Games 444-445: Early Mindscape

1985 introduces our first two whales on Apple's new Macintosh computer - Balance of Power and Deja Vu: A Nightmare Comes True, both by publisher Mindscape. A subsidiary of Scott Foresman, then the USA's largest educational textbook publisher, Mindscape quickly carved its niche as a clearing house for edutainment and other studious software. The Mac, which Apple had hoped to market as a serious, grown up computer, would be a good fit for Mindscape's serious, grown up games.

But what of their ancestors?

We've got two lines of ancestry here - first there are the prior games of BoP's designer Chris Crawford, of which I've only played one - Avalon Hill's Tanktics. Certainly there's a non-whale or two since then worth playing!

Second, there are the earlier games published by Mindscape themselves. Mobygames lists Tink!Tonk! Tonk in the Land of the Buddy-Bots, an early childhood educational game with characters by prolific author Mercer Mayer as a 1983 Atari release. It's a little unclear if this is accurate; the manual states a software copyright of 1984, but also states a 1983 copyright for TINK TONK, Inc, suggesting that these were pre-existing characters, though I can't find any evidence they existed before Mindscape's software.

However, it shows in a 1984 Mindscape catalog, so this is at least among the company's first wave of releases, as part of the Sprout line of ages 4-8 educational software. Only Crossword Magic is verifiably older, and that's because it was initially self-published on the Apple II by developer L&S Software - Mindscape handled the ports to Atari and C64.

So, I've picked my introductory Mindscape title. An educational title meant for very young children.

 

Game 444: Tink!Tonk!: Tonk in the Land of Buddy-Bots

Tonk is not impressed by the Buddy-Bots.

In Tonk's main game mode, you explore an open world in the style of Atari's Adventure in search of robot parts to assemble your buddy-bot, which are won in six minigames that test pattern recognition skills. An alternate mode lets you practice these minigames independently.

 

I beat the hardest difficulty in twelve minutes. Cause I'm that good.

 

The manual has a map of Buddy-Bot Land, which is a big time saver even though it does not show all of the part locations.

Now, there's a nasty secret about the highest difficulty. It's possible to soft-lock your game! The land is randomly seeded with robot guards, who will confiscate a part and take you to King Gork's castle in the south. They are easy to run from and won't follow you across sectors, but they can make crossing certain sectors impossible.

You're not getting through that.

There's a good chance that the southeast quadrant of the map will be completely inaccessible without using the raft. And you get one chance to use it.

Apart from that, this is quite straightforward. Visit each sector, avoid guards and pitfalls, find parts, and play minigames that wouldn't challenge a preschooler.

There's a part right there.

Caves mean minigames

Bot puzzle! Can you reassemble it correctly?

Getting caught is no big deal. Gork just stands there as you leave.

Looks interesting!

But it's pointless. The bots don't do anything and don't even care if they're assembled correctly.

Match the bot with his silhouette for a part.

Can you reassemble this bot from memory? Fail and he'll forlornly sigh YOU FORGOT ME.

GAB rating: Below average. Not much to say here! It's competently programmed, visually appealing, the music is catchy, and like most kid's games, fairly insubstantial overall. The Adventure-style gameplay makes it interesting enough to rate, but not interesting enough to rate any higher than this.

Let's do one more Mindscape release - this time, another educational title, but one that's very much not meant for small children.

 

Game 445: Crime and Punishment

 

We haven't seen Imagic in a while! The short-lived developer of some of the Atari VCS and Intellivision's most technically advanced video games refocused on 8-bit computer game development by 1984, releasing their final titles in 1985. Crime and Punishment, an educational title about American justice, was their sole collaboration with Mindscape.

1984 saw the passing of the Sentencing Reform Act, a culmination of a decade-long research project led by tenured law professor (and Federalist Society speaker) Jack Kress. In an effort to reduce sentencing disparities owing to judge's personal biases, which had long been an issue, the most notable byproduct of the act was the Sentencing Guidelines, a non-binding rubric system for calculating legal remedies for felonious offenses, which is practiced at the federal level and has influenced state-level systems. Other byproducts of the act included mandatory minimums and abolition of federal parole.

Imagic's Crime and Punishment, co-authored by Kress, aims to be a learning tool with two programs; an information module with a brief overview on the history and operations of the U.S. criminal justice system, and a game where you play the judge and must estimate appropriate sentences for convicted felons. As someone who's taken an introductory course in criminal law, I found the module a reasonably good primer and even learned a few things I didn't already know.

This was released more or less simultaneously on C64, IBM, and Apple computers.

Commodore 64

IBM PC

Apple II

There aren't a lot of differences between versions. The PC version probably has the best looking judge graphic, but it doesn't play nice with any version of DOSBox - only PCem runs it without missing graphics. Apple II displays more colors than the others - six as opposed to just four, and actually shows the flag correctly, but the judge looks awfully stupid in it.

Ultimately I decided to use the Commodore 64 version, although it doesn't really take advantage of the platform. Despite some questionable color choices, and some very long loading times at the start, I think it's overall the best looking and sounding version, with better color contrasts, less harsh beeper music, and is the only version with a pleasing gavel-knock sound.

As judge, you may review the facts concerning the case, including details such as the injuries or damages, the relations between offender and victim, the offender's character and reputation, and media coverage before pronouncing sentence, after which you are shown the median sentence according to Kress's guidelines, and scored according to how close yours was. The game claims you are penalized for asking too many questions, but I haven't seen any proof of it.

The guidelines themselves are not provided, even in a simplified form; you have to go by your feelings, your knowledge of comparable real-life cases, or experience playing. By far the most important factor is the crime itself. But sentencing is also affected by factors such as their criminal history, the circumstances surrounding the offense, and others.

You knew this was coming.

