The Adventurers Guild

Written by Joe Pranevich

I think she’ll know.

Last week, we crossed the halfway mark in Dungeon by returning sixteen treasures to the trophy case. We whitewater rafted, smooshed a piece of coal into a diamond, dug for buried treasure, and even drained a reservoir to discover long-hidden pirate booty. More importantly, we’ve also explored the whole world of Dungeon: there are no more areas except those blocked by puzzles. Every exit on my map has been followed and documented! To progress deeper into the maze, I have to invest some time into solving the remaining puzzles. Last week also reminded me that I can’t get complacent: we found stacks of money in the Bank of Zork, an area that I was sure I conquered on the first day. There could be more treasures hidden in areas that already “solved”.

I am also reaching a point in the game where I am solving the puzzles more slowly and with more frustration. This post accounts for more than ten hours of playtime, almost as much as the previous three combined. I made some good progress (with one “Google accident”, more on that in a bit), but I might soon be reaching the end of what I can accomplish without help. Another theme this week is “parser weirdness”-- I may be exiting the polished portion of the game as nearly every solution involved some butchering of the English language. This week, my adventure started in Hell...

Back to the temple...

Descent into Hell

I’ve alluded to this puzzle before but never really solved it “for real”: the entrance to Hades. This is the area near the temple where we found evil spirits and a helpful sign that urged me to “Abandon Hope”. I thought I remembered this puzzle from Zork I; I’m pretty sure that it entailed fetching the bell, book, and candle from the temple and using each one in sequence. Since that didn’t work, I gave up for a while but eventually found the solution in one word: “exorcism”. Grammatically correct equivalents such as “do exorcism” or “exorcise spirits” do not work, you have to use the bare noun. Once performed, the spirits depart and the path is clear.

The next room, the “Tomb of the Unknown Implementer”, smashes the fourth wall. Not only do we find the decapitated heads of the four developers but also strange real life items such as empty Coke bottles, stacks of faded line-printer output, and sign that says “Feel Free”. A hollow voice rings out, “That’s not a bug, it’s a feature!” For all the humor, the room is deadly; even examining the heads kills you. According to an engraving on the crypt, the Implementers lost their heads due to “amazing untastefulness” by the “keeper of the dungeon”. Is this the first reference to a goal for the game? Will we be meeting the “keeper”?

1970s bottles. “Coke adds life”.

Unfortunately, I cannot find anything else to do here and neither the Coke bottles nor the printouts solve any puzzle that I am working on. All attempts to interact with the heads or the crypt results in death. I even try explosives! I’ll have to come back later.

To Kill A Thief

Without too many good options, I turn my attention back to the cyclops in the center of the maze. He’s guarding a staircase but always killed us quickly when we approached before. I pacified him briefly by feeding him the hot pepper sandwich from the house, but then he demanded a drink that I could never provide. Some commenters suggested that I should be searching for wine, but it turns out that I was just approaching the problem in a face-palming way. What did I forget to do? I forgot to open the bottle! Once you do that, we can give him a drink and he falls asleep. Problem solved.

Just upstairs, we discover that the cyclops was guarding the Thief’s treasure room, currently containing the golden sarcophagus and a chalice. I last saw the former in the Egyptian room and have no idea how it ended up here. Before I can act, the Thief shows up and all the treasures poof away. He attacks, but I bravely run east to see what else is here.

The heart of the maze?

I discover two new dead ends:

The first room has a note from the Thief and a hole in the floor. The note tells me that there is no treasure below-- but do you trust a thief?-- and that if I go down I will be trapped. I jump down the hole and learn that the Thief was telling the truth about both. The only escape is restoring.
South of there is an room with a locked steel door. Is this the path to the endgame? The keys don’t work here so I’ll have to keep looking for a way to open it.

With nothing else here, I steel myself and face the Thief in one-on-one combat, expecting to lose. I do! But before I die, I land a couple of good hits on him which is encouraging. There might be a less violent solution, but I fight him, die, and restore six times before I get lucky enough to win. The coffin and chalice reappear and I have no difficulty getting them both back to the trophy case. Is it a bug that I picked up the coffin this way? Am I going to be stuck because of it? With the Thief out of the way, I also complete mapping the maze. I find twenty-two rooms total and three exits: the cyclops, grate, and troll rooms, but nothing new.

Taking the Elevator

With the wind at my back, the next puzzle I take on is the giant’s well. This is the bucket that I found after the Riddle Room with the strange etchings that I had been unable to decode. But now that I have solved both the cyclops and the river puzzles, I discover that I have all of the pieces to win.

Dungeon’s vehicle words are obscure enough that we are given a helpful note the first time we use the raft: board, disembark, launch, etc. I had tried to climb into the bucket before with “enter bucket” when I actually need to “board bucket”. I did warn you about the parser issues! Once inside, I also opened the bottle of water and poured it into the inside of the bucket. Whatever magic that powers it must have been satisfied because it takes us to a new room. We did it!

The upper room also had an intact version of the etching. When you see it now, it makes sense, but I do not think this is “solvable” as a clue:

Not useful as a puzzle clue.

Leaving the bucket does not take me to a “giant” themed area as I suspected, but rather to two distinct zones: a “Wonderland” area patterned off the Mad Hatter’s tea party and a science-fiction area with mechanical noises and a voice-controlled robot. I’ll touch on them individually.

Wonderland

The main room of the Wonderland area consists of a table set for a tea party, including for varieties of cake: one labeled “EAT ME” plus three plain ones with orange, red, and blue icing. There’s a hole just to the east that is too small to climb into; do you see where this puzzle is going?

Our first problem though has nothing to do with the puzzle and everything to do with the parser. The labeled cake is just called this:

> There is a piece of cake where with the words "EAT ME" on it.

Yes, the game has a typo (“where” should be “here"), but that’s not the sin. The issue is that there is no way to manipulate this piece. You can’t say “eat cake” because there are three other types of cake here and the parser doesn’t know which one you mean. All the others can be addressed by color, but “eat me cake” is not recognized. I even try with quotes! We can pick it up using “all”, but then we have the same problem with all of the cakes in my inventory. It takes a lot of stupid trial and error to find that you can call it the “eatme cake” (with no space) and it works. It’s a game-breaking bug.

Let them eat cake!

Once I figure that out, I gobble each of the cakes to see what they do:

Orange - We eat it and explode. Boom!
Red - No immediate result.
Blue - We grow bigger and are crushed by the ceiling.
“Eat Me” - We become small enough to pass through the hole to the east.

I’m too peeved about the parser to mention that in the original book, the “EAT ME” cake was the one that made you larger, not smaller.

I eat the correct cake and run off to find the hidden room half-filled with sewage. The description hints that there may be something beneath the pool, but I’m briefly drawn to a small flask with a skull and crossbones on it. We can pick it up, but opening it is immediately fatal. Is it a weapon? I try everything from sticks to guano before discovering that the solution was right here: the red cake. Throwing it in the sewage dries it up to reveal a Tin of Spices. I have no problem getting that back to the trophy case, but I can’t help but to notice that I’m still carrying the orange cake, the poison, and another piece of the red cake. Am I missing a separate puzzle here or will these come in handy later?

Wouldn’t you like to be a pepper, too?

You, Robot

Just to the north, we find a robot and some instructions. (In yet another parser glitch, the “piece of paper” can only be referred to as a “piece” rather than “paper”.) The robot is so easy that an adventurer with a broken parser could use it! All it takes is to write, “tell robot” then a comma and the command we want to execute. It’s simple. This robot is brought to us both by Frobozz Magic Robot Company and “MIT Tech”. I assume that the latter is further fourth-wall breaking, unless there is an MIT in the Great Underground Empire.

The next room contains an obvious robot-puzzle: a high-voltage control panel with three buttons. Touching any of them results in immediate electrocution, but we can command the robot to do the pushing. Two of the buttons, a square one and a round one, cause a whirring noise to increase or decrease respectively. Pushing the third, a triangle, causes a dull thump in the distance. I explore to see where the thump came from but I do not get far before realizing that the room where we found the robot is now magnetized just like the Round Room! I backtrack all the way to the real Round Room to discover that a steel cage has fallen from the ceiling and the room is no longer magnetized. Opening the cage reveals a violin which I can return to the trophy case. Unfortunately, my theory from last post about the room having eight exits turns out to be false. Two of the exits, north and south, both lead to toward the magic well area. I’m disappointed because that would have been a beautiful puzzle, but perhaps I was over-thinking it.

The final room of this section contains a crystal sphere protected by the Frobozz Magic Alarm Company. If I try to take the sphere, a cage crashes down and the room fills with poisoned gas until I’m dead. If I have the robot take the sphere, the cage smashes it and the sphere at the same time. It takes trial and error, but when I have the robot in the same room when the cage falls, it can lift the cage and free me. That lets me grab the sphere (and the cage) and get out of the room before the poisoned gas does its thing. Another treasure and I’m done with this area for now.

One note spelled L-I-T-E.

The Canary

After doing so well plowing through puzzles and parser errors, this is where I fell off the track. I started researching Zork I in anticipation of beating this game, but I stumbled on a post that mentioned the canary puzzle and just like that the memories came flooding back. The golden egg wasn’t the treasure; there’s something inside!

Once I remembered that, I also remembered that only the Thief is able to open the egg without breaking it. Since I killed him already, I had to restore back a ways to give it to him. After that, we can now find a clockwork canary hidden away in his treasure room! I repeat all of the other puzzles again, but I then remember that this isn’t the end of the canary puzzle either. The details are fuzzy so I take the canary just about everywhere-- I was particularly excited in the coal mine-- but none of those unlocks the treasure I vaguely remember getting before. Finally I realize that you can wind him up when you hear the birdsong in the forest, netting us a golden bauble. Not a bad catch, but I’m disappointed for the accidental cheat. I doubt I could have solved this on my own, but memory is a powerful thing.

Who doesn’t like rainbows?

Bits and Pieces

During the course of my solving these puzzles, I also ran into a few more things of note:

If I “pray” at the altar in the temple, I am transported to the forest. I wish I had known that two posts ago! I spent far too much time climbing that chimney.
In addition to the river, I can use the boat to cross the filled reservoir and even paddle upstream for an alternate route to “Stream View”. We cannot use the boat on the river after the falls. Neither of these seems to help in any way.
I vaguely remembered that I needed to wave something to make the rainbow solid so at one point I waved every item in my inventory. To my shock, the pointy stick gives you a “Very good.” message when you do that. I have no idea what that means, but waving the pointy stick near the rainbow allows me to cross and pick up the requisite pot of gold. Any idea how a piece of pointed wood became so powerful?
I also remember that there was a second solution to the cyclops puzzle: if you say “odysseus”, he runs away straight through a wall in classic Looney Tunes style. That hole leads to the white house, once again completely screwing with my sense of place in this game. This puzzle seems to have no foreshadowing and I’m still not sure if it was intended as a real solution or just a debugging aid. I guess we’ll never know.
I use the gunk everywhere. I can use it to fix the leak in the dam when I push the wrong button but find nothing else of note.

With that, I am going to end this week with a huge surprise: my score is 476 points and now I’m a “Winner!”. Does that mean I can go to the endgame? I can’t wait to find out. This game is still a lot of fun, but it’s just starting to overstay its welcome.

Before I go, one small request for help: I lost my rope. I left it tied to the railing above the torch room and the Thief nabbed it at some point, probably hundreds of points ago. I have mapped nearly 150 rooms so far and re-explored them all, but to no avail. I cannot find the rope anywhere. Can someone please give me a hint: will I need the rope again before the end of the game or do I need to start over?

Treasures Found: 23 (Egg, Painting, Portrait, Pearl Necklace, Coins, Platinum Bar, Grail, Sapphire Bracelet, Jade Figurine, Crystal Trident, Ivory Torch, Stack of Zorkmids, Emerald, Diamond, Statue, Gold Coffin, Chalice, Fancy Violin, Crystal Sphere, Tin of Spices, Clockwork Canary, Glass Bauble, Pot of Gold)

Time played: 10 hr 50 min
Total time: 24 hr 30 min

Written by Deimar

First, they took his girlfriend and put her behind bars guarded by a genie and a man with a passion for obscure 50’s TV series. Then, he fell unconscious and his girlfriend had to wander around a stupidly large garden, a planet with killer robot and a man with a scarf and a mansion full of very suspicious people just to discover there never was anything to discover. Now the troubled couple is back for their final chapter. With a vengeance. May I present to you… Hugo III: Jungle of Doom!!

Adventure!! Cliches!! A three-headed monkey!! Come and see! Come and see!

Everything that has a beginning, has an end. And this is the end of the road for the Hugo trilogy. Afterwards, there are only first person shooters and jigsaws. But this game here represents the result of three adventure games developed almost back to back. The magnum opus of an artist who had time to refine its work. If you thought this and the previous paragraph are just here because after three games there is not much else to be said about the game or the designer, you are absolutely right.

There is one thing I should say about this game however. There is one very noticeable change that put it apart from its predecessors. David P. Gray decided to no longer be a one-man orchestra. He got ahold of a computer graphic artists, Gary Sirois, to make the images for the game. And boy does it look nicer. Just looking at the screenshots it is obvious the graphics are better. I know it is not such a stretch, but not having to look at is a welcome change. Even better, I have another reason to love the guy: he also worked as graphic artist for God of Thunder, another shareware game that I actually loved when I was younger.

Close, but sadly not this one

Freed from the chains of graphic design, Mr. Gray had the opportunity to concentrate more on the plot, mechanics and puzzle design. The former doesn’t seem to be that much different from the previous games just by looking at its beginning. Penelope and Hugo are going back to the US from England, where the plot of Hugo 2 erm… occurred (for the sake of this introduction let’s just roll with that statement), when they are struck by a magnetic storm. This makes their plane lose its course and crash in the middle of the Amazonian jungle. If that wasn’t enough, almost immediately after crashing Penelope is bitten by a gargantuan spider and starts to die from poisoning. Lucky for Hugo, a native appears to tend her injuries and advises Hugo to go searching for some kind of magic water that can heal her. Oh, homeopathy, you have done so much damage through the years...

There are two complementary explanations of why this change of setting and mood for the saga, extracted from these interviews (1) (2). The first one is that Mr. Gray tried to change the theme between games. With the first one being about a disappearance in a house full of monsters and the second one being a about a disappearance in a house full of English monsters. I mean, the first one being an horror game, the second a mystery one and this last one being a straight adventure. Having established that there was a need to change the setting, Mr. Gray decided that a jungle was the place, as Mr. Sirois apparently was very good at drawing trees. That may or may not be a joke from Mr. Gray, but I will let you decide for yourselves.

The trees are very nice. The spider or Penelope are not, but the trees are nice

Regarding the technical work, there are some improvements on the engine. The first one is the existence of a Turbo mode which accelerates the game, allowing faster transportation and a lot of frustration if there is any section like crossing the bridge or the venus flytrap maze from the previous game and somehow I forget to turn the mode off. There is also a in-game hint system implemented, although the manual doesn’t specify how to access it and just merely states its existence (the first rule of the in-game hint system is that nobody talks about the in-game hint system). And Hugo’s size now scales depending on the distance from the camera. All of these seem like nice additions to the engine. They are not something you need, but it is nice to have if they are there.

And finally, puzzle design is what we will be checking on following post. I know, I know. There could be some kind of plot beyond what I have just stated above. I think I will keep my hopes down for the moment. That way the surprise can be more gratifying. Will Hugo 3 be the worst game of 1992 (I am feeling guilty for saying so, as it doesn’t seem fair to compare it to games from more professional, and crowded, companies)? Will there be a twist where the native girl turns out to be a spider? Will I quit the game in rage and blow my computer off out of frustration? We shall see in following chapters of… Hugo III: Jungle of Doom.

I don’t think we have the same concept of “3-D”

PS: As usual, I will be playing the DOS version using DOSBOX.

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There's a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no CAPs will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. As this is an introduction post, it's an opportunity for readers to bet 10 CAPs (only if they already have them) that I won't be able to solve a puzzle without putting in an official Request for Assistance: remember to use ROT13 for betting. If you get it right, you will be rewarded with 50 CAPs in return. It's also your chance to predict what the final rating will be for the game. Voters can predict whatever score they want, regardless of whether someone else has already chosen it. All correct (or nearest) votes will go into a draw.

Written by Joe Pranevich

Romulans!

Happy Halloween! Last episode, we defeated a group of space pirates that had seized a Federation ship. So far, the game appears to have a set pattern as both missions started with a space battle before segueing into a traditional adventure. No items were kept between episodes; they seem standalone so far. I am frustrated that this is my second episodic game in a row, but I can appreciate some designers may prefer that route. This game forces us to play the episodes in order so I still hope that there will be plot progression.

An admiral delivers our orders: Romulans have raided across the neutral zone to attack a station, ARK-7. Our job is to defuse the situation. A planet, then a ship, and now a station? At least we are getting a variety of locations! I find our destination in the copy protection map and emerge from warp to be greeted by a de-cloaking Romulan ship. The captain claims that the Federation is engaging in treachery and that they know of our plans. What plans? Before I can ask, they attack and the episode begins!

So many blinking lights...

Let’s pause here for a moment: I promised a deeper look at the the bridge portions of the game and now seems like a good time to deliver. With only two episodes under my belt, I haven’t delved into all of the systems yet but I can at least tell you what the buttons do. We have two related interfaces: keyboard/mouse for combat and an icon-driven interface for exploration. Many actions can be done in both, but some are only applicable in one or the other.

When it comes to combat, the mouse is the main tool. It’s used for aiming and steering; you have to steer towards the targeting reticule, no strafing. The left button fires phasers while the right fires photon torpedos. You can also use the numeric keypad to steer and use “spacebar” and “enter” instead of mouse buttons, but I did not experiment with this. Before combat begins, you also need to enable weapons (“W” or under Chekhov’s menu) and shields (“S” or under Sulu’s menu) or else it will go very quickly.

As we zoom around and try to hit things, we can also pay attention to a number of readouts:

The damage report screens (“system monitor” in the manual) show you what damage the Enterprise has experienced and the strength of her shields. When in combat you can press “A” to toggle “Target Analysis” mode which shows damage on your adversary. I check this every few seconds to catch when I need Scotty to repair something.
The phaser and torpedo charge graphs show how soon we can shoot again: when the bars are full, fire! This hasn’t been an issue so far, but I believe that damage can cause it to fill more slowly.
The energy level meter has stayed full for me so far but the manual says that the shields and weapons draw from it. We can toggle “Emergency Power” with “E” (or under Scotty’s menu) for a temporary boost.
The speed meter is self-explanatory. We can travel from slowest (“1”) to fastest (“0”) or press tilde for reverse (“`”).
The main viewscreen is where the action is and will gradually degrade to static with damage. We can increase or decrease magnification with “<” and “>”, but I haven’t experimented with it. You can go full screen with “V”.
The scanner tells you your position relative to the enemy, sort of. I just try to turn toward the red dot.

Combat for me consists of flying around at medium speed then throttle back to pivot to the enemy. When he’s on screen, I try to aim just ahead of him and fire like crazy. If the enemy comes straight at me, I speed up and try to turn away; concentrated fire from the AI is deadly. Even if the enemy is damaged, I’m not good enough to aim at the weak part so I just keep firing and hope for the best. It’s not good strategy, but it got me this far. If we are damaged, Scotty can repair one system at a time but you can change his orders if something else becomes a priority. Damage to each part affects the ship differently: shields are the first line of defense, damaged weapons can no longer fire, etc. If the hull is damaged, it is time to panic.

In addition to being an unnecessary distraction from the adventure, the combat sections are also very unlike Star Trek. The Enterprise is a capital ship, roughly similar to battleship or destroyer. It moves slow but has incredible firepower. These combat sections are dogfighting, more akin to Wing Commander than Star Trek. There have been epic space battles in Star Trek but rarely like what is depicted here.

So many icons! Time for a pop quiz?

We do not do much exploration on the bridge, but there are some commands which are not relevant to combat:

Sulu can orbit (“O”) the ship around a nearby planet.
Chekhov can warp to another location (“N”).
Spock can be asked for advice (“T”) or can interrogate the library computer (“C”).
Uhura can communicate with nearby ships or planets (“U”).
Kirk (“K”) can be used to access the Captain’s Log (summarizing your score), the transporter to beam to a planet or ship, and the save/restore functions.

Pop Quiz!

Even knowing all of the things we can do, I still find the interface confusing. Here’s a test to see if it is just me: for a few bonus CAPs, I have scrambled all of the interface icons into the image above. How many of them can you name from what I’ve told you so far? Real players also have to remember which icons are accessed through which member of the bridge crew. I will reveal the answers next week! This isn’t a terrible interface, but it isn’t well-designed either. Why couldn’t all the bridge functions just be available in one icon bar?

Birds… in… space!

Where Were We?

Right! I had just been attacked by a Romulan ship. Unlike previous encounters, our enemy can cloak this time to disappear from both the scanner and view screen. Since he has to decloak to fire, I do not have too much difficulty. I just fly around when he disappears and lower speed to pivot as soon as he pops up again. When the enemy is defeated, the crew initiate self-destruct instead of allowing themselves to be captured.

