Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

I haven’t had a lot of time to play, unfortunately, but I still wanted to make a post as Matt W. in the comments last time skillfully sleuthed out the issue: I was using a bad disk.

Specifically: I had been using this version of the game from the Internet Archive (added 2018-08-08 by 4am) but I should have been using this version of the game from the Internet Archive (added 2019-09-29 by 4am).

Apple II preservation history is long and complicated as the first emulator goes back to 1990 (!) and the emulator I typically use, AppleWin, goes back to 1994. Early files were in DSK, PO, or DO format, which copied file content but not necessarily their exact layout on the disk; much later, technology was developed to dump the disk as a whole including disk structures that don’t port over with DSK (NIB files). In 2018 things went even further to allow dumps at the individual magnetic flux level and the WOZ file format.

Visualization from AppleSauce of the Crime Stopper disk.

The big catch here to all this which makes Apple II emulation tricky is copy protection. Piracy was rampant (as well as methods of circumventing copy protection) but copy protection bypasses also sometimes broke the software in subtler ways. The most amusing I’ve encountered is how The Queen of Phobos has the nuke in the game get set off right away if you’re running off a disk sector other than 000.

You can generally expect early dumps to be based on cracks from the 80s — especially since some of the dumps genuinely go back to 1990 — while WOZ files are based on “fresh cracks” on current technology and the ability to account for subterfuge like what disk sector a program is running on. This means that WOZ files are usually preferrable to DSK, although in Kabul Spy I had the opposite: there was a bug present in the newer WOZ dump not in the DSK format.

None of this was actually relevant here! The two dumps were both in WOZ format, although one of them was more recent than the other. I’ve checked all the ways I can and they seem to be the same “version” (an early version of Oo-Topos was unfinishable) but yet something is different enough about the dumps that there is a signifcant gameplay difference.

In the 2018 version of the file, looking at your desk in your office says you see nothing special.

I also hadn’t found the secret behind the picture last time I played.

In the 2019 version, you find a drawer.

You can still refer to the drawer in the 2018 version dump (which is why I went hunting for version numbers first) but you just have to guess one exists.

(ADD: 4am confirmed on Mastodon it was different versions rather than different dumps. There isn’t anything visible to the player.)

Neither dump led me to realize the other issue, which Matt. W also pointed out: this game has a clue via sound. Specifically, there’s a loud obnoxious beeping sound at the start, which is supposed to indicate your telephone is ringing. This never gets mentioned in the text. (Sorry, I’m still not turning on Apple II sound otherwise except in dire circumstances.)

The message from the phone, combined with the telegram on our desk…

AL CLUBS- I REQUIRE YOUR SERVICES STOP STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL MATTER STOP COME TO THE LOBBY OF THE SIZEMORE BUILDING 2ND AVE. 50TH ST. STOP COME IMMEDIATLY STOP -MILLICENT HYACINTH SIZEMORE

…led me to the subway where I could use my newfound cash from the desk to be able to get on board.

I assume this means the game has 13 places in total we can go to.

Arriving at the Sizemore building, we are handed a ransom note and a letter.

So, as far as we know so far, we’re supposed to help deliver ransom money in order to get a kidnapped daughter back. Something tells me the plot won’t be this straightforward, but I’ll try to pick up the momentum from here next time.