Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

I’ve finished the game, and you’ll need to have read my previous post to make sense of this one.

Before I get back into the game proper, I’d like to do a side trip into history, as this game (and the Softside adventures in general) relate to something interesting about the history of “public domain” distribution companies and preservation as a whole. With that in mind let’s visit the retailer Currys (“Britain’s Electrical Specialists”) before they were bought by Dixons in 1983–

(Ad allegedly from 1980 according to the channel. Does anyone know what is up with UK stores and their lack of apostrophes?)

In 1982, Les Ellingham was a special project manager at Currys, and had the task to launch selling Atari 8-bit computers. Ellingham proposed starting a user’s group in order to more easily show off the Ataris, and got space in a pub in an upstairs room. This was the genesis of BUG (the Birmingham Users’ Group).

The first night — advertised on posters — ended up having a “massive turnout”, and based on the success of the group, they started also producing a newsletter (edited by Ellingham).

From Atari Input/Output Magazine issue 4, November 1983.

The founder himself, writing in Input/Output:

The main objective is to encourage Atari owners in this country to begin writing their own programs, but for those of you who are not as yet ready there are plenty of reviews and hints, and tips for beginners. The magazine started in conjunction with the Birmingham User Group, but is now produced independently although several BUG members contribute material. It has grown quite quickly and many people see it as the UK equivalent to ANALOG magazine.

Page 6 had a strong focus on adventures, trying to keep up a list of every Atari adventure game ever made, and issue 10 (July/August 1984) was a “special issue” devoted solely to the game genre.

Like many Users’ Groups from the 80s, they had a library of public domain software, and unlike many Users’ Groups from the 80s, the entire library is online. Disk #82 (Super Adventures 6) includes both Robin Hood and The Mouse That Ate Chicago (for Atari, of course). The games aren’t technically public domain in the legal sense, being copyrighted by Softside, but if a game showed up in a magazine disk, it seemed to be fair game for any distributors. For those of us delving into gaming history, that’s not necessarily a bad thing: I get the impression that the BUG specifically might be the reason we have a complete Atari collection for the Softside Adventure of the Month games (whereas for TRS-80, for instance, we only have a small selection); one of the early games in the series (I think Alien Adventure?) I only found on a Page 6 disk.

One practical upshot is that when Dale Dobson ran through the complete series, he played the Atari versions which were the only ones readily available. The other upshot is that while Robin Hood had a bug for Atari not present in the Apple, the reverse seems to be true here.

The mice were supposed to be wandering about more than they were (Sam in particular can be lethal), but for some reason their routine was broken. I switched over to Atari and was able to finish the game.

First, a detail I missed that is purely for story. The mountain that was too steep to climb has a cave, and you can enter it to see what happened to Hans and the Professor.

Second, something I had attempted in the Apple version which worked, except (I think) I had the emulator speed too high. If you go to the river where the fight happened and try to GO RIVER, there’s a message…

GASP…PANT…CHOKE

…which made me think I just couldn’t swim. There had briefly flashed on the screen another room, wherein our intrepid mouse-slayer had gone to the bottom of the river.

You need to HOLD BREATH in order to do this. Fortunately, this maneuver is repeated in other games so I puzzled it out quickly. The same command shows up in The Institute, Secret Kingdom, Savage Island (both parts) and Nuclear Sub.

It immediately occurred to me — especially given the CAT BURGALAR reference when trying to enter a house — that I needed some milk. The grocery store was still open and obliged, and I was able to drop the saucer and use POUR BOTTLE to get a saucer with milk. I tried taking it to the front of the (still-closed) pet store but no cats were being attracted.

Back when I was playing the Apple II version I wandered for many, many turns waiting for the stores to be open. Knowing Kirsch’s prior game had “drama timing” I figured that was the case here (that is, certain events aren’t based on X turns passing, but rather when the player reaches goal Y). As another example, even in the Atari version the mice don’t start wandering until you enter the powerline area.

I was unsure the first time around, but I think the way to read this scene is that Maja is the super-huge mouse, and the other three are simply regular-huge. That is, Maja is Godzilla, King of the Monsters, and can only be taken down by a similarly impressive monster.

Sam is the one that was hanging on Hancock Building (and is the only one of the four that killed me by hanging around). The other two are Puji and Fiji, neither who get descriptions.

