Sunday, August 24, 2025

Deja Vu: Won!


Miss Vickers' combination opens Siegel's wall safe, but no antidote is found there. Just a file marked "Ace's bad checks" and a key to his trunk, where Mrs. Sternwood is indisposed.

I noted, this time, that the cabs are parked on Peoria Street, and you don't need to give the drivers a specific address in order to return. The street name alone will do.

I still needed an antidote, and there was only one other place that it made any sense to find one - Dr. Brody's office. I went back there and realized that it was there the whole time, on an unlocked medicine cabinet. I had seen several vials of drugs on it, but because some vials were on an open stand, and others appeared to be behind a display case, I assumed the case was locked, but it turns out you can just take them. But I need a syringe. And the only syringe I've seen is in Joe Siegel's trash.

 

I reloaded again. We're on a tight time limit and a budget. I raided the office, grabbing the evidence, the various keys, and the dirty syringe. It's a sequence break, since I shouldn't have the office safe combination yet, but I'm okay with a slightly dirty run.

I also grabbed the map from Siegel's car. I don't want the cops to find that!

Next, I take a cab to Vickers', skipping Siegel's apartment, and take the earring, the key, and diary.

Then to the office complex, where I immediately give myself a bisodiumitis injection. And more time.


I also take the sodium pentothal orders as evidence, and a few samples for myself. If anything else is going to be useful, this is.

Then I enter my office, taking care of the hitman first, and grab the ammo. And the job offer letter.

I revisited some of the deja vu spots to trigger better memories; Joe Siegel ruined Ace's boxing career by fixing fights, and Ace failed to land on his feet as a private eye, accruing a gambling debt and a bounty on his head. He has no memory of kidnapping Mrs. Sternwood, but rather, of being approached by Mr. Sternwood and asked to be the bagman for her ransom. A setup, obviously, which Siegel would have had to be in on, and his hitman must have planted a phony job offer into my abandoned office, and left phony instructions in his car.

It seems there's not much more for me to do, but Ace is still in a very bad spot, even though he has his memory back.

You can end the game by going to the police, but this is a bad move.


Ditching the gun is no good. They'll find it and fry you all the same... unless you lose it in the sewers.

There's some damning evidence on my person, but the game doesn't mention it, or resolve differently if I drown it.
 

Gotta find more evidence. And Mrs. Sternwood is the key. It seems cruel, but I give her a dose of the truth serum.


 

A ransom note is found in the mailbox, and I force my way in.


I explore, but the only things I find here of note are an incriminating letter,


 And a "blank" notepad.


That old chestnut. Joe's pencil fills in the blanks.

 

This is enough.

The MacVenture universe's legal system operates on Phoenix Wright rules.
 

GAB rating: Good

This is easily the most enjoyable adventure I've played in quite a long time, and I chalk much of it up to the quality of its writing, which, free of its 8-bit contemporaries' capacity constraints, is by far the best I've seen this side of Infocom. I can only imagine that Kemco's NES conversion loses a lot in the translation. It invites comparisons to Deadline, which boasts the stronger mystery and character interactions, but Deja Vu is the better adventure overall, with a fairer solution, stronger worldbuilding, and crisp, monochrome graphics that don't just complement the prose and fit the noir-like atmosphere, but are integral to the interface and gameplay.

"D" tried this one too, and enjoyed the writing and humor, though she wished the mystery itself had been stronger. She was particularly impressed by some of its technical sophistication given its age, such as the window-based interface, the clear visuals, and tricks like awareness of the system clock for time-of-day and day-of-the-week.

There are some issues. It's not a long game, nor difficult, and the puzzles mainly amount to following leads until you find the exonerating evidence, which are all convenient records written and/or kept by the perpetrators themselves. The time limit, the backtracking, and the various ways you can get screwed over by bad luck are irritating, and yet because the game is a bit short and easy, I can forgive it, and even appreciate the sense of urgency and danger that it forces on you. The relative lack of conventional puzzles is a merit too; everything you do fits the game's theme and setting, with no silly adventure logic to distract from it. Condor wouldn't build a human dummy out of produce to throw the CIA off his track or wear a cat hair mustache to fool the police, and neither would Ace.

