So the worst of many terrible things that happened to my work-rate today was the rediscovery of a game called Space Quest, released eight years before I was born. It is a truly and unbelievably wonderful thing and you can totally definitely not just google it and find places to download it. It probably won't work on your computer anyway - you pretty much need DosBox to run it:
http://www.dosbox.com/(Dosbox is very neat for running old programs, especially games).
Anyway, yes.
THE PREMISE: You are a janitor, you get to input your name though the default, Roger Wilco, was used as the name of the protagonist for the remaining five games in the series (none of which I have ever played, I have to admit). You are a janitor on the sciencey spacecraft Arcadia, and wake up from a nap in a closet to find that the ship has been overrun by evil aliens called the Sariens. The doubly bad news is that your ship was working on a machine designed to give new life to your solar system by turning a planet into a star. Which apparently only the Sariens noticed is also basically code for "it's a planet-burning superweapon". You have to escape the Arcadia, evade pursuit/natives/muggers/being ripped off/a very vicious slot machine on the planet Kerona, and then go find the Sarien ship and infiltrate it in order to stop the menace once and for all.
THE MECHANICS: Old school. Navigate with the arrow keys, type your commands. It is a thing of wonder and joy.
FEATURES INCLUDE:
- The town where the only way of making money is a slot machine that sometimes turns you into a pile of ash.
- A lot of rapidly and generically unpleasant forms of death. These include falling off anything, ever.
- The spaceship you can buy where you pay your money, sit in the machine, and it drills itself into the ground two metres before breaking
- That monster you defeat with a water bottle
- The peaceful, noble, alien natives of Kerona whose price for helping you, after you get past a bunch of death traps to find them, is bringing some bloodied remnant of one of their bitter enemies
- Greedo basically turns up.
- Your path to victory involves hiding in a washing machine.
Very highly recommended.
