Showing posts with label 1981. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1981. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 7, 2015
Adventure of the Week Forbidden Planet Part II Forbidden City 1981
This week, I am finally returning to a short series I started playing about a year ago, with William Demas' Forbidden Planet Part II, a.k.a. Forbidden City, published in 1981 for the TRS-80 Model I/III computers by Fantastic Software. Forbidden City is, of course, a sequel to the earlier game, Forbidden Planet Part I, and is dedicated onscreen to the University of Nevada Las Vegas computer department. Fantastic Software and Mr. Demas were both based in the Vegas area at the time.
Bill Demas had several games published by Scott Adams' Adventure International, and was heavily involved in Adams' Adventure #12, Golden Voyage. The two-game Talking Adventure series appeared in 1981 for the TRS-80, and since playing the first one, I have learned both games were remade in 1985, under new titles for the Apple Macintosh computers, with the digitized voice removed, a new mouse-based interface and hi-res black-and-white graphics added. I plan to document the Mac editions in the future, but wanted to finish the series on the humble TRS-80 first.
So why did it take me so long to get around to playing this sequel? Well, I had started it shortly after the first game, and was making good headway, but I got hopelessly stuck very near the end of the game (details below, in the spoilers section). Fortunately, after I ran a short article with some new information received from Mr. Demas, reader Gaël got in touch -- he's a French Macintosh game enthusiast who was trying to track down this series' author, in hopes of finding a copy of the Mac game Utopia, the remake of Forbidden Planet Part I. And Gaël's published walkthrough for the Mac sequel, Futuria, a remake of this game, gave me the information I needed to finish the TRS-80 original! So I owe a big debt of gratitude to a very dedicated adventure fan, William Demas, and the Internet.
The game follows the established Talking Adventures model, but the voice samples are briefer this time, and I did not run into the "play beyond bounds" audio bug/glitch I encountered with the first game. The voice samples are used more appropriately here, often when announcements are played or robots are talking, which makes the audio more atmospheric than the first game's parser feedback. And we hear both female and male voices, another pleasant change, though most adventurers will still want to turn off the voices after a while.
As always, I encourage interested readers to sample Forbidden Planet Part II before proceeding here. It's a decent escape-in-the-space-ship adventure with some interesting and logical "alien" puzzles, and it provides a good level of challenge. Beyond this point, be forewarned that there are guaranteed to be...
***** SPOILERS AHEAD! *****
Forbidden Planet Part II is a fairly straight sci-fi tale, without the cameo appearances by ogres and centaurs seen in the first game, and most of the gameplay consists of figuring out the switches, keys and levers scattered around the map.
We begin this second game game exactly where we left off at the end of the first, standing on the shore of the strange lake. The lake is still poisonous, of course, so trying to GO LAKE remains a bad idea.
There's a door with a small speaker nearby, and a sign gives us... an encoded password? What about the one we were given at the first game's conclusion? Ah -- this is an optional puzzle that we can use to decode the correct password if we don't have it; that's a nice touch. We can't SAY the wrong thing to the automated door's query, either, as the parser simply responds with I don't know what "[entry]" is if we misspeak.
Once cleared for entrance, we have to travel some distance west in the long metal tunnel -- and we eventually reach an advertising sign reading, "Have you completed part I of "Forbidden Planet" yet?", which would be a pointless question if not for the password clues.
We keep traveling W until we reach a point with an opening, and after we go through the opening, it seals behind us.
We can try to go through a steel door nearby, but a voice (and the text onscreen) says: ZAP! I'm electrocuted! I'm dead! Play again? I'm not sure who's speaking here, as "I'm dead!" is a particularly difficult sentence for anyone to utter. But we will need to start over or restore a saved game after quitting. (There are pirated versions of this game online that lack a functional SAVE GAME command, but a proper edition provides a convenient set of 10 game saves with descriptive entries, so we have plenty of freedom to experiment.)
Further down the street, a graphic of a robot appears, holding what appears to be one of those drinking bird novelty gadgets, at least as portrayed by the TRS-80's limited graphics. But we are informed that Robot has a gun, and if we are unlucky, Robot shoots me! I'm DEAD! So we will be dealing with random attacks again, and should focus on trying to find some means of self-protection against these trigger-happy machines.
The city's transportation center has a crystalline cube with a red button, and a monorail. If we PUSH RED, a cube begins whining, and eventually explodes; we can escape the danger by hiding in the monorail, but what we really need to do is GET CUBE and use it to blow up the robot by throwing it before it blows up. Just before he goes to the great Radio Shack Discount Bin in the sky, the Robot says "Stop" or "Stop alien", but we will ignore his directive, given the gun in his mechanical hand.
Inside the monorail, a rusty lever won't budge; the blown-up robot leaves behind some unspecified Robot parts, laying in a pool of oil. We can't just GET OIL though, so the lever will remain rusty for a while. The monorail also has a control panel with a green button, a lever, and a slot, but we don't have anything to put in the slot just yet.
The southern part of the map contains a Repository, a thin beam of light, and a steel door which cannot be opened in the traditional fashion. Nor can the red cube be used to blow up the doors, but we can TOUCH BEAM to get them open. The Repository contains a token and a plastic rod; if we TWIST ROD, It begins to glow. But the light does not last very long, so need to save it in case we find ourselves dancing at a rave later on (though that seems unlikely, given that this Forbidden City seems to be populated entirely by homicidal androids.)
A nearby Laboratory area contains a strange (portable) device, some chemicals and a beaker. We can MIX CHEMICALS, but doing so is fatal. We might be able to use the beaker to obtain the oil, and we can if we are successful at wrestling with the parser -- GET OIL / WITH BEAKER doesn't work, but FILL BEAKER does.
With the lever oiled and the token inserted in the slot, we can settle in to WAIT quite a while (six turns) before the monorail reaches its destination. A robot waiting at the other end of the monorail starts following us after we arrive, though he is patient about taking us out. A control panel in the grotto nearby has a yellow button and a slot, but we can't INSERT TOKEN here; we can, however, PUSH YELLOW to enter a dark area and find some more tokens. (We are expected to use the rod for lighting purposes, but if we know our way around we can safely maneuver in the dark.) Now we can escape the robot by getting on the monorail and using another token to go back where we came from.
Piloting the monorail requires a little bit of effort -- we have to PUSH LEVER initially, but for the return trip, we can PULL LEVER. And can PUSH LEVER a second time at the first stop to go to a construction site (which is lit). There's a strange structure here, being assembled by robots -- it appears to be a nuclear reactor, and we can pick up a canister made of lead. Exploring the area turns up a plastic card, which seems magnetic, a green key, and a storeroom containing a very handy laser pistol.
The laser pistol has a knob and 80 charges; SHOOT ROBOT vaporizes any armed robot in the vicinity. We have to do this a lot at the construction site, as they just keep coming, but we must be careful to SHOOT ROBOT one at a time; if we try to SHOOT ROBOTS they attack en masse and we're dead.
Before we leave the construction site, we actually need to step inside the reactor, where we find a red key, which we will need, and some atomic waste, which is the last thing we need. It doesn't take long before I feel sick, and later My hair is falling out, and finally I die of radiation poisoning. We could probably use some protection, but there doesn't seem to be anything useful in the area.
