Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

(Previous post on this game here.)

I need to dig back in the history bin in order to contextualize some design choices made with The Phantom’s Revenge, and one particularly wild moment that threw me aback.

I need to talk about Jim Gillogly, Walt Bilofsky, and Software Toolworks.

The above clip (Softalk, December 1982) I already used in my discussion of The Hermit’s Secret, but I left out talking about The Original Adventure, which was published before either Girard game. What makes its presence here something of a puzzle is that the Gillogly/Bilofsky edition — which adds several puzzles and an endgame — was first published by an entirely different company, Software Toolworks.

Source.

In 1980, Walter Bilofsky was working at RAND in Santa Monica, and had a Heathkit H89 that he assembled out of a kit as a home computer. With his computer he wrote an enhanced C compiler (rewriting an earlier compiler called Small C made by Ron Cain), and started selling it for $40. Bilofsky originally wanted to sell the product for $80 and wanted to split profits with Cain, but Cain was not interested (early hacker ethos, he just wanted to spread the gospel of C) so he halved the price instead.

This was the start of Software Toolworks, and in early 1982 Walter started selling a version of Adventure.¹ Just like Small C, this was based on pre-existing code, this time from 1977 by Gillogly (in C) although the Software Toolworks version adds three treasures and a new endgame. This means, yes, I should go back and play it at some point since it isn’t just a port. It incidentally is the one commercial version which eventually (in later ports) got an official endorsement from Crowther and Woods and started paying them royalties.

From the Museum of Computer Adventure Games.

The software was compiled for the CP/M operating system and HDOS and ran on Bilofsky’s beloved H89; it was not originally sold for the DOS operating system but my guess is the Norrell version (which we do not have) was arranged so a DOS version was available. This isn’t an enormous technical leap (the operating systems are fairly close together) but it means that Mel Norrell had C source code at hand that was a quite direct port.

This program was originally developed by Willie Crowther. Most of the features of the current program were added by Don Woods. The UNIX version was implemented in C by Jim Gillogly, and expanded and moved to the 8080/Z80 by Walt Bilofsky.

And by quite direct, I mean it even includes a feature left out of some versions, which is you can enter commands in the wrong order. That is, LIGHT LAMP works, but so does LAMP LIGHT. This tends to only be true of derivatives of Crowther/Woods Adventure; even parsers that recognize verbs and nouns like Avon insist on them being in the right order.

Guess which game also allows verbs and nouns to be given out of order?

There is a rather battered old spoon on the floor.

SPOON GET

Okay.

It’s not exact one-to-one code — for example, the weird “blank response” verbs aren’t broken in the Software Toolworks Adventure — but I feel like that the engine here had to have been created by directly eyeballing what came out of Adventure if not at least cribbed in part directly.

This explains, for example, why there are still people functionally equivalent to the dwarves and pirate in this game, despite it being Girard’s second published game. It comes off as a “re-skin” and the way puzzles work — mainly by not letting the player go through a particular exit — also gives a similar feel.

The maniac(s) — that I saw last time and had trouble throwing an axe at — serve as the dwarves. I had been typing THROW AXE, but I needed THROW AXE AT MANIAC (again, not exactly like original Adventure).

There is a nasty-looking maniac here, eyeing you.
One sharply honed knife is thrown at you.
It missed!
This is the middle of the stage. Far above you can see huge flats of scenery held in place by guy wires and ropes. Just in front of you is the orchestra pit, and beyond that stretches an endless sea of seats, upholstered in red plush. There is a small curtained exit to the east.

THROW AXE AT MANIAC

You attack a maniac, but he moves nimbly out of the way.

TAKE AXE

Okay.

THROW AXE AT MANIAC

You killed a maniac! An incredible giant rat lumbers out of the shadows, gobbles up the corpse, and leaves squealing.

Alternately, a ghoul may come out to drag out the carcass. The ghouls also serve as the games “grues” or “pits” and will get you if you wander in the dark.

The pirate, on the other hand, is a “tall dark man”.

There is the sound of heavy breathing from the darkness behind you.

This is a large dressing room obviously intended for a star. It has a pretty dressing table, and a screen covered with roses, cherubs, and an incredible collection of love letters. They are all addressed to someone named Christine. The only doorway is in the east wall.

There is a rather dusty — but valuable! — tiara here.