To take down Puji, you shoot the powerlines while the critter is nearby. Trying to shoot powerlines at any other time simply has the shot miss, and yes, this doesn’t make any sense.

(Game design reflection moment: this game is supposed to be about discovering the weaknesses of the mice. It is perfectly fair to have only this one succumb to an electrical trap — maybe Sam and Fiji are are too alert and dodge, and Maja is so big he just ignores it. What isn’t fair is having the shot itself fail when the wrong mouse is in the room. In a way, this is trying to make the gameplay easier by preventing a softlock — probably the powerline-shooting would only work once. In a Lucasarts style game, this would be unacceptable. However, I honestly would rather have had the mouse-evasion-plus-softlock scene; I would have known to reload, and it would have given a strong clue I was on the wrong track, just with the wrong victim. A simple UNDO feature, not yet invented, would have evaded this being a real gameplay problem, or the game could even auto-UNDO, similar to failing at one of the grail traps in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The general design lesson is that preventing failure doesn’t always make life easier on the player.)

I was on the right track with cheese on the bridge (which never worked, likely because the cheese-hungry Fiji never goes that way); if you DROP CHEESE at the quicksand your player will automatically put it in as a trap.

This is the moment where the music store but not the pet store opens. The music store, just like the grocery store, is happy to give you something for free if they have it in stock.

(Game design reflection moment #2: drama time is often seen as the superior alternative to constant time advance, but drama time can be so cryptic to decipher that it only works in particular circumstances. Certainly Outer Wilds did fine with not only constant time advance but real time. So while it is a more “modern” approach — maybe not the best term since it shows up in 1981 — it isn’t automatically better.)

The music store was more cryptic than the grocery store to figure out but fortunately there aren’t that many instruments that are associated with mice. We need a flute.

With flute in hand you can attract Sam’s attention; as long as you’re in the room adjacent, PLAY FLUTE will cause him to come towards you. Given the bridge hadn’t been used yet, it was quickly clear what route I needed to take.

There’s still the giant, Maja, to contend with, but fortunately the pet store has decided to open. (I get what the author was after using drama time. Due to the plot beat which you’ll see shortly Maja’s defeat has to come last. If I was designing this I would have made the method of defeating the smaller mice available right away and had some specific connection to the pet store owner — maybe they’re too afraid to come until they’ve seen you’ve defeated 3 out of 4, and then they’re willing to let you in.)

I already had the milk-in-a-saucer so I already had a plan: take the cat to the enlarging machine, drop the saucer off to keep him from wandering, activate the machine, and … profit?

This could have been Kirsch’s best game so far. Everything is one connected puzzle. Nearly all the action the player takes is participatory comedy, which is rare even in modern games. The writing could be better but generally hits the right tone all the way through.

However, details matter enough in game design it was still a miss. The promise of being able to figure out the mouse vulnerabilities via observation was an illusion. The movement was random and a bit broken (and even in the Atari version, I had a dead mouse randomly appear somewhere it wasn’t supposed to be). The powerlines puzzle was broken in an effort to keep the wrong mouse from being fried.

At least the ending was comedic and satisfying at the same time.

Yes, I’m sure that won’t be a problem at all.

Coming up: the return of the warm, soothing glow of Apple II graphics.

Then Hans, holding a dripping cheeseburger in one hand, said, “This is a great moment, Professor!”

“Yes, Hans, we shall be able to enlarge anything we so choose. We shall be richer than kings and emperors. We shall own the world.”

We’ve reached August for Peter Kirsch’s next installment of the Softside Adventure of the Month. (Previously: Robin Hood Adventure.) I don’t have absolute confirmation this time the author is him (the author credit tends to be on the TRS-80 version, which nobody seems to have) but the structure is identical to his other games.

So many of our authors, tentatively stepping into the waters for the first time, crank out either a Crowther/Woods fantasy or a haunted house game. Kirsch, needing a game every month, is trying out all the genres. This is not just a giant monster story but also a comedy.

Hans carefully watches the Professor as he turns on the machine as cheese from his burger slowly drips onto the platform.

The two men stare silently at the hunk of carbon as it begins to glow.

Suddenly, unnoticed, a small mouse scampers onto the platform to the cheese…

Giant mice with catchy names have been unleashed and are destroying Tokyo Chicago, and our job is to stop them.