Let's look at this case of lockpick and blackjack possession. The defendant pleaded guilty, and said he had to steal in order to support a drug habit. He was raised in the inner city by an alcoholic father, received a merit scholarship, and studies political science. He has four prior convictions including burglary and a juvenile charge of public lewdness. His probation officer urges a stern sentence.

Some more, possibly irrelevant details

 

A first time offender might get away with probation, but I'm going to trust the probation officer. Six months in jail.

I did okay, but after doing a few more cases, I figured I could do better with some proper data analysis. The cases are procedurally generated, but are based on a set of about 80 templates.

I played through 120 cases and took notes on crime type, sentencing, prior convictions, and in cases of white collar crimes, monetary losses, which makes less of a difference than you might think. From this data, I made a table of crimes, in rough order of most to least severe. This is going to wreck my SEO.

Prison and probation sentences are in years/months, jail sentences are in months/days.

Crime	Sentence	First offense	Repeat	Cases
Murder (repeat)	Death			1
Sabotage	Prison		23/8	1
Assassination	Prison	22/10 to 30/1		2
Treason	Prison	21/11	27/3	2
Rape/murder	Prison	21/10		2
Kidnapping/rape	Prison		20/9 to 22/3	2
Sedition	Prison		20/7	1
Murder of a police officer	Prison	19/7 to 21/10		2
Smuggling	Prison		16/7	1
Rape/burglary	Prison		15/2	1
Kidnapping	Prison	13/11	15/2	2
Attempted assassination	Prison		12/8	1
Rape	Prison		11/7	1
Forcible sodomy	Prison		11/7 to 14/11	2
Sexual assault on a child	Prison	12/8	11/6	2
Arson	Prison	10/5		1
Attempted murder	Prison		9/9	1
Hijacking	Prison		8/11 to 9/9	2
Robbery	Prison	7/4 to 8/4	10/2	4
Assault/burglary	Prison		7/0 to 7/8	2
Sexual exploitation of a child	Prison	6/2 to 7/0		2
Cocaine sale	Prison	5/10		1
Attempted rape	Prison	5/2	6/5	2
Burglary of a dwelling	Prison		4/1	1
Forced prostitution	Prison	3/11		1
Assault with intent to rape	Prison	3/11	7/8	2
Daytime burglary	Prison		3/11	1
Terroristic threatening	Prison	3/7 to 4/1		2
Assault	Prison	3/1 to 4/2		2
Unlawful imprisonment	Prison	2/4		1
Burglary of a business	Prison	2/4		1
Computer piracy ($71,000)	Prison		2/2	1
Illegal business practice (tenth offense)	Prison		2/0	1
Unlawful business practice	Prison		2/0	1
Forgery	Prison	1/11	2/2	3
Heroin use	Prison	1/10	3/11	1
Illegal commercial enterprise	Jail		23/14 to 23/26	2
Burglary of a business	Jail		22/4	1
Possession of a deadly weapon	Jail		22/4	1
Computer piracy ($1,695)	Jail		22/0	1
Illegal business practice (second offense)	Jail		19/6	1
Dealing in unsafe products	Jail		18/12	1
Accepting bribes	Jail	17/26	19/26 to 23/14	3
Resisting arrest	Jail		15/22	1
Perjury	Jail	15/0	15/2	2
Cocaine use	Jail	14/28 to 15/2		2
Carrying a concealed weapon	Jail	14/20 to 21/18		2
Drunk driving	Jail		12/8 to 20/16	2
Possession of burglar's tools	Jail		10/24	1
Violation of probation	Jail		10/16 to 10/20	2
Menacing	Jail		8/28 to 16/4	3
Aiding and abetting a felon	Jail		8/20 to 15/22	2
Mail fraud	Jail		7/26	2
Illegal price-fixing	Jail		7/2 to 16/0	2
Theft of trade secrets (tenth offense)	Jail		6/16	1
Bribery	Jail	5/2	14/4	2
Offensive touching	Jail		4/0 to 6/20	2
False alarm	Jail		2/8	1
Criminal trespass	Jail	1/26	9/6	2
Criminal solicitation	Jail		1/22 to 2/16	2
Operating a pyramid scheme	Jail		1/14	1
Theft of trade secrets (second offense)	Probation		9/0	1
Operating a pyramid scheme	Probation		8/2	1
Auto theft	Probation	8/1		1
Criminal impersonation	Probation	8/1		1
Theft by con game	Probation		7/10 to 8/7	2
Unlawful use of a credit card	Probation	7/4	8/1	2
Pimping	Probation		6/8	1
Marijuana use	Probation		6/5	1
False advertising	Probation	6/2		1
Statutory rape	Probation	5/3 to 6/10	7/1	3
Reckless driving	Probation	4/9		1
Prostitution	Probation	4/8	5/4	2
Loitering	Probation		3/9 to 4/9	2
Hunting out of season	Probation		1/4	1

 

There are a few inconsistencies, but not that many. The crimes of operating a pyramid scheme and burglary of a business had to appear twice each because of sentencing disparities that could not be accounted for based on damages. Another surprise is that in the two cases of sexual assault of a child, the first time offender got a longer prison sentence than the repeat offender - but I had not considered factors like the age of the child, or what the prior conviction was for.

The list also shows some questionable priorities in terms of criminal severity. Why is repeat heroin use punished far worse than repeat drunk driving? Why was a home burglar who stole $50 given four years, and a business criminal who defrauded a million dollars given 19 months, both cases being second offenses? But this reflects the real-life priorities of common law, and my critiques are far from the first or the most insightful.

But overall, the list seems like solid groundwork. So let's try out some cases.

Case 1: Perjury

Details on the perjury itself are scant, but the defendant has six prior arrests with one conviction for animal abuse. I opt for a 15 month jail sentence, as per the table above.

Yeah... too harsh. It's worth five gavel taps, but I'm advised to do better.

