I have finished the game, and my previous posts are needed for context.
Bomb #20: The only thing that exists is myself.
Sgt. Pinback: Snap out of it, bomb.
Bomb #20: In the beginning there was darkness. And the darkness was without form and void.
Sgt. Pinback: Umm. What the hell is he talking about? Bomb?
Bomb #20: And in addition to the darkness there was also me. And I moved upon the face of the darkness and I saw that I was alone.
Sgt. Pinback: Hey…..bomb?
Bomb #20: Let there be light. (Explodes.)— From the ending of the movie Dark Star (1974)
There’s what might be a Dark Star movie reference in the game; I know have a couple of fans watching. It’s hard to tell, because it’s mashed up with the Blake’s 7 reference.
Lieutenant Doolittle surfing at the end of the movie Dark Star.
First, a theoretical side tangent. Text adventures have tended to always have diegetic and non-diegetic commands; diegetic commands are ones that translate to something the avatar does in the world, while non-diegetic commands involve affecting the game program itself: SAVE, RESTORE, QUIT, and so forth. Some games blur the difference (Quondam infamously having the save feature not work in the first part of the game because the player gets beaten up by mobsters) but the general ramification is the player does not reach across the aisle unless some alteration to the program state is needed, and furthermore, it is expected by the player there won’t be some diegetic effect to a non-diegetic command. (The big issue games from this era have is advancing time even upon saving or loading a game.)
HELP has always been an oddball between the two groups; Crowther/Woods adventure clearly is giving a non-diegetic explanation of the game’s setup…
I know of places, actions, and things. Most of my vocabulary describes places and is used to move you there. To move, try words like forest, building, downstream, enter, east, west, north, south, up, or down. I know about a few special objects, like a black rod hidden in the cave.
…but Fortress at Times-End had HELP be the necessary starting command of the game, as for some reason it caused a drawbridge to open. Between the two we’ve had the command sometimes give a piece of information that is absolutely essentially to playing the game (a parser command that is impossible to guess, for instance).
Dark Star turns out to fall in that category, because pressing the buttons at the self destruct area is wrong. The game wants the code formatted in a very specific way, one that can only be worked out via typing HELP.
ENTER GREEN/YELLOW/BLUE AS’CODE GYB’
This is slightly cheeky not only in requiring a command that might make a player feel like they were giving up any kind of personal “no hints challenge” but also the three button colors are green, yellow, and red so the combination doesn’t make sense.
There’s only six combinations so it is easy to simply guess, but there is a way of getting the information otherwise. Back at the ORAC you can type CODE.
Why the player would even know this syntax works is unknown. (I just got it later from the source code.) Also, as shown, it doesn’t actually work: if you type HELP the game lets you know ORAC needs you to be polite, so the correct command is CODE PLEASE.
The Orac was a bit messy to converse with in Blake’s 7, so this could simply be a reference to that, but the actual refusal followed by the “leave me alone” feels more along the lines of talking to Bomb 20 in Dark Star. I’m still going to say the reference is accidental, but I’m going to leave the surfing picture anyway just for fun.
With the self-destruct stopped, the game enters a new phase, the “second mission”. (That means my mucking about the planets was “virtual branching” — I got to see ahead before figuring out the “puzzle” of realizing the HELP command was being mildly abused.)
Another timer! It turns out the complication is not from the life support timer but the fact the space suit (which you need to wear during all the planetary visits) starts running out of oxygen.
Back at planet THREE, there was an ORB, a HOOK, a ROCK, and a KEY.
The ORB simply blows up if you try to teleport it away, so that’s clearly a red herring, but out of the other three items only one of them is useful. You can take the HOOK over to the “green planet” with the fishing, nab the rope and pole, and CATCH FISH. However, you just get a fish, and that’s it. It does nothing. This is a red herring on the level of Ferret, letting you actually solve a puzzle but it turns out to be completely the wrong thing to do.
I was also thinking I might need to use the shininess of the coin as a lure, but that’s not necessary.
