Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

(Click here for my Mystery House II posts in order.)

First off, a brief correction: The PC-6001 version I’ve been playing (at least up to a certain point, for reasons I’ll get into) is on tape, not disk, but everything on one tape. The files, found if you CLOAD multiple times, are

AUTO 1
MYS1
AUTO 2
MYS2 2
MYS2 3

where the double-auto files (meant to load on boot) suggest to me that this is the same copy as the two-tape version I mentioned last time, just someone copied everything together.

As far as why there’s MYS2 2 and MYS2 3, that’s because there’s three volumes! Or rather, there’s two tapes (each called a volume) and three program parts (each also called a volume) at the same time. That is…

Volume 1: has volume 1 on it
Volume 2: has volume 2 on it
Volume 2: also has volume 3 on it

…and all this took a long time to detangle. (Implicit thanks everywhere to the Gaming Alexandria discord, which helped out enormously.) I regret to inform you it gets worse, but let’s see what happens in gameplay context.

Disk from the FM-7 version via Oh! FM-7. I do not have access to this version. The screenshots make it look like it’s based on the Sharp/NEC map. I don’t know how the multiple volumes are handled.

Last time I left off with a cryptic message from a stairway about finding the entrance to the basement. Someone with eagle eyes might have spotted what to do next here, but in this case it was Kazuma Satou from the comments realizing that there was a map/hint page on Mobygames.

The basement and third floor are not shown.

The room in the lower left of 1F — where I found the book hiding the memo — also has a CARPET.

That double black line along the wall.

Some noodling about led me to MOVE CARPET, revealing a locked trapdoor.

This still isn’t enough to finish! You also need to USE HAMMER to bust open the door. Then you completely ignore the door for now and can leave up the stairs.

Trying to go down kills you, and I spent a while trying to survive going down before checking the stairs again.

That’s the end of Volume 1! Volume 2 is an entirely different program on an entirely different tape and doesn’t even carry any variables over. The game requests you reset the computer to move on.

The sequence in volume 1 was intended to get you to bust open a trapdoor before moving on. The reason this is important is that in volume 3 you return to the same room from below and the game assumes you’ve already busted the trapdoor (in a different kind of game, this might have a softlock because you didn’t prepare the trapdoor beforehand).

I want to re-iterate how completely odd and bizarre this is. I’ve never seen a game work this way; the closest I can think of is Savage Island (Part 1, Part 2) where there was an item you might be holding at the end of Part 1, and if you are holding the item you get one password, and if you are not holding the item you get a different password. Since the item is required to make progress in Part 2 early you can get softlocked from the previous game.

Earlier I mentioned “it gets worse” as far as the multi-part situation goes. You see, that NEC PC-6001 file? … is also corrupted. While the 3rd part of the game loads (you have found the jewel and are back on the first floor, now escape), there are damaged lines in part 2. In other words, to keep playing I had to switch computer systems over to the Sharp MZ-2000, where I have the second tape but not the first one. You start with no inventory, so the game assumes you’ve used CAST on the hammer or any other objects from the first floor.

(The Volume 1/2/3 situation still has yet another twist but let’s save that for the end.)

At least this version is likely adapted directly from the MZ-80B original.

The controls now go with the original “type verb and noun separate” system. It’s not as bad as I experienced with Mystery House 1 because there’s no screen swapping, although I quickly found reading memos and taking inventory to be cryptic until I got some source code assistance.

15230 IF D$=”ﾓﾁﾓﾉ”THEN12000

This line in the source code (which is protected from LIST and required shenanigans to break open) is the one that jumps to taking inventory. “ﾓﾁﾓﾉ” is Japanese for, essentially “belongings”, and makes a decent synonym for “inventory”, but is the only command in the game delivered in Japanese rather than in English. There is, fortunately, a function key (F3) which will type the same thing.

This screen will show objects on top (except the player isn’t holding any right now) but also is the only screen you can read memos from. You have to hit F4, which types out READ MEMO (as a whole command, not split!) and then pick the number of the memo. F5 types “RETURN” which will exit from this screen.

Now, a map:

I’ll save the elevator for last. Rotating west, going forward, and entering the door to the south, you get to a room with a picture. The picture has a memo.

