Gaming After 40

Adventure of the Week: Danger Is My Business (1983)

noreply@blogger.com (StillGaming) — Tue, 22 May 2012 20:00:00 +0000

This week, I'm returning to another long-running series, with SoftSide Adventure #20 - Danger Is My Business, published in 1983 for the Atari 400/800. (Frequent visitors may notice I've skipped over SoftSide Adventure #19, Alaskan Adventure, which I played quite a while back before I realized how many of these games were published and resolved to do them in order.)

It sounds like a noir crime drama, but this is actually an Indiana Jones-inspired jungle adventure starring the off-brand hero, Sarasota Sam, who seems to favor a gun instead of a whip. He's also purportedly a U.S. Special Agent, but there's an air of Dr. Jones about him (or her, if our character is actually Sarasota Samantha.)

Usually I recommend that interested readers play the game before continuing, but this one seems to have a serious, game-breaking bug very near the dramatic conclusion. I will provide a solution of sorts in the discussion and walkthrough below, but to see it you are likely to encounter other revelations. So I won't insist that anyone else actually try to solve this one; feel free to wander into the...

***** SPOILERS AHEAD! *****

We begin standing in the jungles of India; a tall tree can be climbed, but there's nothing of use up there. To the northwest of our starting point lies the American Embassy. All we are carrying is a hat and a gun, and unlike his presumed inspiration, Sarasota Sam will happily DROP HAT and leave it behind, which is handy for mapping. We can CLIMB TREE in any location, though most do not contain anything useful. But one of the jungle trees has an apple in it, suggesting some strange biogenetics are at work, or else the designer just doesn't know his flora very well.

We can't get back inside the American Embassy -- the Ambassador asks, "have you my daughter?", and if we answer honestly with a NO, he tells us, "Then get her!", so clearly we're not welcome until our mission is accomplished. YES prompts only, "Liar." So why did he ask???

Ack! Mapping the jungle is critical, as most of the time we are simply SOMEWHERE IN THE JUNGLES OF INDIA with a few distinguishing landmarks here and there. But getting the map figured out is a major pain -- there aren't many items available, and if we DROP APPLE in the jungle, it gets stolen by a wild boar! So we need to make a few educated guesses and confirm later when we have more items to work with.

There's a SLEEPING BEAR in the jungle -- LOOK BEAR reveals, helpfully, that He's sleeping on something you'll need. WAKE BEAR doesn't work -- fortunately, perhaps -- and if we SHOOT GUN, Noise attracts angry natives - You're dead.

There's also a MONKEY in the jungle; He's playing with some shiny object. Another tree has a BANANA up it. The monkey will give us a SMALL KNIFE in exchange for the banana.

Another "room" features a creek, with a handy CANOE floating in it. UNTIE CANOE yields a surprising limitation on the part of our hero -- I'm not very good at untying things. We can CUT ROPE with the knife, and then GO CANOE. But a few moves later, Your feet are getting wet; LOOK CANOE reveals a small round hole in the bottom of the hull. We can PUT APPLE -- In or on what? -- IN HOLE to plug it.

We can try to PADDLE in the canoe, but we're not getting anywhere yet. Maybe that's what's under the sleeping bear? Dropping the apple in the bear's location brings the wild boar whizzing through, but doesn't seem to disturb the bear one bit. We can't TIE BEAR or PULL BEAR either. We can THROW APPLE -- At what? -- AT BEAR, to get him to wake up and kill us, also not useful. (THROW is otherwise a synonym for DROP, it seems, so this is special handling for the apple.) If we try to climb the tree and then throw the apple at the bear, we are simply told, Better not. LOOK TREE is more helpful -- There's a hornets' nest on a branch above the bear (though it's oddly invisible if we climb the tree and look at it from that vantage point.) THROW APPLE / AT NEST sends the bear running off into the jungle, in the great adventure game tradition of random animal cruelty.

Under the bear we find a BOAT PADDLE, which was likely uncomfortable for the poor creature, though not nearly as uncomfortable as a swarm of angry hornets. The apple is unrecoverable, so we have to go back to the apple tree and get another one.

Now we can paddle across the creek -- the apple plug fails, the canoe capsizes and we lose our gun in the process, but we make it to shore. At least mapping becomes a little more straightforward here, with fewer "all directions" locations to deal with.

We encounter some MAD INDIAN HEADHUNTERS -- I presume this means angered and not loony -- and if we try go past them to the northeast, they give chase, throwing spears. If we try to stop and GET SPEAR, the next one hits us and proves fatal. So we should probably seek an alternate route.

To the southeast of the creek crossing is a bog, stretching from a nearby tree to another one in the distance. We can't GO BOG -- not that we really want to -- and we can LOOK TREE to see that this one is an elm tree, which seems a bit out of place. We can actually navigate the long way around, it appears, to get from one side of the bog to the other, so I'm not sure what purpose it really serves. Unless... if we start moving and don't stop after we arouse the headhunters, maybe we can get them to fall into the bog... but simply climbing the tree doesn't manage it.

If we go back the way we came, we see a SPEAR LODGED IN TREE after the headhunters' first attack. There's no time to GET SPEAR, though; if we stop moving at all, we get speared by their second try. What we can do is climb the tree on the west side of the bog, and TIE BRANCH to affix the rope to a strong branch; now we can SWING ROPE to get to the other side, and Headhunters topple single file into the quicksand.

Now we can collect the natives' spear stuck in the tree -- actually, we can't just GET SPEAR, we need to PULL HARD -- and retrieve our rope. Now we can reach a chasm with a tree on the other side, tie the rope to the spear, throw it at the tree, and... not CROSS CHASM or GO ROPE or... oh, wait, I didn't keep the other end of the rope handy on this side! Tying it to the tree on this side first creates a taut rope we can use to gingerly cross the chasm.

On this side, we find more jungle, of course; the map here is a little more logical than elsewhere, but still difficult to navigate. There aren't many landmarks -- just an OLD NATIVE; we can try to TALK NATIVE but he says, "Gimme something valuable first." The knife isn't considered valuable, apparently; nor is the hat or the boat paddle. So we probably need to find a treasure of some kind. Nothing seems to be hidden up any of the trees... but LOOK SPEAR reveals that It's golden from stem to tip. We have to cut the rope yet again, losing it into the chasm, in order to retrieve the spear.

Now we can learn something from the elderly gentlemen: "Three men and girl. Look for oak tree. Go southwest." Until we know this, going SW from that location just takes us back to the chasm's edge, but now we can reach an area with a wall of fire near a waterfall. GO WALL just burns us to cinders, but if we GO WATERFALL and get drenched first, then we can make it through. It's another one-way trip, too -- this game is very episodic in nature.

On the other side of the firewall, we encounter an INJURED NATIVE. The three men and the girl shot him and traveled northeast from here, he tells us, just before he becomes a DEAD NATIVE. Following his directions, we find our rope again, or at least one very similar to it, and then we come upon a tent with whispering audible from inside.

We can LISTEN TENT to uncover a ransom plot -- someone is to go southwest and deliver the note. Waiting to the southwest doesn't seem to move things along though, and there's no WAIT verb as such... but if we've heard this and return, we run into a SNEAKY BANDIT and we are caught, then dead.

To the southeast of the tent is an apparently infinite series of jungle locations; to the northwest we eventually come to a canyon spanned by a rope bridge. We can cross it; there's a SKUNK lurking in the jungle beyond that point, as well as some more MAD NATIVES. We can't GET SKUNK -- Phew! You drop him -- nor will the natives let us pass to the northwest. But we can HOLD NOSE, and then drop him off to scatter the natives. Except this just makes them very mad, and they return on the next turn to chase us.

They are gaining on us as we run in the only new direction available; a few moves later, we come upon another quicksand bog, with the natives gaining on us. We can avoid the bog and keep running, but they do catch up with us, and we're dead again. I had to cheat and look at the code, then wrestle with the parser -- we can't THROW HAT, or PUT HAT / IN BOG, but we can PUT HAT / ON SAND. This causes the natives to assume we are done for, and they wander off. We can't retrieve the hat, so perhaps that puts the nail in the coffin of my assumptions about this story's inspiration.

Returning the way we came, we run into the MAD NATIVES again and we are dead. Oops! Let's try going the other way this time. We enter yet another jungle maze, and can find a MOUNTAIN, from the top of which we can see the American Embassy, due west from a cedar tree. We can navigate through the jungle, then head due west a few moves to reach the embassy.

Of course, I have still failed to rescue the Ambassador's daughter at this point, so it's back to the bandit encampment to deal with the bad guys. Being bold with a GO TENT proves fatal, as we face an EVIL CROOK, a FEROCIOUS OUTLAW, a SNEAKY BANDIT and the AMBASSADOR'S DAUGHTER! We will assume she is not suffering Stockholm Syndrome and actually wants to be rescued, but we have to deal with the other three.

We can CLIMB TREE by the tent and wait a few turns -- now we can safely observe the sneaky bandit emerging, and JUMP BANDIT to knock him out. Someone cries for "Help!" -- I hope it's the Ambassador's daughter and not the guy I thought was unconscious. We can GO TENT now -- and untie the Ambassador's daughter, Messrs. Crook and Outlaw having gone to see what's keeping their friend, and apparently taking the very long way around.

The Ambassador's still-nameless daughter willingly follows us now -- we have to move quickly, exiting the tent and heading across the rope bridge as suspicious footsteps follow us. And somehow, oddly, we're dragging the SNEAKY BANDIT along with us -- eventually, he wakes up and we're dead? He must have followed us after waking up. Hmmmm. Perhaps we need to dispatch him more permanently? But we can't successfully THROW KNIFE / AT BANDIT... the parser just tells us, Better not. We can't seem to keep our gun with us by putting it under our hat when we cross the creek. And we can't directly STAB or KNIFE or KILL BANDIT, either. But we can use the long rope to TIE BANDIT -- actually, we have to be more specific, and TIE HANDS or TIE FEET.

I tried to TIE FEET, and he woke up, saying, "You don't tie me good enough" before killing us. And the same happened after I opted to TIE HANDS instead. We can't TIE BOTH, or TIE NECK, for that matter, and my attempts to tie him to the nearest tree also failed. We can't search him for weapons, though he handily kills us if we don't keep him out of the way. We can't GET BANDIT and toss him out of harm's way somewhere, either. The parser seems to recognize TIE HANDS TO FEET, but he is still able to kill us; I think it's just echoing what we've typed, actually.

So what are we to do here? I had to cheat again, which revealed something that should have helped but didn't -- we can CUT ROPE to produce two pieces of rope, and now, in theory, we can tie him up properly without him reviving as soon as we've tied one or the other. Unfortunately, we are not allowed to CUT ROPE while we're in the tree, so we need to do it earlier. But he still wakes up and kills us before we can get both hands and feet tied.

I was still having problems here, so I had to dissect the code more thoroughly. Line 968 sees that he's knocked out and sets a Number of Turns counter, NT = 3; if it reaches 0, then he strikes, perhaps? So we should not go into the tent and come back out before tying him up, and we should cut the rope before we try to jump him? No... on line 410, when NT = 2, he announces he hasn't been tied up properly and kills us. I am pretty sure this is an actual bug in the game -- these lines of code appear to be in the wrong order!

If I'm reading this right, it checks to see if we are trying to tie hands or feet individually before it checks to see if we have cut the rope in two -- so whichever one we try first, we end up dying as the bandit wakes up! There's no way to reach the "good" TIE scenario as far as I can see -- it is preempted by the earlier lines, which do almost the same checks without paying any attention to the state of the rope. My guess is that this map is so convoluted the unnamed author tested in pieces and never actually played the whole game through from start to finish. We can do something similar here, by setting NT=3 and then doing a GOTO 300, which brings us back into the game with the bandit denatured. This works -- and I think it confirms this as an actual bug, as clearly some other flag has been set that keeps him from attacking again -- but it completely breaks the reality of the game's world. Curse you, unnamed author!

Anyway, with the bandit disabled (by whatever means necessary) we can now get across the rope bridge, with the other two bandits in hot pursuit -- we can CUT ROPE after we cross the bridge to strand them on the other side. And now we can find our way back to the embassy as we figured out earlier, and return the Ambassador's daughter for victory!

I have enjoyed the SoftSide games in general -- this one was more difficult than most, due to the huge amount of mapping required; this game's world is pretty much a huge jungle maze with a handful of unique locations buried in it. And that bandit-tying bug, if such it is, still has me feeling like I didn't truly finish the game. But there are more playable adventures out there, and it's time for me to move on to one of them.

My walkthrough (complete with awkward patching around the bug) is below and should also be available at the CASA Solution Archive.

**** WALKTHROUGH ****

N
CLIMB TREE
GET APPLE
D, E, SW
LOOK TREE
THROW APPLE (at what?)
AT NEST (bear runs off)
GET PADDLE
NW
CLIMB TREE
GET APPLE
D, S, E
CLIMB TREE
GET BANANA
D, E, N
GIVE BANANA
GET KNIFE
S, E
CUT ROPE
CUT ROPE (again, frees it from tree)
GET ROPE
GO CANOE
PUT APPLE (in or on what?)
IN HOLE
PADDLE CANOE (canoe capsizes, but we make it to shore)

SE
CLIMB TREE
TIE BRANCH
D, NW, NE, E, NE (headhunters give chase)
W, SW, SE
SWING ROPE (we elude them)
NE, NW, W
GET SPEAR
PULL HARD
SW, SE
CLIMB TREE
CUT ROPE
D
GET ROPE
NW, NE, E, NE

TIE TREE
TIE SPEAR
THROW SPEAR (At what?)
AT TREE
CROSS ROPE

CUT ROPE
GET SPEAR
NE
TALK NATIVE
LOOK SPEAR
GIVE SPEAR (learn about the oak tree)
SE, SE
LOOK TREE (oak tree)
SW, E

GO WATERFALL
W
GO WALL

TALK NATIVE
NE
GET ROPE
NE
CUT ROPE (into two pieces)
LISTEN TENT (ransom plot!)

CLIMB TREE
LOOK (repeat until the sneaky bandit appears)
JUMP BANDIT (he's knocked out)
D

(there should be some way to disable the bandit for good by tying his hands and feet with the two pieces of rope, but I couldn't figure it out! He always wakes up and kills us before we can finish the tie-up job. I'm pretty sure this is a bug -- the critical check seems to be in a line of code that's actually inaccessible. What did work for me was this:)

TIE HANDS

(bandit wakes up and kills us... the program exits, so at the prompt, we can type:

NT = 3
GOTO 300

This resumes the game with the bandit disabled)

GO TENT (others are away, we untie the Ambassador's daughter)

S

NW, NW (bandits give chase)
GO BRIDGE
CUT ROPE (bandits are stranded)
NW, NE
HOLD NOSE
GET SKUNK
NW, N
DROP SKUNK
NW (natives are angered)
NW, W
PUT HAT (on what?)
ON SAND
CLIMB TREE
LOOK (natives arrive, believe we've sunk in the quicksand)

D, SW, SW, SE
CLIMB MOUNTAIN (see embassy to west of a cedar tree)
D, NW, SW
W, W, W (the embassy!)
GO EMBASSY (Ambassador asks, "Have you my daughter?")
YES (victory!)

The LoadDown - 05/17/2012

noreply@blogger.com (StillGaming) — Thu, 17 May 2012 20:54:00 +0000

Another week, another wave of downloadable games...

WiiWare -- Nothing here, continuing a recent trend.

DSiWare -- One new game: Chronicles of Vampires: The Awakening, which seems an odd name for the final chapter of this hidden-object game series. But there it is.

3DS eShop -- One new Virtual Console game arrives on the 3DS, starring a popular Nintendo character in one of his Game Boy titles: Kirby's Block Ball, a Breakout variant. There's also a free demo of Rayman: Origins, and something new for Nintendo, a downloadable patch for Mario Kart 7's online multiplayer eliminating several shortcut exploits.

XBox Live Arcade -- Two new titles this week: Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode II continues (after quite a long wait!) Sega's episodic platformer, the true sequel to the established 16-bit series. JAM Live Music Arcade is a music game that tries to bring more of a sense of true controller/guitar improvisation to the well-worn genre.

PS3 on PSN -- A whopping four new titles arrive -- Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode II and JAM Live Music Arcade (see above), as well as the head-to-head physics/racing/comedy contest Rock of Ages, and PixelJunk 4am, a hypnodelic music visualizer with Move controller support.

PSOne Classics -- Whether it's a classic depends on your taste in gaming, but the influential puzzle/adventure Myst arrives as a downloadable PSOne title.

Adventure of the Week: Sam & Max Episode 104: Abe Lincoln Must Die! (2007)

noreply@blogger.com (StillGaming) — Tue, 15 May 2012 20:00:00 +0000

Time marches on, and so does my self-imposed five-year spoiler threshold -- so this week, we're playing though Telltale Games' Sam & Max Episode 104 - Abe Lincoln Must Die!. This was the fourth episode of the series' first season, published in early 2007, continuing the interactive adventures of Steve Purcell's gleefully anarchic comic book canine/rabbit crime-fighting duo. The Telltale series rendered in point-and-click 3-D has been quite successful, with three seasons published to date, and the writing and puzzle construction is really hitting its stride here; there are also lots of incidental but funny conversation options available, with solid voice acting and characterization.

I always encourage interested readers to play these games for themselves, and this full episode has been made available FREE as a demo (for the season) by Telltale Games here. So you really have no excuse if you proceed from this point and wander haplessly into the brain-searing miasma of...

***** SPOILERS AHEAD! *****

The Commissioner apparently has a lot of power, as Sam & Max are out to take down the out-of-control President of the United States (after making a prank call using the organic listening device "bug" from Episode 103: The Mole, The Mob and The Meatball, which Max has used to record an exorcism.)

After a drive through the opening credits (on a blue background in this episode), our heroes find themselves outside the White House, where Agent Superball (a recurring character being introduced here) guards the entrance. Resident rat Jimmy Two-Teeth lounges in an innertube in the reflecting pool, being watched by a periscope apparently attached to a submarine; he doesn't really participate in this episode, but he was a key member of the Season 1 cast and so he puts in a cameo appearance during his vacation.

We can pick up a boxing glove at the side of the pool, and check out the pay phone in an alcove; we can't use it to make outgoing calls, as it only takes Susan B. Anthony dollars, so we'll need to go back to the office if we need to use the phone.

Our main goal at the moment is to talk our way into the White House past Agent Superball, whose wonderfully deadpan delivery has made him one of my favorite characters. There are some funny exchanges here, including one in which Superball picks up on what was meant to be a casual aside between Sam and Max concerning the difficulty of tricking him. Max would love to employ violence as a solution, but Sam's cooler head prevails. From conversation, we learn that Superball is also responsible for various secondary duties, so we probably need to distract him somehow so we can sneak in.

We can go back to the office to see what's going on in the old neighborhood. Our friend Sybil is now running a dating service, continuing her career-jumping ways. One of the newspaper headlines hanging on the wall seems to reference previous episodes: "Giant Plush Toy Suspected In Conspiracy." The closet door is locked -- and Sybil doesn't have a key for it, even though that's where she tapes video intros for her dating service. Sybil herself is having trouble finding a soulmate; she wants someone older, with a history, tall and distinguished.

Sam and Max can submit applications to see if Sybil can find dates for them; she thinks stranger things have happened... somewhere... probably. Her "computer" (which doesn't seem to actually exist beyond her rummaging around in a desk drawer) matches people's personality matrices at 15 compatibility points. And there's a great math joke here -- Max says, "I don't have a personality matrix so much as a personality vector." Of course, Sam and Max's perfect matches turn out to be... Max and Sam, respectively. And we wouldn't have it any other way.

At the dead-end street near Sybil's building, the collection of posters has been refreshed. And this time one of them falls down, so we can take it with us for potential puzzle-solving later: a military recruitment poster reading, "Give me all you got!"

The formerly-vacant storefront next to Bosco's Inconvenience Store is now occupied by Hugh Bliss, the rainbow Prismatology guru/magician encountered in Episode 102. His "Emetics" book is free, with free home delivery, and has been translated into 15,000 languages, including Esperanto. Sam is appropriately skeptical of Bliss' claims for well-being through color visualization, while Max gives in immediately to Stockholm Syndrome. We can ask Hugh Bliss to do a magic trick, and he vanishes briefly -- long enough for us to steal his "Free Home Delivery" sign. We seem to be collecting signs here.

One of the headlines on the newspaper machine outside Bosco's covers a couple of classic Lucasarts references: "Purcell attacked by Two-Headed Monkey." Bosco himself is now disguised as a Russian, apparently to dissuade a government targeting device he believes is aimed at him. He is working on his own missile defense system, and planning to raise an army of tens of millions of workers. Sam: "That's a lot of Bolsheviks." Bosco: "No! Is all true!"

Bosco has a truth serum for sale -- most likely yet another ordinary item at an outrageous price, in this case one hundred million dollars. We can also play another round of "Do you have any..." -- including souvenir snowglobes from the Mystery Vortex, a reference to the Lucasarts Sam & Max Hit the Road adventure game. Some gags in the refreshments area are recycled from previous games, saving a little episodic-development money at the expense of freshness. The restroom sports a "terror level" sign... lowest level is green, "probable terror" -- but this won't come into play in this episode.

We might as well check in at the office. The President has left some transparently self-promotional messages on the answering machine, claiming to have saved the country from a plague of robotic hyenas shortly after taking office. We can call Meesta Pizza or the White House, which should give us a chance to distract Agent Superball if we play our conversation right.

The President appears on television to announce that mandatory psychological exams will ensure that all Americans meet the minimum requirements for joy and goodwill. Our captive from episode 103, Leonard Steakcharmer, has joined the collection of past-case artifacts in the closet, still tied up and gagged. Here, too, some gags are recycled from previous episodes.

So it's time to see if we can get Superball to leave his post. "Have you checked the baby?" doesn't work -- he has -- but we can ask him to hold, and as a man of duty, he does so, indefinitely. Now we can enter the White House, to find the President putting out another crazed proclamation concerning a pudding embargo. He appears to be hypnotized, continuing this season's overarching plot, but we can't just hit him over the head as Sam & Max would usually do -- the same Secret Service agent seen at the end of 103, Agent Chuckles, is standing watch.

The office is filled with patriotic/presidential gewgaws and comic details, some tinged with political satire -- there's a sculpture of an eagle with a gun in one hand and cash in the other, for example. A portrait of George Washington on the wall appears to have Steve Purcell's face. There's a joke about Roosevelt's boxing gloves -- is that "Roosevelt" T.R. or F.D.R.? Sam thinks they belonged to E.R. And this one's my favorite milk-snorting silly elementary-school joke from this episode -- "Hi, I'm George Washington. Anyone need their nuts cracked?"

The President's character design manages to blend aspects of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton; he thinks our heroes are interpreters, and he's meeting with foreign dignitaries shortly -- a chance to intentionally mistranslate, perhaps -- but said foreigner has not yet arrived. Special Agent Chuckles can be engaged in conversation -- he's anti-critter, it seems -- and Sam recognizes his voice; he was one of the Toy Mafia bears in episode 103, but he won't admit it.

Chuckles informs us that we can't get into the tempting war room during peacetime. The President's calendar is similarly attractive, but we can't mess with it while the President is watching. If we try to enter the War Room, we are tossed out -- and witness Governor Whizzer (see Episode 101) arriving to visit the President.

