During my first attempt at cracking Hacker since the last post, two mercies presented as a game over.
While exploring the maze, I very soon discovered the restricted area's location tunneling under Australia.
This ended the game, but upon restart I could use the password "Australia" at the initial login screen to skip the introduction minigames and go straight to the maze, where I worked to continue making maps of the underground, and of the spy trading matrix. And once the probes launched, I now had answers to all of their challenge questions - "Australia" being the final answer, they'd leave me alone forever and allow me to focus... until an invisible time limit expired, forcing another restart.
Even with this extended time limit completing the tunnel map was a bit annoying, and took several restarts before I could finish.
Mapping out the trade matrix was incredibly annoying. There are 21 items to buy and trade, and 10 different places to offer them all, giving about 190 possible trades to test. To find out, for example, who will accept the goods you can buy in China, first I'd have to buy the deed in France, go all the way to New York to trade it and buy Stocks & Bonds, then take another convoluted route to reach China and trade them in to buy their goods, and by then there's enough time left on the clock to visit maybe half of the remaining places to see if the Ming Vase and Jade Carving are acceptable there.
I had to restart so many times to finish this up, and of course each time you restart, you have to go through all of the incoming messages again, answer the probe challenges again, etc.
But I eventually finished it as much as it is possible to:
| Location | Wants | Offers |
| France | Cash | Deed, Chronograph |
| England | Chronograph, Jade Carving | Beatles Album, Crown Jewels |
| Egypt | Deed, Chronograph | Emerald Scarab, Tut Statue |
| India | Chronograph, Tut Statuette | Star of India, Jeweled Lamp |
| Greece | Emerald Scarab, Tut Statuette | Ancient Artifact, Grecian Urn |
| Cuba | Deed, 35MM Camera | Spanish Doubloons, Treasure Map |
| New York | Deed | Diamond, Stocks & Bonds |
| China | Stocks & Bonds, Cultured Pearls | Ming Vase, Jade Carving |
| Japan | Stocks & Bonds | Cultured Pearls, 35MM Camera |
| California | Beatles Album, 35MM Camera | Gold Nuggets, 49er Tickets |
By process of elimination, I can logic out who gets what, though not yet in which order, except that France, who alone deals in cash, must come first, and D.C., who wants the completed memo, must come last.
| Location | Give |
Buy |
| France | Cash | Deed, Chronograph |
| England | Jade Carving | Beatles Album |
| Egypt | Chronograph | Emerald Scarab, Tut Statue |
| India | Tut Statuette | |
| Greece | Emerald Scarab | |
| Cuba | 35mm Camera | |
| New York | Deed | Stocks & Bonds |
| China | Cultured Pearls | Jade Carving |
| Japan | Stocks & Bonds | Cultured Pearls, 35MM Camera |
| California | Beatles Album |
I optimize this traveling salesman-like problem as well as I can, and come up with this solution:
France->Egypt->Greece->India->New York->Japan->China->Cuba->England->California->D.C.
 |
| France to Japan |
China comes next, but immediately after leaving, I get a nasty surprise - the robot's navigation unit fails! No longer showing my position on the map, I must navigate the last portion of tunnels blind, which includes a loop around the Australian death continent.
After reaching California and offering the surfing spy there a Beatles Album, I get my last strip of the shredded memo.
 |
| This tells me nothing I didn't already know! |
I take it to D.C. where... the game ends!?
 |
| WaPo today: Saboteur delays Magma Ltd's 'Warm Energy' initiative |
I guess I'd rather be done than have to solve another equally tedious puzzle, but the game still feels unfinished.
GAB rating: Below average.
This... is not what I was expecting. Hacker, in its initial screen of mysterious blankness, seemed like it might be neat, suggesting a direct ancestral link to hacking sims like Uplink, but it plays its hand in minutes and then you see what's going on; a weighted graphing problem which must be mapped out by way of countless attempts and failures before it can be solved. The scant bits of "hacking" involved here are trivial microgames which are figured out once and then become nothing more than nuisance tasks on all of your subsequent restarts.
Only vaguely knowing the game, I expected something more like a cool text adventure than what seems to amount to an adventure version of a trading simulation. I can see how it would appeal in the '80s though.
ReplyDeleteMan, that Jim Levy cameo is adding insult to injury.
ReplyDeleteIt's still great to see you back, though. I had no idea that this game existed, and it's nice to see what "adult" video games were considered to be like back then (or at least games with themes that could trick teenage boys into thinking they were playing a game for adults.)
Interesting. I remember reading a review of this in Compute! or Compute!'s Gazette when I was a kid. The reviewer didn't reveal anything about the game beyond that initial screen, and it seemed pregnant with possibilities. Always stayed in the back of my mind, but I never followed through to check it out...reading these posts definitely felt the way you described your experience in the summary (the writing was excellent, however!).
ReplyDeleteNext is the third most offensive old arcade game (first being Jungle Hunt and second being NARC)
ReplyDeleteI remember this being extremely cool in feel with the packaging (which really didn't show or explain anything) but feeling increasingly disappointed once I realized what the game was about.
ReplyDelete