Overall, Deja Vu is a solid, well realized, and well balanced adventure game, with a clear vision, good design chops, and a unique style that owes much more to interactive fiction than King's Quest while still being graphical in a meaningful way. I award it a place in the ivory deck, and a harpoon; a rarity for this genre.

Friday, August 22, 2025

Deja Vu: Dick moves

They're to be expected.

I've finished mapping out the immediately accessible areas, which are partly interconnected by the sewers, the building fire escape, and Joe's secret elevator, and noted a few dangers.

  • As I learned last time, an alligator patrols the sewers. A bullet takes care of it, but if you don't already have your inventory open and your gun ready when you see the gator, it's too late to do anything.
  • An unarmed, tattooed mugger appears randomly on the streets. Punching him does nothing, and shooting him in broad daylight seems like a bad idea. I gave him a quarter - he dumped me in the alley behind Joe's bar and took every cent I had.
  • Another mugger also appears randomly on the streets, and this one has a gun. With no money to offer, punching him, rather amazingly, works, but he shows up again with a black eye (so I gave him another).
  • The east end of the main street has a police station. Unsurprisingly, you are busted if you go inside, and given a nonstandard game over - they pin the murder of Joe Siegel on you, but your brain turns to mush in jail, you're judged unfit to stand trial, and die in a mental asylum.
  • Going east from the police station kills you immediately, as pictured above. 


I restarted and did a quick run-around of Joe's bar and office, mainly to trigger some memories and grab some valuable items, but I also played the slots in the secret casino - a good investment as $0.75 earned me a $7.50 payout.

Lucky thing you can multi-select all those quarters before moving them.

I save and hit the streets.

 

Joe's car key doesn't open the trunk or the backseat, but it will open the front seat door, where I find:

  • A photo of a very large woman, which triggers a deja vu moment.
  • Siegel's car registration and home address - 1212 West End St.
  • A street map with some instructions. Some very incriminating instructions.
Is she still in the trunk?

I try popping the hood - and the car explodes. No need to guess what happens when you start the ignition, I'm sure. Reload!

Heading west - there's nothing but trouble going east - I encounter:

  • A newsstand. The headlines state "Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor," placing today at December 7th 1941. The newsboy advises me that the cops are looking for me - a woman across the street saw me doing something sketchy and tipped them off.
  • A gun shop has a Luger in stock. I can afford it, but I've already got a piece. A piece that will get me fried, but having a spare won't change that.
  • Two cabs, one blue and one yellow, are idling on the west end of the street.


A dame approaches.


I punch her out before I can find out what she's got for me.


In her purse is a Saturday night special, a makeup kit, and a $20 bill, which I take. And soon after I meet a bum who wants $20 for a tip - I give it to him and learn that Joey's hit man is waiting for me in "my office."

I enter the blue cab and take it to 934 West Sherman, the pharmacy's address. As it turns out, also my address.


I see the goon through the window and plug him with a .38. But the door's locked and I haven't got the key, and I can't break though the glass and open the door that way. Dr. Brody's office is also locked.

Next I go to 1212 West End St. to check out Siegel's apartment.


I find nothing here except a broad's photograph and an address - 520 S. Kedzie. I go there next.


The door's locked, but I can shoot my way in. This doesn't spook the cab driver at all.


There are a few things in here - a familiar scent of perfume, an earring, an unmarked key, a combination "33-24-36" written on a pad of paper, and a diary with the letters "M.V." embossed on the front, accounting the owner's past relation with Joe Siegel, and an ongoing affair with one John Sternwood.

The key opens Dr. Brody's office. Why does she have a key to this?