Agent Superball is still on hold outside, so we can re-enter to find the Prez in need of our interpretation services -- the previous impostors who looked just like us having been thrown out -- even though Whizzer has been speaking perfect English with no accent to speak of. Whizzer is now the governor of West Dakota, America's 51st state, winning the popular vote on the strength of his erstwhile TV celebrity status as one of the Soda Poppers. He's trying to kick his own soda habit and is here to lobby the President for more federal support of his Mount Rushmore Soda Abuse Prevention Program (MRSAPP). Clearly we will want to knock him off the wagon somehow, if only for fun.

Interpreting is straightforward, but we can of course choose to distort Whizzer's words for our own purposes. There's some really great dialogue here -- most of the options are fun, as we can posit armed revolution, unrequited love, and baseball fever -- but we really want to make him ask for a drink. The President obliges, opening the Oval Office globe to reveal cold, fizzy orange sodas. Whizzer can't resist, and of course finds himself in immediate need of a bathroom. When he asks, we can translate honestly, or ask "Which way is Lincoln's Bedroom?" or "Which way is the War Room?" Getting him to attempt to access the War Room gets both him and Agent Chuckles out of the way for a bit, as they head off to the interrogation room.

Now we can try to deal with the President. Using the gun elicits Sam's comment, "I don't like Jodie Foster that much." But the boxing glove left over from a previous episode in inventory works just fine, knocking the President's head completely off and revealing him as a hypnotic puppet using the airwaves to enslave American minds. Agent Chuckles returns to discover the President is "dead," and declares an emergency election, activating the robotic statue of Abraham Lincoln, disguised as a sculpture at the Lincoln Memorial, as the presumed victor. The Commissioner calls -- it seems Max will have to run against Lincoln, and win.

We can gather some campaign slogan cue-cards from the President's office -- "The buck stops here," "1000 points of light," and "I did not have sex with that woman." But Superball has taken up guarding the War Room and the Presidential Calendar in Chuckles' place, so we can't do anything with those yet.

To win the nation's votes, Max needs to engage Lincoln in televised debate, and fortunately the robot does not match the original's statesmanship; we have an opportunity to influence Lincoln's cue-card responses with the various signs and cards we have collected to date. Our candidate can spout off some joyfully crazed, Max-like campaign speeches about his coming despotic rule, but doesn't contribute anything of substance beyond some funny moments, e.g. "We have nothing to fear but fear itself. And the chupacabra! Madre de Dios! He'll kill us all!"

We have to knock Lincoln off of his lofty perch somehow. He just keeps reading whatever is on the cue cards, so with Sam moderating the debate, we can get him to make some questionable platform policy announcements on toxic waste ("Free home delivery!"), religion and schools ("Two wrongs don't make a right!"), and taxes ("Give me all you got!") His poll standings drop with each controversial answer, though the increase actually appears to go not to Max but to perennial third-party candidate Ralph Nader.

Lincoln is still winning at 40% to Max's 39% after the cue-card takedown, so we have to probe him on family values. He has been faithful to Mary Todd Lincoln for over 150 years. Maybe we need to tempt him somehow? We can put the "I did not have sex with that woman" cue card on the stand, so it looks like we might be on the right track.

Maybe Sybil can help us find a potential date for Lincoln. Actually, maybe she would be interested. We can use the bug on Sybil to spy on her innermost thoughts, but all we hear about is other careers she is considering, which probably serves us right. There don't seem to be any blank applications around to forge, but Lincoln's campaign flyer might work as an application: "I want you!", followed by a list of his qualifications.

This episode doesn't focus as much on Bosco and Sybil as has been the case to this point -- it's more wide-ranging in scope -- but both play significant roles. Sybil loves Lincoln's "application" and asks the boys to give him her number. But Lincoln stands fast for fidelity. His prepared statement might be useful, though, if we record it with the bug and play it back for Sybil. Max teases him, eliciting a few mild threats to boot.

We can now play selectively edited portions of Lincoln's statement to Sybil over the phone, suggesting that she should meet him immediately on the steps of the White House for a date. She arrives during his family values speech, and the scandal pushes his numbers down slightly, allowing Max to win the Presidency by the narrowest of margins, much to everybody's consternation. Out of control now, the hypno-ray-eyed robotic Lincoln stomps off to wreak havoc and enslave the populace.

Sam and Max are left back on the White House lawn, and shortly President Max finds all three of the Soda Poppers -- Specs, Peepers and Whizzer -- in the Oval Office, threatening Civil War among the Dakotas they all now govern over custody of Mount Rushmore and its tourism value. And they don't quite believe Max is actually the President. They are contentious but cordial to each other; we may have to fix that.

There's a ribbon on Max's desk that we can use to appoint anybody as an honorary Cabinet member, but Peepers doesn't want it. Neither do the other Soda Poppers; Agent Superball will accept the position, but still won't stop guarding the War Room door. Using the bug confirms that Whizzer is still sorely tempted by thoughts of soda.

We can change the date on the calendar to Arbor Day, or Earth Day, or Easter, or Secr... Administrative Professionals' Day, or the Beginning of Passover. This doesn't seem to have any immediate impact, however.

We can take out after the rampaging Lincoln ("LINCOLN SMASH!") in the DeSoto, but bullets, megaphone threats and horn blasts don't distract him at all, so we need a better plan.

Perhaps we can visit Bosco and obtain his "truth serum" to give Whizzer a drink. We don't have the hundred million dollars... but maybe President Max does? Bosco recognizes Max as the President, but still wants cash on the barrelhead. Back at the White House, we can examine the Presidential Discretionary Budget, conveniently capped at one hundred million dollars. But the only available options are historic sites -- The Alamo, the Statue of Liberty, and Independence Hall.

Agent Superball will take a vacation, if it's a federal holiday. He won't take Easter or Passover off -- it has to be a secular holiday. Hmmm. We can't turn the calendar page away from April -- do we need to create a NEW federal holiday?

Sybil, disappointed by Abe's apparent dishonesty about his marital status, has changed careers again to run a... dating service? A carbon-dating service, actually, as she can't afford another signage change at the moment. Hmmmm... can we borrow her nifty carbon-dating gun? The tiki on her desk turns out to be 2000 years old -- she thinks she can get her office on the registry of historic places. Maybe those rotisserie weenies at Bosco's are old enough to qualify? Could be, but Sybil won't let us borrow the equipment until she knows her office is on the registry.

Returning to the White House, we can allocate Max's budget to her building -- and when we return there, she's nowhere in sight, presumably on debt-free vacation. The carbon-dating gun is still on her desk, and we can borrow it to confirm that Bosco's hot dogs date from the early Cretaceous period. Re-allocating the budget should be simple now. Yep -- now we get Bosco's truth serum, which as usual is rather more mundane than the price tag warrants: a bottle of vodka. Sybil is not back in her office -- we can date a few things lying around, and there's a darkly funny bit about the 8-year-old stuffed fox; Max sees the "bright side" by imagining the fox offed itself and donated its body to taxidermy.

Whizzer doesn't handle his soda very well -- so what will he do under the influence of truth-inducing vodka? He reveals that Peepers and Specs think each other's ideas are stupid, and all-out war breaks out between the Dakotas! Which cues this episode's (and season's) best and brightest surprise -- a fully-choreographed musical number celebrating the joys of War, starring a cast of multiple Agent Superballs. It's completely unexpected, witty, and charmingly animated.

Resolving not to let THAT happen again, Sam and Max enter the War Room... or would, except Superball is still guarding the door. We can strip him of his ribbon, and return it, which we need to do -- as we have appointed him Secretary of... something among the various humorous choices, say Meats and Cheeses... he is willing to abandon his duty by taking Secretary's Day off.

The Dakota Situation is getting bad, as displayed on the War Room's situation screens, and Lincoln is still on the rampage. The War Manual simply says, "1. Select Target. 2. Press Fire." This is simple enough. We can bomb Krypton (or will, eventually, in 26 million years when our missile arrives), Bosco's (he was right!), or Antarctica; the Kremlin's beacon isn't working at the moment, fortunately. The missiles are disguised as the Washington Monument; as each one launches, it is replaced with another. We can confirm that Bosco's Missile Defense System is fully operational, and shoots our incoming missile out of the air. Somehow, it appears, we need to get a targeting beacon near Lincoln.

From the War Room, we can also take a gander through the periscope in the White House pool, though we don't see anything besides Jimmy Two-Teeth lounging around. Going back to Sybil's and Bosco's doesn't yield any new ideas. Trying to chase down Lincoln again proves gun and megaphone useless in equal measure.

Hmmm. If we deallocate the budget from Bosco's store, does it disable his missile defense system? Nope. It seems we're running out of puzzles -- there's almost nobody around to talk to, and few situations to address beyond the primary challenge. And even though I had played this episode before, I got stuck here! I consulted Telltale's official walkthrough to re-discover that the homing beacon at Bosco's is on his security camera. I assumed Bosco would know or say something about it, but such is not the case. With hindsight, I should have realized the camera angle visible on the Beacon Cam was a clue to its whereabouts, and suspected it might be liberated for alternative use.

Now we can follow Lincoln in the Desoto and hopefully find a way to attach the beacon to him. A simple, accurate toss by Max does the job, and the Beacon Cam shows that it's still attached when we return to the White House (confirming that the view from the War Room is a live camera feed through each of the beacons, which I hadn't quite realized.)

In short order, Max's mighty foot strikes the red button. The missile is fired... robot Lincoln is destroyed... and Agent Chuckles, riding on the giant ex-President's shoulder, is knocked out.

And our heroes go off to do something for fun, while Chuckles' apparently robotic or alien superiors report an ominous contact error in his earpiece...

Telltale Games did adventurers' hearts good with the revival of Sam & Max, and this is arguably the best episode from season 1. But we've still got two more episodes to go before we wrap up this season, and I look forward to the ride.

Clueless Gaijin Gaming: Mitsubachi Gakuen (1990)

noreply@blogger.com (StillGaming) — Fri, 11 May 2012 20:00:00 +0000

One of the things I really enjoy about import gaming is its sheer unpredictability -- half the time I don't know what a game I'm buying is actually about, and even when I can't make head or tail of the story it's fun to speculate about what's going on. Some games travel well across the ocean, with minimal language barriers, while others are so specific to Japanese culture that they're almost impenetrable to Western eyes.

Hudson Soft's Mitsubachi Gakuen is a simple adventure game that falls into the latter category. It's set up like a digital comic, with simple menu-based conversation and actions, and its most striking characteristic is its heavy use of digitized photos. The PC Engine's CD-ROM technology was new and exciting, and this game pulls out all the stops -- backgrounds are shot on location, and the characters are played by actors. Bland, cheery chiptune music accompanies the visuals, freeing up the CD access for image data and keeping the story moving along at a good pace. There are even some bits of motion video during the game's intro, though these are VERY brief, consisting of just a few frames.

The story purportedly has something to do with reaching fame as a pop idol, with segments spread through the different seasons of the year, but my brief sampling of the Summer segment consisted mostly of wandering around the beach:

Chatting up girls:

Hanging around the local restaurant:

Interrupting fishermen:

And flipping through the onscreen yearbook/encyclopedia and watching the game's intro, in a vain attempt to understand who all these competing girls are (they are apparently divided into four or five teams of several girls each):

It's not much of a game, but I have to admit that its down-to-earth approach is endearing. The idol hopefuls even look like real people, instead of the idolized stereotypes that populate the PC Engine's mahjong library:

And the supporting characters are funny and sometimes comically grotesque:

Unfortunately, I ran out of patience before I made much progress in the story; my Western, non-Japanese-reading eyes were unable to make progressive choices much of the time. So this is not a game I'm ever going to finish, but it's certainly something different. Mitsubachi Gakuen marches to the beat of a very different Eastern drummer, reflecting American pop music ideals through the Japanese pop idol model of disposable stardom.

This isn't one I'm going to recommend, but I wouldn't dissuade anyone from picking it up if the above sounds appealing. You might be able to find it for sale here.

The LoadDown - 05/10/2012

noreply@blogger.com (StillGaming) — Thu, 10 May 2012 20:16:00 +0000

We're getting into the summer season, when traditional retail video game releases tend to slow down. But there are still a few interesting new titles available online...

WiiWare -- Nothing new here. Wii U coming soon?

Wii Virtual Console -- Apparently back from the dead, the Virtual Console sees two new/old Mega Drive releases on the platform, courtesy of Sega. Wonder Boy in Monster Land is the Mega Drive version of a game also known as Dragon's Curse on the TurboGrafx-16, which is already available on the VC. But Monster World IV is much more exciting -- it's the final game in the Wonder Boy series and has never been released outside of Japan; the new English translation will be appreciated by many.

DSiWare -- Two new releases here for the DSi and 3DS. Sudoku by Nikoli is for those who have exhausted all the other Sudoku options available on Nintendo's handhelds; Nikoli reportedly did much to popularize Sudoku in its early days, but given the nature of these numeric puzzles it may be hard to distinguish one designer's style from another. There's also a sequel, the unfortunately-titled Paul's Shooting Adventure 2, an inexpensive side-scrolling shooter with fun, silly enemy designs.

3DS eShop -- Nothing 3DS-specific this week; the DSi and DSi XL have price cuts coming up on May 20th so perhaps Nintendo wants to focus on delivering some value on the older hardware.

XBox Live Arcade -- A hugely successful indie game makes its way onto Microsoft's console with Minecraft: XBox 360 Edition, letting a whole new audience build and explore blocky but fascinating new worlds.

PS3 on PSN -- One new title this week: Datura, a point-and-click first-person adventure with some beautiful imagery and Move support for (in theory) better immersion.

Adventure of the Week: The Dalton Gang (1982)

noreply@blogger.com (StillGaming) — Tue, 08 May 2012 20:00:00 +0000

My schedule has been a bit overcrowded lately, so for the sake of brevity I'm tackling another SoftSide adventure game for the Atari 400/800. Published in November 1982, and as usual uncredited to any specific author, SoftSide Adventure #18 -- The Dalton Gang casts the player as a newly-minted sheriff out to stop the nefarious Dalton brothers. (Incidentally, the Daltons are distant relatives on my wife's side of the family, but don't worry -- I'll still be happy to fulfill my expected role by gunning them down in the dusty streets of an unnamed town in the vintage American West.)

The disk image I found online omits the usual SoftSide intro and launches us right into the game, so we'll have to figure out the objectives on our own. Fortunately, the setup seems to speak pretty well for itself:

I always suggest that interested readers try these games out before proceeding below. Much of the fun in adventure gaming comes from discovery -- getting past an obstacle to explore a new location, coming up with the solution to a vexing problem, and figuring out what is going on in the designer's virtual world. But I also know there are literally thousands of these games out there, and they can be maddening to solve at times, so for history's sake I am trying to document my own experience of playing them. That is, I have absolutely no qualms about offering copious and (I hope) comprehensive...

***** SPOILERS AHEAD! *****

As the game begins, we find ourselves standing in front of the Sheriff's Office, currently unoccupied; a sign directs us to "APPLY AT MAYOR'S OFFICE." We can enter to find an open jail cell and a desk with a locked drawer.

Next door to the Sheriff's office, in perhaps the worst possible location for this type of business, is the town's SALOON. There are no further details provided; most of these locations are remarkably nondescript, as was usually the case with these BASIC-language adventures. The GENERAL STORE on the east side of town is closed at the moment, bearing a gag sign -- "GONE TO A HANGING, BE OUT FOR A STRETCH." There's also a LIVERY, hosting a BLACK STALLION; the Horse won't let you if we try to CLIMB STALLION, and the parser doesn't know what RIDE means.

At the NEWSPAPER OFFICE, a clerk hands us a note reading, "SEEN NEWS" -- which by adventure game logic means these are probably compass directions for navigating a maze of some kind. From the roof, up a rope ladder visible from the street, we can see the nearby BANK, but see nothing special about it.

A RAIN BARREL down the street reveals nothing special, but there's an interesting stylistic idea here -- at this location, in addition to the customary Visible Exits and Visible Items the game adds an In the distance you see category for the bank. I'm surprised more games didn't try this kind of thing -- the intrepid adventurer always seem to have tunnel vision in these early efforts.

At the eastern outskirts of town, we find ourselves walking a DUSTY TRAIL where a GOLDEN RATTLER hisses and threatens. We have nothing anti-snake in our inventory, so we'll have to go back into town to find the MAYOR'S OFFICE, which is directly west of where we start.

In the office, Mayor asks, "What do you want" (one word, please)? Apparently he is not much of a talker. Requesting a BADGE yields, "Sorry, I can't help you. Begone!", but SHERIFF produces a better response: "Ok, you'll do. Here's your first paycheck for $200. You'll get another $200 on a performance basis." Wait -- so we get half the money available just for applying, and we have to do a fair amount of work to get the other half? It sounds like the Mayor is inadvertently subsidizing drifters and encouraging a high turnover rate, but we don't seem to have any other options here so we'd best get down to business.

Travel SW of the Mayor's Office leads to a trail ending at a creek. (The screen changes background color here, as if to suggest something special; SoftSide's earlier adventure The Deadly Game adopted the same convention, but no author is credited on either.) We can GO CREEK to cross it, arriving at a green pasture at the edge of a desert. We can't walk across the desert to the east, but we can navigate the pasture as a maze; however, there are only two rooms to it, and nothing interesting to explore or find.

Maybe we need a horse to cross the desert, as the game hints: It's too far to walk on foot. So we'll go back to town and look around for a way to commandeer the Black Stallion. If we enter the Saloon now that we are armed and badged, the story kicks into gear -- Someone runs in and yells, "Sheriff, Sheriff! The bank's being robbed!"

As we approach the bank in the distance, we can see a shootout in progress, with EMMETT DALTON, BOB, BILL and GRAT participating. This seems to go on for quite a while -- at least, we have time to figure out we need to DRAW GUN... except then if we dilly-dally too long, Bill Dalton shoots us. And if we try to SHOOT BILL before he does the reverse, we tend to miss.

We can, however, GO BARREL to hide behind the rain barrel... this seems to keep us safer, but our shots keep missing. I just kept trying and while I was trying to SHOOT BILL, I did eventually hit Grat Dalton, killing him with one poorly aimed but nevertheless effective shot.

Now Bill Dalton climbs up onto the roof of the bank, as the remaining brothers continue to fire from the street in front of the bank. We can climb up the ladder on the newspaper office to the roof, where we are able to SHOOT BILL across the way. Unfortunately, while two of the Daltons are now dead, we see Emmett and Bob riding out of town, apparently with a hostage in tow. We can't GO BANK to investigate further -- for some reason we get chased out. And then the same happens at the stable, and at the general store which is now open for business. Are the townsfolk already so profoundly dissatisfied with the new Sheriff's performance? We can't even get in to see the mayor!

Hmmmm. Can we explore the Indian Reservation east of town? Trying to SHOOT RATTLER only brings out a stereotyped Native American, who says, "No shootem my pet" in terse early-80s adventurese. I'm out of bullets anyway, but clearly this is not a solution.

It seems that maybe we don't want the Daltons to show up so soon. We don't seem to have a key for the Sheriff's desk, even though now we are legitimately able to look in the drawer -- but we can SHOOT DRAWER to shoot the lock off (without damaging the contents, suggesting that the previous sheriff managed to put a padlock on a desk drawer.) Here we find a set of keys we can use to lock the jail cell, if we had to.

The parser is typical of the SoftSide games -- responses are brief and the dictionary is limited; there's no TAKE verb, only GET is supported. And DROP GUN just reholsters it, so it's no help for maze-mapping.

Starting over fresh with some knowledge in hand, I found that I was still getting chased out of all the local establishments even though the bank hadn't been robbed yet, and realized it's because I didn't HOLSTER GUN after using it. I also discovered that we can't TALK MAYOR, but if we draw our gun while in his office we get chased out.

So it's time to get back to dealing with the Daltons, now that we can visit the General Store. The store carries a typical adventure game assortment of goods -- some practical, like a canteen, boxes of ammo, a saddle, a tobacco pouch, a shovel, and food, along with more specialized items like a small ladder and a disguise (which is not described; I pictured it as a forward-looking Groucho Marx nose and glasses.) Our tab would run to $270 if we wanted to buy one of each, so we're going to have to be careful about using the $200 we currently have available to spend; the Mayor doesn't take kindly to expense reports.

The saddle is the most expensive item in the shop, at a whopping $145, but we probably need it to get anywhere, and I decided to buy some extra ammunition as well. We PUT SADDLE on the Black Stallion, and now we can CLIMB STALLION and ride him into the DRY, DUSTY, DESERTED DESERT. Navigating according to the newspaper clerk's note, we randomly encounter rattlesnakes we can shoot, but shortly it develops that You're dying of thirst. It seems that the canteen is a good investment too; we can fill it at the creek before entering the desert, and we need to drink its contents just as we reach the end of the desert, emptying the canteen.

We can explore an old mine, if we DISMOUNT, letting our horse run off. It's a maze, and the only unique room has loose floorboads. But we can't seem to GET FLOORBOARDS or GET BOARDS, and DIG FLOOR and DIG BOARD reveal nothing. If we attempt to SHOOT FLOOR, our aim is so bad that we miss completely.

Emerging from the mine, we can also visit a cabin with some bushes and a small, unclimbable tree nearby. If we DISMOUNT, the Daltons appear from the cabin. We have to DRAW GUN and probably LOAD GUN at this point, but if we wander right up to their hideout we are shot immediately. We can GO BUSHES to hide; GO CABIN is fatal. And even if we hide in the bushes just as the Daltons appear, we are discovered and shot. This appears to be because after the horse runs off, he ends up at the Daltons' cabin, arousing their suspicions.

I was a bit stuck here, so I cheated by looking at the code, where I found a reference to a CROWBAR, which ought to help with those stubbornly slippery floorboards. Looking for a possible place to find this worthwhile item, I discovered that we can GIVE FOOD to the Golden Rattler to gain access to the Indian Reservation, as the meal puts the creature to sleep. And we can buy and give the tobacco pouch to the old Indian there, who gives us a MAGIC STICK.

The magic stick doesn't appear to be anything special, and we can't WAVE STICK to summon anybody's vengeful ancestors. But later, in inventory, it becomes MAGIC STICK (POINTING DOWN) near the creek. Is it a dowsing rod? Could be, but I never actually found a practical use for it.

It's time to go back to the cabin, to see if we can figure out how to outsmart the Daltons; by this time it had occurred to me that if we are hiding in the bushes AND on the horse, then perhaps we can see them come out before they see us. This proves to be true -- if we SHOOT EMMETT they both scatter, Emmett going behind the cabin and Bob running into the mine.

A hidden trail northwest of the cabin doesn't tell us anything about where Emmett went, but we can follow it back to town, it's just a shortcut. It was worth the return trip, however, as the clerk hands us another $200 if we go into the Mayor's office; then he says, "The Mayor's been kidnapped." So is the game over??? It doesn't feel like it should be yet; apparently we have goals beyond earning a paycheck.

Backtracking yet again, I found that we can GO CABIN after scattering the Daltons to find the coveted CROWBAR. Good! Trying to find our way back to the loose floorboards in the mine, we run into Bob Dalton hiding in the mine; he shoots us before we can get there. We can take cover (automatically) but we keep missing if we try to shoot back from here, and approaching him also proves fatal. But if we wait until his six-shooter runs out of ammo (temporarily) we can go NE, see him and SHOOT BOB before he shoots us. Now that we have the crowbar, we can GET BOARD to find a SACK OF MONEY. And we are apparently such an honest lawperson that we cannot even LOOK MONEY or OPEN SACK!