So it's back to the monorail and on to our next stop at the outskirts of the city. A building off of a forlorn road has a red button, and a small box found lying in the road has a red button and a green button. We will leave it alone for a moment -- our most immediate goal is to PUSH RED inside the building, at which point an announcement says, "Decontamination complete." This future technology can apparently actually repair radiation damage already sustained, and we need to do this if we hope to continue the adventure. And we need to do it quickly -- there isn't a move to spare, and if a robot decides to start pursuing us we just have to hope we can get decontaminated before he shoots us.
I discovered that we don't actually have to close the door in the monorail -- we can travel safely with it open, which saves a few moves, and it's handy to keep inventory items inside the railcar until we need them. Other experiments established that we should not open the lead canister found at the reactor site, as the glowing stone inside is highly radioactive, and that if we TURN KNOB on the laser pistol, it self-destructs. This explosion won't destroy the numerous robots at the construction site though, so we shouldn't do this either. And the strange device we found early on is just a radiation gauge -- it glows bright red in presence of atomic waste, in case we are unfamiliar with the dangers of said nuclear byproducts.
We can pick up the small button-bedecked box from the road -- if we PUSH RED, nothing happens, and if we PUSH GREEN, we hear a -CLICK-... ? I realized after trying to figure out why this response was being given that I was on the monorail at the time, and the parser was getting confused between multiple green buttons. (I wish I'd remembered this later on when I got stuck!)
I was starting to get a little bit stuck here, running out of ideas, and I was glad to find a scan of the hint sheet published for the original game at TRS80Stuff.net. This helped me for a while, but was of no use when I got stuck very near the end (are you seeing a trend here?)
Returning to the small grotto, we can use the red key in the slot to turn power on in that area (INSERT RED, TURN RED, PUSH YELLOW.) We can also try to INSERT the GREEN key -- and the voice is actually helpful here, as the screen display says simply, Sorry but the voice further explains, "It doesn't fit."
With the power on, a light beam allows access to an underground room. The control panel here has a two-position lever and a green button, there's a screwdriver in the steel chamber to the north, and we find a metal platform in a small metal room. A storeroom contains a deactivated robot, with an empty slot.
The metal platform turns out to be an elevator, with buttons marked 2 and 3, and we can INSERT CARD to activate it. Level 2 has many dangers -- the security outpost is staffed with numerous robots, and it is very likely that Robots spot me and attack! I'm DEAD! What's worse is that using the platform appears to consume the plastic card, but in fact, it somehow ends up in the hands of the deadly robots. There's a green light beam here, but TOUCHing it vaporizes our hand, so we don't want to do that. We also need to pick up a cartridge in this area.
We seem to be stuck here, but if we LOOK FLOOR we can find a vent, and with the screwdriver from Level 1, we can OPEN VENT / WITH SCREWDRIVER. A robot can still follow us into the narrow vent, and it seems there is no way out, until we learn to CRAWL.
This takes us to the Security Control Station -- we can INSERT GREEN (key) here, and PUSH RED, to deactivate all the robots! Whew! And our pass card gets returned to the slot on the platform.
Now we can INSERT CARTRIDGE into the deactivated robot, and it follows us. With the robots deactivated, we can use the exploding laser to blow up the security door on Level 3. The control panels become a bit repetitive -- there's not much variety here -- but we want to use the yellow key found here back in the security control station on Level 2, inserting the key and pulling the lever to open a door on level 3.
A force field still blocks access to the Lead Room on level 3, but the robot, once activated, can make sense of the nearby switch room with its overwhelming number of levers and buttons. We can only GO FIELD after the robot helps us out here.
As it turns out, we can't transport the lead canister on the metal platform, which is more of a matter-transfer device than an elevator, because Radioactive material causes a malfunction. I materialize extremely malformed, which is not a good thing. We need to revisit Level 1 and use the green button there to transport the canister to the Lead Room. There is some transuranic waste here, and it's deadly, so we should SAVE GAME before we start experimenting and figuring out how to dispose of it with various combinations of PUSH LEVER or PULL LEVER and PUSH GREEN on Level 1.
If we leave an activated enemy robot wandering around, we can't shoot him later after we've deactivated the security 'bots -- once we have activated the "good" robot and it follows us, the game will no longer let us SHOOT ROBOT. So we should mop up any stragglers before turning off the security robots that are NOT following us around.
Once we have the canister safely transported to Level 3, we can GO into the force FIELD. This leads to a corridor with a window, where we can see outer space. We GO PLATFORM to reach the Launch Control Station, which sounds like it may help us get out of here at last. We find the hangar doors open, and the space ship closed. PUSH YELLOW opens the space ship, but touching the lever seems fatal. If we TOUCH BEAM past the force field, then I'm sucked out into space. I'm DEAD! This does not seem to be based on the space ship's closed/open status, so we need to PUSH RED and PUSH GREEN on our control box in this area to fix the situation. PUSH RED closes the hangar doors, and PUSH GREEN opens them. With the hangar doors closed, we can open the ship's door safely, and then GO SHIP. Aboard the space ship, PULL LEVER closes the door, and we can PUSH to open it again.
Here's where I got stuck. It seems clear that the glowing stone in the lead canister is needed to power the ship, and we can enter an empty compartment with the friendly robot in tow. If we DROP CANISTER there, PUSH RED causes the robot to take the glowing stone; this ought to be a good thing, but we die of radiation poisoning immediately thereafter with no chance of decontamination. I felt like I must be close to the end, but I couldn't quite figure out how to get the stone into place without dying from the radiation. PUSH RED didn't seem to work outside of the fueling compartment, and if we try it in the room with Many colored buttons & levers, the command pushes something else and the ship blows up.
Fortunately, Demas' later Mac port Utopia and Gaël's walkthrough saved me after several hours of beating my head against this puzzle. The parser confuses the box's red button with the remote control unit's red button, and the button on the box takes precedence only outside of the space ship's compartment room. So while I was trying to PUSH RED in various locations, it only seemed to work in the radiation room and not anywhere else. I could witness the robot taking the glowing stone out of the canister when I pushed the remote control's red button at that location, but then, of course, I died of radiation poisoning, and I couldn't seem to use the remote to trigger this action from anywhere else. As it turns out, we have to get rid of the two-button box to fix the parser's confusion, and ultimately PUSH RED on the remote control unit from a safe distance back at the launch control station, which is the only other place that the remote will work. With all this straightened out, the robot now announces that the ship is now fueled and we are ready to go.
All we have to do now is go back to the ship, close the doors and push the green button (which apparently opens the hangar doors as well as launching our ship) -- and victory is at long last ours!
Forbidden City was quite an adventure -- it was fairly challenging to explore and learn how everything was supposed to work, and the constant barrage of enemy robots requires constant attention to what's going on. Sadly, there were no more Talking Adventures published, but the existence of the later, retitled Mac versions means I will be revisiting this world at some point.
My walkthrough is available at the CASA Solution Archive, and is included here, below the fold.
**** WALKTHROUGH ****
Read more »
Read more »
Bill Demas had several games published by Scott Adams' Adventure International, and was heavily involved in Adams' Adventure #12, Golden Voyage. The two-game Talking Adventure series appeared in 1981 for the TRS-80, and since playing the first one, I have learned both games were remade in 1985, under new titles for the Apple Macintosh computers, with the digitized voice removed, a new mouse-based interface and hi-res black-and-white graphics added. I plan to document the Mac editions in the future, but wanted to finish the series on the humble TRS-80 first.
