Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

By 1892, the Dalton Gang — only formed a year before — had gotten a reputation for outrunning the law while performing a string of train robberies.

Of the founders Bob and Emmett Dalton, Bob previously had filled his father’s shoes becoming a lawman, and was familiar with the issues in Oklahoma: a fragmented group of sheriff services with only the U.S. Marshals having jurisdiction over the whole. They recruited a group based mostly on people they grew up with, and the gang ended up having a rotating roster with the brothers at the core. The two other brothers, Bill and Grat Dalton, were imprisoned at the time but Grat later managed to escape and join the group and Bill was acquitted.

Their exploits included a near-miss at Red Rock. The gang was eight strong at the time and they planned a heist on June 1 at the arrival of the Santa Fe, with the train scheduled for 10:00.

A train did arrive, but the lights were out. The station agent went inside and Bob sensed something was off, telling the gang to hold off and wait. Indeed there was a trap, as deputy marshals awaited inside. The plan of the heist had been learned of, but Bob’s sense of danger meant the gang waited for the first train to leave and the next train — the expected one — to arrive. The haul ended up not being much for the size of crew (at most around $10,000) but that’s because the first train was carrying the majority of the money, at 6 times that amount.

The famous end of the Dalton Gang came upon an attempt in October (with Bill Powers, Bob Dalton, Grat Dalton, Dick Broadwell, and Emmett Dalton) to enter the history books by robbing two Kansas banks simultaneously in daylight. This is the event most dramatized in media, not only for the wild gunfight with marshals and the citizens of Coffeyville, but because Emmett Dalton (the only survivor) survived to write two books and spread the mythos about the group, re-painting them in a Robin Hood light.

Today’s game is essentially a revised version of that pitched battle, where you fight against the brothers solo, although the “slippery between the hands of the law” aspect that the brothers held comes into play.

Softside Magazine, November 1982.

Peter Kirsch returns! No prologue this time like The Deadly Game: you’re got 0 DOLLARS OF CASH and a SIX-SHOOTER to your name, you’re on a street, and there’s a sign telling you about a vacant job as sheriff.

As usual with Softside, there are Atari, Apple II, and TRS-80 versions of the game. I picked TRS-80 straight off the bat this time given my experience with The Deadly Game. Yet again that’s no guarantee it is the best version, and for reasons I’ll get into later there are some advantages and disadvantages to the Atari version.

However, by random chance, I started exploring the opposite way, forestalling the encounter. The town is laid out roughly west-east with a turn in the middle, and the mayor is on the far west side.

To speed things along, though, let’s imagine I followed the author’s script and went to the mayor first (even though there’s no way of knowing the mayor is there until you map out and find the office).

The $200 on a “PERFORMANCE BASIS” turns out to be a huge pain for me later.

With a STAR in hand I wandered and checked out the rest of the town. The sheriff’s office has a cell but no keys; you’re supposed to apply your six-shooter to the desk and shoot out a lock, revealing the keys (they won’t get used until later).

I guess this makes it feel more like a Western.

Adjacent is a saloon (we’ll save that for later) and a general store that is closed (which we’ll also save for later).

Yet further is a stable with a BLACK STALLION (ours, but it needs a saddle) followed by a newspaper office.

I immediately guessed (correctly) this was a clue to a maze.

Next along the row is a rain barrel (empty) followed by a bank (also nothing there for the moment); at the end of the line is a “golden rattler” blocking the way.

You can try to shoot the rattler but you’ll get stopped by an Indian.

I wandered a bit in this state, also finding a path leading to a “creek” going to the west side, before I finally went to visit the saloon last (I had already seen it once before becoming law enforcement).

Kirsch is essentially combining an open style with triggered events, like his game Robin Hood. This is a location-and-condition trigger; you have to be the sheriff and have entered the saloon for the bank robbery to start. Sometimes this works well, but for my game it was awkward to explore a town all the way over twice before anything kicked off.

Heading back to the bank…

…the robbery has ended but there is a shootout. (Your gun, by default, is holstered, so you need to either TAKE GUN or DRAW GUN; be sure to holster it again before entering a store or they’ll kick you out.) Waiting too long here is lethal; Emmett and Bob aren’t in shooting range. The one Dalton that you can get a bead on is Grat.

Back to the west a little there’s a rope ladder leading to the roof of the newspaper office. You can backtrack and climb up to get a different angle on the scene:

If you head back to the Mayor’s Office, the clerk reports to you the mayor has been kidnapped. I did not find out this way — more on that later.

After the shootout, the general store is now open:

The mayor gave us $200 to spend (remember another $200 comes later). You cannot buy everything at once; I had to reload my game multiple times to figure things out, and while there are technically multiple options, you at least need to get the CANTEEN and the SADDLE. (AMMUNITION is good too. The six-shooter needs reloading after 6 bullets.)

The food and pouch of tobacco, incidentally, go to the east side of town where there’s the GOLDEN RATTLER. You can give the food to make the snake happy, and then past that there is an Indian with a pipe. Trading the tobacco:

According to Dale Dobson there’s some part of the code that indicates it works as a dowsing rod, but the water in the game is quite easy to find and I was never able to get the stick to work. Neither puzzle gives any points.

(I should mention, as an aside, there are 8 points total in the game revealed by typing SCORE. Taking down the first two Dalton brothers led to 1 point each. This will be important later.)

With the saddle you can put it on the STALLION and ride it around (just using normal directions, you don’t have to RIDE SOUTH every time or whatnot).

The horse doesn’t make you go “faster” and you have to get off every time you go in a building (DROP HORSE). I still found it gratifying to ride around in an atmospheric sense.

I was stuck from here for a while before I realized back at the CREEK on the far west side of town it was possible to GO CREEK, moving past to a new area. (It is unclear why there wouldn’t be a compass direction for that.)