 

Two marked vials are here - one labeled Sodium Bicarbonate, another "SPECIMEN - 11/13 Todd Zipman." The cabinet here is combination-locked, and M.V.'s combination doesn't work, but my last bullet does, and there are many files inside:

  • Multiple orders of sodium pentothal for Joe Siegel, all handled by Marsha Vickers.
  • A carbon-copy of the pharmacy bill found in Siegel's office.
  • Several drug cards, starting with one on sodium bicarbonate. An alkaline gas relief solution. What kind of a pharmacist needs to keep a file to remember what that is?
  • Biosodiumitis - An antidote to diethanol trimene.
  • Diethanol trimene - An experimental memory-loss drug.
  • Sodium pentathol - Lowers inhibitions, and induces unconsciousness and veracious verbosity. Wrong, guys, that's hypnotism... though they do spell it wrong here.
  • Chemopapain - Pyschoactive euphoric drug.
  • Medrezine - Nerve gas counteragent.
  • Ofreeall - Anti-arrhythmic heart medication.
  • Several deranged memos detailing symptoms of conditions such as "cardiovascular shutdown" (e.g. death).
  • A copy of an advisory to Mr. Ace Harding, recommending that I quit smoking.
 

The key also unlocks my own office.


There are spare bullets in the desk, and some notes in the filing cabinet.

  • "Sugar Shack" has it in for Siegel. Reason unknown.
  • Some case notes concerning a blackmail against the alderman. Sugar Shack was the culprit, and our evidence put her away for a nickel.
  • Lastly, a letter from presumably Joe Siegel, asking me to kidnap a wealthy lady.

Evidently I took this job and things didn't go right for either of us. Clearly I have a (very possibly criminal) past history with Siegel, left him for the private eye business, and got into some trouble with the mob. He'd have me do one last, high-risk job to clear my name. But then, why would he want Mrs. Sternwood? More likely that Miss Vickers... or Mr. Sternwood... would want her (and Siegel) out of the way. And Vickers had been supplying the office with Dr. Brody's sodium pentothal, for whatever reason, giving her opportunity to be in on this.

My thinking - both Vickers and Sternwood are behind this. Sternwood, who we know is very wealthy, hired Siegel to kidnap his wife, promising him so much money that he could afford to pay off the mob. I did the job, but someone in their employ shot Siegel, blackjacked and drugged me with the cocktail that Vickers supplied, and hauled me, along with the murder weapon and Siegel's trenchcoat, down to the bathroom to take the fall. Ironically, they could have done nothing, and Sugar Shack, the one fly in the ointment, would have blown up both of them.

I'm still not sure why Vickers had a master key to 934 West Sherman, or why they bothered getting antidote, or who actually shot Siegel, or the point of giving me his coat (or at least putting his stuff in my coat), or why his hitman was after me. Perhaps Siegel intended to double-cross me so that the kidnapping couldn't be linked to him.

But now I'm stuck in a stupid way. I can't return to Joe's Bar because the cab driver needs an address, and I'm not sure what it is! It's just as well - the game warns me that I'm rapidly turning into a vegetative state, and it's not clear that I'm even on the right track to curing this. I suppose the antidote ought to be found in Siegel's office somewhere, but if it's not in his combination safe then I don't know where else it might be.


My Trizbort map:

Wednesday, August 20, 2025

Game 455: Deja Vu: A Nightmare Comes True!!


Buy Deja Vu: MacVenture Series, which includes the original Macintosh and colorized Apple IIgs versions:

Read the manual here:

ICOM Simulations was a small Illinois software house whose credits prior to the launch of the Macintosh include a handful of obscure arcade-style games on the Apple II, IBM PC, and Panasonic JR, and some software conversions to the former two. Deja Vu, their first release to the new Macintosh market, was conceived as an attempt to translate the concept of the text adventure - which had been semi-graphical for years - into a mouse-driven format befitting the platform's ecosystem.

The result is often said to have pioneered the point and click adventure. Personally, I don't see it this way, though they were successful at their goal. It is, ostensibly, a point and click interface, but by design (and in compliance with Apple's guidelines), feels like an extension of the Mac's native interface, and not very game-like, or all that anticipatory of the games by LucasArts and Sierra to come.