No, the item you need is a KEY, which I’ll show off in a moment. You also need to get the box over to the cave and nab the stalactite (as I showed off before) and do the SHOOT STALACTITE (as I also showed off before). SHOOT incidentally doesn’t even bother to check what noun you use, so the only reason I knew for sure it was applying to the stalactite was the brokenness of the parser.
For whatever reason, if you step to the cliff one step to the east and do the SHOOT over there, the dissolving ice will make some vapor and get TWO CRYSTALS from the rockface. I don’t think there’s a clue to this other than it seems like the command ought to do something.
This, plus the KEY, are what’s needed to win the game. Flying back to the Dark Star, I went back to the chamber with two spots missing on a cube. There I had an epic hour-long struggle with the parser.
The two commands that work — which I eventually had to pull straight out of the source code — are REPLACE CRYSTALS and COMPLETE CUBE. For “complete”, I suppose that makes sense, but this is the first and will probably be the last time I’ve ever seen that verb in an adventure game. For “replace”, the crystals go in empty spaces — we’re not replacing anything! I tried PLACE CRYSTALS as one of my first attempts with no joy.
However, even with the right command, I was stopped by a “glass dome”. You cannot refer to either the GLASS or DOME so I tried taking over the heavy stone from the crater planet and using it for smashing purposes, but I just got gnarly default messages.
I finally realized the LOCK just outside did not correspond to the ID card door as I previously assumed, but rather was its own independent thing. Typing USE KEY (more fun with the parser!) will cause, the game reports, nothing to happen, but we’ve seen that trick already.
The key-use opened up the dome, so now it is possible to COMPLETE CUBE.
This suggests either Mexican Adventure was written earlier or the games were made together. Haunted House also references Mexican Adventure. That’s the one game from the Sharpsoft Class of ’82 that I haven’t reached yet, but it’ll have to wait for another time, because I need a breather from their particularly ornery parser…
…and possibly cope with another ornery parser, as coming up: we’re staying with science fiction and visiting an unusual Apple II graphical game, a deep enough cut it did not make my 1982 list.
Renga in Blue 
A few observations:
I thought the game was fun when it was in the initial self-destruct timer mode, but then it kind of fell apart after it opens up. You can tell that he couldn’t really think up any good puzzles, so he tried to compensate by having you waste your time against the turn limits with red herrings and parser nonsense. That’s not good game design.
There are two pointless bits of randomization: Every time you talk to Orac, the code changes, and every time a new game is loaded the items are placed randomly in the giant crater.
Looking at the code after winning, I noted a few silly jokes: If you type SOLVE CUBE (who would do that?) it tells you it’s not a Rubik’s Cube. You can flip the coin (again, why?) and it will tell you it’s either heads or tails. If you enter EARTH as your course in the starship, you get yet another Mexican Adventure ad. If you take off the gravity belt in the cave and JUMP, you float all the way up and get impaled on another stalactite.
The syntax error you mentioned is supposed to GOTO another line that prints out “Your next of kin will be notified!”. The one little mystery I mentioned is that it seems there’s something you can do to successfully (although pointlessly) play the pinball machine and have it print out a score, but I can’t figure out how. Baltasarq, could you take a look at this? All the pinball stuff is in one section of code, so it should be fairly easy to spot.
One last thing I found funny is that I randomly tried entering the pool, and it tells you that your suit starts dissolving. This led me to believe that the fish might have some sort of acid content/tolerance, so I spent a few minutes trying to throw it at or slap (Monty Python style) the glass orb with it, thinking it might make it dissolve. When I figured out it was just the key/lock thing, I was disappointed. My theoretical puzzle would have been much more original!
I meant the glass dome at the endgame, not the orb.
Yep, line 6020, the one with the erroneous color6,1 (which, again, should be color ,,6,1), ends with line goto 6960, which is:
6960 v1$=””:v2=””:v3$=””:vt$=”Your next of kin have been informed.”