As soon as the dust settles, I research ARK-7 in the library computer. It’s a scientific station with a mission to study the origins of life, led by a very familiar person in Star Trek lore: Dr. Carol Marcus! I’ll talk more about this in the trivia but “wow”. She was a character first introduced in Star Trek II as a former love-interest of Kirk’s and she secretly bore his child. I did not expect this game to “go there”, especially since it takes place prior to the movies. It appears that they accidentally created a plague deadly to Romulans but not other life-forms. I have Uhura open a channel and the Romulan captain, Ardea Preax, answers. He accuses the Federation of making a “genocide factory” and that more Romulans will be crossing the neutral zone soon to destroy the bioweapon. We’d better figure out what is going on quickly!

We approach the station.

Great view! Hope they don’t kill us.

Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and a redshirt beam over to the station’s bridge. Our redshirt this time is named Lt. Ferris and he doesn’t seem to like Romulans. The only thing accessible from here is the main computer. I have Spock search it for more information and he discovers a log from Dr. Marcus. She explains that they created the “oroborus virus” by mistake and are cleaning up the mess by destroying it and all information about it. One more important detail: it affects both Romulans and Vulcans! Since we brought Spock, that might be a bit of a problem. I have McCoy search as well and he learns that the plague works very fast. He suggests we examine how the virus works under different gasses and that the necessary equipment is already on the station. That sounds like a hint!

What a big gun you have!

The part of the station that we can access is pretty small, just four rooms. Rather than narrating my way through them, it’s simpler just to tell you what’s in each. The room just to the right of the bridge is the research lab. That contains:

A “Basic Compound Distillator”. It will separate something into its component parts although McCoy stops us from experimenting with any of our current items.
A “Hawking Neutrino Accelerator”. Other than looking like a raygun, it doesn’t seem to be pertinent.
A refrigerator holding samples of the plague virus in little petri dishes. That seems safe.
An unnamed device with a compartment and a nozzle attachment. It’s for “rapid reproduction of virus cultures in the presence of an anti-agent”. I can put some of the virus in the compartment but do not have anything that fits the nozzle yet.
A ladder down to deeper areas of the station. Unfortunately, Romulans are guarding the ladder from below and shoot anyone who gets close.

Anyone else think that resembles the lab from “The Fly”?

The room to the north of the bridge and northwest from the research lab is the “science lab”. How is “science” different than “research”? I have no idea. This room contains:

A “synthesis chamber”. This machine takes two gas canisters (right now, Oxygen and Hydrogen) and mixes them with a third solid that can be placed in a little door to the left. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to work right now.
An “ARDAK 1000” molecular replicator. Unfortunately, Dr. McCoy says it will take hours to get it working-- hours that we do not have.
A storage closet that contains an anti-gravity unit for moving heavy things around. We pocket that, although I’m not sure how Kirk has pockets big enough.

Scotty would love this!

The last room is the engine room, north of the main research lab. That contains:

A “Cochrane-500 Fusion Drive”, over a century old and still functioning normally. I suppose you do not need much in the way of engines on a stationary object.
A wrench on the floor which we pick up immediately.
A storage closet containing a canister of Nitrogen. I use the anti-gravity device on the canister of Nitrogen to carry it.

Unfortunately, in all of this exploring, Spock is getting sick. Every few minutes, he stops to cough. Will it kill him? Or just an annoyance? I have no idea. I contact Uhura on the communicator but she tells me that we have to stay on the station until the situation is resolved, no matter what.

From here, I can start to solve some of the puzzles. I use the wrench on the gas feed in the science lab to start the gas. Doing some simple experimentation, I find that I can create a bottle of water when I mix Hydrogen and Oxygen but only get “wet grey goo” when I add the virus sample. I also swap the Nitrogen with the others to try different combinations. No matter what I mix the virus sample with, all I get is goo, but Nitrogen and Oxygen combined creates a container of Nitrous Oxide, better known as “laughing gas”. All this experimentation too too long however and Spock dies of the disease-- there was a time limit after all. I restore and do the whole section again more quickly.

Hearing William Shatner sing this would be fantastic...

Once I have the laughing gas, I give it to Spock to see if it cures him, but all I succeed in doing is letting it loose in the air. A few moments later and incessantly thereafter, Kirk and McCoy pause to share a joke, a song, or really anything else. It’s silly, but I get a kick out of it. Spock wants none of it, of course; he’s just a stick-in-the-mud. Unfortunately, I have to hear a LOT of these jokes because I get stuck here and have to re-explore everything several times to figure out what I am missing: there is more to the computer on the bridge.

If you re-examine the computer after getting out all of Dr. Marcus’s logs, you can browse the data files. We find entries on laughing gas, a gas called “Tantalum bi-lithium thalo-dihydroxide” (abbreviated TLTDH), and ammonia (NH3). TLTDH can be cooked up from electrical insulation and works like laughing gas on Romulans and Vulcans. I’m pretty sure that I already mixed Nitrogen and Hydrogen, but the TLTDH gas seems promising. I search the station and find an access panel that I missed that contains electrical insulation bits. I cook them up in the distiller to create some “polybendylcarbonate” which I then mix with Oxygen and Nitrogen to create the gas! Unfortunately, using it on Spock only causes him to crack bad jokes too, it doesn’t cure him of the disease.

I completely forgot about the anti-agent device! This was the machine in the main lab that had the nozzle on one side and a slot where we could put the virus cultures on the other. I try that with the water, the laughing gas, and the TLTDH but none of them show a positive response in the virus sample. What am I missing?

This station is not handicapped-accessible.

I’m stuck again so I re-explore everywhere and find one surprise: the Romulans are no longer shooting at us! In fact, I climb down the ladder to discover that they are all near-death. They must be suffering just like Spock! I restore and verify that this must be on a timer since a few minutes prior, they were still shooting. It also makes sense that they would collapse before Spock does since he arrived later. Other than a large door marked “Restricted”, there is nothing to do there. I enter the door.

Always with the handcuffs...

In the final room, I discover Dr. Marcus and her team tied up, plus one unconscious Romulan. I free her and explore the room, but there isn’t too much to say. They drop little dialog hints, but there’s a prototype “Genesis” device (from Star Trek II) in the room so I wouldn’t say that they are being very subtle about the connections. Carol is glad to see that Kirk is her rescuer, but they keep the references subdued. Even with the new area discovered, there’s nothing obvious for me to do and Spock dies again. I restore. I need to focus on curing the disease.

On my next go-around, I find that I can mix Nitrogen and Hydrogen to make Ammonia after all! I have no idea why it didn’t work before. Did I make a mistake? Does it only work after I read about it in the library computer? I don’t know. I use that on the anti-agent machine in the other room and that was the trick! Ammonia affects the virus so it creates for us a small sample cure and hints that we need to create more of it. I go to the science lab and try mixing it with all sorts of gas combinations. Most of them only product grey goo, but Nitrogen and Hydrogen work to give me a syringe of cure. We are almost done!

And you have pointy ears.

I inject Spock with the cure and he’s fine now, but I have a new problem: I can’t get down to rescue Dr. Marcus because the Romulans aren’t near-death yet. I could wait, but there must be a better solution. I search the station and this time find a vent in the engine room that I didn’t poke at earlier. I drop my can of TLTDH down the chute and hear the distant sound of laughter. By the time I make it down the ladder, all of the Romulans are asleep. I have McCoy inject each of them with the cure as we go past then rescue Dr. Marcus. When I inject the final Romulan in her room, I discover that he is the captain that I spoke to on the viewscreen earlier. We get some dialog options again: I can either say that the Romulans were honorable, blame the whole thing on Dr. Marcus, or chase them off the station. I take the nice approach and he takes it very well. In fact, the Romulan captain even awards me the “Romulan Eagle of Valor” which will look very nice next to all my Starfleet commendations! The mission is finally at an end and we can beam out.

What did I miss this time?

We have our light banter-- Kirk muses whether he will ever see Dr. Marcus again-- and the admiral gives us our score: only 95% this time, but still three commendation points. I’m not sure what I missed, but it could have been due to all of the saving and reloading. I probably missed a clue in the final playthrough that I received on a different life. This was a fun episode, but I didn’t expect a full-blown prequel to Star Trek II. Star Trek has done the “have to find a cure quickly” storyline so many times, but this one was still pretty fun. I especially enjoyed the laughing gas jokes. I don’t think it comes off in my write-up very much, but the stream of banter was consistently well-done. Onward to the next one!

Hint, hint.

Star Trek Trivia

The Bird-of-Prey design for the Romulan ships are similar to those used on “The Balance of Terror” and “The Deadly Years”. The Romulans switched to Klingon designs for later seasons of TOS, but these are the original versions. These captains may not have been lucky enough to get the new battleships yet. The Romulan practice of self-destructing instead of surrendering also came from the former.
Lt. Ferris might be related or a reference to Galactic High Commissioner Ferris (“The Galileo Seven”). That adventure also had the Enterprise rushing to cure a plague.
The Cochran-500 Fusion Drive was named for Zefram Cochran, the inventor of the warp drive. Kirk ran into him in “Metamorphosis”, but modern Trek viewers will know him better from his role in the film, First Contact.
After flirting with it last episode, this one goes deep into movie-territory by introducing Carol Marcus and hinting at her work on the “Genesis” device. This episode only winks at her relationship with Kirk, unless I missed some dialog. David, their son, would be seven at this point but wasn’t mentioned.
“Jolan-Tru”, the Romulan salutation used by the captain, was first introduced in the TNG episode Unification. That episode is famous for bringing now-Ambassador Spock into the TNG era.

Up next: A comedy?

Time played: 3 hr 10 min
Total time: 7 hr 35 min

Written by Joe Pranevich

Pushing against the wall. Literally.

Welcome back! Last week, I became a “Winner!” in Dungeon, at least according to the score, but am not quite at the end yet. I have played for more than 24 hours and suspect that I could give it a fair rating, but a victory seems hollow while there are still puzzles to solve and a mysterious “endgame” to find. I’m pumped! Unfortunately, I’m also pretty stuck. This post will bring you up to speed on the final puzzle that I managed to solve, where I am with several puzzles that I have not, and request your assistance for how I move forward. I hope I need only a nudge or two to drive this first game in my marathon to its conclusion.

As soon as I got my “winning” score last week, I searched all of the map again to see if any new areas had opened up. I vaguely remember that something did when I beat Zork I two decades ago, but I do not recall where and I have no idea if Dungeon bases that off the score or the number of treasures in the case. In the end, I gave up and looked at the various puzzles that I had left. I suspected that there was treasure in the dead-end pit room after the Thief’s den, if only because he told us that there was none. Last time, I became trapped and had to restore, but this time I thought of something new: pushing the wall. It gave way and opened up a brand new area!

Map of the sliding puzzle maze.

With the wall pushed out of the way, I find myself in a strange little area. The “maze”, if we can call it that, consists of sandstone and marble walls arranged in a grid. We can push the sandstone ones, as long as there is nothing behind them, but the marble ones are fixed in place. It doesn’t take long to realize that I am in an oversized sliding tile puzzle. I map out the entire thing onto graph paper, carefully noting the original positions of every block that I move. It takes a couple of reloads to complete since we cannot “pull” any of the blocks back into place if we push them against a wall. Fortunately, all the rooms turn out to be square so this approach works well.

I discover a few things:

Our starting location is the only area to have a hole in the ceiling.
Two of the sandstone walls have ladders on one face, one west and the other east. Since neither of them are under holes, we cannot climb up, but it implies a potential objective.
Under one of the sandstone blocks (the one I labeled “S4”), I find a “gold card”, a pass to the Royal Zork Puzzle Museum. I do not know if this is where I am now or somewhere that I will need to find later. I push every block at least once to check for other things under them but to no avail.
In the south of the maze, I find a security door with a card slot. I can use the gold card to open the door, but the card is sucked inside in the process. Poking my head outside, I realize that it is the steel door near the thief’s room.

Even though I found the exit, I did not find the treasure that the thief had hinted at. The obvious solution was that I needed to use the ladders, but there were no holes other than the one that I came in through. Is the gold card the treasure? At first, I did not think there was any way to maneuver the ladders into a position where I could climb out of the original hole, but after sitting down with pen and paper and working it out like a logic puzzle, I found a solution! It takes twenty moves, but I am able to get the west-facing ladder in a spot where I can climb back out of the hole. I wish I had the talent and time to make a nice animated GIF, but at least you can see the end state:

Is there a simpler solution?

With that, I escape with the gold card and place it in the case. My new total is 501 points! I worry that I missed something with the east-facing ladder, but I can’t move it anywhere useful.

What I Have Left

Although I am stoked I made it as far as I did, with help from my twenty-year old memories of Zork, I admit defeat. This is my formal “Request for Assistance”. I hope that you will be gentle with me and leave your hints in rot13 with escalating levels of obviousness; I’d still like to figure out as much of the rest as I can but I need a little push.

The entire dungeon, so far. Orange denotes an unsolved puzzle.

I have been working on:

Glacier Room - I am unable to pass the wall of ice. It seems to melt easily but always with my death. I have not found a way to melt it from another room yet and gigging didn’t work either.
Volcano - I can enter the volcano and view it from a ledge, but I can find no way either down or across to a ledge on the other side. Can I build a bridge or to jump the distance? Or is there another way to the other ledge?
Explosives - I have explosives with a fuse but nothing to blow up. There’s a wall with a crack that I initially thought might be bombable, but this is not The Legend of Zelda.
Implementer Crypt - I can find no way to interact with either the heads or the crypt itself. The room breaks the fourth-wall and I fear there is some “creative” solution that I’m simply not thinking far enough outside the box to find. What about the Coke bottles and line-printer output?
Poisoned Flask and Magic Cakes - I still have the flask and some cake left from Wonderland. The cakes don’t seem to work outside that area but a poison must be useful for something.
Suicide Knife and Other Items - What good is a knife that kills you when you use it? I also haven’t found a use for guano, the burned-out lantern, or a few other items. The chalice, grail, and coffin are containers but never used as such. Do I need one of them to solve a puzzle?
“Granite” Wall - There are a couple of walls labeled or called “granite” in an obvious way. Is there something to it?

I appreciate any advice that you can provide! If it turns out to be something silly, I will be disappointed but sometimes you miss the obvious when you stare at the same thing for so long.

Treasures Found: 23* (Painting, Portrait, Pearl Necklace, Coins, Platinum Bar, Grail, Sapphire Bracelet, Jade Figurine, Crystal Trident, Ivory Torch, Stack of Zorkmids, Emerald, Diamond, Statue, Gold Coffin, Chalice, Fancy Violin, Crystal Sphere, Tin of Spices, Clockwork Canary, Glass Bauble, Pot of Gold, Gold Card)

(* Last week, I neglected to remove the gold egg after it was replaced by the clockwork canary.)

Time played: 2 hr 30 min
Total time: 27 hr 00 min

By Deimar

Hugo Journal Entry #1:"So much for going home. Penelope and I just got stranded somewhere in a jungle. No idea where, as there are no jungles between England and the US. That storm must have really messed with our plane instruments, so we could be anywhere in South America, Asia or even another planet. Penelope says it wouldn’t be the first time one of us is in another planet actually. In any case, we are now in the middle of nowhere. Penelope has gone exploring while I change into my jungle suit. Yes, I don’t know why I was wearing a jungle suit. A present from uncle Horace? Wait… is that Penelope shouting? I guess I will check as soon as I’m finished with my change of clothes and writing this diary"

So, when we first take control of Hugo we have Penelope poisoned lying on the ground and a native telling me to go to the left as there is not much time left and that I have to find some magic water in a secret garden behind a waterfall. Sounds interesting, too bad I am not one to hurry and that there was something fishy with the urgency, so I decided to exit the screen to the right to find the place where the plane crashed. Sadly, I was unable to find anything there even after looking into the plane. Feeling a bit more foolish, I decided to take the girl’s advice and go left.

Yes. That is in fact a bare breast. Not so kid friendly after all.

After walking one screen with nothing else but trees I reached a bridge across a chasm over a stream. And here we can already see the usual quirks that characterize a Hugo game. The first one is that the bridge can’t be crossed because Hugo is afraid it won’t support his weight. The second is that you can actually walk behind and in front of the bridge. And I dare you to tell me if you would have guessed so looking at the screenshot. At this point I was starting to feel shivers down my spine remembering the infamous bridge in Hugo 2. After trying to walk over the bridge carefully, jumping and even going back to see if I had already missed something I stumbled upon the solution. You see, if you type “look at plants” in any screen you get a very sarcastic message saying that there are a lot of vines, plants and the like in every screen in the game. Although I think it is kind of unintuitive using things that are described as basically just decoration, I tried to emulate Tarzan and cross the chasm using the vines and the game asked me what would I use them on. So I started trying to use the vines I couldn’t take on the bridge changing verbs until I tried “tie vines to bridge” and it worked. I guess it is not that bad for Hugo standards. And you can’t die, so that’s a plus.

Well, at least it doesn’t seem like there is an easy way of avoiding crossing the bridge this time

After crossing the bridge, it collapses down to the stream, leaving Hugo locked on that side of the jungle. It is not a very big jungle, but it has its charm. The jungle is composed by about 8 screens that are interconnected forming a circumference. The first screen after the bridge is a crossroad with the upper left part of the circumference. It is mostly empty, but for a scroll from an old man looking for his crystal ball, apparently containing a lot of power, that he lost near a big boulder next to the road. Quite specific for having lost it. Going clockwise from this screen takes you to a river full of piranhas. Surprisingly, you can’t die there. In fact, I am very surprised by the small amount of deaths you can suffer in this game.

Tis but a scratch!

Going the other way around you get to see the rest of the jungle. First a few screens with nothing to see. One jungle screen with lots of trees and a small golden bell. A waterfall which must be the one the native girl mentioned that can’t be crossed. If you look in this screen you get a strange message regarding the stream producing the waterfall being next to the elephant. Next is a cave guarded by a spirit. There was nothing I could do here, but trying to banish the spirit told me that I was missing some ingredients. Something to remember.

Haven’t we met this ghost before? I can’t quite put my finger on it…

Next we get to the infamous boulder. I tried looking for the magic crystal ball with no luck at all. Even after trying to dig around the boulder. Moving on I got to a village, probably home to the girl helping Penelope. I have to say this is by far the prettiest Hugo game, even if most of it are jungle screens full of trees. The village really seems alive. First you get to see it from a distance and when you enter it there are a lot of people doing things. The don’t interact that much with you, but it is refreshing to see all the effort put into making the game more interesting that empty screens with a single object in them. Well, yes, that is still a problem in this game, but at least it doesn’t hurt my eyes. If we discount Hugo’s bright yellow trousers and hat.

This could be straight out of Tintin in the Congo

Some natives are preparing their meal, while there are others at the back playing with blowpipes and you can even see the witch doctor through his hut’s window. One of them even starts following you and force feeding you some exposition. She, subtle as a battering ram, says that Hugo shouldn’t go into the witch doctor’s hut, that they are fed up with the taste of their food and that usually strangers give them something in exchange for a present. If that was not subtle enough, the guys with the blowpipes just straight tell you that you should give them something in exchange for one blowpipe. I tried giving them the bell and the scroll but to no effect. Going into the witch doctor’s hut leads to a dead end, as he traps you in a wooden cell he has in his hut and there was nothing I could do to escape. I did notice that there was a rat, a cage and a golden candle I could interact with as soon as I was able to get off the jail.

The witch doctor is fully committed to his role as the only cannibal in the tribe.
He has everything he needs: a cell, a giant pot…

Following the road across the jungle I got to a screen with the infamous elephant. Infamous because even the look command states that the author is fully aware that there are no elephants in the Amazon and that this one must have escaped from a zoo. The next screen takes us to the other side of the river full of piranhas, closing the circumference. It was at this screen that I realized two things. The first one is that this must be the stream that leads to the waterfall. The second one is that I could try to cross the river swinging from vine to vine as I tried in the bridge before. And this time it worked. You don’t get anything but for a few points and tones (almost the only sound up till now) and a way to get all the way around to the beginning.

At this point I was kind of lost at what to do. I didn’t think I had missed anything but didn’t have any puzzle I felt I could tackle at the moment. As I had dedicated some time already to beat the ghost and escape from the witch doctor’s hut I decided to try and find the ball next to the boulder. After having tried some verbs like push, dig, look around and the like, I noticed that you could go behind it. That didn’t do the trick however gave me the idea to type “look behind the boulder”. I think I would have preferred for it to be hidden behind the boulder and that you could only take it after going behind.

I don’t think you could have missed anything that big, even if it is behind a boulder…

Looking at the ball just said it was cloudy, and trying to scry has no effect either, so I started going around trying to give/use the ball on everything with no luck. I discovered you can drop objects, and that they appear in the screen, which is a nice touch. However, that didn’t solve the problem. I was starting to feel a bit uneasy, as I had very few items and I was not seeing how any of them could help me solve the puzzles in front of me. I was getting so desperate that I even read the manual again, even considering it is a word document with barely 7 pages, none of the them especially useful. So I returned my focus to the objects in my inventory and it just dawned on me that maybe “cloudy” meant the crystal ball was simply dirty. I acknowledge that maybe it is more obvious for a native speaker, but when I read cloudy referring to a crystal ball I just assumed it was showing... well… clouds. To be honest, I am not even sure it does make reference to it being dirty. But I tried cleaning the ball and it showed Hugo getting into a plane. I just spent several seconds changing between feeling foolish for not having tried “get into the plane” and kind of proud for having discovered what I think is the in-game hint system. Which meant I had even less useful items in my possession. Lucky I was dead-ended and had to restart again? Let’s see in the next episode!