Just past the creek. As the message implies, you can’t go farther from here without using the horse.

Past the creek is a pasture (see above) and then a desert.

The desert is a maze but the “SEEN NEWS” message from the newspaper office is intended to indicate directions. While in the desert, you start getting thirsty quite quickly (be sure to GET WATER from the creek before entering the desert; this is why the canteen is the other necessary purchase) and there are rattlesnakes that randomly appear.

You need your gun out and loaded, and you can shoot the rattlesnakes as they appear. Following the SEENNEWS route and using the gun several times on the way, a “dusty trail” comes up next.

This is where the Daltons are hiding, but once again I didn’t quite do things in the right order; first I went south and found a “dusty trail” with a “hill” and a “mine”. Alert because of my creek issue, I treated both as possible directions, and tried GO HILL first:

This is how I found out the mayor was the extra person the Daltons was getting away with (never mind the mayor was all the way on the other side of town at the time of the bank robbery). I also realized I was softlocked and needed to bring the ladder in for a rescue; this got me a point, for 3 points out of 8.

There’s a “secret” path that loops back directly to the mayor’s office so you don’t have to do the desert route back.

The “mines” are a maze, this time not one with a gimmick.

I thought Kirsch had shaken off doing such things, but alas.

The only room of interest had a wooden floor:

The game decide to be annoyingly resistant to my attempts to refer to any of the nouns described, so I decided to move on. Instead of heading to the hill/mine area, I went northwest to a CABIN; this is where the Daltons lurk.

Oops! So, if you hang out at the cabin for long enough, or go in some bushes to hide (which requires dismounting the horse) the Daltons spot you and gun you down. The visible horse here is the problem. (According to Dale Dobson’s walkthrough I checked later, in the Atari version you can ride the horse into the bushes; that doesn’t work here.) You might think to go elsewhere, ditch the horse, and then walk over to the cabin, but the horse will take off if you leave it somewhere and it happens to resurface right at the cabin. (There is no explanation why the cabin serves as, er, horse catnip. What’s a thing that attracts a horse?)

To the south of the cabin is a small tree. The idea is you can dismount here without the horse taking off right away (for some reason) which gives you time to TIE HORSE. Given the other non-cabin locations have the horse make a bolt for it, this was tricky but not impossible to figure out.

With the horse tied away — presumably not making suspicious horse noises outside the cabin causing the outlaws to notice — you can head back to the cabin and hide in the bushes.

No matter which brother you aim for, they both scatter to different locations. Emmett goes to town and Bob goes to the mines. The cabin itself is completely undescribed on the inside other than it has a crowbar you can pick up.

Taking down Bob first, he’s lurking at the room with the wooden floor.

Occasionally Bob would fire a shot; my shots back always missed. I realized — upon needing to reload — that I might be able to heed the words of Dirty Harry.

“I know what you’re thinking. ‘Did he fire six shots or only five?’ To tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I lost track myself.

“But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

Bob did not fire every turn, but I waited (rather, typed LOOK) until Bob had fired exactly six shots, then dived in the room safely. With a clear shot, SHOOT BOB worked, and then the crowbar worked (after many attempts) via the command GET BOARDS. (Note for Atari version: it uses GET BOARD, singular, instead.)

The sack of cash is able to go back to the bank for another single point, bringing the score to 4. Shooting Bob did not give any points (ominous music).

Emmett turns out to be out back in town hanging by the bank. If you just try to walk (or ride) down the street to him he’ll take off.

The key here is the second paycheck from the Mayor. I admit I was baffled for a while discovering this, but it turns out that the moment where the Daltons scatter from the cabin is also the moment the powers that be decide you can get an extra $200. Curious how that works.

The extra money is enough to buy all the remaining items from the general store, including the disguise kit (which normally was too expensive after buying just the saddle and canteen). If you dump your lawman badge and wear the disguise, you’ll be able to safely make it up to Emmett without him getting spooked.

You can then shoot him dead, and I admit this is where I started to think something was fishy. I was able to get return the bank’s cash but I was otherwise stuck with nothing to do and two dead bodies — the Dalton gang are taken care of, where are the fireworks? I had incidentally tried ARREST and was not understood, and I didn’t have any handcuff-items either, so I still assumed that violence was the answer, but no: you can GET EMMETT. I guess the player is holding rope in their inventory that doesn’t get mentioned? (Atari version again: ARREST actually works as a verb.)

You can cart each Dalton back over to the jail, and use the keys from the gun-blasted desk to lock them in (if you don’t lock the door they won’t stay). Each Dalton captured is 2 points.

In my “winning run” — I had to restart to fix the softlock — I ended up dealing with the mayor last, meaning the game ended while still in a pit:

Once again I find myself appreciating what kind of ambition Kirsch had in exploring all the genres — and different iterations of event-based gameplay — while being frustrated by technical limitations. The game anticipates more than you might expect, with the horse mechanics and is-your-gun-holstered check, but I still had moments like applying the crowbar which give a reminder this is still a monthly series of games rapidly cranked out in BASIC.

I also appreciated the alternate routes in terms of either shooting arresting the last two Dalton brothers, even given the unfair implementation. I would very much have preferred some extra indication the game goes to an unwinnable state if either brother is a corpse!

(For books, I used Daltons! The Raid on Coffeyville, Kansas by Robert Barr Smith via University of Oklahoma Press, and Into the Sunset: Emmett Dalton and the End of the Dalton Gang by Ian Shaw via the University Press of Kansas. The former aims to dispel the Robin Hood mythos and expose the Daltons as gang mostly interested in stealing and giving the money to themselves; the latter establishes a little sympathy or at least understanding to their situation.)