Line 6970 runs over the vt$ string, printing it letter by letter, with another for… next loop inside for creating a pause after each printing. It also finally plays some music. Very dramatic. ;-)
About the pinball, what I found is as follows (line 430 asks the player for another action):
Line 2950 prints the description about a “token pinball”. This is an object that the player should be able to carry. Go to 430
Line 4460 prints “no money no game”, goto 430
Line 4470 prints “the pinball is at the restroom”, goto 430
Line 4480 prints “insert the token first”, goto 430
Line 4490 prints “you’re in the way to a hi-score”
Line 4500 prints “when it tilts”, goto 430
Line 4530 prints “The score says…”, goto 430
This suggests that the interaction should be: 1) insert token/insert token in pinball, 2) play pinball, 3) “you’re in the way to a hi-score when it tilts”, 4) examine pinball/read pinball/read score -> “the score says…”
That’s what I can infer.
Thanks for the research!
I experimented a bit:
The pinball is in the restroom
No money – no game!
So it seems that “play pinball” is recognized.
The pinball machine is an alternative way to get the abort code for the self destruct.
If you look at the coin, the description reads “it’s a token for the pinball.”
Then go to the pinball machine with the coin, INSERT TOKEN, PLAY PINBALL (which causes the machine to tilt), and LOOK SCORE. You will get the following response: “The score says RYY” (or whatever the abort code is in your game.
Btw, could you reveal what the Apple II game is? I’ve been pretty comprehensive with that platform over the years, but your description/tease has me a bit stumped…
And ruin the intrigue?
I will say this one’s in Mobygames so you might be able to figure it out.
Ahh… I think I vaguely remember seeing the ads for that one in Softalk back in the day. IIRC, you covered a similar oddity for the Atari not that long ago. Should be interesting.
Something weird I noticed while doing the search: Prism, the obscure Apple II “storydisk” which was yet another early 80s treasure hunt craze cash-in, was co-authored by Mark Capella of World of Odyssey/Will ‘o the Wisp fame, which is interesting in light of the latter’s unusual for the time focus on narrative/descriptive text rather than player interaction.
I’m unclear what kind of game Prism is based on the description other than it being a contest game. There’s no dumped copy (Adventure Gaming Museum has one, and I’ll ping him some point about it, but I think he doesn’t have disk dumping capability at the moment).
It’s definitely intriguing if it’s like Alkemstone where the hidden objects are still buried!
Well, I went down a research rabbit hole on Prism, and I think we’ve got something interesting here.
First, the Apple II version is available on Internet Archive as a couple of DO images. I read through the whole thing on Applewin and it runs fine. The Atari version is available on Atarimania. There was also a PC version, but it may be lost.
As for the program itself, it’s not a game, but a computer storybook interspersed with hi-res graphic screens featuring some occasional animation and sound. The only user interaction is flicking through the pages using the arrow keys. The whole thing is just a vehicle for the treasure hunt contest puzzles, and my best description would be that it’s like an inadvertently psychedelic version of Krakit. Certainly, the purple prose, flashing lights, and enigmatic clues left me with some sort of contact high…
Press coverage wise, it was first introduced in the 11/82 issue of Softalk, had what seems to be its only ad in the 12/82 issue, and then mostly disappeared there except for a few back-issue index listings. It received a blurb in an early 83 issue of the UK Apple II mag Windfall, and received a full review in the 5/83 issue, which is unfortunately not available online. The best coverage however is the lengthy review and article in the 5/83 issue of Creative Computing, which you should definitely read. There’s a decent amount of speculation there on some of the puzzles/clues.
Going back to Krakit, there are some odd similarities here. The company, ISM (whose only small success seems to have been with the application software Mathemagic) had a similarly generic sounding name, was based in upstate NY (Syracuse) and had some official UK distribution (listed in the manual). The “game” itself, while more narrative-oriented, was also clearly inspired by the popularity of Masquerade and was released at exactly the same time (around October/November ’82).
