Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers (PC) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
75A playthrough of the 1992 CD-ROM rerelease of Sierra On-Line's 1991 graphic adventure for PCs running Dos, Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers.
Space Quest IV is my absolute favorite of the six games in the series. All of them are quite good, but this one was as close to a perfect adventure game as I've ever played. Not because of its puzzles (which are good, but not Sierra's best by a long shot), but because of its writing, personality, and its style. The writing alone is worth playing it for - it feels almost like a lost sequel to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (yeah, they channel Douglas Adams' humor THAT well) in how twisted, insane, and absolutely brilliant it can be.
There aren't many games as utterly gripping for their entire length as this one was the first time I played it, and it hasn't lost any of its shine in the 25 years since it was released. There's a very good reason that this game was given away by PC manufacturers for years as a showpiece for multimedia PCs: it looks and sounds incredible, highlighting a ton of skill, talent, and money all put to good use in proving the merits of the CD-ROM format for gaming.
Like most of Sierra's adventures from 1990 through around 1994, the backdrops are all hand-painted, the musical score is some of Sierra's best (Mark Seibert and Ken Allen are well known by the company's fans because of the sheer quality and quantity of their output), and it's fully voice acted, effectively elevating the entire experience above anything that would've been possible on floppy disc. I mean, it features Gary Owens as the narrator. Gary Owens! If you don't know the name, look him up. You know who he is, even if you don't know you know. He was in EVERYTHING. And his tone is as bombastic, condescending, and sarcastic as you'd only dreamed before when reading the on-screen text. He's definitely a major highlight of the whole experience.
But then, given that the game was cutting edge in terms of tech, and that it only missed the title of having a record-sized budget by about a year and a half (King's Quest V actually hit that landmark figure first, but both had budgets of about $1M USD), and that it was so well written and designed made it a sure-fire hit before it was ever released. In all honesty, as much as I adore KQ5, this is a far better game in just about every respect. And God, is it funny. There is nothing else like having Gary Owens tell you after you've been killed that, "[w]e're glad you could play SQIV. As usual, you've been a real pantload."
So, if you've read this far, you can probably tell that I'm a big fan. And if what I've said hasn't managed to convince you, I doubt anything else that I could say would.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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