Case 2: Dealing in unsafe products

The defendant is a Vietnamese immigrant, has a prior conviction for vandalism, had been held in contempt of court, and is a business owner. ACLU urges leniency. I opt for a 15 month jail sentence, given the minor priors.

I should have gone with the table! This is exactly what the last sentence said. Still, this is worth eight gavels.

Case 3: Smuggling

 

This is a serious offense, but it's his first, and he pled guilty. The offender was raised by welfare hippies, and works a steady job. Community opinion wants leniency.

From the table, I estimate a 15 year prison term.

Six gavels for a somewhat excessive sentence.

Case 4: Kidnapping

Not looking good for the defendant, who has ten prior arrests and nine convictions of unspecified crimes. I follow the table exactly and give 15 years, two months.

Should have gone higher still, but this is still worth eight gavels.

Let's do one more.

Case 5: Illegal price-fixing

This is a first-time adult offense, though he used fake I.D. as a juvenile. The defendant informed on his accomplices, has a history of being cold and calculating, and dreams of being a millionaire.

His dreams may be ruined, but owing to this being the first offense, I grant leniency with a five month jail term.

Ouch!

 

I thought I'd perform better than this, but even after 125 cases there are still a lot of holes in my chart. The difference in punishment between first offense and repeat offenses can be very significant for some crimes, and insignificant for others.

GAB rating: Below average. It's a unique concept for sure, but in practice this just isn't very good at all. Without any guidelines to reference, you're just playing a guessing game. Of course this isn't meant to be a conventional game as much as a learning tool, but it's a missed opportunity in that regard as well. Apart from the information module, the game does nothing to discuss criminal law or any of the legal theory behind it. It will teach you that accepting bribes is a more serious crime than offering them, but doesn't foster any discussion on why.

Still, I like the idea, and there's nothing else quite like this. I'm surprised that Crime & Punishment never got revisited in the years to come - one can imagine a CD-ROM edition with interactive sentencing guidelines, gigantic databases of real-world reference cases, Encarta-like articles on legal concepts hyperlinked from the case files, and FMVs of Jack Kress pounding his gavel as he admonishes your weak justice game. I'd play it.

Spellbreaker: Won!

I missed something early in the game. The golden box in the ogre's lair containing the third cube responds to Jindak, but not just because the cube inside is magical. The box itself is magical too! It is linked to the cube, and exiting from the cube dimension's east exit will take you to wherever the box happens to be. Unless you're carrying it!

In retrospect, I now know that I cheated myself out of a clue by taking it with me and hoarding it like a pack rat. If I had just left it, I would have very soon discovered that the cube's linked exit takes me right back there (and been beaten to death by the ogre). And I might have noticed that this is the only cube without any sealed exits, and from there puzzled out the reason why. But because the box was on my person, the east exit simply bounced me back like every other cube dimension's unusable exit and I was none the wiser.

On the other hand, because I took the gold box with me and hoarded it like a pack rat, I didn't have to reload a saved game from near the beginning of the game to get it!

The box has another function. It can be linked to any other cube by placing that cube inside. I'm not sure if there is a point in doing that, but this also changes the engravings on the box to depict a thematically appropriate beast:

1. Moles - Packed Earth
2. Rabbits - Soft Room
3. Dolphins - Water Room
4. Eagles - Air Room
5. Butterflies - Changing Room
6. Worms - Boneyard
7. Fireflies - Light Room
8. Spiders - String Room
9. Owls - No Place (why owls?)
   
10. Grues - Dark Room
11. Salamanders - Fire Room
    

Knowing this, I have a way of reaching the volcano's outcropping. Toss the box over there, then Blorple into the third cube and exit east.

Here, I found a twelve cube, but this time upon collecting it, a surge of power flowed through it and into me. This must be the last one! This cube is unicorn-themed, and Blorpling into it goes to a chaotic Magic Room.

The Magic Room doesn't seem to be immediately useful. The place is a mess, and Jindak even reveals that there's nothing magical within. North goes back to a meadow that I've already been to, South links to the box, and East is blocked off by an impassable void.

Time to confront Belboz. I Blorpled to the String Room and exited south. He hadn't responded to "talk to Belboz," but I tried commanding him to stand - almost surprisingly, this worked! I doubt I would have thought of this without the hint that I'd need to talk.

Belboz told me that a doppelganger had been here, and challenged me to prove my identity with a trivia question about the Enchanters Guild. This part is copy protection! So late in the game, too. The answer is in the set of trading cards that come in the package.

Belboz gave me a key. I then asked him about the cubes - he explained that these cubes held the foundational elements of the world, and that whoever possessed them could reshape the universe. Other than that, I couldn't get any useful answers from him.

One last unsolved problem - opening the door from the inner vault. I blorpled back, tried my key, and it didn't work. Rezrov, however, did work this time! Possessing the twelve cubes of foundation makes all the difference here.

The door slammed shut as I went north to the outer vault, where I found twelve more cubes, denoted "x1," "x2," and so forth, arranged in two piles. Another door, this one made of iron, exited to the north, but the iron key does not open it, and Rezrov triggers an alarm and your imminent death at the hands of the bored royal guards.

Jindak, however, shows both piles of cubes are magical, and one pile is a bit more magical than the other. I know what's going on here.

This puzzle is a chestnut, but the rules here are that you get three casts of Jindak - after that, an alarm triggers, and two moves later, you die. Saving won't work here!

First, you want to remove two cubes from each pile, leaving two piles of four. Your first Jindak will then reveal which pile of four contains the strongest cube, and if they're the same, then the strongest cube is in one of the cubes you removed. After that, it was trivial to figure out which of those four was the strongest with two Jindak casts. I made sure to a Blorple memorized before the last Jindak - there's no time to memorize after the alarm sounds.

But... after being pretty certain that I found the powerful cube, I Blorpled in and there was nothing there! I reloaded, tried again, and this time found the powerful cube (it is randomly chosen each time you reload) in just two Jindaks, and still, nothing!