Session Time: 1 hours 43 minutes
Total Time: 1 hours 43 minutes

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!

By Ilmari

Attention all Federation citizens! You have been duped!

In the last few weeks, you’ve been led to believe that the face of the Federation is benevolent and enlightened, a paradise based on the inalienable rights of all sentient beings.

Federation propaganda at its worst

These were all lies, which you have been made to believe with the careful administration of docility and gullibility inducing tranquilizers in the water system. In truth, the real face of Federation is far more ruthless...

It’s like an iron fist smacking you senseless

Fortunately, there are resistance groups fighting the fascist regime of Federation. The best known of them is….

Notice the lack of apostrophe

****************************************

When I first suggested to my fellow admins Blake’s 7 (1978-1981) as a possible topic of an extra post and as a counterpoint to all this goody goody Star Trek stuff, all I got was incredulous stares. Joe Pranevich hadn’t even heard of the show, while TBD had watched one episode of it, on basis of his auntie’s recommendation that it would be just like Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - needless to say, he found the series not like that comedy classic. I am not saying it’s Federation trickery behind this ignorance (although I wouldn’t put it past them), but there’s certainly a clear gap to be filled here.

Like many good things in British scifi, Blake’s 7 was created by Terry Nation. What, you have never heard of Terry Nation? Or Terry ****ing Nation, as they so endearingly call him in the great Adventures with the Wife in Space? The man behind Daleks? The genius who invented Davros? The one who made Survivors possible?

Admittedly, this last one is known only by us old British scifi aficionados

There are certain themes that run through all of Nation’s creations - militaristic governments, pandemics, apocalyptic situations. Yes, Mr. Nation seems like a positive and optimistic kind of guy.

He also seems to have strange fetishes, fondling a hand of a Dalek

You often hear people say things like Deep Space Nine made Trek edgy and even destroyed the Roddenberian ideal of human future. I am sure these people have never seen Blake’s Seven. The basic premise of the series is a clear giving the middle finger to Star Trek - what if Federation would have been baddies, a ruthless Orwellian dictatorship? And there’s no doubt about it that this is meant to be a stab on the Trekkian Federation, because they even use a similar insignia.

But that’s not all. It shows a great deal of courage and far more edge than everything in Profit and Lace and Alt Mirror Universe put together that Terry Nation made the nominal star of the show, Roj Blake, a convicted sex offender. And not just any kind of sex offender, but a child molester.

Does the one named Kirk have anything to say to that?

Let me first seduce this two hundred years old girl who has just hit puberty

Of course, it’s all just a Federation ruse to make Blake lose his credibility as a freedom fighter. Still, it tells something about the tone of the series that the Feds even considered this possibility. I mean, they just brainwashed a number of innocent kids and implanted some pretty disturbing memories into their heads, just to get this one person into a ship flying to nearest prison planet.

The other members of Blake’s Seven are no professional officers. There are smugglers, cleptomaniacs, violent psychopaths calmed down only by brain implants… just a pleasant lot, always ready to betray one another, if a good possibility occurs. And then there’s Kerr Avon, brilliant computer technician, who was just on verge of doing the best swindle of Federation history before being caught, and the character with the best lines.

Like Kirk wouldn’t be anything without Spock, Blake wouldn’t be anything without Avon. There are clear analogies - an idealist man of action needs his rational counterpart, who has a talent for ironic statements. But while we are always sure that Kirk and Spock are best chums, it is always a bit unclear whether the cynical Avon cares at all about Blake - or whether he is just biding his time to capture their ship to his own nefarious purposes.

Unlike the static world of Star Trek, where no one dies except some meaningless extra, Blake’s Seven is never a fixed group of people - new members are introduced, old members vanish. The show even survived the absence of its supposed main character.

This instability had its bad side effects also. Terry Nation was a man of great introductions and story concepts, but he usually failed on actually pulling the story together. A classic example is the serial, in which Daleks were introduced - the first few episodes work well in getting us to know the worst menace of whole universe, but then we encounter the sorry bunch of pacifist Thals and everyone goes running around in caves and jumping over the smallest pit ever for far too many episodes.

After the first few episodes, Nation did water down the series. It is a wonder that Blake’s team survives at all, but then they just stumble into Liberator, an alien spaceship with technology superior to Federation - and few episodes later to Orac, the most efficient computer in the universe, with the ability of predicting future. While these might have been necessary plot devices just to give Blake’s group a fighting chance, same cannot be said of the change, in which the faceless fist of Federation was given a face, in the form of the Supreme Commander of the Federation military, Servalan, and her lapdog, Travis - two of the campiest villains in the whole scifi history.

Ice Queen and Pirate of the Federation - can you really take these two seriously?

It is no wonder that when the second season of the show started and Terry Nation could finally leave the script writing duty to others, the quality of the episodes soared. But the worst enemy of Blake’s 7 was not Federation nor Nation's lack of writing skill, but - as it was case in all British scifi of the era - the insufficient BBC budget, and as the times went by, it just kept diminishing, making the later series look cheaper and cheaper. Still, the show managed to have some strong episodes down to its shocking, but inevitable final episode.

Thus, it is quite surprising that no one has had the guts to do a proper adventure game of the show before the end of nineties - a clear sign of Federation censureship, if any. A curious temporal anomaly has allowed us to take a sneak peek into the future of the blog (1997), where a text adventure Snare, based on Blake’s 7, is a possible Missed Classic. Since doing a full playthrough of the game would break all the laws of time, we will merely look at some opening scenes.

You can just sense the class oozing from these quotations

I am no programmer, but I better say something about the technology behind Snare. You see, in the nineties making quality text adventures suddenly became easier than ever. The man behind this change was Graham Nelson, who published several versions of Inform, a programming language meant specifically for designing text adventures. Inform wasn’t the first of its kind, but it definitely was far more nuanced and capable of creating games which allowed more intricate interactions.

Even the game gives kudos to the creator of Inform

The starting scene gives us a clear task - we are about to use our computer skills to steal some money from the government. Although the game does not tell it, our identity is now clear - we are playing as Avon and this is the famous hustle that led him to the same prison ship as Blake.

Just five million credits and I could be playing adventure games all day long

There’s plenty of directions to go from here, but I am especially interested of the large building on the east. There’s a guard, but I am carrying a pass that lets me in - this must be where Avon is working.

I think I’ve met bank accountants like her

Elevators take me to 23rd floor of the building, where I instantly check the lavatories.

Considering there’s a metal detector on the front door, how did this get here?

Next, I check my office.

I just love the level of details

Opening the picture frame I find a tariel frame (a sort of space diskette).

I never knew fooling bank securities would be so simple

How should I escape now? I have a gun, but I cannot take it through the front door (I try - I am caught, taken into an interrogation unit and left to the care of someone called Shrinker - the end). Maybe I could shoot Susi so that no one notices and then switch the metal detector off?

No, that doesn’t work

I quickly had the idea of throwing a book to the switch. Surprisingly that works and I am free to walk out the building with my gun and…

...get caught

I am pretty sure I should have gotten a bit further than this, since I didn't even get to use my gun - I suspect I should have used my time more sparingly after loading the bank fraud program. Still, I am on to the next stage of the game, which makes this a perfect point to break this glimpse into the future - who knows, we might continue from here when we reach 1997.

In the meantime, feel free to make your own choice of the best TV space opera ever - there are lot of options to choose from, in addition to Star Trek and Blake’s 7. (For simplicity’s sake, we’ve put all series belonging clearly to same time and space continuum together).

By the TAG Team

There are times when our reviewers just have so much other commitments to deal with that they cannot make their posts on time. It just so happens that affairs of the most important nature have just delayed both our current reviewers.

We are not saying it has something to do with the American politics.
We are definitely not implying that 'Deimar' and 'Joe Pranevich'
are just nom de plumes of certain otherwise famous persons.
We are also not denying it.

Since the next game post will be postponed after the big election (again, we were highly encouraged to state that this is nothing but a coincidence), we thought it best to publish yet another discussion post.

The topic was actually suggested in our last post by Dehumanizer, who correctly noticed that an introduction to adventure game could be understood in a completely different manner.

We all know that adventure games are the underdogs of gaming industry. We all have friends who enjoy playing such games like Sky Rim, Fall of Fury, Simulated Lives of Ordinary People, Civilizing Nations IX, FIDE World Cup 2017, Accordion Hero World Tour or even Tamagotchi Go, but barely raise an eyebrow for a Kickstarter of Les Manley Under a Killing Moon Goes Cosmic Gender Bender. The obvious question is what would be the perfect game for introducing these people to the joys and wonders of adventure games.

Should it be a game specifically meant for newbies...

...or a game that lures you into thinking it is actually a cheaper version of Test Drive...

...or perhaps a game with a bold and innovative plot?

So, be bold and innovative yourself and suggest a good introductory game for adventuring novices and remember to explain why do you think it is such an obvious and good choice. In the mean time, we'll be waiting for hilarious solutions to all the problems in the White House (hey, it was a Dungeon reference - what were you thinking?).

Written by Joe Pranevich

Harry Mudd!

Last week, we conquered another episode in the saga that is Star Trek: 25th Anniversary. Thus far, we’ve rescued Federation colonists from fake-demons, saved a hijacked vessel from space pirates, and prevented a genocidal war with the Romulans. I am having a ton of fun so far, even as the interface and puzzles are clunkier than I was expecting. The game loves its source material and as a Star Trek fan I appreciate all of the little details they are getting right. Would a non-fan like the game as much? I don’t know. It’s a wonderful anniversary tribute so far.

This episode begins with Kirk receiving orders to travel to the Harlequin system to rescue a scout ship being harassed by Elasi pirates. I knew they would be back! The library computer tells me the system is a war zone with two inhabited planets, one Elasi-controlled and one Federation-controlled. We head there and provide just enough distraction to enable the scout ship to warp away but that leaves two attackers closing in on the Enterprise. It’s time for the obligatory combat sequence!

Boom! That has to sting.

Unfortunately, the pirates kick my ass over and over again. The strategies that I discussed last week fail against two nimble ships that pound the Enterprise from all sides. When I attack one, the other gets a clean shot on my flank. We can tell the ships apart on the scanner because the dots are different colors, I struggle to keep either of them individually in my sights for very long. They are fast! This episode reinforces my assertion that the Enterprise is ill-suited for dogfights. I die a lot.

After many false-starts, I revise my strategy by flying backwards. The ships are fast, but they do not have have our caliber of weapons or shields. If I fly backwards when they take a run at me, I can trade blows with them easily. I take a ton of damage, but also get in some good hits. I believe that I destroyed one ship that way (but I do not recall getting a message about it) and eventually the second one gives up and runs away. Not my finest hour, but I hope my score is not penalized too much.

A man of mystery and challenging likeness rights

Once the Elasi are gone, we receive a weak message from an old friend: Harry Mudd! He explains that he was having a misunderstanding with the pirates over the sale of some “Mudd’s Miracle Degrimers”. He should know better than to cross pirates! Kirk is none too happy to see his old friend… er… nemesis. Mudd informs us, and Spock agrees, that under Federation law we must assist him as he is a registered trader. During the melee, he fled to the Harrapa system so we set course for there. I check the library computer again and learn that Chameleon, the main planet of the Harrapa system, is under pirate control but trying to break away. That could be fun!

What the heck is that thing?

When we arrive, we discover that the binary star system is affecting our scans. Spock is able to track Mudd to a derelict adrift nearby. The ship is huge and split into six separate areas, but Spock detects only limited life support. Mudd informs us that he had been doing a salvage operation on the derelict under Federation law, although Spock retorts that Mudd filed with the Federation authorities that there was nothing of value on the ship. Harry corrects him to say that he did not believe there was anything of value at the time he filed the paperwork. Kirk decides to beam over to see what the conman is really up to.

And you have been terrible trouble to us...

We arrive in a cargo hold and find Mudd going through some boxes. While doing salvage here, he claims, he discovered devices that can be used to clean the walls. They floated the dirt right off! Naturally he marketed the mysterious devices as industrial degreasers. Not long after he sold some to the pirates, they started tracking him everywhere. I’m suspicious of this story, especially as Mr. Mudd has been moving from one Elasi system to another. Of course, if there is a civil war going on locally, that could make it difficult to find a rogue trader. Mudd also informs us that under Federation law we are not permitted to remove anything from the ship we may find. Everything belongs to him under his salvage rights. I’m sure that won’t come up at all.

Now that the prologue is out of the way, we can explore. The room we are in contains a box of dodecahedrons (which I’m just going to call “spheres” from here on out because that word is easier to type) which Spock identifies as being memory modules of some kind. We also find the “degrimers” that Mudd was pawning and some thumbnail-sized lenses on the ground. The lenses fit the tool perfectly and I can use it to cause random electronics in the room to explode. Neat! I have no idea what that will be useful for, but making random things on the ceiling explode is fun. Kirk says that he now understands why the pirates wanted the degrimers, but I don’t. Are they weapons? That seems like it, but then why were the pirates trying to kill the guy instead of capturing him?

Hey look! More dodec… er… spheres.

With nothing else to do and Harry sifting through his salvage, I head south to find another strange area of the ship. Just as in the previous room, there is a claw on the ceiling and the major motif seems to be giant orange soccer balls. Off to the left, we can see where Mudd’s scout ship has penetrated the hull and installed a temporary airlock. Next to that, a portable life support system chugs away to let the landing party breathe. Spock comments that it is not a particularly good life support system. These spheres, unlike the ones in the hold, appear to be matter/antimatter engines that are reminiscent of those of the ”Hoopooin of Seginus IV”. No, I have no idea what that means, either. Unfortunately, there isn’t enough power to activate anything. Will I have to find a way to turn the power back on?

I mistakenly exit and re-enter the room because I wandered too close to the door and on my return I get a brief cutscene with Mr. Mudd. He appears outside his hatch and tells Kirk that he has to “er… fix something”. He wants to know if we’ve seen a “multipurpose doover” around since he left it someplace. We haven’t, but we have a dialog choice anyway: I can either tell him that I do not know or that I wouldn’t give it to him anyway. I select the latter and Mudd returns to his ship. Of course, just then the life support system starts to shake. I have Spock scan it and he says that it’s about to fail-- we’d better fix it soon. I think I know what the “doover” is for!

I feel like I’m in one of those claw machines.

To find the doover, I have to explore north. The next room we discover is a weapons area. There’s a control panel on the left with triangle buttons that seems like it needs power. Spock believes that the weapons here are similar to phasers and photon torpedoes, but there are also canisters on the ground which he calls “power boosters”. They can be used to boost the range of photon torpedos. Will those come in handy? I find neither a repair tool nor anything I can play with so I keep pushing north.

I’m not sure those beds look very comfortable.

The next room is a medical bay with a monitoring station and dispensary in the center. McCoy gives it a once over but says that he cannot operate the equipment until we learn more about the aliens. Aliens!? What aliens? I have to assume that is a script bug because we haven’t found any aliens yet, but the ship must have been built by someone.

In all this dawdling and exploring, Spock lets us know that life support is down to 75%. Still plenty of time...

Is that a doohickey I see before me?

The final room is apparently the bridge. The viewscreen is closed and chairs are arranged around more triangle-button panels. I do not need to explore for more than a few seconds because Mudd’s repair tool is sitting right on the console. I grab it and beeline back to the life support system. Spock repairs it with plenty of time left. Whew! Once it is fixed, Mudd appears out of his ship, acts like nothing happened, and heads back in again. Pretty pointless. I head back to the bridge to continue exploring.

That sounds like a good idea, actually...

On our way back, we are interrupted by Mr. Mudd once again. He has been exploring the medical bay and fiddling around with the central console. He drops a canister of green liquid and is surrounded by a puff of vapor. Moments later, he is acting even crazier than usual, spouts conspiracy theories, and somehow manages to spin his head 360 degrees. I try to get Doctor McCoy to cure him, but he needs to get him to one of the beds first. I try a bunch of things to calm him down, but in the end it’s an old Star Trek stalwart: I click to “use” Spock on him and he delivers a vulcan nerve pinch. Problem solved! Even once Mudd is in a bed, McCoy remains stuck: he needs to learn more about the aliens before Mudd can be cured.

How can I learn more about the aliens? Let’s try using my memory module! I explore the ship to find somewhere to plug it in-- starting with the bridge. While there, Spock discovers that the two consoles are configured differently. I’m not sure why that is a surprise since Sulu and Chekhov also have different consoles on the Enterprise, but whatever. He also believes that the aliens are fixated on the number six, as well as numbers related to it, especially threes and twelves. Although all of that is fascinating, none of it helps me find a place to plug in my sphere. I keep looking.

Stupid exits.

I’m not going to bore you with the stupid and repetitive task of exploring the whole ship again (and again), clicking on everything, trying to use the sphere on everything, and not finding anything new or interesting to do. It takes me some time, but I eventually realize the “obvious”: there was an exit that I missed. Both from the bridge and the weapons room, you can click off the the side to find a new room. Considering every other room on the station was in a straight line, this hardly seems fair. Go back up and look at those screenshots. Do YOU see a passage west? I sure as heck don’t.

The library has a giant memory sphere and a data screen, currently back. I still can’t plug in my sphere anywhere, but Spock seems to think we can use the power of threes and the tricorders to decipher the data in the spheres… somehow. Honestly, I’m sure exactly what is happening. We learn that the universal translation is offline because the Enterprise is out of range due to interference; that is why we can’t read their language already. I eventually work out that if we use both the medical tricorder and the science tricorder, we are able to work out the basics of the language. (I have no idea what the “three” there is that Spock was referring to earlier.) Now that we know the language, we can use the ship’s controls! But… isn’t the reason we couldn’t use them before a lack of power? Spock also tells us that we should donate these memory spheres to the Kornephoros Life Sciences University for further study.

Searching the library further, we learn that almost all functions except weapons can be managed from the bridge. The power boosters, called “whyos”, increase the range of their weapons but not their strength. Spock is also able to discover that the ship was created by a race called the L’Shaians, lizard people with three pairs of eyes and twelve fingers. That explains their fascination with threes, sixes, and twelves!

Is it a hexclops?

Now that we can read the language, Dr. McCoy can use the medical console. With just a bit of effort, he modifies the drugs to work on humans instead of l’shaians and gives it to Mr. Mudd. That isn’t quite the end of it, but we can use the medical kit on him and he’s cured the rest of the way.

Once Mudd is fine, I head back to the bridge to finish exploring now that I can read the language. There are two consoles, one that I can use as Kirk and another that I can use as Spock. On Kirk’s, we can access the communications or viewscreen. The latter just opens the window but doesn’t show anything unexpected. Communications is similarly a bust as we still have too much interference to reach the Enterprise. Spock has access to sensors, navigation, and engineering controls. Looking at the sensors reveals the next big surprise: the Enterprise is locked in battle with more pirates! While we’ve been exploring, they’ve been fighting and there was no way for us to know. We do have partial engineering function because the pods are gathering energy now, but no navigation. We are dead in the water with no way to aid our comrades… unless I happen to have crazy long-range weapons lying around.

I head back to the weapons room and Spock is able to use the console to load a torpedo into one of the firing mechanisms-- this finally lets us use one of the cranes that have been on the ceiling in every room. Unfortunately, my plan ends before it begins because the main battery has been destroyed; there is no way to fire the weapon. Spock recommends taking it back to the Enterprise but that hardly seems helpful in the circumstances. I get a dialog option where I can either agree with him, disagree, or try to hail the ship. None of them seem to drive the plot forward and hailing fails because of the continuing interference.

I do another round of re-exploring the ship and for some reason-- I have no idea why-- we are able to hail the Enterprise from the bridge. We learn that they have successfully defeated the pirates and everything is going to be okay. We get an option whether or not we want to beam out or talk to Mudd first so I choose to talk. After a few dialog options, Kirk accuses Harry of selling weapons to terrorists and convinces him to donate half of everything to the university that Spock liked. Mudd reluctantly agrees and everyone is happy. We beam out.

He’s always blinking.

Back on the bridge, we engage in some post-mission banter. Uhura has somehow arranged for Mudd’s wife to visit him on a starbase-- he’ll love that! And then we get our call from the admiral and find that we got 100% and 4 commendations! Wow.

I mean “wow” because I have no idea what happened here. Did I just completely misunderstand the plot of the mission? We didn’t help the Enterprise defeat the pirates, we didn’t use the weapon they hinted at since the beginning, and I never found a use for either the memory sphere or the degrimer that I picked up. The hints in the library computer seem to be for another game entirely. When was I supposed to learn that the ship was under attack? Did they not finish coding this mission? All in all, it feels incomplete and to still get 100%... I don’t even know what to say. Loved seeing Harry Mudd, but this was a mess.

Name those references!

