Bomb #20: The only thing that exists is myself. Sgt. Pinback: Snap out of it, bomb. Bomb #20: In the beginning there was darkness. And the darkness was without form and void. Sgt. Pinback: Umm. What the hell is he talking about? Bomb? Bomb #20: And in addition to the darkness there was also me. And I moved upon the face of the darkness and I saw that I was alone. Sgt. Pinback: Hey…..bomb? Bomb #20: Let there be light. (Explodes.)
— From the ending of the movie Dark Star (1974)
There’s what might be a Dark Star movie reference in the game; I know have a couple of fans watching. It’s hard to tell, because it’s mashed up with the Blake’s 7 reference.
First, a theoretical side tangent. Text adventures have tended to always have diegetic and non-diegetic commands; diegetic commands are ones that translate to something the avatar does in the world, while non-diegetic commands involve affecting the game program itself: SAVE, RESTORE, QUIT, and so forth. Some games blur the difference (Quondam infamously having the save feature not work in the first part of the game because the player gets beaten up by mobsters) but the general ramification is the player does not reach across the aisle unless some alteration to the program state is needed, and furthermore, it is expected by the player there won’t be some diegetic effect to a non-diegetic command. (The big issue games from this era have is advancing time even upon saving or loading a game.)
HELP has always been an oddball between the two groups; Crowther/Woods adventure clearly is giving a non-diegetic explanation of the game’s setup…
I know of places, actions, and things. Most of my vocabulary describes places and is used to move you there. To move, try words like forest, building, downstream, enter, east, west, north, south, up, or down. I know about a few special objects, like a black rod hidden in the cave.
…but Fortress at Times-End had HELP be the necessary starting command of the game, as for some reason it caused a drawbridge to open. Between the two we’ve had the command sometimes give a piece of information that is absolutely essentially to playing the game (a parser command that is impossible to guess, for instance).
Dark Star turns out to fall in that category, because pressing the buttons at the self destruct area is wrong. The game wants the code formatted in a very specific way, one that can only be worked out via typing HELP.
ENTER GREEN/YELLOW/BLUE AS’CODE GYB’
This is slightly cheeky not only in requiring a command that might make a player feel like they were giving up any kind of personal “no hints challenge” but also the three button colors are green, yellow, and red so the combination doesn’t make sense.
There’s only six combinations so it is easy to simply guess, but there is a way of getting the information otherwise. Back at the ORAC you can type CODE.
Why the player would even know this syntax works is unknown. (I just got it later from the source code.) Also, as shown, it doesn’t actually work: if you type HELP the game lets you know ORAC needs you to be polite, so the correct command is CODE PLEASE.
The Orac was a bit messy to converse with in Blake’s 7, so this could simply be a reference to that, but the actual refusal followed by the “leave me alone” feels more along the lines of talking to Bomb 20 in Dark Star. I’m still going to say the reference is accidental, but I’m going to leave the surfing picture anyway just for fun.
With the self-destruct stopped, the game enters a new phase, the “second mission”. (That means my mucking about the planets was “virtual branching” — I got to see ahead before figuring out the “puzzle” of realizing the HELP command was being mildly abused.)
Another timer! It turns out the complication is not from the life support timer but the fact the space suit (which you need to wear during all the planetary visits) starts running out of oxygen.
Back at planet THREE, there was an ORB, a HOOK, a ROCK, and a KEY.
The ORB simply blows up if you try to teleport it away, so that’s clearly a red herring, but out of the other three items only one of them is useful. You can take the HOOK over to the “green planet” with the fishing, nab the rope and pole, and CATCH FISH. However, you just get a fish, and that’s it. It does nothing. This is a red herring on the level of Ferret, letting you actually solve a puzzle but it turns out to be completely the wrong thing to do.
I was also thinking I might need to use the shininess of the coin as a lure, but that’s not necessary.
No, the item you need is a KEY, which I’ll show off in a moment. You also need to get the box over to the cave and nab the stalactite (as I showed off before) and do the SHOOT STALACTITE (as I also showed off before). SHOOT incidentally doesn’t even bother to check what noun you use, so the only reason I knew for sure it was applying to the stalactite was the brokenness of the parser.