The memo says the clock needs to be set to 1 o’clock for the door to open. (Remember back in Volume 1 of the NEC version of the game it said 3 o’clock. More on all that later.)

Going back to the starting position and north leads to a room with a fireplace. Searching the fireplace yields a match.

In the same “room” (it’s another 2 by 1 setup where you see across the long room) there’s a “RACK” partly underneath a “HATCH”. You can MOVE RACK so it now is fully underneath the hatch, then OPEN HATCH to get access to the third floor.

The third floor has what the game calls a SCOOP lying on the ground (shovel) and also windows that mysteriously open to reveal a number.

Just to be clear with a map:

To the north of where the shovel is there’s a rectangle on the wall that looks like it should have a door, but it isn’t. After a bit of struggle I came up with PUSH WALL which opens the passage.

The next room has a clock. This is where the first memo (set to 1 o’clock) comes into play, as you can ADJUST CLOCK and then say you want it at 1. This opens yet another secret passage, this time through the tiny door in the clock.

The next room (and last room of floor 3) has a computer, specifically an MZ-2000 in this version of the game.

RUN MZ2000 will print a memo that you can then take.

マイクロキャビン マーク カラ W ニ 2:S ニ 1

This indicates you’re supposed to start at the Microcabin logo and go west by 2 and south by 1. We’ll need this shortly. Let’s go outside by heading to the elevator.

The mechanics here are weird. You need to press and hold W to leave, or press and hold E to approach the buttons. No other keys work; you aren’t typing on a parser prompt. Wild inconsistency is the most consistent thing about this game.

There’s 3 buttons; the second one kills you, the other two are helpful.

One of them takes you to a garden outside. You need to specify DIG GROUND, at which point the game will ask you for how many steps west and south; this is where the memo comes into play.

The inventory limit of 2 still applies, so you need to cast off one of your items after doing this in order to get the BOX, or TRUNK.

If you try to then saunter through the exit — and you can go down the stairs, you just can’t walk around the first floor otherwise — you’ll find it is locked. You also need a key, which is where the other button on the elevator comes into play.

This leads to darkness, which you can dispel with LIGHT MATCH. (According to the source code, the amount of time the match is lit is tracked in real time. This is very rare for a turn based game but we’ve seen it once in a while, like in how Devil’s Island you needed to wait in real time for a guard to show up.)

The safe lets you enter the 7474 from the window (rather, ADJUST / SAFE, 7, 4, 7, 4) revealing a key inside.

Again you might need to worry about your inventory limit. If you got the BOX first you’re in trouble because you can’t discard the match! The best order is to do the key first and then get the box.

With the key and box in and (with possibly some trouble as mentioned in the caption) you can now officially saunter outside to a win.

With scrolling text.

Now, you may be wondering — hey, Mr. Blog Author, didn’t you say something about needing to bash open a hatch with a hammer in volume 1, how did that come into play? And what about the hole with the rope? Yes indeed: it turns out the MZ version of the game only has two volumes and whatever happened in volume 1 must be different from the NEC version, despite it looking like the same game from the video. I could technically try starting in volume 3 of the NEC version and beating it from there, but I am honestly fine passing for now. (The good folks at Gaming Alexandria are still trying to work out how to rescue the data from the tape for NEC volume 2. I’ll keep everyone posted. My theory is a divergence at the very end allowing for the third volume.)

The start of Volume 3.

I think the multi-volume gameplay mess demonstrates a case of “flying too close to the sun” that many of our authors have suffered, where they need to follow-up their previous game with something more ambitious. (As touted in the ad, “the program size has now doubled, making the adventure even more exciting.”) Still, I found it interesting how reasonable the MZ (volume 2) version of the game was relative to everything else I’ve seen: the only hard part is realizing, for example, you’re looking at a HATCH on the screen and need to apply the parser accordingly. I also got stuck a while figuring out how to work the elevator given it doesn’t even use the parser! So our original author-dentist seems to have kept to reasonable ambitions (apart from the volume-splitting) but the later people who made ports started to get unreasonable, like with the carpet puzzle on NEC or the confusing design elements of the MSX version.