Here is the last of the Sharpsoft set of games from 1982, the series that included Secret Kingdom, Haunted House, and Dark Star.
I’ve got historical background here from writing about Secret Kingdom and here writing about Sharpsoft’s 1981 game Escape from Colditz. Like Secret Kingdom, this one didn’t have A.J. Josey involved, but was solely the work of Geoff Clark.
Sharp MZ-80K keys, via Marcin Wichary in the Museum of Computing in Swindon. Attribution license.
The only current available version of the game is for the original, Sharp MZ-80K, the computer originally intended as a kit with the calculator-like keys (see above).
You have just come to from concussion, you have lost your memory. You find yourself in a Mexican prison, your aim is to escape from prison and return to Texas a rich man.
(ADD: Strident points out the MZ-700 version of the game with color is also available.)
Often our protagonists start in jail for crimes they didn’t commit; this time I’m wondering if the player is jail for a crime they did commit. In a gameplay sense, we’ve seen approaches all over the map for opening prison escapes, it being something like a mini one-room game to start proceedings. They sometimes involve breaking out a window (Escape from Rungistan) or out the front (Devil’s Island, which memorably involved having to start by waiting 2 minutes in real time before killing a guard).
From doing LOOK BED you can find a BLANKET. LOOK DOOR reveals THERE IS A GUARD OUTSIDE and LOOK GUARD notes
GUARD LOOKS GREEDY
and I’m not sure what this means, but this is clearly signaling some kind of bribe to start (which I think is new!) BRIBE GUARD gets the response
SHOW IT TO HIM FIRST
but there’s the slight problem that you don’t start with anything valuable.
The SKYLIGHT is BARRED AND AT GROUND LEVEL but doesn’t seem to respond to commands otherwise.
And … that’s as far as I’ve gotten. This is another kick opening where it’s hard to do anything. I did manage to crash the game by typing GET without an object
but I have made no progress past this point. Here’s my verb list attempt:
STA gets NOT YET so I don’t know if that verb is STAND, STAB, or START.
The verbs at least have distinct failure messages. DRINK responds I THINK YOU HAD TOO MUCH TO DRINK ALREADY (not sure our memory issues are just from a concussion!), BURN chides the player with YOU ARSONIST!, DIG responds YOU DO NOT HAVE A SHOVEL, and CONNECT cryptically responds THINK.
I could of course prod open the source code (it’s BASIC) but I feel awkward doing so on the very first puzzle. Having a “kick opening” (start of the game with a tough puzzle) is extremely risky and makes it seem to the player like something might be broken; Wizard and the Princess starting putting cards in packages explaining how to solve the first puzzle. I’m wondering if Sharpsoft received any grumpy letters or anyone who bought this game just coped.
I’ll take speculation from anyone who hasn’t played, but if someone has managed to get farther on their own, I don’t want any “real” hints yet.
(For those who were anticipating the Misadventures rather than this game, there were technical issues severe enough I’m kicking the games to my loop-back list. This means once Mexican Adventure is done I’ll have five games left to go for 1982.)
Renga in Blue 
Maybe second-order nouns are key here. Can you interact with, e.g., the CHAIN, the BARS, or the WALL?
Also the fact OPEN didn’t seem to work feels *very* odd, especially with a door in the first room. Did the other Sharpsoft games have bespoke verb-noun pairs? E.g., “OPEN” isn’t recognized, but at some point a hypothetical future “OPEN DOOR” *might* be recognized? (Essentially, I wonder if verbs are getting crossed off the list prematurely.)
OPEN gets the “I MUST BE STUPID” message if it gets recognized it is done so bespoke.
GET WALL is pretty funny:
I DON’T THINK THERE IS A ALL
this is true with this message in general — always cuts off the first letter
It “doesn’t see a BAR or CHAIN which suggests they might be object but just aren’t accessible right now
Is there a source to attribute it for sure to Geoff Clark? That was my feeling looking at the game originally, but I don’t think I managed to track down any contemporary references.
At CASA we have screenshots from a “coloured” Sharp version. Presumably different to the b&w version you’re playing?
I haven’t played the Sharp version but fully completed the later ZX Spectrum port… I seem to remember enjoying many elements of it.
The MZ-700 version of Mexican Adventure has also been archived by SHarpsworks. I think that’s the version I was originally discussing at one point with him, with the MZ-80A version being more recently discovered. https://mz-archive.co.uk/downloads/2vHMDwifd1wOAsCMO6hRIP0ozmfkxaH4790UQMrxCK4mi1Uz.html
in line 0
REM BY GEOFF CLARK JULY 82
huh, missed 700 was available! might play with that just because there might be some subtle helpful difference
Well, as you might remember, I played through this one right after Haunted House. I’m going to tell you right now that there’s a major parser shenanigan going on here in the opening, so you might want hints. Just let me know.
I can also tell you that the Spectrum version Strident mentioned was some strange in-joke/private release type of thing done by teenage brothers (they must have had a Sharp system when they were a bit younger), so the walkthrough he did will only be partly effective here on the original.
IIRC, when I did a little ranking chart for the Sharpsoft series after I had finished them, I put this one I the lower half, with Colditz and Dark Star. It’s more substantial than some of them, but it’s got some issues that drain the fun out to a certain extent.
I’m going to give myself another 30 minutes, but if you’re up for a ROT13 progression I’m probably going to need it
Sure, I’ll whip something up if you want it. It’s pretty egregious, from what I remember.
I found out FILE is a object (but did not locate one) and I weirdly found MAKE WINDOW is understood (YOU DO NOT HAVE EVERYTHING)
that’s likely my limit, though
and five minutes after posting that I found GROUND works even though FLOOR doesn’t, and you can FEEL GROUND
Good work! That little sequence stumped me for a couple of hours, IIRC. Typical parser nonsense, in any case.
Speaking of which… It’s a three letter parser, I believe, so don’t make too many assumptions about recognized commands.
My current guess on win is winch, but we’ll see
Map wasn’t too terrible w using the arrow keys to move but doing DIG everywhere was a pain
IIRC there was a note or something in the game which tells you exactly where to dig, so I don’t remember that being an issue for me. The real problem I had fully mapping out the desert was that it’s inordinately large compared to the overall game map, and there weren’t enough items to do it the regular way. Combined with there being some dead ends and it linking up with both sides of the road system, it just ended up getting on my nerves.
I think when I played the Spectrum version, the mention of “ground” for the “skylight” prompted me to use that word. In the Spectrum version examining the ground mentioned a flash of something, I think, which is why FEEL GROUND didn’t seem unfair.
Have you tried with the wall? Maybe a loose brick as in Jabato (a Spanish adventure)?
alas, noun not recognized, good idea though
this has the most hilarious contrast between amount of space at the start and what comes immediately after
big blocky space which you have the lawnmower through to explore everything
Mapping the desert was a real slog, and the road system was pretty boring too. It’s a poorly designed map in general, once you break out of prison. I found the fact you you could just go back in (and out) whenever you felt like it pretty funny, though.
Your labours in the cell made me think of the toughest game with the same opening conceit; wait until you get to Wild Wood 2.
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“For those who were anticipating the Misadventures rather than this game, there were technical issues ….”
What was the issue you encountered??
like, ALL OF THEM
crashes in places that seemed irrelevant so I ripped them out, then more crashes, then there’s lines with LPRINT in them for no apparent reason
you’re welcome to take a stab but it’s pretty uphill
6th game has characters that look like the dump just went bad on top of everything else
https://willus.com/trs80/?-a+1+-p+9515+-f+1+q=nightmare