For whatever reason, if you step to the cliff one step to the east and do the SHOOT over there, the dissolving ice will make some vapor and get TWO CRYSTALS from the rockface. I don’t think there’s a clue to this other than it seems like the command ought to do something.
This, plus the KEY, are what’s needed to win the game. Flying back to the Dark Star, I went back to the chamber with two spots missing on a cube. There I had an epic hour-long struggle with the parser.
The two commands that work — which I eventually had to pull straight out of the source code — are REPLACE CRYSTALS and COMPLETE CUBE. For “complete”, I suppose that makes sense, but this is the first and will probably be the last time I’ve ever seen that verb in an adventure game. For “replace”, the crystals go in empty spaces — we’re not replacing anything! I tried PLACE CRYSTALS as one of my first attempts with no joy.
However, even with the right command, I was stopped by a “glass dome”. You cannot refer to either the GLASS or DOME so I tried taking over the heavy stone from the crater planet and using it for smashing purposes, but I just got gnarly default messages.
I finally realized the LOCK just outside did not correspond to the ID card door as I previously assumed, but rather was its own independent thing. Typing USE KEY (more fun with the parser!) will cause, the game reports, nothing to happen, but we’ve seen that trick already.
The key-use opened up the dome, so now it is possible to COMPLETE CUBE.
This suggests either Mexican Adventure was written earlier or the games were made together. Haunted House also references Mexican Adventure. That’s the one game from the Sharpsoft Class of ’82 that I haven’t reached yet, but it’ll have to wait for another time, because I need a breather from their particularly ornery parser…
…and possibly cope with another ornery parser, as coming up: we’re staying with science fiction and visiting an unusual Apple II graphical game, a deep enough cut it did not make my 1982 list.
I’m in the curious position of figuring out how to fuel the starfighter and visit other planets, but still with the Dark Star self-destruct timer ticking down. I don’t even know if stopping the self-destruct is the end of the game or you get missions after. There’s three structural possibilities for what’s going on:
a.) I’m “looking ahead”, like how Burglar’s Adventure lets you keep playing after setting off an alarm to see what’s coming, even though the game is already lost. This can help understand what some earlier objects in the game might be for and/or help get a notion of what kind of patterns the game follows (for example, how many items are red herrings?). This idea really could use a name. “Virtual plot branching” maybe?
b.) The timer is incredibly tight and you’re genuinely supposed to fly off to get resources before coming back and stopping the self-destruct sequence.
c.) This is a Ferret-style game, where you clearly and intentionally have to go murder your virtual selves finding out some information which will then get applied back in the “main plot”. There’s no realistic way your main character could learn that information other than referring to things learned from their doomed-to-death clones. This is like if in the game Outer Worlds, instead of there being a time loop, your character just dies over and over and you somehow happen to know the information from your dead selves; that is, it is functionally identical to a time loop, but the game-world ramifications are grislier.
I’ve been keeping an eye out for any references to the movie Dark Star (1974) but other than the name of the game I haven’t spotted any. It’s a title that easily could be made independently. The Dark Star in this game is a space station, not a ship, and I wouldn’t call the exploding a movie reference unless we start talking to a bomb. Image via a video about the Dark Star miniature work.
Continuing from last time, I was able to grab: ID CARD, CHART (mentioning “DILUS DC”), TEA STRAINER, SPACESUIT, METAL SUIT (radiation protection), GREEN SUIT, COMPASS, DETECTOR (of radiation), BOX (polystyrene, trying to open it says “it’s not that easy”), PHASER, COIN (for a pinball table).
For open problems, other than the mysterious box (the one thing I’ll resolve later), there’s an ORAC computer that might be a red herring, there’s an alien in the vent (you’d think the phaser works, but it is rigged to not be able to fire while in the space station), two suspicious “blank walls” (again the phaser would be nice to use, but alas), a crystal cube “without two blocks” in the engine room, and three buttons (yellow, red, green) that supposedly disable the self-destruct sequence. Trying to press any of the three buttons is rebuffed by the game.