Star Trek Trivia

Mudd was the only returning villain of the original series. He was in “Mudd’s Women” and “I, Mudd” and references to both can be found here. I was unable to find any references to the animated episode, “Mudd’s Passion”.
Stella Mudd was Harry’s strong-willed wife and was never truly seen on the original series, only android replicas on “Mudd’s Women”
Starbase 7 was never seen on the original series but can be implied as the Enterprise twice visited the higher-numbered Starbase 11. (It did appear in novels and comics however.)
The “universal translator” largely went unmentioned in TOS (it is explored more fully in the spinoffs) but a version was featured in “Metamorphosis”. The fact that the Enterprise needs to be nearby is unusual.
The Vulcan neck pinch used on Mr. Mudd was Spock’s signature move and was used several times on the original series (and more sparingly on later shows).
When discussing other adventures that must be worse than Harry Mudd, the redshirted security officer references salt vampires (“The Man Trap”), deranged computers (“The Return of the Archons”, “The Changeling”, “The Ultimate Computer”, “That Which Survives”), blood-draining clouds (“Obsession”), cell imploding sirens, and Greek gods (“Who Mourns For Adonais”). Of those I can figure them all out except the sirens. Is that a reference to the animated episode, “The Lorelei Signal”? If so, that’s the first episode of the animated series to be referenced. Kirk replies that he’d rather have dealt with any of those instead of Harry Mudd.

If this episode does take place after an animated one, that puts the whole timeline in a bit of as bind. Both this game and TAS appear to take place in the 4th year of Kirk’s 5-year mission, but the animated show replaced Chekhov with two animated-only characters: M’Ress and Arex. Since our Russian friend is still here, it can’t be later. We should just shrug and not take this stuff so seriously!

Sounds vaguely biblical?

Next episode: The Feathered Serpent.

Time played: 3 hr 15 min
Total time: 10 hr 50 min

By Deimar

Hugo Journal Entry #2"I just had a most strange dream. Penelope and I fell off our plane and she was bitten by a spider. I got to explore a jungle with elephants, piranhas, evil spirits, witch doctors… The dream ended with me looking at a mysterious crystal ball where I saw myself getting into the plane. Isn’t it strange?. Penelope doesn’t find it that fascinating. She has spent the last hour or so just complaining about me losing our direction. What a girl! She just doesn’t seem to understand how incredible my dream was. And now she just won’t stop screaming. And only because our plane is falling into a jungle. I really hope she appreciates the irony. In any case, I think it is time to stop writing and brace for impact... ”

Back to square one, but with a lot more knowledge. So once again Penelope gets bitten and once again we are set to save her. And once again I go to plane screen, only this time I type “get in plane” and voilá. A nice close-up and everything I need to solve this game is shown. Including: Some clay (why are Hugo and Penelope carrying some clay in the plane and why wouldn’t Hugo be able to take some from the jungle is a mystery we may never solve); a sandwich; some bouillon cubes; some pins and a water flask. These guys do travel light.

At least the close-up is pretty. Not pretty enough to save this “look into plane won’t work” issue, but it is something

To be honest, it seems kind of cheap that there are that many items hidden here. Considering the ones you can get in the jungle don’t serve a purpose, at the moment, in solving any of the puzzles available, I think they could have been spread across the multiple screens. In any case, after looking at the new inventory items, the description of the cubes suggest they can be used for seasoning food. And the girl in the village told us about wanting something to spice up their food. We have a clear runner up for the most straightforward puzzle of this year!

The natives were so impressed with the cubes that they gave me one of their blowpipes with sleeping darts. When I first saw them playing with the blowpipes I thought that would be the solution to escape the witch doctor’s house. But the description you get when they give you the darts is that you can put an elephant to sleep. So I had to try. And I succeeded. The elephant fell asleep but there was nothing I could do with it. I went on to try my theory with the witch doctor to no avail either. So I was at the same point as I was before restarting the game, only with more items. But I had to have the solution with me, as there wasn’t really any other puzzle I feel I could solve. And when I took a closer look at my inventory, it just hit me. I have played Monkey Island enough to know what you can do with some pins. I was missing a voodoo doll however, but the clay seemed like a good option to solve it. Although “mold clay” didn’t work, make doll did. And so the once mighty fell, not with a bang but with a lot of pain, as if several pins were introduced into your body.

With the witch doctor rolling in pain in the floor, I could simply open the door of the jail and get out. This allowed me to take the candle and play mouse trap. You see, the description of the sandwich makes a point indicating it contains cheese. And there is a mouse you can interact with. And a small jail. I put the sandwich in the jail and waited for the mouse to get into it. But the little bugger was not collaborating. I noticed there are two mouse holes in the room and the mouse was peeking from the one farthest from me. So I just went to that side of the room and the mouse fell into the cage.

I am not going to imply anything, but I feel like this one could also have been inspired by a certain pirate adventure saga

Somehow I think I was in sync with the game at that point because after getting the mouse I immediately thought of the elephant. I think it is more cartoonish than anything based on real life, but I have always learnt from cartoons that elephants are afraid of mice. Sadly, my elephant was in a deep slumber and I wasn’t able to wake it up, although I was able to drop the cage and set the mouse free, which made me think I was on the right track. I restored to a previous save before putting the elephant to sleep and did everything again.

The following part is a bit tricky, although I liked it a lot. If you set the mouse free in front of the elephant, it gets scared and runs out of the screen in the direction of the stream full of piranhas. Then the game tells you that while he passed through the river it blocked the flow of water. The thing is you don’t have time to shoot the elephant while it runs scared. You have to shoot it before, then release the mouse just after shooting it and the elephant will fall asleep just in the middle of the stream, blocking the water flow and unblocking the path across the waterfall below.

I didn’t think this day would come, but I have to praise a puzzle in a Hugo game. It is mostly logical, involve a timing element that you have to discover and there are enough clues to keep you in the right direction

With the waterfall dry, a small path is uncovered. It leads directly to a garden full of gigantic plants with a pond of rejuvenating water. Well, that was easy, except for the plane part. Just a bit of water into the water flask and it’s time to roll up this game and save Penelope. Except there is no clear way to get back to her. The only roadblock I could identify was banishing the ghost, but it still told me that I was lacking some of the three items needed.

Forget Penelope, we could get rich!! Rich with this water!!

So I started going around looking for something I could have missed, using the items I had on everything on sight. I consulted the crystal ball and it only told me that I had to meet the old man, that he was waiting for me. The old man is the guy who made the ridiculous questions in the first game, and the one Penelope knock out in the second one. But that didn’t tell how to reach him. I realized that the only two items I hadn’t used where the golden bell and the golden candle. I started to think I needed a third golden item (and even googled it to find why would three golden items would be needed to banish an evil spirit) and went screen by screen typing get gold. Absolutely no success. It is at this point that I decided to check a walkthrough. PLEASEDONTTHROWANYTHINGATMEANDLETMEEXPLAIN!! Right now, I am under certain time constraints and I have a time limit to finish reviewing this game. More concretely, I have to finish before the 18th because I will be unavailable for three weeks after that date. So I decided to check the walkthrough instead of making a request for assistance. My apologies, but time is of the essence.

In any case, the solution to this particular puzzle is finding a spell book that just appears if you get next to the upper right shore in the piranha stream screen. Yes, you heard it correctly. You have to casually walk into a small corner and the book will appear. Are there any clues the book may be there before it appears? No. Is there any reason to go there? Absolutely not. What is a spell book doing in the shore of an amazonian jungle? I don’t know and I am sure even David Gray is not inclined to provide answers to this question. Let’s go with the default then: A wizard did it.

This is really scary, even more than the ghost, the piranhas and the cannibal witch doctor all together.

The book is actually the third item needed to banish the evil spirit, granting access to the old man. Let’s be clear, I think it would probably have been preferable not to have this close up. It is quite… curious. In any case, the man feels a little guilty for the tribulations he imposed upon Hugo in previous games (I guess getting knockout does not count) and therefore he proposes a game, where he will try to guess what Hugo is holding in his hand. The first two guesses are an obvious no, but for the third one he guesses a flask of magic water. And just by answering Yes you are left at the right side of the chasm we crossed at the beginning of the game, just next to the screen where Penelope lies. I gave her the water and that’s it. The end for real. We will miss you and your pixelated graphics, Hugo. Farewell, you magnificent couple!

Ride into the sunset, Hugo and Penelope! Good riddance! By the way, I like the way you fixed your plane in the middle of the jungle!

Session Time: 1 hours 16 minutes
Total Time: 2 hours 49 minutes

written by Aperama

This game is without a doubt one of the hardest I've discovered to research since beginning this blog. I'm strangely willing to hop in 'head first', so to speak – but that would make for quite a short introductory post. What I've garnered, however, does not fill me up with confidence. Eternam is a title by Infogrames Europe SA, a group probably best known for making largely Amiga action titles in the earlier days of its existence along with some licensed titles. There have been a few unfortunate incidents with them already on this blog, I fear. We're soon to encounter what could well be its best known game in Alone in the Dark later on in the year – a game which just about literally created the 'survival horror' genre. What some of you who follow Chet's blog might know this group for first is Drakkhen, a title so incomprehensible that it was almost impossible to follow...

… which is the game that this one is supposedly a self-aware 'parody' of. Even with Chester's logical, clever writing, I struggled to follow Drakkhen when he played it. I do not feel encouraged by the thought of a game which might well make even less sense. Still, it does have some unique features. One of the most obvious changes to a typical adventure game is that this title takes place primarily through a first person perspective. As a parody of Drakkhen, it maintains the 3D, 360 degree motion (on a horizontal axis anyhow) that the game it parodies uses, with some third person intervals throughout apparently. It also entirely takes place using the keyboard – no mouse whatsoever. 'T' for take, 'U' for use, 'S' for speak, 'L' for look, 'I' for inventory and 'D' for options, along with space bar for 'fire' in the 3D first person sections. I cannot change this selection. Yes, this is as terrible as it sounds in practice, methinks.

There aren't even any fun anagrams for this awkward layout
– am I supposed to use my LUST ID for something in-game?

So, the issues are mounting and I haven't even gotten to what really has me fearful – Infogrames is French. French people do thousands of things well. Their breads, cheeses and wines are legendary. Their military has had international recognition for years upon years through their Foreign Legion, and their culture is truly astounding. Adventure games they do not do well. In fact, the most painful games I can think of to visit this website have almost universally been French. What's that I hear you say? But that's unfair profiling? The game was published first by Infogrames – but for the later CD-ROM port in 1993, Capstone Software (which is a group that some of you may have heard of, and most of you who have will fear) took charge of publishing it, which gives me an idea of the 'quality' I'm due to expect. The game also has a somewhat prohibitive copy protection scheme which involves using an included package which I'm simply not able to find. The first version I found of the game had an included crack, but I've had one game runup result in a black screen, the 'introduction' doesn't load and I wasn't sure if I had actually encountered the true 'entry' to the game as of first writing this – since, I found a new copy which works far easier and allows the 'introduction' screen to come aboard. Hooray! I'll get to that in my first play post though.

The only version of the game manual I can find is in Spanish – this is what Google suggests..

And what I receive after using the included game crack

The one positive I will definitely give to this game is that it is ambitious. The few screenshots that I have found in attempting to search up information about this game (extremely scarce apart from a few Let's Play-styled videos which I don't really want to look at for obvious reasons) do show off something that is at least fairly visually appealing, and I'm not really too worried about the game not looking or sounding good. For all that I expect the game to be utterly crazy and borderline nonsensical, I doubt the game will fail in making a spectacle of itself as it does so. French games look great, even if they're largely insane.

This is the opening screen to the game.. um.. I think?

It's fair to say that this is not a game that seeks to invite potential players. Starting it up literally drops you straight into the middle of a field (well, after the copy protection prompt). There is a short message that confirms you are DON JOHNSON.

“Did someone say my name?”

Er.. rather. 'Don Jonz' is going to the 'biggest and best planetary funpark in the entire galaxy', Eternam. Turns out that it is being attacked by the archenemy of 'Don Jonz', 'Mikhal Nuke' (Mickey to his friends). He's a Space Marshal, you see, and he's heading to the Island of Revolution as part of his holidays. There's at least one person on his side – Tracy, a technician on the Eternam coordination team. She's the first person we see on the screen – or rather, the only person. Everyone else throughout the game seems to be drawn in a style reminiscent of King's Quest 7, I.M. Meen and all of the other games Animation Magic had a hand in. This is definitely a compliment, particularly for 1992! Will she actually help? I have no earthly clue, as I can't really look into this and the manual is incomprehensible even translated from Spanish (I don't believe this is a translation issue and rather just the way the original manual was written). Vive le France, right?

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There's a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no CAPs will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. As this is an introduction post, it's an opportunity for readers to bet 10 CAPs (only if they already have them) that I won't be able to solve a puzzle without putting in an official Request for Assistance: remember to use ROT13 for betting. If you get it right, you will be rewarded with 50 CAPs in return. It's also your chance to predict what the final rating will be for the game. Voters can predict whatever score they want, regardless of whether someone else has already chosen it. All correct (or nearest) votes will go into a draw.

Example Bet for 20 CAPs (with 20 immediately going to Laukku because I forgot to award them last time around):

Terra jnf bapr srnerq, ohg vf abj zl sevraq
Jul jvyy zl zvfnqiragherf frrz gb arire raq?
Bar bs gur orfg gb cvpx sbe fher
Ohg V'z eneryl gur svefg gb gur qbbe

Written by Joe Pranevich

So close and yet so far away.

Two weeks ago, I gave up. After finding my twenty-fifth treasure hidden in the middle of a sliding block puzzle, I could go no further. I was blocked by a mass of ice, a volcano that I could see but not touch, and by evil spirits that haunted the graves of former programmers. I still had a suicide knife, a bomb, and half a dozen other items with no known use, but I was out of ideas and had to turn to the blog for help. Fortunately, you all came through for me and I’ve been able to make progress.

Just before I jump in however, I want to discuss an aspect that I forgot to bring up last time: ASCII illustration. We had seen a couple of very simple ASCII graphics earlier in the game, plus the engravings on the giant well, but the game transitioned to simple ASCII graphics for room descriptions during the Royal Puzzle Museum section. Once inside the puzzle, room descriptions were replaced by a simple ASCII representation of our surroundings: a 3x3 grid of the local area with “S” and “M” for sandstone and marble walls. It’s all very simple, but it was a great touch and made a difficult section quite a bit easier. Sorry I forgot about it last time!

Simple ASCII maps replace text in the puzzle.

Thanks to tips provided by Voltgloss and Griffin, I had new ideas to consider. Voltgloss provided his pointers in “Invisaclues” style so I went with his first. I wanted to have to work for the answer and this way I could start with just a nudge in the right direction. It took me three clues to advance:

The puzzle that's bottlenecking you is how to get past the glacier.
You were able to melt it before, by holding a lit match to it; but the rush of water killed you.
Your guess is correct that you need to melt it (and survive).

Nothing here is too much of a surprise, but knowing that it was the glacier that I needed to tackle next was a big help. My other thought was that I would have a way to enter the volcano from the ledge and melt the glacier from the “inside”. In both cases, I worried that there was an item I needed from the crypt so this narrowed my search space considerably.

Even with those clues, it wasn’t easy. I first attempted to use the “evaporation” cake from the Wonderland area. Throwing it at the glacier didn’t work, nor did having it on the ground or in my hands when the water swept past. I tried melting the ice with the match, the candles, and the torch and always had the same effect. It took some experimentation, but I discovered that throwing the torch was the trick: doing so causes it to explode on contact, destroying the ice but also leaving us trapped in grue-infested darkness. I do it again with the lamp and the way is now clear! I find the now “burned-out” torch one room away, but nothing I try re-ignites it. I fear the rest of the game will be played with the lantern.

Melt from glaciers can cause sea levels to rise. Don’t carelessly throw magic torches!

Is this the right solution? Can I still win if I destroy a treasure? I have no idea. For now, I will explore the new area and see what I find. Just to the west I discover a ruby and twisting passage to the bottom of the volcano. At the base, presumably surrounded by lava, is a basket containing a “receptacle”, a cloth bag, and some braided wire. It’s a hot air balloon! I can board it like the other vehicles but there’s no obvious clue what to do. My guess is that I need to burn something in the receptacle so I run batch to fetch the leaves. Unfortunately, they do not fit but I think I’m on the right track. I pretend to be a pyro and check everything I own to see what burns. (I did this once before, but I have a few new things now.) The game appears inconsistent: the leaves, guidebook, newspaper, leaflet, bird’s nest, and instruction label from the boat all burn nicely, but timber and printer paper seem to be remarkably resilient. I take a collection of paper products and return to the balloon to try them out. The guidebook burns nicely and a turn later we are off. Hello, aviator!

As we wait, the balloon ascends in 100-foot increments up the dome of the volcano. At 200 feet, I find a ledge to land on with a zorkmid coin and a door to the south. Unfortunately, I spend too much time looking around because the balloon floats away without me and I’m stuck! I restore and discover a hook on the ledge. I can tie the basket’s braided wire to the hook to keep the balloon from floating away without me. I explore south to find the library. Why would you keep a library in a volcano? I have no idea. It contains four books, none of which I can read. But before I can get any farther, I hit a real obstacle: my lantern is out of juice. I redo the whole sequence and save as many turns as I can, but time and time again I get stuck at the library. I must have used too much power earlier in the game. I confirm with Voltgloss that there is no way to charge it in this game so I am stuck.

Knowing what I know now, this house is too small.

Everything Old Is New Again

I considered quitting. My score already says that I am a “Winner” and I’ve solved almost every puzzle. I bet my rating would be fair. But… I do not want to start my marathon with a partial win. Voltgloss also offered to provide me with a “script” that I could cut-and-paste in to get back to where I was before. I appreciated the offer! Since I’m going to do it, I am going to do it right. I built a game plan and solved for a win with as little lantern use as possible:

First, grab the leaves, nest, and egg before heading into the house. No harm grabbing it since we’re not wasting light yet.
Grab only the rope from the attic; we can save two turns by not collecting the other stuff yet.
With the sword, lamp, and rope, defeat the Troll and make a beeline for the Torch Room. For one more turn, I turn off the lamp as soon as I descend the rope. I return to the surface through the Twisty Passages, grabbing the coins and the keys on the way to the grate.
On the next dive, I fetch the rope then face the Cyclops twice over: first using the food and water to put him to sleep then with “Odysseus”. While I am nearby, I also hand-deliver the egg to the Thief for later.
From here, we just have to iterate over all the remaining puzzles. I do the Artist’s Studio and Bank of Zork next, then grab the grail and pray at the altar to return to the surface. I feel like I should use every exit once in case points are there are involved.
Just to deal with the annoyance of the Round Room, I do Wonderland next and score the crystal sphere, tin of spices, and violin.
The Loud Room and Dam #3 are next, winning the platinum bar, trunk, and trident. I believe a commenter clued me in, but I also grab the gold coffin from the Egyptian Room now as well.
I do the rafting section next for the emerald, statue, and pot of gold. This time I do not have to use the gunk since I know how to cross the rainbow.
The next part requires the lantern again: the Coal Mine. That gives me the bracelet, diamond, and jade figurine. I forgot that you have to traverse that maze twice to ferry the coal around, but it’s not so difficult with a map.
Finally, I open up Hades to visit the ghosts of the Implementers. There’s no treasure there yet, but I might need the Coke bottles or printer paper.
With my score as high as possible, I easily defeat the Thief to win the chalice and clockwork canary then proceed to get the gold card in the sliding puzzle. Once I return to the surface, I get the glass bauble from the woods as well.

A bit more than three hours later, I am right back to where I started! I have the same treasures and the same score but with considerably more battery life. Back to the balloon!

So majestic!

Let’s Go Ballooning

In the library, I find our differently colored books: blue, green, white, and purple. I cannot read any of them. Are they just for burning? I cannot imagine any MIT-educated Implementer would want to burn books! I get them all to the balloon and set it free.

A short time later, I find the viewing ledge that I could see earlier but it is too narrow to land on. I keep going and finally find a second ledge near the rim. Once again, I can access one room just to the south but this one is empty except for a rusty oblong box with a hole in it. I key off of “rusty” and fetch the rusty knife but that isn’t the trick. I put the zorkmid in the hole, but that doesn’t do the trick either. How about the exploding brick? I fetch it-- keep in mind that I have to restore back and do this whole section again each time-- and I am able to place it in the hole and light it. We get a satisfying boom and I return to find a crown and a card. The crown seems like a treasure to pocket, but the card is ominous: “Detonation of explosives in this room is strictly prohibited.” Apparently, we are standing over weak rock strata. Uh oh!

I try to ride the balloon to safety but taking it to the rim results in death. I cannot hang around too long as the ledge collapses and sends me to my death that way. The safe room is already gone. How do I flee a crumbling volcano? I try everything I can think of-- I even “open” all of the books and discover a stamp! I came very close to missing that treasure! It doesn’t keep me alive but at least I know what the books are for.

A philatelist’s dream

If I don’t unhook the balloon, the ledge collapses and drags the balloon down to my death. If I unhook it, I float to the rim and die. With perfect timing, I can loosen the balloon and the ledge falls away underneath us. It’s a great “suspended in midair” moment, but we still float to the rim and die. What am I missing? As usual: the obvious. If I close the receptacle while something is burning inside, the balloon descends. I “wait” a few turns and find myself safe and sound back at the bottom.

I take everything to the trophy case and get the answer that I’ve been waiting for:

Your score is 585 [total of 585 points], in 1483 moves.

This gives you the rank of Cheater.

Ha! I am amused that the game thinks I cheated, but I’m not offended.

