Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

(Continued from my previous post.)

Just as a reminder, this game involves multiple cities that are going to go nuclear, and we have to go globe-trotting to stop the mad bomber. (Or evil corporation; more on that later.)

The curious bit is that I made some progress in a manner that resembled one of the old Carmen Sandiego games, where I thought about the actual geographic location as opposed to solving a regular puzzle.

We’ll get to that, but first a quick note on the dating for this game. As I mentioned last time, I got the date from the Computer Adventure Solution Archive but didn’t know where 1982 came from. It comes from the disk label.

From the Museum of Computer Adventure Games.

I found an eBay auction with an Apple II disk that also had 1982 on it. The back on the box says 1983. While this might suggest a pure typo on the disk’s part, I suspect it was a matter of delayed production, like Kabul Spy which has some 1981 dates but was published on the 16th of February, 1982. We have that specific of a date because Sirius filed it as such with the US Copyright Office. Escape From Rungistan has a “Date of Publication” of June 2nd and The Blade of Blackpoole is listed as November 24th. The last entry was filed at the start of 1983 and there are no later filings from Sirius, suggesting they stopped bothering.

Enough lingering, we have criminal(s) to catch!

From the UN Building you land at you can go east to find a shoe store and and a deli. Between the two is an “alley” that has a thermos bottle. The shoe store says it is “closed” (I don’t know if it ever opens) and the deli says it opens at 10. Going a little further is Ajax Security Systems with a sign that mentions voice activation.

The door is locked. I don’t know if this means we are supposed to break in with a voice command, or if this is just a hint that there’s a voice activated door later that uses the system.

While the shoe store and Ajax remain unresolved (and may stay that way) the deli really does open at 10 and you can wait briefly before coming in. You then find out the store is only selling soup and you have to choose what kind of soup you want.

The thermos from the alley is required. Mm, alley soup.

I chose tomato, and the game lets you pick that (and then kicks you out of the store because the health board comes and closes it down). It turns out I chose poorly but I’ll get back to that.

To the west is a taxi, and it is always the same graphic.

I don’t know what this clue means yet.

You need to tell the driver where to go, and the prompt is open ended. Theoretically, the SUBWAY or the STATUE OF LIBERTY or the MET or YANKEE STADIUM are all possible, but you instead need to suss out where the game wants you to go. You need to think back to the envelope from the UN Building. It mentioned that the threatening message came from a pay phone at the Central Zoo, so maybe there’s a clue at the ZOO.

The music cues from Rungistan are still in, by the way. This spot plays “Mary Had a Little Lamb”. There’s also an anxiety-inducing tick-tick-tick as the time goes by when you aren’t typing anything so I was not playing with the sound on.

New York. Not complete in that I don’t know if the shoe store or the security store can be entered.

If you haven’t been able to tell yet, this game doesn’t even remotely pretend to be realistic representations of the various cities, but just have some stand-in places. So while Roberta Williams might have a lot of Zoo rooms that do nothing and are meant to simulate the feeling of being there, Bob Blauschild gets straight to business.

Just to the west of the elephant is a “junk food” stand. I tried BUY ICE CREAM and the game told me I was restricted to popcorn, potato chips, and peanuts. Attempts at buying the popcorn and chips inform you the stand is out, so only the peanuts are available, and they go straight back to the elephant.

Going east there’s the seal pond, and trying to step further results in an animated bomb bouncing on screen. You need to (in a timely manner) GET BOMB and THROW BOMB to dispose of it.

Further on is a man-eating lion cage, and a paper inside. Going in the cage is fatal, but you can GET PAPER / WITH BROOM (the lion eats the broom).

A clue! We can technically take the airport straight from New York to Paris, but our “contact” is in London so let’s do that first.

Unlike most of the airports, the London one has a few extra locations to visit.

First off is a Telex — that’s a teletype, like the old-timey stock market ticker. This drops some information that not all might be as it seems.

The specifically gives the warning that there are no bombs but rather “MISSILES TO BE LA…” (messages cuts off) Adjacent to the telex is a newsstand where the newspaper gives even more mystery.