So why did it take me so long to get around to playing this sequel? Well, I had started it shortly after the first game, and was making good headway, but I got hopelessly stuck very near the end of the game (details below, in the spoilers section). Fortunately, after I ran a short article with some new information received from Mr. Demas, reader Gaël got in touch -- he's a French Macintosh game enthusiast who was trying to track down this series' author, in hopes of finding a copy of the Mac game Utopia, the remake of Forbidden Planet Part I. And Gaël's published walkthrough for the Mac sequel, Futuria, a remake of this game, gave me the information I needed to finish the TRS-80 original! So I owe a big debt of gratitude to a very dedicated adventure fan, William Demas, and the Internet.
The game follows the established Talking Adventures model, but the voice samples are briefer this time, and I did not run into the "play beyond bounds" audio bug/glitch I encountered with the first game. The voice samples are used more appropriately here, often when announcements are played or robots are talking, which makes the audio more atmospheric than the first game's parser feedback. And we hear both female and male voices, another pleasant change, though most adventurers will still want to turn off the voices after a while.
As always, I encourage interested readers to sample Forbidden Planet Part II before proceeding here. It's a decent escape-in-the-space-ship adventure with some interesting and logical "alien" puzzles, and it provides a good level of challenge. Beyond this point, be forewarned that there are guaranteed to be...
***** SPOILERS AHEAD! *****
Forbidden Planet Part II is a fairly straight sci-fi tale, without the cameo appearances by ogres and centaurs seen in the first game, and most of the gameplay consists of figuring out the switches, keys and levers scattered around the map.
We begin this second game game exactly where we left off at the end of the first, standing on the shore of the strange lake. The lake is still poisonous, of course, so trying to GO LAKE remains a bad idea.
There's a door with a small speaker nearby, and a sign gives us... an encoded password? What about the one we were given at the first game's conclusion? Ah -- this is an optional puzzle that we can use to decode the correct password if we don't have it; that's a nice touch. We can't SAY the wrong thing to the automated door's query, either, as the parser simply responds with I don't know what "[entry]" is if we misspeak.
Once cleared for entrance, we have to travel some distance west in the long metal tunnel -- and we eventually reach an advertising sign reading, "Have you completed part I of "Forbidden Planet" yet?", which would be a pointless question if not for the password clues.
We keep traveling W until we reach a point with an opening, and after we go through the opening, it seals behind us.
We can try to go through a steel door nearby, but a voice (and the text onscreen) says: ZAP! I'm electrocuted! I'm dead! Play again? I'm not sure who's speaking here, as "I'm dead!" is a particularly difficult sentence for anyone to utter. But we will need to start over or restore a saved game after quitting. (There are pirated versions of this game online that lack a functional SAVE GAME command, but a proper edition provides a convenient set of 10 game saves with descriptive entries, so we have plenty of freedom to experiment.)
Further down the street, a graphic of a robot appears, holding what appears to be one of those drinking bird novelty gadgets, at least as portrayed by the TRS-80's limited graphics. But we are informed that Robot has a gun, and if we are unlucky, Robot shoots me! I'm DEAD! So we will be dealing with random attacks again, and should focus on trying to find some means of self-protection against these trigger-happy machines.
The city's transportation center has a crystalline cube with a red button, and a monorail. If we PUSH RED, a cube begins whining, and eventually explodes; we can escape the danger by hiding in the monorail, but what we really need to do is GET CUBE and use it to blow up the robot by throwing it before it blows up. Just before he goes to the great Radio Shack Discount Bin in the sky, the Robot says "Stop" or "Stop alien", but we will ignore his directive, given the gun in his mechanical hand.
Inside the monorail, a rusty lever won't budge; the blown-up robot leaves behind some unspecified Robot parts, laying in a pool of oil. We can't just GET OIL though, so the lever will remain rusty for a while. The monorail also has a control panel with a green button, a lever, and a slot, but we don't have anything to put in the slot just yet.
The southern part of the map contains a Repository, a thin beam of light, and a steel door which cannot be opened in the traditional fashion. Nor can the red cube be used to blow up the doors, but we can TOUCH BEAM to get them open. The Repository contains a token and a plastic rod; if we TWIST ROD, It begins to glow. But the light does not last very long, so need to save it in case we find ourselves dancing at a rave later on (though that seems unlikely, given that this Forbidden City seems to be populated entirely by homicidal androids.)
A nearby Laboratory area contains a strange (portable) device, some chemicals and a beaker. We can MIX CHEMICALS, but doing so is fatal. We might be able to use the beaker to obtain the oil, and we can if we are successful at wrestling with the parser -- GET OIL / WITH BEAKER doesn't work, but FILL BEAKER does.
With the lever oiled and the token inserted in the slot, we can settle in to WAIT quite a while (six turns) before the monorail reaches its destination. A robot waiting at the other end of the monorail starts following us after we arrive, though he is patient about taking us out. A control panel in the grotto nearby has a yellow button and a slot, but we can't INSERT TOKEN here; we can, however, PUSH YELLOW to enter a dark area and find some more tokens. (We are expected to use the rod for lighting purposes, but if we know our way around we can safely maneuver in the dark.) Now we can escape the robot by getting on the monorail and using another token to go back where we came from.
Piloting the monorail requires a little bit of effort -- we have to PUSH LEVER initially, but for the return trip, we can PULL LEVER. And can PUSH LEVER a second time at the first stop to go to a construction site (which is lit). There's a strange structure here, being assembled by robots -- it appears to be a nuclear reactor, and we can pick up a canister made of lead. Exploring the area turns up a plastic card, which seems magnetic, a green key, and a storeroom containing a very handy laser pistol.
The laser pistol has a knob and 80 charges; SHOOT ROBOT vaporizes any armed robot in the vicinity. We have to do this a lot at the construction site, as they just keep coming, but we must be careful to SHOOT ROBOT one at a time; if we try to SHOOT ROBOTS they attack en masse and we're dead.
Before we leave the construction site, we actually need to step inside the reactor, where we find a red key, which we will need, and some atomic waste, which is the last thing we need. It doesn't take long before I feel sick, and later My hair is falling out, and finally I die of radiation poisoning. We could probably use some protection, but there doesn't seem to be anything useful in the area.
So it's back to the monorail and on to our next stop at the outskirts of the city. A building off of a forlorn road has a red button, and a small box found lying in the road has a red button and a green button. We will leave it alone for a moment -- our most immediate goal is to PUSH RED inside the building, at which point an announcement says, "Decontamination complete." This future technology can apparently actually repair radiation damage already sustained, and we need to do this if we hope to continue the adventure. And we need to do it quickly -- there isn't a move to spare, and if a robot decides to start pursuing us we just have to hope we can get decontaminated before he shoots us.
I discovered that we don't actually have to close the door in the monorail -- we can travel safely with it open, which saves a few moves, and it's handy to keep inventory items inside the railcar until we need them. Other experiments established that we should not open the lead canister found at the reactor site, as the glowing stone inside is highly radioactive, and that if we TURN KNOB on the laser pistol, it self-destructs. This explosion won't destroy the numerous robots at the construction site though, so we shouldn't do this either. And the strange device we found early on is just a radiation gauge -- it glows bright red in presence of atomic waste, in case we are unfamiliar with the dangers of said nuclear byproducts.