GET TIARA

Okay.

E

A tall dark man wearing an astrakan hat and evening clothes slides slyly out of the darkness, comments “I’ll just relieve you of that,” and lightly snatches up your treasure before vanishing into the shadows.

The references to Christine made me highly suspect we were dealing with this fellow:

Returning to my main point: you would think the strong restriction mechanically to Adventure would make any notion of a plot twist impossible, but The Phantom’s Revenge does something to pull it off anyway. It feels a bit like “engine abuse” akin to building a tower defense game in a Baba is You level but that just made me even more impressed.

So, returning to the game’s content itself, here’s a meta-map of the environs.

You’ll notice lots of dotted lines. Those are for the magic words that allow fast travel. They tend to be (or at least have tended so far to be) easy to find. As Andrew Plotkin pointed out in the comments, we saw one with the phrase “Yngvi is a louse” which originated in the short story The Roaring Trumpet and immediately became a meme in the sci-fi/fantasy community.²

Picture from The Roaring Trumpet as it first appeared in the fantasy fiction publication Unknown, May 1940. Story by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt; illustrators for this issue were Cartier, Hewitt, Isip and Schneemann.

“Ham” is a little more indirect, but still obvious:

You are in a small alley, walking under a lovely blue sky. You can hear some traffic noises to the south. There is a weatherbeaten door to the north that says “Deliveries.”

There is some rudely scrawled grafitti on the wall.

READ GRAFITTI

It says “Every ham wants center stage,” and looks like it was put on in a hurry with a spray can.

HAM

It is now pitch dark. If you go on you’ll probably be eaten by a ghoul.

LIGHT LAMP

The lamp is now on.
This is the middle of the stage. Far above you can see huge flats of scenery held in place by guy wires and ropes. Just in front of you is the orchestra pit, and beyond that stretches an endless sea of seats, upholstered in red plush.
There is a small curtained exit to the east.

More ominous is “FANTOME”.

You are at the south end of the wharf. There is a moorage of some kind just south of you, with a broad harbor beyond. Far off on the horizon there is a small island with a grim building on it that fills you with indescribable horror.

S

You are standing in a rather large motor launch that is moored to the end of the wharf. There is a neatly lettered sign in the stern that says “Put loot here.” The name on the side of the boat is FANTOME.

FANTOME

You are in a private theatre box, furnished with two red and gold chairs. A small sign on the wall says “Reserved for the Ghost.” The whole room is draped in red velvet except to the east, where a gap in the curtains lets you see the stage. The only exit leads northeast.

There is a tattered page of sheetmusic lying here.

As the “put loot here” message implies, I did find the place where the loot goes, and you have the typical satisfaction of a score increase when making the deposit. What I found puzzle is the location. Hermit’s had you deposit at a spaceship, and leaving the planet seemed like an appropriate end to the game. Here, we are leaving our ominous prison/opera house to an even spookier island filled with “indescribable horror”?

There is some sense to this, which I’ll be getting to. But at least at that moment I was quite puzzled.

I’m not going to give all my maps yet — they’re definitely works in progress — but the picture above shows part of outside.

You are in the middle of a short section of waterfront. The entrance to some sort of low dive opens to the north. South of you the boardwalk stretches out into an old creosoted wharf, and you can hear the roar of the surf.

N

This is obviously a low dive. Big burly men in black shirts, fallen women, and computer freaks of all sorts line the dirty bar. A crazed young man is frantically pushing buttons on a big machine with bright blinking lights. There is a small, inconspicuous door in the east wall.

The presence of people, that is, normal people walking around, not maniacs throwing knives in the dark — makes for some interesting spice to the atmosphere. There are people here living (and playing some manner of arcade game) but surrounded by a decaying opera house, prison, and distant creepy island. None of them talk, but this feels appropriate for the decay.

Well, mostly none — if you try to go east, a bouncer stops you, which is one of my unsolved puzzles. Also nearby there’s a “guard kiosk” to the prison which requires a pass and I have no pass.

South of the dive is the “loot here” place, and underneath there is a beach which serves no purpose I could find. Mind you I waited many terms, being burned by both Zork III and Avon requiring you to hang out on a beach hoping something shows up.

There is a small patch of sand here, and the seawater laps gently back and forth just south of you.