 

A commenter alerted me to my error - I assumed that the cube I want is more powerful than the fakes. It could actually be less powerful than the fakes! This complicates the puzzle a bit.

The first move is still to weigh four cubes against four cubes - this time, it identified one pile as the stronger, but the correct cube could be in either one of them.

Weigh 1: [x3,x4,x5,x6] < [x9,x10,x11,x12]

Next, I swapped some cubes around, and weighed three against three. Two from the underweight pile and one from the overweight pile, against one from the underweight pile, one from the overweight pile, and a dummy cube that was neither underweight nor overweight. No matter what Jindak said, I'd have a way to solve the puzzle with just one more cast.

This second cast of Jindak showed both piles were the same.

Weigh 2: [x4,x5,x9] = [x1,x3,x10]

All six of those are fake! That leaves x6, x11, and x12 as the only possibilities. From the first weigh, we know that x6 can't be overweight, and x11 and x12 can't be underweight.

I memorized Blorple before weighing x11 against x12. They were identical, proving that x6 must be underweight and the correct cube.

The alarm went off, summoning the guards, and I Blorpled into x6, taking me to a Sand Room.

 

This room, seemingly the inside of an hourglass, can be exited up or down, and both lead to places I've been before, but things are different. Incidentally, putting this cube into the gold box changes the engravings to turtles, but there is no linking exit.

Up goes to the "Ruins Room," but now there is a normal sack on the ground containing a girgol scroll, and the room is flooding. Down goes to the Dungeon Cell, but the door is closed and locked, and the cabinet contains a blank scroll. Attempting to leave either location is fatal; you either drown, get arrested, or if you try to leave by Blorple, spaghettified.

We've time traveled into the past! Infocom does seem to love this trope.

By setting the Dungeon Cell to the state in which we originally found it, we can Blorple out and live. This means retrieving the scroll, leaving the spellbook inside, locking it - it can be unlocked and locked with Belboz's key - and Rezroving the cell door before immediately Blorpling the power cube. Or, as I realized later on further experimentation, any other cube.

But this trades the all-important spellbook for a seemingly useless blank scroll!

Resolving the past Ruins Room is simpler - you just need to move the Girgol scroll into your zipper and leave it behind, taking the sack with you. But you don't have a lot of time to do this before the room floods enough to ruin the scroll.

I reloaded to the Sand Room and did the Dungeon Cell time paradox routine - but I made sure to memorize multiple Blorples before giving up the spellbook. In preparation for the Ruins Room, I Blorpled to the Magic Room first, where I'd have time to empty out the zipper, save for a few items I'd need next.

In the Ruins Room, I moved the scroll from the sack to the magic zipper, first taking a moment to inscribe the Girgol spell onto the blank scroll, and then Blorpled back to the Magic Room where my stuff waited and could be moved back into the sack.

Now that I had the final power cube, the swirling void here was passable, and took me to a castle, where the shadow - my shadow - appeared. He relieved me of the cubes, magically froze me in place, and explained that he, quite predictably, used me to get them for him, as he started assembling them into a structure which emitted rays of cosmic energy as he completed its construction. Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy might have had just a touch of influence here.

The spell on me wore off shortly after he put the last cube in place, but by then it was too late to do anything - he entered this hypercube with a dramatic backflip and ascended to a higher plane of existence, and deleted me from mine.

I soon discovered that by attacking the shadow, he casts his spell sooner, which will wear off before he finishes his spiel, at which point he ignores you. Cast Girgol just before he enters, and you have a few turns to act.

Removing a cube foils his plans, but isn't the best outcome.

The shadow, now as solid as a real person, performs a back flip into the tesseract. "No!" It screams. "Stop! Fool, you've destroyed me! You've destroyed everything! All my lovely plans!" Now glowing as brightly as the construction it made, the figure approaches the center. It dwindles in size and grows in brightness at the same time, until it reaches the empty center. Then you, it and all the world blink out like a spent match.

 

The correct move, and I'm not really sure I understand why this works, is to replace the cube with another object of sufficiently large size. Most of the things you've got will do.

"Stop! Fool, you've destroyed me! You've destroyed magic itself! All my lovely plans!" Now glowing as brightly as the construction it made, the figure approaches the center. It grows smaller and smaller, and just before it disappears, the hypercube vanishes with a pop, and the "twelve" cube melts in your hand like an ice cube.

 

You find yourself back in Belwit Square, all the guildmasters and even Belboz crowding around you. "A new age begins today," says Belboz after hearing your story. "The age of magic is ended, as it must, for as magic can confer absolute power, so it can also produce absolute evil. We may defeat this evil when it appears, but if wizardry builds it anew, we can never ultimately win. The new world will be strange, but in time it will serve us better."

 

Your score is 600 of a possible 600, in 771 moves. This puts you in the class of Scientist.

GAB rating: Above average. 

I put this conclusion ahead of Sorcerer, but behind Enchanter. Much of what I said about those two applies here - the writing is still good, the room descriptions nice and evocative, and the magic-based puzzles are some of Infocom's best yet. The economy with rooms and objects is admirable as well; almost everywhere you go and everything you see serves a purpose, if not at first, then eventually!

But the worldbuilding, which is so often the strongest part of Infocom's best games, feels flatter than usual, despite the literal multidimensionality. Unlike in Zork and Enchanter, I never felt I was exploring or immersed in a fantasy world. Being structured around a collection of magic cubes and corresponding hub areas makes it feel disjointed and chaotic - this may well have been Lebling's intent, but it means the world never really comes together in any satisfyingly cohesive way. I initially thought that the cubes' unused exits might wind up linking together and join the world for one big interconnected payoff in the end, but they wound up being mostly irrelevant, used only once for a minor (and moderately unfair in my opinion) puzzle.

