Producer: Bubble Bus
Retail Price: £8.95

After 20 years in space the Orion has almost completed its task of galaxy-mapping. Only one small nebula remains - but while making the intergalactic jump there the explorer ship is taken over by strange strange mechanical beings, the Zimen.

In an attempt to remove these parasites, you control four robots (Captain Slog, Plot the navigator, Engineer Knut and Able Spaceman Bodd) which you use one at a time.

Touching control panels with a robot can give access to code screens; decoded, these open matter-transmitters and lifts. This way the Orion's crew can move through the ship and closer to their ultimate goal: locking into the Bridge Computer. When all four have done this the Orion is safe.

The robots start in different parts of the ship. Some have a relatively easy passage through the maze of 230 rooms, using automatically-opening doors, but others are temporarily trapped in their rooms.

The robots' limited energy is quickly drained by contact with the Zimen, who materialise suddenly in the Orion's passageways with deadly persistence. These aliens corner the outnumbered robot crew, who must use all their speed and agility to avoid energy-draining embraces. Replenishment points help, of course.

To counterattack the Zimen, your robots can unleash bouncing bombs, gaining points when the sinister aliens are exploded. But remember the object isn't destruction - you must reach the Bridge Computer.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: unexciting, monochromatic, 3-D
Sound: bouncy title-screen music, otherwise the usual spot FX

Right from my first go, I didn't enjoy The Fifth Quadrant. The graphics move very smoothly, but the characters themselves are unattractive and the perspective is a bit messy. And The Fifth Quadrant is unplayable and unaddictive. It might have made an average budget game.
MIKE [42%]

The only aspect of The Fifth Quadrant that I really like is the opportunity to go back and forth among four characters, which adds variety to the background and tasks. The rest of the package is mundane. The graphics have the odd interesting feature but they're not stunning, and though the title-screen sound is very good the game sound is limited to boring spot FX. The Fifth Quadrant is easy to get into, but the lack of serious action soon makes it dull.
ROBIN [61%]

Bubble Bus
£8.95

Space, the final frontier... After 20 years, the galactic survey vessel Orion has almost finished its long exhausting mission to map and explore the Hercules Cluster. All that's left is one small nebula. Oh well, think the robotic crew, and put themselves into suspended animation. While they lie dreaming, the principal baddies enter stage right, and take over the ship. When the crew awake, they find the entire ship reprogrammed in a strange alien tongue, and baddies - the Zimen - everywhere. The four crewmen, shagged out after their snooze, must battle against time, traverse 230 rooms, kill the baddies and repossess the ship by logging onto the ship's computer. Each robot has its separate function - captain, navigator engineer and crewman - and different skills, which you'll find out as you play the game. There are loads of tasks to perform, most to do with the ship's computer, where the strange alien lingo has to be decoded. When one of the crew loses its energy it becomes immobilised, and it's up to the other three to save it.

It's a game of two halves (Brian), of which the first is a sub-Knight Lore shoot 'em up, except with infinitely feebler graphics. You switch between characters at any time, and if you find a computer, it can be ENTERED (evil Twilight Zone-type laugh). This second stage is a bit like the Alien game in The Planets, cross with Q-Bert. You move a cursor over various rectangles and pray that something happens. Nothing did when I tried it - I could have been changing joystick option for all I knew.

It's an odd game, really, never quite the sum of its parts. The animation's excellent, but the graphics are uninspiring and gameplay is slow. Screens are mainly monochromatic, though for each character there's a different colour. One irritation is that all the robots look the same - if it weren't for the name at the top, I'd be lost! In all, then, an average, overpriced game.

Label: Bubble Bus
Author: In-house
Price: £7.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Jerry Muir

It's been a while since we saw anything bubble up from Bubble Bus and boy, does this look like it's been in the pipeline for some time.

Sadly that doesn't mean many man hours spent perfecting a blockbuster - just that it's old-fashioned!

You control four droids on board the spaceship Orion, with the intention of re-uniting them on the bridge for a mass logging-on ceremony. In your way stand the nasty Zimen, who appear from nowhere, like fluff in your navel, and need to be bombed out of the way.

To keep controls to a minimum, Bubble Bus lets you communicate with the ship's computer by bumping into its consoles. These access an alien language game, which looks like the Martian edition of Blockbusters and lets you command features such as lifts.

Despite the OK-ish Ultimate-style 3D D graphics, nice sound effects and 230-odd rooms, this will only appeal to the most hardened arcade-adventurer.

Label: Ricochet
Author: In-house
Price: £1.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tony Dillon

Who'd be a person called Bodd? I'll tell you who. One of the 4 heroes in the old Bubble Bus title, 5th Quadrant. You play the 4 robots who have been given the task of re-programming a few computers on a spaceship that has been taken over by a lot of nasties who in turn have re-re-programmed the same items.

Confusing? Not half as confusing as the gameplay. Your sprite looks like a pepper pot with no face, so you can't tell which way he's pointing. Also, you don't seem to be able to fire straight at the very-fast-to-appear-but-very-slow-to-die nasties that come at you with a glitch and a smile. The graphics are plain, sound even plainer and altogether, not my choice for the prestigious cheapo of the month, award.