Last time, I mentioned three books published at the incorporation of Shinkigensha. One of them was an NEC PC “yearbook”, essentially an encyclopedia of software.
Via Yahoo Auctions.
Looking at the inside front cover, you can see publication info.
This includes a publication date (March 10, 1983, noting it is a first printing), the creator (The Micro Communication Editorial Department), the publisher (Shinkigensha Co., Ltd.), the company responsible for the cover and layout (Palm House), the companies responsible for production (Bunkasha and Fukuda Kogei), the companies doing printing and binding (Live Printing and AN Offset), and finally the company doing advertising (Micro House).
There’s also the line
発行人 桐野敏博
indicating the individual publisher representative is Toshihiro Kirino. This is out of a staff of 10, and Bunji Yonekura was the President at this time.
Referring back to Toshihiro Kirino: later in life he became chairman of the education software company LINES (the website is education dot jp, just to give you an idea of their prominence) but he also has some history prior to Shinkigensha.
Most directly clear is a reference in a 1980 book (about a handmade newspaper from Japanese Prisoners of War on Leyte Island). The book cites Mr. Toshihiro Kirino of Live Printing (along with Mr. Atsuo Takeuchi of Saikosha, another printing company) as helping with restoring the old handwritten text. Note how Kirino is associated with a company that worked with Shinkigensha but not the company itself. (This might be another situation where the two were informally affiliated in some way, like it is possible Micro House and Shinkigensha were.)
Less clear to me is if he’s the same person associated with the Japanese New Left (specifically the “Kyoto University All-Campus Joint Struggle Committee”) and an incident of alleged attempted bombing at the residence of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner General. None of this is implausible, but given that this Toshihiro Kirino was indicted (and then acquitted) under the Explosives Control Act, I’d prefer some absolute confirmation before getting more into the story. (Also adding plausibility is the president of Shinkigensha in ’83 came from the same academic leftist circles; he authored various articles in socialist magazines in the late 60s.) This will likely all end up as a future standalone post. I’ll link something I wrote four years ago in relation to the movie Akira as compensation for now.
July 1972 cover of The Situation. The top article by Toshihiro Kirino is specifically about the incident.
Returning to the game, I suspected I was missing some mechanical aspect to how it worked. Indeed I was. It turns out that objects only exist in a room if you’ve applied LOOK (that is, miru or miwatsu) to the room. Doors are an exception but they aren’t treated as normal objects; they are hard-coded into particular rooms.
Entering the deck with a cannon, trying to examine the cannon and being rebuffed, looking at the room, then trying to examine the cannon again. We are then told it can fire 32-pound cannonballs.
This is extraordinary behavior and we’ve only seen this in one other game: Omotesando Adventure. I was a little faster to pick up on the issue in Omotesando because you can’t even open doors without looking; here it seemed like everything was normal, and I was doing LOOK during my exploration process just to keep oriented (since the game by default only gives room descriptions). It meant for a little while I could refer to objects, but on my pass where I was trying to search things or do other actions (but I didn’t use LOOK because I already knew what was there) I was failing because the game was pretending the noun I was using didn’t exist in the room.
With that figured out, I set about systematically examining things and searching things, for real this time. The various masts explain what they are (the mizzenmast is the one at the back of the ship, according to the game). The barrels are still ordinary (I think I examined them right the first time) as are the desks (sadly, still didn’t find anything, ugh). I also tried various random verbs that seemed appropriate, like using SLEEP on the hammock.
“Rest as long as you like.” (Real time delay.) “It’s time to wake up and get moving.”
I found out that I made a translation error in the armory and what I had down as a cannon was actually a cannonball (this may have been more a note-reading error than a translation error, since it went as cannonball in my notes but cannon on the map). I found I could take the cannonball, but I haven’t been able to do anything with it yet. (Before anyone asks, I did try to put it in the cannon, with the caveat that none of the verbs seem particularly appropriate for that. No luck, but the cannon would need more in it to work than just a cannonball normally anyway. I also tried all four of the “destroy” related verbs on the hatch while holding the cannonball, and also trying to throw it while I was standing there.)
Most interesting were the skeletons / skulls, who seethe with “angry spirits”. Searching them does not go well.
「 ワレワレ ノ イカリノ コエヲ 1ドデモ キイタカ ！
バチアタリモノハ タイカイ ノ モクズ ト キエヨ ！ 」
which I translated as
Have you not even once heard the sound of our anger! Cursed defiler, vanish into the depths of the vast ocean!
The game cuts off right there with no description of what happens or a “you have died” message.
The scene in the lower deck as depicted in PC Magazine, June 1983.
With the big pile of skulls, I was able to listen.
スイヘイタチノ カナシイ サケビ ガ フネジュウニ キコエル。
「 ワレワレニ ヤスラカナ ネムリヲ アタエヨ！ 」、ト。
カレラノタメニ トナエヨ ・・・「 アーメン 」
The sorrowful cries of the sailors echo through the ship.
“Grant us peaceful slumber!” they plead.
Pray for them… “Amen.”
Unfortunately, while SPEAK AMEN and SAY AMEN both are recognized (or rather, “amen speak” and “amen say”, in the order needed) the only response I’ve gotten is nothing happened. This perhaps needs to be done somewhere special.
Even after feeling I’ve got the hang of the parser, I’m terribly stuck. I’ll give things a little more time but I’m probably going to break open the rest of the source code (I’ve only just looked at the verb / noun data). Any more suggestions on what to try are welcome.
Renga in Blue 
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