Back when I’ve discussed “bawdy games”, one of the issues that has come up multiple times is the difficulty in advertising. Chuck Benton of Softporn Adventure had the good fortune of being discovered by Ken Williams of (Sierra) On-Line. Some games advertised instead in The Dirty Book, but that book itself had trouble advertising in other outlets.
Interface Age does not feel that the submitted advertisement conforms with the magazine’s standards.
Another option was simply to go via public domain, like with Porno Adventure and Drive-In. Today’s games, however, did not go that route.
(The obligatory not safe for certain work environments warning applies to anything after this point. Also, there’s a somewhat rude word for a drunk person.)
Kettering near Dayton, location of today’s company.
I’m not sure how Bob Krotts of the Softcore Software Company managed, but all the way through 1982 and part of the way through 1983 he put a significant number of ads out for his adventure game products, Misadventures 1 through 7. (The first six came out in ’82, and the seventh came early in ’83.)
As far as why the ads got through, my guess is a combination of
a.) chutzpah on the part of Krotts; notice in the ad below he tried to sell the game in Tandy’s book (this was a book collecting what essentially was ads for third-party software) and bragged about it not getting in. (As further evidence, albeit from later in life, one might consider he later became known as “Dirty” Bob Knotts, ran an adult video store, and is current co-chair of the X-Rated Critics Association.)
b.) chutzpah on the part of the magazines, which were TRS-80 specific ones like 80 Micro, H & E Computronics, and 80-U.S. While one could quantitatively prove this by counting ads or the like, my qualitative sense upon reading these magazines is that they had a more hobbyist bent to them and didn’t try as much to be family oriented.
The situation is complex in 80-U.S in particular, which printed an upset letter to the editors in their August 1982 issue…
Gentlemen,
…may I mention that I have three young teenagers who read your magazine and I find the ad from The Softcore Software Co. offensive.
It seems that people involved with personal computers should be above this “tacky” behavior. Adult book stores and X-rated movie houses are available to those with sexual hangups. Why degrade your magazine for the relatively small amount of revenue from this advertising?
…and following that, I haven’t found any reprints of the ad in the same publication, although I might be missing something. So at the very least there was actual pushback. On the other hand, one of the columns had an extended riff in their November 1983 issue on the first Softcore adventure (Madame Rosa’s Massage Parlor) making a fictional story. The true interpretation might be that the author simply decided to send his ad budget elsewhere.
From the Museum of Computer Adventure Game History. Clearly the same label was used for every printing.
I’m taking down the first three games (Madam Rosa’s Massage Parlor, Wet T-Shirt Contest, Sewers of Moscow) in order. I’ll handle the other three from 1982 in a separate post.
Misadventure 1: Madam Rosa’s Massage Parlor
Our task is to “discover the hidden photographs of the politician’s beautiful daughter” while looking for a speakeasy at the wharves, avoiding “deadly alleys”, “the bouncer” and “other characters of questionable reputation”.
The game follows the standard Scott Adams-style split window, but without any of the advantages and all of the drawbacks. There’s no object or direction list; there’s just the room description on top, and you have to test exits in every room to figure out which directions you can go. This really would go better with a standard scrolling window.
The parser is one of those which ends up chastising the player most of the time (and not in a fun way). I got “TRY SOMETHING ELSE” and “WRONG” many times in an attempt to do actions.
For example, the response here to SEARCH TRASH is TRY SOMETHING ELSE.
The map is one of those with lots of repetition; south of the locations just mentioned are three that just state “THE ROAD GOES NORTH AND SOUTH.”
This is followed by more rooms that are either “ROAD”, “WHARF”, “ALLEY”, or “DEAD-END” in some variety.
At the far south end is a door with a peep-hole. You can knock, and a bouncer asks if you are old enough, then requests your I.D.
I had no I.D., or even method of checking what my character’s inventory was. On a hunch, I checked the manual of Misadventure #5 (which I had from the earlier link) and found it mentioned the command EXAM. Not EXAMINE (which doesn’t work), but EXAM. I took it back to the pile of trash at the start:
EXAM WINO leads to finding out the wino has some money and and I.D. card. Taking the card back to the door, I was able to break into the speakeasy.
WELCOME TO MADAM ROSA’S SPEAKEASY BAR & GRILL! THE PLACE IS FILLED WITH PEOPLE, MUSIC, AND LAUGHTER! AN OPEN DOOR IS EAST. AN ELONGATED BAR IS FILLED WITH DRINKERS AND BOOZE.
