THIS TIME, THE SYNTONIC ROVING SPOTLIGHT HAS LANDED ON, -ICK- BOB KROTTS! THIS VERMIN CHARACTER IS THE -GASP- VICE PRESENT OF OUR CLUB! BOB IS A RESIDENT OF KETTERING, OHIO AND HE IS AN AVID MARVELITE … HE HAS ABOUT UH 300 TO MAYBE 700 COMIC BOOKS … ANYWAY KIDS, HE HAS BOASTED THAT SOMEDAY HE’D GET HIS NAME & LETTER PRINTED IN MARVEL AND HE’S FINALLY DONE IT…
— Via the Ohio fanzine Syntonic from 1968, about a 16-year-old Bob Krotts
Continued from my previous posts about the “Misadventures” series. (1, 2, and 3; 5 alone)
“Published by some fans in Ohio. Todd Freeman, Bob Krotts and Steve Flock with contributions by Tony Isabella, Mark Evanier and Dwight Decker. Once again some 15 year old kid from the Bronx, NY, who signed his artwork, GEM, provided artwork and some stories.”
While there was a superhero-themed action-adventure in videogame history quite early (Superman from 1979) this wasn’t a genre that struck text adventures with the same verve as fantasy. Scott Adams would eventually launch Questprobe Featuring the Hulk as official software in 1984, but as far as I can find, Misadventure 6: Super Hero Adventure is the first superhero-themed text adventure. This kind of statement is always dangerous to make but I really have been playing all the adventures, and my loop-around list doesn’t include any, so…?
From Basic Computing, July 1983. The other product advertised is a Frogger clone (Leaper) and the copy this time gives no hint of the “naughty” aspect to the series.
Our hero has 10 abilities. These abilities are activated by typing an appropriate number.
This is essentially a “tool-based” game where the player brings their abilities and/or inventory in and choosing the right one to apply is the “puzzle” at any given moment. We’ve only seen this format twice before I can remember:
a.) Haunted House, the DEC BASIC version. The player is given a large list of items to start: TOILET PAPER, CROWBAR, RADAR JAMMER, DICTIONARY, etc. and while the game uses regular parser commands, they involve applying the starting inventory. Their display is hard-coded:
10270 PRINT “You have with you…..”
10271 PRINT ” TOILET PAPER, a CROWBAR, a LANTERN, a FLASHLIGHT,”
10272 PRINT ” a RADAR JAMMER, a MACHETE, A CAN OF GHOST REPELLANT,”
10273 PRINT ” some MATCHES, A DICTIONARY, and a FLY-SWATTER.”
10280 PRINT “You have collected…..”
10285 FOR N8=1 TO 30
b.) Kaves of Karkhan. There’s a list of people that will come on your expedition with various tools. Some of the tools help with particular obstacles, and in some cases the character abilities will help instead.
Thus Misadventure 6 enters rare company, although it has the same issue the other games did: trying to match the right thing already held to an obstacle doesn’t feel very adventure-like. More on that in a moment.
I visualized the main character as sort of a budget Superman (although Spidey Sense and levitation, skills 5 and 6 respectively, are from different heroes). You start at the DAILY GALAXY and get a message that Lois Laid is missing.
Head west and you can pop into an elevator (PUSH BUTTON), complete with a small animation of the door opening and closing…
…and then after hit the town.
Despite the town being full of malfeasance, there are no real obstacles. You can travel over everything without stopping, and see almost the entire map (including the second part I’ll show later) without solving a single puzzle.
Some example encounters:
If you do want to engage, you just need to pick which of the ten powers (strength, vision, hearing, breath, Spidey-sense, levitation, speed, martial combat, climbing, sexyness) you want to engage. If you pick wrong (“THAT POWER WILL NOT HELP YOU HERE!”) you get a message about you are vulnerable now and need to leave, but there’s no other negative effect other than time lost. This means — especially for the more esoteric encounters — you might as well just lawnmow your way from 1 to 10 until getting the right effect that you want.
In some cases it’s pretty easy to predict, like the battle against the Hulk-like creature involves invoking “strength”. It’s a little less obvious you are supposed to apply your climbing acumen to the dinosaur.
Imagine doing Insult Swordfighting in Monkey Island except that the jokes are only sort of half-formed so you have to test all the punchlines.
The skull, which I assumed to be a mystic floating ghost-thing, just needs regular combat skills applied. Just to the west where there are some “oriental” fighters you instead don’t fight at all but rather use bad breath.
You would think this encounter would involve climbing, but instead you want to levitate your enemy instead.
As I already mentioned, nothing is blocked/hidden, with two exceptions. One is at an “abandoned building” you can find earlier where using super vision spots a hole. You can GO HOLE to get to a new small sewer area.
This lets you find a bomb you can disarm and a worm you can stomp.
One is a safe near the beginning where your super vision can’t penetrate the lead lining.
Despite the “rapid falling”, you can do many things and come back here later.
The safe turns out to be essential, as this is where Laid is stashed. Your ultimate goal is to use STRENGTH to bust the hydrant, which will shoot some water and slow down the safe and cause it to come to the ground. The problem is if you try to use strength right away the game claims it won’t be useful here, and the game fails to mention a particularly flag it is checking.
17000 IFSC>14THENGOTO17020ELSEGOTO13999
If you try to use strength in this room, it first checks the variable “SC”, which is the “BONUS POINTS” that have been referenced in various screenshots. Essentially, you’re supposed to do 15 heroic deeds, which is enough to come back here and win the game. It isn’t at all clear this is a special area or you are failing a score check! I couldn’t even find a way to check your score in the game, I thought for a while it might be simply mentioned in the text for humor.
The regular part of town isn’t nearly enough to get the right score, so you have to head into the sewers.
Encounters include ants, a tank, Madame Rosa (referencing the first game), Moleman, Dr. Doom, the author (as “Dirty Bob”), E.T.’s parents, and “An advertisement salesman from 80 MICRO”.
It wasn’t clear until this point super vision included eye lasers, because it gets used earlier just to see more clearly.
The tank succumbs, for some reason, to bad breath. Not everything can be “defeated” (I tried all 10 actions with Dirty Bob but no luck, you’d think he’d respond to sex appeal).
Upon scrounging enough heroic points, strength on the hydrant at the safe will now mysteriously work.
There’s one last nasty surprise if you’ve taken too many turns to beat the game:
She suffocated…you took too long!
which “fixes” the lawnmower aspect but gives no sense the player is on a timer to begin with.
While I found the graphics to be amusing, and some of the takedown actions were good, the game was more inscrutable than satisfying. Every one of the Misadventures has been bespoke-coded and with the lack of much in the way of a world state or inventory. The games are thus reliant on atmosphere to get by, which worked for Krotts early (1 and 2), not so much with the superhero game (even though one does not expect Superman to bother with much in the way of an inventory!) There’s still one more Misadventure to go (MADAM ROSA meets E-Z), but it’s dated 1983 so I’ll save it for later. E.T.s sister was kidnapped by Madame Rosa and the player needs to rescue and return the poor alien home before kinky stuff ensues. Maybe Krott will return to giving the people what they really want, which is unbridled raunchiness.
Renga in Blue 