We can pick up the small button-bedecked box from the road -- if we PUSH RED, nothing happens, and if we PUSH GREEN, we hear a -CLICK-... ? I realized after trying to figure out why this response was being given that I was on the monorail at the time, and the parser was getting confused between multiple green buttons. (I wish I'd remembered this later on when I got stuck!)
I was starting to get a little bit stuck here, running out of ideas, and I was glad to find a scan of the hint sheet published for the original game at TRS80Stuff.net. This helped me for a while, but was of no use when I got stuck very near the end (are you seeing a trend here?)
Returning to the small grotto, we can use the red key in the slot to turn power on in that area (INSERT RED, TURN RED, PUSH YELLOW.) We can also try to INSERT the GREEN key -- and the voice is actually helpful here, as the screen display says simply, Sorry but the voice further explains, "It doesn't fit."
With the power on, a light beam allows access to an underground room. The control panel here has a two-position lever and a green button, there's a screwdriver in the steel chamber to the north, and we find a metal platform in a small metal room. A storeroom contains a deactivated robot, with an empty slot.
The metal platform turns out to be an elevator, with buttons marked 2 and 3, and we can INSERT CARD to activate it. Level 2 has many dangers -- the security outpost is staffed with numerous robots, and it is very likely that Robots spot me and attack! I'm DEAD! What's worse is that using the platform appears to consume the plastic card, but in fact, it somehow ends up in the hands of the deadly robots. There's a green light beam here, but TOUCHing it vaporizes our hand, so we don't want to do that. We also need to pick up a cartridge in this area.
We seem to be stuck here, but if we LOOK FLOOR we can find a vent, and with the screwdriver from Level 1, we can OPEN VENT / WITH SCREWDRIVER. A robot can still follow us into the narrow vent, and it seems there is no way out, until we learn to CRAWL.
This takes us to the Security Control Station -- we can INSERT GREEN (key) here, and PUSH RED, to deactivate all the robots! Whew! And our pass card gets returned to the slot on the platform.
Now we can INSERT CARTRIDGE into the deactivated robot, and it follows us. With the robots deactivated, we can use the exploding laser to blow up the security door on Level 3. The control panels become a bit repetitive -- there's not much variety here -- but we want to use the yellow key found here back in the security control station on Level 2, inserting the key and pulling the lever to open a door on level 3.
A force field still blocks access to the Lead Room on level 3, but the robot, once activated, can make sense of the nearby switch room with its overwhelming number of levers and buttons. We can only GO FIELD after the robot helps us out here.
As it turns out, we can't transport the lead canister on the metal platform, which is more of a matter-transfer device than an elevator, because Radioactive material causes a malfunction. I materialize extremely malformed, which is not a good thing. We need to revisit Level 1 and use the green button there to transport the canister to the Lead Room. There is some transuranic waste here, and it's deadly, so we should SAVE GAME before we start experimenting and figuring out how to dispose of it with various combinations of PUSH LEVER or PULL LEVER and PUSH GREEN on Level 1.
If we leave an activated enemy robot wandering around, we can't shoot him later after we've deactivated the security 'bots -- once we have activated the "good" robot and it follows us, the game will no longer let us SHOOT ROBOT. So we should mop up any stragglers before turning off the security robots that are NOT following us around.
Once we have the canister safely transported to Level 3, we can GO into the force FIELD. This leads to a corridor with a window, where we can see outer space. We GO PLATFORM to reach the Launch Control Station, which sounds like it may help us get out of here at last. We find the hangar doors open, and the space ship closed. PUSH YELLOW opens the space ship, but touching the lever seems fatal. If we TOUCH BEAM past the force field, then I'm sucked out into space. I'm DEAD! This does not seem to be based on the space ship's closed/open status, so we need to PUSH RED and PUSH GREEN on our control box in this area to fix the situation. PUSH RED closes the hangar doors, and PUSH GREEN opens them. With the hangar doors closed, we can open the ship's door safely, and then GO SHIP. Aboard the space ship, PULL LEVER closes the door, and we can PUSH to open it again.
Here's where I got stuck. It seems clear that the glowing stone in the lead canister is needed to power the ship, and we can enter an empty compartment with the friendly robot in tow. If we DROP CANISTER there, PUSH RED causes the robot to take the glowing stone; this ought to be a good thing, but we die of radiation poisoning immediately thereafter with no chance of decontamination. I felt like I must be close to the end, but I couldn't quite figure out how to get the stone into place without dying from the radiation. PUSH RED didn't seem to work outside of the fueling compartment, and if we try it in the room with Many colored buttons & levers, the command pushes something else and the ship blows up.
Fortunately, Demas' later Mac port Utopia and Gaël's walkthrough saved me after several hours of beating my head against this puzzle. The parser confuses the box's red button with the remote control unit's red button, and the button on the box takes precedence only outside of the space ship's compartment room. So while I was trying to PUSH RED in various locations, it only seemed to work in the radiation room and not anywhere else. I could witness the robot taking the glowing stone out of the canister when I pushed the remote control's red button at that location, but then, of course, I died of radiation poisoning, and I couldn't seem to use the remote to trigger this action from anywhere else. As it turns out, we have to get rid of the two-button box to fix the parser's confusion, and ultimately PUSH RED on the remote control unit from a safe distance back at the launch control station, which is the only other place that the remote will work. With all this straightened out, the robot now announces that the ship is now fueled and we are ready to go.
All we have to do now is go back to the ship, close the doors and push the green button (which apparently opens the hangar doors as well as launching our ship) -- and victory is at long last ours!
Forbidden City was quite an adventure -- it was fairly challenging to explore and learn how everything was supposed to work, and the constant barrage of enemy robots requires constant attention to what's going on. Sadly, there were no more Talking Adventures published, but the existence of the later, retitled Mac versions means I will be revisiting this world at some point.
My walkthrough is available at the CASA Solution Archive, and is included here, below the fold.
**** WALKTHROUGH ****
Read more »
Adventure of the Week Mummys Curse 1981
Recent forays into the Apple II adventure game library, with many early and exclusive titles,
has brought me to this weeks subject: Mummys Curse. It was released in 1981 by a small publisher variously known as Highland Computer Services and Highlands Computers Inc. -- the company published several Apple II graphic adventures written by Butch Greathouse and/or Garry Rheinhardt in the early 1980s.
The intro explains that the scenes are DONE IN HIGH RESOLUTION GRAPHICS (not yet common in 1981, though the illustrations are fairly simple) and the game uses a two-word parser. Our goal is TO RECOVER THE SOLID GOLD DEATH MASK OF KING RUTTATUTTUT WHICH IS GUARDED BY THE MUMMY. Were also informed that we will encounter a number of amulets and must use their individual names for differentiation, and that we must bring the gold mask back to the Oasis to win. Sounds straightforward enough!
As always, interested readers are encouraged to face the Mummys Curse firsthand before continuing into my playthrough notes below. I found the game fairly challenging -- the map is large and maze-infested, and while the puzzles are generally straightforward its not easy to find everything thats important; I had to avail myself of some clues at the CASA Solution Archive to finish this one on deadline. Beyond this point, for the sake of documenting these games, I will be detailing my experience from start to finish. That is, there are sure to be...
