One, I have a version of the game which is very near to the intended experience. You can download it here, and be sure when you start to say YES to loading a save game. (In the emulator DCHector, this moves your tape from 31/63 to 32/63. If you want to rewind the tape back a step, go to Tools/Tape Unit and use the single left arrow to move the 32 back to 31. This lets you overwrite the save file with a new one, or reload the same save file on restart without having to reboot the emulator.) The save file is identical to the normal start of the game, except that the beaker in the laboratory is now bubbling, meaning you can skip using the apparatus (which is broken in the machine code somewhere).
Two, possibly more importantly, is that Gus Brasil figured out the last step in the game. I had realized it had to be a reference to the “FOR EVERYTHING THERE IS A SEASON” song/Bible verse and I spent most of my time trying out various permutations of SAY THING with no luck.
Gus had made an observation based on something I provided a screenshot of straight from the hexadecimal.
The very end of the clip (BIG3SMA4TIN5BEL6TUR) is providing nouns. That is, there’s a BIG KEY, a SMALL KEY, a TINY KEY, a BELL CORD, and a … TUR?
This had briefly flitted in my consciousness when I tried SAY TURN, and it did lead me to wonder if I had messed up some other flag in the game and SAY TURN (either done once, or SAY TURN typed three times in a row like in the song) was the key. Knowing Gus had won the game, I pondered the extra possibilities and … surely not?
Yes, TURN TURN wins the game. Even though it’s a two-word parser, TURN TURN TURN also works (the parser doesn’t accept any more characters, so SAY TURN TURN TURN isn’t even typable).
First of all, what is the character actually doing at this moment? Clearly not saying the words out loud, since saying them doesn’t work (as I amply proved lots of times before writing my post yesterday). TURN TURN is an “non-reality” command, kind of like in Warp how the game asked you to REGISTER SHORT ROPE. At least in Warp you were “talking” to the underlying computer running the game, here it isn’t clear at all how to interpret this final act. (You could be a spoilsport and claim that SAY not working is just a bug, and TURN TURN is being said out loud, but there’s enough intentionality going on I am fairly sure this is what the author intended.)
Second, what happens after? Somehow the player has won, but the game doesn’t narrate escape (as Gus points out, while there is an escape message, it doesn’t get printed in the game). Also, just like how the ending of La maison du professeur Folibus left the main character blue permanently, here there is no indication that the shrinking has been “cured” upon escape.
With the Roger M. Wilcox game Derelict 2147 there was a similarly ambiguous ending, where the player seemed to be trapped on the Derelict of the title even though they had won by gathering all the treasures. Roger made the insightful comment that:
The fate of the craft is probably the same as the fate of being stuck on Trash Island with an empty gas tank. Except there was no “Escape from Derelict 2147” sequel (nor did I ever think about writing one). Basically, once you get all the treasures, the universe ends.
With Mysterious Mansion it is quite possible the author never thought through any of what I just outlined — there’s a victory screen, so the universe ended. Don’t worry about what happened after. Maybe the tiny person who escaped from Mysterious Mansion and the blue person who escaped from the world of Folibus team up and fight crime. Your imagination can take you anywhere.
…
Since you’re still reading, a quick bonus: here’s the remainder of the 1982 games before we can declare it done, as seen in my post on the final stretch. There’s already a few games in 1983 I suspect will get pushed back, and some 1980 and 1981 discoveries made that will need to be attended to in the future, but after this list is done we can officially embark on 1983 games. Feel free to guess what the order will be!
Bedlam (TRS-80, by the author of Xenos) Countdown to Doom (from the Cambridge mainframe that brought Acheton, Hezarin, Avon, etc.) The Curse of the Pharaoh (Peter Kirsch does graphics) Enchanted Forest (TRS-80 Color Computer does graphics) Geheim-agent XP-05 (Early German game) Grave Robbers (Unmodified VIC-20 game with graphics) The Hobbit (The famous one) Mexican Adventure (The last Sharpsoft game) Misadventures 5 and 6 (Two more bawdy games from Ohio) Zodiac Castle (follow-up to Windmere Estate)
Unfortunately, not long after my last post, I reached what looks like a fatal bug in the game.
Fortunately, I was able to hack my own save file to give myself the required item. I’m glad I did, because what happens after is astonishing.
Unfortunately, I still haven’t finished the game. I am what I am certain is at the ending but I am unclear if the part I’m on is broken or not. I’m calling this my last post on the game for now.
