Ever since the two guys from Andromeda discovered and punched upon galactic dustman Roger Wilco, he hasn't had a minute to himself. Dragged from his mortally safe and boring freighter-cleaning routine into conspiracies beyond Captain Kirk's wildest imagination, Roger now just wants to wind down. Hoping to use his fourth graphic adventure to return to his home planet, Xenon, for a foam bath and some good company. Roger finds his plans thwarted yet again. Sierra's cult game designers Mark Crowe and Scott Murphy relentlessly thrust him into an odyssey through time and space.

Into the time warp
A year after its spectacular appearance on the PC, Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers is now ready to land on the Amiga. Keyboard fans have succumbed to the admittedly easy-to-use, point-and-click interface. Few will miss the sparklingly witty exchanges with the parser. An icon bar across the top of the screen shows all the possible modes and menus, chosen by right mouse clicks and executed by left ones.

You can walk, talk, examine or manipulate objects. The inventory is pictorial, too, unlike the smug messages you get after meeting your timely demise - gently hinting at what might have convinced fate to turn at the doorstep.

Where does our involuntary hero set out, then? On his way home to Xenon, arch-rival and ultimate baddie Vohaul (of earlier sequels' fame) has unsuspecting Roger caught and, very nearly executed. Only nearly, as members of a resistance force are at hand to wrest our hero from the killers' iron grip. With encouraging comments, they shove him through a time rip - straight into Space Quest XII: Volhaul's Revenge II.

Xenon seems to have taken too much of a megablast sometime in the future. Eerie ruins and paranoid androids welcome Roger (or, the in case of the androids, out of) this brave new world. Soon, however, entrances to the glitzy underworld are found. A fast and furious race against time, the infamous Sequel Police and a lot of ill-mannered aliens ensues. Will you be able to rescue Roger from the unforgiving Vohaul? Will the pink rabbit he caught and the latex babes of Estros successfully visited?

Almost certainly so. While the beautifully absurd encounters, puzzles and cross-references send science fiction fans whooping, they will all too soon find that they have solved it all. The past, the future and, more specifically, Roger's lfe and sanity do not even take beginners long to restore. Hardly a headache is caused by the trials and tribulations of our hero.

While the story amuses, but leaves seasoned players dissatisfied, the listless conversion of sound and graphics does injustice to the Amiga. Admittedly, metallic minimalism has a certain sci-fi appeal that might be lost on, say, a Larry or King's Quest player. Still, there is no excuse. What could decent programming have done to the Monolith Burger Bar scenes or to the irritably well-stocked software shop (look at some of the games, you'll crack up!). As it were, you'd better turn down the volume, ignore the dreary backdrops and indistinguishable objects as far as possible and get on with the game.

Unlike lovesick Larry, Roger Wilco definitely has all our sympathy. Watch the poor chap stumble from one acid trap into the next huntress poised to strike - girls must simply fall for this innocent (if slightly prone to swaggering) blonde dummy. Yet they must be strong-willed to put up with this deficiencies...

So you want to be a hero
Grit your teeth and hang on to your mouse... or fall asleep while Roger drags himself across the screen. Seven disks provide you with lots of installation time to study the technical manual and the more colourful Space Piston magazine. Beginners' tips and something close to Infocom humour temporarily distract from the simple, if wickedly-funny game itself.

Asking £35 for an absurdly fat package with less game than even two years ago is simply asking a bit too much. Surely, Sierra can do better than that?

Let us just come out and say it, shall we? When reading the documentation is more fun than playing the game, you know that you are on to a loser. In the packaging that comes with Space Quest IV is a fun little mock magazine called 'Space Pistol' that introduces the character Roger Wilco, ex-janitor, space hero, and star of the three previous Space Quest adventures, as well as providing other info which is handy to know when playing the game. It is colourful, well put together and quite humorous in places, three things the game miserably fails to be.

Having read the magazine, and indeed, having looked at the similarly jokey packaging, you might reasonably expect the game to be a jolly little number with lots happening and loads of great characters. If so, you are going to be disappointed. Space Quest IV is a very dry, slow affair which seems to ignore all the encouraging advanced made in the adventure genre over the last couple of years.

The story concerns Roger being plucked from his own time and dumped back on his home planet Xenon far into the future. The place is looking a bit worse for wear and zombies wander the street. As it turns out this is the result of a super computer having gone mad after being infected by a virus caught from a pirate copy of Leisure Suit Larry (and if you think that is a hoot, then the humour is just about on your level - it never gets any better). Somehow the computer has also developed time travel facilities which some rebels have got hold of, and that is how Roger has been transported here. Roger has to capture a time vessel, do a lot of whizzing around in time and space and generally put everything bang to rights.

