The_Fifth_Quadrant_TCS Commodore 64 game

The crew of the good ship Orion has entered the Sustained Low Energy Expenditure Process (S.L.E.E.P.) as they journey to the Hercules Cluster for mapping. Speaking of sleep, that's one thing you won't experience when you play this game. Why, you ask? Is it the remarkably cool graphics? Utterly awesome special effects? A profusion of pure addictiveness? Well, no, more like the anguish of having spent a tenner on it.

Anyway, while the crew is in S.L.E.E.P., the Zimen board the ship (0000 - sounds a bit rude) and take over the ship's onboard computers, reprogramming them in an alien language. Who can save the crew? Who can destroy the Zimen? Who can save me? The cast of this game includes:

• Slog: Ship's captain and pilot, equipped with a specialized Compu-Brain (a bit like mine, really). However, Slog also has a complex; he's slowing down, and he knows it.
• Plot: Ship's navigator, brilliant at any sort of calculation. Plays 4-D chess with the ship's computer, hates losing (now that sounds like me).
• Bodd: More three-dimensional shenanigans from Bubble Bus. Bodd is my favorite; I used to watch the cartoon, you know. He's a computer with a screw loose.
• Knut: Ship's engineer, knows every zecometre of the ship. Has a vast intelligence, and their origins are shrouded in mystery.

With these four humble droids, you have to free the ship from the grasp of the evil Zimen, who either have a population of several thousand million on the ship or breed like tribbles. It all rapidly develops into a maze-bound shoot-'em-up.

Graphics: Leftovers from Wizards Lair. Sound: Yawnsville!

I must have killed hundreds of those pesky blighters on my travels around the ship, but to what avail? One of the droids starts off locked up in a prison, another starts with no energy, and then the Zimen move so fast your energy whizzes down, and it's goodnight wherever robots hang out.

It appears to me that Bubble Bus must still be living off the royalties from Star Quake, and this game should do nothing to change it.