We still have to deal with Emmett Dalton somehow, and find the kidnapped Mayor. If we go back to the bank, we see the last of the Daltons fleeing at a distance. We can stop at the bank and GIVE SACK to the grateful officials, but Emmett appears to be long gone.

We can reset this chain of events by coming back to the bank after leaving for a bit -- and this time I noticed that Dalton is recognizing the long arm of the law well out of its reach. It's time to buy the disguise with our recent payday, and WEAR DISGUISE. But Dalton still recognizes us and flees? Maybe we need to drop our SHERIFF'S STAR as well... yes! Now we can SHOOT EMMETT dead! But the game still isn't over -- maybe what we really want to do is ARREST EMMETT, and put him in the cell in the Sheriff's Office. (If we don't have our gun drawn when we try to do so, though, he just laughs and runs off.)

Now that I think about finding the kidnapped mayor, I realize I probably could have arrested Bob instead of shooting him earlier, so I backtracked and did so. We might as well buy the small ladder too, as we've almost cleaned out the store.

Now we can go look for the mayor. Maybe the ladder will let us climb the tree by the cabin? Nope, Ladder's not high enough. Hmmmm... it must be high enough for something, then. It doesn't work in the cabin either, there are no hidden ledges or attics available.

I was stumped again, so a more detailed peek at the code was in order. There's a room 49 we haven't visited, a pit in the mine; we apparently can reach it if we are in room 65 and MR > 0, whatever that means (I think it means the mayor has been kidnapped.) And it looks like we need the ladder to get out of the hole. Room 65 appears to be the top of a hill, another location we haven't visited. And we can CLIMB HILL outside the mine to get here -- d'oh! I just didn't explore thoroughly enough. Falling into the pit, we find the Mayor! We can climb out of a hole in the side of the pit using the ladder, and the Mayor automatically climbs out of the hole and rides with us on our horse so we can take him back to his office.

The Mayor thanks us for the rescue, and then (if our gun is still drawn) we are again chased out. And we have 8 out of 8 points, for victory! This is less than a heroic final image -- the foolish Sheriff being booted into the street after not having the good sense to put his gun away -- so it's good that we can also just LOOK to actually trigger the official end of game. Strangely, SCORE reports that we have all 8 possible points but does not actually end the game. In any case, we are victorious!

This was a more complicated little adventure than I was anticipating, and I took full advantage of peeking at the BASIC code to solve a few stumpers (perhaps a little too hastily, in this case -- I can't blame the parser as much as my own lack of exploration.) I didn't find a published walkthrough for this one, but mine should soon be up at the CASA Solution Archive, and it's included here below the fold. I'm not sure how many more SoftSide adventures were actually published -- we may be reaching the end of the series soon, but we're not there yet.

**** WALKTHROUGH ****

W
GO OFFICE
SHERIFF
E
GO OFFICE
DRAW GUN
SHOOT DRAWER
HOLSTER GUN
OPEN DRAWER
GET KEYS
S, E
GO SALOON (the bank is being robbed!)
S, E, N, N, E, E
GO BARREL
DRAW GUN
SHOOT GRAT (repeat until Grat Dalton dies)
W
CLIMB LADDER
SHOOT BILL (Bill Dalton dies, Emmett and Bob escape)
D, W, S
HOLSTER GUN
GO STORE
BUY SADDLE ($145)
BUY CANTEEN ($10)
BUY SHOVEL ($10)
BUY AMMO ($5)
BUY AMMO ($5)
BUY FOOD ($5)
BUY POUCH ($20)
E, N, E, E, E, E, NE
GIVE FOOD (snake goes to sleep)
E
GIVE POUCH (get a magic stick)
W, SW, W, W, W, W

GO STABLE
PUT SADDLE
CLIMB STALLION
S, S, S, W, W, W, SW, S, SE
DISMOUNT
GET WATER
CLIMB STALLION
GO CREEK
DRAW GUN
LOAD GUN
E

(This navigation may be interrupted by a rattlesnake or two:)

S, E, E, N, N, E, W, S

(if you encounter one, SHOOT RATTLESNAKE )

DRINK WATER
SW

NW, W
GO BUSHES

(wait for Emmett and Bob Dalton to come out of the cabin)

SHOOT EMMETT (they scatter)

DISMOUNT
GO CABIN
GET CROWBAR
S, E, SE

SW
GO MINE
NW, NE

(Bob Dalton starts firing at us -- may need to save here, this is somewhat random; LOOK repeatedly, and wait until he does NOT fire a shot)

NE
ARREST BOB
GET BOARD
GET SACK

SE, NE, NW, SW, SW

NE, NW, W

CLIMB STALLION
NW, N, NE
E
DISMOUNT
GO OFFICE
GO CELL (Bob is left there)
S
SHOOT DRAWER
OPEN DRAWER
GET KEYS
LOCK CELL

S, W
HOLSTER GUN
GO OFFICE (collect $200)
LOOK (the mayor's been kidnapped)

S, E, E, E, N
GO STORE
BUY LADDER
BUY DISGUISE
E
DROP STAR
WEAR DISGUISE

N, E, E
DRAW GUN
E
ARREST EMMETT
W, W, W, S, S, W, W
GO OFFICE
OPEN CELL
GO CELL (Emmett is left in the cell)
S
LOCK CELL

S, E, E, N
GET STAR
WEAR STAR
DROP DISGUISE
HOLSTER GUN
N, E, E, E
GO BANK
GIVE SACK

(now to rescue the mayor!)

S, W, W, W, S, S, W, W
CLIMB STALLION
W, SW, S, SE
DISMOUNT
GET WATER
DRAW GUN
LOAD GUN
CLIMB STALLION

GO CREEK
E

(again, shoot any snakes we encounter)

S, E, E, N, N, E, W, S

DRINK WATER
SW
DISMOUNT
SW
CLIMB HILL (we fall into a pit)
DROP LADDER (Mayor will follow you)
CLIMB LADDER

NE, NW, W
CLIMB STALLION
NW, N, NE
DISMOUNT
HOLSTER GUN
GO OFFICE (Mayor thanks us)

LOOK (8 out of 8 points - victory!)

The LoadDown -- 05/03/2012

noreply@blogger.com (StillGaming) — Thu, 03 May 2012 22:24:00 +0000

May days! May days! Abandon retail!

WiiWare -- Nothing here this week, but there's a little action on the...

Wii Virtual Console -- as an emulated version of Sega's 1987 coin-op Super Hang-On arrives, with fast-paced arcade motorcycle racing that still holds up pretty well.

DSiWare -- One new title arrives for the DSi and 3DS, Amoebattle, a real-time strategy game with some honestly-come-by educational content (need energy? Absorb some mitochondria!)

3DS eShop -- One new title, Bird Mania 3D which is really a 2-D avian side-scroller with hand-painted graphics layered in 3-D. It looks like a shooter, but I don't think the player (as Mojo the... bluejay?) has any real offensive capability -- it's more of a memorization and steering challenge.

XBox Live Arcade -- Two new games this week. Fable Heroes is a multiplayer hack-and-slash side-scroller that ties into Lionhead Studios' popular Fable series. Awesomenauts is another online arena shooter.

PS3 on PSN -- Two new games. Awesomenauts shows up here also, and Doc Clock: The Toasted Sandwich of Time brings the PC adventure/platform/puzzle game to the PS3.

PSOne Classics -- Just as I was giving up on this platform, three new titles have arrived! Capcom's fighter Darkstalkers 3, Sony's stiff-upper-lip RPG The Legend of Dragoon, and EA's action mech game Future Cop: LAPD, which began life as a futuristic entry in the Strike series but developed in a different direction.

Adventure of the Week: The Deadly Game (1982)

noreply@blogger.com (StillGaming) — Tue, 01 May 2012 20:00:00 +0000

It's been a couple of months since I've returned to the long-running BASIC adventure game series published by SoftSide disk magazine. So this week we'll be playing SoftSide Adventure #17 -- The Deadly Game on the Atari 400/800, published in October of 1982. As is the case with most of the SoftSide games, the author is uncredited; all I can say is that this game shares some stylistic characteristics with other SoftSide text adventures.

The Deadly Game starts with a boilerplate Agatha Christie setup, as six greedy cousins gather for the reading of Uncle Henry's will. A rather lengthy text introduction takes us to Sir Henry Drysdale Vanderbilt's mansion, where we must spend the night -- a substantial inheritance will be divided among the survivors in the morning. I don't know what sort of person Uncle Henry was in life, but as a corpse he manages to come off as a sadistic jerk who desires to cause his extended family as much bloodshed as possible.

The intro is actually a bit misleading, but we'll get into the specific details later. As always, I recommend that interested readers sample this one for themselves before continuing below. This post won't try to kill you, but it no doubt contains murder, mayhem and ...

***** SPOILERS AHEAD! *****

With the intro out of the way, the maid escorts us to a guest room and locks the door, and the game launches right into the action. We see a bed, a dresser, a portrait of Uncle Henry, and an unbreakable, unopenable window, with deadly gas seeping under the door! (How exactly we observe that it is deadly gas remains a mystery; I like to imagine it forms cartoon-style clouds in the shape of a skull.) So it seems we're in an escape-the-room adventure, at least to begin with.

We can TAKE the PORTRAIT of Uncle Henry on the wall to reveal... a safe. It's already hard to breathe by the second turn. The dresser has three drawers... all of which are locked. The bed has a pillow and a blanket... and we can STUFF BLANKET - In what? - IN CRACK to stop the gas from entering. If we TAKE PILLOW, we get a nasty surprise as You have just been bitten by a tarantula hiding under your pillow. The title seems fitting, as there's certainly no shortage of ways to die in this game.

The wall safe has a combination lock. We can see a gypsy woman down below, through the unbreakable window, and apparently hear her throwing an unsubtle hint our way -- Diamonds are a girl's best friend replacing the constant PSSST of the gas heard earlier. We can also LOOK DRESSER to see that the top drawer has a bronze lock, the middle gold, and the bottom silver -- so we will probably have to find three matching keys.

The engine uses I for inventory, with no alternate INV or INVENTORY verbs, and we are constrained to a five-item inventory limit, though we aren't carrying anything at the start of the game. HELP hints that the parser is a little broader than the norm for this era, if a bit awkward -- we can LOOK UNDER - Under what? - UNDER BED to find a bronze key, though it's too far back to reach it (and the initial LOOK step isn't actually required.) We can also find a wad of gum under the chair, though it's odd that looking under the pillow does not reveal the tarantula waiting to attack.

We can't MOVE BED or take the key WITH GUM. But we can obtain the key WITH PORTRAIT (that must be why it's initially described as a LONG PORTRAIT.) We can't UNLOCK TOP, but we can just OPEN TOP now that we have the bronze key, to find a bobby pin and... a zinc key, which doesn't look like much help yet. But we can use the bobby pin to PICK LOCK and escape this first room, finding ourselves on the balcony which seems to surround the entire house.

An open door adjoining our guest room leads to the body of cousin Fred, who's already been shot. LOOK FRED reveals nothing further, and we can't SEARCH or MOVE his corpse. We may also notice that there are no other doors in these rooms, making Uncle Henry's house seem more like a Holiday Inn.

Along the south side of the balcony, we find one room that is locked, and another containing the body of cousin Phil, also shot. Whoever is doing this isn't being very original, or perhaps is saving all of his or her creative approaches for the player, as evidenced by the fact that the room's walls are caving in, moving towards us! There's a gold key in here, but it's in a far corner and we can't reach it; at least we can reset the trap by leaving the room, so this puzzle can be worked on later.

A room on the eastern side contains the body of cousin Rachael; also shot. So three of the five cousins are already dead, and the villain options are narrowing; if we had a list of our cousins, we'd almost be able to name the killer, or so it seems. The room is dark, and the light switch on the wall does nothing, so if we want to see something beyond Rachael's remains, we may need some illumination here.

Down a spiral staircase we find a massive living room, divided into nine locations. The front door to the east is locked. We find an elevator shaft on the western side, and a cellar door in the southwestern corner -- these are rather odd connections to find in the living room.

The cellar has a fuse box with two broken wires that keep falling apart if we try to reassemble them (LOOK BOX establishes all of this.) We do have to be observant, as some useful items are mentioned in the rooms descriptions and are not listed as distinct objects. There's also a garden hose, and a workbench that seems to have nothing useful on it, behind it or under it. We can mend the broken wires with... the wad of gum? This doesn't seem like it would be a good way to fix a fuse, but we can STICK GUM - On what? - ON WIRES to connect them. To go back upstairs, we can't GO STEPS as they are described onscreen, but must GO STAIRS.

We can't get back up to the balcony from the living room easily -- we encounter a live rattlesnake, and of course Snake won't let you if we try to GO STAIRS. But we are free to explore the rest of the lower level. North of the living room is a long hall with a telephone -- always busy if we try to make an outgoing call, of course -- as well as a dining room and kitchen. There's a pot on the stove with a lid -- and as we examine the kitchen, Suddenly a shadowy figure throws something sharp at you. We seem to have plenty of time to figure out what to do as the parser shrieks, "QUICK! DO SOMETHING!" We can't DUCK the incoming missile or leave the room, but we can TAKE LID as an impromptu shield, and claim the jagged rock thus deflected.

Old school adventure games sometimes have odd puzzles, and here we get to THROW HOSE at the rattlesnake, yielding the surprising response: GOOD THINKING! Snake falls in love (It looks like him too) and takes it away in some dark corner. Ahem. I'm not about to LOOK CORNER.

Now we can go to cousin Rachael's room and TURN SWITCH, turning on the lights and getting electrocuted. So why did we want to fix the fuse box?

North of our starting point, we can go to an attic upstairs, with an elevator, and visit the maid's room which contains a bed and a long broom. UNDER BED reveals nothing, but says it looks like a good hiding place so we may need to make use of it later. Taking the elevator is dangerous -- it plummets at 90 miles per hour, and we have to JUMP to survive, ending up in the living room downstairs. We actually have to take this route, however, as if we try to go back downstairs the normal way we trip and fall, fatally.

Can we use the long broom to block the crushing walls in the late cousin Phil's room? Not easily, and the parser is unforgiving -- if we try to JAM BROOM or INSERT BROOM or PUT BROOM -- On what? -- BETWEEN WALLS, we get no useful result but the walls still close in within a few turns. We can't take the gold key with the broom, either. But we can THROW BROOM (initially the parser takes this to mean THROW BRONZE if we are still carrying the bronze key!) and it automatically becomes a HORIZANTAL [sic] BROOM, preventing the walls from closing all the way.

With the gold key we can open the middle drawer in our own room and obtain a brass key. This allows us to access the room containing the corpse of cousin Marilyn, who has also been shot. A note here reads, "76L." This sounds like a combination, but my initial attempts to use suggested (incorrectly) that it's not for the wall safe.

So what next? LOOK ROCK reveals some writing, and READ ROCK reveals an inscription: 31R. So we seem to be picking up the combination in pieces. But I still couldn't figure out how to DIAL it as suggested when we try to OPEN SAFE; I tried DIAL RIGHT, DIAL 31 RIGHT, DIAL 31R, and DIAL 31R76L, which didn't get me anywhere.

Exploring some more, I realized I'd been getting tripped up a bit by the parser and was missing some key items. While we can't OPEN CABINET in the kitchen, or look behind or under it, if we simply LOOK CABINET we find an axe and some nails. We can use the axe to SMASH DOOR into the last guest room, producing a broken door and PLANKS OF WOOD. Inside the room is cousin Alex, also shot. With the saw we can SAW WOOD to... what? Ah, a step is produced. Maybe we can get back upstairs now and use that hiding space.

While checking this possibility out, I discovered a small bug here. We can LOOK STAIRS heading up to see that now A wooden step is missing. Looks dangerous! But then the game follows with the puzzling, "IN A GUEST ROOM. The door is open". This is just a minor glitch, not game-breaking.

Now it seems we should try to FIX STEP, but Sorry, you can't do that. FIX STAIRS is more informative: You can't yet. We probably need another tool, like a hammer.

I wandered into the living room at this point and ran into THE KILLER -- who shoots us. Hmmmm... we've already found the bodies of Cousin Phil, Cousin Fred, Cousin Alex, Cousin Marilyn and Cousin Rachael, which accounts for all five of them. But there's clearly an independent murder at large, contradicting the game's scenario -- the greedy cousins are not out killing each other. It doesn't seem I can get through here any more, after we have broken down the door to Alex's room, and there's no time to react:

So I ended up backtracking to a previous save for better navigational freedom. Given my lesson with the kitchen cabinet, maybe i should go back to the workbench? Ack - LOOK WORKBENCH (and all the variations on that theme) reveals nothing, but LOOK BENCH turns up a can of hydrofluoric acid and a jar of turpentine, considerably more useful. The acid reportedly dissolves glass -- that's strong stuff in that can! -- and we can return to our own room to POUR ACID / ON WINDOW to dissolve it. This doesn't really do anything for us at the moment, though. The gypsy woman is still down below, still reminding us about the diamond she apparently expects us to produce. We can also POUR TURPENTINE / ON PORTRAIT, but it doesn't seem to do anything.

It seems we've explored the place pretty thoroughly, and there aren't any new puzzles pending, so it's time to see if perhaps we can survive any of the deaths we've discovered. A little a priori knowledge from a previous life lets us SMASH PILLOW / WITH ROCK -- yielding CRUNCH - You killed a tarantula under your pillow. I had to peek at the code to figure this out, though -- and also to learn that we can now use the pillow to WIPE PORTRAIT to reveal another painting, and READ PORTRAIT to get the third part of the combination, 33R.

Now we seem to have the whole combination. 33R 76L 31R (or a variation, swapping the two right turns.) But I'm still having problems getting the parser to understand what I want to do. Ah - we have to DIAL 31R76L33R, cramming it all into one "noun" to get it open. The safe contains a diamond, and it seems we should take hint and THROW it to the gypsy, who tosses us the silver key in exchange. Now we can get some gloves out of the bottom drawer, and maybe these will help us survive the electrocution in Rachael's room.

This proves to be the case -- the electrocution was built into the switch itself -- and now we can see and take a hammer, and go back to the balcony stairs to repair the step. Now we can get back up to the maid's room again, where we find a gun hidden under the bed. It contains a single bullet -- probably meant for us, and it implies the killer is either a really good shot or a really bad planner.

Leaving the maid's room, we run into Uncle Henry's lawyer, who says, "You need a permit to carry a gun." Busybody! And the game rubs it in by claiming that I don't know what 'SHOOT LAWYER' means. He won't let us past him with the gun in hand. But if we put it back and then try to go and call the police downstairs, the killer shows up and shoots us, so it seems confiscating the gun is a good idea. The lawyer disappears if we drop the gun, and reappears if we pick it up, so this constraint seems intentional.

But aha! We don't need a permit to carry a bullet, so we can disarm The Killer this way, assuming he or she doesn't have any other ammunition. I am certainly beginning to suspect the maid, what with the tarantula under the pillow and the gun hidden in her room and all of my greedy cousins dead of gunshot wounds. Not to mention her locking us in our room just before the deadly gas hits, at the very beginning of the game.

We may notice now that we still have 2 nails after repairing the step -- I wonder why, as the remaining nails never come into play.

Going back to The Killer's usual haunt, we are again confronted by this villainous figure -- but this time the empty gun clicks, and we are informed that "It's the maid! She was deemed to inherit uncle's fortune if no one survived. You grasp her and she can't escape." Funny that Uncle Henry's lawyer didn't mention this catch-all condition at the reading of the will, so we could have sent the maid away for the night on account of her clear conflict of interest.

Anyway, we are fully able to drag the captured maid all over the house. But what we should really do is go to the telephone, CALL POLICE, and take her to the front door to await processing. There's a knock, we OPEN DOOR... and apparently we are supposed to load some sort of climactic piece, but the game is bugged or expecting to load from cassette! There's no further section of code on the disk that I can see. Ah, well, I'm going to call it victory and assume whatever's left unseen here is just a quick wrapup, bundling the maid off to jail while we enjoy the much larger inheritance her machinations have afforded us. Hmmmm... maybe we shouldn't press charges. At any rate, the game ends happily if not very neatly:

In testing my solution, I discovered that The Killer does not appear as expected until we have found all of the bodies; we don't otherwise have to visit Cousin Fred's room, but the plot demands it. And the rattlesnake did not appear on my second go either, perhaps for similar reasons. The biggest issues I had with this game were parser wrestling problems, especially when discovering contents of cabinets and workbenches. But there are some tricky-for-the-wrong-reasons puzzles afoot too -- I can say with a high degree of confidence that there aren't many games where SMASH PILLOW actually does something interesting, and THROW HOSE was a bit of a stretch too. Fortunately the SoftSide games are written in BASIC, so it's not difficult to dig into the details when necessary; I like to think of it as a meta-adventure of sorts.

To save others the headaches, my walkthrough is available at the CASA solution archive, and is included here below the fold.