But… what now? Wasn’t something supposed to happen, to clue me in for the location of the endgame? I search both above and below ground in search of something new, an area that opened up or an item I didn’t see before. I know there is an “endgame” that I need to find but would a real player be this patient?

I find my answer at the crypt, but not immediately. While I am looking for a way to get the crypt door open, a “wraith-like” figure appears and congratulates me on my accomplishments. He tells me that I am fit even to join the Implementers! He fades away and I can finally open the crypt door. What’s inside? Let’s find out next week!

Treasures Found: 29 (Golden Egg, Painting, Portrait, Zorkmid Bills, Pearl Necklace, Coins, Platinum Bar, Grail, Trunk with Jewels, Sapphire Bracelet, Jade Figurine, Crystal Trident, Ivory Torch (Burned Out), Stack of Zorkmids, Emerald, Diamond, Statue, Gold Coffin, Chalice, Fancy Violin, Crystal Sphere, Tin of Spices, Clockwork Canary, Glass Bauble, Pot of Gold, Gold Card, Ruby, Zorkmid Coin, Crown, Stamp)

Time played: 5 hr 35 min
Total time: 32 hr 35 min

Written by Joe Pranevich

Klingons!

It’s time for more Star Trek! Last week, we defeated the con artist Harry Mudd and arranged a reunion between him and his erstwhile wife as a parting gift. It was a fun mini-adventure even if it had some bugs and plot hiccups. At this point, all of our adventures have been standalone and and that is fine, but I was hoping for some connecting thread or hints of an overarching plot. Thus far, the only recurring element has been the Elasi pirates, a group created for this game. We have a few episodes left so we’ll see what happens.

This episode breaks the mold by starting with a Captain’s Log rather than a message from an admiral. Federation intelligence is concerned about a military buildup near Hrakkour, a system on the edge of Klingon space. The Klingons are searching for a renegade, but we do not know what he did to deserve such a search party. Sensors have detected a faint trail leading to Zamphor in the Digifal system on the Federation side of the border and we are ordered to investigate. If we do not discover what happened and de-escalate the situation, there could be war.

A lot of episodes start this way...

On arriving in the Digifal system, a warbird led by Commander Taraz warps into the system. He let’s us know that he is chasing a genocidal criminal into the system and I should let them continue their business. We get some dialog options, but they all boil down to rude ways to ask them to leave immediately. I pick the one that seems most diplomatic but he doesn’t like it one bit. Within seconds, he’s attacking and I’m dead even before I get my shields up. So much for being relatively nice. On the next pass, I try another option that waves the Organian Peace Treaty in his face. It’s still pretty rude, but perhaps Klingons like that because he backs off. He gives us twelve hours to find the criminal before he changes his mind about being nice. I get the option to agree but ask him to leave, but he doesn’t like that and I’m space debris again. On my third attempt I just agree to do it without trying to ask anything else of him. He flies off and I’m able to orbit the planet.

Holy heck! I managed to get out of combat for once. Were there dialog options I could have chosen in any of the other episodes to get out of the fight? Combat is by far my least favorite part of this game so this is good news. We beam down and begin the “adventure” portion of the episode.

Sybok? Sorry… er… I thought you were someone else...

We do not have to hunt for the criminal: we beam down and he greets us in flowing white robes. He claims to be Quetzecoatl, the misspelled god of the Aztecs, and we get some choices in how we greet him in return. I take the formal approach and ask him if he is aware that the Klingons are looking for him. He seems pleased by this, claiming that his missions do not usually produce results so quickly. I accuse him of jeopardizing the peace between the Federation and the Klingons but he disagrees; he is there to promote peace. We don’t believe him. I have Kirk ask him why, if he loves peace so much, would he name himself after one of Earth’s bloodiest gods. He seems shocked by this accusation and transports us all to the bottom of a pit.

Aztec-Space-Jesus?

Once we regain control, I talk to everyone and explore the trap. Spock thinks we can climb the vines to get out, but the tricorders say they are not strong enough. A snake on the ground initially scares me, but a scan says that it’s not dangerous to humans. Even so, we can’t pick it up without it slithering off into a hole. I try stunning it with a phaser but all of our weapons have been disabled. I pixel-hunt the screen to find something else to do and discover a sticky resin on the wall, a pile of rocks, and the hole the snake hid in. Of those, only the rocks seem to be useful as I can throw them at other vines just out of reach to cause them to fall down. Once we have a thicker set of vines to climb up, we escape the pit. Now what?

Is he attacking us with a macuahuitl?

After passing through featureless jungle for a bit, we emerge into a clearing. An Aztec warrior demands to test us in Quetzecoatl’s ways, but I am uncertain how to start the test. He won’t even talk to us. McCoy confirms that he’s human but Spock claims that he is too large to nerve pinch. What do to? When talking to Dr. McCoy, he drops a David and Goliath reference. Is that a hint? I don’t have a sling, but I throw my rocks at him until he is knocked unconscious. I ask McCoy to check on him and he chews me out, claiming that I picked a “thoughtless” approach. But… it was your idea! Did I miss a better solution?

The warrior drops a “knife”, but I am going to just pretend that it is a macuahuitl. The macuahuitl, or Aztec sword, is a obsidian-bladed weapons that the Aztecs fought the Spaniards with. They were incredibly sharp, capable even of cutting off the head of a Spanish horse in motion. Unfortunately, they dulled extremely quickly and so were less useful than European-style swords over a period of time. I’ll be on the lookout for horses.

Is Friar Tuck going to show up?

Past even more featureless jungle, we arrive at a log bridge crossing a stream. On my first trip across, a monster jumps out and kills my redshirt so I restore. With the creature underwater, the knife isn’t much use and there are very few ways that I can interact with it. I return to the featureless jungle and featureless pixel-hunt, but do not find anything new that way. On my way back, I discover that I can cut off up the leaves of a bush at the bank of the river using the knife. If I throw the leaves in the water, the monster runs away! It seems biologically unlikely that the monster’s regular stomping grounds would be inches away from a planet that could poison it, but what do I know? I cross the bridge and briefly pass a dilithium mine and pocket some crystals before continuing on.

And you look like you want to disco.

The end of the path leads to a conference room in a cave. Quetzecoatl congratulates us for solving his puzzles. We get some more dialog options, but I stay diplomatic. Quetzecoatl asks whether what we said was true about the Aztecs and I blame it on human nature, that people will naturally twist good messages to evil ends. He seems unhappy and claims that he doesn’t want to be all-powerful anymore. He asks if humans are good at medicine and I agree so he proposes that we cut out his a special gland that gives him his powers. We agree to do that, hoping that if the Klingons no longer see him as a threat, they may no longer attack. Kirk orders a beam-out and all five of us are soon on the Enterprise. Is the episode over already?

A different Klingon!

Just as Kirk settles back into his chair, three more Klingon warbirds arrive, this time led by Admiral Kenka. He wants to put Quetzecoatl on trial. We tell him that he’s being operated on, but they do not seem to care. Kenka reveals that Quetzecoatl did not directly destroy the Klingon colony, but rather spread the social contagion of “peace” there. To contagion the “disease”, Admiral Kenka liquidated the whole population himself, including his own family. I tall him that he is responsible for what happened there, not Quetzecoatl. Our conversation is interrupted by a Federation admiral. Star Fleet has contacted the Organians and confirmed that Quetzecoatl should be subject to Klingon laws given the nature of the crime. On the bright side, we’re allowed to defend him. I love a good Star Trek trial episode! We warp to Hrakkour and beam down to the Klingon courthouse.

Criminal Court is now in session…

The trial is over before it even begins. Admiral Vlict (wasn’t he Kenka a minute ago? It’s supposed to be the same guy) just wants to execute Quetzecoatl and be done with it. We get some dialog options so I tell him that I have a surprise for him and that we demand a full trial. Kirk is, he claims, a warrior based on how many times he’s fought Klingons hand-to-hand and ship-to-ship. As such, he has a right to a warrior’s trial. Vlict reluctantly agrees, but only if I take a test to prove my worthiness: the Test of Life. Why does everyone just want to test us?

Ensign Bennie and the Jets?

We are taken to a mining installation somewhere on the planet. A nearby door is guarded by lightning; Spock believes it is actually alive. He recommends using a metal projectile to render it harmless. I do not have much metal but there are rocks and wooden poles around. I discover that if I shoot the rocks and dip the pole in the molten metal, I can create a primitive… stick with metal on the end. I throw it at the lightning and it disappears. Spock comforts us that it isn’t dead, just sleeping for a few days.

With the lighting down, we still have a locked door to contend with. Spock claims it requires a combination but his tricorder doesn’t have enough processing power to extract it. I scan it anyway. A few unsuccessful minutes later, I also realize that we can hail the Enterprise and talk to Uhura. She is able to have the ship do the heavy processing and discovers not one, but two separate codes embedded into the door. Should they give us both. I agree and we open the door… but are transported somewhere else entirely.

This is a triumph! I’m making a note here: huge success.

Our new room contains three objects: a container with three slots; a table with nine pill-shaped objects colored red, green, and blue; and a yellow portal. We can’t come back the way we came because the portal is not “primed for neural link”. I expect I’ll have to prime it by solving the puzzle.

I grab three colors at random and arrange them in the system as red/green/blue. A message comes on about the “Light of War” and tells me that emergency protocols have been engaged. That doesn’t sound friendly. I switch the red and blue to get a message from the “Light of Travel”, then pop in the green at the top for the “Light of Knowledge”. That one lets me know that the first crystal corresponds to the type of light we will use, but I worked that out already. Should I pick war, travel, or knowledge? Since this is Star Trek, I choose “knowledge” and start rotating through different combinations. Most didn’t work, but green/red/red scanned nearby vessels and all green summoned a disembodied voice, Bialbi. He tells us that we have to put the crystals in the correct order and that the “integrator” is now active. What is that?

Just to check, I try the yellow portal but it isn’t a portal. Instead, Bialbi scans my brain and tells us that the situation will be “resolved”. He (it?) transports the Klingon admiral into the room and tells him that he is being judged guilty and the punishment is death. I have Kirk step in to his defense (how ironic!) and he agrees to spare Quetzecoatl. Bialbi is not satisfied because his crimes are far larger than a single life, but he accepts Kirk’s request for clemency. Instead, he says that the Klingons must leave and never return to the planet on pain of death. He seems to like Kirk, but we have to let him down gently as this planet is still in Klingon space; we won’t be able to visit. With the mission completed, we beam out.

This episode forgoes much of the usual banter. Spock says that everything worked out for the best, but Kirk is somber and reminds him just how many Klingons lost their lives over this. An admiral raises us and gives us our score: 85% and two commendation points. We have to be able to do better than that!

So you’re saying I sucked?

I replay the scenario from scratch and concentrate on passing the Aztec warrior without conking him on the head with rocks. The trick turns out to be the snake that I could not pick up before. Every time I get close to it, it flees into its hole. Using the rocks, I can also fill the hole and leave the snake with nowhere to go. With that done, we can pick him up and deliver him to the Aztec warrior. He seems impressed, but says that only by shedding blood can we pass. I think I’m supposed to believe that means I have to fight, but I use the snake on Kirk instead. The warrior is impressed with our self-sacrifice, gives us his knife, and let’s us pass. I replay the rest just as before and this time I received 100% and 4 commendation points. What a difference a non-violent solution makes!

I love that this episode broke the mold: We could talk our way out of combat. We had adventures on two planets with a shipboard sequence in between. I almost wonder if this was intended as a “two-parter” with the shipboard sequence in the middle intended to be the start of the second part. You can see how that could work, but there’s not enough content for that in the finished product. The plot was derivative, even compared to the other episodes, even if the execution was good. We just saw an ancient race re-emerging in episode one! I look forward to see how the next episode builds on this.

Star Trek Trivia

The correct spelling of the Aztec god in English is “Quetzalcoatl”; this episode consistently misspelled it. On the bright side, at least he didn’t change names halfway through.
The animated series episode, “How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth”, also features an alien claiming to be Quetzalcoatl. I do not know how to reconcile this game with that episode.
Gods-are-aliens is a common trope in Star Trek. Kirk met Apollo in “Who Mourns for Adonais” and will meet the god of Sha-Ka-Re in Star Trek V. Picard will deal with the “devil” in “The Devil’s Due” on TNG. Deep Space Nine will base much of their series on the tension between Bajoran spirituality and the Federation’s atheism.
As discussed in episode one, the Organian Peace Treaty was established in “Errand of Mercy” and is one of the few serialized details in the original series.
After Kirk demonstrates his proficiency at throwing rocks, Lt. Stragey comments that no one plays baseball anymore. This game predates the debut of Deep Space Nine, but the lack of baseball was a recurring plot point in that series.
Ships in Star Trek run on Dilithium crystals, a rare material that could not be replicated. Several episodes centered on the Federation finding new sources of dilithium.
Klingons generally do not use naval titles; a similar rank to “Admiral” would be “General”. The TNG episode “Loud as a Whisper” revealed that peacemakers like Quetzalcoatl were virtually unknown in the empire.

Sounds vaguely biblical… again?

Next episode: “The Old Devil Moon”

Mini-Request for Assistance

As this was being readied for posting, I ran into a problem: a space battle two episodes from now is proving to be more than I can handle. I may have to leave this game as “Lost!” if I don’t find a way to survive the attack. Those of you that have played this before, do you have any hints or pointers that I can use to deal with this sequence? If I get stuck here, how much of the game will I miss? I hate to think that I’d leave a anything incomplete, but this combat may be too rough for me. I’m going to keep working on it but thanks for your help!

Time played: 2 hr 25 min
Total time: 13 hr 15 min

By Deimar

And for the last time we are here, rating a Hugo game. At this point it seems a bit unfair. When Hugo I was released Sierra was still doing games with the first version of their SCI engine, still using a text parser. Graphically, those games were already squeezing all of the EGA’s power and there were some even prettier coming from competitors, especially from Lucasarts. In spite of all that, Hugo’s House of Horrors could be considered a product of the time. Not something spectacular, but at least not that much different from other games in that or previous years. By this point however, and even in spite of the graphic improvements, Hugo III seems totally out of time for 1992. The idea of this blog has never been to judge the games by their peers in their time period, but to look at them from the perspective of 30 years of graphic adventures. However, I wanted to point out that in spite of the low score I am sure I will give this game, I think there are signs of improvement from David Gray and that the effort put into it might be hidden between what came in 1991 and what is coming in 1992. Although it will probably still be the worst game of the year, let’s be honest.

I am sure something similar happened to Amelia Earhart...

Puzzles and Solvability

Reading my score for Hugo II one of my main concerns was that there wasn’t enough items to make the game interesting. And to be honest that has not changed that much. If anything, it is even more obvious where to use the items. It is fine to give some hints to the player, but this game flatly tells you where to use some of them. Heck, it is even worse considering the hints are given for some of the easier puzzles but none is given for the hardest (banishing the ghost or escaping the witch doctor). And to round that up, the biggest problem is not even solving the puzzles as much as finding the objects when phrases like “look into plane” doesn’t work or you have to hit a random spot to get a book.

Not everything is bad. There is something better than in the previous games. Having the whole game happen in an interconnected setting allows more complex puzzles. More specifically, the elephant puzzle. This puzzle requires getting items from several locations, obtained by solving other puzzles and the puzzle itself is interesting because of the timing needed to execute all the actions. However, this alone is not enough to rise the score in this category, as the linearity of the puzzles and the other quirks mentioned above are enough to put it into the ground.

Rating: 2

I guess a wizard was reading by the piranha-infested stream and somehow forgot that it was in fact a piranha-infested stream

Interface and Inventory

Ok, this aspect has definitely not improved. It is the same old parser used in Hugo I and Hugo II. If anything, the addition of a Turbo mode is very on point, given that you have to walk a lot through the jungle and I really appreciated not having to wait for the slowest man in earth to cross every screen. Still, the descriptions of some of the items are really poor, there are very few things with descriptions in every screen and they are sometimes misleading. There two very clear examples of this. The first one is the so called hint system, which doesn’t even tell you it is a hint system, it is difficult to find and use and doesn’t really help that much (unless you didn’t know how to get items in the plane of course). The other example is crossing the bridge at the beginning of the game. This puzzle requires to tie some vines to it. However, if you try to look at the vines, or any other vegetation for that matter, the game tells you that you should forget about it. Damn you, David Gray. Damn you.

Rating: 1

So if there is no point in taking any vegetation why do you expect me to use it to solve a puzzle?

Story and Setting

Been there, done that. Character A needs rescuing and character B goes on to save her. It is the same story all over again. At least in Hugo II you had the added mystery murder thingy. Here the only thing changing is the setting. But it is a very good change. This jungle feels somewhat more alive than the houses in the previous ones. And it is more coherent also. Even though the natives do very little, it does feel like they could be living there due to the detail put into the village. However, there is no driving force behind solving the puzzles other than getting to the point where you save Penelope. I mean, there is really no point in getting into the witch doctor’s hut, but you just do it because it is the only way you haven’t tried and there must be something there even though Hugo has no motive to go there. I know, that could be said about a lot of other adventures, but here it just seems forced.

Rating: 2

I just love this village I don’t know why. Maybe it is because of the low expectations I had when starting the game...

Sound and Graphics

It is a Hugo game so... no sound at all. Some beeps from the speaker at the beginning that could be considered a melody. Graphically, the story is very different. I mean, it is still not that great, but I would say it is about King Quest III’s level of quality instead of below King Quest I’s. I just have to give it one more point than to its predecessors if anything for hiring an artist and not having badly digitalized pictures as background.

Rating: 3

Don’t you love those trees?

Environment and Atmosphere

If there is something worth mentioning in this game it is that the environment really feels coherent and cohesive. Big improvement over the mess that was Hugo II. However, the effort put into detailing the jungle and making it an interesting place doesn’t translate into a good atmosphere. I mean, I never felt like I was in any kind of rush or that there was danger looming over my head. It is just like a stroll through the park. A park full of piranhas, elephants, cannibals and ghosts but a stroll nonetheless. A small stroll even, as the whole game is just a few screens long, although it is commendable that I didn’t feel like it was a small place. Overall, a little improvement over the usual Hugo games.

Rating: 3

I am having a really hard time getting screenshots. The game is just so short it is very difficult not to repeat them.

Dialogue and Acting

There is some dialogue. It is not interactive but for the old man part but it is something. The writing is not very good and I would dare say that it has been played more straightforward, losing the charm of the corky dialogues from previous games, even if those were very few. I think it is fair to say that it is in tone with Hugo 2.

Rating: 3

No, it is not an elephant. I am just happy to see you.

Final Rating

2+1+2+3+3+3 divided by 0.6 is 23.33, making 23 the rating for Hugo III: Jungle of Doom. Hugo II had 18 but Hugo I had 24 so I am going to give this game two discretionary points because I think it is slightly better that Hugo’s House of Horrors in all aspects. That makes 25. Congratulations Joseph Curwen! You have correctly guessed the score for two Hugo games!

Cap Distribution

100 CAPs for Deimar:

Blogger Award - 100 CAPs - For blogging his way through the game for our enjoyment

25 CAPs for Joseph Curwen:

Penelope’s saviour award - 20 CAPs - For guessing the game’s score
President of Hugo’s fan club award - 5 CAPs - For guessing Hugo II and Hugo III’s score

15 CAPs for Illmari

Witch doctor slayer award - 10 CAPs - For playing this game with me
True adventure award - 5 CAPs - For having played and finished all Hugo games with the reviewers

Written by Joe Pranevich

There are no pumpkins in this game.

Happy (Early) Thanksgiving! This week, I am thankful that both of the games I am playing are coming to a well-deserved end. We’ll talk about Dungeon today and I’ll close out the rest of Star Trek later in the week. As I ended last time, I had finally scored the maximum of 585 points and was visited by a wraith who opened the way to the Implementer’s Crypt. I have heard a lot about the famous Zork “endgame”, but I know nothing about it. I come to this point beautifully unspoiled. It is exciting! My score has now reset to 5 of 100 endgame points. I have a long way to go...

Inside the crypt, I find nothing: no corpses, grave goods, or anything else. The walls say “feel free” on them, but no amount of feeling seems to help. I’m so at a loss to what to do next, I even kill myself with the suicide knife. That thankfully is too dark of a place for this game to go. Should I fill the crypt with grave goods as an offering to the “gods”? I fetch the grail and coffin but they do not do anything obvious. I can close the crypt door, but nothing happens. What am I missing?

Just like this but emptier?

It’s a bad omen for the rest of the endgame, but I have to take another hint. Thankfully Voltgloss suspected I’d get stuck here because he included some endgame pointers as well:

How can you join them in that rest? No, suicide is not the answer...
...even if the answer feels like it *would* functionally be suicide.

Oh! I close the door and turn off the lamp. Hanging out in darkness in this game is normally suicide, but there are no messages now about grues. I suppose that even they can’t come in here uninvited. One turn later, I am whisked away to the top of a long stairwell. The cloaked guy that I saw before appears and informs me that I am ready for the “ultimate challenge” of Zork. He tells me of a magical incantation that I can use later but I do not quite understand what he is talking about. With his prompting, I type “INCANT FROG” to see what it does, but it still doesn’t make much sense:

>INCANT, frog
A hollow voice replies: "FROG MDPDYR".

