Then Hans, holding a dripping cheeseburger in one hand, said, “This is a great moment, Professor!”
“Yes, Hans, we shall be able to enlarge anything we so choose. We shall be richer than kings and emperors. We shall own the world.”
We’ve reached August for Peter Kirsch’s next installment of the Softside Adventure of the Month. (Previously: Robin Hood Adventure.) I don’t have absolute confirmation this time the author is him (the author credit tends to be on the TRS-80 version, which nobody seems to have) but the structure is identical to his other games.
So many of our authors, tentatively stepping into the waters for the first time, crank out either a Crowther/Woods fantasy or a haunted house game. Kirsch, needing a game every month, is trying out all the genres. This is not just a giant monster story but also a comedy.
Hans carefully watches the Professor as he turns on the machine as cheese from his burger slowly drips onto the platform.
The two men stare silently at the hunk of carbon as it begins to glow.
Suddenly, unnoticed, a small mouse scampers onto the platform to the cheese…
Giant mice with catchy names have been unleashed and are destroying Tokyo Chicago, and our job is to stop them.
We’ve encountered August 1982 Softside before as it is an adventure-heavy issue, with Operation Sabotage being the cover game and Kirsch including an article about his adventure-writing process (which we looked at while exploring Magical Journey).
I have both Apple II and Atari versions but I stuck with Apple II since I had already set up a disk the same time as Robin Hood. I have a download at this link.
The narrative experiment here is to create a wide-open map where the mice essentially roam freely. You’re just supposed to set up … traps I think? Unfortunately, given I have yet to defeat any of the mice, so I don’t know if that’s true generally.
I can give the complete map (so far), the items I’ve gotten (which is not many) and the general behavior of the mice. A zoomed out look at the landscape first:
I’ve divided the map into four regions; the southeast (where you start) is the Laboratory, to the southwest is the Bridge, to the northeast are some Stores, and a powerline-laden road leads to Downtown in the northwest.
Before the action starts, your inventory has a wallet with $39.98.
The road you start on includes a “quicksand bog” which is so far the only place I’ve found you can die…
It’s a Kirsch game so it uses GO instead of ENTER. I’m still recovering after Sharpsoft Haunted House.
The laboratory is three rooms: east and west rooms with a MACHINE and a room in the middle with LASER-SHAPED RODS. The machine has a red RESET switch, a green #1 button, and a green #2 button; if you hit these in order the machine will theoretically work (if something is in the laser room that it can transform). I have managed to make something GIANT but I’ll show it off later.
Moving on to the Bridge area…
…there’s a small town to the south with houses you can’t enter.
These turn into SMASHED HOUSES later. Your JEEP incidentally gets the same treatment.
The Bridge that I’m using to name the region is given with an ominous weight limit…
…and a curious scene on the west side. I don’t know if this is meant as a joke or a hint. Knowing Kirsch it could be either.
You might think this is indicating with a bright klaxon that I’m supposed to get a mouse to follow me, and its enormous weight will drop it to its doom, but I haven’t gotten any of the critters to visibly follow me over to here yet, despite the smashed houses.
Hitting the northeastern area and the stores:
The hardware store, helpfully, has a high-powered rifle. It costs $39.99, and your wallet has $39.98, so you are one penny short. Cruel, cruel capitalism.
Fortunately, outside, there is a “young lady” who wants a “penny for your thoughts” and is being literal.
With the change added to our account we can obtain the rifle.
Two of the stores (the pet store and the music store) are closed with the owners “out to lunch”; the fourth store (a grocery store) is open, and the owner is the opposite of the hardware store owner and is giving away everything for free, as long as you say what it is and they have it in stock.
This is kind of like the storage room in Dog Star Adventure where you had to specify what you wanted, but with some comedy logic to it.
At the end of the line there’s a MOUNTAIN which is too steep to climb; I assume this comes into play later.
Now, to Downtown, and finally meeting the critters!
First off, at where the powerlines start, is MAJA.
I don’t know what the “small rodents” indicate; I do know this is the only mouse that wanders, although he sticks to the powerline area.
Chicago has more stores, but try to enter them and you get rebuffed by a gust of wind.
Satisfyingly, not long after both of these buildings become SMASHED versions (this happens offscreen). Wandering further there’s another mouse (SAM) wrecking havoc:
Weapons useless, just like King Kong. If you try to shoot MAJA you just miss.
I have seen either of the other two mice. I might being hearing one of them as I have been walking around with the message
SQUEAK…SQUEAK
sometimes appearing, although this may be connected to the fact that in the laboratory I created giant stinky cheese.
I haven’t been able to FEED MOUSE or tempt the monsters onto the bridge via dropping cheese in the middle or anything like that. I’ve honestly been having trouble communicating in general, with the only verbs working off my standard list being READ, DRINK, POUR, PRESS, PUT, PUSH, SHOOT, THINK, HOLD, PLAY, GIVE, and ENTER.
