The Space Bar

The Space Bar is an adventure game co-developed by Boffo Games and published by Rocket Science Games and Sega Soft in 1997. The game featured a 3-D environment which allowed the player to rotate (as opposed to Rocket Science's earlier production Obsidian in which the camera was usually fixed), and a humorous cast of aliens in the framework of a mystery. The player fills the role of a detective, interacting with characters and objects via a first-person interface. The name itself is a pun, as the game takes place in a bar in outer space: literally a "space bar" rather than the space bar found on a computer's keyboard.

An intergalactic PI named Maksh has been kidnapped. Also, an evil shape-shifter is hunting for a special data storage unit. His partner Alias Node has been assigned to track him down. As Alias Node, you track down the shape-shifter to a bar, much like the Mos Eisley cantina, where your goal is to find the fate of your partner, and the alien who is disguising as the shape-shifter.

You, however, have a special ability, the ability to form a mind meld with beings. You can inhabit the patrons of the bar in an effort to locate your partner and the shape-shifter. With this special ability, the game is divided into six mini-games as you search each alien for an explanation. A unique twist is that you view each game as that alien would see the world, whether as an insect, a potato or a being with three sexes. You're able to tackle each part of the game separately, and come and go as you please in this 360-degree panorama adventure game.

Tropes used in The Space Bar include:
  • Bad Guy Bar: The premise.
  • Continue Your Mission, Dammit!: If you spend too many turns getting things done, you'll start getting calls from your kidnapped partner or your Chief to hurry up, already, or creepy taunts and threats from the Big Bad.
  • Evil Sounds Deep: The Big Bad Ni'Dopal.
  • The Exotic Detective: Alias, who has the ability to read and explore other people's memories as an interrogation method.
  • Future Imperfect: One of the areas in the game is a historical museum in the form of a Wild West bar, with Entertainingly Wrong descriptions for everything (did you know, for instance, that diving helmets were used by cowboys to help defend against Indians and Nazis?). Alias even lampshades it at one point, snarkily noting he thinks the bar's creators did about fifteen minutes of research.
  • Heterosexual Life Partners: The opening cutscenes and various flashbacks strongly suggest Alias and Maksh are this, though Maksh also has a wife and kidlets.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: Justified. Your PDA is actually partly a digital storage device, which the on-board AI Zelda digitizes inventory into and out of as you need it.
  • I Owe You My Life: Taken to hilariously ludicrous degrees. Every time your partner contacts you to beg you to hurry up and rescue him before the Big Bad does something horrible to him, you get a flashback about how he risked his life to save/help you or your mother, as a guilt trip to motivate you. Which ends up easily equaling over 10 different times he's done so. And it turns out that there's actually even more times beyond that, and Alias and Maksh can't even agree on which ones actually "count".
  • Is It Something You Eat?: In the segment with the memories of the rather intellectually-challenged alien Thud, you describe most objects by their edibility. For instance, the bazooka is "Long. Heavy. Not edible". Despite this description, you can attempt to eat it.
  • Meaningful Name: The main character Alias Node. In computing terminology, "node" refers to a connection point for sending and receiving information, while "alias" refers to symbolic alternate names for information. Put it together, and it's essentially a descriptor of Alias' interrogation technique.
  • Mood Whiplash: Overall, the game is a comedy and has a number of hilarious parts and flashbacks... but it also has some rather serious parts (especially one flashback which is a trading simulation and another which involves helping out La Résistance), and then there's the creepy parts when the genuinely scary Big Bad taunts you over your PA and some of the death scenes you can experience.
  • Planet of Hats: Aliens tend to conform to various stereotypes, with the exception of humans (who are described as the "vanilla" species) and the betentacled aliens that inhabit this planet.
  • Sassy Secretary: Alias' PDA's AI Zelda gives off this vibe when interacting with him.
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