***** SPOILERS AHEAD! ****
As the game begins, we find ourselves at a Desert Oasis WHERE ALL TRAILS CROSS. There appear to be a couple of palm trees near a pool here, but we cant LOOK TREE or LOOK POOL, or CLIMB TREE; we cant DRINK POOL, but we can DRINK WATER -- AHHH THAT WAS GOOD. I try to DIG, but YOU HAVE NO SHOVEL, suggesting that were likely to run across one at some point.
Heading north from the Oasis brings us into the Great Sahara Desert, with the sun beating down on the dunes. Continuing north for the moment, we see some mountains in the distance, and North again brings us to a location with LUSH MOUNTAINS AHEAD and a stick lying on the ground. Well follow adventuring best practices and GET STICK in case it comes in handy later.
Im just plowing forward here, seeing what the map looks like, and heading N once again we find a branch in the path through the mountains. North again shows us the Nile river off to the west, and one more northward step is as far as we can go for now, as we encounter a Great Wooden Door that is locked.
Ill backtrack south to the Oasis again, and head South to see Shiek Mazurkas Small Palace. Heading south again here loops back to the desert location just north of the Oasis. I always like to map the world out before we get into the story, so now Ill head east from the Oasis to discover a Small Village on the edge of the desert. It looks like the map is a little more constrained than it appeared to be at first -- heading east from the village takes us to Shiek Mazurkas palace again. But we can go north into the village, where two stucco huts lie to the east and west. A similar location to the north contains another pair of huts, and then loops back to the main Sahara desert location if we continue north.
Before I check out the huts interiors, I want to map the desert a bit more -- we can go East from the main Desert to another similar location, then north to an Ancient Temple. We can enter the temple to see an inscription on the ceiling -- it reads, "FIGURE ME SOUTH. ONLY TWO PITS = DEATH. FIGURE ME IN FIGURE ME OUT." Hmmmm. Cryptic!
Were still traveling light, inventory-wise, so lets see if we can find anything useful in those village huts. In the villages south end, the small western hut is vacant but the large eastern one is a Trading Post. Its operated by a stereotyped Chinese merchant named Woo Fooy, and he has... wait for it... a KNIFE AND SHOVEL FOR SALE. We are prompted DO YOU WANT TO BUY THEM?..Y/N. Ill answer Y -- after all, I do want to buy them -- but of course, WOO FOOY SAYS AW FOOY YOU NO GOT GOLD COINS and kicks us out of his establishment with its wonderful but limited wares. At least weve learned something about the coin of the realm, and we can keep an eye out for some gold coins.
The northern end of the village is similarly laid out. In the small western hut, we find A MYSTERIOUS MAN WRAPPED IN A BLUE SHROUD who shouts "BEGONE AMAHD," and a great wind drives us back out of the hut. Interesting. We can also reach the same Trading Post here, it apparently spans the north-south length of the village.
Our map is filling in bit by bit -- now Ill explore the region west of the Oasis, where we see the PYRAMID OF SATSOP II on the horizon. The map, which is never too straightforward, gets even more convoluted here, with two different rooms where it LOOKS LIKE A HUGE PIT AHEAD. We can work our way around the pyramids other side to the west, and fall fatally into the huge pits if were not careful with our navigation. It took me a while to figure out whats going on here -- it seems there are also multiple locations where THE PATH HEADS SOUTH AND EAST/WEST, and one of them leads to THE ENTRANCE TO THE PYRAMID, but this only seems to happen after weve circled the pyramids western side without falling into the eastern or southern pit.
Anyway, weve reached the pyramids entrance and can now attempt to explore it, which seems exactly the sort of thing one should do in an adventure titled Mummys Curse. We enter it by traveling south into an entrance/exit area, and the pyramid presents a substantial mapping challenge. Immediately to the east of the entrance is the CONFUSED YET? room. Theres a long hall south of the entrance which leads to (I think) a different CONFUSED YET? room, but I die of thirst before getting too far and have to restore and visit the Oasis to rehydrate.
The map is designed (and maybe forced by limited disk space) to confuse the player by featuring multiple identically named and illustrated rooms, but the geography is generally consistent and naturalistic. Our main objective here seems to be to find some useful items. A dead end in the southeast corner of the pyramid contains some matches. Another in the southwest area provides the gold coins we need for supply purchases. Theres also a dead end with a FULL EWER. The pyramid maze is messy to map, but eventually I manage to find my way back outside so we can head into the village to buy some supplies. We dont have to make any choices here -- we buy the knife and the shovel in one turn when we answer the prompt in the affirmative with gold coins in hand.
I dont have a use for the knife yet, but I spend some time digging in the various locations on the map. This proves fruitless, but in touring the map Ive drawn so far I realize I have not visited the Nile -- theres still nothing to dig up there, but we can try to CROSS NILE... nope... GO NILE? Nope. SWIM? YOU GOT TO MIDSTREAM AND RAN OUT OF BREATH AND DROWNED. Whoops!
I also see that I missed a northeastern part of the desert, where THERE IS SOMETHING BURIED IN THE SAND. Eureka! DIGging here reveals STAIRS LEADING DOWN INTO A CRYPT! Its the only part of the game so far where traveling Down is an option, so there we shall go...
THE EYE OF HORUS IS PAINTED ON THE FLOOR here. To the west we see a rather large portrait of Cleopatra on the wall, and there dont seem to be any other rooms we can explore down here yet. I try to PUSH WALL and TOUCH WALL and EXAMINE CLEO and TOUCH EYE and KISS CLEO, but nothing seems to have an effect. The ewer is full of water, but that doesnt suggest anything. I try to LIGHT MATCH and LIGHT STICK, but the parser is obstinate: WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO BURN THAT? I poke around a little bit, but thirst sets in and I die on the way back to the Oasis before realizing I can DRINK WATER repeatedly from the ewer, as its magically always full of water.
Anywhere else we havent been? The path that splits in the mountains has a westward branch that leads to a cliffside where we can see THE MUMMYS TOMB. We cant get to the tomb from here, but we can climb northward to the top of the mountain, where we find the AMULET (SMA). Entering an old stone shrine here lets us acquire some incense, and were told this was used as an alternate location when the priests couldnt find the crypt.
Maybe we can BURN INCENSE somewhere in the crypt? I try this at the entrance -- SMELLS LIKE HIPPY HOLLOW. YOUR INCENSE IS GONE. Well, dang, that didnt do much. But I do notice that we can go further down into the crypt, to a room with a picture of Isis and the AMULET (HORUS) available. Another passage leads south to an image of the Phoenix, and west is an OLD RELIGIOUS ALTAR with an ax for the taking.
Can we use the ax on the big wooden doors? Nope -- CUT DOOR just returns PUT YOUR AX AWAY UNTIL YOU REALLY NEED IT.
Standing on the southern bank of the Nile again, trying to find a way to the Mummys Tomb, I try to MAKE BOAT -- YOU HAVE NO ROPE, but it seems this might be possible if I have the right elements. I try to CHOP TREE at the Oasis, but am advised to LEAVE THESE TREES ALONE. Have we seen any other wood or rope around?