The machine incidentally does not work to create a giant rifle (even if you try to convert it before the cheese). I suspect it only works on particular types of matter.
That’s all I have. Despite the size of the map, a lot of the rooms are “filler” (YOU’RE IN DOWNTOWN CHICAGO, no description otherwise) and I suspect some of the geography will be leveraged in the puzzles as we try to lead mice in various ways to their doom. I’m happy to take any speculation people want to make on what to try next.
Renga in Blue 
I would think the saucer might be a gettable item. Can you dive into the river somehow and check? Saucers make me think of milk, which makes ne think of cats… Maybe it could all be part of some puzzle to lure a cat (and make it gigantic?) to attack the mice? Just spitballing here…
One other thought: I’d imagine those powerlines must be used somehow to electrocute the mouse who hangs around near them. That was kind of a standard trope in old giant monster movies, I seem to recall. Is there some way to knock them down, or lure him into them, when he’s in the vicinity?
<Peter Falk voice>
Oh yeah, just one more thing…
Since you’ve already proven the quicksand is deadly (isn’t it always?), I’m thinking maybe you need to lure one of them over there to drown it. Just like the bridge, actually… That weight limit can’t be there for no reason.
So, if I’m on to something here it will be:
One killed/chased by a cat you lure
One electrocuted by the powerlines
One falls in the quicksand
One falls through the bridge
GAME OVER, MAN!!!
Sorry, I’ll stop now. It’ll be funny when it turns out I was wrong about all of this…
one of the things I tried was throwing the cheese at the powerlines to see if Maja would take the bait, and that’s when I discovered THROW wasn’t a verb
I think Maja is _always_ in a room with powerlines so that has to be how he gets handled
I was trying to figure out how to weaponize the heavy winds in Chicago downtown to take out Sam, but no clue
Can you shoot the powerlines with the rifle?
If you shoot the powerlines with the rifle you miss.
Went back and took another look at this entry, and something struck me: The concept of “distance”. What I mean is that, based on everything the game is telling you, and if what I’m guessing about the puzzles holds true, the main concept the author seems to be going with is that it’s too dangerous to do anything up close, so you need to do it, or have it done for you, from afar. Thus the need to lure them into traps, as one would naturally do to a mouse anyway. So for instance:
If my idea about the cat is true, it’s a case of luring it to you (presumably with a saucer of milk), and then turning it loose (in giant form?) to do the job for you.
If what we both think about the powerlines is true, then it’s doubly the case. You can’t get near live powerlines, so you have to get them to do the job for you at a distance. It struck me that a rifle is generally used for distance shooting. Maybe you can drive him into the lines by shooting at him, or even take the lines down directly by firing on them?
As for the other two possible methods of destruction (bridge and quicksand), these would seem to follow the “mousetrap” analogy more closely, in that there should be a way to safely lure them there to their own demise. The stinky cheese seems pretty obvious, so maybe try putting it on or near those two areas and see what happens? If it works for one, it should follow that there will be one final mousetrap puzzle to work out for the other.
Overall, this is the type of adventure that seems fairly easy to solve in concept (I think he was mostly just taking ideas from old movies and cartoons), but may be tricky to piece all together and execute due to timed events, semi-random character movements, etc. It’ll be interesting to see…
Adding on to these thoughts…
Is there a way to check the time in-game? Maybe the pet store opens after enough turns pass (i.e., after the owner comes back from lunch) and maybe you can get a cat there. Especially if milk is available at the grocery store. Maybe the music store opens too.
On reread, I see PLAY is a recognized verb, which strongly suggests to me that a musical instrument of some kind is available (presumably from the music store).
there’s no guarantee here, but in terms of raw turns, I don’t think the stores are affected, I spent a very long time wandering and they were still closed
it may be an event-based timer, still
Dubious suggestion: could you shoot the locks on the doors?
Okay, since I’m not likely to ever play this one myself (I really don’t like adventures with too much timer-based or random movement stuff, as a general rule), I poked around and saw that Dale Dobson had covered this one, and… yeah, it’s kind of a mess in that regard and he had to look at the code and start over a bunch of times to get through it.
I won’t spoil anything, but I will say that something you’ve already tried is absolutely supposed to work, so I don’t know if it’s a specific timing issue or maybe there’s a problem with the Apple II version (he played the Atari one). Just letting you know, now, because otherwise I think you might be stuck wandering in circles indefinitely here…
looks like the mouse-wandering is buggy on the Apple II
also I had an issue with the emulator speed being cranked as I missed a message
probably going to make it to the end soon
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The title makes me think of The Goodies for some reason. Well, that was a giant cat…