PRESS YELLOW: I DON’T SEE THE POINT IN THAT!
PRESS RED: IT WON’T WORK!
PRESS GREEN: I DON’T SEE THE POINT IN THAT!
I gather, given the differing error messages, that red is the first button in the combination, but something is stopping the PRESS. Since the crystal cube is in the same room, I suspect fixing the crystal cube is the hang-up.
Returning back to the room with the starfighter, there’s a “TAP” and a “HOSEPIPE”, and turning the tap causes fuel to flow out of the hose.
The right command here is tricky to find; if you try to take off with starfighter the game says it needs REFUELING, and that word specifically needs to be used here: REFUEL STARFIGHTER. Unfortunately if you try to then take off it doesn’t work:
(I’m starting to imagine, plot-wise, that we did an “emergency long distance teleport” over to the bridge of the Dark Star when contact was lost, and it’s such a difficult/dangerous procedure only one person could be sent. That explains why we aren’t familiar with what the buttons on the bridge do, and also suggests some lore questions: What happened to the crew? Why was the fuel sabotaged? Why is the crystal cube broken? Why did the self-destruct sequence start? Where did the alien come from?)
Going back out and checking the fuel, you see it is LUMPY. The TEA STRAINER works to fix this (!!) by typing STRAIN FUEL. Doing REFUEL STARFIGHTER with the fix now allows you to take off.
The procedure (given on a note earlier, combined with information from a chart) is to set COURSE DILUS and then type DRIVE.
This changes the starfighter’s location, closes the exit “down” (to the Dark Star) and opens an exit south, to a “hold”.
The belt is a GRAVITY COMPENSATOR BELT and the bracelet allows for teleportation. You can then hop in the alcove and find five buttons corresponding to the three planets in the viewscreen. And yes, those numbers don’t match, so PRESS FOUR and PRESS FIVE result in an unfortunate demise:
As an aside, this is where Rob was getting stuck and thought the code needed changing in order to introduce the digits 1 through 5, as the buttons are described that way. PRESS 1, PRESS 2, etc. previously didn’t work at all because the game doesn’t even let you push the actual buttons. Quoting Rob:
When I originally got to that area, I naturally assumed that, since the game says “the buttons are numbered 1-5” that you had to use the numerals. When it became obvious that you couldn’t, I tried typing them out but the game kept responding “nothing happened!”. Since not being able to enter numerals was clearly a bug, I immediately reported it.
This is not the first and certainly will not be the last bit of early-80s text adventure jank that gets mistaken for a bug. (Certainly by modern standards it is a bug — why would you mismatch display and input like that?)
With fairly high efficiency (I’m off by 1 or 2) I was able to get to the alcove safely with everything worn (space suit, bracelet, belt) in 27 moves.
Given the space station explodes at 50, this does not seem like enough time to do everything and come back. For example, here’s the map upon pressing THREE:
It’s just a straightforward grid, exploring a crater.
In addition to the KEY from the center there’s a HOOK (“fishing hook”), ORB (“made out of an unknown element”), and STONE (“heavy”) lying out in the open.
Picking up all three items and returning to the start (at the “monolith” that allows teleportation) takes 17 turns. Given the 27 moves at start (let’s say 25 with perfection and no typos, and yes making a typo counts as a move) that’s 42 moves used up already on only one teleport destination. Even if it turns out one or more of the items are red herrings, I think option b (explore planets, then rush back to stop the self-destruct) it starting to seem unlikely.
Jumping over to planet ONE, it is just two rooms (so far):
The stalactite might make a tempting phaser target, but shooting it is a bad idea:
Nabbing the phaser from the Dark Star takes even more extra moves, but given it doesn’t work on the space station, it seems necessary. However, we have had plenty of games before where weapons are a red herring.
You can try to take it but the game says you need an “INSULATED CONTAINER”. This turns out to be the BOX from the Dark Star, but taking it results in yet more moves being wasted.