**** WALKTHROUGH ****

TAKE BLANKET
STUFF BLANKET (In what?)
IN CRACK (poison gas stops seeping in)
LOOK UNDER (Under what?)
UNDER BED (find a bronze key)
UNDER CHAIR (find gum)
TAKE GUM
TAKE PORTRAIT (reveals wall safe)
TAKE BRONZE (With what?)
WITH PORTRAIT
OPEN TOP
LOOK TOP (a bobby pin and a zinc key)
DROP BRONZE
TAKE PIN
TAKE ZINC
PICK LOCK
DROP PIN
GO DOOR
S
GO DOOR (cousin Fred is dead)
GO DOOR
N, N
GO STAIRS
E, E
GO DOOR
TAKE BROOM
UNDER BED (looks like a good hiding place)
GO DOOR
W
GO ELEVATOR
PUSH BUTTON (elevator plummets at 90 mph)
JUMP (arrive in western part of living room)
S
OPEN DOOR
DROP ZINC
GO DOOR
GO STAIRS
E
LOOK BOX
STICK GUM (on what?)
ON WIRES (the fuse is fixed -- somehow)
E
LOOK BENCH
TAKE JAR
POUR TURPENTINE (on what?)
ON PORTRAIT
TAKE ACID
S
TAKE HOSE
N, W, W
GO STAIRS
N, N, N, N, N, E
TAKE LID
(LOOK several times until thrown rock is deflected)
DROP LID
TAKE ROCK
LOOK ROCK
READ ROCK (part of combination)
S, S, W, W
THROW HOSE (if rattlesnake is here, rattlesnake falls in love and takes

it away)
GO STAIRS
S, S, S, W
GO DOOR
THROW BROOM (walls stop closing in)
TAKE GOLD
GO DOOR
W, W, N, N, N
GO DOOR
OPEN MIDDLE
LOOK MIDDLE (brass key)
DROP GOLD
TAKE BRASS
SMASH PILLOW (with what?)
WITH ROCK (killed tarantula)
DROP ROCK
TAKE PILLOW
WIPE PORTRAIT
DROP PILLOW
READ PORTRAIT (part of combination)
DROP PORTRAIT
POUR ACID (on what?)
ON WINDOW (window dissolves)
LOOK WINDOW (gypsy woman below)
GO DOOR
S, S, S, E
OPEN DOOR
GO DOOR
TAKE NOTE
READ NOTE (part of combination)
DROP NOTE
DROP BRASS
GO DOOR
E, E, N, N, N
GO STAIRS
E, N, N, E
LOOK CABINET
TAKE AXE
TAKE NAILS
S, S, W, W
GO STAIRS
S
SMASH DOOR
DROP AXE
GO DOOR
GET SAW
GO DOOR
SAW WOOD (a wooden step is produced)
DROP SAW
TAKE STEP
S, S, W, W, W, N, N, N
GO DOOR
DIAL 31R76L33R (the complete combination)
LOOK SAFE
TAKE DIAMOND
THROW DIAMOND (gypsy tosses back silver key)
OPEN BOTTOM
LOOK BOTTOM
DROP SILVER
TAKE GLOVES
WEAR GLOVES
GO DOOR
S, S, S, E, E, E, N
GO DOOR
TURN SWITCH
TAKE HAMMER
GO DOOR
S, W, W, W, N, N, N, N
FIX STAIRS
DROP HAMMER
GO STAIRS
E, E
GO DOOR
UNDER BED (a gun)
TAKE GUN
LOOK GUN (one bullet)
TAKE BULLET
DROP GUN
GO DOOR
W, W
GO STAIRS
S, S, S, S, E, E, E, N, N, N
GO STAIRS
E (it's THE KILLER! With an empty gun! We grab her!)
N
CALL POLICE
S, E, E, S
OPEN DOOR (apparent end, some kind of coda missing)

Of Import: L-Dis (1991)

noreply@blogger.com (StillGaming) — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 20:00:00 +0000

One of the things I remember most fondly about the post-crash era of videogaming was the emergence of publishers with distinct visual personalities. On the Atari 2600 and Intellivision, everything tended to look about the same -- there wasn't enough graphical flexibility to allow for much distinction, and while some designers were better than others at getting the most out of the hardware, everyone was wearing the same straitjacket. When the 8-bit NES came along, suddenly there were enough pixels and colors available to suggest cuteness and grittiness, sharpness and subtlety; Super Mario Bros. looked distinctly different from Metal Gear and Mega Man.

I was reminded of this in the negative sense this week, as I fired up Masaya's L-Dis, a 1991 CD-ROM shoot-'em-up for the Japanese PC Engine. I've only played a few of Masaya's games, and my general impression of the company's work has been less than stellar; it's not so much that their games were bad, as that they were undistinguished. I have no sense of Masaya's "personality", so I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Nippon Computer Systems' games division came up with a pretty strong game this time around.

The story is slightly more interesting than the standard ship-plus-stone-chinned-pilot-versus-universe conceit. The game's prologue introduces us to two young students, a boy and a girl, whose after-school chalk-drawing session is interrupted by evil forces from another dimension:

Whatever this entity is, it manages to kidnap the girl, and transform the kids' drawings into an array of villains. We pick one of three weapons options, and we're off to battle!

The game looks really good, with bright cartoon graphics and smooth animation, though there is a little bit of sprite-priority sloppiness causing flying enemies to move "between" ground-based foes and the background layer. The CD-Audio soundtrack cooks along nicely if unmemorably, and we get to face a good variety of small enemies and several bosses per level. The difficulty is also pitched well -- while I never quite managed to beat the first level during a quick sample of the game, I got consistently better and at least managed to make it TO the third boss with lives left.

The design is intentionally loose and silly -- all of the powerups are announced in a high-pitched child's voice, and nothing is taken seriously; weapons include ladies' footwear flung haphazardly at the enemy. The early part of the first level features a colorful sunset and a giant flying sharkish submarine:

Eventually we reach the apparent end of the level, and face a clam monster who initially faces the wrong way and is frightened of all the gunfire aimed at his backside:

After beating the clambot, we are transported into a strange dimension, with a bit of background parallax, to face this bug-eyed robot villain:

L-Dis isn't a spectacular game or a forgotten classic, but it's completely competent and pleasant to play, and its colorful visuals make for a nice change of pace from the usual 2-D side-scrolling shooters that were so common on the PC Engine. I will probably spend more time with this little cute-'em-up when I sit down to play just for fun.

This one's worth picking up -- you might be able to find it for sale here.

The LoadDown -- 04/26/2012

noreply@blogger.com (StillGaming) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:16:00 +0000

April showers bring... erm, fun-filled hours... of downloadable gaming!

WiiWare -- Quiet here. Going once?

Wii Virtual Console -- Bobbing back up this week with Capcom's Mega Drive game Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers, in case you need another SFII variant for your collection.

DSiWare -- One title that makes for a full circle of sorts... Chuck E. Cheese's Arcade Room, which is not so much an arcade as a virtual ticket-redemption game center. Available games include racing, skee-ball, target shooting, basketball, and Smash-a-Munch. Chuck E. Cheesy!

3DS eShop -- One new game, Block Factory -- something like an unlicensed Tetris Construction Kit. I'm surprised casual game publishers haven't ensured this DIY generic puzzle creator never saw the light of day.

XBox Live Arcade -- Two new titles arrive: Bloodforge is ~~a forgotten 80's hair band~~ an M-rated combat action game, heavy on the gore and horned helmet fetishism. Deep Black: Episode 1 is a third-person shooter focused on underwater movement and combat, a potentially fresh idea with multiplayer to boot. (Personally, I'd hold off on either of these for a bit -- Episode 1 of The Walking Dead is expected to arrive on Friday, see below.)

PS3 on PSN -- Two new titles this week. PopCap Games' Bejeweled 3 is yet more color-matching ~~mayhem~~ ~~fun~~ ~~entertainment~~ matching of colors. And Telltale Games' The Walking Dead series debuts with Episode 1: A New Day -- see below for more details.

Notable on PC and Mac -- Telltale Games' newest episodic series, The Walking Dead, premiered this week. Based on the universe of Robert Kirkman comic books, it's available on Steam and -- after a few days of technical glitches -- Telltale Games' own website. Critical reception has been positive, and from my brief experience with it so far I think it's going to be one of Telltale's most successful efforts, both creatively and financially.

Adventure of the Week: Alien Research Centre (1990)

noreply@blogger.com (StillGaming) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:00:00 +0000

I ran across the prolific output of UK adventure publisher Zenobi Software quite a while ago, but haven't played or written about any of their games until now. Zenobi published a ton of independently-developed text adventures for the Spectrum and the Atari ST in the 1980s and 90s, and the Balrog himself created a website reminiscing about those times. Picking a title at random, I came up with the 1990 illustrated adventure, Alien Research Centre, by Ian Smith, Shaun G. McClure, and Tom Smith.

The 48K Spectrum had a distinct advantage over many of its competitors, with enough memory onboard to support tape-based adventures with graphics, and these illustrations are nicely handled with very little evidence of the "color clash" occasioned by the Speccy's graphics system.

It's a fairly standard escape-the-alien-spaceship plot, though in this case we are out to recover an Earthly craft (the off-planet Alien Research Centre) where something has, presumably, gone horribly wrong. It's distinguished by a solid, relatively bug-free design and detailed graphics, with some obscure but ultimately logical puzzles and many ways to die. It's easily as good as many of the commercial adventure games of the Spectrum's heyday.

As always, I encourage interested gamers to visit the Alien Research Centre before proceeding here, as I will be documenting the game in detail. In other words, there are necessarily going to be...

***** SPOILERS AHEAD! ******

We start out in the Docking Bay. To the south is Doctor Goebbler's office, with a desk and a hole in the ceiling. EXAMINE DESK yields a doctor's ID card. Above the office is a vent with dust and rubble covering an exit. We have a decimator cannon in hand, but it's ineffective against the rubble, so its name seems to be a bit of an exaggeration.

The Biolab to the north of the docking bay contains a titanium scalpel, and to the east is a corridor occupied by a Giant Maggot. Trying to GET MAGGOT is fatal, but we can saunter past the deadly maggot to visit the crew quarters, where we find evidence of violence and death. We also pick up a matter disrupter (UK spelling) and some pliers.

Is the disrupter any good against the rubble in the vent? We can't DISRUPT RUBBLE. EXAMINE DISRUPTER reveals that ON THE FRONT THERE IS A SMALL SWITCH MARKED 'ACTIVATE'. But ACTIVATE DISRUPTER only yields I DON'T KNOW HOW TO ACTIVATE DISRUPTER. Maybe we should PUSH SWITCH? No, that blows us up directly; the matter disrupter seems to be more of a bomb than a gun.

Can we use it on the Giant Maggot? No -- if we stay in the area for more than one turn, trying to prepare the bomb, THE BEHEMOTH FLOORS ME AND SUCKS AWAY MY LIFE'S BLOOD. And while the decimator cannon is modified to only target life forms, this juvenile monster is too fast - IT DODGES IT.

We can, however, drop the matter disrupter in the vent, push the switch, and immediately exit to the office below -- the explosion clears the rubble away but leaves the vent otherwise undamaged somehow. Now we can travel through the vents -- there's a small door and an air grill halfway along the passage, and some bits of paper along with a Freeze Beast at the southern end. The Freeze Beast is also shockingly good at dodging the decimator cannon, which we've lugged halfway across the galaxy and is now starting to seem like a gag gift.

We can OPEN DOOR in the vent to access a small storage room, where we find a void-suit and a soldering iron, both of which will probably come in handy. This is a very classic adventure design -- we are clearly required to assemble some tools to solve the puzzles ahead.

The Freeze Beast is not as aggressive as the Giant Maggot -- we can read the bits of paper without being attacked, seeing that one of them contains scrawled numbers (2749 in my playthrough.) We can't take the time to CUT BEAST with the scalpel though, it still attacks.

The attractive graphics don't include takeable objects, and often depict things that aren't accessible -- for example, the storage room shows a door, but the parser doesn't recognize it -- but at least we don't have to guess at the names of any objects seen but not mentioned at the text. Can we open the air grill in the vent? OPEN GRILL, PUSH GRILL, KICK GRILL, and TAKE GRILL don't seem to do anything.

I seem to be a bit stuck, so I consulted Dorothy's walkthrough at CASA to discover that while we can't CUT MAGGOT, we can STAB MAGGOT with the scalpel. The parser tells us that IT VOMITS BLOOD AND SHRIVELS UP. I CAN NOW GO EAST.

This slightly-necessary violence allows us to reach the Chemilab, where there is some flux, good for soldering; and a broken Vac-Tube transport, conveniently disabled by a single, easily visible broken wire. It's a good thing we have a soldering iron and flux! We SOLDER WIRE, and now we hear a whoosh of air; but we can't USE TUBE or GO TUBE or RIDE TUBE or ENTER TUBE. But if we try to leave the room to the west, we discover that it has already transported us, and will shuttle us between two floors any time we enter the Vac-Tube room.

We can find a smashed Droid and a wall-mounted cable in the engine room. Examination of the Droid establishes that it WAS PROBABLY PULLED APART BY A GARGANADON! It doesn't sound like we want to run into one of those. The southern part of the engine room smells of ammonia, and a pool blocks a western exit, apparent evidence of a serious janitorial mishap. If we try to enter the pool, or the western exit, or even just hang around too long, the pool draws us under and we are again dead. So the pool seems to be sentient, but we can't SHOOT or STAB it; not that we would expect to be able to.

Some of the graphics are reused; to the south of the pool we find a fire axe in the Maintenance Room, which looks exactly like the small storage room. We can't CHOP BEAST with the axe, but we can SMASH GRILL.

Going down through the smashed grill takes us to a dusky uninhabited alien containment room that seems to have suffered some acid damage. There's also an airlock, with a hand rail, an outer hatch, and a lurking Vapour Wraith. If we do the wrong things, the Wraith attacks us with electricity. If we open the hatch, we are sucked out into the void. But if we wear the void-suit and HOLD RAIL and then OPEN HATCH, the wraith is sucked out of harm's way (our harm's way, that is) and now a southern passage is open.

The second alien containment cell contains a corpse we may wish we hadn't EXAMINEd (THIS MAN HAS BEEN RIPPED ALMOST TO PIECES AND IS ALMOST UNRECOGNISABLE), and a jar of acid. We can POUR ACID in the pool, but the chemical combination explodes and takes us with it. We see this rather downbeat death screen a lot in this game:

The acid proves to be more useful on the Freeze Beast (though the bits of paper are also destroyed, so we'd better have noted the code before using it), allowing us to go down to a Hydroponics Garden... where the Garganadon lurks. It is also very good at dodging a blast the decimator cannon, and I am beginning to wonder if we are going to get to decimate anything at all.

It's walkthrough time again, to obtain a few key details. We can CUT CABLE in the engine room to obtain... A USEFUL ROPE. How did that happen, exactly? It's explicitly useful, anyway, so we'd best take it along. And we can KICK FLOOR in the acid-damaged alien containment room to access a lower passage. (After this point, any time we enter the alien containment cell we fall through the floor -- that was quite a kick! Winners don't do acid.)

This claustrophobic lower passage runs east-west, and here I notice a dead woman. EXAMINE WOMAN reveals that BITE MARKS OF A HUGE RADIUS ARE THE CAUSE OF DEATH, which neither surprising nor reassuring.

The Medi-Centre has complicated equipment that did nothing to save the lost crew, in case we were not already feeling wary and depressed about Her Majesty's half-arsed space programme. We find an access panel and a blue chemical here. I am finally running up against the game's nine-item inventory limit, so I drop the soldering iron and flux, assuming I only needed them to repair the Vac-Tube wiring in the great adventure game tradition. We can open the access panel and make our way (a mysteriously one-way traversal) back into the air vents above the doctor's office.

Another corridor west of the medi-centre contains a mutant Land Shark. (Candygram?) We can't POUR CHEMICAL or SHOOT SHARK to any productive effect, so we chalk up another failure for the decimator cannon, which apparently fires too slowly to intercept anything but a sedated elephant. What else can we use the chemical on? I don't know what it was, but pouring it on the sentient pool informs us that THE POOL HAS VAPOURISED (though the ammonia smell lingers.) Now we can go west to the Engineering Supplies room; I was expecting a slide rule, maybe some graph paper, but all we find here is a net.

This seems like it would be useful for capturing a water shark, but is it effective against the Land Shark? Yes, we THROW NET, THE SHARK IS IMMOBILISED and we can travel south. Here we find the Communications Room, but the equipment has been sabotaged. There is an SOS Transmitter here, with a start button. Pushing the button doesn't do anything, but if we examine the transmitter, we spot and remove an IC (an integrated circuit, I assume.) It's not clear if we can repair the chip or use it somewhere else, but examination indicates IT'S THE VITAL COMPONENT TO MOST TRANSMIT-RECEIVE DEVICES. Hmmmm.

The IC won't go into the smashed Droid. We can, however, return to the Hydroponic Garden and SHOOT the GARGANADON; the first try fails, but we just have to be persistent and something is finally decimated as advertised. Now we can travel east to a huge Agri-Dome. There's a ledge here, which is probably where we need to use the odd cable-born rope... and yes, THROW ROPE does the trick.

Climbing the rope (U) takes us to the Bridge. A Security Droid loitering around in lieu of providing actual security says, "State Access Code." I hope that random bit of paper we found earlier is the real deal! We can goof around with unsuccessful responses -- STATE 1111, SAY 1111, 1111 -- until we get serious and SAY 2479. The droid leaves and now we can access the actual Bridge controls.

The Bridge's touch-pad can be examined -- basic ship systems are reportedly operational, but I NOTICE THAT SOME OF THE IC SOCKETS ARE EMPTY. We only have one IC -- and we can INSERT IC, but some of the sockets are still reportedly empty, and still only basic ship systems are up. But we have no need for fancy flight lessons -- we just TOUCH PAD, and we are off to victory! If only there were a victory illustration instead of this variation of the death screen:

I enjoyed playing Alien Research Centre -- it has a nice sense of atmosphere and a design that's open enough to allow some experimentation and head-scratching, though it's still fairly linear and without a walkthrough handy I would likely have gotten terminally stuck at a couple of points. I will definitely be looking at more of the Zenobi library as time goes on.

East vs. West: LOOM (1993, PC Engine)

noreply@blogger.com (StillGaming) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 20:00:00 +0000

It's LOOM week at Gaming After 40, apparently, as after tackling the U.S. version it seemed like a good time to sample the Japanese PC Engine edition. Published by Victor Musical Industries in Japan, this Super CD-ROM was a port of Lucasfilm Games' PC point-and-click adventure:

You can read my earlier post to get full details about the game itself; I'm going to focus on some more subtle differences here. This adaptation is an interesting hybrid of the versions published in America. It appears to use the game data from the original U.S. release, with the text translated to Japanese. And it features no voice acting at all, but has more CD-quality music than the American CD-ROM edition.

It's interesting to note that character closeups and other material omitted from the US "talkie" are present here, with brief interruptions of the music as necessary for loading. These images seem to be based on 256-color VGA updates of the 16-color EGA original, which were reportedly created for but not used in the PC CD-ROM version. Similar images were also seen in the Japanese FM-Towns version, so this PC Engine port may have been based most directly on that edition.

It must have been tricky to adapt the PC-oriented SCUMM engine to sprite-based hardware; this version of the engine probably could not have been updated to handle sprite scaling, so porting of later games like The Secret of Monkey Island would not have been possible. Fortunately, LOOM's design uses an old trick, employing multiple sprite sizes for hero Bobbin Threadbare, with changes carefully concealed behind the scenery.

I didn't play through the entire game, but the story appears to be identical. It looks like the width difference between platforms (320 pixels on the PC compared to a standard 256 on the PC Engine) is accounted for by keeping the original graphic data as-is, and just leaving extra pixels off the left side of the screen. It's easy to see this with the Magic Engine emulator -- the text is off-center, and sometimes sprites that would be offscreen are not displayed until they scroll into the active area:

The engine gets bogged down when there's too much going on -- I presume it's translating spriteand background data to pixel-level rendering, no mean feat on the PC Engine. But LOOM is completely playable on the PC Engine, and this version was re-ported to American shores for the Turbo Duo, late in the system's life.

I'd really recommend the North American "talkie" over this version, but it's an interesting historical artifact for adventure gamers. You might be able to track it down here.

The LoadDown -- 04/19/2012

noreply@blogger.com (StillGaming) — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 21:57:00 +0000

Taxes are done (at least here in the U.S.) and it's time to see what's new on the near-instant-gratification gaming front... fairly quiet this week...

WiiWare -- Nothing here this week... starting to feel a mite lonely in this part of the Nintendo universe.

DSiWare -- One new game, I Must Run!, a high-speed platformer, more adult than the usual fare, with T-rated language and violence as the orange-jumpsuited hero runs to save his wife.

3DS eShop -- Previously only available with preorders of the new Kid Icarus: Uprising, this 3-D enhanced version of the 8-bit NES classic Kid Icarus is now available to everyone with $5.99 to spare. There's also a free demo version of the action/puzzler Pyramids.

XBox Live Arcade -- Two new titles arrived this week. Fez is a cute 2-D/3-D platformer, in development since 2007 and subject of the documentary Indie Game: The Movie. Trials Evolution is a much-anticipated followup to the popular physics-based Trials stunt bike game.

PS3 on PSN -- I could have sworn this was released a few weeks back, but it appears that Sega's coin-op port of the light-gun (PS Move) shooter The House of the Dead 4 actually showed up this week. So go kill some zombies!

Adventure of the Week: LOOM (1992, CD-ROM Version)

noreply@blogger.com (StillGaming) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 20:00:00 +0000

Somehow, I have managed to make it through more than two years of weekly adventuring without tackling any of the classic point-and-click efforts from Lucasfilm Games. So it's high time we remedy that, with a look at Brian Moriarty's LOOM, originally released in 1990 and upgraded to this CD "talkie" version in 1992.

LOOM doesn't get a lot of love these days, primarily because it is rather brief, and not as wildly funny as most of the publisher's other titles. Its unusual interface also takes some getting used to -- it has no inventory system, only a musical staff that the hero can use to cast magical drafts (spells), and basic point-and-click examine actions for items. But I think LOOM is an unrecognized milestone in the development of the adventure game, for a couple of reasons.

One, LOOM is a clear bridge between the Infocom era and the point-and-click adventure; its use of spells, substantial support for applying the wrong spells, and generally wizardly narrative call the Enchanter series to mind. Brian "Professor" Moriarty's career spanned the technological gamut, from Atari BASIC (Crash Dive!) to Infocom's Z-machine (Wishbringer) and Lucasarts' SCUMM engine, so the game's pedigree is solid. And LOOM's design feels like a wholehearted but carefully considered embrace of the graphical, mouse-driven age -- the minimal interface makes sense, as an attempt to tell a compelling interactive story without text or other complex forms of input.

Second, this CD-ROM edition of LOOM is a fine early example of adventure gaming finding its voice. Raw CD Redbook audio was used originally, as on-the-fly mixing of CD and Soundblaster streams was still a bit iffy, and much of the original dialogue had to be edited down in order to squeeze the voiceover content onto the disc. Internet heresy though it may be, in my opinion the reworked dialogue is significantly improved over the original script -- it has more character and more consistency, and some generic lines are replaced with much wittier stuff. It's also much more British in flavor, and eminently more actable, suiting the voice casting. (Unfortunately, there are also a couple of new typos in the new onscreen text!) Unlike the competition at Sierra On-Line, Lucasarts already had access to proper sound studios and acting talent as the new technology dawned, and this was the first CD-ROM "talkie" adventure game I played that actually sounded like a professional effort.

The game offers Standard, Practice, and Expert difficulty levels -- I'll be playing on Standard here. The difficulty setting affects how the game's musical distaff is presented -- Expert mode doesn't label or echo the notes, so we have to learn and replay the drafts based on pitch alone. The original release had another extra in the Expert mode, which I'll detail below, but that was omitted from the CD version along with some other details. The current Steam release unfortunately lacks the original "radio drama" intro disc, and the Windows engine by default has an annoying graphics smoothing algorithm turned on which muddies the improved VGA graphics a bit. The CD version also lacks the constant background music of the original, although the music excerpts that remain sound very nice. It's good to have the onscreen text turned on, also, as some of the dialogue clips cut off too soon or are poorly aligned, leaving bits of starts and endings in the wrong place.

As always, I encourage interested adventurers to visit the world of LOOM before proceeding here. It's not a long or difficult game, and it is still commercially available for a reasonable price on Steam. I should warn you that the drafts are somewhat randomized, so don't take my word for any of the sequences mentioned below. Beyond this point, young Weaver, there lie...

***** SPOILERS AHEAD! *****

(Apologies for this screenshot, I hadn't yet turned off the graphical filtering.)

As the story begins, a glowing messenger nymph arrives to wake a young, napping Weaver, our hero Bobbin Threadbare, and tell him that he is needed in the village; the voice actress does a Billie Burke/Glenda impersonation here that isn't wholly successful. Bobbin doesn't have much to do after she departs, except climb down the mountain to the village. If he inspects the lone leaf hanging on the tree under which he has been sleeping, it falls. "The last leaf of autumn!", he notes. This is portentous.