THE SLOWEST FORM OF TIME TRAVEL
Sure, it sounds like there is a lot of scope for fun here, and, indeed, that could have been the case if all the opportunities had not been so roundly missed. Instead the game plods along, and is not helped by the fact that each screen takes an eternity to load - there are some set sequences, such as the shuttle flying you from the ruined city to the time machine base, that take a good few minutes to unravel, filled mainly with static pictures and music that sounds as if it were composed on comb and paper. It is not as if there is anything worth looking at while you are waiting either - the old-fashioned 16-bit graphics are, to put it politely, hideous, and the animation, such as there is, makes Roobarb And Custard look like a Disney classic.

The other big problem is with the gameplay itself - there is very little interaction with other characters. For the first quarter of the game, if you try to talk to anyone, you end up dead seconds later - hardly an incentive to continue. This is the kind of lame plotting you were unlucky to find even In the bad old days of text only adventures.

The problems you are faced with are slightly better, but only slightly - most are pretty straightforward and should not really challenge any halfway experienced adventurer. The only thing that will stop most people from completing the game in a couple of hours is the fact that it is so damned slow.

CURSOR AND CURSE AGAIN
Want to know more? Okay, well the control system is far from friendly too. By clicking the mouse button you can change the cursor from a walk icon to pick up, look, taste, smell or talk. When you collect something you can also select that using the cursor.

There is also a menu bar which appears whenever the cursor goes to the top of the screen - a decent enough idea, but in practice annoying, as it always appears when you merely want to make Roger walk that way, but it is slow and awkward to use, as there is always a pause between your click and anything happening.

REACHING THE END OF THE LINE?
And the humour! How sad it is - full of in-jokes and irritating ' well what did you expect?'-type captions. In no time at all it gets wearing and does little to lighten the overall leaden atmosphere of the game. The main joke, since the plot concerns time travel, is that the bar at the top of the screen chances to show various supposed future sequels in the series, such as Space Quest XII. They are hoping! If this one is anything to go by they will be lucky (and we will almost certainly be unlucky) if there is ever a Space Quest V

The first thing which strikes you about Space Ouest IV is that it is BIG. We're talking massive here - this is a game which spans a multitude of worlds throuqhout space and even time itself.

The subtitle of this game is Roger Wilco And The Time Rippers, which means that our hero from the previous three games gets to visit the future in Space Cuest XII and the past in Space Quest I, in the battle against his old enemy, Vohaul. The old stoat has sent his black android guards through time to destroy Wilco in all his previous incarnations. He might succeed, unless you can guide Roger through all the hazards that the universe can throw at him.

First he's abducted and sent through time by some mysterious helpers, next he's chased around a devastated future version of his home planet Xenon by the black guards. And finally he has to hop through time in a stolen time machine to find away to escape Vohaul, and put the mockers on his galactic domination plans. Along the way, he has to dress up in women's clothes, dodge laser blasts in a zero-G environment, play a Ms Astro Chicken arcade machine and work for hours on end in the kitchen of a Monolith Burgers restaurant.

Phil:In this game, you (as Roger) visit a number of alien worlds, solve myriad different puzzles, travel to many different time zones and... oh yes, you die a lot too. It's not an easy stone, and saving as you go along isn't just a good idea, it may just save your sanity. The plot comes pre-thickened with in-jokes (like the bad low-res graphics in the Space Quest I time Zone) and puns run throughout. The jokes are added for fun, and none of the game or it's story are just an excuse for the stupid joke. The humour is gentle, unusual for on American game, and has just enough personality to keep you playing.

Although this is a very excellent game in itself, this conversion of it verges on the annoying. Sierra games are written on a single, generic system, which makes porting to different computers a breeze, and Sierra says proudly that each game is the same on every computer. Not so.

The PC version on a 286 VGA PC and Roland sound card is fast and very enjoyable. The Amiga version is slow to the brink of criminal insanity - even the smallest area of graphics moves like its covered in golden syrup. Unless you 're playing it on a really hot set-up, you're not really seeing this game at its best on the Amiga, which is a real shame. The PC version was given a ZERO Hero and rightly so. But this is no Hero.

The gameplay is very, very good, and the game itself very absorbing and addictive once you get into it. But the problem is you may be put off at the start by the nigglingly tepid speed and grey, contrast-free graphics that you might want to kick it into touch before you start. If you do persevere, the inconsistent synchronisation of sound effects with action could well dempen your enthusiasm.

If you like adventure games a lot, buy this game and ignore the graphics for the first two areas of the game - you'll love it. If long and involved games leave you cold, or you've played PC versions of previous Sierra products, forget you even heard the name Wilco - you'll probably be disappointed.