Arrangeable windows, nested containers, and drag & drop gestures? Flintstones.

Interestingly, the original manual doesn't describe the plot at all! It's entirely devoted to explaining the interface (and a few gameplay tips), written in a Siegel-esque gangster snarl. If you use a mouse-driven Windows interface on a regular basis, then it's all pretty straightforward, though a few minor peculiarities of the era remain. If you're more used to laptop trackpads, or, heaven forbid, touch-only interfaces, then you're in for a very unaccommodating experience.

I'm emulating a Macintosh rather than playing the Steam version to ensure a more platform-authentic experience, though I'm using Mini vMac rather than MAME, simply because MAME goes one step further for authenticity and also emulates the disk-loading times, which are horrendous on early Mac hardware.

 


We're alone in a tavern's washroom stall. No memory. Signs of being kidnapped and drugged. And the prose and aesthetic suggest Dashiell Hammet much more than Robert Ludlum.

I take the trenchcoat off the bathroom stall, revealing a .38 snubnose revolver hanging underneath it by a leather holster. Six rounds are chambered, three have been fired.

Inside the trenchcoat, I find:

  • $1.75 in quarters
  • A gold-plated lighter monogrammed "J.S."
  • A pack of Lucky Strikes
  • A handkerchief, also monogrammed "J.S."
  • Sunglasses
  • J.S.'s wallet, containing:
    • An office key
    • A key-card embossed "SIEGEL, APT. 1A"
    • $20
 

I exit the stall and explore a bit, Trizborting as I go, but as I do, the screen periodically darkens and the game warns me of my rapidly deteriorating state of mind.

The main barroom opens up three ways; upstairs to an office, downstairs to the wine cellar, and out to the street. I search upstairs first.

A poster upstairs gives us some clue about our identity.

Why... does Joe need all that?
 

The office key opens the inner office to a nasty sight.


A dead body, with three holes in it. I would bet that's where my missing bullets are. The encounter triggers a deja vu moment, but he can't be placed just yet.

There's also a key to a Mercedes-Benz on his person, a wall combination safe, and a desk where I find the building key, a pencil, and a blank sheet of paper. I can't seem to find a way to make the pencil and paper interact, but the window opens to a fire escape, from which the third floor (and street) is accessible.


Someone was drugged and interrogated on the third floor, and I think I know who. There's a syringe in the trash, and in addition to the empty vial of sodium pentothal on the windowsill, there's also an empty vial of diethanol trimene, and a full vial of medrezine, which are not real drugs.

A button calls the elevator, which serves four floors. One is a casino room, with a secret passage in the back, making a circle back to the wine cellar, and a hatch into the sewers - an alligator-infested maze.

I thought these guys were only in New York!

I go for the gun, but I'm too slow; I'm gator bait before I can rifle through my trenchcoat. Next time, I'd better have it open in advance.


 My Trizbort map (so far):

 

Monday, August 18, 2025

Superauthenticity: Atari 2600 aspect ratios

Combat, in a superauthentic 2:1 PAR

As one of the first commercial console systems ever, the Atari 2600 didn't handle resolution or aspect ratio in a standard way. MAME, when emulating an NTSC model, assumes a framebuffer of 176x223, but this is misleading; the vertical resolution was whatever the programmer wanted it to be, and can even change frame-to-frame, which plays hell with upscaling hardware (but works fine on analog televisions... or emulators). Atari themselves recommended using 192, but even they didn't always follow this. As for the horizontal resolution, 160px was the effective maximum, and only the very limited sprite capabilities could even use that degree of resolution, but some developers would make it less than that by extending the HBLANK period, effectively buying their code some extra clock cycles in exchange for resolution.

Consequently, the system's authentic display aspect ratio isn't really straightforward. You can certainly assume 4:3 is correct and expect your framebuffer (itself an anachronism) to just scale up to a 4:3 resolution. That's the default behavior of MAME and Stella, and this typically looks okay, but it isn't truly authentic; a real system on a real NTSC television wouldn't use the entire display most of the time. Nor is this necessarily my preference! I had been overriding this on a case-by-case basis almost from the start.

