The Space Quest games are replete with funny dying situations, which were intended to poke fun at Sierra’s other games. They were graphic in a cartoony way, and were followed by some sarcastic remark. They brutally exaggerated the arbitrary and frustrating deaths of the King’s Quest games.
I’d like to stress that this was very much on purpose and part of the charm of the game. As every new game in the series came out, you found yourself seeking ways to die (making sure to save before) to see what Roger Wilco (the main character) would do or to see how he would react. It seldom disappointed in that regard.
Now, the problem was that some of those deaths were not just incidental, like falling off a cliff or drinking something that clearly warned you not to. Some where actually part of the main game puzzle logic, in which you had to die to advance your understanding of the environment and be able to move forward.
My biggest problem wasn’t that, though. My biggest complaint was regarding the many arbitrary puzzles and interface quirks. As someone mentioned before, you had to be facing the right way and next to an object in order for the game to respond properly. The text parser was also very terse, and lead to many fights with the interface like that classic Gilbert example of trying to pick up a bush.
In some situations, if you were one or two pixels off, the game would not acknowledge the interaction or give you a response that was not useful, and you would just miss an entirely important element of a puzzle. This is infuriatingly frustrating! 
Some puzzles made no sense at all. They required you to carry a specific item or perform a specific action or series of actions for which you had no possible motivation other than “the designers thought it would be funny.” We’re talking worse than rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle here – imagine if you had to also figure out that you needed to paint the rubber chicken blue and find a pretzel, all before being able to use it. Yeah, that bad.
Then there were the timed “action” sequences, where you had to control the character/ship/cursor/etc. in a precise, accurate, and careful manner for which the UI was utterly unsuited. Imagine the Thimbleweed Park arcade games with less responsive controls, as a key element in order to solve a puzzle. Absurd!
However, having said all that, the story, locations, graphics, and jokes were indeed very interesting. In my opinion, the humour was witty and irreverent, and more than a bit cheeky. It kept you wondering what else comes next, and made up for most of the transgressions. Mostly.
One of my favorite jokes/puzzles when I was younger is a can of Dehydrated Water, which you find in a survival kit. It says “HO, just add air” (i.e., it’s missing one “O” from “H2O,” which the ambient air can supply). It’s silly and nerdy, and pure Space Quest. Hilarious! 
It is important that you all understand that most of these quirks were par for the course in most adventure games of the time. None of these flaws were Space Quest specific. What SQ did was wrap them around a layer of sarcastic and zany humour, which helped soften the edge a bit. SQ games tried to kill you a lot, just like any other adventure game – they just did it in a funny and clever way, with lots of style and sometimes a little cynicism, but all in good fun. You knew they were parodying a similar situation from some other game, just with a funny twist.
I have very fond memories of playing these games, and armed with a hint guide (not a walk-through) they are indeed very entertaining. You just have to be ready to accept the insta-deaths and arbitrary sequences. As they say, save fast, save often; pick up everything that is not bolted down; and try everything with everything.
dZ.