Since he told me to “choose wisely”, I restore my game. I’ll come back and do it again once I understand what it is doing. Saving and restoring is disabled so I have to start the endgame over from scratch. That ought to increase the difficulty! One more detail: all my stuff is gone. I arrived with only the sword and a lamp, everything else is left behind. At least I won’t worry about missing items.

I descend the stairs to emerge at one end of a long hallway. There’s a button to press, but it does not seem to do anything yet. I follow the hall north to a room with a red laser beam across the path. Tripping it doesn’t set off any alarms and I do not find much at all I can do with it. Further down there is where it gets interesting: the hallway ends at the mirror. Just in front of it is a compass rose painted on the floor with a groove running from north to south. Touching the mirror or the compass does not appear to do much. I can shatter the mirror with the sword but am rewarded only with a broken mirror. I restore to fix it and resolve to find whatever it is I am missing. It must involve the button, the beam, or the mirror.

The strange thing I notice about the button is that I get two messages when I press it: one that says I press it in and one that says it pops out. There must be a way to hold it in place? I don’t have tape or glue, so no immediately apparent way to do it. The beam is similarly challenging. I can’t “cut” the beam with the sword or “reflect” it somewhere. I stumble on the solution by accident: if you drop the sword in the room, it lands in a way that blocks the beam. It would have been nice to clue me in that blocking the beam was the right approach! That doesn’t change anything in the mirror room but when I push the button, it stays pushed. Even better, a hidden panel opens in the mirror wall. We have a path forward!

I hoped the solution would have been duct tape.

The Strangest Contraption

Inside the mirror is, by its own admission, “rather complicated”. I’ve resisted blogging room descriptions directly, but this one is special enough I just can’t resist:

You are inside a rectangular box of wood whose structure is rather complicated. Four sides and the roof are filled in, and the floor is open.

As you face the side opposite the entrance, two short sides of carved and polished wood are to your left and right. The left panel is mahogany, the right pine. The wall you face is red on its left half and black on its right. On the entrance side, the wall is white opposite the red part of the wall it faces, and yellow opposite the black section. The painted walls are at least twice the length of the unpainted ones. The ceiling is painted blue.

In the floor is a stone channel about six inches wide and a foot deep. The channel is oriented in a north-south direction. In the exact center of the room the channel widens into a circular depression perhaps two feet wide. Incised in the stone around this area is a compass rose.

Running from one short wall to the other at about waist height is a wooden bar, carefully carved and drilled. This bar is pierced in two places. The first hole is in the center of the bar (and thus in the center of the room). The second is at the left end of the room (as you face opposite the entrance). Through each hole runs a wooden pole.

The pole at the left end of the bar is short, extending about a foot above the bar, and ends in a hand grip. The pole has been dropped into a hole carved in the stone floor.

The long pole at the center of the bar extends from the ceiling through the bar to the circular area in the stone channel. The bottom end of this pole has a T-bar a bit less than two feet long attached to it. On the T-bar is carved an arrow. The arrow and T-bar are pointing west.

Did you get all that? I’m not sure that I do, so I tried to draw it. This is the worst illustration ever, but it gets the point across:

Not my best work...

The floor has grooves and compass rose like we saw outside plus a complex set of poles: a short one, a long one, and a T-bar pointing west. The floor is “open” so the grooves and compass belong to the hall and not the box. While I looked around, the door I entered through closed behind me. I experiment with everything to discover that I can lift the short bar a bit, but not the other two. I also learn that I can “push” each of the wall panels for a different result: the colored panels rotate the room relative to the compass rose on the floor while the wooden panels rock the room slightly. That seems suspicious so I rotate the structure to each of the eight possible positions and try pushing the panels again. When the compass arrow points north or south, the pine panel reveals a door when I press it. I am initially confused because that door is not the same as the mirrored door that I came through. Looking at my diagram above, the mirrored door is on the white/yellow wall while the pine door emerges through that panel.

The rotation is difficult to describe so I made another diagram:

Still not Picasso.

When I turn the structure, the “room” that I am in rotates within the long hallway. When it is east/west, like it was at the start, it blocks the hall completely with a mirrored side. When I shift it north/south, it forms two new narrow rooms on the west and east. There is no way to exit when it is turned in a half-direction. I rotate the structure so that I can get by and explore the rest of the hall, but I am stopped almost immediately. The “Guardians of Zork”, giant statues that watch over the hall from either side, stand guard just a few steps farther north. When I approach, they club me to death. I continue experimenting and find that the mahogany button will move the whole structure north or south when the arrow is pointing that direction. The obvious solution seems to be to use the structure to sneak by the statues, but it is not to be. As we pass, the statues still see us an attack. I’m killed in a mass of splinters and death.

From here, I admit that I start to cheat slightly. Since I cannot save my game in the usual way, I keep an open document of commands recorded on it. When I die, I cut and paste them all into the terminal to get back to where I was. It’s simple, but effective. It also keeps me from going crazy as the Guardian statues kill me over and over again.

The good news about this section is that it’s a finite puzzle. We don’t have a ton of rooms or objects to manipulate and it’s just a matter of understanding what’s in front of us. I work out that the short pole affects the room’s rotation: with it up, the structure can turn, but down it is locked in place. However, that pole doesn’t prevent us from moving forward or backward. This contraption is difficult to visualize, but could it be locked into the groove on the floor? But when the pole is down while we are moving, we can pass the Guardians without being killed. I guess that the train vibrates less when it’s down so the statues only see their reflections as we pass by and do not attack. I’m just theorizing in retrospect because I was shocked when that worked. I made it!

I sucked at the sports questions...

Trivial Pursuit - Zork Edition

At the end of the hall, I find an unassuming wooden door. It’s locked but I knock anyway. The “Master of the Dungeon” appears and… he asks me Zork trivia. Who saw that coming?

Question One: What object is of use in determining the function of the iced cakes?

This is a tough one because I solved the Wonderland cakes through trial and error, but I later worked out that I could use the flask as a magnifying glass. I give that as my answer and he’s happy. One down!

Question Two: What object in the dungeon is haunted?

This one is easier, but I still make a mistake. It could have been the crypt or the skeleton, but the suicide knife is what I thought of first. I screw up and say the “nasty knife” first and get it wrong, but the Master lets me try again. The haunted knife is the “rusty” one. Two down!

Question Three: Beside the Temple, to which room is it possible to go from the Altar?

I also discovered the answer to the final question while I was exploring. If you pray at the altar, you are taken to the forest. I answer that and he is pleased! The door opens and I emerge into the next area.

The road to Hell is paved with Zork trivia.

The Final Puzzle

The area beyond the door isn’t very large: just a short hallway that wraps around a prison cell. The long hallway ends at a parapet overlooking a fiery pit. There’s a dial there with eight numbers and a button. As I explore, the Dungeon Master watches me carefully and follows me from room to room. When I enter the cell, he waits outside, but otherwise he watches me like a hawk. Very interesting!

I start experimenting. If I open the cell door, pushing the button will cause it to close. I iterate over each of the eight numbers on the dial, setting and pushing the button for each one to see what changed. For the most part nothing happens, but when the dial is set to four, the cell changes. Instead of being empty with a door on the north wall, it’s now empty with doors on both the north and south walls. I change the numbers again and re-explore the whole area to see if any doors appear anywhere else, but only that one door when the dial is set to four. As a test, I drop the lantern in the cell and change the number. When I return, the lantern is gone. When I set the number back, it reappears. My theory: the dial is bringing different cells here from a deeper part of the prison. I might be able to use that to travel to another location-- sneaking out the special door in Cell #4-- but there is no way for me to push the button from the cell or delay the action so that I can run in.

It takes some time and experimentation, but I eventually discover that we can ask the Dungeon Master to do things, just like we the robot earlier in the game. He refuses occasionally, but I can give him items, ask him to pick up and drop things, etc. Unfortunately, I cannot give him compound commands. I really want him to wait twice and then push the button to give me time to get to the cell, but there is no way to do it. I later discover that when you are in the cell, the Master can still hear you through the window. This means that I can give him commands from one room away, but that is still not where he needs to be.

Finally, I figure it out: it was a vocabulary problem. If I tell him to “stay” rather than “wait here” or similar, he remains in the room that I leave him. I ask him to stay at the parapet while I walk to Cell #4. I test and he can still hear me out the cell window and responds to commands! I ask him to change the dial and push the button and the room is magically transported. There is fire out the window. Is this the prison? I open the bronze door behind me and walk out... to a victory! I emerge into some sort of treasury. The Dungeon Master appears and congratulates me on the win. He even appoints me as the new DM! After 36 hours of Zork-fun, I finally won!

Next week, we can put the first-- and likely longest-- game in our Zork marathon to bed with the final rating.

Time played: 3 hr 50 min
Total time: 36 hr 25 min

Written by Joe Pranevich

A long winded introduction!

Last week, we rounded out the fifth episode of the game by saving an Aztec god from certain death at the hands of a Klingon tribunal. Star Trek can be wonderfully strange sometimes! We’ve had fun, but this week we will draw the saga to a close. As you can see from the title, I was not as successful as I hoped. I hate to not stick the landing, but I’ll keep working at it until the Final Rating is posted. Those of you that have played this game before (or read the comments) will have a good idea of what I’m stuck on, but we’ll get there in just a moment.

On to the matter at hand: Starfleet has contacted the Enterprise with a sensitive mission. A pre-warp world around Alpha Proxima may be in trouble. An asteroid (comet?) on an elliptical orbit will be approaching the planet soon and the Federation’s monitoring satellite have detected something suspicious. We have to go there, figure out what’s wrong, and fix it without alerting the natives. Sounds like fun!

That’s no asteroid… it’s a space station?

After we get our orders, Spock chimes in with more exposition. 1000 years ago, the planet was more advanced than it is now, but a global war blasted them back to the bronze age. The natives have gradually rebuilt to 20th century Earth-levels of technology, but their mythology still refers to the approaching asteroid as their God of War, Scythe. The asteroid approaches every 200 years. We warp into the sector and scan it to discover a forgotten missile base from the last great war. Uhura detects a computer transmission from the base to the planet, but it goes unanswered as the natives no longer have the technology to receive it.

We beam down to the base and arrive in front of a large metal door. Is anyone else surprised that this “asteroid” is both large enough for us to orbit and have a breathable atmosphere with Earth-like conditions? As we land, Mr. Scott informs us of a transporter malfunction during the beaming. We arrived fine, but it will be at least an hour before he can transport us out again. I try to explore our surroundings, but the game does not let Kirk and the landing party leave the vicinity of the metal door. I can pick up rocks; maybe I can throw them at another Aztec warrior. When we approach the structure, Scotty updates us on his progress: the Enterprise has a computer virus! Weapons and tractor beams have been knocked out and he estimates three hours to repair.

One door...

With no help from the Enterprise, all we can do is try to tackle the door. It has some sort of camera at the top, plus a keypad and display. I have Spock try to unlock it, but he is prompted for a passcode. He suggests that the people that built the base were superstitious and may have used a number important to them… but I know nothing about them! How does that help me now?

I restore to earlier in the episode and consult the library computer:

Alpha Proxima, the local system, has five planets of which two are inhabited. The third planet, Proxtrey, is the one with the pre-warp civilization and asteroid trouble. The fourth planet is a Federation leisure world well-known for its museums.
Scythe, the “asteroid”, was originally a moon of Proxtery that was knocked out of orbit. The name “scythe” is also the 17th letter of their alphabet.
On Proxtrey, the “Lucrs” and the “Sofs” waged a great war 1000 years ago which killed 75% of the population and rolled back hundreds of years of civilization and technology.
The Lucr culture was rooted in individualism. An individual who made the most of his (or her) abilities was considered a god. They used base three for their numbers and they gave 99 special significance.
The Sofs culture was collectivist. They used base four for their numbers and liked things in groups of 100.

With that knowledge, I return to the door to try codes. I try 17 and 99 first, but neither of those do the trick. Do I need to convert to base three? 17 in base three is 122, but that doesn’t work either. But 99 in base three is 10200 and that works! Math can be fun!

Two doors...

Once we get inside, Uhura updates us that the virus was somehow transmitted when the ship scanned the base. Mr. Kyle has been able to isolate the problem and they are running antivirus programs now. While they do that, I explore the next locked door. This one has a computer terminal where we learn that words in the Lucr language have a “neutral”, “submissive”, or “aggressive” posture. Do they use mood instead of grammatical gender? There’s a keypad on the right that prompts us for another password. I run through the same numbers as last time and the door opens with 122. I guess I’m good at this!

Three locked doors! (Ah, ah, ah.)

We emerge into an open space and get another update from Uhura. She and Lt. Kyle have discovered that the Klingon antivirus “K’Trhra-C” is able to cure the infection but it will take some time. The tractor beam is working again so that we should be able to stop up to ten missiles, but any more than that and we cannot ,protect the planet. Er… what? When did we discover the base was going to fire missiles? And if that’s the case, why didn’t it fire them the other four times it approached the planet since the war? I explore the room, but there’s not much to find. The northern door is locked and requires an ID card instead of an easily guessed password. The doorway to the east is open so we head there next.

Reused art assets! Just like the real show!

The room to the east is a science lab, reminiscent of the one from the Carol Marcus episode. Even the gun on the ceiling is the same! I’m not sure if this represents laziness or brilliance on the part of the creators as reuse of assets was a Trek staple, especially in later seasons. There’s a box on the floor that contains some wires we can collect plus a control panel. The gun on the ceiling is a mining laser, but it can no longer be pivoted far. The computer lets me fire it with multiple settings: 1, 10, and 100. At first glance that seems to be a strength setting, but “100” requires me to enter coordinates. I’m not sure what is going on there.

Eventually, I give up and search the other room again. When I try to manipulate the keycard slot, I get a message that says my fingers are too big. Spock checks it out and believes that we can fashion a keycard out of rock using the mining laser and use it to open the door. That sounds stupid, but no less so than locking your missile base with your culture’s equivalent of “password” so we’ll let it slide. I scan the keypad with the tricorder to get an image of the card I would need to create, then use that on the mining laser to create an indentation in the rocks at the far side of the room. Now what? I realize that the rocks from outside are a purer metal than the rocks in this room so I put some into the indentation and fire the laser on setting “1”. Like magic we melt the rocks and get an ID card!

I wonder if either of those could play Zork.

The final room contains the “brains” and “brawn” of the base: a trio of computers plus a fleet of nuclear missiles. Two of the computers appear responsible for targeting while the third controls the launch sequence. I examine the two computers carefully and they are not quite the same: the left one runs at 750,000 operations per second while the right does 1,200,000. Spock realizes that the left one has a virus! If we spread it to the other computer, the missiles will fall harmlessly into the sun.

The solution is simple: I connect the cable from the other room to each computer. The virus crosses the cable and we win! It feels like an anticlimax, but Starfleet likes it enough to award us 89% and 3 commendation points. What did I miss? I don’t feel like replaying for 100% so this will have to do.

Up next: the season finale!

Star Trek Trivia

This episode was light on the Star Trek references. Most notably, it is predicated on the “Prime Directive”, the Starfleet notion that mankind should never interfere with a pre-spacefaring culture. That was first seen in the episode “Bread and Circuses” but has been a staple of Star Trek lore in every format.
Computer viruses were too “high tech” to be imagined for the original Star Trek, but The Next Generation faced a virus in its second season (“Contagion”). The Oxford English Dictionary credits David Gerrold, Trek writer most famous for “The Trouble With Tribbles”, with the first use of the term in one of his non-Trek novels in 1972.
Long-forgotten automated weapons were depicted a few times, most notably “The Doomsday Machine” on the original series and “Arsenal of Freedom” on The Next Generation.
The two computers portrayed here wouldn’t even have been advanced for 1992. A contemporary 486DX processor could perform 25 million operations per second. Modern processors are thousands of times faster than that.

A destroyed starship!

I intended to discuss the final episode next week, but it turned out shorter than expected. Rather than force everyone to wait a week for a short post, let’s jump right into it! We begin the final episode with a Captain’s Log: twelve hours ago, the USS Republic, the ship that we sparred against in the first episode, was attacked. We arrive at her last known location to find her all but destroyed. There are only two life signs aboard, both heavily injured.

Before we beam over, we are given a choice: I can send Starfleet a full report immediately plus order the Enterprise to flee to Starbase 24 if an enemy approaches, or I can wait to notify them and have the Enterprise stand her ground. Why are those choices connected? What if I wanted to notify and stand to fight? I choose the communicate-and-fleet option as the safer approach. Better to save the crew and lose the captain than have another ship be destroyed.

Redressed sets!

We beam onto the Republic’s bridge and find everyone dead, including Captain Patterson. The life sign that we detected just moments ago has already faded away. It’s a sad scene. I send Spock to scan the computers and he learns that the ship was attacked by the Enterprise! How is that possible? Could it be that someone captured the sensor data from our initial skirmish with the Republic and replayed that somehow to hide the origin of the attack? Could this be related to the virus from the last episode? Does all of this connect?

He’s dead, Jim.

Leaving the bridge takes me directly to sickbay. Two bodies lay in medical bays, but only one, a young woman, is still alive. I have McCoy stabilize her and she confirms that it was the Enterprise that attacked. They even had visual confirmation! There goes my theory. McCoy discovers that most of the casualties on the ship were caused by life support being lost in the battle. There is nothing else to do so we request a medical team and beam back to the ship.

Sorry. Who are you again?

The scene jumps ahead as Kirk narrates an updated Captain’s Log. We have located and are pursuing the ship that destroyed the Republic and it really is an exact duplicate of the Enterprise, right down hull markings and transponder signal. It’s luring us to Veradine and I get the choice to either hail the ship or try to catch up. I try talking first. Ies Bredell of the Varadine Defense Force answers our hail. Many years ago, a young Lt. Kirk did something to Mr. Bredell that he was pretty unhappy about. He asks us if we remember… which of course we do not because this has never come up before. This is not a plot element carried over from either the series or movies. I ask how he created a duplicate of the Enterprise. Bredell just says that his people have good intelligence. I tell him that he couldn’t possibly beat a well-trained Starfleet crew and he opens fire. Here we go!

RIP Captain Kirk (2233-2269)

And this is the end of the line for me. Within seconds, Bredell’s ship is joined by two Elasi fighters. The combination of the three of them, the fast pirate ships plus the heavy firepower of the fake-Enterprise, defeats me over and over again. This is by far the hardest battle I have faced and I am not even coming close to killing even one of their ships. I requested assistance last week and I will gladly take more hints this week, but as of right now I am toast. I will keep trying different things while I work on the Final Rating.

What happens next? Not much. I read a few spoilers online that suggest that the game ends as soon as the battle does: one more visit from the admiral and then an ending based on your overall scores through the missions. We may not be missing much, but I’d rather not have my first loss either.

I may be feeling down on this sequence because I lost, but this is a disappointing way to end. The finale doesn’t tie the episodes together in any way. The villain is one-note and a lost opportunity to use someone from the Star Trek canon that we might care about. And closing an adventure game with a non-adventure episode? That’s a strange decision. There’s so much more to say, but I’ll hold my tongue until next time.

Star Trek Trivia

Captain Kirk’s time as Lt. Kirk aboard the USS Farragut is central to this storyline, but none of the events described in this game were hinted at in the original series. Kirk’s time on the Farragut was a central element of the episode “Obsession”.
It would have been very difficult for Bredell to construct his Enterprise-2 in time for his revenge plan. At this point in our story, Kirk had been on board the Enterprise less than four years. It takes two years for a Starfleet shipyard to build their own Constitution-class starship. Bredell could not have planned and built this replica in only three years without access to the same quality shipyards.
Using a near-duplicate of the Enterprise was a cost-saving measure in a number of episodes, most notably “The Doomsday Machine” and “The Tholian Web”. The hand-wave is that the Constitution-class starship was a major workhorse during this era of Trek history so naturally Kirk will see them on his missions.

If all of the stars align, next week we will have a special post to look at the updated version of “Vengeance” which was included in the CD-ROM edition of the game. Depending on how long that gets, we could push off the Final Rating until the following week. Either way, this part of our “five-year mission” is coming to a close soon.

Time played: 2 hr 05 min
Total time: 15 hr 20 min

Written by Reiko

Frederik Pohl's Gateway, our next game from Legend Entertainment, is naturally based on the 1977 book of the same name and author, the first installment of the Heechee saga. Trickster covered the book last year on his short-lived Retrosmack blog, so I won't go into much detail about that here. Besides, while the game takes its setting from the book, the plot diverges quite a lot, and even the PC is somewhat different despite being supposedly the same person as the book's protagonist. The book seems to be much more character-driven, but the game focuses more on the setting and plot. You don't need to know anything about the book to play the game, because it's quite a rich setting, capable of supporting a lot of different stories. Apparently Syfy is going to adapt the book into some kind of TV show, too.
I should start out by admitting that the Gateway sequel, Gateway II: Homeworld, was one of my favorite games when I was a kid, being one of the several science fiction games that I actually owned (along with Alien Legacy and Outpost). But I didn't play the first game until much later, when the rise of abandonware made many games much more available. That was still several years ago now, so while I will be playing with a lot of familiarity of the setting and puzzle solutions, I don't remember all the details. I am very excited to be sharing one of my favorite game series with you all, but I will do my best to temper my excitement with a fair treatment of the game's features.