Spellbreaker isn't quite free of annoying genre conventions either. Granted, there are no mundane mazes, no hunger, and no expiring light sources, but having to constantly juggle inventory items partway in got annoying, and having to stop what you're doing to sleep got annoying. The many, many ways you can die or make the game unwinnable, forcing a reload, was also annoying, but at least it tended to be obvious when this happened. Many of the puzzles are based around strict timing, and are failed if you use a "turn" to examine anything or to check your inventory - that was also annoying. So was having to type "MEMORIZE BLORPLE" a thousand times - couldn't we have just had that one committed to memory? So was having spells fail randomly.

Speaking of which, the major premise of the game - the end of magic - isn't explored all that deeply. It would have been interesting to see magic further deteriorate as you progress through the game, forcing you to adapt and rely on non-magical means of problems solving, but nothing like that ever happens. From start to finish, all of your problems are solved with the right spell.

Besides, the Coconut of Quendor is just going to bring it all back anyway.

In the end, Spellbreaker's positive qualities stand out, but I still feel a bit let down by it, and by the Enchanter trilogy as a whole.

My Trizbort map:

Spellbreaker: Monoliths

Despite a tip from a commenter telling me that it was already possible to break the seal affecting all of the hub rooms, and also possible to productively interact with Belboz, I could not figure out how, nor how to progress in any meaningful way. I turned to the walkthrough, and saw that its next instructions showed how to deal with the octagonal room.

What you do is put the compass rose in a compass-shaped inlet, as I had, to open the passageway into the octagonal room. But I was wrong in my belief that the compass controls it from here! Before entering, you remove the compass rose. The passage stays open. Then you go in, and you touch the runes on the octagonal room's walls with the compass to open a passage there.

Seriously - did anyone figure that out on their own? Placing the compass in the initial inset was pretty obvious, and removing it not quite as obvious, and I knew the compass was somehow used to manipulate the room, but why would you think that touching the walls with it would do anything?

This area is actually a maze of octagonal rooms, and each of the compass's eight directions is good for one use before turning into brass and deactivating, and north is already used up to get inside. In effect, you get seven moves to navigate the maze, and can't move in any direction twice. The rooms themselves have eight walls each, and each wall has a rune whose color dictates whether the compass will react and open a hole there or not.

The maze is not large or complicated, and one room's west wall is uniquely marked with a gold rune and alabaster inset. I couldn't find any way to reach this room without using up my west move, and I don't think it's possible, but it doesn't matter - all you have to to is Rezrov the inset and the wall opens up revealing... another cube.

The ninth cube goes to "No Place." Eastward from this hub is the Inner Vault from Zork III, still full of treasure, and the door from the Outer Vault locked and Rezrov-proof. Southward from No Place is a nondescript "plain," which is in fact a frictionless plane like something out of Mathmagic Land. Colorful rocks glide around the landscape, and another cube sits on one, but walking around is impossible, and the rocks protest if you try to climb on them.

I offered the lava fragment to the green rock in the immediate vicinity, and it gratefully allowed me to climb aboard and carry me where I wished. I moved toward the brown rock in the east, and it moved away, but I could eventually trap it in the corner of this plane and get its cube.

The tenth cube goes to a "Dark Room." And this dark room is situated over a dark, dark cave. So dark that your own light sources don't work very well.

You know what this means - grue city! And if you're in deep enough that you can see their outlines, you're already dead.

To survive, you've got to memorize a Snavig spell and then abandon any light-emitting items before going on. And then you must cast Snavig to become a grue.

Past the grues is a pool of faint light, with a climbable pillar in the middle. And on top of it, a cube.

The eleventh cube goes to a "Fire Room." South goes to back to the clifftop connected to the very first cube. North goes to a volcano - we'd been to its base before, but this part is higher up.

On the volcano, a heat-resistant outcropping can be seen to the west, but there's no obvious way to reach it.

Now I'm 415 points in, out 600, and I've seen 80 rooms, but a lot of them are part of the octagonal room maze and plains area. That's already more than the median 48KB Infocom game; only Zork I and Planetfall are appreciably bigger. I've got to be nearly done.

I have four unsolved problems:

• How do I enter the sealed rooms in the hubs?
• What do I do with Belboz?
• How do I open the door in the inner vault?
  
• How do I reach the volcano outcropping?
  

The first two should be solvable already, but I still can't figure out how.

Tips would be appreciated - if possible, I'd prefer gentle tips that prod me in the right direction to find the bit of information I'm missing to solve the puzzle over outright spoilers. I'll have updates in the comments regarding my progress over the weekend.

My Trizbort map (so far):

Spellbreaker: Megafauna

Following my impasse with the magic carpet, I reloaded an earlier save, to one just before I was forced to choose between saving a scroll in a bottle and the magic cube needed to get me there, and used a bit of fish to distract the hungry grouper so that I could collect both. Then I retraced the rest of my steps up until I had the magic carpet again.

Now then - what can we do with this flying carpet? I already know that using it outdoors just gets me lost in the wilderness, and that removing its tag prevents it from working entirely. I thought that the oubliette, accessible from the cube I just rescued, might be a good place to fly, but the carpet doesn't fly in there.

But I discovered something else here. An outflow pipe here can be entered  - secure the spellbook first! - after shrinking yourself with magic. This leads back to cube 1's Ruins Room, and another cube is picked up along the way. Continuing to go down the outflow past the Ruins Room will be your immediate death.

The water can also be frozen with magic, but I don't see what purpose it serves. The flow continues regardless.

This fifth cube can be Blorpled into a phase-shifting hub leading to a room containing an ornate, and magical compass rose, and another room with an inset in the wall. Inserting the compass into it causes the north arm to change color and opens up a passage to an octagonal room with no way out.

I think I know what I'm meant to do here, but I'm unsure how to communicate it to the parser! Moving, rotating, or pushing the compass, its arms, or its knobs just produces the unhelpful message "nothing happens."