To the east is a poker room with an open seat. You can sit down but this leads to death:
AFTER PLAYING FOR AWHILE, YOU NOTICE A MAN ACROSS FROM YOU WHO IS CHEATING! YOU ACCUSE HIM!!! HE PULLS A GUN AND SHOOTS YOU BETWEEN THE EYES – YOU ARE DEAD!!!
There are seemingly no other exits, but you can go back to the bar and BUY DRINK, whereupon the bartender will ask if you would like to meet some “WILD WOMEN”. Saying “YES”:
A LARGE BOUNCER BLOCKS THE HALL!
I used BRIBE BOUNCER and was able to proceed on.
THE STEPS LED TO A DIMLY-LIT ROOM. THE WALLS ARE ALL OF PLUSH CRUSHED VELVET. A SMILING SCANTILY-CLAD LADY AT A DESK INVITES YOU TO ENTER THE OPEN NORTH DOOR.
Heading north leads to an intersection where a naked lady is running away from some scene to the west. Checking in, there is an “OLD MAN” who is dead but “MUST BE HAPPY – HE IS SMILING!!!”
There’s another scene with an “UGLY” woman with an “OLD WOMAN”, a “LOCKED DOOR” with “MUFFLED BREATHING”, and a room with “OLD MEN” in raincoats looking through peepholes.
Bypassing all this, there’s a door that leads to a stairway up to a new floor.
To the north is a room with trapezes:
THIS APPEARS TO BE A ROOM FOR VERY AGILE PEOPLE! THERE ARE MANY TRAPEZES HANGING FROM THE HIGH CEILING. HMMMM..
You can SWING TRAPEZE but it will cause the bar to collapse; for some reason, EXAM BAR will now reveal the photos.
You can’t go back directly to the previously floor; exploring around leads to a series of rooms with scenes of varying level of questionable-ness (like THE MAYOR OF THE CITY in a hot tub who is PLAYING WITH A RUBBER DUCKY while a girl is in the tub with scuba gear) although the one you want has a book case; TAKE BOOK opens a secret passage to the last section.
The final challenge is a hallway where some of the exits are traps where a bouncer finds you (see above); I didn’t test if you could get the photos back by repeating the trapeze scene. Finally I came across a room with a window that seemed promising:
THE PASSAGE DEAD ENDS IN A CORNER ROOM. AN OPEN WINDOW IS NEXT TO AN OLD BED. YOU ARE SIX FLOORS UP!
A rope is visible through the window and you can climb down and escape:
Well, that was awkward. Before moving on to the next game, I should point out absolutely everything is bespoke. There is no way to take inventory because there is no inventory (if you take the card from the wino, that sets a flag, but it doesn’t have any special world-model attached). The way special commands are given is by room; in the window room at the end, EXAM WINDOW is special-coded to work there:
18174 IFWW$=”N”GOTO1991
18176 IFWW$=”EXAM WINDOW”GOTO2030
That means other than directions, the entire game is waiting for exact phrases in exact rooms. It is a wonder it hangs together at all.
Misadventure 2: Wet T-Shirt Contest
We are in trouble with a crime boss and need money fast. The logical solution: winning a wet t-shirt contest. Sure?
IT IS ALMOST DUSK. YOU ARE SITTING ALONE IN YOUR HOTEL ROOM.
THERE IS A LOUD KNOCK AT THE DOOR!!!
(after OPEN DOOR)
3 TOUGH THUGS ENTER THE ROOM. THEY BEAT THE CRAP OUT OF YOU!
YOU ARE INFORMED THAT – IF YOU DON’T PAY THE BOSS THE HUNDRED DOLLARS YOU OWE BY TOMORROW – YOUR ASS IS GRASS! THEY LEAVE THROUGH THE EAST DOOR.
Stepping outside, there’s some trash near the hall with a fish wrapped in a newspaper, doing EXAM PAPER (yes, it’s doing the EXAM thing again):
From here, the city is yours to explore, or mostly wander empty roads in:
The important places are marked: the club where the contest happens (yellow), a science building (blue), an arcade (brown), and a coin (green). You can try visiting a bank and getting a loan (they make fun of you and escort you out) or visiting the IRS (they arrest you for tax evasion).