S

This is where the ocean meets the land. The waves roll in and out in hypnotic sequence.

The prison area has a bunch of curious items lying around (like keys, a whiskbroom, and a “round black thing” where you get no further description); I was able to use the keys to unlock an “iron maiden” which opened a secret area blocked by a dog. Going in a different direction led to a river where I was able to ride a grate (?) down a river before making it to a mysterious underground lake.

You are at the mouth of a large river that runs here from the north. South of you it feeds into a large underground lake.

S

This is the north east shore of a peaceful underground lake. You can see only water and the massive stone wall enclosing it.

The underground lake connects to the backstage rooms of the opera house, including an area blocked by many rats and an area blocked by one giant rat.

This is a rather dirty tunnel that slopes up to the south.
It turns into some sort of gravel covered area to the north.

A giant rat, easily eight feet high, bares its sharp front teeth, twitches its whiskers, and refuses to let you go by.

FEED RAT

The rat gobbles up the cheese, and then starts to eye you as a possible second course.

The upper portion of the opera house has some seats (a small maze, a gold ring is there), an office with a safe (which I haven’t opened) and, weirdly enough, a Gutenberg bible as one of the treasures.

Treasures marked in color.

As the pictures above imply, a good number of the treasures tend to be just lying around (again Adventure-style) although managing to get them all to safety (the wharf) without theft is somewhat tricky to coordinate (just like Adventure) and the lamp is running out of power at the same time and must be conserved (also just like Adventure).

The bit that wasn’t just like Adventure is one of the last pieces I mapped:

This is a small, rather oppressive drawing room. It is decorated in black, with a few touches of crimson and silver. Dark forbidding doorways lead out of all four walls.

There is a framed photograph of a lovely woman here.

N

As you walk into this black draped room, and see the great ebony coffin that is its only feature, you feel dizzy and suddenly faint. Then, with a rush of exultation, memory returns to you! This is your home, your secret lair. YOU ARE THE PHANTOM!

While the situation still doesn’t completely make sense to me, multiple pieces clicked: the reason we started in prison, the ambiguous opening, and most importantly the reason why we’d be gathering treasures to take to a spooky island — I assume to enact the “revenge” that we are seeking. I am curious if more plot points, I suppose again via room description, get dispensed along the way.

The curious design aspect here is that while I found the above revelation pretty deep in my wanderings, it would have been possible to discover it early. It wouldn’t have undermined things, exactly, but it was a more effective moment when I had the oddness of the situation hanging as I was making a map. I admit I didn’t trust it would go anywhere — The Hermit’s Secret never really did — which is part of why it took me by surprise.

So the man in black is someone else entirely. Since I haven’t found his lair I don’t want to speculate yet as to his identity (and of course the game might not give a satisfying answer).

A list of everything I’ve found so far:

treasures found: silver comb, tiara, ornate clock, framed photograph, russian egg, emerald, book, ivory bracelet, platinum brooch, gold ring, opera program

items found: spoon, cheese, ticket, white silk scarf, round black thing, whiskbroom, leash, keys, musicsheet, little card (“Joe sent me”)

obstacles: single large rat, multiple rats, guard dog, safe, dive, guard station, going west at starting prison cell, and I still need to map out a “magic forest” near the coffin

Yes, I should try the leash on the dog, I’ll get to it, but I suspect I’ll need to do something else to make the dog peaceful first. This is a game where coming up with the initial map is overwhelming and solving puzzles really has to come after already spending several hours just soaking up the locations.

The seats maze just for reference.

^{1. The copy at the Museum of Adventure Games is marked 1.0 and seems to be the earliest. It is dated February 1982. Even though some sources say it was released in 1981 I’m sticking with 1982.↩}

^{2. Fortunately the air was warm enough so Shea didn’t mind the loss of his garments from a thermal point of view. Around them the dungeon was silent, save for a drip of water somewhere and the occasional rustle of a prisoner in his cell. Across from Shea there was a clank of chains. An emaciated figure with a wildly disordered beard shuffled up to the bars and screamed, “Yngvi is a louse!” and shuffled back again.}

^{“What means he?” Heimdall called out.}

^{From the right came a muffled answer: “None knows. He says it every hour. He is mad, as you will be.”}

^{“Cheerful place,” remarked Shea.↩}