The game opens with an illustrated background sequence summarizing the setting. Explorers on Venus have found tunnels carved by the alien Heechee half a million years ago. Nobody found much of anything interesting until one explorer stumbled across a working spacecraft. He unwisely just got in it and started fiddling around.

A hidden Heechee spacecraft on Venus.

Eventually he managed to trigger it to take off and use its FTL drive to take him to an huge space station that had been sitting between the orbits of Mercury and Venus. Unfortunately, the station didn't seem to have any food or water, and he couldn't get the ship to take him back to Venus. So before he expired, he rigged his ship to explode in order to send a signal to Earth.

The station was the biggest discovery ever, after the knowledge of alien artifacts at all, of course, because it contained hundreds more spacecraft just like the one that had taken the explorer there. Those FTL spacecraft became humanity's gateway to the stars, hence the name.

Some codes send the ship to the heart of a star or other lethal location...

The catch? Their destinations couldn't be deciphered. Their only control was a four-digit code. It became a sort of lottery to take a ship to an unknown destination, an interstellar prospecting venture. Most locations yielded little or nothing, and a few explorers never returned, but a small fraction found useful technology that could be worth a fortune.

The PC is supposed to be the same as the protagonist in the book, but he's not even named in the game as far as I can tell. Which is probably just as well, because the guy's name is Robinette Broadhead. Seriously, who would give that kind of name to a boy? It's not too surprising he has psychological issues.

The scenario is given in the game this way:

"You won the local lottery on December 23, 2101. The prize was a one way ticket to Gateway worth $238,575, including a limited partnership in Gateway Enterprises, transportation to Gateway, ten days worth of life support on Gateway itself, a class in Heechee ship handling, and an invitation to go on the first available mission after graduation.

"A week after you turned in your winning lottery ticket, you boarded an interplanetary ship traveling from Earth to Gateway.

"It is now Wednesday, May 17, 2102, and you have been aboard Gateway for less than a day. You have been assigned living quarters and a proctor to show you around and get you settled in. Your first ship handling class starts later today.

"You are about to become a Gateway prospector."

The manual has some additional information. It puts the gamble rather bluntly: "You will be put aboard a Heechee starship and will take your life in your hands as you punch out for a destination that could be the core of a star, a deadly black hole, or a new planet filled with the riches of ancient Heechee technology." It also suggests that the Earth is getting rather depleted, an idea which I think is mostly ignored in the game: "The prize was a one way ticket to Gateway, a passport out of the food mines in the blasted moonscape of Wyoming, and a chance to become rich beyond your wildest dreams." Food mines? What does that even mean?

With that, we start "Part 1: Gateway Prospector".

Gateway has almost exactly the same hybrid text interface as Legend's previous games, Timequest and the Spellcasting games, so I'm not going to say much more about that besides mentioning again that I will generally play in half-screen mode, hiding the menus and leaving more room for text. But there are also a number of graphical interface screens that do not use the parser, shifting the needle on the hybrid text adventure scale a bit farther toward graphical adventure. Most of these graphical interfaces involve pushing buttons on various technological devices, and given the sci-fi setting, there are a lot of devices.

Button-pushing on a commset.

Bob Bates is again credited as designer in general and also specifically for part II. Other designers include Michael Lindner, Duane Beck, Mike Verdu, and Glen Dahlgren. Steve Meretzky's name appears only under "Additional Testing".

Gateway is available on the Internet Archive. Legend released it for free at one point to promote the sequel, so if you haven't played it, I'd encourage you to give it a try. Already the graphics look a lot better than Timequest, and having Bates and Meretzky involved is a good indication that the puzzles will be good too. Next time, we'll dive into exploring an alien space station and taking the gamble of a lifetime!

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There's a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no CAPs will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. As this is an introduction post, it's an opportunity for readers to bet 10 CAPs (only if they already have them) that I won't be able to solve a puzzle without putting in an official Request for Assistance: remember to use ROT13 for betting. If you get it right, you will be rewarded with 50 CAPs in return. It's also your chance to predict what the final rating will be for the game. Voters can predict whatever score they want, regardless of whether someone else has already chosen it. All correct (or nearest) votes will go into a draw.

Written by Joe Pranevich

Last week, I completed the adventure game marathon that is the original Zork. Of all the games that I have played here, this is the one that I feel proudest for winning. I have wanted to play and beat this game for years; thank you for giving me the opportunity to share it with you. I will get to the final rating shortly, but if you have been reading the comments then you know I have one remaining piece of unfinished business: the alternate versions.

Throughout my coverage, I have been aware that Voltgloss and others have been playing a different version of the game than I am. I was attracted by the “Dungeon” version because it was the one that I discovered for Linux many years ago and, as far as I knew, it was the only one. In this, I have betrayed my age because an alternate version of Zork has been available since 2004. I have a better idea now how these variants fit together and just won the other major contender for the “definitive” version. None of this affects the score so if you want to get right to that part, just scroll down.

Map of Zork from January 1982. Notice this is the 585-point version

For the last several weeks, I have been blogging the 585-point version known as Dungeon. I discussed the history briefly in the introduction, but it started as a fork of the original Zork codebase, freed by a hacker and ported to work on a wider array of systems than originally intended. From the early 1980s through 2004, this was the definitive version of mainframe Zork and the only version that could be played outside a small community of MIT-flavored PDP-10 users. This game claims to be derived from the “final” version of Zork and includes all puzzles created through 1979, but I have since learned that several refinements were made later and missed being included.

Mainframe Zork continued to have some development until 1981 when a new “final” edition was produced. This edition grew to 616 points and featured several additional treasures and puzzles. I do not know how widely distributed this version was; I have found documentation from 1982 that suggests the 585-point version was in wider circulation. The source code for this version was leaked sometime before the early 2000s (possibly in 1996), but it was unplayable, a historical curiosity only. It was written in a dead programming language called MDL (also known as “Muddle”) and could not be built on modern systems. Two later advances would finally bring this version back to a playable state.

In 2004, Ethan Dicks and others took that MDL source code and ported it to Inform, an adventure game creation language. In spirit, this was much like the original anonymous hacker that ported the 585-point version to other systems. This would become a 646-point version, but as far as I can discern it only changes the point values from the 616-point version rather than adding anything new. This version used the Inform parser and so while all the game elements were the same, a few solutions were worded slightly differently. It’s the easiest way to play something very close to the original game.

The final chapter in this story was finished in 2009. In that year, Matthew T. Russotto released “Confusion”, a Muddle interpreter written in C and C++ that knew “just enough” syntax that it could play the original MDL sources (616 points) with only a few modifications. It has its own bugs, but this version is the only one that utilizes the original game parser. You can get Confusion prebuilt for Windows, but I had to jump through a few hoops to get it to compile for the Mac. As I closed out my look at Dungeon, I played this version to conclusion so that I could get as much of the original experience as possible.

All of the above does not answer the most basic question: which version of Zork is definitive? Is it the 1979 version that predates the founding of Infocom? Or does the 1981 version best represent the authors’ intent? Does it matter that the later version may have been played by fewer people? I can’t answer that for myself, let alone for you. Instead, let me summarize the handful of differences that I discovered and you can decide for yourself.

Where is Saruman when you need him?

Same Game, New Puzzles

I did not solve the 616-point version of the game without help. Playing both versions side-by-side is maddening because new exits and changed descriptions do not stand out in descriptions you’ve read dozens of times before. I may have a similar challenge playing Zork I later. I tried to play the new puzzles straight but did not always succeed without help. These are the differences that I found:

The Three Palantirs

The largest addition is the three-part “palantir” puzzle, colored crystal balls that revealed distant parts of the maze. Each ball, when found, hinted at the location of the next.

The White Sphere replaced the “crystal sphere” that we found in the Wonderland area. Looking into it revealed the location of the Red Sphere.
The Red Sphere puzzle was fun. Just west of the Torch Room was a new room with a locked door. The White Sphere revealed the other side and showed that someone had left the key in the keyhole. With that knowledge, I was able to slide the welcome mat (a new object found on the surface in front of the white house) under the door and push out the door key using one of the skeleton keys. I then pulled the mat to retrieve it and opened the door to collect the Sphere. Looking into it revealed the location of the Blue Sphere.
The Blue Sphere puzzle was the most difficult of the set. The Red Sphere described a “Sooty Room” filled with coal dust so I checked the mine first. I re-mapped the whole place without finding any differences. I had to look up the solution and I suspect I never would have worked it out: if you tie the rope to the timber then drop it at the top of the Slide Room, the rope will dangle down the slide. You can climb down to access a hidden room in the middle of the slide which contained the final sphere.

Close cover before striking.

Other Puzzles and Changes

The trapdoor to the basement now stays open after you discover any alternate exit from the maze. This simplifies the process of getting treasure back to the case considerably.
The entrance into the Land of the Dead now requires the longer exorcism puzzle that I remembered. Once I had the bell, book, and lit candles at the entrance, I did the sequence: I first rang the bell, but it turned red hot and forced us to drop both it and the candles. I then picked up and re-lit the candles then read the book. The spirits departed and we accessed the crypt as before.
I missed one new puzzle completely. The matchbook has new text that tells you that you can send away for a brochure. I thought nothing of it, but if you type “send for free brochure” (even when not near a mailbox), the brochure containing a “Don Woods commemorative stamp” will arrive at the white house in a few turns. This puzzle both honors one of the creators of Adventure while also poking fun at an obscure puzzle in that game. I like the idea behind this puzzle, but it fails to make sense on multiple levels.
Once you return all the treasures to the case the Wraith tracks you down shortly no matter where you are. It was much easier to miss him in the older version as he seems to only appear in the Crypt.

This version feels more polished overall. The parser accepted complex commands like “drop everything except torch” and had the proper use of pronouns. A handful of text changes made puzzles like the clockwork canary and the sliding blocks much easier to understand. In contrast, additions like the “Sooty Room” and “free brochure” puzzles set the game backwards in solvability. In the end, it’s a wash. My feelings on the game are unchanged. I appreciate why some fans love and swear by each of the two versions.

Introduction to the MDL version under Confusion.

Final Rating

Puzzles and Solvability - Most of Dungeon boils down to “just” a treasure hunt, but experienced through a set of some of the most diverse puzzles in adventure gaming. We had not only traditional mazes and fetch quests, but also a sliding puzzle, a “Simon Says” puzzle, and many others. The endgame itself is like a masterclass in puzzle design and unlike anything I have played before. Although some of the puzzles were hard, only a few were “unfair’-- the glass bauble being the worst offender-- and I always felt like there were new things for me to try nearly until the end. Well done. My Score: 7.

Interface and Inventory - I had to play the MDL version to appreciate the original engine but what I found was fantastic. The text input was intelligent and dynamic; it would be excellent for 2010s let alone the early 1980s. The fact that it was implemented in a LISP-esque language certainly helped. Suspect received a 6 for nearly the same interface. That is a bit too high for me on a text-only parser, but this is an excellent text-only parser. My Score: 5.

Story and Setting - There is little story to speak of in Dungeon, just an unnamed protagonist delving into the ruins of an ancient civilization. Players are rewarded with hints here and there of a deeper backstory with the Twelve Flatheads and the decline of a brutally inefficient empire. It’s nonsensical and fun but not particularly deep. Although the setting as a whole makes nearly no sense, individual areas are exceptionally well done, especially the volcano and Flood Control Dam #3. My Score: 4.

State of the art ASCII imaging.

Sound and Graphics - You might expect a zero here because we are playing a text adventure, but the ASCII art for several of the objects as well as the basic representation of the sliding puzzle maze give it enough of a fraction of a point that I need to round up. My Score: 1.

Environment and Atmosphere - I had a lot of fun playing the game. The designers kept it whimsical and rarely did the game go into darker territory than it should have. My biggest complaint is that the layout of the dungeon makes absolutely no narrative sense. Why have a bank below the white house? Why have a cyclops in the center of the maze? Why have a well that doesn’t lead anywhere but more puzzles? The designers tried to take an Adventure-like maze and pretended that it made sense for something closer to archaeology. My Score: 3.

Dialog and Acting - The prose in this game is well-written and I was never bored or misunderstood what the game was trying to say. My Score: 4.

Final Calculation

Totaling it all up we get (7+5+4+1+3+4)/.6 = 40 points. I’ll award a single bonus point for the tremendous influence this game had on the rest of interactive fiction. Final score is 41!

While not astronomical, that places Dungeon above the other text adventures that we have played and it scores well against early graphical adventures. That feels right. A lot of what made Infocom great can be found in this game. It rewarded the time that I spent with it, but I can see someone with less dedication having a worse experience.

You guys did an amazing job guessing the score on this one. Average guess was 40.3. Niklas and Ilmari will split the reward for guessing 40 and 42 respectively. Congratulations! CAP distribution will be included in the Star Trek final rating which will land either this week or next.

What’s Next

This was the first step in a very long marathon, but it just got longer: based on some prompting from Voltgloss, I will add Starcross to the playlist. He was a great help with hints and if he says that has some elements that tie into Zork, I’ll play it and see. I also learned of Mini-Zork, a stripped-down 1987 variant of Zork I for systems that could not play the full thing. As of right now that is not on the list, but I might be convinced if someone feels strongly about it.

The next marathon post will be Zork I, but I’ve already won and will cover it in one go. Essentially, when Infocom was founded they created a version of Dungeon with fewer puzzles (such that could fit on a contemporary home computer) and launched it as Zork I. Please comment here with your score guesses since there won’t be an opportunity later.

Written by Alfred n the Fettuc

[Admin's note: You were probably all expecting an Eternam playpost by now. Unfortunately, Aperama works in a field where approaching Christmas means more work (and I am not implying that Santa's factories are actually located in Australia, although if I were him, I'd certainly consider moving Down Under from the cold North). So as not to make a large gap with only one official game and occasional Missed Classics going on, we've decided instead to continue for a while with another French game, Bargon Attack, this time played and reviewed by a real Frenchman! Aperama will return to the joys of Eternam in the future, when holiday season will be over. Now, I'll give the stage back to Alfred!]

My youth as a French adventure gamer who couldn't speak English was strictly limited to a few games. I couldn't understand all the Sierra Classics that were never translated and I wouldn't discover the Lucasarts masterpieces until Day of the Tentacle a few years later. In consequence, my first forays into the adventure genre was with Delphine Software Games (Future Wars, Operation Stealth...) and Coktel Vision. I have a lot of great memories of Inca, Ween and Lost in Time, and I've spent a fair amount of time playing Bargon Attack as 11-year old me. That’s why I’m really pleased to be able to play it again (and hopefully complete it, which I was unable to do at the time) as my first article on the blog. Let’s try and save French video gaming reputation!

French video gaming attack

Coktel Vision was a French company created in 1985 and was mainly specialized in edutainment software. Its most famous product (at least in France, don't know if it was known abroad) was the ADI series featuring Adi the alien, which went on to star in a morning cartoon and even spawned a full TV cable channel, Adibou TV in 2005, which was discontinued since. Adi was created among others by Muriel Tramis, of Emmanuelle "fame".

ADI : still seems better than the Teletubbies…

Coktel Vision created a few adventure games in the 90's, their most well-known work probably being the Gobliiins trilogy (which we'll come to soon) and Woodruff and the Shnibble (which we'll come to around 2036). The “erotic” trilogy from Muriel Tramis (Emmanuelle, Geisha, Fascination) is also among their creations, as well as the weird adventure/action hybrid Inca (1992) and its follow-up, and the quite good Ween : The Prophecy (1993) and Lost in Time (1993). Their last big adventure game was the ill-fated full-motion video Urban Runner in 1996. The company had been bought by Sierra in 1992 and disappeared in the same mess that crushed all the subsidiary companies of Sierra in the 2000's.

Bargon Attack is primarily an adaptation from a comic book published between 1989 and 1990 in a French computer magazine named Micro News. The creators of the comics went on to program their own video game and were then published by said Coktel Vision. The comics and the game have their very own 80’s style, mixing their own Parisian environment with classic science-fiction.

Scooter! Computers! Aliens! Phasers!

I'm not sure Bargon Attack will be the game saving the French adventure gaming reputation (the best PISSED rating of a French game that is not a Missed Classic being 44 for Operation Stealth / The Stealth Affair), but I certainly hope it will beat Emmanuelle's abysmal (and deserved) rating. What I remember mainly for this game is its weirdness and the sound effects, mainly a full-voiced introduction which was in my memory horribly acted and barely audible but still mind-blowing for me in 1992. And the stepping sounds. Oh my goodness, the stepping sounds. I'll see while replaying the game if they are as annoying as I remember but it seems to me that the game has very little sound except a continuous sound of the hero footsteps which resembles sounds like a shredder trying to chew gravel.

CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH

I think it's a weird game. From what I remember, every screen is separated and you have to figure out a way to exit to the next screen, not unlike Gobliiins. However, it's not always clear what to do to make progress. In this screenshot over here, which is the first screen, you'll have to get a coin of some kind to put in the guy's money box. If you don't do that, you'll be unable to ride the escalator and will be ejected from it should you try. Nothing seem to tell you any clues that you're supposed to do that and you stumble upon the solution by exhausting every possibilities, which is pretty remote from good game design. Then again, it's from my recollections of this game so I might be wrong. We'll see that together in my first post. I also remember an arcade game with a giant crab I couldn't pass so I never finished the game…

First intro screen. Weird to offer a demo where you see a little
part of the game playing itself. Doesn't fit an adventure game.

So let's boot up this new shining example of French game design and see what it's worth. Once I selected "game", the intro film starts. The graphics are pretty good for the time, mixing graphics and digitized images, and the fully voiced intro (while difficult to understand) is certainly impressive. A video game, Bargon Attack, is apparently enjoying a massive success but seems to be a scheme from aliens to take control of Earth. (According to the narrator, they should have realized that by the fact the company releasing it is called "Invaders". Yeah, pretty smooth, guys...) There is also a weird cult with star-shaped masks which seems to be related to that (albeit unclear how) and an exposition in Beaubourg about a painter named Sark, also wearing a mask and seemingly completely crazy. Then an alien appears in the computer and shoots you... And the guys in the mask give you another chance... aaaand you're dropped in the game. Weird.

Aaaah, Paris...

You play the part of a computer game playing geek… Pretty immersive...

Is that me or does he look like a young Ed Norton?

A lot of details into this bedroom, even if I spent quite some time
realizing that the troll-faced alien on the left is a crushed can.

Wow… pretty meta considering I’m playing on
a computer emulating a computer emulating a computer...

Ok… did I lose already?

So here we are, now it's time to stop the alien menace and walk my apparently metal-plated boots all over the Paris streets... See you next post to see how this weird little game holds on today.

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There's a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no CAPs will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. As this is an introduction post, it's an opportunity for readers to bet 10 CAPs (only if they already have them) that I won't be able to solve a puzzle without putting in an official Request for Assistance: remember to use ROT13 for betting. If you get it right, you will be rewarded with 50 CAPs in return. It's also your chance to predict what the final rating will be for the game. Voters can predict whatever score they want, regardless of whether someone else has already chosen it. All correct (or nearest) votes will go into a draw.

Written by TBD

No, not THAT extended Vengeance

When I decided to play the CD-ROM version of the final mission of Star Trek 25th Anniversary, I knew it was extended due to complaints about the original version's short length, but I had no idea just how extended it was.

When Joe played the floppy version the only 'puzzle' he needed to solve was brilliantly deducing that using Doctor McCoy's medical equipment on the dying woman might be useful. The extended version gives us multiple puzzles, so let's see what happens between watching a Starfleet officer die and meeting the man who wants to kill us in a ship battle...

In the extended version, we don't immediately beam back to the ship after the woman dies. We can't even if we want to. Calling the Enterprise just has Uhura telling us that they're still tracking the distress call.

But we have other locations to explore. We don't even need to go to sickbay first. When we leave the bridge we are presented with a map of the ship.

Shiny!

The yellow, DAMAGED sections are the ones we can explore. The only ones available at the start are the BRIDGE, AUXILIARY CONTROL and SICKBAY. Unavailable areas are TRANSPORTER ROOM, ENGINEERING AND WEAPONS BAY.

Let's start with SICKBAY, where we've already been in the floppy version. Going to the sickbay area by turbolift takes us to the corridor outside sickbay. .

The red door to the left takes us to the sickbay we've seen, but the debris at the end of the corridor covers the entrance to the next turbolift, which we need to enter the other areas.

I try the obvious solution of using my phaser on the debris to destroy it. It works, but more debris (which looks suspiciously like the same debris) falls from the floor above. Using Spock's tricorder suggests that we need something to support the roof.

The sickbay itself has a small table not seen in the original version. On the table I take a MEDICAL DRILL that fires a microscopic phaser beam, and an empty HYPODERMIC INJECTOR. I was expecting one or both of those to be useful in saving the alive woman, but no luck. She's dead, Jim.

So now let's try the AUXILLARY CONTROL room. We end up just outside the door to Auxillary Control, but the door won't open. Amongst the rubble we find a MOLECULAR SAW that doesn't help us open either the door or the panel next to it. We use Spock's tricorder, which is something I do on everything in every area I go to.

This man died while trying to perform the Karate Kid 'crane' technique.

The medical drill I took from sickbay helps me open the panel, but the drill isn't powerful enough and the molecular saw is too bulky to remove the jammed debris.