I turned to a walkthrough - turns out I missed something! The trap door at the top of the oubliette can't be reached by magic carpet, but it can be opened with Rezrov. And freezing the water does serve a purpose - one freeze does nothing, but a second freeze blocks the outflow, flooding the hole. A third cast - you've got to memorize three casts ahead of time and then secure the spellbook - solidifies the pool surface and lets you climb out.

The dungeon has yet another cube on the floor, but also a moldy, disintegrating book, found inside a cabinet in one of its cells. It can be magically repaired, and inside, a lone spell 'Snavig' - shape change - is found and transcribable with Gnusto. There is also a guard tower overwatching, but nothing useful seems to be within, and when you stick around, the roc swoops down and snatches you.

 

This sixth cube takes us to the boneyard where death would normally deposit you. A north exit goes back to Belwit square, and a west exit is sealed. But I couldn't find anything to do here, so I went around the world again to see if Snavig could be useful anywhere.

Snavig doesn't work on the roc, but it does work on the grouper - and you'll want to leave everything behind before doing this. Which means you've got to memorize it, plus a Blorple before you step through the ocean portal, and if the spell randomly fails, you've got to Blorple back and retry.

As a grouper, you can dive to the bottom of the ocean floor, where a seventh cube sits! Whatever you brought with you will also sit here, which is why you want to bring nothing. You can't pick it up as a grouper, and eating it produces a humorous (but very undesirable!) result, but you can just wait for the spell to wear off - you've got enough oxygen to retrieve both it and the cube that brought you here, surface, and use your Blorple to return to safety.

 

This new cube leads to a brightly lit hub whose only functioning exit is a volcano, where a lava fragment can be found and collected if magically cooled first. But I couldn't see what to do with it, or find anything else to do, so I turned to the walkthrough again.

Finally, I learned what do do with the magic carpet. You take it to the guard tower and ride it before the roc gets you, which I had actually tried doing, but did not realize that in this place, and this place only, you can take off, land in the place it takes you, and survive. From above, the wilderness surrounding the guard tower is completely indistinguishable from any other wilderness area, but if you go west toward the jagged mountains, you'll reach the roc's nest, where you can get the cube before the mother returns (or the baby hatches).

This eight cube goes to a "string hub" with one valid path - south, to an enchanter's retreat, where Belboz meditates, and will quickly kill you if you attempt any hostility. He will submit to a magic mind probe, but this reveals nothing suspicious.

I'm now 340 points in, out of a maximum of 600. This is a pretty long game! I've only seen 47 rooms, which is probably the majority, but there's very little padding here. Almost all of them have at least one functional purpose.

I have three unsolved problems:

• How do I enter the sealed rooms in the hubs?
• What do I do with Belboz?
• How do I manipulate the Octagonal Room?
  

 

I suspect the first two problems don't get solved until I'm near the end, and the third is just a matter of finding the right verbiage. We will see.

My Trizbort map (so far):

Spellbreaker: Rummy cubes

Spellbreaker seems like a deadly game - I've barely begun to map it out, with only 14 rooms visited, and already found two locations where you die if you do the wrong thing, or even just wait around too long.

To recap - magic is failing, all of the land's guildmasters except myself have been turned into frogs, and a mysterious cloaked figure has selected me for some mysterious purpose, but left no clues; just a magical white cube that represents some kind of pocket dimension with four passages and a hole. The north passage is invisibly sealed. East leads to a stone hall where a massive serpent devouring its own tail blocks off a circular passage. South goes to a precarious cliff, with avalanche-triggering rocks at the top, and a grumpy ogre at the bottom.

 

I restarted, quickly reobtained the cube, used the Blorple spell to enter it, and quickly discovered there's not much more to explore! The west passage goes nowhere new - it just leads directly to the ogre's cave, and the hole is a very long drop to the bottom, which the game shows uncharacteristic mercy by telling you instead of just killing you for trying to take it.

I tried to find productive use for any of my magic - in particular, it seemed like Throck, a spell to make plants grow, might be weaponized against the allergic ogre, but to no avail. Half of the time my spells just failed outright, and Throck didn't seem to do anything the other half of the time.

The girgol spell - a one-time use scroll to freeze time - proved useful. After deliberately triggering an avalanche, I cast girgol, and was able to climb a series of free-falling boulders to reach the clifftop! Here, a Ƶ500 coin lay on the ground, and a hermit's stone hut was perched by the edge. Inside, another white cube was embedded in the walls, but the hermit wouldn't let me take it. The malyon spell, which animates inanimate objects, fatally demonstrates that this is a load-bearing cube.

I couldn't see what else to do here, or find a use for the coin, so I turned to a walkthrough. First, it says to write a "1" on the cube - I assume this helps distinguish it from any other cubes we find. But second, and I have to call this unfair, you actually do have to jump into the hole! Go down once and be warned that this is a bad idea. Go down a second time to actually do it. And there's still a chance that you die from doing this.

I didn't die, but fell some distance, until a roc swooped down and picked me up, and dropped me into her nest, where a scroll of Caskly - "cause perfection," could be found and Gnusto'd, and another cube, which the roc wouldn't let me take, was wedged underneath an egg.

I returned to the stone hut and cast Caskly on it to give it a little more structural integrity. After this, I could take the new cube and Blorple inside.

 

This cube, which I wrote "two" on, goes to a different pocket dimension with only two exits. One is sealed, the other goes to a meadow, where I find garden sheers and a conspicuous ragweed.

It's pretty obvious what I need to do here. I pull - not cut - the weed, and return to the ogre's cave, where I could replant and Throck it, sending the ogre into a sneezing fit long enough to steal his cache - another cube, and a scroll of epnis - sleeping.

Espnis does not work on the mother roc and allow me to take the cube in her nest, so I Blorple this third one.

