Crazy Nick's Software Picks: Roger Wilco's Spaced Out Game Pack (MS-DOS) - Guest Post

Guest poster mecha-neko continues to torture himself for your entertainment.

Crazy Nick has returned.

Someone has a very cruel sense of humour.

Forget Roger Wilco. Let's spend some quality time with that famous computer game heroine...

MS. ASTRO CHICKEN:

MS. ASTRO CHICKEN: Flight of the Pullet, by ScumSoft.

What do you mean you've never heard of Ms. Astro Chicken?

She's got lips on her beak. Explain that.

I click the mouse and launch myself into adventure.

Space Flying Squirrel! Space Dog! Space Ms. Astro Chicken! Such good friends!

I click the mouse, and she eventually follows it. We make such a good team. She seems happy enough, at least.

The interface informs me I've got eggs. (Sounds serious. Maybe I should see a doctor? AHAHA.) I either have to collect them, protect them or fire them at my enemies. Only one way to find out! EGG AWAY!

My space eggs have no effect on the space flying squirrel. I've been playing for five minutes and I have yet to score my first point.

Curses! The furry git got me.

If only I could move a little FASTER.

Oh ho ho, time for some real egg mischief! Can you guess what happened when the egg hit the fan? That's right! Absolutely nothing happened. It went right through the fan and hit that rock.

This space farmer was shooting at me with his space blunderbuss. I space egged him. Ms. Astro Chicken laughs heartily, as do I. I award myself six points.

... I think he's dead. War is hell.

I was momentarily distracted and brutally torn apart by a wild space dog. Take a look at all the above screenshots. Notice how Ms. Chicken is in roughly the same position in each one. I played this for ten minutes; that is how slow she moves. I think my score of eight points is wholly respectable.

My robot brain is telling me that you can play this game in an arcade in Space Quest IV, but its not necessary to advance. I guess miracles can happen.

Man, all this gaming has made me hungry. I think it's time we hit...

MONOLITH BURGER:

This is the boss. His big flapping animated mouth is mesmerising.

In this game, you have to assemble burgers. You put them together in stages: yer lettuce, yer pickle, yer mayo, yer mustard, yer ketchup and yer sesame-seed bun. You got that? You better, because you don't get told it again in game.

The burger trundles down the conveyor belt... I click on the bright green stuff, then the burger. Now the olive green stuff, then the burger. Now the mayo, the burger. Mustard, burger.

CRAP! I missed with the ketchup!

My BURGER is REJECTED! They're DISINTEGRATING my BURGER! My EARS are RINGING due TO this EAR-SPLITTING din! Make it stop!

Wait, if I messed up, does this mean the game might end?! No such luck. Another burger appears on the conveyor belt.

You get $1 for each burger you make, plus the satisfaction of not seeing your hard work disintegrated by laser beams. It isn't particularly difficult to make a burger and it doesn't seem like the belt gets any faster when you make them. The main difficulty in this game is trying to get a shitty old serial ball mouse to do what you tell it to.

This is a game about a guy working in a burger shop. It's virtual burgery. It is not fun.

Yeah, well, your mum's some real hamburgers. How do you like that?

Let's get outta here. It's time for a ride on the...

SAND SKIMMER:

Whoosh! I'm skidding all over the place! They don't call this a 'Sand Skimmer' for nothing! That little Skimmer in the distance is actually the mouse cursor. I click to move the ship to that position, like Ms. Astro Chicken.

Driving over those little rocks knocks you about a bit.

Driving over the larger rocks sends Roger hurtling through the air.

Haw haw haw. Notice the cursor is on the opposite side of the screen. I didn't stand a chance. :(

I have no idea where Roger's blasting off to in this game. (Except onto his face.) I assume if I managed to get him to survive long enough, he'd either reach his destination or I'd score a point or something along those lines, but I couldn't get anywhere near that far.

If the games responded to your controls in a timely manner, they might have been entertaining for a minute or two. As they stand, they're a horrible, horrible mess and a complete waste of time. I guess you could say that's accurate to the experience of playing Space Quest IV!

I couldn't get it off PC speaker music, either.