The tale of a lazy janitor and the beginning of the Space Quest series.

User Rating: 9 | Space Quest: Chapter I - The Sarien Encounter PC
Back in 1986 Sierra was hard at work developing a few different games that would put the gamer in a series of quests... Sierra developed Kings Quest, and Police Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, and then realized that they hadn't tapped anything Sci-fi, enter Space Quest. Space Quest was created using the same AGI engine as Kings Quest, Leisure Suit Larry and Police Quest. It allowed at the time some cartoonish graphics, that made for a great time. The game started out with A delemma. With suns getting weak and about to explode scientists develop a new device called the Star Generator, which will create a new sun, not to mention planets (cough cough, Genesis from Star Trek 2). The ship that the Star Generator is on is attacked by a race called the Sirens, and everyone is killed, everyone except for Roger Wilco who is sleeping peacefully in his broom closet.

As you take control of Roger, you step out of the broom closet and find everyone dead and the ship you are on about to explode. The game is played by using the arrow keys to control Roger. You will perform different tasks by actually typing in what you want him to do, like "look around," or "buy drink." As you play you will find new locations to explore, like the planet Ortega, and a huge battleship controlled by the Sariens. During the game, you will find a lot of trial and error type situations that will even sometimes test your patience. Fortunatly enough this was the time of save anytime and restore your game, so trial and error isn't that big of a task. The developers made sure that this game was as funny as could be and uses many references from space movies to keep it funny. You will see things like powedered water in this game, or a creature called an O-rat prumple you up into a basketball . There are also a couple of small mini games, like driving in a hover vehice while avoiding big rocks, or while in space avoiding asteroids, while the mini games are small, this was unheard of in games this old.

For a game that is now celebrating its 20th. Birthday, it is still a funny take on any space adventure game. This is in a time when adventure games were real adventures, and you never saw anything repetitive. If you have a PC that is a 386 or slower, and have never played the Space Quest series, this is an absolute must. The SQ series as a perfect reason to have an old PC.