The third cube's hub world is a watery one and has three exits, two of them unsealed. One leads to the bottom of an oubliette. The other leads to the middle of the ocean, where your spellbook gets waterlogged, you drop your cube (which soon gets eaten by a grouper), and a bottle is seen floating.

I reloaded, and knowing what would happen, I first memorized Blorple, then put the spellbook inside the magic zipper so that it would not get ruined. I stepped into the ocean, grabbed the bottle, and Blorpled the first cube, knowing I could never return here.

The bottle, which I then opened, had a "liskon" spell, which shrinks living things. I knew where this would help - the ouroboros reacted as promised, letting me slip past it and into a temple adorned with a very large basalt rat statue featuring a prominent mouth. Malyon would animate it, and espnis would make it yawn, letting me reach inside and grab a fourth cube.

The fourth cube is air-themed, made of solid clouds, and has four passages out, including a gap downward.

North takes me to a deadly frozen glacier, where a freezing scroll of "tinsot" lies in the snow banks.

South drops into thin air, where the roc once again picked me up and dropped me into her nest. Tinsot seemed like it might let me freeze her in place long enough to take the cube here, but it does not.

West goes to a busy bazaar, where a wheeler-dealer (threader-vendor?) carpet salesman can be lowballed and bartered down to Ƶ500, but he'll try to push the red one on you. Don't accept this - insist on the blue. He won't allow you to cast jindak (detect magic) in the shop, but trial and error shows that the blue carpet is magical and the red carpet is just a threadbare rag.

I put the carpet down on the ground and sat - and it flew! Up into the clouds, where it eventually took me to a mountainous wilderness. Although the carpet responds to directional commands, it seemed endless, and landing here is immediately fatal.

At this point, I'm stuck. I did discover two things, neither of which is immediately useful - first, that the magic carpet has a tag on its underside, which if removed, causes the carpet to lose its flying ability. Second, that in the middle of the ocean, the grouper can be fed with smoked fish taken from the guild's banquet hall, allowing you to retrieve both the cube and the bottle. I have some ideas about things to try next, mostly involving the magic carpet in various places, but for now I'm calling this a stopping point.

My Trizbort map (so far):

Game 443: Spellbreaker

Read the manual here:

https://www.mocagh.org/loadpage.php?getgame=spellbreaker

 

Get Frotz (if native Windows execution is your wish) here:
http://www.davidkinder.co.uk/frotz.html

 

I skipped over an Infocom game this year - one of my favorites, actually; A Mind Forever Voyaging, simply because I've played it too much already and would gain nothing from a replay. Infocom's first game to use the new V4 format required a then-luxurious 128KB of RAM and allowed much bigger worlds than ever before, more interactivity, more vocabulary, and more in-depth game mechanics. This one, designed by Hitchhikers' Steve Meretzky, is set in a near future ruled by neoconservative technocrats, and downplays puzzles in favor of narrative, as you'd observe and interact with a 60 year time-lapsed computer simulation of your hometown's projected future.

This format's requirements completely locked out the Commodore 64, the most popular computer of the day, and required anyone with a stock Apple //e - the second most popular computer of the day, to upgrade. It would be reserved for select prestige titles. V3 remained Infocom's popular format and continued to be used in more games, including our next whale, and conclusion to the Enchanter trilogy - Spellbreaker.

This one, authored by Enchanter's Dave Lebling, is marked Expert Level on the box. In fact, this is the final Infocom game with that label. This would have once intimidated me, and it still does a little, but I've had a pretty good track record with enjoying expert-level Infocoms, if not always with finishing them without help.

 

Infocom's box feelies are, once again, dissatisfyingly thin - all we get here are an Enchanters Guild pin, a set of six Topps-style trading cards of famous enchanters, and a manual that takes the form of a Frobozzco wizard's catalog, whose only concession to the game's premise - the decline and fall of magic itself - are a "Special Crisis Edition" hallmark on the front, and a listing for conventional swords within alongside the expected potions and scroll parchments.

We begin in the Council Chamber, where a meeting of the guildmasters is taking place. Do you know how difficult it is to make butter pastries by hand?, sniffs the boulanger. Now 'gloth' hardly works, and when it does, it folds the dough too often! Far more troubling, though, is the brewmaster's dire warning - Without magic, there isn't going to be any beer! Murmurs run through the room, and fingers are pointed, mainly at us, and just before the Poets Guild has a chance to drop some devastating burns in rhyming verse, everyone mysteriously turns into newts! Everyone but us, and an unidentified figure in the back of the room, who I pursue.

It's a short-lived chase, though - I go out the chamber door, past a buffet in the grand hall, and out the door to Belwit Square, where the suspect, obscured by a black cloak (of course), vanishes in a dramatic billow of orange smoke.

I take a moment to review my inventory - it consists of a knife, a magic stylus, and my spellbook, which contains:

• Blorple - Explore mystic connections
• Yomin - Probe minds
  
• Rezrov - Open locks
  
• Frotz - Illuminate
• Gnusto - Inscribe scrolls into the spellbook
• Malyon - Animate
• Jindak  - Detect magic
• Lesoch - Wind
  

 

The game specifically notes that we've never seen "Blorple" before, but Jindak and Lesoch are new spells too.

A cast of Lesoch clears the smoke from the square, leaving a white cube on the ground. Jindak takes a few tries to get right, but eventually reveals that the cube is magical.

Normally this where I'd start Trizborting, and I do, but there's not much to map out! Belwit Square extends infinitely to the east and west, the way south is blocked by a guard, and there's nothing in the Enchanter's Guild to the north but a bunch of frogs and a banquet hall, from which I help myself to some bread and fish.

I try out Blorple on the magic cube - instantly I'm teleported into a pitch black, subterranean chamber, and I quickly Frotz the spellbook so that I don't get eaten. And here, I start Trizborting.

