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I also learned English mostly by Space Quest.

I remember being nine years old, sitting in front of SQ1 with my best friend, and trying to survive the escape pod early in the game. How do you avoid dying when it crashes on an alien world?

Our only hope was my neighbor who was a few years older and seemingly infinitely wise. I called him up, and patiently he spelled out the magic words to type before launching the escape pod:

“FASTEN SEAT BELT”

What do those words mean? We had no idea, but we lived on to explore another world.

A few years later I could read and write English just fine, but had no idea how anything was pronounced. Sierra English was a real thing among my generation.



Same memories for me, but with King’s quest 3. I still have the tiny English-french dictionary I wrecked by opening it and translating every and each word of each sentence, for that [6 months] adventure. To get rid of the wizard, become a bird, kill that nasty spider, go into bear’s house, etc, etc…




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