It’s very likely the programmer of the two Interact text adventures was John Stout, shown on the left in a fall 1982 Micro Video newsletter. He is described as having “a hand in almost every piece of software in our last two catalogs” — that includes Mysterious Mansion — and he had just finished with the CRPG Mazes and Monsters. I think a comparison of coding style might help make the case solid but I’m satisfied enough for now. He’s described as having both B.A. and M.A. degrees in Composition and writing music for the University of Michigan Marching Band. He died in 2017 of cancer.
The one (1) action I still had left I could have simply figured out — although I’ll admit I don’t know how I would have figured this out — is getting the key from the crystal ball. If you have the crystal ball and play the organ, the ball shatters in such a way you can get the key (why this works and just shattering the ball by hand doesn’t, I don’t know). The small key then opens the door in the clock to reveal yet another door. We need a tiny key now.
It turned out all my problems after this point stemmed from a bug. I was unable to operate an APPARATUS in a lab. I should mention this bug wasn’t isolated; when you wear the invisibility ring, it becomes described as a RING IM WEARING even when dropped, and if the SKULL is dropped in a random place it turns into the skeleton of the summoning portal, and you can get a second skull due to inventory bugs that causes the portal to the laboratory to be summoned anywhere.
I had found that if I did PUT LIQUID after the apparatus asked for some juice, I ended up with a RING on the ground. This is true even if you are currently wearing the ring, and it is possible to pick up the second ring (except they’ll merge if you wear the second ring). I am 100% now certain this is meant to be a different object, BUBBLING LIQUID.
Unfortunately the game would normally stop from there, but I felt unusually determined yesterday so I started invoking the spirit of Hackerman. Remember, with great processing power comes great responsibility.
My first step was just seeing what I could find by plowing through the relevant file
The Mysterious Mansion Adventure (1982)(Micro Video).k7
in a text editor. The most relevant item I found was a list of objects…
BED
CANOPY BED
COLLAPSED BED
CRYSTAL BALL
STOOL
STOOL
CROSS
LARGE HOLE
2 MOUSE HOLES
A MOUSE HOLE
DAGGER
DAGGER IN BED
…which continued on sequentially for every object in the game. Notice the two STOOLs. The way object state is handled is to repeat an object multiple times, so there isn’t one RING, but rather a RING and a RING IM WEARING as two separate objects. This why you can hold two rings at once, except when you wear the second ring the rings now “merge” into one.
There are three BEAKERS. The first I believe is empty, the second is the starting one with poison, and the third has the BUBBLING LIQUID that the apparatus is supposed to produce (as opposed to making another RING).
What the parser list of the game looks like in a hex editor.
The emulator DCHector I was using does handle save files properly, although they get saved directly to the tape file (write protection needs to be turned off). I made three save files, one where I did a save from the very start of the game, one where I did LOOK ORGAN, and one where I did LOOK ORGAN followed by TAKE PIPE. I used the program HxD and its comparison feature to figure out where the changes were happening. I also for good measure made a fourth save file for right after I picked up the SKULL at the witch (my inventory had a SKULL, RING IM WEARING, CROSS, DAGGER, and PIPE).
For example, with a save file made after doing LOOK ORGAN, at byte 4010 the first six bytes in hexadecimal were
02 05 05 1c 11 11
after TAKE PIPE they changed to
02 05 05 1c 11 ff
It turns out that that sixth position is the location for the PIPE object, at what happened is it got moved from 11 (the starting room of the game, 17 in decimal) to FF, which is what the game uses to indicate an item is in the player’s inventory. This was sufficient for me to make a chart of different item locations in data.
Ultimate hacker mode, PENCIL AND PAPER.
While I also identified the player’s inventory count number, I didn’t want to fiddle with that. I ended up taking my game-in-progress and turning the CROSS and DAGGER into “00” and giving my player the BUBBLING BEAKER and TINY KEY. After some more experimentation I backtracked and just swapped the cross into the beaker, as the tiny key is only found after using the beaker (so it isn’t busted like the beaker is).
DRINK LIQUID results in the message I SHRINK VERY VERY SMALL.
Also, don’t drink it while you’re at the cat, who then thinks you’re a mouse, whoops!
All items are dropped. There is in fact only one item you can carry while tiny, the TINY KEY (which we’ll get later). Before getting there, I should mention the cat above is a preparation puzzle — there’s a spot on the map later where you need to go through one of the mouse holes and out the other, so the solution is to prepare yourself.
