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Following his humorous adventures in Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon,
Roger Wilco is relaxing at his favorite pub somewhere in time and space when heavily
armed soldiers enter the room. Carrying a parting message from Roger's old nemesis,
Sludge Vohaul, they plan to get rid of the janitorial hero, execution style. That is
until a man with an over-sized hair dryer helps Roger escape through a time rip into
the future. Now Roger Wilco has woken up on his home planet, sometime in Space Quest
XII. The series has gone to ruin without it's hero, Vohaul rules all. Roger must
quickly hotwire a time pod and undo Vohaul's plot. The most logical way to do this is
to run amok through past, future and the end of the universe, having a few laughs
along the way. If there's a few spare moments, he might swing by the galaxy's biggest
mall, charm his ex-girlfriend whom he knows nothing about and provoke some brawly
monochrome bikers living in the original graphics of Space Quest I. Space Quest IV is
the first in the series to feature Sierra's SCI interface (better known as "VGA
icons"). Sierra's standard icon set, used here, includes icons for Walking, Looking, Using/Pickup, Smelling, Tasting as well as inventory access. Roger Wilco is shown on
the screen from the exterior in multiple viewpoints. It was released on floppy disks
initially, and then on CD-ROM in December 1992 with full speech support and featuring
Laugh-In announcer Gary Owens as the voice of the narrator. It featured 256-color hand
painted graphics and a fully mouse-driven interface. It was one of the first games to
use motion capture animation. The game cost over US$1,000,000 to produce, but sold m
ore than its three predecessors combined. Like Space Quest III, this one featured a
mini-game: Ms. Astro Chicken. |