Maybe I need to explore the pyramid more, its confusing map may be hiding some more artifacts. I find a flashlight in a linear passage west of the entrance, and I think Ive exhausted the pyramid now.
Can I BURN INCENSE at the old altar in the crypt? Aha! The altar opens and reveals a hidden room behind it. The AMULET (APEP) is here, and a painting of Nefertiti. I also visit the Temple again, and realize that the drawing on the wall is a rough map of the Pyramid. Yes, it does look like Ive cleaned that place out. I try to LEARN MAP and MEMORIZE MAP but it seems to be a visual reference only.
What now? Can I... MAKE TORCH? MAKE KEY? CARVE IT. Really? Wow. CARVE KEY produces a wooden key! Maybe we can open that massive gate now... and yes, we can! The only thing behind it is the end of the path, a forested area with some strands of hemp. I try to BURN HEMP, but fortunately the game wont cooperate, and I try to MAKE ROPE instead, which works. Can I MAKE BOAT now? No -- YOU HAVE NO WOOD. But I can CHOP TREES right here -- clearcutting the whole area, apparently -- and GET LOGS.
MAKE BOAT now allows us to make a raft -- can we carry it all the way to the Nile? Apparently so! USE RAFT allows us to cross the Nile, and we are now standing at the threshold of the Mummys Tomb.
The game warns us that theres only one way in and we wont get out the same way, so this is a great time to SAVE (the game provides a single save/restore slot, but Im using the AppleWin emulator so Ill just save the entire machines state instead.). Immediately upon entering, I have difficulty breathing, and shortly YOUR LUNGS EXPLODED IN FLAMES AND YOU DIED ON THE SPOT! Thats pretty strong stuff, whatever it is. I try to HOLD BREATH, but that doesnt work. Maybe these amulets are supposed to help? WEAR HORUS isnt recognized, the parser thinks we are trying to WEAVE something. When I USE HORUS, the amulet glows and vanishes AS YOU FEEL ITS EFFECT ON YOU, but I cant really tell what effect thats supposed to be, so well have to use a little trial and error here.
USE HORUS doesnt help us breathe, but USE SMA does and the parser confirms we have been saved by THE POWER OF SMA. The next room seems to be a dead end -- we are told that "MUMMY DEAREST" was here but hid when he heard us coming? The other amulets dont seem to reveal his whereabouts, and we cant DIG here, nor can we LIGHT FLASHLIGHT to seek him out.
What have I missed? Ah -- thanks, CASA! I never entered the Sheiks Palace, and didnt realize I could due to the map layout -- we go south to reach the Palace, then north to enter it, and I hadnt actually tested navigation in that direction. Inside, we meet ABDUL THE PALACE GUARD. We cant LOOK GUARD or TALK GUARD, but if we SAY HELLO he lets us enter.
Inside the palace there are stairs going up and a hallway to the north. The room to the north is empty -- BROTHER THIS GUY DONT HAVE MUCH OF A PALACE, the parser comments -- and the upstairs room contains a STRANGE MIXTURE OF DIRT AND STRAW. Mud? Brick? MAKE BRICK doesnt work, nor does MAKE MUD. I try to POUR WATER -- and the mixture somehow softens and provides access to a new room, a north/south passage with a ramp heading upwards.
This map is a lot bigger than I expected for a single-disk game -- the ramp leads to stairs, leading up to The Dome Room, though there doesnt seem to be any reason to come up here. The north/south passage connects to an east/west passage, where we meet the WICKED PRINCESS FATIMA of legendary mirror fame to the east, and find a trap door to the west.
I try to GO DOOR and OPEN TRAP to no avail, but when I try to simply go D the parser suggests that we need to pick the lock with a knife. PICK LOCK does work, and now we find ourselves in a room with a mirror? We cant BREAK MIRROR, but if we go N we walk into the mirror... and die. Its safer to go S, into another east/west passage; a shimmering blue wall to the east takes us back into the palaces upper level, but we should probably restore and explore to the west first.
There are some traps down this hallway -- first, a small but bottomless pit. We cant JUMP PIT, but if we go N, then THE STRENGTH OF HORUS kicks in and carries us over. I realize that I must have USEd HORUS earlier when I was experimenting, as I no longer have any of the amulets in hand; fortunately, the effect is long-lasting, and so is the power of APEP that subsequently protects us from a three-headed snake.
Weve reached an orange room, where we find a scepter that we should probably take along. After finding our way back out the way we came in, it seems like a good time to go see if we can deal with the mummy yet.
In the room where the mummy is hiding, I WAVE SCEPTER -- and we rise to a location where the parser opts for minimal drama and punctuation: YOU HAVE FOUND THE GOLDEN MASK BUT SOMEBODY IS HERE TO SEE YOU. HEY ITS THE MUMMY.
KILL MUMMY? YOU UNFORTUNATELY ARE THE ONLY ONE THAT CAN BE KILLED. BURN MUMMY? WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO BURN THAT? Hmmmm, there go all the obvious ideas. I try to leave the room, but I cant escape and after a few turns of my fumbling about THE MUMMY JUST DID YOU IN.
Something unusual happens here, though. After I die, Im given the option to keep playing -- and when I do, I find myself back at the Oasis, with a victory message!
Apparently, when we reincarnate we dont lose any of our inventory items, and weve been given the Mask when we entered the room! So even though we died in the process of reaching our objective, the game thinks weve won fair and square. But this doesnt quite seem right, so I check the walkthrough and learn that I was supposed to explore an area west of the Pyramid to learn a magic phrase to use against the mummy. Apparently if we have the flashlight and travel east from one of the LARGE PIT AHEAD rooms, we enter the pit -- and find graffiti on a wall in the passage reading, "HORUS = STRENGTH, APEP = SNAKE, SMA = LUNG," which weve already figured out by trial and error. The text also tells us that AMAHD means ADVENTURER, so thats what the folks in town have been calling us. Ah! The mysterious man says "BEGONE AMAHD" and we are whisked away. Does that work when we try it? BEGONE AMAHD yields CLOSE BUT NO COOKIES, but BEGONE ADVENTURER sends us instantly back to the Oasis, with exactly the same victory message. Basically, dying whisks us back to the Oasis, and so does employing the hard-won magic phrase, so either way we come out a winner if weve made it into the heart of the Mummys Tomb.
Mummys Curse is a more involved experience than I was expecting for a game of its vintage -- the map is very large considering the number of illustrations included, and the puzzles are intertwined and reasonably challenging. The tricky layout sometimes feels like a bit of a design cheat, but the game is fair enough in its way if were careful to draw an accurate map. Ill have to try the other Highlands Computers games, if I can track them down -- these small, obscure companies often produced interesting adventures that are well worth playing, even if theyre not well known.
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has brought me to this weeks subject: Mummys Curse. It was released in 1981 by a small publisher variously known as Highland Computer Services and Highlands Computers Inc. -- the company published several Apple II graphic adventures written by Butch Greathouse and/or Garry Rheinhardt in the early 1980s.