I’ve been on the record as being quite fond of preparation puzzles, but they’re very hard to do without a vicious softlock (you won’t find out about needing the pipe here until later, and you have to backtrack to before shrinking to use the pipe as shown).
Shrinking modifies the player’s ability to traverse the map. (This feels like Retelle’s game Nuclear Sub when you flood the sub; everything is irreversibly changed.) You can’t go from the master bedroom to the attic anymore; what you can do is go in the fireplace and go in the chimney that was previously too small.
This puts you on a roof. You can approach edges on the north, south, east, and west sides. I admit I was stuck for a while here; I tried jumping but it just resulted in death.
However, one of the four sides — the west side — has a balcony below and you can jump down to safety. I don’t know if there’s a way to get a hint for this, I just started testing sides when I realized object-based gameplay was now out the window so my options were low.
You can then find the tiny key, which is the whole point of going through the sequence in the first place. The tiny key can be picked up by our tiny avatar.
If you’ve put the pipe down, you can safely get by the cat; the mouse-hole passage links you down to the starting room of the game.
Then (I assume with some unmentioned climbing about) you can OPEN CLOCK at the last tiny door.
It took me a few beats to realize that the PLAQUE that says FOR EVERYTHING is meant to be combined with the book’s message of THERE IS A SEASON. That is, it is actually reconstructing text of Ecclesiastes 3, the verse that Pete Seeger derived the song There is a Season from.
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.
Unfortunately now I’m at a hard stop. Remember, we’re permanently small. The tiny key disappears upon using it. That means no inventory at all.
The maze never got used for anything, but I’ve done a pass through with the torch (in case the dim light means an object is hidden) and also while small. Because of the cat, the latter is only possible if you drink the liquid at the cubbyhole…
…and it really feels like there ought to be something to this, given how much work was put into the maze with no reward, but absolutely nothing new is revealed while small I could find. I’m wondering if the Attic was originally designed so that you couldn’t backtrack but had to pass through the maze to get out, but the author left in a “bug” allowing leaving by a simpler route.
There is the SAY verb. It will repeat what the player says as long as it is between one and six characters. So the ending could be some matter of code-word, but I’ve tried everything both reasonable and unreasonable (TURN, PEACE, LIFE, DEATH, SEASON, SPRING, SUMMER, WINTER, FALL, HEAVEN, etc.). I also went and used the actual verb TURN on everything including the clock multiple times.
I’ve checked over closely the machine code and see nothing in the plaintext that suggests a code-word. Given how many broken spots the game has I’m not inclined to push farther as the ending could be just as broken as the lab puzzle was. (Or at least, by skipping over the lab puzzle, some other element needed for the end never got triggered.) However, I feel like I’ve experienced everything the game has to offer (and the ending just shows YOU HAVE ESCAPED) so I’m satisfied with moving on. Readers are still welcome to take a whack in the comments with my fixed file, but coming up, continuing with the minimalism theme: a VIC-20 adventure game that manages with graphics somehow.
From the last of the Hector line, the MX from 1985 by Micronique. Source. This game never got translated into French. We will be returning to this computer in the future with a very nice-looking graphical adventure.
Victor Lamba II HR, one of the French offshoots of the Interact. Notice the AZERTY keyboard. Every time I boot my emulator (which is French) I have to remap a few keys to turn it into QWERTY configuration. Via Retro Ordenadores Orty.
I flailed at nothing for a while before checking a hint Gus Brasil dropped; he suggested I MOVE the bed. I’m pretty sure I tried PUSH with no luck, ugh.
This opens up a HOLE, although it isn’t clear from the description the orientation, so I was a bit surprised when I tried GO HOLE and plummeted to my doom. Oops.
I had worked out the ROPE / SHORT ROPE business earlier — and I could see how that could be a huge hassle for someone who didn’t visualize the fact they weren’t reaching high enough to cut the rope — so fortunately TIE ROPE / CLIMB ROPE was now easy to come by. The landing place is dark.
I also had the MATCH from up in the high cupboard and the TORCH still, so I took these too back to the dark room to find a HOLE with a CROSS and nothing else of note.
Where things get interesting (in the “may you live in interesting times” sense) is upon trying to leave. This requires passing through the hallway with the cobwebs I found no use for.
Dropping the torch before entering is possible, but carrying over my knowledge from Troll Hole, I remembered the dark rooms in this parser allow moving around and dealing with items with no penalty. That is, you can go in the dark room, GET CROSS, and leave with CLIMB ROPE without ever turning on a light. So for my current run I still have a preserved match and torch in case I need it later (which might evade solving some puzzle involving clearing out the cobwebs first, and clearing out the cobwebs might reveal an item, so I can’t forget this entirely).