I go back to the bridge and look around in more detail. A support beam had fallen at the left side of the screen.

Spock uses two pages of text to say “It is a metal stick”

I use the molecular saw and Kirk dutifully cuts the beam, which I then take to the sickbay corridor to see if it will hold up the floor above. With beam in place, I shoot the debris and it works.

Um, could that one beam really hold up a floor full of infinite debris?

I walk through the red gooey mess that was once random debris and enter Turbolift 2, now able to visit more areas. Weapons Bay access is still blocked by extreme radiation, so I try Engineering.

So you mean I should shoot it with a laser gun, gotcha, Spock.

I shoot the dangerous debris (I'm not sure how many times I read the word debris during this mission, but I read it enough to start wondering what the plural of debris was) and find a PORTABLE FUSION POWER PACK. Spock points out that if I'd fired 3.2cm lower we'd have been destroyed, but I didn't, so he can just carry the power pack himself if he doesn't stop complaining.

Entering the door to Engineering, I find the Impulse Engines are still intact and clicking on anything in the room bombards me with typical Star Trek technobabble.

Shouldn't you have said, “the lines to the power regulator have been severed”? I find your use of grammar illogical.

So, I find out that I can restore power to the ship by using the Impulse Engines, but to do so I need some power cables. Searching around I find two hanging cables in the teleportation room corridor and the sickbay corridor. I take them and come back. After I plug them in, Spock tells me that I need to research the correct setting otherwise the fusion reactors will melt down. I can always count on good ol' Spock to bring my mood down when I think I've achieved something.

I eventually find a storage closet in engineering that looks more like generic scenery, which contains oil and a library of ENGINEERING TECHNICAL JOURNALS. Convenient. I can't take the oil, but I can use the syringe with it to take some, on the off chance I'll be needing to perform emergency surgery on the tin man at some point soon.

I go back to the Auxillary Control Room and use the oil on the debris blocking the door's gears. It loosens them and I can now remove the debris and enter the Auxillary Control Room.

On the floor of the control room I find some of the captain's log files and play them on the nearby computer. The log shows that the Republic fought off unknown cloaked ships before noticing the Enterprise in the sector and asking for help. It seems the Enterprise surprised the Republic by firing on them while they were unprepared. As for why these logs are here but the final log is in the bridge, I don't know. It doesn't really make sense that Captain Patterson would be here for the fight with two unknown vessels, but move to the bridge for a fight with the Enterprise, so we'll go with the rule of 'fits the plot' here.

MATHEMATICS UPDATE: Fry pointed out in the comments that the final log here was from the First Officer, so more the rule of 'player wasn't paying attention'. The Captain did make the first two logs here, and the log after the first fight was posted on Stardate 6088.1 but the final log here was from the First Officer on 6088.5. Some googling shows me that the difference of 0.4 is 9.6 hours, which gives the Captain plenty of time to move to the bridge before the Enterprise arrived and shot at them. Using the same maths, if the Captain is prompt with his log-making, the fight with the Elasi took 7.2 hours!

Spock tells me that connecting his tricorder as well as Bones' medical tricorder to the auxillary control computer will give the ship enough computing power for limited functionality but we shouldn't do so until restoring power to Engineering.

In other words, we should solve this puzzle last, as the plot won't make sense otherwise.

While in the Auxillary Control Room, we also check out the Engineering Manuals on the log player and memorize the information we need to get power back to the ship.

We go back to Engineering and Spock successfully uses the information from the Engineering Manuals to reroute power from the Impulse Engines.

Now we can insert both tricorders into the CPU in Auxillary Control which gives us exactly enough computational power to control a single ship's system.

As we do so, Redshirt points out the bleeding obvious

Thank you redshirt, but shouldn't a random occurrence or petty alien have killed you by now?

We can now divert power to one of: WEAPONS, SHIELDS, or TRANSPORTER CIRCUITS. Spock suggests we raise the shields, but as I've reloaded a saved game after doing that and hitting a dead end, I first attempt to divert power to weapons. Attempting to do so has Spock let us know that the torpedo loading system is malfunctioning and to clear it we'll have to physically fix it despite all turbolift access to the torpedo bay being blocked by a hull breach. I instead raise the shields and the Elasi hail us in response.

The Elasi captain is upset that I didn't give his associate on the Masada some important information back in Mission 2. There you are, Joe. There IS a link to a previous mission in the final one. I have the option of being defiant or telling him it will take time to get the info from the Republic's computer as it's been badly damaged. I choose the latter and after defusing the Elasi's second threat by pointing out that destroying us will also destroy the data, he agrees to give us time to get the data. Spock begins to point out that any data has already been destroyed until McCoy tells him to shut his Vulcan pie-hole. PROTIP: Never bring a half-Vulcan if you intend to bluff an enemy.

The Elasi tells us that he'd rather not kill me as an old friend wants to meet me, and gives me thirty minutes to get the information.

We can't use the transporter to get to the Enterprise as it's too far way, but we'll be able to fight back if we can get the weapons online. We can't transfer the power from the shields as we need to keep the Elasi off our ship.

Seems we have to find an alternate way to get the transporter powered so we can get to the weapons area to fix the malfunctioning torpedo system (I suspect debris is somehow responsible for the malfunction).

We go to the transporter room and plug in our portable fusion power pack that you probably forgot we picked up earlier. Spock warns us that with the small amount of power it contains, only one of us will be able to transport to the extremely dangerous weapons room.

I heroically order Ensign Redshirt to be the guinea pig and Spock transports him to the Weapons Bay. He examines the problem and lets us know that he can force the torpedo door open, but when he does the room will lose pressure and we won't be able to beam back there again.

I'm pretty sure you won't be making it back here anyway, ensign. I'll be sure to log your heroic sacrifice in my log... if I have time... and don't manage to find a date.

Ensign Kije does the job, and requests a transport back. I tell Spock to beam him back. He pulls the lever, and I can see Kije's atoms appear on the transporter pad, and then...

Well, that was a letdown. He lived, and I'm not certain but he seems more muscly and heroic than I remember.

I go back to the Auxillary Control Room and hail the Elasi Captain. I choose to tell him that we have the information, but he'll have to beam over to get it because our computer's subspace transmitter is out.

The captain doesn't trust us, but his sensors show that only our shields have power and demand we lower them at once so they can beam in.

I promise to comply, and lower my shields by diverting power to our weapons instead.

The Elasi lower their shields so they can beam in. I immediately fire the torpedoes that Kije fixed.

This scene seemed very classic Kirk to me. Tricking his enemy into lowering their shields so he could destroy them.

The Elasi captain orders his weaponmaster to fire all weapons on the Republic, but all their weapon systems are off-line due to our torpedo strike.

The Enterprise approaches and the Elasi Captain cloaks his ship after threatening that we may meet again sooner than I realize.

Uhura hails us and Chekov tells us that they detected another ship nearby and came as soon as they could. We assume that the Elasi must have done dealings with the Romulans to get access to their cloaking technology but brush the question off to beam back to the Enterprise and look for the ship that attacked the Republic.

This is where we get back to the point that Joe described in his 'Lost' post as “The scene jumps ahead as Kirk narrates an updated Captain’s Log. We have located and are pursuing the ship that destroyed the Republic and it really is an exact duplicate of the Enterprise, right down to hull markings and transponder signal”

We then have the same discussion with Bredell and the 3 versus 1 battle which I also failed to win after multiple attempts.

I found it interesting that Joe noticed that the scene jumped ahead – it jumps ahead here too but seems much less jarring having met the Elasi and seen more of the damaged ship. It seems to me after playing the mission that this version is always what was intended in the original game and it was shortened either due to time or disk space constraints. It was probably my favourite and the longest of all missions, and a much more fitting final mission to the game, disregarding the near impossible space battle finale.

My conclusion: A significant and almost necessary addition to the game that fleshes out the Republic's fate, with many more dead bodies and more destroyed/damaged ship parts, but for the love of Quetzalcoatl, this game update should have included difficulty settings for the ship battles!

Session time: 2 hours

By Ilmari

While Joe is busy completing Zork 1, let's get a step further in our history of early Coktel Vision games - what did they do before games like Bargon Attack? Doing a quick summary of games that have been covered so far, Mewilo was an unknown classic, Freedom was barely an adventure game, Operation Getafixwas too small and simple, and Emmanuelle… well, I guess we all remember what Emmanuelle was like. With a track record like this, it is hard to know what to expect from the next game designed by Muriel Tramis.

There’s magic! And dragons! And obligatory eye candy with ridiculous clothing!

Legend of Djel shows yet another side in Coktel Vision repertoire - it’s a game based on a fantasy setting. I know that the game had a sequel of sorts, Ween: The Prophecy, which I have also played. Unfortunately, I remember of the latter game only two annoying twins, who were supposed to be your servants, but would all the time manage to lose precious inventory items.

The winners of the Cedric Award 1993?

Looking at the manual of Legend of Djel, it seems there’s a rich background story for the game, spanning many different lands. The central place is the Kingdom of the Ashes, so called because it was at some point devastated by a series of volcanic eruptions. The blame on this event fell on wizard Hokram, the chief of the humans who had first populated the land. Hokram was promptly banished, when the eruptions occurred. After several centuries, Hokram returned. The new occupants of the Kingdom of Ashes thought him first to be a madman - how could Hokram have lived so long? - but they soon found out they were mistaken, when they saw strange glow surrounding Hokram’s cottage.

Hokram got married to witch Esabelle and they conceived a son, Djel, who is also the hero of the game. Considering his lineage, it is no wonder that Djel grew up to be a magician. Petroy, a gnome friend of his father’s, introduced him to the three wizards governing the surrounding countries:

Azeulisse, mistress of the Land of 100 Countries. Djel apparently had romantic dealings with her daughter, whose name is not revealed in the manual.
Theros, a wealthy aristocrat.
Kal, a pauper.

Petroy also took Djel to a tour around all the lands surrounding the Kingdom of Ashes. I am pretty convinced I’ll have to visit all of these lands during the game, so I won’t bother describing them in detail now.

Some time after Djel’s travels, his parents, kept alive by power of something called Orah, moved into a plane beyond all matter (no, apparently they did not just die, but more like vanished into a thin air).

Then, a series of disasters struck the Kingdom of Ashes. Firstly, the harvest was pillaged and the people of the kingdom starved. Those left alive caught a deadly plague. And to top it all, it became “impossible to make more babies” (the manual leaves the mechanic of the last catastrophe somewhat unclear).

Everyone blamed at first Djel, but it then became evident that it was the three neighbouring magicians who were behind it all. Theros had caught a disease that made him spread the plague around him - an unhappy consequence of a personal disaster. Azeulisse had lost his daughter (we still don’t know her name) and in her motherly rage she had cast the spell preventing baby making - a somewhat radical decision, but parents can be crazy about their children. And what was Kal’s excuse? Well, apparently he just hadn’t the money to feed the populace of his lands, so he let them go rampaging on other lands. I think I am not going to particularly like this Kal person...

Djel’s house

Beginning the game, I meet Azeulisse and Kal, who explain once more their terms and hand me statues, by which I can contact them in the future.

Hand you all the gold I can make, so your starving people
won’t destroy my land?I am liking you less and less!

After this brief introduction, I witness an animation, in which a statue of a man with an eagle’s head crowned by bull’s horns blows out a kind of spark, which opens up a screen in Djel’s house, showing me what looks like a planet floating in space. From the manual I know that this statue will enable Djel to travel to different lands in spirit form. The manual also suggests that I should be able to choose the land I am travelling to with some kind of Atlas, but I can’t seem to find this book anywhere in Djel’s house.

A cozy little den

The basic interface of the game couldn’t be simpler. I can move with my mouse a symbol of a mask and press with it various spots on the screen and then either something or nothing happens. With interface as simple as this, it seems that the game is mostly about exploration and not so much about puzzle solving.

Let’s start exploring then! I shall begin with what I found in Djel’s apartment. Firstly, there were the two statues given by Azeulisse (the horned Sumo wrestler) and Kal (the little can at the centre of picture). I didn’t seem to a have a statue from Theros yet.

The test-tube on the left side contained a solution that I could use to restore my energy, but that wasn’t yet an issue at the beginning of the game. The candle apparently showed how much time I had left to complete the game, although the manual noted that I might be able to find a new candle somewhere. Sitting on a perch, there was an owl that might warn me of any intruders in Djel’s cottage.

The crystal ball on the table should be a device for receiving messages, but at the beginning it appeared to do nothing. There was also a jar containing a head of a conquered dragon, which should help Djel to memorise things. Basically, the jar was just a way to open an interface, in which to check the status of your missions for the magicians, your energy level, inventory and economical situation.

Like a Candel in the wind

The land outside Djel’s cottage seems empty

I can look through the window, but the manual tells me that I should do it especially, when I see a silhouette in it. Through the door I can access Djel’s library. In a bookshelf I find couple of interesting things: a second candle and a picture of a young woman.

Perhaps she’s the daughter I should be looking for

Probably the most important thing in the library was the huge metallic contraption called Great Alambic, which could produce gold, if I would just first find the proper ingredients.

3 bats + 1 lead crystal = gold

Magicians

With nothing else to do in Djel’s cottage, I used the statues to enter the lands of the two magicians.

Visiting Azeulisse was a bit of a disappointment. She clearly wasn’t at home, and trying to press any spot in the room just led me back to Djel’s apartment.

Kal’s shabby den contained just a statue, by which I could summon Kal himself. Kal at once wanted to know if I had the money for him. My mask icon changed then into a hand. At some places of the screen, it showed a thumb up, at others, a thumb down - a pretty simplistic dialogue system. If I chose yes, I had a chance to haggle with Kal.

The haggling interface was again pretty simple. There were three piles, representing three different amounts (1, 10 and 100 coins) and by pressing them multiple times, I could increase the amount of money I was offering to Kal. Clicking a picture of a money bag would then confirm my offer. The manuals tells that when I am haggling, I will have three chances to make an offer that a person I am haggling with accepts. Because the game has no internal saving capacity, finding the most optimal offer would require multiple sessions.

And then the old niggard didn’t even accept my money!

The Land of the Rivers of Fire

With nothing else to do, I took the path to the other land. There’s no indication in the game itself what the land is and where you are going, so you must try to deduce it from the descriptions given in the manual. This time it’s pretty easy. There’s a cave on the side of a cliff, a scared, rabbit-like creature called Loris, and if you click on the pit with boiling lava, you’ll meet the master of Loris, Artem, who will give Djel some extra energy.

By the power of Greyskull…

Trying to access the cave, in which the master of this land resided, I found out that my touchpad was suddenly broken - or so I thought, because I seemingly couldn’t move the mouse pointer past a certain line surrounding the cave. In fact, this was a clever way to represent the invisible barrier, which had to be forced several times, before it let me in. When I finally reached the cave, the master - some sort of horned beast - told me that I required a jewel that had belonged to Azeulisse’s daughter to find her.

Moving Lands

After I had returned to Djel’s home with the information I had gained, the screen changed and now showed a picture of two lands. One of these brought me to Moving Lands, ruled by a moody magician, who wanted my help to change the landscape.

In principle, I had to click on various objects, which would then change their places.
When an object was in a correct place, a lightning would struck.

Moving lands, as they should be

After fulfilling the wish of the magician, he was for some reason doubled. The other magician wanted to fight with me.

Definitely by “strengh”

The game leads quite frequently into a position where I must choose to fight a person either with strength/force or with mind, so I might as well describe here the two fighting minigames. I’ll state first that although I usually despise all minigames in adventure games, this time they were truly unique and fun little diversions. In fact, the two games work so well that I could imagine someone selling them as small apps.

In the confrontation by strength/force (the manual and the game use different words for it) both the Djel and his opponent assume the form of a dragon. There are three different dragon forms: red (Fire), green (Earth) and blue (Water). Of these, Water douses Fire, Fire burns Earth and Earth soaks up Water. So basically, when a Water dragon fires upon Fire Dragon, the Fire Dragon loses her energy. Then again, if a Fire dragon fires upon Water Dragon, the Water Dragon will eventually have to change her form (or so at least the manual says, I couldn’t verify this in action). Finally, if a Water dragon fires upon another Water dragon, both dragons are recharged.

The combat field is divided into two sections, with each dragon occupying one half of the field. The field is also full of crystals, by which player can change the colour of her dragon - that is, if the crystal is active. Crystals tend to become inactive after a bit of use, but they can be reactivated by the balls of fire/energy that the dragons blow up. In addition, the fire/energy balls can bounce from various obstacles placed on the combat field (and yes, you can hit yourself with your own balls), and after several bounces, the balls become more effective in activating the crystals.

May the best dragon win!

Confusing? Yes. Fun? Yes! I am sure more able players could make quite effective strategies, but I did fairly well just by madly dashing from one crystal to another, seeking to gain the upper hand and then just holding my opponent off from the proper crystals with my great balls of fire.

If confrontation by strength is just a mad dash of shoot and run, confrontation by mind is a little bit more intellectual - but not too much! The basic idea is pretty simple. Me (eagle’s head) and my opponent (skull) are placed somewhere on 8 x 8 grid. In her turn, the player must a) move her piece to one of the eight possible directions and b) remove one piece of the grid around her opponent. If the player cannot move, she has lost. Does it sound as dynamic as a slow game of chess? Well, if you are too slow in choosing your move, your turn will go and the opponent gets to make two moves in a row! In practice, you have no time to think of the strategy, but you’ll just have to rely on your gut instinct to push your opponent over the edge, before she does the same to you.

An almost impossible position, but I still managed to beat it by keeping my eagle close to the skull.

After having beaten the evil double of the magician, the real one told me to see a charming portrait on my den - he probably meant the picture of Azeulisse’s daughter I had already found.

Land of Everlasting Thirst

The other land I could access at this time was known as the Land of Everlasting Thirst. The manual told me that Atrem, the genie that lived in the lava pits of the Land of the Rivers of Fire, was some day pissed off by the Land of Everlasting Thirst and made the volcanoes cover half of the kingdom. The survivors were forced to drench themselves all the time in order to put out the flames, which licked unceasingly at their bodies.

The flames seem to have subsided, but the only inhabitant
I can see does have a pool of water ready.

Talking with the creature on the left, I could buy a diadem that had belonged to Azeulisse’s daughter. This was in fact a case of an alternative puzzle solution - I could have used the diadem to avoid the battle in the Moving Lands altogether.

There were still three flames burning - you can see two of them (the blue dots on the wall of the broken building) and third is covered by the mask icon. As manual told me, by clicking the flames, I could summon the former ruler of the land, who was buried under solidified lava (it’s the reddish rock wall). The ruler first showed me three pictures, from which I had to choose the person I was looking for, that is, Azeulisse’s daughter. Then he told me that the daughter had gone to the Kingdom of the Ashes - the home of Djel himself.

Saving the daughter

Owl, you seem to have become all blue!

Upon arriving in Djel’s cottage, I noticed two changes. Firstly, the owl sitting on the perch was glowing, which according to the manual is a sign of an intruder. Secondly, a silhouette on the window told me that I could talk with someone on the window. I started by checking my library and found out the intruder. She told me she was Azeulisse’s daughter, but later on, she would reveal herself as something else.

I’d replace that owl with a sturdy lock - it’s far more
effective to keep intruders out than to know when they are in

Through the window, I saw another would-be daughter.

I am getting a bit annoyed that this person, whom Djel
has a crush on, doesn’t appear to have a name

Apparently she really was the real daughter - or so her mother appeared to think.

Couldn’t you just accept her as she is?

With nothing else to do, I visited Kal, who did have the formula for giving the daughter back her freshness (his words, not mine!). All I had to do was to fight his enemies (I am getting sick of the ineptitude of this supposed magician). After I quickly confronted his enemy, Kal was willing to part with the formula, which I took to the daughter and recited.

Soul? I’d be satisfied with your name...

After taking Azeulisse’s daughter to her mother, Azeulisse took her statue back. Then I got a call to my crystal ball.

Theros, the magician I should cure.

After Theros, Kal contacted me to tell me that he needs his statue to pacify his subjects. This seems like a good spot to end the post, since I’ve solved one of the three quests already. I am still unsure whether I like the game, but it’s certainly quite original. Remember to guess the score!

Missed Classic: Dungeon - Go Ask Alice

Game 76: Hugo III: Jungle of Doom - Introduction

Star Trek - Better Living Through Chemistry

Missed Classic: Dungeon - Gold Carded (Request for Assistance)

Hugo III - Welcome to the jungle

Future Classic: Snare (1997)

Discussion Point: What Adventure Game Would Best Lure Your Friends Into the Genre?

Star Trek - His Name Is Mudd

Hugo III - Won! (with a little cheat)

Game 77: Eternam (1992) - Introduction

Missed Classic: Dungeon - Joe Versus the Volcano

Star Trek - Walk Like an Aztec

Hugo III: Jungle of Doom - Final Rating

Missed Classic: Dungeon - Won!

Star Trek - Lost! (For Now)

Game 78: Frederik Pohl’s Gateway - Introduction (1992)

Missed Classic: Dungeon - And Another Thing… (Plus Final Rating)

Same Game, New Puzzles

Game 79 : Bargon Attack - Introduction (1992)

Star Trek: 25th Anniversary - Extended Vengeance

Missed Classic 31: Legend of Djel (1989) - Introduction

By the power of Greyskull…