We’ve encountered August 1982 Softside before as it is an adventure-heavy issue, with Operation Sabotage being the cover game and Kirsch including an article about his adventure-writing process (which we looked at while exploring Magical Journey).

I have both Apple II and Atari versions but I stuck with Apple II since I had already set up a disk the same time as Robin Hood. I have a download at this link.

The narrative experiment here is to create a wide-open map where the mice essentially roam freely. You’re just supposed to set up … traps I think? Unfortunately, given I have yet to defeat any of the mice, so I don’t know if that’s true generally.

I can give the complete map (so far), the items I’ve gotten (which is not many) and the general behavior of the mice. A zoomed out look at the landscape first:

I’ve divided the map into four regions; the southeast (where you start) is the Laboratory, to the southwest is the Bridge, to the northeast are some Stores, and a powerline-laden road leads to Downtown in the northwest.

Before the action starts, your inventory has a wallet with $39.98.

The road you start on includes a “quicksand bog” which is so far the only place I’ve found you can die…

It’s a Kirsch game so it uses GO instead of ENTER. I’m still recovering after Sharpsoft Haunted House.

The laboratory is three rooms: east and west rooms with a MACHINE and a room in the middle with LASER-SHAPED RODS. The machine has a red RESET switch, a green #1 button, and a green #2 button; if you hit these in order the machine will theoretically work (if something is in the laser room that it can transform). I have managed to make something GIANT but I’ll show it off later.

Moving on to the Bridge area…

…there’s a small town to the south with houses you can’t enter.

These turn into SMASHED HOUSES later. Your JEEP incidentally gets the same treatment.

The Bridge that I’m using to name the region is given with an ominous weight limit…

…and a curious scene on the west side. I don’t know if this is meant as a joke or a hint. Knowing Kirsch it could be either.

You might think this is indicating with a bright klaxon that I’m supposed to get a mouse to follow me, and its enormous weight will drop it to its doom, but I haven’t gotten any of the critters to visibly follow me over to here yet, despite the smashed houses.

Hitting the northeastern area and the stores:

The hardware store, helpfully, has a high-powered rifle. It costs $39.99, and your wallet has $39.98, so you are one penny short. Cruel, cruel capitalism.

Fortunately, outside, there is a “young lady” who wants a “penny for your thoughts” and is being literal.

With the change added to our account we can obtain the rifle.

Two of the stores (the pet store and the music store) are closed with the owners “out to lunch”; the fourth store (a grocery store) is open, and the owner is the opposite of the hardware store owner and is giving away everything for free, as long as you say what it is and they have it in stock.

This is kind of like the storage room in Dog Star Adventure where you had to specify what you wanted, but with some comedy logic to it.

At the end of the line there’s a MOUNTAIN which is too steep to climb; I assume this comes into play later.

Now, to Downtown, and finally meeting the critters!

First off, at where the powerlines start, is MAJA.

I don’t know what the “small rodents” indicate; I do know this is the only mouse that wanders, although he sticks to the powerline area.

Chicago has more stores, but try to enter them and you get rebuffed by a gust of wind.

Satisfyingly, not long after both of these buildings become SMASHED versions (this happens offscreen). Wandering further there’s another mouse (SAM) wrecking havoc:

Weapons useless, just like King Kong. If you try to shoot MAJA you just miss.

I have seen either of the other two mice. I might being hearing one of them as I have been walking around with the message

SQUEAK…SQUEAK

sometimes appearing, although this may be connected to the fact that in the laboratory I created giant stinky cheese.

I haven’t been able to FEED MOUSE or tempt the monsters onto the bridge via dropping cheese in the middle or anything like that. I’ve honestly been having trouble communicating in general, with the only verbs working off my standard list being READ, DRINK, POUR, PRESS, PUT, PUSH, SHOOT, THINK, HOLD, PLAY, GIVE, and ENTER.

The machine incidentally does not work to create a giant rifle (even if you try to convert it before the cheese). I suspect it only works on particular types of matter.

That’s all I have. Despite the size of the map, a lot of the rooms are “filler” (YOU’RE IN DOWNTOWN CHICAGO, no description otherwise) and I suspect some of the geography will be leveraged in the puzzles as we try to lead mice in various ways to their doom. I’m happy to take any speculation people want to make on what to try next.