With the CROSS in hand the most immediately obvious next step was to try it on the vampire.
The vampire drops a ring, and just past the vampire is a skeleton with a missing skull. I figured I needed the skull from the witch, but the witch not only prevents passing through but also prevents taking the skull.
Fortunately, the ring that was just dropped presents a solution to this. I tried WEAR RING in case I could do a magic spell or some such (even though there’s no feedback given) and it turns out there’s a spell at work the whole time.
That is, the ring has turned us invisible! The skull can now be grabbed. The cat with two mouse holes is still hanging out in the same room but doesn’t present an immediate obstacle or threat so I’m guessing we’ll deal with that later.
Before showing off the skull, I should mention that going into the PASSAGE the witch was guarding leads to a CUBBYHOLE with a LEVER. Pulling the lever drops the player into a maze.
This took a bit of work to map at first, and I had to run the clock out once just trying out directions.
I still had the “turn, turn, turn” hint in mind, and thought it might apply here, since rather than the verb TURN it could apply to simple directional movement. The layout finally dawned on me, and the hint indeed helped:
Unfortunately, this doesn’t help me at all; the route here lets you go from the witch area down to the pantry next to the kitchen, but there’s no treasures in between. In Troll Hole, there was a maze where if you hadn’t found the gold nugget yet (too large to take out the normal way) the maze would also seem similarly useless, so that’s what I suspect here: this is intended as an alternate route later in the game.
Returning to that skull I mentioned, and doing PUT SKULL while at the headless skeleton in the vampire section:
The portal leads to a laboratory which is a dead end, with an APPARATUS, LOOSE WIRE, and BEAKER that has LIQUID.
The apparatus is described as having a loose wire and doing TIE WIRE gives the message
IT IS NOW FIXED
BUT NEEDS JUICE
but I’m unclear how to work things past that. I tried POUR LIQUID and the game said O.K. but with no apparent result. I’m worried that the parser is wanting something very specific, here (although it is also faintly possible it wants something other than the liquid). I did incidentally try drinking it…
…with little surprise as to the result. To summarize everything that’s a blatant loose end:
There’s an angry cat at some mouse holes (this likely won’t come into play later)
I can traverse a maze but didn’t find anything (this likely is meant as a through-route, but maybe I missed a secret)
I still can’t get at the small key in the crystal ball, in order to unlock the door in the clock
I need to operate the apparatus in the laboratory somehow
There’s a chimney too narrow to enter
This is leaving out the possibility of more secrets (like from clearing cobwebs; there’s also an apparently empty closet but maybe something happens there?) I don’t know how close I am to when Gus Brasil got stuck but I’ll take any hints or spectulation whatsoever.
This is, as the manual notes, the “spine-tingling successor” to the Troll Hole Adventure, the game we played recently for the rare Interact computer from Michigan (and the less-rare-but-still-unusual Hector computer in France). The historical background is over at that link, so I’ll just dive in.
Well, maybe one piece of history. There’s a story in a 1983 edition of the Micro Video newsletter which talks about a Don Stockton of Ft. Lauderdale who modified his Corvette using an Interact computer. “Besides monitoring the car’s basic electrical functions, the Interact uses a ‘simple BASIC program’ to display a series of menus which Don uses to control gear shifting and other operations when driving.” As Don points out, the chunky character screen ends up being an asset for car visbility.
This game is published by Micro Video, rather than the Long Playing Software label I theorized was just an imaginary “subsidiary” which only used the name once.
There’s no treasure: this one’s just an escape from the spooky house, and with a time limit of 240 moves, ending at midnight. The time limit is emphasized enough the game gives warnings at 180, 120, and 60 moves from midnight. Aardvark’s Haunted House we just played had exactly the same trick (running to midnight with a minute per action) but it ended up being a fairly generous limit (only pushed closer to the limit because of the weird bug that forced me to take out treasures one at a time). However, that was just due to the straightforward nature of the actions. Based on Troll Hole and the parts of the game I’ve seen so far, this one will still have a tight map but might have lots of backtracking, so turn optimization may come into play later.
Not until I’ve solved more puzzles, though!
The layout is the typical multi-floor house with rooms like “kitchen” and “library” and “hallway” and etc.
The text is still chunky. Behold.
This is one step in, after doing LOOK ORGAN and finding the PIPE, which can be taken.