The intro explains that the scenes are DONE IN HIGH RESOLUTION GRAPHICS (not yet common in 1981, though the illustrations are fairly simple) and the game uses a two-word parser. Our goal is TO RECOVER THE SOLID GOLD DEATH MASK OF KING RUTTATUTTUT WHICH IS GUARDED BY THE MUMMY. Were also informed that we will encounter a number of amulets and must use their individual names for differentiation, and that we must bring the gold mask back to the Oasis to win. Sounds straightforward enough!
As always, interested readers are encouraged to face the Mummys Curse firsthand before continuing into my playthrough notes below. I found the game fairly challenging -- the map is large and maze-infested, and while the puzzles are generally straightforward its not easy to find everything thats important; I had to avail myself of some clues at the CASA Solution Archive to finish this one on deadline. Beyond this point, for the sake of documenting these games, I will be detailing my experience from start to finish. That is, there are sure to be...
***** SPOILERS AHEAD! ****
As the game begins, we find ourselves at a Desert Oasis WHERE ALL TRAILS CROSS. There appear to be a couple of palm trees near a pool here, but we cant LOOK TREE or LOOK POOL, or CLIMB TREE; we cant DRINK POOL, but we can DRINK WATER -- AHHH THAT WAS GOOD. I try to DIG, but YOU HAVE NO SHOVEL, suggesting that were likely to run across one at some point.
Heading north from the Oasis brings us into the Great Sahara Desert, with the sun beating down on the dunes. Continuing north for the moment, we see some mountains in the distance, and North again brings us to a location with LUSH MOUNTAINS AHEAD and a stick lying on the ground. Well follow adventuring best practices and GET STICK in case it comes in handy later.
Im just plowing forward here, seeing what the map looks like, and heading N once again we find a branch in the path through the mountains. North again shows us the Nile river off to the west, and one more northward step is as far as we can go for now, as we encounter a Great Wooden Door that is locked.
Ill backtrack south to the Oasis again, and head South to see Shiek Mazurkas Small Palace. Heading south again here loops back to the desert location just north of the Oasis. I always like to map the world out before we get into the story, so now Ill head east from the Oasis to discover a Small Village on the edge of the desert. It looks like the map is a little more constrained than it appeared to be at first -- heading east from the village takes us to Shiek Mazurkas palace again. But we can go north into the village, where two stucco huts lie to the east and west. A similar location to the north contains another pair of huts, and then loops back to the main Sahara desert location if we continue north.
Before I check out the huts interiors, I want to map the desert a bit more -- we can go East from the main Desert to another similar location, then north to an Ancient Temple. We can enter the temple to see an inscription on the ceiling -- it reads, "FIGURE ME SOUTH. ONLY TWO PITS = DEATH. FIGURE ME IN FIGURE ME OUT." Hmmmm. Cryptic!
Were still traveling light, inventory-wise, so lets see if we can find anything useful in those village huts. In the villages south end, the small western hut is vacant but the large eastern one is a Trading Post. Its operated by a stereotyped Chinese merchant named Woo Fooy, and he has... wait for it... a KNIFE AND SHOVEL FOR SALE. We are prompted DO YOU WANT TO BUY THEM?..Y/N. Ill answer Y -- after all, I do want to buy them -- but of course, WOO FOOY SAYS AW FOOY YOU NO GOT GOLD COINS and kicks us out of his establishment with its wonderful but limited wares. At least weve learned something about the coin of the realm, and we can keep an eye out for some gold coins.
The northern end of the village is similarly laid out. In the small western hut, we find A MYSTERIOUS MAN WRAPPED IN A BLUE SHROUD who shouts "BEGONE AMAHD," and a great wind drives us back out of the hut. Interesting. We can also reach the same Trading Post here, it apparently spans the north-south length of the village.
Our map is filling in bit by bit -- now Ill explore the region west of the Oasis, where we see the PYRAMID OF SATSOP II on the horizon. The map, which is never too straightforward, gets even more convoluted here, with two different rooms where it LOOKS LIKE A HUGE PIT AHEAD. We can work our way around the pyramids other side to the west, and fall fatally into the huge pits if were not careful with our navigation. It took me a while to figure out whats going on here -- it seems there are also multiple locations where THE PATH HEADS SOUTH AND EAST/WEST, and one of them leads to THE ENTRANCE TO THE PYRAMID, but this only seems to happen after weve circled the pyramids western side without falling into the eastern or southern pit.
Anyway, weve reached the pyramids entrance and can now attempt to explore it, which seems exactly the sort of thing one should do in an adventure titled Mummys Curse. We enter it by traveling south into an entrance/exit area, and the pyramid presents a substantial mapping challenge. Immediately to the east of the entrance is the CONFUSED YET? room. Theres a long hall south of the entrance which leads to (I think) a different CONFUSED YET? room, but I die of thirst before getting too far and have to restore and visit the Oasis to rehydrate.
The map is designed (and maybe forced by limited disk space) to confuse the player by featuring multiple identically named and illustrated rooms, but the geography is generally consistent and naturalistic. Our main objective here seems to be to find some useful items. A dead end in the southeast corner of the pyramid contains some matches. Another in the southwest area provides the gold coins we need for supply purchases. Theres also a dead end with a FULL EWER. The pyramid maze is messy to map, but eventually I manage to find my way back outside so we can head into the village to buy some supplies. We dont have to make any choices here -- we buy the knife and the shovel in one turn when we answer the prompt in the affirmative with gold coins in hand.
I dont have a use for the knife yet, but I spend some time digging in the various locations on the map. This proves fruitless, but in touring the map Ive drawn so far I realize I have not visited the Nile -- theres still nothing to dig up there, but we can try to CROSS NILE... nope... GO NILE? Nope. SWIM? YOU GOT TO MIDSTREAM AND RAN OUT OF BREATH AND DROWNED. Whoops!
I also see that I missed a northeastern part of the desert, where THERE IS SOMETHING BURIED IN THE SAND. Eureka! DIGging here reveals STAIRS LEADING DOWN INTO A CRYPT! Its the only part of the game so far where traveling Down is an option, so there we shall go...
THE EYE OF HORUS IS PAINTED ON THE FLOOR here. To the west we see a rather large portrait of Cleopatra on the wall, and there dont seem to be any other rooms we can explore down here yet. I try to PUSH WALL and TOUCH WALL and EXAMINE CLEO and TOUCH EYE and KISS CLEO, but nothing seems to have an effect. The ewer is full of water, but that doesnt suggest anything. I try to LIGHT MATCH and LIGHT STICK, but the parser is obstinate: WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO BURN THAT? I poke around a little bit, but thirst sets in and I die on the way back to the Oasis before realizing I can DRINK WATER repeatedly from the ewer, as its magically always full of water.
Anywhere else we havent been? The path that splits in the mountains has a westward branch that leads to a cliffside where we can see THE MUMMYS TOMB. We cant get to the tomb from here, but we can climb northward to the top of the mountain, where we find the AMULET (SMA). Entering an old stone shrine here lets us acquire some incense, and were told this was used as an alternate location when the priests couldnt find the crypt.
Maybe we can BURN INCENSE somewhere in the crypt? I try this at the entrance -- SMELLS LIKE HIPPY HOLLOW. YOUR INCENSE IS GONE. Well, dang, that didnt do much. But I do notice that we can go further down into the crypt, to a room with a picture of Isis and the AMULET (HORUS) available. Another passage leads south to an image of the Phoenix, and west is an OLD RELIGIOUS ALTAR with an ax for the taking.