To seek superauthenticity, we should be looking at PAR rather than DAR. According to MAME's source code, the NTSC Atari 2600 has a sprite-pixel aspect ratio of 12:7, or about 1.714:1. Background pixels are four times as wide. I'm not going to bother with PAL calculations.

Combat

Scaling:
PAR:
DAR:

 

12:7 PAR is indeed very close to 4:3 DAR, and could well be the reason why the MAME developers settled on a 176x223 resolution.

However, for this particular game, there's a good reason not to use it. The game has rotating tank (and plane) sprites, and only double-wide pixels let them retain their correct dimensions in all orientations. Atari's artwork simply assumed the pixels would be doubled. Not because they actually thought this, but because this made plotting out the rotated sprites much less work.

Though I will say, the scores look better with square pixels. 

Verdict: Double pixels

 

Adventure

Scaling:
PAR:
DAR:

12:7 looks best to me.

Verdict: 12:7 PAR 

 

Space Invaders

Scaling:
PAR:
DAR:

Funnily enough, I think the square pixels look best! Better approximation of the arcade's vertical orientation, and the invaders (and laser base) get very chonky as you go wider.

Verdict: Square pixels

 

Yars' Revenge

Scaling:
PAR:
DAR:

This is another game with rotating sprites, and only double-width pixels preserve their dimensions, but in this case I think the spritework looks better with 12:7 pixels.

Verdict: 12:7 PAR

 

E.T.

Scaling:
PAR:
DAR:

E.T.'s a short, chubby little guy. But the humans look best at authentic PAR.

Verdict: 12:7 PAR

 

Ms. Pac-Man

Scaling:
PAR:
DAR:

You might assume that Ms. Pac-Man's vertical sprite is just rotated, but she isn't. Atari did the responsible thing here and re-drew it to consider non-Pythagorean scale pixels. It's still a bit too wide, but 4:3 comes the closest to a perfect rotation.

Verdict: 4:3

 

Let's look at some Imagic games next!

 

Demon Attack

Scaling:
PAR:
DAR:

This is interesting. The Imagic logo? Perfect match for the official printed logo at square pixels. And the rest of the game looks fine with square pixels too.

Verdict: Square pixels


Atlantis

Scaling:
PAR:
DAR:

Subjectively, this one also looks best to me with square pixels, especially those ampoule-like domes.

Verdict: Square pixels
 
 

We'll finish this series with some Activision.

 

Pitfall!

Scaling:
PAR:
DAR:

Square is very obviously too thin. I defer to authenticity here.

Note the thicker than usual black bar on the left side of the screen - Activision games tended to give up some of the active picture to prevent the artifacts that you see in other games.

Verdict: 12:7 PAR


River Raid

Scaling:
PAR:
DAR:

Subjectively, square pixels look best to me. The sprites just seem too fat otherwise.

Verdict: Square pixels.


H.E.R.O.

Scaling:
PAR:
DAR:

 

This one seems a bit off at any aspect ratio, but square honestly looks the most okay, even if R. Hero looks a little bit skinny.

Verdict: Square pixels.


Pitfall II: Lost Caverns

Scaling:
PAR:
DAR:

 

Authentic 12:7 looks the best. Easily.

Verdict: 12:7 PAR.


I'm not really sure why I did this series; I'm done with the Atari 2600 whales and I don't know if I'll ever play another one, and I doubt many people care about optimizing how good their Atari games look. Comprehensiveness, I guess. But it seems to me that Atari developers were very inconsistent about designing for the system's pixel aspect ratio. Square pixels are objectively wrong; you'd never get a vertical 160x192 display on original hardware, and yet subjectively, most of the games not by David Crane or by Atari themselves look better this way.

We'll be returning to the simple, square-pixel world of Macintosh games soon enough, if only for a little while. 