The sign is a warning (“DANGER DO NOT PLAY THE ORGAN”) and if you try that right away without taking away the pipe first, this happens:
NICE LITTLE TUNE
LOOSE PIPE FALLS
ON TOP OF ME
I AM DEAD WITH 236 MOVES TILL MIDNIGHT
The fireplace can be entered; there is a BIG KEY (which can be taken) and a CHIMNEY which is too narrow to enter.
Back at the drawing room, the clock is said (via LOOK CLOCK) to HAVE A BIG DOOR. OPEN CLOCK gets the response
DONT HAVE A KEY
but if you grab the big key from the fireplace first, it will open, revealing a second, smaller door.
I’ll talk later about the small key corresponding to the second door, so let’s visit other places, east first:
THERE IS A SEASON made me immediately think of the following “TURN, TURN, TURN”, so I assume something somewhere needs to be TURNed, but nothing I’ve tried the verb on so far (including the book) has had an effect.
Further there’s a WINE CELLAR (with nothing) and stairs down lead to a VAMPIRE who is HUNGRY FOR BLOOD. He prevents going up the stairs or entering an ARCH. The Dracula in Aardvark Haunted House technically doesn’t “kill” you, he just softlocks the game if you don’t have the sledgehammer/stick handy since he prevents you from leaving, whereas here the difference is a death scene.
UNSAFE FOR CHILDREN.
Heading back to the drawing room, there’s a dining room to the north with a TABLE, TORCH, and BELL CORD. You can just pick up the torch, the table doesn’t do anything (?? not a safe assumption given this company’s last game) and the BELL CORD makes noise if you pull it.
We’ll come back to the cord later, and also to the room to the east, which has a kitchen with a cupboard that is out of reach.
For now, heading back to the start and going up:
You can’t take the cobwebs, and TURNing them has no effect either.
Here’s my map for now, but I’m sure it is incomplete:
To the south is a bedroom with bed; trying to TURN it gave me the cryptic message.
DONT SEE IT
After experimenting more, it seems like “fixed” objects give this message, but it’s possible the parser is leaking here in such a way I can figure out which objects are important and which are not. That is, trying to TURN COBWEBS gives a message of O.K. while TURN BED has the odd DONT SEE IT which might imply the cobwebs are important but the bed is not.
To the west of the hallway there’s a crystal ball…
…where LOOKing at it shows the small key (THERE IS A SMALL KEY INSIDE). However, you can’t get it (DONT SEE IT). In other circumstances I’d call that message a bug, but the layer of enigma makes it work. Trying to break the ball is unhelpful…
BREAKS INTO TINY PIECES
…so let’s try EAST of the hallway instead, with a bathroom that has a SINK, STOOL, and MIRROR.
The mirror and stool are both portable, and I assume we can fill something with water from the sink later (like Troll Hole). There is nothing behind the mirror, unlike Troll Hole.
The stool can go downstairs and be used to reach the cupboard in the kitchen. There is a match inside the cupboard which I haven’t used yet, so let’s go north of the hallway to a MASTER BEDROOM with a CANOPY BED. LOOKing notes there is something inside, and going in you find a DAGGER.
It’s a structural dagger! Taking the dagger causes the bed to collapse, and if you’re holding the pipe it lets you survive.
In a game design sense it is likely the player will have found the pipe by now, but it’s possible they won’t be holding it on their current loop through the game.
The collapse reveals a new exit, to an attic with “2 mouse holes”, “passage”, “cat”, “witch”, and “skull”, as well as a passage the witch prevents the player from entering.
The mouse holes are described as being across from each other, the cat is described as mean, and the witch is described as ugly. I tried bringing the mirror in just in case the witch’s ugliness was somehow “magical” but no luck.
One more thing! The stool works to get a match from the high cupboard, but it’s also useful with the ringing cord. If you take the dagger over to the cord you can try to CUT it and get a SHORT ROPE.
Trying to TIE ROPE after gets the message it is too short; the game here is broken. If you take the stool from earlier, drop it, and stand on it before cutting the cord, the result is now a ROPE (rather than a SHORT ROPE) evading the problem.
This feels much denser to describe than is typical for a game this size; the style here has not only any object potentially come into play (multiple times) but the possibility of using an item wrong (so while playing I have to keep track of items from the past and not just what I happen to be holding). There is no walkthrough or video available of this game and even Gus Brasil (who defeated Troll Hole before me) hasn’t been able to beat this game. I’ll take any suggestions people have!
Renga in Blue 