East from the initial chamber, which has exits in all four cardinal directions and a hole leading down, I enter a stone hall leading north and south. To the north, an ouroborosan serpent fills a circular passage. To the south, a vast field of ruined pillars and water stains, and a zipper, which I take. But I find no passage back to the initial chamber.

Soon I grow tired, and unable to find any sort of bedroom, I just sleep on the floor, where I dream of mages viewing premonitions of violence through a magic mirror.

The zipper seems to be a bag of holding. I can open it, put things inside, even enter it myself. Inside is a Gnusto-proof scroll of girgol - time stop. Casting Blorple on it takes me to an empty room, which exits right back to wherever I came from.

 

Unable to make any progress with the serpent - it reacts to Yomin but only informs me that the serpent is punished for its pride - I Blorple the cube again, and return to the underground chamber. The north exit is magically sealed, but south leads to a new set of rooms -  a sheer cliffside, which as I attempt to ascend, gives way and dumps my body down a ravine!

Death isn't necessarily the end in the Zork universe - the cloaked figure appears, mocks my failure, and sends me to a corridor of bones, from which I can exit back to Belwit square and Blorple back into the cube again to resume my task.

I return to the cliffside - a spell of Throck - "cause plants to grow" - is found and can be Gnusto'd into the spellbook. Climbing down, I find a cave guarded by a sneezy ogre, who pounds me flat as I try to explore.

The shade warns me that I'm on my last try as I resurrect one more time, and return to the cliffside. Girgol freezes the ogre in place and lets me pass - this is probably not the correct solution; Infocom would not waste bytes on details such as his hay fever if it weren't important - but it works, and I enter his lair where I find a bed, a golden box, and a scroll, which I cannot interact with until the spell wears off. And as soon as it does, the enraged ogre charges in after me and curb stomps me.

My Trizbort map (so far):

Games 441-442: Tank Battalion & Battle City

Our next whale, Namco's Battle City, is a minor one, and is one of the earliest third-party games developed specifically for the Famicom.

As it is a successor to an even lesser non-whale, I'll be playing that first.

Game 441: Tank Battalion

Scan by The Arcade Flyer Archive

 

It's hard to believe it, but this ugly-looking, clumsily-playing maze shooter came out almost simultaneously with the sublime Pac-Man! It feels like it should be a generation older.

I get ahead of myself, but Tank Battalion isn't very impressive.

The idea is fairly original and anticipates some aspects of tower defense strategy, making it a welcome break from the countless Space Invaders clones of the time. You drive a tank through a fully destructible maze and have to protect your base, represented by an eagle insignia, from an enemy tank battalion. This would be impossible if they were smart enough to coordinate and flank your base from multiple directions at once, but the AI is erratic and very stupid, so instead this is merely frustrating. The tanks don't pose much threat to you, but you can't be everywhere at once, your own firepower is limited to one shot on screen at a time, which can easily miss thanks to the enemies' unpredictable movements, and if they land a single hit on the base, it's an instant game over no matter how many spare lives you have. Consequently, there are times when you may want to sacrificially throw your own tank in front of an incoming shell in order to save the base and reset the attack pattern.

Both you and the enemies can destroy walls in the maze, which ought to provide a lot of strategic options that you otherwise wouldn't have. But this feels like wasted potential - you can only strategize so much when the enemies follow no discernible pattern or logic, and methods of reshape the maze to your advantage feel limited to optimizing your own mobility through it. Perhaps there are reliable mazing strategies that come with experience and feel, but thanks to poor framerate and unresponsive controls, I felt no desire to stick with it any longer than I did - after beating the third wave, where the maze walls disappear entirely, I decided that I'd seen enough.

GAB rating: Below average, borderline bad. The concept is decent, but it's clunky and not much fun.

Game 442: Battle City

Cover hosted by Mobygames

 

I have no idea how this Japan-exclusive Famicom cartridge got over 50 Mobygames votes - that's not a lot, but it's more than the likes of Balloon Fight and Bomberman. Unlike those, I'd never heard of Battle City before.

This successor follows the same formula as Tank Battalion before it, but with a battery of big improvements.

• Solid near-60fps framerate and responsive controls
• Greater terrain variety
  
• 35 distinct levels with level select option
  
• Level editor with cassette saves
• Two player simultaneous action
• Four enemy tank types with differing levels of speed, armor, firepower, and aggression
• Powerup system
  

 

Since this has a two-player option - one that's implicitly cooperative with you two against the battalion but with a competitive scoring aspect (and the possibility of "accidental" friendly fire), I played this one with "B," who takes player two in the below video.

 

And, well, this is a major improvement over the original! It still doesn't feel very strategic, but I can live with that thanks to much smoother controls and faster gameplay, which makes Battle City feel arcadier than its coin-op predecessor. Levels feel more like battle maps than abstract Pac-Man-like mazes, thanks to zanier designs and terrain variety with features like view-obstructing trees and water which blocks tanks but not your shorts.

The new powerup system also provides a strategic element - killing a super tank will spawn one somewhere in the stage, and these are quite desirable, including effects such as freezing all enemies in place, upgrading your cannon, extra lives, or even just clearing the screen. But it might not spawn in a convenient spot, and they vanish after a few seconds - do you disengage from your current melee to get it, do you keep fighting and try to win quickly enough that you still have time to get it, or do you ignore it?

We played for not quite 20 minutes and made it to level 13 before we got bored and decided to quit. "B" played with a riskier, more aggressive style than myself, where he spawn camped and racked up more kills and points than I did, but also lost his own lives quicker.

GAB rating: Above average.

This was fun, and one of the better early-generation Famicom games I've played. I'm sure that the level editor would have provided lots of replay value back in the day. If it were 1985 and my only gaming system was a Famicom, this would have been one of my favorite video games. But it isn't - it got repetitive eventually, and I'm not at all eager to go back and finish any of the unplayed levels.