It doesn’t look terrible but the “skips” in various spots led me to get lost; I was hoping I didn’t have to map, but the coin in particular turned out to be fairly elusive, and it turns out you need to find it first. With the coin in hand, you have enough money to play a game:
The game explodes, leaving only a screen, which you need to take. (Remember, there’s no real “inventory” in a general sense, just a variable flag.)
With the screen in hand, the next stop is by the science building, with an elevator of DEATH.
The elevator has 21 floors, and there’s no information on the game which floor is helpful; you just need to test them all. Keep in mind this is a game with no saved game feature! (Normally, I used save states.) Here’s a full table:
21 – stuck in 3×3 area
20 – electrocuted
19 – electrocuted
18 – killed by dogs
17 – electrocuted
16 – scientist / secret door
15 – stuck in 3×3 area
14 – stuck in 3×3 area
13 – no 13th floor
12 – electrocuted
11 – alarm
10 – killed by dogs
9 – killed by women
8 – electrocuted
7 – scientist’s lab
6 – electrocuted
5 – killed by dogs
4 – stuck in 3×3 area
3 – scientist / secret door
2 – electrocuted
1 – lobby
The “3×3 area” is just a small set of rooms that do nothing and the only thing to do is to leave. The “scientist / secret door” involves a scene with a scientist leaving through a secret door and farting. The “killed by women” is, um, kind of like a scene from Softporn Adventure but a bit darker.
KNOCK-OUT GAS COMES OUT OF THE VENTS…
YOU AWAKE TIED TO A BED. YOU ARE NAKED!
5 BEAUTIFUL WOMEN ENTER AND RAVISH YOUR BODY!!! WOW!
UH, OH…YOU CAN’T TAKE IT! YOUR HEART GIVES OUT!
Maybe you’re the “old man” from the first game. The floor that you actually need is 7 (lab) although it too is extremely deadly. There’s a series of hall intersections where if you choose wrong you will die: lots of killer dogs plus a trap floor.
THE FLOOR GIVES WAY! YOU FALL TO YOUR DEATH!
The correct sequence (w w n n w n w door s s w) can only be found by trial and error.
I first came across this scene before even finding the coin (I was still hopeful I could avoid making a city map); if you do the coin-screen sequence first, you can GIVE SCREEN in order to progress the scene forward:
The whole gimmick is that you can then push a button to switch to the body of the woman.
YOU ARE IN THE BEAUTIFUL WOMAN’S BODY!
THE PROFESSOR SAYS THAT YOU WILL REMAIN THIS WAY FOR 1 HOUR!
YOU ARE NOW ALONE IN THE ROOM (EXCEPT FOR YOUR BODY IN THE CHAIR). THE SCIENTIST HAS LEFT.
The rest of the game is pretty straightforward as far as actions go, if a bit icky plot-wise. You need to follow the same steps it took to arrive at the lab, just backwards, then hoof it back to the club near the start of the game.
You win due to your (the other person’s) “transparent” shirt. With $200 in hand you can hike it back to the lab, where you’ll transfer back and win the game.
I guess you could think of this as a degenerate’s version of Savage Island Part 2. Technically speaking there was a lot more death than bawdiness to the game. Let’s jump ahead now to….
Misadventure 3: Sewers of Moscow
We’re now a superspy, meant to stop some catastrophe or another gallivanting around Moscow. What we’re stopping is unclear because we’ve lost our memory. The ad copy still the obligatory low-key mention of smut…
THE BEAUTIFUL SPY YOU FIND TIED SPREAD-EAGLED TO A BED HOLDS THE KEY TO THIS MISADVENTURE. BUT BE VERY CAREFUL WHAT YOU DO TO HER.
…but to start with, we awake with our memory gone, and:
?FC ERROR AT 70
These lines seem to be causing the game issues:
70 FORMM=1TO40:X=USR(MM):NEXT:RETURN
72 FORLM=40TO1STEP-1:X=USR(LM):NEXT:RETURN
74 FORLM=1TO6:X=USR(LM):NEXT:RETURN
I just changed them to RETURN and the game was able to play all the way through. Maybe they’re for the sound shenanigans the game’s title screen mentions it has.
You start in a forest having an unfortunate parachute accident, and once again, the parser is bespoke in an almost unique way.
The key here is to CLIMB TREES — ok, that part’s not too bad — finding yourself in tree branches. The key phrase then is CLIMB N.