TWO leads to a “green planet”, which is again small.
The LONG STICK at the opening room is described as “bamboo”. The pool to the west has FISH, and if you try to CATCH FISH the game says you need a hook. If you bring the hook over from the crater it turns out you’re still missing something.
If it turns out you then also need a pole after finding tackle, the bamboo one probably qualifies.
To the north there are three “cliff” rooms with ROCKFACE objects (“crystalline”). Trying to CLIMB (even while holding the rope, or dropping it in the room) is rebuffed.
Trying to SHOOT ROCKFACE (with the phaser) gives the response
YOU DO NOT HAVE THE STALACTITE!
and bringing the stalactite along gives this screen:
As efficient as possible getting to this screen. Right after this the Dark Star explodes.
It’s hard to experiment with the planets because the background timer keeps going off quickly; while it is still very faintly possible the player is just supposed to move very fast, I can’t imagine doing all the steps to make a fishing pole and do whatever it is the stalactite needs and grabbing at least the hook from the crater and still be under fifty.
I suppose playing this game is a little like talking Bomb 20 out of exploding, but only by coincidence.
Next time I’m going to take another stab at the Dark Star itself, as I get the nagging feeling it’s the bespoke-command parser that’s really tripping me up here (am I even pressing the buttons on the self-destruct control in the right way?)
What happens if you try to skip getting the space suit before visiting planet ONE.
As the links above imply, we’ve played two of them, and have two more to go. I’m still unclear if these were listed in the order they were written or not. Having played Dark Star a little, I can say the parser feels better than Haunted House but worse than Secret Kingdom. However, that’s not really proving anything, and it could even be the case (given we’re dealing with two different authors) they were developing games in an overlapping way.
Both A.J. Josey and Geoff Clark remain mysteriously resistant to my attempts to find them even as references in computer magazines. The closest I found was that there was a person named Geoff Clark who worked as a camera supervisor on some Classic Doctor Who episodes; it would be lovely to find out it was the same person (especially as I know one of the readers of this blog also worked as a camera supervisor for Doctor Who) but there’s absolutely no evidence for that and there’s enough Geoff Clarks out there I can’t call it anything more than coincidence.
I didn’t find much else on Sharpsoft either other than a profile of Michael Opacic who wrote them word processor, spreadsheet, and database software, and “sold full rights — no royalties” with “the attitude that a bird in the hand is worth several in the bush.” A different contract paid out 15% royalties so the company was clearly giving both options; I still have no names associated with the founder or founders.
I originally had this game farther down on my list, due to a technical issue commenter Rob discovered; while you are required to type numerical digits later in the game, the program (in the MZ-700 format we have) doesn’t let you. It is literally impossible to win without modifying the source code.
What’s happening here is that the game is restricting what the player types to certain ASCII codes. The ASCII code for “0” is 48, and the code for “A” is 65. The first line restricts input to letter characters (anything less than 65 in ASCII is left out), leaving out the needed digits. By changing the value to 48, “0” through “9” are now included.
While it certainly is possible for a unfinishable game to hit in the 80s for no particular reason at all, in this case the game was originally written for MZ-80A before getting moved to the MZ-700. While this more or less just adds color, I could easily see a change like the bug above also slipping in.
The game starts with music, which I’ve dropped a video of below.
Despite the Star Wars theme, the game feels (so far) like an amalgam of Star Trek and Alien. You’re in the Dark Star ship and you are the only one aboard (except for, as you’ll see later, an alien); the closest aspect to Star Wars is a “starfighter” that’s on board, but maybe that gets later to shoot down TIE Fighters so suddenly the theme will be appropriate again.
The most interesting part of the instructions is the notice that this game has no score as it is “mission” based and “you either make it or you don’t!!”