Thursday, August 14, 2025

The Crimson Crown: Won!


Welcome to the bottom half and finale of this game. We gathered the magic artifacts the sage foretold of; Erik's royal sword, an onyx signet ring, and a magic scepter, as well as a "sphere of annihilation" and a few other doo-dads. We helped the wizard Zin drive away some haunting spirits and recovered an ancient tablet, we befriended an owl, and learned some magic words. But none of that helps right now; the vampire has us, and our stuff. Sabrina and I are imprisoned, and Erik is about to be dog food.

Lack of inventory and places to go means there aren't many things I can try doing. I'm in no condition to summon the owl with a whistle, but Sabrina is, once I splash some water on her face, and it brings us a beehive. This plugs the drain, letting water fill the pit, and we float to the surface.


I wake up Erik and we explore.

Oh, come on. A literal maze of twisty passages? In 1985?

My stuff is scattered throughout the dungeon, and I gradually recover bits of it as I explore and solve whatever problems I can as I encounter them.

A magic seashell turns into a magic shield
The sphere of annihilation does its job
 
A cave troll's got a lantern and our bag, and now our scepter too.

A rare encounter with natural life, but I'm not sure if there's a purpose.

 
Gotcha!

 

I can't seem to get the sack or lantern, but I am able to retrieve my scepter, which impresses a dragon roosting in the eastern side of the maze.


His name is "Fury" and promises to answer if we call.


The next part has me stuck, and I need a walkthrough. There's a darkened room nearby, and I thought for sure that the troll's lamp would get me through, but you can't get ye lamp (and I'm certainly not going to tell thou why). Nor does the dragon answer here.

Instead, you wear the onyx ring.


The sage had hinted that I'd need a pointy weapon dipped in blessed water to defeat the black fiend, and I indeed had encountered a basin of it in the maze, where I had immersed the centaur's arrow. But finding the right verbiage here is the real puzzle; SHOOT MAN and SHOOT ARROW prompt me that I am forgetting something. Also, he kills you after three incorrect actions.

The correct actions; LOAD ARROW and SHOOT ARROW. He dies, and behind him, a massive set of iron doors yield only to Fury.


Enter, and observe an epic monster duel.


I'm helpless, but Erik isn't. Unfortunately, Erik is useless, and refuses to fight the vampire, claiming we just need to escape. But he also refuses to leave without us. The game hints that I must find a way to break the vampire's charm, but also refuses to let me wear the crown, since only the heir to the throne can do that.

The solution? I had to look this one up. GET ERIK.

Is this supposed to be a Samwise Gamgee situation? I don't buy it.
 

We simply leave, and return to the seaside cove, where our ride home meets us.

 

GAB rating: Average.

It's... fine. A casual, mostly solvable adventure, with adequate graphics, adequate writing, and mostly free of the genre's traditional annoyances. Mostly. But it doesn't feel as fresh, exciting, or atmospheric as the first game, whose only noteworthy fault was being very short. I'd say the first disk side in The Crimson Crown is about as long as the original game, but the second side just feels like an epilogue. The werewolf and time limit of the first game might have been annoying, but they respectively contributed a sense of danger and gravity that just isn't here in the sequel. And while it goes out of its way to ensure the game is solvable, with ample clues and not very many ways to die or softlock yourself, there wasn't a single satisfying puzzle in the whole adventure; all of them are either obvious immediately, obviously signposted, or solvable with brute force, with the exception of the endgame which I just found dumb.

My Trizbort map:


I went back and played the pre-release version for comparison. It is incomplete, and ends at the disk flip.

An intro scene unique to this version
 
It's familiar, but cruder.

This sequence is not illustrated yet.

The Griffin's riddles are in the game, not the packaging.

The zombie's fate is grislier.

A very different depiction of Karel Thurg

Whoopsie.

Some different banter. The grating is pre-opened for you!

Zin, sans silhouette

The end!

I kind of wonder what the Comprehend engine was even doing.

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