Bobbin visits the Weaver village, his home, which is now deserted; one tent can be entered, where we find the Book of Patterns (with which Bobbin is already familiar), some green fabric, and a dye-pot. Clicking on the pot, we hear a four-note tune which presumably is a dye spell of some sort. But at this point we have no way to cast spells, as Bobbin is under-staffed. (Sorry. You knew that pun was coming somewhere along the way here.)

Tapestries inside the improbably large temple hidden behind the entrance of one tent tell the story of the Great Guilds -- this bit feels very Infocom-ish, as three tapestries in sequence are encountered, and elegant prose describes the Creation of the World, the Passing of Two Shadows, the Decline of the Great Guilds and the foretold coming of a Third Shadow.

As we reach the heart of the temple, Bobbin witnesses the council of Elders punishing an older female Weaver named Hetchel, who has a lifelong connection to our hero at what now seems to be great cost to her own well-being. She is transformed into a swan's egg, unexpectedly, when the penalty draft is played, and the other Weavers in authority are transformed into swans. This is all very strange indeed, and the voice acting here is excellent.

The temple is invaded by another swan, and they all fly off, leaving Bobbin alone in the temple. He picks up the lead Weaver's discarded distaff, and now he can play drafts, though he only has access to the first three notes, c, d and e. The swan's egg is trying to open, with e-c-e-d echoing on the musical staff when we click on it. Playing this opening draft hatches the egg, freeing Hetchel -- now in bird form -- who tells Bobbin that strange things have been happening ever since he was born. She calls him the "Loom Child," telling him that he must escape this island and find his destiny, before she dives into a rift in reality, following the swans to dimensions unknown.

The sequence C-f-g-c plays on the loom if we click it, but most of the notes are too high for Bobbin to play at the moment. Exploring the village, we learn that the seagulls on the pier sing e-c-e-d also, so this is apparently a bird theme of some kind. Or an "opening" theme, actually -- we can cast it on a clam, beachside, and one of the gulls gets a treat. This is no doubt a useful draft for avian scavengers, and it provides a hint about how this universe works.

Now we can hear more specifically that the dye-pot draft is d-d-c-d; we can use this draft to dye things green, though Bobbin hates that grass green color. Tipping a flask over in the dye tent plays g-f-f-e. The manual lists all of the spells, with empty staffs for note-taking, which indirectly hints at what sorts of drafts we should be looking for, though some are red herrings. The randomization of the drafts falls into two categories -- some spells are reversible, allowing Bobbin to do or undo something, while others are palindromes that operate in one direction only.

Some hollow trees west of the village contain three owls, yielding the partial draft c-d-d... but guessing at a fourth note isn't helpful -- Bobbin tells us either that the sequence we've tried isn't a draft, or that he doesn't think he spun that one right if we do come up with the right sequence on our own. We have to free a rabbit from some brambles in a nearby graveyard where a fourth owl sits -- it takes the rabbit as prey and returns to its tree, allowing us to listen and complete the draft. It is in fact c-d-d-c, at least in my playthrough, but we have to see the whole sequence revealed before we can cast the draft; guesswork doesn't count.

Another tent in the village has some gold in it. It's dark and hard to see inside -- but, ah, we can cast the owl's spell on the darkness to see with the creature's night vision assisting us. A spinning wheel here is used to turn straw into gold -- d-e-d-c -- and discovering this also enables the "f" note on the staff.

What now? We can't seem to do anything with the Loom in the temple, its magic is beyond Bobbin's ken as a novice Weaver. Bobbin's mother, Lady Cygna Threadbare, is buried in the graveyard, and her headstone contains a poem with some clues. Bobbin notes the last bit in particular -- "The day the sky is opened / And the Tree is split asunder." We can focus on the sky from the graveyard, but trying to open it yields only, "Maybe I should stand a bit closer." Returning to the mountaintop, and opening the sky, we see lightning strike the tree and send it tumbling into the lake below; it floats and comes to rest by the dock. Is this transportation? Yes, Bobbin can set out on the floating tree for parts unknown, with some of the swans trailing behind him.

Along the way, he encounters an ocean-borne tornado, a waterspout. The open draft doesn't do anything, but clicking on the waterspout yields c-f-c-c. Reversing this twisting draft to c-c-f-c untwists it., and reaching shore earns Bobbin access to the "g" on the staff.

From the beach we can enter a forest or approach the glowing green city of Crystalgard. In the city, we observe an official of some kind conversing with an older man. Approaching, Bobbin can eavesdrop -- these are the Bishop, and Master Crucible. Apparently a sphere with the ability to see 4-6 hours into the future has been produced, but the Bishop demands an 8-hour capacity. After these characters depart, Bobbin can enter a tall crystal; ringing the bell inside transports us to a tower where two men are sharpening a scythe of some sort. It's a restricted area, so we are summarily sent back (though not killed, as this is a Lucasarts game!)

We can enter another part of the crystal structure, where one Master Goodmold welcomes us and asks if it's true that peering beneath a Weaver's hood brings instant, agonizing death. Bobbin doesn't know, but this is a useful hint. Goodmold allows us to look around, "but if you break it, you buy it!" A finely sculpted chalice is worth investigating -- we can reverse the spill spell we learned from the flask back home to fill it with wine, though we don't need to do so. We can also explore this area, using one of those then-fascinating "force the player to navigate the 3-D space! Isn't this cool?" paths through the background's several doors and transport towers.

In the forest outside the city, Bobbin meets a group of four shepherds who are sure he is here to steal their sheep. They have heard of a wizard foretold and ask Bobbin to show off some magic; they also have some invisibility magic of their own. None of our drafts seem to work, but when they become invisible, we hear g-c-g-c. Let's try that... no good, they are not impressed. This scene has much-improved dialogue compared to the original's generic dismissals -- the shepherds are heartily-voiced and jauntily insulting, sending poor Bobbin away with, "Don't trip on your robe, little Wizard!"

Maybe we can use the invisibility spell in the crystal city now. We can see something going on up in the tower, probably the people working on the scythe. We seem to have no opportunity to go invisible ourselves, though; at least there's no obvious way to target Bobbin. The crystal room is a cemetery, where we can note husband and wife, Luscent and Softshard Bottleblow, buried side by side.

If we empty the chalice and examine it, Bobbin remarks on its beauty and we get a brief history lesson from Master Goodmold. This artifact is the famous Chromax Conundrum -- for unknown reasons, carved out of diamond instead of glass by Luscent Bottleblow -- and it is the only surviving example of his work after a dragon attacked the city years ago. We learn that the first Scrying Sphere was lost in the attack -- so perhaps we should see if we can find it.

While we have been exploring, a solution comes to mind -- we can cast the invisibility spell on the people working in the tower, which effectively makes Bobbin invisible, it just works differently than I had assumed. He can eavesdrop on the workers to learn that Master Crucible is selling a scrying sphere to the Bishop for a considerable sum, though nobody knows why the Clerics would want such a thing.

Invisible Bobbin can also walk right past the workers and take a different crystal tower to access the Scrying Sphere. And now, in one of those illogical time-travel puzzles, we learn that e-f-f-e apparently transforms Bobbin (in what appears to be an illusory fashion) into some beast that scares the Shepherds away. So now we have a new draft -- I guess the learning is legit, it's just a paradox that doesn't quite make sense. We can also see a vision of fire in a cave, and of a swan's eye, hearing C-f-g-c as the associated draft. Examining the deadly giant scythe on the way back out of the tower, we learn a-a-a-g -- apparently a sharpening draft.

Using the illusory spell, the shepherds now see Bobbin as the dragon of times past and flee. A new draft, d-e-f-a, sends the remaining shepherd's sheep over the fence, and the inverse brings them back again. We can dye the sheep green, and the shepherd complains about it -- how can he watch sheep he can hardly see? -- but there doesn't seem to be a reason to do this.

At the far end of the shepherd's fields, we find a small cottage. Here, Fleece, female leader of the Shepherds, tells Bobbin that there are problems with the dragon. The creature spots the white sheep easily and makes off with them, which is making it very hard to fill Bishop Mandible's order for 10,000 sheep. Hmmmm. Is he raising an army? Of sheep?

There's a sickly lamb in the cottage, and we can try to dye it green to demonstrate the idea that obviously springs to mind, but no, that doesn't work. Fleece's healing spell -- c-a-a-c -- is not helping the poor animal, but we should make note of the spell for later. We can turn all the sheep in the field green -- and immediately, the Dragon arrives and picks up Bobbin as the easiest target. She is disappointed in her catch, comically so, and rather vain and house-proud to boot; this dialogue is substantially rewritten for CD, and the performance is very entertaining.

The dragon informs us that some wizard came in a while back and made off with much of her treasure, and destroyed her glass collection, except for a glass ball that survived. Can we reverse d-e-d-c to turn her gold into straw? Yes. She demands we turn it back -- NOW -- but we gain the "a" note on the distaff for our trouble. We also learn that she's not fond of breathing fire -- she can do it, but generally won't.

So we have learned a bit, and we aren't being eaten, but we are still stuck in the Dragon's cave. The healing spell doesn't help us, but we can use the e-f-f-e spell to manifest as fire -- apparently we look like whatever our target fears or at least dislikes the most. The dragon flees, and afterwards... hmmm. The straw is actually all burned, so Bobbin's fire mode was more than an illusion, it seems. Now we can navigate out of the dragon's cave through an unblocked passage -- the fire fulfilled the earlier vision from the scrying sphere -- and cast the owl spell so we can maneuver through the dark cavern, with a simple "spotlight" showing only the immediate area around Bobbin. We can wander around quite a bit, but the only "success" I had here was finally walking Bobbin off a ledge, causing him to take a one-way fall to another part of the cavern.

There's a pool here; what draft should we use on it? Clicking on it yields a new draft -- f-a-a-f -- which shows Bobbin's reflection in the water. Trying the spill spell indicates that we must be trying to flood the cave; the inverse, however, dries it up, and we find the dragon's Scrying Sphere. It shows us an erupting volcano, reprises the earlier vision of Mother Cygna, and shows us Bishop Mandible acting generally suspicious.

Now how do we get out of here? I tried a number of spells on the pool in both dry and filled states, to no avail, before figuring out that we have to travel back into the maze proper by going up behind the area where we emerged after falling. Now we can make our way out of the cavern to a twisty outdoor staircase, untwisting it to continue.

We find ourselves in a cemetery, lit with an eery orange glow. A boy lies fast asleep on the ground; we can cast the healing spell to wake him, long enough to learn that he is one Rusty Nailbender of the blacksmiths' guild, before he falls asleep again. There really is some beautiful artwork in this game, considering the era and the newness of 256-color VGA graphics:

Bobbin can approach the impressive smithy; he is told by a strapping, shirtless man in the tower that the gate only opens for Blacksmiths, but the open spell gets Bobbin in, at least until he is immediately escorted back out.

Casting the fear spell on Rusty doesn't do anything; we can try the "send home" sheep tune, but Rusty just complains about being bothered and goes back to sleep. We can try to cast the open draft on one of the graves -- the ground shakes, and Bobbin concludes that perhaps he should not try that.

What have we learned recently? The reflect spell doesn't do anything interesting on the grave, despite its shiny bronze surface. But we can cast it on the boy, and it switches our images. Now Bobbin looks like Rusty and can enter the smithy. Unfortunately, just like the real Rusty, Bobbin has gathered no firewood, so he is thrown into a dungeon while the distaff is taken from him as a scrawny bit of fuel. The blacksmiths are busy making swords for the Clerics, which seems a very unclerical thing for them to be needing.

Stuck in the cell without the distaff, Bobbin-as-Rusty is tempted to sleep on the straw. It's the only thing we can do, actually, and sets off a fairly complicated cutscene. The dragon spots the sleeping "Bobbin" and devours his flesh (offscreen), leaving a bloody skeleton behind and an angry Ghost of Rusty. The distaff cast into the fire magically refuses to burn, drawing the attention of Hetchel (still in bird form), who arrives avis ex machina to return it to Bobbin, who has returned to his normal appearance now that the mirror image is disrupted.

Exiting the cell with the open draft, Bobbin can explore the smithy a bit, or would do so if he didn't realize he's inappropriately dressed. We can go downstairs to eavesdrop on Bishop Mandible some more; like most power-mad world-domination schemers, he's not being very circumspect about his plans. The ten thousandth sword is almost finished! We'd better cast an unsharpen draft -- g-a-a-a -- but it's too noisy to cast any drafts in the active forge. Listening to the Bishop's conversation produces a brief respite from the blacksmith's pounding during which we can do a little weaving. The draft a-a-a-g doesn't do anything, so let's try sharpening it instead. This doesn't quite work as I expected -- it acts the same way a twist spell would have, ruining the blade and getting the quietly lurking Bobbin noticed by Bishop Mandible, and not in a good way.

Bobbin is thrown into a hanging cage, where Mandible's assistant Cob (seen later in a Secret of Monkey Island cameo, where his name is spelled "Cobb" and he promotes LOOM) is eager to torture the young Weaver. Bobbin and Loom's provinciality are somewhat underestimated by the arrogant Bishop, and there's some good dialogue and acting in this scene. Bobbin is forced to demonstrate his power by opening the cage -- it comes to mind that perhaps it would be more interesting to open the cage of a small dragon also housed here, but it's not accessible at the moment.

Mandible takes Bobbin's staff, and informs us that he plans to open the vast graveyard below, raising an army of ten thousand undead soldiers and launching the Age of the Clerics. He has preparations to attend to and dismisses Bobbin, under Cob's watchful eye, as he is to touch nothing. We can try to gaze into the Bishop's Scrying Sphere -- not touching it, mind -- but Cob won't stand for it and demands a foolish trade. He wants to do some looking of his own, testing the old warning that to look under a Weaver's hood brings death, and it does, as it turns out. It's a quick, disintegratey death, though Cob's screams are heard only as annoying noise by the Bishop out on the balcony. (The original version showed us Bobbin's bare face, briefly, when playing on Expert difficulty, but that feature was cut for this edition; I admit to being curious, but storywise I like the idea of the Weavers staying hooded and mysterious.)

Now Bobbin can observe the sphere, where he sees an image of mother Cygna again, a roast bird of some sort, and a single black feather floating to the ground. We return to the balcony, but do not have time to stop the Bishop -- he opens the very fabric of the world, releasing an evil being who resembles Disney's Maleficent.

The new CD script makes it clear that Chaos does not consider herself to have been summoned; she has been released, and thirsts for power. She tears the Bishop's body apart in a surprisingly graphic bit of animation, and then stalks off in search of evil to do on this plane. The distaff is left behind for Bobbin to reclaim, but the other cage in the dungeon is now open. The hungry dragon steals up behind Bobbin on the balcony, causing him to fall into the rift in reality.

Through various wormholes, Bobbin can revisit earlier locations to marshall his resources for the presumably apocalyptic battle ahead. Visiting the blacksmiths' graveyard, we encounter the late Rusty, who is a bit ticked off at being dragged back to the real world while waiting to finish his transition to the next. He is saddened that the Forge has been destroyed, of course, but we can heal his corpse to restore Rusty to the land of the living, which improves his disposition. He goes off to investigate the fate of his fellow 'smiths. We'd like to follow, but Bobbin can't wander far while visiting these earlier locations, just to keep the narrative tight.

Revisiting Crystalgard, we find Master Goodmold dying on the ground. The crystalmakers could not bring themselves to use the Scythe, fearing its terrible power would make them the equal of the enemy; Chaos stole it and is now armed for the world's destruction. His corpse vanishes before we can heal him.

We can also reach a new location, the Shore of Wonder, outside the Pattern of the world, where Mother Cygna and the other swans are floating. Bobbin is the first to see it with mortal eyes, but he doesn't have the full range of notes on the distaff yet. Bobbin learns that the swan is in fact his mother (this has been thoroughly telegraphed earlier), who did not die but was banished in swan form by the Elders when Bobbin was born of the loom, unforeseen. We also learn that Chaos seeks control of the Loom, while Hetchel is trying to stop her. Cygna advises her son to close the holes rent in the Pattern before confronting Chaos.

We stop by the Shepherds' field again, to find most of them dead, and Fleece trying to put them out of their misery. She enlists Bobbin's help, but while we can't invert it, the healing spell actually works, and they are revived. The new CD script has Fleece and company fearing Chaos' impending "harvest," which is a much better and more Irish-accent-friendly line than the original, in which they feared that, erm, "the Dead Ones [will] return to reap us again!"

With the last hole sealed, note "b" is added to the staff, and Bobbin can cross the Shore of Wonder to return to the island of Loom, and to the Temple where the Loom itself resides.

Which draft should we use on the Loom? The open and heal spells do nothing, nor does untwist. Clicking on the Loom yields Cygna's draft, but we still don't have access to the high C needed to weave it. Chaos appears and demands that we teach her to use the Loom, as her trusted advisor, despite Bobbin's protestations and outright refusals. Chaos has drafts of her own, and Hetchel is silenced when she tries to give Bobbin the unmaking draft necessary to rend the Loom and defeat Chaos. (Chaos was male in the original game, but her voice and gender are clearly female this time around.)

Maybe we can unsharpen Chaos' scythe now? All of our magic appears useless on her. We can't heal or reflect Hetchel to free up her speech. Clicking on the loom yields b-a-g-f; reversing it does nothing interesting. Casting it on Hetchel frees up her speech, but she soon gets fried by Chaos, and served on a plate, to boot.

Now the Loom gives us b-f-b-f... but what to cast it on? Hetchel, the Loom, and the Dead One seem impervious to it. But we can reverse it on Hetchel; the Loom is just echoing the most recent spell cast, which I had forgotten. She returns to bird form, but now gets killed properly by Chaos, rather graphically torn apart in a small but bloody explosion; Chaos also seizes Hetchel's last feather (as seen earlier in the Scrying Sphere) as a memento.

The Loom now recalls b-c-c-b. We can use it to rend the loom in similar fashion. Now Chaos is unhappy, trapped on one side of reality, but so are the rest of Bobbin's friends, subject to her now-limited but still thoroughly evil reign. High "C" is added to the staff, and Bobbin knows he must return and face Chaos.

However, we are now floating outside the Pattern, with the last note available. Our earlier visions and recent events indicate that C-f-g-c ought to be useful now. Bobbin casts it on himself... and...

Bobbin turns into a swan and flies off with the others, leaving Chaos in charge of the remaining world on the other side of the rift. Presumably our hero may be back to fight another day, but it's not a very satisfying ending, given that no sequel emerged. (Apparently two were planned, FORGE and FOLD, featuring further adventures of Rusty and Fleece and presumably a final confrontation with Chaos, but these games didn't happen.)

The original LOOM had closing scenes of Rusty and Fleece watching the swans fly away, but these were cut from the CD version. One suspects this is because it was now clear that the sequels were not going to see production, but these moments might also have been trimmed so that the CD music could play through the ending credits, without pausing to load new data from the disc -- quite a slow proposition at the time.

Hey, George "The Fatman" Sanger of The 7th Guest fame worked on the music!

I played LOOM when it was released back in 1992, and enjoyed revisiting it for this post. It may not be a masterpiece of adventure gaming -- it is on the easy side, as at worst we just have to try casting every draft we can think of on every object we encounter -- but it's a solid piece of interactive storytelling, with solid graphics and great voice acting, and I have always enjoyed it on that level. It also captures a moment in time, as the text adventure gave way to the full-blown multimedia era, and many of Lucasarts' innovations inform gaming to this day.

Clueless Gaijin Gaming: Police Connection (1993)

noreply@blogger.com (StillGaming) — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 20:00:00 +0000

The PC Engine console was very successful in Japan, and consequently hosted a huge library of games in its home territory. Some of the titles were unusual hybrids of video and board game, like Nihon Telenet's 1993 Super CD-ROM release, Police Connection:

Police Connection is really a 4-player board game on a video screen -- there are no action sequences, and the only difference from the real-world equivalent is the availability of CPU opponents. This, unfortunately, is a big part of why this game doesn't work tremendously well -- if we don't have 4 human players available, we still have to fill out the roster with artificial intelligence characters. There are 4 cute detectives to choose from:

The game features a CD-Audio, Western-influenced jazz score, and the detailed graphics are a hybrid of cute and serious. Technically, the game doesn't access the CD drive much once play is underway -- it appears that the expanded Super CD-ROM system RAM is used to hold all of the relevant data, so the CD drive is free for music playback. Most of the Telenet games had strong soundtracks, and this one is no exception.

Just in case we think we're in for an evening of family entertainment, the first case (of three available) makes it clear that we're not going to be looking for lost kittens -- a murder has been committed:

The game's problems become apparent as soon as it gets underway. The interface is standard board-game fare -- each player, in a fixed order, gets to roll the die and move the number of spaces allowed. If we enter a building or crime scene to investigate, the act of entering, exiting, and conducting any questioning there consumes two turns in total. There are some special menu options available, like a Taxi that allows bonus moves per turn, and an Arrest item for use when the case is close to its conclusion.

The biggest issue with Police Connection is that the design is ultimately linear -- while we can wander freely around the city to explore the available sites, we have to do so in the correct order, because if we don't have information gathered in one location we can't ask the right question in another. There is no interactivity or choice involved in the questioning -- we simply walk in, automatically ask something appropriate, and then exit on the next turn. At the beginning of the game, we waste several forced turns walking in to see the police chief, getting some basic instructions, and exiting the station. Then we can visit buildings and locations at will, including the crime scene itself, depicted with a cute bloody chalk outline icon:

Understanding that a real investigation has to follow leads and develop ideas, the linear approach wouldn't be such a huge problem if not for the second issue: all of the computer-controlled characters follow exactly the same programming. Their actions are not randomized, they have no distinct personalities or strategic predilections, and they all know a priori the optimal order for investigating the case, which they follow in a strictly scripted fashion.

The only variation in the CPU players' positions at any given time comes from random die rolls, and over the course of a game it tends to average out. This is about as exciting as the competition gets -- while I have opted to move my character to the right after exiting the police station, everyone else is marching along a predetermined path to the left.

As a result, the game offers no interesting challenge unless there are 4 human players, because all we really have to do is follow the AI characters closely and hope that a lucky final die roll allows us to win the game at the last minute. We can see everything the other players are doing -- including menu selections -- and the game slows to a repetitive crawl very quickly (especially for non-Japanese speakers like myself) as the same information gets provided four times. Just because another character has discovered something doesn't mean our own character knows it, so there's not even any Clue-style advantage to borrowing information discovered by other players and sprinting ahead to the next relevant site.

If there were more of an actual investigative aspect to the cases, or some minigames where skill might be applied, or even a more efficient way to conduct the investigation than the path employed by the doggedly unimaginative AI, Police Connection could have been a different experience. As it stands, it has the trappings of a traditional board game, but none of the charm or unpredictability. I completely understand why this title never made it to the West -- beyond the amount of translation work that would have been required, and the rather graphic crime scenes, it's just not a great game. (NEC actually did encounter some controversy over the nature of crimes depicted in the American title, J.B. Harold Murder Club, which was similar in theme if not in style.)

Police Connection is one for the historical record, not necessarily suitable for actual play.

This is one I can under no circumstances recommend, but if you insist, you might find a copy for sale here.

The LoadDown -- 04/12/2012

noreply@blogger.com (StillGaming) — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 21:09:00 +0000

As tax deadlines approach, there are all kinds of distractions available...

WiiWare -- Nothing new here this week; it seems this platform is slowing down as the Wii U prepares to launch later this year.