You start in the control room of the Dark Star. There’s no options other than to SIT DOWN. That alone took a bit of time to work out. The command SIT is bespoke and only works in this room in this context (that is, somewhere it is hard-coded to check for “SIT DOWN” as a phrase rather than the command SIT being considered a verb on its own). It (and some other commands) evaded my verb list:
The evasion can be pretty bad; just typing SIT alone gives the message I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU MEAN BY THE COMMAND ‘SIT’, which suggests this is entirely the wrong thing to be typing; SIT SEAT gets equal confusion, and the parser doesn’t even let you type SIT ON SEAT (it will stop you from putting in a space after a second word — the same kind of hard enforcement that led to the bug where numerals couldn’t be typed in).
Sitting down successfully results in a blank screen, a red button and a blue button. Pressing either button just states NOTHING HAPPENS! which is slightly frustating because something happens in both cases. With the blue button, it turns the screen on and reveals the player’s mission: the ship is about to blow up and the self-destruct needs to be de-activated.
You starts with a WATCH in case you need to check how long until death. The clock is ticking even before you’ve seen the message, so my first game through I had the amusing scene of flailing wildly trying to get into a seat, baffling over buttons that do nothing, reading the destruction message, and dying shortly after.
The red button invisibly opens an exit to the north, where you can find a map which gives the overall ship layout in glorious ASCII.
Before going on to explore the ship, I want to point out how incredibly odd the opening is in a meta-sense. Surely if we’re here, and we’re the only one, we’re meant to be here — that is, the avatar ought to already know the function of the red button and blue button, so saying that nothing happens is doubly curious? In 1982, the amnesia trick still hasn’t been rolled in much yet to cure player-vs-avatar-knowledge disjoint (Ferret and El Diablero have been the only two); most games from this era seem to just pretend it doesn’t matter. It’s hard to deal with, though; Kirk in a Star Trek adventure game surely should know his own ship’s layout, yet the player needs to map it out.
Following the same order as the ship’s map:
2 is the recreation room, which has a pinball machine and a table. The table has an ID card which will be needed later, and a chart which talks about a star system DILOS DC. I have not used this information yet.
The pinball machine is described as a Captain Fantastic which is a real pinball game from the 1970s (it was the follow-up to Wizard by Bally and sold immensely well; it helped for Bally’s finances that Elton John — whose likeness was used — took his payment in pinball machines).
Moving on to 3 is the research lab, which has a radiation detector, a polystyrene box, and an Orac (a fictional computer from the show Blake’s 7). Sure, let’s toss all the sci-fi shows in there.
4 is the flight deck with a starfighter. You can hop on but the starfighter lacks gas. So much for escaping self-destruct the ignoble way.
5 is the galley (that’s far southeast on the map) which has an old tea strainer.
Stepping into the larder reveals an air vent; you can go in the air vent to find a “blank wall” and going any further results in death-by-alien.
Moving up to 6 is the cargo hold, with multiple suits: a spacesuit, a “metal suit” (which turns out to be radiation protection) and a green suit (which I don’t understand yet). Hidden within the suits are a COMPASS and a NOTE, the latter explaining that the starfighter — the one we saw earlier that needs fuel — responds to spoken commands.
With the ID card back at the recreation room you can get into 7, which is a armoury. It has a phaser (which can only be set to kill) and a coin which goes back at the pinball table.
Playing pinball has the game respond YOU’RE WELL ON THE WAY TO A HI SCORE WHEN THE MACHINE TILTS!
Finally there’s 8, which can be reached by starting at the control room and going due north. If you just do that right away you die.
The metal suit back at the storage is sufficient for protection.
The control panel has three buttons (yellow, red, and green) with the note that they disarm the self-destruct in the right combination. Why don’t we know the combination? Maybe we’re raiders and there’s a missing manual insert. Just to emphasize why the “bespoke command” feature is dodgy, here’s my attempt at reading the inscription that goes with the colored buttons:
I picked the wrong noun on READ first and it told me the command READ wasn’t understood! This very much implies to stop using READ, and I only persisted because I already observed the response was deceptive.
Once I got past the rough starting command the game became fun to explore. I’m not even “stuck” yet, but I had enough enthusiasm from people who wanted to play along I figured this was a good place to stop.
Renga in Blue 