Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

Bonus surprise post!

Mystery House II running on a Sharp MZ-80B2 (a slight variant of the MZ-80B, the original platform for the game). Via bowloflentils.

Yes, I arise from my slumber for at least a little while. This is the sequel to Japan’s first graphical adventure game, using the same first-person-with-directions view as the previous game. (If this isn’t ringing bells, you probably want to read my posts on the game first. The important thing to emphasize is that despite the name and opening graphic clearly coming via the Roberta Williams Mystery House, the Japanese game entitled Mystery House goes in an entirely different direction in both gameplay and content, and the sequel follows suit.)

I have already technically finished Mystery House II in one of its ports — the MSX version, which has an English translation patch — but I had enough disappointment that I mentioned I would return to tackle the NEC PC-6001 port, which I knew from testing was very different.

The situation turned out to be even more complicated than I expected.

“Mystery House is now 200% more powerful … The program size has now doubled, making the adventure even more exciting.” From I/O Magazine, May 1983.

Parsing the ad above, it mentions versions for cassette selling for 3800 yen and for disk selling for 9800 yen. The big catch is that cassette (due to size) was sold as volume 1 and volume 2. In other words, this game was split originally into two entirely separate parts. Volume 1 involves the ground floor (and possibly the basement below); Volume 2 involves the upper floors. You can’t get to the upper floors without finishing everything below, and the way this is enforced is extremely cryptic (I thought for a while I was running across a bug, for reasons you’ll discover).

The PC-6001 version that I did my playing has all the pieces on one tape, but I also have (with the help of the Gaming Alexandria discord and gschmidl) a copy of Volume 2 (and only Volume 2) for Sharp MZ-2000. The “volume 2” version of the game starts on the upper floor of the House; if you walk down to the ground floor, you can only see the room at the bottom of the stairs (identical to the first part of the game) but can’t walk anywhere.

We have seen a trick like this before, with Robert Arnstein’s Haunted House from way back in 1979, as published by Radio Shack. It was made when 16k wasn’t quite as common for TRS-80 so it was stuffed into 4k instead, meaning to get a little more content there’s a tape swap upon arriving upstairs (and the trip is one-way).

There was a cassette version of PC-6001 as well, except both volumes were sold together. Via eBay.

This is very different from the MSX version which had quite a bit of trekking up and down — made painful by an inventory limit of two. The inventory limit carries on here but there’s less space to travel around in. I’m still quite stuck, though, and this is without a walkthrough to consult this time.

The opening graphic is still essentially cribbed from Roberta Williams.

The NEC PC-6001 version is fortunately like the FM-7 version of Mystery House 1 in how it controls. You type commands in regular English VERB NOUN form; this is unlike the MZ versions which have you type each as a separate line. If you are facing a direction like EAST typing the same direction will move forward; if you aren’t facing that direction it will turn you that way. Chronologically Gaming managed to land a copy of the MZ version with volume 1 so you can watch some of the opening of that version here:

It has a major difference you can see by going NORTH, turning EAST, walking EAST, and then turning NORTH.

That’s a MEMO on the ground, not present in the MZ version. You can TAKE MEMO and then READ MEMO, at which point the game prompts you for a number (there are memos 1 and 2 at least, I think up to 4).

That is

メモをさがせ
ちかしつのいりぐちにきをつけろ !!
2Fへまわれ

Search for the memo.
Be careful of the entrance to the basement!!
Go to the second floor.

Just to reinforce the idea I’ve mentioned before that the “VERB NOUN” form is strange for Japanese, from left to right, the first line メモをさがせ can be parsed literally as メモ (memo) を (is the object of action) さがせ (action is search for, imperative form).

Heading in further…

…the first room is a kitchen. Of the items to the south, the only one I’ve been able to refer to is a REFRIGERATOR which has a CUP. To the north is a CABINET, although rather than OPEN CABINET you’re supposed to type SEARCH CABINET.

Both the CUP and CABINET are part of the later MSX game; the TOWEL was not part of it, but the KNIFE did get used for an identical purpose to this game.