Not swing, or just movement, or even CLIMB NORTH; it has to be specifically CLIMB followed by the abbreviation N. I suspect this is the kind of game the author only tested themselves. (Unlike Softporn Adventure!)
Past that, there’s a set of very plain rooms with descriptions like “CLEARING”, “NOTHING”, and a “NOTHING” where you also need to “BEWARE OF THE ANTEATERS!”
Sadly, no anteaters appear in the game.
There’s a few death-exits in this area, but it isn’t death-at-every-step like the science building in Misadventure 2 (that’ll happen later). The key to moving on is to go to a VERY DARK VALLEY and type the word FEEL alone. Just the word FEEL.
Just to be clear, yes, I checked the source code for the CLIMB N and FEEL-word-by-itself parts.
With the shovel in hand, you can go over to a NOTHING where the floor is DAMP and DIG. This drops you into a maze with a mean trick.
It’s a “normal” maze with no loops, but going east leads to a whole section which is all dead ends, whereas going west is a very short trip to the exit. It’s essentially the maze equivalent of a shaggy dog joke.
There’s also this elongated description in every room.
Past that obstacle, you can climb some stairs to find a mysterious door, where a “SHORT MAN WEARING A GREY OVERCOAT AND HAT” ushers you in a room and points out a panel. Pressing a button in the panel triggers a message:
After this enlightenment returns:
YOUR MEMORY HAS RETURNED!
YOU REMEMBER THAT:
YOU ARE AN AGENT OF THE U.N.
YOUR MISSION – ONCE DROPPED DEEP INTO SOVIET TERRITORY – IS TO ELIMINATE THE POSSIBILITY OF WW III.
You are supposed to enter the number just received into a phone. Unfortunately, this is a “suicide mission” and you’ll die in the process of ambiguously stopping WWIII.
This is followed by a “death building” fairly similar to the science building…
…except going the wrong direction gets you gunned down by secret police:
A LOYAL MEMBER OF THE MOSCOW SECRET POLICE SPOTS YOU, PANICS, AND SHOOTS! BETTER DEATH THAN TORTURE…
Eventually one route leads to a locked door; to get through the locked door, you need to pass through a dark area and finally reach the hinted-at smut.
If you examine the gag, you’ll find a key; if you free the spy (UNTIE ROPES) she kills you.
FOOL – I AM REALLY A DOUBLE AGENT!!!
SHE REACHES UNDER A BED, GRABS A KNIFE, AND STABS YOU IN THE HEART – YOU DIE!!!
With the key in hand you can go back to the locked door and find the promised room with the phone. I think the code is randomly generated — mine was 196 — and typing CALL 196 triggered the end of the game.
So despite the advertising, Misadventure 3 really had no smut whatsoever, as well as a grim fatalist ending. Not even stopping WWIII, just delaying it!
Brief Introspection
We’ve seen a fair number of authors “cheat” with specific moments of bespoke parser use; it is very rare to essentially make that an overarching coding style, up to and including making it so there isn’t even really an inventory to speak of. To make a comparison I have to go back to something like 1979’s Jungle Island:
400 PRINT”THE VINE BREAKS!! YOU HEAR WARRIORS APPROACHING!”
401 INPUT V$
410 IF V$”RUN” GOTO 220
420 PRINT”YOU’RE RUNNING AS FAST AS YOU CAN!”
430 INPUT T$
440 IF T$”N”,”S”,”E”,”W” GOTO 310
450 PRINT”IT IS NOT ADVISABLE TO RUN THROUGH THE JUNGLE”
The cases here aren’t quite as bad as that game; the Misadventures have a centralized “hub” of commands in each area, and that perhaps informed the author’s style of making big tangly maps for everything. This all has the odd effect that unexpectedly, I thought the bawdiest of the games (Misadventure 1) was the strongest. There’s not really anything going for this author in terms of puzzles, and certainly the parser can’t handle anything stressful, so all that’s left is exploration; at the very least the sequence of naughty scenes showed some variety (…and creative use of margarine). With Misadventure 3, the most interesting room was one literally called NOTHING with a side reference to anteaters.
We’ll visit the other Misadventures soon and see if this trend of non-naughty naughty games continues (the ones available; Misadventure 4: Casino of Pleasure is lost) but for now, coming up: two Britgames, and the very last regular graphical Apple II game of 1982. We are getting close to the end!
Renga in Blue 