DSiWare -- One new title this week -- Anne's Doll Studio: Tokyo Collection, a casual craft/activity which allows users to create dolls, design outfits, and export the resulting images to the SD card.

3DS eShop -- This week's new game Ketzal's Corridors is an interesting puzzle-action idea that takes some advantage of the system's 3D capabilities, as players try to rotate Tetris-like pieces to fit into approaching holes in the wall.

XBox Live Arcade -- Three new titles arrive this week, plus one I missed last week. Capcom's World Gone Sour is an advergame platformer, based on the Sour Patch Kids candy brand. The Splatters is an action/puzzle game with great comic potential, as gooey acrobatic creatures strive to create spectacular and messy effects. Skullgirls is a stylish indie 2-D fighting game with T-rated cartoon partial nudity and violence. And late last week, Anomaly: Warzone Earth arrived, a sort of reverse tower-defense game where the player's military units must invade well-defended territory to find out what's going on.

PS3 on PSN -- Very similar to recent XBLA lineups, with three new games including World Gone Sour, Skullgirls and Farsight Studios' The Pinball Arcade compilation of classic pinball coin-ops arriving in the past week. Good to see more games hitting both platforms around the same time.

Adventure of the Week: Enchanter (1983)

noreply@blogger.com (StillGaming) — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 20:00:00 +0000

This week, we're playing through Infocom's classic Enchanter (1983), a ZORK spin-off of sorts written by Marc Blank and Dave Lebling. Running across this one in the pages of an old Infocom catalog made me yearn to explore its magic-strewn fantasy world again; it's been long enough since I played it the first time that I don't seem to recall many of the solutions. We'll be playing Version 29 here, using the WinFrotz Z-machine interpreter for Windows.

Enchanter is a more story-driven experience than the ZORK treasure hunts, though it's set in the same universe and there are definite similarities in literary style and puzzle design. The stage is set in dramatic fashion -- the warlock Krill threatens the land, and the Circle of Enchanters heeds ancient advice under the leadership of wise Belboz. They will send a novice Enchanter, the player, into Krill's stronghold on a reconnaissance mission, to avoid revealing the full power of the Circle too soon.

As always, I encourage interested adventurers to tackle Enchanter firsthand before proceeding below. The game's prose is extremely well-written; while I will spoil the plot here, and quote from the text a fair amount, the game is worth experiencing directly just for the quality of its descriptive text. Infocom set a high bar for interactive fiction, and while the arrival of graphics made the text adventure commercially unviable and the form has continued to mature on an amateur enthusiast basis, the company's best products still hold up well. Beyond this point, you may not be eaten by a grue, but you are likely to encounter...

***** SPOILERS AHEAD! *****

As the game begins, we find ourselves at a fork in the road. The map in this area seems intentionally designed to confuse, but I think it's just an attempt to represent an outdoor, unplanned environment, with lots of angled navigation. We can meet an old crone in the otherwise deserted village, who begrudgingly gives us a scroll containing the rezrov spell, which can open things. (Her hovel is described as "a place of great disorder.") We can acquire some basic provisions in decrepit buildings outside the town -- a loaf of bread in a disused oven, a jug, and -- as almost always -- a lantern.

A sign along the western road reads simply, "Why." As we go further west, we find more signs; the next in the series reads, "are." If we succumb to curiosity and continue, we eventually discover the entire phrase: "Why are you going west when the castle is east? Burma Shave." After that comic coda, the signs become too worn to be read, and we really ought to head back east. The "road" is not just a repeating room, or at least it uses a counter of some kind; we have go all the way back east after sating our curiosity, at which point we are likely to be too thirsty to survive for long. So it's best to make our way to the ruins of the Old Lingolf House in the northeast and drink from the brook.

We have to sleep on occasion, and our sleep is almost always disturbed by dreams providing visions and hints of the future. The first involves wandering through the dark, and seeing murky faces, except for one bright one -- when we touch it, we wake. Hmmmm.

From the top of Lonely Mountain at the center of the initial map, we can see Krill's castle looming ominously in the distance. It has three turrets, two smaller ones flanking a third cold, black tower that spews black mist over the surroundings.

The magic system follows the classic pencil-and-paper RPG format. We will need to transfer any new spells into our trusty spell book to make them reusable, and must memorize any spell before we can use it; there are other spells which are too complex to be transferred and can thus only be used once, reading from the original source. The crone's rezrov spell must be copied with GNUSTO REZROV; checking our spell book gives us specific descriptions of each spell in our arsenal, and this one officially will "open even locked or enchanted objects." We also have blorb, which protects a small object; nitfol, to converse with animals; and frotz, which causes something to give off light (and serves as the namesake for the modern Frotz interpreter, which, appropriately, has kept the Infocom flame alive on many new platforms.) We might as well take the opportunity to FROTZ LANTERN, since it's broken but can magically be imbued with light, and then re-LEARN FROTZ in case we need it again.

With our provisions gathered, it is time to venture into the evil castle -- REZROV GATE does the job. (Although there's a slight bug here -- if we try to OPEN GATE after magically opening it, we are still told that The gate is secure; it cannot be unlocked.) We feel our mind being probed, then dismissed, it seems, as we enter the gate.

A closet south of the courtyard holds a large, jewelled box, wrapped in tight coils of thin rope. If we were the hero of ZORK, we could probably cut this Gordian knot, but as a novice Enchanter REZROV seems like the right choice.... except that The magic in the rope is strong enough to prevent the rezrov spell from working. Hmmmm. These spells may not be as all-purpose as they appear.

The northwestern tower contains a Jewel Room. Most of the beautiful chests and cabinets are empty now, but there's an ornamented egg here. It appears to be a puzzle box, festooned with a handle, a knob, a slide, a crank and a button. Fortunately, we needn't solve anything too complicate; REZROV EGG works. But the scroll inside is shredded, damaged beyond readability. So maybe we don't want to open it, even magically. We'll just take it along instead, after a restore, and hope we find some means of reading it without opening the egg. (Veterans may note that this is reminiscent of the egg puzzle in ZORK I.)

A Hall of Mirrors on the north side of the castle looks out onto an underground labyrinth. A bedraggled adventurer appears, carrying a dim lantern and an elvish sword, glowing dimly. He appears to be the ZORK I hero.

A Guarded Door at the northeast tower sports a five-headed, razor-tongued beast, flame-spewing gargoyles and groping tentacles, as well as a sign reading, "Don't Bother." It flashes briefly "Fat Chance" if we try to REZROV it.

The library contains the ashes of hundreds of empty scroll tubes and books, but there is one old and dusty book left intact. We can read the table of contents, or part of it -- what remains of the book contains The Legend of the Unseen Terror and The Legend of the Great Implementers. We also hear some low, guttural voices coming nearer from the south, so we'd best be careful here. We can leave in the opposite direction, and they don't pursue us, at least for the moment.

The southwest tower contains a bedroom; if we sleep on the soft bed, we have a vision of a beautiful, noble damsel holding a scroll in one hand; she gets into bed and turns out the light, and we note that she no longer has the scroll. Then we wake up. So is the scroll hidden in the bed somewhere? LOOK UNDER THE BED yields nothing, but SHAKE THE BED causes one of the bedposts to rattle as though something is inside it. REZROV BEDPOST reveals the scroll, which contains the vaxum spell -- "make a hostile creature your friend." That may come in handy, so we should GNUSTO VAXUM to keep it.

There's a Gallery along the southern wall of the castle, displaying portraits of famous Zorkians like Lord Dimwit Flathead and the Wizard of Frobozz, tying this game firmly into the same universe.

In the southeast tower, we hear loud crashing and screeching from above. This leads to the Engine Room, where a machine of no apparent purpose makes a ton of noise. We can see a room to the southeast that may contain a scroll, but getting there is a challenge. We can make a dash for the Control Room, but the machinery speeds up after we get there. The scroll is old and brittle and contains the complex kulcad spell, which can be used to "dispel a magic spell." But our feeble GNUSTO powers fail to copy the spell into our book; at least the failed attempt allows the scroll to remain intact. Trying to get back out of the control room results in death by machinery plus spears, so we'll have to solve some puzzles here if we hope to add this spell to our inventory.

There's a dungeon below ground, where we can find another scroll containing the exex spell, which makes things move with greater speed. It's found in a passage behind a square block chipped away by former inmates of the dungeon, apparently trying to tunnel out. The tunnel is unfinished, but we can pick up a worn silver spoon somebody discarded as a poor tool for the task.

Below the dungeon is the Translucent Room maze, a peculiar room, whose cream-colored walls are thin and translucent. Mapwise it seems to be the same room, but the exits change in a consistent fashion; it's not a tricky or deceptive maze, we just have to map it carefully. But there doesn't seem to be any point to it -- it doesn't appear to lead anywhere new.

We can exit the castle to the south to find a rocky beach along a grey and lifeless sea. An enormous turtle is here, his enameled shell shining with all the colors of the rainbow. We can NITFOL TURTLE to converse with the creature. He asks, "How do you like my shell? A wizard did that to me about 75 years ago,"  and wonders aloud if we are going to something about that annoying warlock. He responds to TURTLE, FOLLOW ME. He'll even go up the stairs into the towers, though he complains, "Pretty steep stairs for a turtle, friend. But if you say so..." We will probably find some purpose for him eventually. We can also FILL JUG on the beach, but now it is full of undrinkable seawater, so let's not do that.

Entering the Temple at the center of the castle courtyard is dangerous; a horde of hunched and hairy creatures plan to sacrifice us, and they throw us into a Cell in the north tower, with none of our possessions. We only survive for a few more turns. This also happens if we enter the junction near the temple; we can't navigate out of it without getting captured. Casting the EXEX spell on ourselves doesn't seem to help in terms of escaping their clutches... though maybe that would help with the Engine Room? No -- the additional speed helps, but the spear trap still fires off, and the flying blades are too fast to dodge even with magical assistance. So we may need a shield of some kind too. BLORB ME doesn't help, though it's a rather entertaining way to go as we are fatally squished into what feels like a black hole.

Death is not permanent in Enchanter; the Circle of Enchanters are frustrated and disappointed, but the player is revived and returned to the area near the castle with some basic supplies put within easy reach; it's not a foolproof mechanism, though, and undoes no permanent mistakes we've made, so it's still best to SAVE early and often.

The castle's kitchen has been recently used, with a warm, empty oven and bloody knives, but I never found anything to do there.

Having the turtle in our company does not help us with the hairy creatures, and the turtle himself complains about having to follow us around so long. I wasn't really sure what to do with him; EXEX TURTLE doesn't noticeably speed him up, and this particular Infocom effort does not allow us to ASK TURTLE ABOUT anything... oh, wait!  We can see that now he is moving with terrific speed, it's just that he doesn't notice the difference. This seems useful, but we can't RIDE or CLIMB TURTLE -- The turtle doesn't allow you to get on his back. We can direct the turtle to go places, but we're still the target for sacrifice if the creatures are alerted. Interesting but not yet productive.

On the north side of the castle is a rusted gate; we can REZROV it to access a grey, lifeless forest. Here we find a scroll containing the krebf spell: repair willful damage. A swamp to the east is filled with the sound of frogs. We can NITFOL FROG -- our random target doesn't have much to say, just "Breep! Hiya! Seen any juicy flies? Breep!" But the chorus of other frogs tells us, "Look under the lily pad. Breep!" Following suit, we find a scroll with the cleesh spell: change a creature into a small amphibian. Hmmmmm. The frogs discuss the Interlogic prose adventures (as Infocom's creations were known early on) and what they would do if they were princes again. CLEESH FROG makes no visible change, and we can't UNCLEESH FROG or anything.

Now that we are considerably more armed with spells, can we do anything with the Guarded Door? We can't turn the monsters into small amphibians, and the other spells don't seem to work either. Can we get the scroll out of the egg? Breaking it also shreds the scroll. Maybe we can open it and then KREBF the scroll, assuming the egg's design counts as inflicting "willful damage."  Aha! The restored scroll contains the ZIFMIA spell -- magically summon a being. But we have to be able to see the creature in question.

We have ten spells now. Reading the dusty book found in the library in more detail, we learn how ancient enchanters lured the Unseen Terror to the location of a magical scroll, then sealed it in the living rock; and that the Great Implementers created worlds filled with puzzles for others of their kind. Both are considered fanciful stories, though only one is strictly for entertainment value here.

We can ZIFMIA ADVENTURER in the Hall of Mirrors and bring him into our world. He wanders around the map, and we can follow and observe as he plays the part of the beleagured adventure gamer to hilarious effect; occasionally, The adventurer stares at his possessions as if expecting a revelation or pulls out his map, a convoluted collection of lines, arrows, and boxes.   We can CLEESH him, but he doesn't seem to leave his sword behind, and he's not at all interested in the Guarded Door.

In the control room, we can KULCAD CONTROLS to use the kulcad scroll once, even though we can't GNUSTO it into our spell book. This cause most of the controls to vanish, but there's a glowing button left over? No, BUTTON is just what the parser interprets CONTROLS to be. The button is apparently real, anyway. Maybe this is a clue (along with the adventurer's behavior) that the Guarded Door is an illusion? Apparently not -- the fire and tentacles are real enough; we can open the door, and 19 demons emerge, knock us senseless, and return. Belboz shows up whenever we use KULCAD, to admonish us that we are attracting attention with this powerful spell; this may be a hint that we should use it with great care, a lesson I failed to comprehend and heed.

It seems like we need to get the kulcad scroll out of the Engine Room area, and see if we can use it on the Guarded Door. CLEESH ME is a bad idea, as we get distracted by more newtly concerns and lose control of our participation in the story, bringing it to a close. We can EXEX HAMMER in the Machine Room, and its thudding blows seem to become more frequent, but we can't speed it up enough to burn out the machinery or shut down the spear trap.

So... I've never been above seeking a hint in times of distress. The classic Infocom Invisiclues approach works well, as it doesn't give away too much too soon. We can't do anything with the controls, as I suspected, but another clue suggests that someone or something else in the game could survive the spears. Sounds like our friend the turtle, we just need to find out how to communicate with him from a distance. Or... perhaps, tell him to go to the control room before we have gone there ourselves.  Except he's too slow to survive the dangerous machinery -- sorry, Mr. Turtle! Trying again with EXEX in effect helps, if we can work around the parser's expectations -- TURTLE, GO SOUTHEAST doesn't work but TURTLE, GO SE does. We also need to cast EXEX on ourselves, as the turtle's crossing has sped up the machinery -- but some time needs to pass between casts, so we have to plan ahead a bit.

Sleeping and starting fresh, we can EXEX ourselves and run to the Control Room to join our turtle friend. Now the turtle is still getting smashed by the hammer on the way back, though he does disarm the spear trap. Can we time it so he doesn't?  Apparently not, as the crash that kills him does not coincide with the routine Crash! of the hammer every other turn. And even after the turtle's unwitting (and probably unwilling) sacrifice, there's another spear trap ready to cause us trouble on our own way back.

Looking for another hint, I learned that we have to take advantage of the parser's features, and give the turtle the whole series of instructions, never going to the control room ourselves or trying to shout directions across the noisy room. So TURTLE, GO SE. TAKE THE SCROLL. GO NW. works -- and this time he's fast enough to avoid the giant hammer and survive! This is the kind of puzzle Infocom was really good at -- complex, with lots of ideas that might work but do not, and enough support from the design so that lots of them almost work, while the real solution makes the best sense. We would be remiss if we did not take a turn to say TURTLE, THANK YOU -- he replies, "Glad to be of help. I think I'll get back to the beach, now." And his role in our adventure is done.

Now can we... ? Yes, KULCAD MONSTER reveals the Guarded Door as a simple wooden door, its magical guardian having been dispelled. Now we can reach the map room, where we find a purple scroll, a worn pencil inscribed with runes, and an old parchment map. The ASCII-rendered map appears to match the Translucent Room area we've mapped out, but it is inscribed with letters and indicates the presence of a room P that can't be reached by any existing passage.

The other rooms are also lettered, which is probably another clue about how we might use the map. The purple scroll contains the filfre spell -- to create gratuitous fireworks -- but it's complicated enough that we can't GNUSTO FILFRE. I'm hitting the inventory limit in my playthrough at this point, so I drop the opened egg and the dusty book.

Hmmm... the pencil is from the Frobozz Magic Pencil Company. Can we use it to amend the map? Yes, but it releases the fabled Unseen Terror! Our score drops to -10, and the game is over with a rank of Menace to Society. So that's not a good idea. Experimentation reveals that we have enough of the worn pencil left to draw two connections, and erase two connections. So maybe we can rouse the beast and move it out of its lair, without actually releasing it into the world at large. But it doesn't seem to move unless it thinks it can escape, and we can't really tell where it is without making some educated guesses. The Terror's room contains a scroll emanating power, but we can't allow the Terror to escape. Maybe we need to cut off the main entrance and use the triangle area to avoid it ourselves. ERASE B AND R; CONNECT P TO F -- now we can approach the Terror without letting it out of the maze.

The powerful scroll, we discover, contains the guncho spell, used to banish the victim to another plane of existence. Powerful magic indeed, but it's also complex so again we can't transfer it to the spell book. GUNCHO TERROR wipes it out. But did we really gain anything by doing so? All we've done is find the Terror and destroy it, losing the scroll in the process. So we might need to be smarter about this, and save the scroll for Krill. Can we get in and out of the maze without releasing the Terror? We are trapped once we are in the creature's presence, so we need to avoid it completely unless we're going into the room with the scroll, where we can at least defend ourselves.

So... can we predict the Terror's movements? Does it make a beeline for the exit? If so, it would probably traverse through P, M, R, and B. We want to go M, then to P, get the scroll, go to F and get the Terror trapped again.  Maybe if we start at R and then take the sidestep route through H... no, it's moving too fast and soon catches up with us. Does it seek us out? The Invisiclues indicate that it only moves one room per turn, so we have options here. Maybe we can trap it in the F-V-J-K section of the translucent maze by disconnecting M and V. So we'll try this -- connect P to F; wait a turn, then disconnect M and V, then disconnect F and P. Now we can CONNECT M TO P and grab the scroll...

That seemed to work, whew! Confirmation comes a few turns later, when You hear a horrible anguished scream through the walls of the cavern as the Terror realizes that it is trapped and its scroll of power stolen!

Now we seem to be well prepared to take on Krill, but we still have the temple full of hairy humanoids to deal with. And the Gordian box, which I had almost forgotten about. Since we've freed the adventurer, maybe we can get him to cut the cords. He's not interested, and he's suspicious if we try to give the box to him, nor will he let us take his glowing elven sword. Hmmmm. We have nothing else suitably cutting in inventory. The temple ceremony employs a ritual dagger, but we don't have time to do anything there before we are sacrificed.

It's time to experiment a bit with our bulging spell book. We can VAXUM a group of four hairy figures if we approach the Junction via the Library, and they back off, chatting cheerfully. We may see the adventurer tearing past, having fought them in another room, but this doesn't seem to clear a path for us.  We also cannot VAXUM the HOST of figures seen outside our sacrificial cell; only small groups are susceptible, and after doing so we are still accosted by a large group in the Junction area and sacrificed as usual.

Invisiclues time again... we need the ozmoo spell to survive the sacrifice. A clue to finding it is found in a dream... the bright face, perhaps? If only there were some friendly individuals around...

There are some rat tracks in the ashes of the library, leading to a scroll in a rat hole containing the gondar spell -- quench an open flame. We can VAXUM ADVENTURER to befriend him, but he still won't cut the box open for us. Ack!

Further clue hunting suggests that we didn't need to use the KULCAD spell on the illusion door -- we should have befriended the adventurer and had him open it! Oh, well. I'm running low on bread and have had to fill the water jug twice at 721 moves, so it's probably best to start over and economize turns, now that I've figured a few things out.

Starting over, I'm able to round up the spells fairly quickly this time. This time we'll VAXUM ADVENTURER and get him to follow us; he has his treasure-seeking eye on the ornamental egg in our possession, it appears. ADVENTURER, OPEN THE DOOR results in an entertaining scene as we see him being attacked by illusory knives, flames, and rats, but he is immune to the illusion that does physical damage to our magic-sensitive selves. Now he's collecting items we need from the map room. He gives up the purple scroll willingly, but if we fall asleep, we may find that some other treasures have been liberated from our person.

Inventory slots may become tight later in the game, and I realized that we can save an inventory slot by FROTZing the jug or any other item we have to carry anyway, and dropping the lantern.  211 moves and I have the map in hand, ready to deal with the Terror again. Then I had to sleep -- the adventurer stole the map and pencil and silver spoon, but not the scrolls or basic supplies so that was okay. Except -- I later realized -- he also took the spell book, so that's no good. It's probably better if we BLORB it before napping -- but in my case I was now too tired to learn it! Time once again to restore and be more efficient so we can protect our spell book from the adventurer's random theft and redistribution.

Now I think we've solved most of the puzzles, so it's time to see if we can get into the Temple. We have no time to react, still, if we get captured and sacrificed. We have three powerful scrolls that can't be transferred, and a spell book full of potentially useful spells, but we lose our possessions, so any escape we can engineer will have to be based on something we can memorize. I tried several ideas but remained stuck, so it was Invisiclues time again; this time I learned that the dream with the glowing face refers to the Gallery! Dropping the frotzed jug and entering the gallery after nightfall reveals a single lighted portrait, behind which we find a black candle and a black scroll.  The scroll contains the ozmoo spell -- survive unnatural death -- and we can GNUSTO this one, then LEARN OZMOO and OZMOO ME (the effect involving a classical huge puff of orange smoke) after we're thrown in the cell but before we are taken to the altar.

None of the creatures appear to notice that we have survived, as we awake with the dagger in our chests. And if we encounter this scenario on a second go-round, without our belongings, we die as usual. Can we try dispatching the creatures with a massive CLEESH? No, it only affects some of them, not all. Can we GONDAR their torches? No. But they seem to be ignoring me, so maybe I just need to leave my belongings behind somewhere so they aren't confiscated before we attempt to go through the Junction and the temple sacrifice. Except I still need a light source to find my stash afterward, so I should also LEARN FROTZ and cast it on the dagger.

With the dagger, we can cut the rope on the jewelled box in the closet. This reveals a vellum scroll containing the melbor spell - protect magic users from harm by evil beings. That's pretty general, but should be handy.

Now that the Temple's denizens are satisfied with their sacrifice, even though it got up and walked away, we can access the Landing east of the Junction, leading to a winding staircase. Apparently this is an infinite staircase -- we can climb upward or downward indefinitely -- but we can KULCAD it to reveal it as an illusion, before we pull a Wile E. Coyote and plummet into an apparently bottomless pit, just behind our heavier possessions. We find ourselves holding a new scroll, containing the izyuk spell -- it allows us to fly like a bird, but only for a few turns and we can't plummet fast enough to catch up with our lost belongings. The tower remains infinite, even without the staircase, and while we don't land hard, we learn that After many years, only tattered remnants of you remain, still falling.

We can't seem to get around this, but we still have our lightweight scrolls after flying out of the tower while IZYUK ME is briefly in effect. For safety's sake, we should eat and drink before we enter the tower, as we will lose the jug and the bread, and as the spell book is also lost we may have to memorize some spells; we just don't know what they would be yet, and we can only remember so many before the ones learned earlier start to become jumbled.