To summarize, it mentions an industrialist (Renee Renoir) found dead, and he must have died the same day as the bomb threat. He was lead of a now-dissolved energy company, International Energy Limited, and the two other people involved (Rand and Stupertino) are missing, so it’d be useful to find them (or potentially, their dead bodies).

Finally, marking the game definitely as from the 80s, there’s a Hare Krishna. They used to be common at airports in the US before they were banned from prophesizing at terminals; there was a court case about it trying to argue for 1st amendment protection (they were decided to be “not public forums under the First Amendment”).

Their appearance is marked by the tune “We’re in the Money”. They were known for having flowers so I tried GIVE FLOWERS and and received money, which is odd, since I’ve been using money (to buy plane tickets, etc.) even though I don’t have them listed in inventory. I assume this gets used for a Serious Bribe later.

You can try KILL KRISHNA to which the game responds YOU MUST BE FROM N.Y.!

Now comes the taxi and the Carmen Sandiego part, since we were given no location for the contact. I tried BIG BEN and the driver told me the traffic was bad but how about Buckingham Palace. Sure?

The main vibe to catch onto here is that despite the fact we were given no directions to the contact, by finding some place in London to go we’ll be able to find them anyway quite quickly. Just one step is away is New London Bridge, and he’s waiting for us at the north. Here’s were the word LITHIUM (randomly on the wall at the start of the game) comes into play.

Connected to the same area we can go to Paris by train. The Chunnel wasn’t finished until 1994, unless I’m missing something this otherwise wasn’t possible in 82-83?

Here’s what likely is the entire Paris map:

The train lands us by a taxi, and this time we can either use the clue and go straight to the street with the Laundry place (on the paper we found at the lion cage) or we can just say we want to go to the EIFFEL tower and of course it is connected.

Inside, we can give our slip and find out while the pants are clean yet, they found a key inside that they hand over. I have yet to figure out what the key goes to, but it managed to form some drama anyway, as while trying to get over to the taxi (to go to Rome, the next destination) it falls into some sewers.

The sewers are easier to pre-map out before this, because when you pick up the key the sewers coincidentally decide to start dramatically filling with water. This is done in real time and you have to make your way back out in time.

Unfortunately, you aren’t out of the woods yet: you start shivering from cold and die quickly from pneumonia afterwards.

The trick is to — rather than picking up TOMATO soup earlier — pick up CHICKEN NOODLE. Because that’s what’s good for health, right? (It was a thing in the 80s, at least. As was the flowers thing. As was peanuts going to elephants. There’s a lot of “unrealistic common wisdom” puzzles going on.)

OK, Rome. This time I didn’t know exactly what to tell the Taxi. The newspaper mentioned Stupertino, but that doesn’t work for a prompt. I literally Googled “rome tourist” and started running through the list, getting a hit on FORUM.

Just to the east of the Roman Forum. Weirdly, not unrealistic for these two places to be close.

These are right next to the Stupertino Villa but it is locked up and I don’t know how to get in. The key doesn’t work.

The last threatened city is Miami, which is available flying from New York. After some noodling I was able to go to the BEACH.

There’s no clues or anything pointing to a mad bomber / missile launcher, but there is a water-skiing contest, and it uses the left and right arrow keys in order to steer through some buoys. I haven’t beaten it yet so I can’t tell you what the reward is.

Miami has one more destination: San Juan.

Going back to the informant’s message, they said Rand was at St. Thomas. So if we’re looking for Rand (or their dead body) we need to get from San Juan to St. Thomas, which is why I (successfully) tried out BOAT.

Trying to GET GAS for the boat causes some of it to spill, and disasterous consequences.

I could easily still be missing a location via Carmen Sandiego method, so I should do a screen just in case the Miami taxi also can visit the Everglades. Other than that, I’ve got the security and shoe stores I haven’t entered (New York) a villa that can’t be entered (Rome), a key I have yet to use (from Paris), a mini-game I need to beat (Miami) and the boat/gas problem (San Juan). No hints yet, please; if anyone has played this before, you’re welcome to speculate.