I’ve finished the game. (Previous posts here.)
I had missed a couple things in the open, and then missed one (1) mostly absurd puzzle, then had to struggle a bit more with the parser to get to the end.
People’s March for Jobs, Scunthorpe, 1983. Scunthorpe Telegraph Archive. Socialist Action wrote the same month “The Tory Lie that prosperity lies around the corner has been nailed.”
Back when I had found the letter and the rubbish bins, I had missed (because it was only implied in the text, and you had to LOOK again to see it) that a “cheque card” dropped along with it. (I still needed to interpolate what that meant; that term does not get used in the United States.) I had also missed the fact you could go “west” at the bank despite not being able to go in it.
I then hit a potentially serious headache by trying TYPE 1001, as told to me by the phone call.
ASIDE: Dialing 1001, as I tried to do after, is equivalent to dialing a random number, which is the reason for the other message, which apparently was meant to be the local time “at the third stroke it will be 3.23 and 30 seconds”. Repeating dialing 1001 alternates between another message (“4.31 and 30 seconds”) before returning back to the first one, so I think the implication is the system is broken and it isn’t giving a real time at all. In other words, that part was a “red herring” meant for “atmosphere”.
Returning back to the bank machine, the parser here did something monstrous: “TYPE 1001” gets the response that you’ve typed the wrong number!
I baffled for a few beats and it was only my experience with similar issues elsewhere that held out here: I tried the process of entering the card in and typing 1001 on a line by itself, no verb, and it worked. I guarantee some gnashing of teeth was felt in the 80s on this part.
After that, while scrounging about the map, I found I missed another room exit, going east at the rain section. This leads to an isolated room where there’s a small key that will be used later.
With the fiver and key in hand, I was still stuck on the rusty door at the house. In the meantime, Strident had made some comment about a milk commercial from the 80s…
…and I was truly baffled, as while I had tested drinking the milk, it simply said “you drink the milk” and the item went away. There’s no indication of any kind of effect. (In general, I’m always quite cautious with consumables on old school games; if there’s no immediate effect usually it either gets given to a character or applied, like the cheese, or is a complete red herring, like the food in this game.) However, I went through the map and tested nudging everything again to see if there was something new, and found magically I could now open the rusty door. (I assume you Hulk Out and manage to rip it off its hinges due to the raw power of milk, but it just says you open the door in the text so it is left to the player’s imagination.)
Definitely the worst puzzle in the game, although not nearly at the same level as the skull puzzle in Invincible Island. I imagine some players never even realized the puzzle existed (going to drink the milk first before even trying to get into the building).
In the basement of the building were some rats; fortunately I already had the rat trap with the cheese prepared.
Past the rats is a “cardboard box” where it isn’t clear it is a sealed box with something inside (rather than an empty open box) but I experimented enough to realize I could OPEN BOX WITH SCISSORS, yielding a pair of boots.
With the boots now worn (remember this switches outfits, so our player is no longer wearing a lab coat or dungarees, but just boots) I was able to get past the building site. At the far west were some pipes where EXAMINE PIPES yielded a flight suit.
After this comes the final part of the map: the airport.
While walking in the airport is straightforward, there is an officer inside the airport that tries to stop you if you go in any farther.
I was left (by this point) with the official papers, the fiver, the small key, the flight suit, the book, the old hat, and the food as unused items. The last two are red herrings; the other four get used here to win.
You can give the official papers to the officer and he’ll then say there’s a “pass fee”.
Is this a bribe? This feels like a bribe.
Handing the fiver over, you get waved in to find an airplane.
The panel indicates it needs a key for the ignition; this is where the small key gets used. You also need the flight suit worn and need to have read the book (which teaches flying) to do the final command, which isn’t FLY or many other variants I tried. I even started to check if there was an “invisible” item like a joystick or if the plane also needed gas. I eventually gave up and had to look at a walkthrough: TAKE OFF.
I agree with several people who said that Urban Upstart was by far their favourite adventure, and great fun to play. Its success on the Spectrum has now led to a Commodore 64 version just being released.
Urban Upstart was quite well regarded, and Pete Cooke has indicated it was by far his best selling game. While I’d mark it as “above average” it does fall short of “all time classic” given the janky parser and occasional awkward clueing. (I didn’t even discuss how the game is extremely slow to run; I had to crank the emulator to 900% before it became fluid.) I could just chalk that up to being an “old” game where people simply have greater standards now, but it does seem like there’s more going on than just that.
Another Scunthorpe picture from 1983.
Being in the “cultural mood” helps; I will return to a more detailed examination of politics and industry under Thatcherism in a later game (as Thatcher herself even makes an appearance). I think this is also a case where the medium is deeply appropriate for the message. That is, it just feels right to have a satirical, slightly-punk game on the ZX Spectrum in the first place. With a rich fantasy world, the limits to the art and parser can be jarring; here they seem appropriately on theme.
One comparable situation is with the modern lo-fi horror games. Many “indie” horror games now take an aesthetic last seen on the Playstation 1; having giant polygons and uncanny textures can add to the mood rather than feel like unrealism. Unnatural, low-resolution monsters that look broken because the hardware surpassed its polygon limit? Perfect!
Itch even has a compilation of new games called Haunted PS1 Demo Disc.
Similarly, when Urban Upstart does something frustrating, it feels quite akin to dealing with the frustrations of 1983 Britain that were being vented. Sure, you might get sent down a wrong alley for hours because you typed GIVE LAGER and got pounded for not typing GIVE LAGER TO FAN, not realizing you were doing the right thing but with the wrong words, but it just adds to the experience.
Coming up: a new variant of Adventure from 1979 that only made it on the Internet as of today.
Renga in Blue 
If you fancy a much more polished, modern take on this genre, I heartily recommend the point-and-click adventure Thank Goodness You’re Here! on Steam. It’s a much more affectionate look at Northern England with Beano-like cartoon graphics.