This is a continuation of the story of Bob Krotts, which I wrote about here, so you should read that post before you read this one. Krotts ran a “Softcore Software Company” which published seven TRS-80 games, six of them landing in 1982, and I had played the first three.
I still can’t play Misadventure 4, Casino of Pleasure, but I can link to the Launchbox entry which includes a tape picture as well as cover art.
The blurb reads:
Your first problem will be finding the hidden casino! This is accomplished by using traditional adventure-type methods.
If (and when) you make it to the casino with the money, you must increase it so that you have enough money needed to pay-off the gangsters who await you at the casino exits! Beware the pit boss! Don’t have too many free drinks brought to you by sexy young drink girls! Above all, enjoy the many gambling devices…
This suggests a dual-gameplay, starting with “traditional” adventure and turning into a straight gambling game after. Perhaps the game will show up someday, but for now let’s get to that sexy, sexy, existential dread of Naked Nightmare.
From the Museum of Computer Adventure Game History.
I’m not kidding with the existential dread, not just in the weird image on the cover (Krotts ran a photo studio so I’m sure this was intentional) but the blurb on the back.
In Naked Nightmare you awake with no memory and no clothes! It will take all of your cunning to successfully complete this Misadventure! Beware the helicopter of death! Avoid the lethal laser beams! Try to find out why the naked lady laughs at your groin!
WARNING before moving on: early on there is a slur for a little person. No need for a not-safe-for-certain-work-environments notice this time, though.
The opening drops you in what is essentially a random-message maze; locations are fixed, some places have fixed descriptions, but lots of places pull a message from a random pool.
At the start, you have the choice between going north or east, but east kills you with hidden laser beams.
AUTOMATIC LASER BEAMS SLICE YOU
INTO A USELESS MASS OF FLASH!!!
Going north leads to the first random description room.
Other possibilities include:
YOU SEE NOTHING IMPORTANT AT THE MOMENT.
YOU SEE A RAT LAZILY CRAWL AWAY FROM YOU!
YOU SEE A BAT FLYING DOWN THE LONG HALL.
YOU SEE AN INSANE WOMAN RUN PAST!
As all the exits are north/south/east/west, I decided to try a grid style map rather than a node style map. However, since there are “jumps” (because otherwise rooms would land on top of each other) I’ve marked each room with a dot (for “random” rooms) or words (for things fixed in place). I first saw this trick with an article by Richard Ramella so let’s call it a Ramella-style map.
The spirals indicate to me this might be what the author had in mind in the first place.
The “sign & kicked” is just two steps away from the start, where a VIBRATING SIGN claims that PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE – SOMETIMES!
The sign is a clue that sometimes, actually quite rarely, you’ll have an encounter in this room (just leave and come back repeatedly). I only came across it via luck on a reset, as I had tested this theory with 20 no-shows in a row.
Following the path past all the “random” rooms…
…eventually leads to a button.
Pressing the button causes a sound in the distance. I wandered a bit trying to figure out what that was; this included going all the way back to the start and testing the laser defense. The dead end immediately adjacent to the first button now shows a second button.
After pressing the second button, I went searching again; the spiral up to the north passes by a “sign” which says BEWARE CIRCLEVISION and a red telephone. The reverse 7-4-1 clue suggests DIAL 147 but that gets no answer. Where the 147 goes to instead is at the end of the hall, where a portrait on the wall has moved aside.
DIAL 147 gets a third button, and again you are left to search all over the map to hunt down an effect. Nothing seems visible now, because it turns out the laser grid to the east of the start room (marked with a ! on my map) is finally down.
No indication otherwise this would happen. This reminds me of Asylum where you find a key and have to hunt over previously-searched territory.
Continuing with a new map…
…going south results in an ALARM where YOU ARE CAUGHT! (No more detail than that. Stormtroopers? Ninjas? Old ladies with deadly purses?) Going all the way to the end to the east results in another laser beam barrier.
Most of the side rooms are deadly, too; three of them have ropes where if you PULL ROPE you either have the ceiling drop on you or the rope turns out to be a snake and you die.
One room has a ladder, but it, too, is death. (This is feeling a lot like the office-building maze from Misadventure 2 with lots of trial and error.)
The exit is at a room with a dresser, where you can climb it and then pull a rope to reveal an attic. Before that I should mention you can MOVE DRESSER to find some pants, then WEAR PANTS. There’s no inventory tracking other than if you have pants or not.
Getting into that aforementioned attic, it is described as completely dark. Taking a cue from Sewers of Moscow (Misadventure 3), just FEEL is enough to make progress.
The door can be bashed open with just KICK DOOR, leading to a roof.
Things get a bit dicey here; I found a cord on the flagpole from examining it, tried PULL CORD, and found that it sent my pants up to the top.
YOUR PANTS ARE NOW AT THE TOP OF THE FLAGPOLE!
UH OH… A HELICOPTER IS APPROACHING!
IT DROPS A BOMB – YOU DIE!
(Suddenly it feels like I’m playing Lost Pig.) Somehow, it works to examine your pants (which describe a belt loop with no belt) and CLIP LOOP; then when you pull the cord you go up the flagpole with the pants. But how did they go up when you were just pulling the loop? It’s almost like there was an implicit action there of hanging the pants if you don’t do the beltloop trick.
Now you need to get the attention of the helicopter, but if you just WAVE (my first impulse) you fall off and die. I had some visualization trouble here, because I assumed the player is clinging to the pole here, but following the steps above, you are being held solely by your pants. You need to HOLD FLAGPOLE (I got this from the source code) and only then WAVE. The helicopter will lower a ladder; you can unclip the loop, then CLIMB LADDER to victory. It is unclear why they were bombing us in the other reality, other than the lack of pants.
Sewers (Misadventure 3) was mostly “clean” but still had one scene; here I have no idea why this game falls into the series other than the “naked” part. I wonder if anyone bought the game and was disappointed purely for that reason (not that it’s mostly a random maze of death where you have to push buttons and pull ropes in the right order, except for the final puzzle with some guess-the-verb tossed in). I think the final 1982 installment ramps the action back up, so to speak, so coming up: Misadventure 6, where you are a super hero with unusual powers.
Renga in Blue 
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