Floating eastward out of the Winding Stair tower, we find ourselves in Krill's secret chamber. We learn that he was the main figure sacrificing us in the temple, to our nonexistent surprise.  Krill snaps his fingers, and a giant dragon appears! So it seems we probably should have learned GONDAR. Restoring and replaying verifies that yes, that works -- the dragon's flame is doused and the creature vanishes. Then Krill summons another creature, dark and shapeless but armed with a battle axe. Does the MELBOR spell protect us from this evil being? Nope. But CLEESH does the job nicely, as the axe falls and cuts the newly-minted newt neatly in half.

Now Krill is out of tricks and starts a guttural chant. It's time to pull out the big gun -- GUNCHO KRILL, and victory is ours!

We join the Circle of Enchanters at Belboz's side, and the closing text promotes the continuing Enchanter series, probably revised in this 1986 edition after the trilogy was well established.

Few companies published interactive fiction with Infocom's sophistication and dedication to the form; while other parsers often claimed to do more, they often relied on tricks and heuristics that created an easily-pierced illusion of improved comprehension. Infocom's parser was not perfect, nor was its storytelling, but its works are still among the best adventure games in existence. The next game in this series is Sorcerer, which we will doubtless tackle in due course.

Cover to Cover: Infocom 1987 Catalog (pp. 17-18)

noreply@blogger.com (StillGaming) — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 20:00:00 +0000

We've reached the end of another Cover to Cover pagethrough series, as we wrap up the 1987 catalog from interactive fiction pioneer Infocom. The company had been acquired by Activision at this time and would soon be pressured to include graphics in its future and final products; in some ways this feels like the last of the "old" Infocom era. The last two pages feature support for frustrated adventurers and faithful fans alike.

Page 17 promotes the legendary Invisiclues -- sold separately, these packages included full maps and hint books, with clues printed in invisible ink that could be developed with a special marker. Infocom's hint design originated with an unofficial adjunct called the Zork Users Group, and was eventually made part of the company. The concept worked very well -- ideas and suggestions were revealed gradually, and red herrings were included among the questions, so players could get themselves unstuck without cheating themselves completely out of those memorable "Eureka!" moments:

Infocom also published a promotional quarterly newsletter called The Status Line (originally The New Zork Times) which included news, hints, and behind-the-scenes articles. It was provided free to people who registered their Infocom games and was always an entertaining read.

And that's it for this trip down memory lane. These old catalogs fascinate me because they capture moments in time -- the games that were being promoted in this printing, and moreover the games that were not, say something about the state of Infocom and the text adventure genre in 1987. In the digital distribution era, games need not go "out of print," but physical production concerns and sales to date likely account for the absence in these pages of Cutthroats, Seastalker, Suspended, Starcross and other Infocom titles of the early-to-mid-1980s.

Clueless Gaijin Gaming: Susano-o Densetsu (1989)

noreply@blogger.com (StillGaming) — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 20:00:00 +0000

Perhaps my entire fascination with Japanese RPGs stems from a subconscious desire to rid myself of the desire to play Japanese RPGs; since I don't speak or read the language with any degree of fluency, a game has to do something really special to keep me interested. This week I've spent a little time with Susano-o Densetsu, a rather strange role-playing game published by PC Engine co-creator Hudson Soft as Volume 17 of the company's own HuCard series. There's a little bit of English here and there, but it's primarily in Japanese and I'm not familiar with the property if it originated in another medium, so I won't be able to tell you very much about the story. But here we go anyway!

As far as I can tell from the opening sequence, which is surprisingly substantial given that this is not a CD-ROM game, our hero is harassed or otherwise irritated by a vampire, a little person, a Cardinal, Street Fighter II's Ken, and a shirtless caped luchador into becoming a wild-haired, glowing-eyed demon of goodness. Or something.

Given the unusual and colorful character lineup, while I know the title translates as something like Legend of Susano-o, it's much more tempting to call it Bazooka No-o and his Friends and his Wacky Electric Hairdo:

Oh, Susano-o! Oh, don't you fry for me!

After the opening, which must eat up a good half of this largeish 512 MB HuCard, the game settles into a more-or-less standard JRPG format. The game adopts a cyberpunk aesthetic -- the streets are deteriorating, the buildings are rundown, and everyone dresses in improbably colorful futurewear, including our hero, who conceals his crazy eyes and mod hairstyle beneath an attractive suit of golden armor. The usual fantasy role-playing lineup of shops and inns is morphed into more modern establishments -- a Bar, weapons shop, Hotel, and everyone's favorite restaurant, Food:

The proprietors do not buy into the conventional wisdom that the customer is always right, though I guess it wouldn't feel right to buy weapons from the friendly, perky type usually found working in retail:

Everything takes place in an overhead view; after leaving town, the player wanders around the world map. Something I always appreciate is that enemy attackers can be seen from a distance, giving a weak and fleeing player a chance to avoid confrontations. But if we get too close to an incoming enemy formation, the battle begins.

The combat system is unusual -- forward-looking in some ways, yet hopelessly clunky in others. It tries to play like a very slow-paced action RPG, with a real-time counter permitting enemy and player attacks. When the player has a chance to act, we can spend the opportunity moving away from enemies or attacking with ranged weapons. But the detailed text displays (most of which seem to be of the "Player hits enemy for N damage!" variety) slow the whole operation down -- we can't speed them up very much or skip over them, which makes fighting more tedious than it ought to be.

Also, once enemies get close enough to strike our hero, it's hard to get out of the way -- the player tends to be surrounded by foes who simply close in turn after turn, so if we don't succeed in taking them out while they're halfway across the screen, our hero is encircled and summarily dispatched. The open screen layout implies more flexibility and control, but without some structure to the combat it's almost impossible to strategize effectively; there's something to be said for the traditional lineup approach. It also doesn't help that the player's sight tends to shift from enemy to enemy each turn, so that if we hit buttons too quickly our default target is usually not what we expected it to be.

When our hero succumbs to the onslaught and flickers offscreen, he returns to the friendly local hotel, where the crusty manager seems less than sympathetic:

Susano-o Densetsu is pretty standard RPG fare -- without being able to understand the story, at least, the dystopic trappings quickly devolve into the usual attack-and-level-up-then-rest-up cycle. And while the combat system feels fresh to some degree, its best featured get bogged down in a clunky and uncooperative interface. But it does close another gap in my Hudson Soft numbered-volume HuCard collection -- Volume 17, check!

It's fairly rare to see a substantial RPG on the HuCard format, so collectors may find this one interesting on that count. It's not an expensive game to collect -- like most early PC Engine titles, it's fairly common these days. You might be able to find a copy for sale here.

The LoadDown -- 04/05/2012

noreply@blogger.com (StillGaming) — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 20:34:00 +0000

April showers bring... well, May's not quite here yet, so it's hard to say. Here are some games, though.

WiiWare -- One new game this week, TNT Racers, a multiplayer racing game that seems like it was announced ages and ages ago; it features colorful tracks, a variety of racers to choose from, and online multiplayer (up to 4 players.)

DSiWare -- One new title up: Penguin Patrol, which at first glance resembles the 80s arcade game Pengo but is actually more like Skweek. As a heroic Inuit, the player must rescue baby penguins stranded on the ice by traversing the tiles, which break up as they are walked on.

3DS eShop -- No games this week as such, but Colors! 3D arrives. It's an art application that supports creation of layered 3-D drawings, posting drawings online, and collaborative creation with another local 3DS user. Some impressive results have been posted by the app's creators, and the 3DS stylus is fine-grained enough that this might actually be a neat little art tool. It also features coloring pages for those who would rather not be creative.

XBox Live Arcade -- Three new games since our last update. Licensed platformer South Park: Tenorman's Revenge arrived late last week, to mixed reviews. Farsight Studios' The Pinball Arcade is intriguing -- the developer did a fine job with past Gottlieb and Williams collections, and this online venue also features classic licensed pinball machines, launching with Black Hole, Ripley's Believe It or Not, Tales of the Arabian Nights, and Theatre of Magic. And there's also Grasshopper Manufacture's Diabolical Pitch, a looney Kinect game created by the always-quirky Suda 51, pitting the player's baseball hero against an array of animal-headed foes.

PS3 on PSN -- Just one new titles, but's something we haven't quite seen before -- Sega's The House of the Dead 4, an arcade sequel coming straight to PSN without a disc-based release. The coin-op barely surfaced in the US, so this console port will be the way most American gamers experience the game, using the Playstation Move controller as a light gun.

PSOne Classics -- Going three times... not that it won't bob up again whenever something is going on, so fret not.

Adventure of the Week: Sam & Max Episode 103 -- The Mole, The Mob and the Meatball (2007)

noreply@blogger.com (StillGaming) — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 20:00:00 +0000

This week, we return to a series that's just beyond the five-year release threshold I try to maintain, with Telltale Games' Sam & Max Episode 103 -- The Mole, The Mob and the Meatball. This 2007 animated point-and-click adventure game was the third episode in Telltale's first series based on the comic books of Steve Purcell, popularized within the genre by the classic 1993 Lucasarts graphic adventure Sam & Max Hit the Road. The sardonic canine detective Sam and his hyperactive, joyfully violent rabbit buddy Max have starred in three successful series at Telltale at this writing.

This episode picks up where Episode 102 left off, as our heroes set out to investigate the bizarre hypnotic teddy bear sent to control a talk show host at WARP-TV. We can see that the writing and design were still finding their stride in these early efforts, and some of the resource reuse that made episodic gaming a good economic fit for adventure games is still a bit obvious. But it's a solid adventure game design, with some very funny moments and puzzles.

As always, I encourage interested gamers to tackle Sam & Max Episode 103 independently before proceeding here, especially because the game is still commercially available (and frequently on sale at very attractive prices.) While Telltale's own published walkthroughs make me less concerned about spoiling the puzzles than is usually the case, good fun is to be had experiencing the game's plotting and dialogue firsthand. With that said, be forewarned that there are likely to be...

***** SPOILERS AHEAD! *****

The story opens, per usual in the first two seasons, with a call from the commissioner -- amid the morbidly witty dialogue, we learn that a mole sent in to investigate the Toy Mafia has not been heard from in quite a while. Sam and Max are asked to go in after him, starting their investigation at Ted E. Bear's Mafia-Free Playland and Casino, a name which doth protest too much. The opening credits feature a purple background this time; the episodes cycle through a rainbow of colors as the season progresses.

To find the mole, our heroes are equipped with the secret code phrase: "Does the carpet match the drapes?" Sam informs Max that if we have located the mole, "He'll say, 'Well, I never!' and smack me across the face." This does eventually come into play plotwise, but serves mostly as an excuse for us to ask this question of everyone we meet, earning innocent and wholesome responses despite the setup.

Sam & Max's office is much as it was in previous episodes. The TV is showing Midtown Cowboys reruns from the last episode, and there's still quite a bit of dialogue reuse here; economic constraints are still showing a bit. Our resident rat "friend" Jimmy Two-Teeth is operating a fencing joint out of his usual rathole in the wall below the bulletin board, and the closet now contains the charred Hypno-Bear from Episode 102, which may indeed be a clue about the Toy Mafia's doings in this episode. There's nothing useful plotwise in the office at the moment, so we're off to explore the street and see what's changed since the last episode.

Convenience store proprietor Bosco is in a Frenchman disguise this time, donning a beret for the sake of entertaining yet another paranoid fantasy. This time he's afraid of the Toy Mafia, and believes they saw through his Englishman disguise last time, though his accent and mangling of the language are even less convincing en Francais. He fears unauthorized deliveries to his store, and has created an improved security system to prevent such nefarious product placement -- it consists of an image recognition camera and a vacuum system that places unrecognized merchandise out on the street. He has a listening device for sale -- for ten million dollars, following his usual pattern of outrageous pricing for something that will likely turn out to be mundane. There's a Secret of Monkey Island reference here -- we can ask Bosco if he has random items in stock, including a rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle. There's also a funny series of "Do you..." -- "NON!" gags based entirely on comedic timing, something not possible in the pre-talkie adventure era. At the snack counter, there's a promotion going on the Not'Cho's -- a free toilet brush with every purchase, but Bosco hastens to inform our heroes that it's a USED toilet brush. It's been fun, but we haven't acquired any inventory items here either.

So next we're off to see what line of work Sybil is in these days. Someone has installed a webcam on top of one of the cactuses in her office. Hmmmm. Now she's a professional trial witness, though she doesn't have her first case yet; she swears this, her latest career, is the one that she's sticking with. We hear some more recycled gags here, as Sybil's decor hasn't been updated much since Episode 102.

Lefty's hardware store and Stinky's restaurant are still closed, and the posters at the back of the alley have been updated, though they're not as funny as some of the offerings in earlier episodes. There's a suspicious car parked behind the DeSoto, with a license plate reading "DRGDLR", but it doesn't factor into the plot.

We've established that not a lot has changed in the neighborhood, so it's off to Ted E. Bear's Mafia-Free Playland and Casino for some plot progress. The greeter, Lovey Bear, is a human in a costume bear head and a tailored Italian suit. He sounds suspiciously Mafioso as he hands out free tokens and accidentally refers to "Don Ted E. Bear" who is doing some "business" in the back -- inquiring informs us only that it is "the kind of 'business' with quote marks around it, so's you know not to ask."

The establishment is brightly lit and colorful but still somehow seedy. We can use tokens to play Whack Da Ratz! -- we have to shoot 20 of the singing rats to win, without touching the ones that are keepin' their mouths shut. This wasn't super easy to do without a real mouse on my laptop -- I got 19 on my first try, 17 on the second, and 21 on the third, winning a Ted E. Bear refrigerator magnet.

We can hear (with repeated clicks) the entire Ted E. Bear theme song, as performed by the DISTURBING BEAR HEADS mounted on the wall. Jared Emerson-Thomas did a great job scoring this series, and this bouncy protest song -- by which I mean protested innocence -- is a lot of fun. It's a shame we don't hear the whole thing in one go until we get to the credits.

Dealer Cuddly Bear hosts a card game. We can play a game of Indian Poker against one Leonard Steakcharmer, a mustachioed bald-headed circus strongman type (conveniently reused from Telltale's "pilot"/test effort, Texas Hold 'Em.) The game involves each player drawing a card and putting it on his forehead; we can see Leonard's card but not our own, and the highest card wins. It appears, of course, that Mr. Steakcharmer has some way of discerning his own card -- he looks over Sam's shoulder before deciding how much to bet. We'd like to win his ten million tokens, and he's generous with the terms, as he assumes he can't lose; this seems to be true for the moment.

The guard at the back room door indicates that only Toy Mafia members are allowed in, with a required password; Max asks about joining the Toy Mafia, but the membership contact is also behind the door. We can guess at the password with unsuccessful but entertaining results, and we see other Toy Mafia bears come and go, whispering the password -- Bosco's listening device would probably be handy, and maybe Leonard's ten million tokens would be suitable to close the deal.

A one-armed bandit resembles an actual bandit, with mask and striped shirt; it's not hard to win, but we don't actually win anything. Ted E. Bear's original meatball sandwich -- circa 1957 -- is on display in a glass case.

Aha! Here we are -- a very shiny clown nose over the entrance reflects Leonard's face, and he can likely see it from across the room. Can we find some way to obscure the reflection? This is where we might want to remember that Sam and Max were playing a game at the beginning of the episode that involved throwing playing cards into a wastebasket. Yep -- the Ace of Spades is still lying on the floor by Jimmy Two-Teeth's place. Returning to the casino and putting it on the clown nose causes Leonard to think he's always got an Ace, and we can easily win his 10 million tokens by exploiting his overconfidence.

Bosco accepts the tokens and gives us his listening device -- it's a bug, literally. That is, it's a cockroach with a military background who will repeat precisely what he hears. Back at the casino, we can listen in and determine the passphrase, which is "Leave the gun. Take the cannolis."

Now we can enter the back room and meet Chuckles, the pit boss, who's had his eye on our heroes via the establishment's security cameras. To get into the Toy Mafia, we have to complete two -- wait, three assignments, as Ted E. Bear's original meatball sandwich has just been stolen during our conversation. We need to lean on an uncooperative businessperson, whack a witness in an upcoming criminal case, and "recover a small item that belongs to us." Further consideration verifies that we have to lean on Bosco by putting toy bears on his sale table; whack Sybil, who the mob has under surveillance; and recover the meatball sandwich, of course.

So how do we sneak product into Bosco's Inconvenience Store? Can we use the Ted E. Bear refrigerator magnet to fool the security system into thinking the bears are expected items? Doesn't seem like it. We can't sneak a Bear onto the table directly, but we can distract Bosco by telling him the Toy Mafia is outside. He spends quite a bit of time looking through his binoculars, speculating about whether the subject of his interest is CIA or else CIA, or Illuminati or The Knights of Malta or Skull and Bones, based on what the person he's observing is reading in the newspaper. This is funny dialogue, and also buys us some time.

Bosco's B-TADS 2 security system works as promised if we just try to put a bear on the sale table. But we can put the Ted E. Bear magnet on the camera, making it contraband and sending it out the door (this didn't work quite the way I expected, but was effective enough!) Now we can put the purple "I Love You No Matter What" bear on sale, and a Toy Mafia rep stops by to give us the thumbs-up. Bosco is quite distressed, though the animation isn't quite up to communicating the excellent angst of the voice acting; Telltale's engine and technique would improve over time.

So that's one down, but as Sam says, "Our journey to the dark side has just begun." So let's see if we can track down the meatball sandwich by way of Jimmy Two-Teeth. Whoops -- that idea panned out a little to well! We walk in on Leonard, who is waving a gun around and trying to fence the hot sandwich. Sam tries to be reasonable, but once in a while it's good to let the anarchic Max take the lead. "Hey, is that a cap gun?" he asks, catching Leonard in another cheap cheatin' move, and then a little rough-and-ready Max action ends with Leonard tied up. He swears he won't reveal the sandwich's location, but we know from previous interaction that his late mother means the world to him. Sam and Max (and the player) team up to deliver some "Yo' Mama" jokes - Sam's options offer various setups, while Max's include appropriate punchlines -- making for a fun little dialogue-matching puzzle to break Leonard's resolve. Not all of the lines are jokes per se, some are rather complimentary or at least sentimental, and soon we learn that the sandwich was stashed in the one-armed bandit, and Leonard stole the arm, which we now reclaim. In short order the arm is restored, a token inserted, and the stolen sandwich is back in the Toy Mafia's hands. We've left Leonard tied up in the office, of course.

Now we're left with the unpleasant task of rubbing out Sybil. We don't really want to kill her, so we'll probably have to fake it somehow. We have Leonard's cap gun now, and we noticed the surveillance webcam in Sybil's office earlier -- this may be handy, but we can't openly enlist Sybil's cooperation in staging her demise. We can, however, steal her empty coffee cup right off the desk, and return it to her confused gratitude. She seems distracted and nervous... apparently she's already been told that the Toy Mafia is going to try to kill her before she testifies in a big trial, and of course she would never suspect her dog and bunny friends. Sam asks, "Have you considered faking your own death?", but she's too honest for that, so we will have to arrange it ourselves. Maybe we can drug her coffee -- after we get her some coffee -- and use the cap gun, arranging it to look like we're shooting her as she passes out? Sam refuses to obtain any coffee from Bosco's -- "We don't ACTUALLY want to kill Sybil." -- but we can fill the cup with ketchup from the condiment dispenser, which may work better for our purposes. We can't mix in any anti-depressants from the gumball machine outside, either, so let's abandon the drug angle and see what we can do with the cup of ketchup. We put the cup on her desk, use the cap gun on her, and -- it looks like we missed her, she doesn't fall for it. But we can use Sam's real gun on the ketchup-filled cup, splashing her with red goo and stunning her "dead", just before Max eats the camera and cuts off the feed to the Toy Mafia before she wakes up and gives the ruse away.

Now our boys are in -- but after Ted E. Bear doffs his bear head and reveals himself as the mole, our heroes don't quite realize he's switched sides before he figures out they are freelance police. A chase ensues (I was beginning to think we were never going to tear carelessly through the streets in the DeSoto in this episode) and the mobsters are driving a vehicle with bulletproof tires.

We can shoot down a hanging sign to knock them out of commission, and then return to the casino to take down the Don. He's out of the office, apparently, but Sam notes that there's always something interesting behind a door marked, "Do Not Enter Under Pain of Death." Before entering, we can do a little detective work -- there's a map marked with national truck routes, chalkboards with Smuggling, Racketeering and Extortion accounting, and a mini-bar in the office.

Behind the door, we discover an assembly line making Hypno-Bears, and Harry Moleman is (in his debut appearance, looking much larger than we know him to be later on) running the show. He tries but fails to hypnotize Sam and Max -- Sam is still protected by the hypno-shield in his hat and Max's brain is -- well -- but they opt to play along. The mole orders Sam to shoot Max, but fortunately we have the cap gun. Max goes through a lengthy death soliloquy that manages to reference the Dukes of Hazzard, Sting, and Charlie's Angels among other pop-culture references, and then puts himself through the machine's vacuum system before popping out at the other end. He gets stuck momentarily, pointing out that the system has a pressure gauge, so maybe we can jam it and blow the whole thing up somehow.

We can see teddy bear voice gizmos in a bin, being assembled, but we can't take one. We can grab a finished bear from the line, however -- "Give all your money to Ted E. Bear", it intones. This isn't a very useful command to give to the Mole, but this seems like a good idea to play with. We can use the bug to listen to and record Harry, but would have to get him to say something more useful -- he's just reading the newspaper comic strips, and his opinions about Mary Worth and Garfield aren't going to help us. But the One-Armed Bandit is also in the room for maintenance -- someone noticed that it actually coughed up a prize when we reclaimed the meatball sandwich -- and his "You're on fire!" gizmo might be of use. We drop it in the bin, a semi-rejected bear drops off the line, and we convince Don Ted E. Bear that's he's aflame. This sends him running for the (fake, OSHA-violating) fire extinguisher on the wall, we pull the vacuum lever, and Harry Moleman is sucked into the machinery a few minutes before he clogs the pressure system and the factory blows up.

Sam and Max run for their lives, dodge the debris and head off for a well-deserved celebratory dinner, as Chuckles the bear removes his head to reveal himself as a secret government agent. With the factory destroyed, it's apparently time for Plan B... which we will learn more about in episode 104.

I really like this series -- Telltale Games' success with this game did much to revive the adventure genre on a commercial basis, and the Sam & Max series consistently balances sharp humor and entertaining puzzle design. These aren't difficult games in the brain-busting manner of the old days, but there are still plenty of fun red herrings and rewarding "Aha!" moments. Good stuff, and we'll get to Episode 104 at some point.

Cover to Cover: Infocom 1987 Catalog (pp. 15-16)

noreply@blogger.com (StillGaming) — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 20:00:00 +0000

Our current cover-to-cover series is coming down the home stretch, with just four more pages of the Infocom 1987 product catalog to go...

Page 15 presents another box set collecting three Infocom science fiction titles:

I have to wonder about the logic used to determine which games went into this particular Science Fiction Classics set -- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Planetfall are certified classics, but were more comedy than hard sci-fi; A Mind Forever Voyaging was true sci-fi, but more about atmosphere than puzzle solving and not a huge success. And Infocom's early serious sci-fi classics Starcross and Suspended are out of the picture altogether. My guess is that AMFV hadn't sold tremendously well and was available for the set, while the other two were popular and therefore still in print.

