again RUG HEAD! You couldn't hit the broadside of a Dysan sphere.
Just keep yammering, punk. Why, in my day we used to have to play video games on real machines, like C64's and 2600's, not these wimpy piles of junk.
What do you mean? In your day, they played video games with wooden sticks and bearskins.
Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberry wine.

A fair amount of banter was removed from the Battle Cruiser sequence, evidently.

Battle Cruiser Debug Cheat

During any of your turns after you've placed your ships in the Battle Cruiser minigame, Look at the two white rectangular lights flanking the monitor exactly twice each. You'll know if you've done it right if no message appears.

Once this cheat is activated, all of Quirks ships are silently probed and rendered visible in all sectors. You'll have to change sector for the grid to refresh and the cheat's effect to be apparent.

(Source: Benshoof)