Sequel to
Space Quest: The Sarien Encounter, this was published in 1987 by
Sierra Online, and was again written by the infamous
Two Guys From Andromeda.
Story
Roger Wilco's fame after defeating the Sariens and saving the Earnon system has faded, and he is again a janitor. Working aboard Xenon Orbital Station 4 above his home planet, he's out sweeping up spacedust when his boss orders him to come back inside.
Ever incompetent, Roger is on the brink of losing his job again, and so is ordered to clean up the results of space sickness in a recently arrived commuter shuttle. Despite having just dropped his broom outside, Roger bravely enters the shuttle to clean up the vomit and is beaten unconscious by goons.
When he comes to, Roger is held before Sludge Vohaul, a huge sack of flab on a life support system. (NB: The Star Generator cartridge in the first game was made by Dr. Slash Vohaul, and this is what he's become in the time since ) Vohaul isn't too pleased about Roger spoiling his plans to steal the Star Generator with the help of the Sariens (for use as a weapon, of course). His new plot is to infest Xenon with hundreds of genetically-engineered life insurance salesman. Fiendish.
Roger, meanwhile, is taken down to the surface of the planet Labion to work in a mine. The hovercraft transporting him, however, runs out of fuel. The resulting crash kills his captors, and Roger escapes into the jungle. Avoiding patrols of guards, Roger makes his way through the jungle, a swamp, a dark cave and eventually reaches the landing platform he arrived at.
Successfully stealing a shuttle, Roger's escape is cut short as Vohaul takes the controls and redirects the shuttle back to his massive asteroid fortress *dramatic chord*. Avoiding the traps, robots and alien horrors inside the fortress, Roger confronts Vohaul only to be shrunk and placed in a jar. Cutting a hole in the glass, Roger climbs into Vohaul's life support system and switches it off. With Vohaul dead, Roger aborts the launch of the horde of salesman clones.
Unfortunately, Vohaul has activated an emergency system which is causing the asteroid's orbit around Labion to decay. Roger rushes to an escape pod (as he always seems to in these games) and escapes in the nick of time.
All isn't well yet, as the pod is nearly out of oxygen. Roger has no choice but to climb into the pod's cryogenic sleep chamber to survive. And so the game leaves us.
Space Quest 2 was a much larger game than it's predecessor. It also gained a bit of notoriety in my household as, being a bit young, I was terrified by the bit with the swamp monster (it's amazing how scary bad PC speaker sound effects and EGA graphics can be). The root monster bit, where you're given a graphic description of your digestion in the thing's stomach was also a thing of great childhood fondness.
Again, plenty of movie and sci-fi references, including:
Vohaul's henchmen all looked like soldiers from Planet of the Apes.
The alien in the fortress looked just like the soldier aliens from, er, Aliens. Except it had huge red lips, and implanted an egg by kissing you. This wouldn't hatch until you'd almost won the game. Thanks a lot, Sierra.
Labion was basically Endor from Return of the Jedi, right down to small Ewok-like inhabitants, and the landing platform above the treetops.
The Labion Terror Beast was basically Taz, and has its own node.
Your spacesuit at the beginning looked much like those aboard the Discovery in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Crowe and Murphy admitted that this was intended to be the final game in the series. But the fans would never have that. The game also included a cool comic book called Space Piston (which would reappear with Space Quest 4) detailing Roger's exploits in the previous game.
Edit: I've read on some fansites that Slash and Sludge Vohaul are in fact not the same person, but were born siamese twins. Slash was the superior of the two and Sludge bore a huge grudge because of this - ordering the Sariens to steal the Star Generator from his brother.