Before going on, I should point out while the CUP was referenced in the Japanese text that went with the picture, the CABINET wasn’t, and of course translations can differ so even when at item gets named like the cup was it can be a pain to figure out the English word to type in the parser. Fortunately, the game has a HELP command that gives a fair amount of the needed words:

The game is written in BASIC so normally a list could also be obtained via the method of listing the source code, but the game has some sort of memory-protection preventing this. There’s an emulator (iP6+) that allows dumping the memory into a file, and I used this while the game was on to get a 100% complete list of understood words.

N, E, S, W, U, D, ADJUST, BREAK, DIG, LIGHT, LOOK, MOVE, OPEN, PRESS, PUSH, PUT, READ, RUN, SEARCH, SET, TAKE, TIME, INVENTORY, CAST, USE, TIE, KICK, HELP, UNLOCK, SAVE, BATH, BED, BOARD, BOOK, BOX, CABINET, CARPET, CHEST, CLOCK, CUP, DOOR, FIREPLACE, FORK, GARDEN, GROUND, HAMMER, JEWEL, KEY, KNIFE, MATCH, PAPER, PICTURE, PLATE, RACK, SAFE, REFRIGERATOR, SCOOP, SIDEBOARD, SPOON, TABLE, TOBACCO, TOILET, TOWEL, WALL, WINDOW, MEMO, ROPE, FLOOR, BUTTON, LADDER

Moving on, to the west is a 2-section room of the type seen multiple times in the original Mystery House.

Trying to ADJUST CLOCK (like was possible with the MSX game) gets the message that the clock is broken.

Attempting OPEN WINDOW on the first window (the one to the east) just gets the response that it won’t open; the window after is subtly different:

“Because the window latch is so stiff, it’s difficult to open.”

USE KNIFE works here. I complained about this in the MSX version being arbitrary. The text is a strong clue; the text wasn’t quite so explicit in that version.

After this I dropped the knife because of the stringent inventory limit of only 2 items at a time. It goes back to the cabinet (by “magic”) if you need it again. The verb the game uses for dropping items is CAST.

The scene here doesn’t let you turn; you can only go SOUTH which will put you back in the house. The hammer is used in the MSX version to bust a hole in a wall and there’s also a SCOOP (shovel) later which can be used to dig.

Moving on, south of the two-space room with the clock, there’s a four-way door intersection with stairs.

The south is the front door (locked). Trying to go east leads to a hole going down…

…and trying to go down kills you. (I assume the ROPE mentioned in the object list is used later.) Just like the outside section with the hammer the scene here is “locked” and you can’t turn.

Heading west instead leads to a room with windows to the west and south (OPEN WINDOW just gets “NO!”) and some books to the north.

When trying to TAKE BOOK you are prompted with which book you mean; the game wants you to type a digit from 1 through 6.

Being prompted for a digit. My first time through here I had the CUP and HAMMER which was too many inventory objects, and I was confused why the game wasn’t letting me take a book.

Each book is identical except for one (chosen randomly at the start of the game, I’ve had it be book 2 or book 4), which includes an extra surprise.

Memo 2 says to enter a door at 3 o’clock (3時のとびらをくぐれ). I assume this matches the MSX puzzle of setting the clock, but as I indicated earlier, ADJUST CLOCK just says it is broken, so something is different in the sequencing.

Finally let’s get around to those stairs. Trying to go up them right away, the game asks if you’ve found the second memo. Trying to go up them after finding the second gets the message

ちかしつのいりぐ ちを、あつけましたか?

or something like “did you figure out how to get into the basement?” (Maybe? I could use a Japanese expert to confirm here.)

I mentioned earlier I thought maybe this was a bug; I had no idea why going up stairs would provoke these kinds of “hint” messages (first indicating to find a memo, then pointing to the basement). Once I realized this was a “split” game (unlike the MSX version) the logic clicked into place. It also clicked into place why the MSX version might have changed things around; I can say that the “view” still is far superior in this game as you can see what’s going on to the left or right. You can even see changes in the distance; going back to the two-square room, notice how while looking west you can see the window open to the far right, which is not a detail the MSX version had at all.

I’m technically not on the hook for finishing this version of this game; I’m satisfied enough knowing why the different versions came out the way they did. I’m still interested if anyone has any helpful suggestions for progress. I have a copy of the game here; boot the emulator, pick option 2 for BASIC 32k, say you want 2 pages, type CLOAD, right click and pick Tape->Insert followed by the Mystery House file, then type RUN.