Page 16 collects three Infocom mysteries as the Classic Mystery Library, with what looks like similar logic:

In this case, the earlier Deadline was omitted from this collection, while the newer Moonmist makes an appearance. This means that this three-game set includes two introductory-level mysteries, Moonmist plus The Witness, plus the more challenging Suspect.

I have to confess that I was never very good at the Infocom mysteries -- I played The Witness back in the day, but never quite found an ending I was satisfied with. I think my methodical, exploratory approach to adventure gaming isn't a great fit for the style -- part of the challenge is being in different places at the right time to witness the autonomous characters doing or saying certain things, which requires a certain amount of efficiency and replaying to piece together the whole story and gather the best possible evidence. I ought to try again sometime soon.

Next week, I think we'll wrap this one up!

East vs. West: Neutopia (1989)

noreply@blogger.com (StillGaming) — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 20:00:00 +0000

It was 1989, the 8-bit NES was still leading the market, and NEC knew they needed something to compete with Nintendo's major franchises. Keith Courage was no Super Mario, but Hudson Soft managed a creditable Legend of Zelda clone with Neutopia. I played the US version from beginning to end at the time of its release, and enjoyed it immensely for what it was. Now I'm finally getting around to sampling the PC Engine version (and adding Volume 23 in Hudson Soft's numbered HuCard series to my collection.)

The title screen of the Japanese version is completely in English:

The North American version differs only in the year of release (1990), the customary added "FROM NEC" legend, and minor layout details:

The gameplay is so clearly and completely lifted from Zelda that there's not much for me to write about here. There's more RPG-style human interaction, with lots of characters hidden behind bombable murals and down hidden staircases; most offer hints (in Japanese text), and some sell potions or offer free healing services. Neutopia's color palette is rich and subtle compared to its NES forebears, bringing its world to life with rounded, shaded imagery and animated water effects, without skimping on the color. It really does feel like a 16-bit upgrade of its inspiration, although the overworld musical theme is not nearly as stirring as Link's enduring march.

Beyond the look of the game, this is wannabe-Link territory all the way through. Our hero was known in the US as Jazeta, and the primary villain as Dirth, and in both regions the game begins with a short cutscene as the villain makes off with a princess/priestess/heroine of some sort:

Some of the enemies are clearly, shall we say, "inspired by" Nintendo's series:

And our hero joyfully lifts bombs, potions, and ~~the Holy Bible~~ the Book of Revival over his head when he finds them in treasure chests, just like that other fellow:

Eventually we pick up a fireball weapon that's slower but more controllable than Link's boomerang, and we can use bombs to blow holes in certain walls to meet new people and find secret (bonus and/or required) dungeon passages. And of course there are 8 dungeons to explore and conquer, with the expected aid of compass and automap -- this interface will look very familiar to Zelda fans:

The dungeons feature simple combat, with plenty of flicker-free enemies roaming about, as well as puzzle rooms where we must push blocks or kill all the monsters to escape or gain access to a treasure chest. There are gold and silver coins, and various powerups and new abilities to acquire, like improved armor and a fireball-throwing sceptre. There's a boss to fight in each dungeon, and if our hero dies, he is soon resurrected back at the beginning of the map to fight his battles anew.

If he defeats a boss and collects a medallion, he returns to the same location, with one of the empty slots on the temple floor filled in to track his progress, and the adventure continues.

That's Neutopia. It's not a bad game at all -- the production values are solid, it controls well, and I thoroughly enjoyed playing it back in the day. Of course, at that time, The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link were the only existing titles in Nintendo's now long-running series. A few decades later, Neutopia's derivative nature, and the continued popularity and advancement of the original franchise, means this game doesn't hold up as well as the more original titles in the PC Engine library. But it sold well -- a sequel, Neutopia II, was released in both Japan and North America -- and while it's just a classical old-school action RPG, there's nothing wrong with that.

If you wish to explore every incarnation of the land of Hyrule, even the unofficial ones, you could do much worse than Neutopia. This game isn't particularly hard to find -- it was popular on the TurboGrafx-16, and is also available on the Wii Virtual Console (Nintendo circa 2007 apparently coughing politely and looking the other way.) The American version can be readily found at Amazon:

If you prefer -- remembering that this is a HuCard, so you'll need original PCE hardware to play it -- you may be able to find the Japanese edition for sale here.

The LoadDown -- 03/29/2012

noreply@blogger.com (StillGaming) — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 21:03:00 +0000

Time Marches out, with one last round of downloadable news for this month -- a relatively quiet week.

WiiWare -- Getting a bit quiet on this platform; the only new item this week is a free demo version of 2 Fast 4 Gnomz, a speedy cartoon platformer released about a month ago.

DSiWare -- And as if to emphasize that the 3DS (now officially one year old in the U.S.) is where the contemporary action is, the latest DSiWare game is 90's Pool. It's a billiards game.

3DS eShop -- One new title this week: ARC STYLE: Soccer 3D, which borrows the Sensible Soccer aesthetic to some degree (at least in the overhead view) but doesn't play nearly as neatly; some may find it a cost-effective alternative to Konami's 3DS soccer cartridge. There's also a demo version of the retro-styled and well-received platformer, Mutant Mudds.

XBox Live Arcade -- Wrecked Revenge Revisited is the only debut title this week, latest in a long line of car-combat games inspired by Twisted Metal; this one features fairly realistic-looking stock cars, augmented by cartoonish weaponry.

PS3 on PSN -- Just one new game here also. Closure is an indie platformer with a light-based mechanic -- only platforms that are lit can be touched safely by the player, so manipulation of the lighting is key to success.

PSOne Classics -- Going twice...

Adventure of the Week: Legacy (1984)

noreply@blogger.com (StillGaming) — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 20:00:00 +0000

I've only recently started to look at the Apple Macintosh platform, thanks to a reader's encouragement. Eventually the Mac and PC software scenes converged, but when the Mac was the only consumer point-and-click system on the market, it hosted some unique adventure games. This week, I'm taking a look at Challenger Software's 1984 adventure, Legacy. It was a team project -- games were getting more complicated now that more sophisticated graphics were possible, and the artists corral the Mac's monochrome pixels into some highly detailed artwork. Rather than trying to list all the authors, I'll just show you the credits popup:

The manual informs us that we are a young magician seeking to recover a mystical orb, in the standard adventure game tradition. The game's authors were reportedly high school students, and while the text occasionally sounds derivative, it's still evocative, and location names are fresh and poetic; it's nice to wander through Scattering Leaves and Burning Hickory rather than endless rooms of Forest. The puzzles are straightforward, as long as we have the spellbook containing a few key details, but there are a few red herrings so fleshed out that they're quite capable of leading the player down the wrong path for a while.

Technically the game has a few shortcomings, chiefly that the illustrations are apparently uncompressed, and while the map is fairly compact the game takes up two disks, requiring frequent swapping for the east and west sides of the map. This wouldn't be so bad, except that each disk stores an independent save file, so if we want to return to a save from the other side of the map, we have to find our way there before we can resume. The parser is fairly sophisticated but occasionally interrupts the story's flow, and there are a few holes in the logic where the designers didn't anticipate the player's actions.

Once again I suggest that interested readers explore the world of Legacy before continuing below; I will be divulging everything I discovered about this adventure, and as I found no published walkthroughs online, mine will be provided at the bottom. So take heed, brave adventurer -- there will be...

***** SPOILERS AHEAD! *****

We begin in the forest, where scattering leaves blow about and there's nothing obvious to do. Heading to the west and crossing the rickety, one-way bridge over the Misty River calls for Disk Two, so perhaps we shouldn't go there just yet. Still, there's not much to do where we are, in the woods -- we see some very nice graphics and lush descriptions, but it's a bit... touristy. There are no immediate signs of humor or danger.

So we cross the Misty River, transitioning to Disk Two, and examine a log lying across the path. A large tree at the end of a path looks to be the only interesting thing we've encountered so far -- EXAMINE TREE reveals a rope ladder hanging down its opposite side. We can climb up to a wooden platform, and easily OPEN the ironbound oaken DOOR. And now we can't ENTER DOOR or GO DOOR or navigate in? Ah, we must simply ENTER. (ENTER is treated as a direction more than an action on something, at least in this situation; when we're near the cave, a simple ENTER yields You must supply a noun.)

Inside the treehouse we find some potentially useful items -- an old book, a lamp, a splintered broom, some old garments, a large dusty trunk and a bed. Trying to take some of the useless old stuff reveals something about our character -- Certainly a magician of your prominence doesn't need to be carrying around... whatever non-portable item we were trying to pick up. We do find a coin in some old overalls, though I never found a use for it; I think it's an intentional red herring.

There's no SAVE or SAVE GAME command -- we have to use the Mac's File menu per Apple's GUI standards. This makes sense, but it's annoying that the same goes for INVENTORY, with an Inventory menu that lists the items in our possession even though clicking on them does nothing; some of these point-and-click experiments justifiably did not survive. The parser also appears to give a few details away -- attempting to SWEEP DUST with the broom yields You can't sweep the diamond dust with your bare hands!, and READ BOOK produces You must specify which book you mean, even though there's only one present at the moment. But the confusion is understandable -- we already have a spellbook in our inventory, and a container filled with diamond dust if we examine it closely. OPEN THE OLD BOOK yields You can't open that, but READ THE OLD BOOK works, even though it's written in a language we don't understand. We can't read our spellbook in-game, but must reference the documentation, where detailed backstories and casting instructions fill out the game world's mythology a bit (and provide yet more red herrings, in the form of promising spells that are not actually implemented in the game.)

We can't GET LAMP in the treehouse. We can EXTINGUISH THE LAMP, though that doesn't seem like a good idea as we have no way to relight it. We can still EXIT, fumbling our way out, but if we go back into the dark treehouse, we somehow regain vision momentarily, enough so that again You see some old garments and an old book here. This kind of gives away which items are important and which are just window dressing.

I managed to crash the game (or at least the Mini VMac emulator) by taking the old book in the darkness where I knew it was even though I couldn't see it, so I started over and stayed on Disk 1 for a while. A cave to the south is the origin of the Misty River, and the parser informs us that it cannot be entered except by following the river; this led me down the wrong path for quite a while later on.

A battle axe is embedded in the bark of a tree, so ingrown that we can't retrieve it. Maybe we can use our spellbook here -- it looks like the Mandukaal spell will do the trick, reverting the tree to the acorn stage. The spells are fairly complicated, which is kind of nice as it makes the physical spellbook seem like more than copy protection. We have to make a triangle around the base of the tree using fine white powder made from crystallized sap, then place three silver acorns at the vertices of the triangle. And then say "Entragon." Hmmm.

Back on the west side of the river -- the bridge disintegrates as we cross -- an ominous gray cottage is also decaying. It contains a crushed barrel and a charred shovel, both burned beyond use, and oddly there is a fire in its fireplace. We can't put it out, so it must be magical in nature.

So what next? Well, the map at this point is pretty constrained, so let's go through our inventory. We have an ivory vial containing -- ah, crystallized tree sap powder. Good. So we just need to find some acorns. We also have a pouch containing some fish scales, a glass bottle with ointment, and a sack containing diamond dust. Most of these seem to be ingredients for our spells, so it looks like we will probably have to gather others in the right order and end up casting all of them to finish this adventure, though that's not really true.

At the top of some stairs, we see that there are apparently good trees and evil trees in this land, and they line up right along the border of Frimlock Forest and Sechryll Forest. Nature vs. nurture? There's a grassy clearing to the east, but there's no DIG verb so I'm not sure what we are going to do here. Sitting on a log briefly notes that the roar of the wind in the trees is strangely reminiscent of the crashing waves of the ocean. Is that significant or just descriptive?

Looking at our collection of spells, we have Lacrhymith, for levitating large inorganic objects, and Zuryll, which changes non-living objects to dust. Flameir makes the caster invulnerable to flame and heat. Most of these -- all of them, actually -- require some ingredients we don't have, but we can still examine the possibilities. Flameir requires an ointment -- is it the one in the glass bottle? We can't OPEN THE BOTTLE to check -- You can't open that -- nor can we USE OINTMENT or SPREAD OINTMENT. The spellbook says we have to put it on our hands, feet and forehead, in that order, but how? We can try to PUT OINTMENT ON HANDS and PUT HANDS IN OINTMENT -- both yield You can't do that with your hands. Oh, well -- we also need a lump of fireclay, which has spent thirteen days in a Minathian lamp, and that's nowhere in sight.

Except -- is that a Minathian lamp in the treehouse? I don't know yet, but going back there and trying to TAKE THE TRUNK moves it, revealing a hole with a gold coin stamped with the name Crun Drasmoor. We can't TAKE COIN, we have to TAKE CRUN DRASMOOR. When we try to climb down, we discover that the rope ladder has been moved, but we can CLIMB VINES to descend the tree. If we examine the tree afterward, we can see that the ladder is no longer hanging from the platform above. But we can still CLIMB LADDER to return to the treehouse, or even just go UP, even though an attempt to CLIMB TREE indicates there are no branches low enough to climb.

Hmmmm... now we are seeing a slender, surefooted figure creeping about near the rotting log. We can't examine or talk to it, though. Taking the broom to the ominous cottage is more productive -- we can SWEEP FLOOR WITH BROOM to discover a trap door. Entering the cellar, someone slams the trap door closed, and we are, as one might expect, trapped. There's a well down here, and a lantern hanging nearby that is not mentioned in the description. Trying to TAKE THE LANTERN is a bad idea, it falls and goes out, leaving us in darkness again. We can't ENTER THE WELL -- it only lets us stand next to it and note that its waters aren't reflecting anything. Restoring a save so we have light again, we can EXAMINE THE REFLECTION and see an image of the decrepit cabin's past: a man with a telescope and a fire; then we see a horrible fire break out. A molten monster leaps out of the well -- and terrified, we run up the stairs, through the trap door cartoon-style -- all on autopilot -- and find ourselves in a different cottage than before. Well, it's the same cottage, but as it was before the fire. And here we find an intact barrel, a strong shovel, a box, and the man and his telescope. The box contains two large sea shells, needed for the water-crossing spell Zythrimnos. But before we can act, the molten monster shows up:

And now the Mac is beeping and Time is running out as the man is killed by the fire creature and the cabin begins to collapse. We only have time to take three objects, as going for a fourth is fatal. The telescope turns out to be broken, having been dropped, so we should take the box, shovel and intact barrel, probably. What's in the barrel? We can't seem to OPEN or BREAK it.
When we EXIT to escape the nightmare from the past, we find ourselves in the cellar again. Can we escape this location via the well? No, it's gone black; but we can just go UP again to enter the present-day decaying cabin. If we go back D, we're told that someone slams the trap door again, but we need only go U again, we're not actually stuck. The designers apparently never anticipated unnecessary return trips. EXIT in the cottage of the past goes to the cellar, while EXIT in the present day goes back outside.

It's not clear why we need the shovel, as the parser does not understand the DIG or USE SHOVEL. All we have gained, it seems, is the ability to cross the river after the bridge was broken when we came over earlier. Following the spellbook's instructions, we OPEN BOX, THROW SCALES ON WATER (THROW SCALES is not acknowledged by the parser in any way), HOLD SHELL, and SAY ELYSORR. Now we can just go E (and insert Disk 1 again). We still have some fish scales in inventory, but we're down to one white shell, so I hope we don't need to do this too often.

So now what? Are we any closer to casting another spell? SWIMming in the river is fatal. We can try the tree spell -- we can successfully MAKE TRIANGLE WITH POWDER... but can't ENTER TRIANGLE yet because the game recognizes that our preparation is not complete. We still need acorns from a Black Nemesis tree, and a thorough examination of all the trees we can get to doesn't help us with that.

Can we translate the old book? Do something with Crun Drasmoor? Figure out why we hear the ocean when we sit on the log? Or open the barrel? We can't DROP BARREL or THROW BARREL from the tree (THROW is treated as DROP.) Seems like we might be able to SHOVEL (something) -- it works as a verb and needs a noun? No, the parser is just saying that I'm trying to use a noun as a verb (Illegal noun usage.)

The manual mentions that we should look for clues in the illustrations. There are definitely items that the text does not mention, but sometimes it's hard to tell what an illustration is illustrating. We can't CLIMB THE HILL by the cave; we slip, fall into the river and drown.

Okay. It seems like the fire protection spell and the fireplace ought to work together somehow. But there's no fireclay in the game? Or -- time to cheat by poking at the parser -- recognition of the associated magic word HENKEL? Nor MANAT, nor ALSOV -- it seems most of the spells in the book are red herrings, where we have one of the ingredients as the game begins but the second is not actually available (perhaps due to overambitious design?) The tree-to-acorn spell Mandukaal is workable, and has an obvious application. So we need to find the silver acorns, that's the only other spell that's truly available.

I had to cheat by peeking at the unencrypted game text to learn that the acorns appear to be hidden in a cavern somewhere. Some other material suggests that the intact barrel is not actually sealed, it just isn't crushed -- we can get into it. Maybe we can use the barrel to travel in the river -- holding it and jumping in isn't sufficient, but can we GET IN THE BARREL? No. CLIMB BARREL? No. ENTER THE BARREL works.

Entering on the west side of the river sends us rapidly around a bend, where the barrel capsizes and we drown. This seems to happen no matter where we launch the barrel. Do we need to hang on somehow? Can we use the shovel as an oar? Not that I can see. This probably won't work anyway, as the river is flowing OUT of the cave, not into it. Time to look at other ideas.

The unidentified thing in the Large Grassy Clearing that I took to be a haystack or a grave or a small garden-sized patch of dirt is actually... a rock. We can PRY ROCK WITH SHOVEL to reveal a hole (although the graphics actually cause the hole to appear to the right of the unmoving rock, creating the impression we have been digging the hole instead.) We need a rope ladder to climb down, dang it, and it's already been stolen, double dang it.

This is a puzzle of its own -- we can't TAKE LADDER from the treehouse platform, as it is securely tied to two pegs on the platform. If we UNTIE LADDER, it drops to the ground and the thief makes off with it -- he must be the mysterious figure we can't otherwise interact with. We have to PULL THE LADDER UP to keep it.

Now we can enter the hole below the rock and find the Room of the Black Nemesis, to collect the acorns we need for the axe-freeing spell. We just SHAKE THE TREE to free up the three shimmering silver acorns we need.

North of the Black Nemesis we find the traditional Stygian Boatman (here called a Boatsman), who wants Crun Drasmoor and will transport us to the Sechryll Forest if we give it to him. We can also just climb back up the rope ladder, but we should see where the apparition takes us... he refers to us by name, Dagon Bathraal, in case we haven't read the manual. On our way back to Disk 1 territory, we see two large looming claws threatening the fragile boat... and then it destroys it. Is this another red herring or do we need to deal with the creature somehow?

Let's just take the acorns and run for now. We can MAKE TRIANGLE WITH POWDER, PUT ACORNS ON TRIANGLE, ENTER TRIANGLE, and SAY ENTRAGON to reduce the tree to an acorn. Now we can obtain the massive battle axe. Can we CHOP TREES to clear the way? No, despite the many directions which are blocked by growth, we are told that, Being good, you can't kill the trees.

So now what? It seems that we still have some fish scales left -- I thought the first use consumed them, but we do have more scales and a shell left over so we can use the water-walking spell one more time to go back across. Maybe now we can use the axe somewhere. Yes, we can CHOP CLAWS WITH AXE to get safely to Sechryll Forest with the Boatsman.

We are now approaching The Drab Castle -- Roberta Williams would never stand for such lame coloration! -- and destiny urges us forward, making our next few moves a one-way trip to the castle gates. We can open them and enter to find the Room of the Orb, presumed object of our quest. It lies on a red velvet pillow. (The prose is particulary purple here, with graceful yet surly lines carved into the patterns on the walls as the young authors struggle to create a sense of beauty and foreboding all at the same time.)

What now? It won't be as simple as taking the orb... oh, wait actually, we can just TAKE THE ORB, but if we try to EXIT we are prevented from doing so, as our quest is somehow incomplete: To turn back now would be a foolish decision that you would regret for the rest of your days. We must EXAMINE ORB to see a vision of a black magician -- and a white one -- two versions of the Wizard Arkimar. He looks very much like Gandalf -- we've briefly seen him before, muttering in despair whenever we die.

The finale presents a moral conundrum -- we are told that an evil being's soul is trapped in the orb; if we give it to the white Arkimar, he will destroy it; the black Arkimar will not, and suggests that this is the greater good. I'm not one for moral absolutism, but I follow the lessons of Star Wars and give it to the white Arkimar. This proves to be a bad choice... but so is giving it to the black Arkimar, apparently.

If we opt not to make a decision and just KEEP THE ORB, the two figures coalesce into one and congratulate us for our moral fortitude, though it feels more like good old-fashioned indecisiveness. And now we do actually give it to Arkimar to claim the reward of apprenticeship under his magical hands. As it turns out, there wasn't much at stake here, really -- just a test of our hero's resourcefulness. But the game is over, ending at last in victory!

Legacy never saw a sequel, and its young authors apparently went on to other pursuits. But it's not a bad little adventure, and some of the illustrations are very attractive. My solution is available at the CASA Solution Archive, and is also available below the fold.

**** WALKTHROUGH ****

W, W, W (insert disk two)
S, S
EXAMINE TREE
CLIMB LADDER
PULL THE LADDER UP
UNTIE LADDER
TAKE LADDER
OPEN DOOR
ENTER
EXAMINE GARMENTS
EXAMINE OLD BOOK
TAKE BROOM
MOVE TRUNK
TAKE CRUN DRASMOOR
TAKE OLD BOOK
EXIT
CLIMB VINES
N, N, N, N
OPEN DOOR
ENTER
SWEEP FLOOR WITH BROOM
OPEN TRAP DOOR
D
ENTER WELL
EXAMINE REFLECTION (monster forces us upstairs)
EXAMINE MAN (may have to repeat until the monster gets upstairs)
TAKE BARREL
TAKE BOX
TAKE SHOVEL
EXIT (to the cellar)
U
EXIT (outdoors)
S, S, S
E, U, E
PRY ROCK WITH SHOVEL
TIE LADDER TO ROCK
DROP DOWN LADDER
D

SHAKE THE TREE
TAKE ACORNS
U
PULL UP LADDER
UNTIE LADDER
TAKE LADDER
W, D, W, N

EXAMINE BOX
THROW SCALES ON WATER
HOLD SHELL
SAY ELYSORR
E (insert disk one again)
E, E, N

LOOK IN THE VIAL
MAKE TRIANGLE WITH POWDER
PUT ACORNS ON TRIANGLE
ENTER TRIANGLE
SAY ENTRAGON (tree is reduced to an acorn)
TAKE AXE
S, W, W

THROW SCALES ON WATER
HOLD SHELL
SAY ELYSORR

S, E, U, E
TIE LADDER TO ROCK
DROP DOWN LADDER
D, N
GIVE CRUN DRASMOOR
CLIMB ABOARD (two giant claws loom from behind)
CHOP CLAWS WITH AXE (we arrive safely at a dock)
EXIT THE BOAT

N, N (to gateway of Drab Castle)
OPEN GATE
ENTER GATE
TAKE ORB
EXAMINE ORB (two wizards appear)
KEEP THE ORB (they coalesce into one)
GIVE ORB TO ARKIMAR (victory!)