As for the contest itself, despite the assurances of authenticity and notification card provided with the software, I can find no evidence that any of the prizes (three solid gold keys encrusted with different gems, hidden somewhere in the continental US and valued anywhere between 15 and 40 thousand USD each in 1982 money) were ever found, or that the final puzzle that was supposed to be revealed when all three were reunited with the “Prism” was ever solved. In fact, the only possible afterword to all this that I was able to find was an odd reference in the 11/83 issue of Creative Computing, where David Ahl’s extensive feature on the Toshiba T100 (an obscure US version of the minor Japanese Pasopia system) claimed that the computer actually came bundled with ISM’s software, including Mathemagic, Graphmagic and even Prism, where the contest was briefly described, seeming to indicate that it was still unsolved and active. This would all seem to point to Toshiba USA, who were located on Tustin, CA at the time, having bought-out ISM and their assests at some point in ’83 and having assumed responsibility for the contest. After that, the trail seems to go cold.
However, there may actually be a hot lead to follow on this. A couple of years ago, some guy who had a copy of the otherwise lost World of Odyssey started posting info about it on a thread in the CASA forums, which you’ve probably seen. Unfortunately, he seemed unwilling to do what was necessary to have it dumped and preserved, and it all petered out. But last August, Mark Capella himself popped up there and made a post about it. Sadly, no one ever responded to him, but his full email is listed right there, so it should be possible to contact him and see what he might still know.
In any case, despite it not being a game per se, its adventure author connection, possibly unsolved mystery, and the popularity of your Krakit and Alkemstone entries would seem to make it a good candidate to cover here.
Prism by ISM? It has been dumped for quite a while, you can find it both on archive.org and the asimov apple database (in the images>games>strategy folder).
My search fu clearly was failing back when I checked on it. This seems worth an investigation but I am going to save it for after I am done with the proper 82 adventure list.
(Also, strategy!?)
For “replace”, the crystals go in empty spaces — we’re not replacing anything!
I think that the implication is that crystals had been there before and have since gone missing, so you’re replacing absent parts (cf. your attempt to “repair” the cube).
I took it this way myself. There seems to be a theft/sabotage angle here, but it’s never clearly explained. What I’d really like to know is how did the exact key you need end up getting tossed, with a bunch of other junk, into a gigantic crater on an uninhabited planet, and how do you even know to be searching there to begin with?
There’s silly stuff like this in Mexican Adventure too, so having played through all of them now, I’d say the Sharpsoft crew were better off when sticking to traditional treasure hunts, as they seemed to struggle making things hang together otherwise.
Assuming you keep my head-canon that the player arrived via long-range teleport, you could assume the villain also had such technology and used it to send the key off to the nearest planet; the key is found right at the obelisk rather than elsewhere so it didn’t have to be placed in person.
Mind you I think they just were in treasure hunt mode.
The key seems like a reverse moon logic thing, where it’s perfectly obvious* and sensible how to solve the puzzle–you unlock the lock with the key–but it makes no sense whatsoever that the world should be set up so you can solve the puzzle. Which is pretty much the default to adventure game puzzles, but this takes it very far.
Also the reverse of a dirt quest, instead of having to go through an elaborate sequence to get some ordinary object that should be available at any hardware store, you have an extremely specialized object that just happens to be lying in one of the three places you can reach, far away from where it’s used or where it would make sense for it to be.
*Except for the part where it wasn’t clear that the lock was separate from the card reader. And needing to guess USE KEY instead of any of a billion other commands that might work. And “NOTHING HAPPENS.” But none of those are moon logic puzzles!
Eugh. Feels like they missed a chance to describe the fish as a literal red herring.
You’re going to have to eat your words about COMPLETE when you get tot he Jerry Maguire text adventure.*
*joke. AFAIK there is no Jerry Maguire text adventure.
The missed opportunity on red herring occurred to me too.
Oh, heads up: “HELP” lowering a drawbridge is not in Revenge of Balrog but its sequel, Fortress at Time’s End.
Rereading that entry, two things struck me:
thanks, fixed
my favorite from Grimtooth’s is one which is meant to kill players who are paranoid and always stand back prodding things with 10-foot poles