Can we use the ax on the big wooden doors? Nope -- CUT DOOR just returns PUT YOUR AX AWAY UNTIL YOU REALLY NEED IT.
Standing on the southern bank of the Nile again, trying to find a way to the Mummys Tomb, I try to MAKE BOAT -- YOU HAVE NO ROPE, but it seems this might be possible if I have the right elements. I try to CHOP TREE at the Oasis, but am advised to LEAVE THESE TREES ALONE. Have we seen any other wood or rope around?
Maybe I need to explore the pyramid more, its confusing map may be hiding some more artifacts. I find a flashlight in a linear passage west of the entrance, and I think Ive exhausted the pyramid now.
Can I BURN INCENSE at the old altar in the crypt? Aha! The altar opens and reveals a hidden room behind it. The AMULET (APEP) is here, and a painting of Nefertiti. I also visit the Temple again, and realize that the drawing on the wall is a rough map of the Pyramid. Yes, it does look like Ive cleaned that place out. I try to LEARN MAP and MEMORIZE MAP but it seems to be a visual reference only.
What now? Can I... MAKE TORCH? MAKE KEY? CARVE IT. Really? Wow. CARVE KEY produces a wooden key! Maybe we can open that massive gate now... and yes, we can! The only thing behind it is the end of the path, a forested area with some strands of hemp. I try to BURN HEMP, but fortunately the game wont cooperate, and I try to MAKE ROPE instead, which works. Can I MAKE BOAT now? No -- YOU HAVE NO WOOD. But I can CHOP TREES right here -- clearcutting the whole area, apparently -- and GET LOGS.
MAKE BOAT now allows us to make a raft -- can we carry it all the way to the Nile? Apparently so! USE RAFT allows us to cross the Nile, and we are now standing at the threshold of the Mummys Tomb.
The game warns us that theres only one way in and we wont get out the same way, so this is a great time to SAVE (the game provides a single save/restore slot, but Im using the AppleWin emulator so Ill just save the entire machines state instead.). Immediately upon entering, I have difficulty breathing, and shortly YOUR LUNGS EXPLODED IN FLAMES AND YOU DIED ON THE SPOT! Thats pretty strong stuff, whatever it is. I try to HOLD BREATH, but that doesnt work. Maybe these amulets are supposed to help? WEAR HORUS isnt recognized, the parser thinks we are trying to WEAVE something. When I USE HORUS, the amulet glows and vanishes AS YOU FEEL ITS EFFECT ON YOU, but I cant really tell what effect thats supposed to be, so well have to use a little trial and error here.
USE HORUS doesnt help us breathe, but USE SMA does and the parser confirms we have been saved by THE POWER OF SMA. The next room seems to be a dead end -- we are told that "MUMMY DEAREST" was here but hid when he heard us coming? The other amulets dont seem to reveal his whereabouts, and we cant DIG here, nor can we LIGHT FLASHLIGHT to seek him out.
What have I missed? Ah -- thanks, CASA! I never entered the Sheiks Palace, and didnt realize I could due to the map layout -- we go south to reach the Palace, then north to enter it, and I hadnt actually tested navigation in that direction. Inside, we meet ABDUL THE PALACE GUARD. We cant LOOK GUARD or TALK GUARD, but if we SAY HELLO he lets us enter.
Inside the palace there are stairs going up and a hallway to the north. The room to the north is empty -- BROTHER THIS GUY DONT HAVE MUCH OF A PALACE, the parser comments -- and the upstairs room contains a STRANGE MIXTURE OF DIRT AND STRAW. Mud? Brick? MAKE BRICK doesnt work, nor does MAKE MUD. I try to POUR WATER -- and the mixture somehow softens and provides access to a new room, a north/south passage with a ramp heading upwards.
This map is a lot bigger than I expected for a single-disk game -- the ramp leads to stairs, leading up to The Dome Room, though there doesnt seem to be any reason to come up here. The north/south passage connects to an east/west passage, where we meet the WICKED PRINCESS FATIMA of legendary mirror fame to the east, and find a trap door to the west.
I try to GO DOOR and OPEN TRAP to no avail, but when I try to simply go D the parser suggests that we need to pick the lock with a knife. PICK LOCK does work, and now we find ourselves in a room with a mirror? We cant BREAK MIRROR, but if we go N we walk into the mirror... and die. Its safer to go S, into another east/west passage; a shimmering blue wall to the east takes us back into the palaces upper level, but we should probably restore and explore to the west first.
There are some traps down this hallway -- first, a small but bottomless pit. We cant JUMP PIT, but if we go N, then THE STRENGTH OF HORUS kicks in and carries us over. I realize that I must have USEd HORUS earlier when I was experimenting, as I no longer have any of the amulets in hand; fortunately, the effect is long-lasting, and so is the power of APEP that subsequently protects us from a three-headed snake.
Weve reached an orange room, where we find a scepter that we should probably take along. After finding our way back out the way we came in, it seems like a good time to go see if we can deal with the mummy yet.
In the room where the mummy is hiding, I WAVE SCEPTER -- and we rise to a location where the parser opts for minimal drama and punctuation: YOU HAVE FOUND THE GOLDEN MASK BUT SOMEBODY IS HERE TO SEE YOU. HEY ITS THE MUMMY.
KILL MUMMY? YOU UNFORTUNATELY ARE THE ONLY ONE THAT CAN BE KILLED. BURN MUMMY? WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO BURN THAT? Hmmmm, there go all the obvious ideas. I try to leave the room, but I cant escape and after a few turns of my fumbling about THE MUMMY JUST DID YOU IN.
Something unusual happens here, though. After I die, Im given the option to keep playing -- and when I do, I find myself back at the Oasis, with a victory message!
Apparently, when we reincarnate we dont lose any of our inventory items, and weve been given the Mask when we entered the room! So even though we died in the process of reaching our objective, the game thinks weve won fair and square. But this doesnt quite seem right, so I check the walkthrough and learn that I was supposed to explore an area west of the Pyramid to learn a magic phrase to use against the mummy. Apparently if we have the flashlight and travel east from one of the LARGE PIT AHEAD rooms, we enter the pit -- and find graffiti on a wall in the passage reading, "HORUS = STRENGTH, APEP = SNAKE, SMA = LUNG," which weve already figured out by trial and error. The text also tells us that AMAHD means ADVENTURER, so thats what the folks in town have been calling us. Ah! The mysterious man says "BEGONE AMAHD" and we are whisked away. Does that work when we try it? BEGONE AMAHD yields CLOSE BUT NO COOKIES, but BEGONE ADVENTURER sends us instantly back to the Oasis, with exactly the same victory message. Basically, dying whisks us back to the Oasis, and so does employing the hard-won magic phrase, so either way we come out a winner if weve made it into the heart of the Mummys Tomb.
Mummys Curse is a more involved experience than I was expecting for a game of its vintage -- the map is very large considering the number of illustrations included, and the puzzles are intertwined and reasonably challenging. The tricky layout sometimes feels like a bit of a design cheat, but the game is fair enough in its way if were careful to draw an accurate map. Ill have to try the other Highlands Computers games, if I can track them down -- these small, obscure companies often produced interesting adventures that are well worth playing, even if theyre not well known.
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