This week, Im tackling an old TRS-80 text adventure called
Escape From Atlantis, one of those archive games with no clear provenance or official publisher. Its been a bit elusive, mainly because the first source I found years ago was confusing it with Greg Hassetts
Atlantis. I finally tracked down a .CAS tape image online -- trying to load it with CLOAD in Disk Basic reminded me why these games took so much longer to play back in the day, as the tape load itself takes a few minutes! But at last, we have a title screen:
This version is credited in online sources to Thomas Ally alone, back in 1985 when he was in middle school, but this version also mentions a Shaun Shelton. It also crashes shortly after starting, but fortunately some technical notes are included with the cassette image -- it wont run with Radio Shack Disk BASIC, only standard Model I Level II BASIC, and the TRS-80 has to be started with MEMORY SIZE? at 32511 to avoid issues with the scrolling routine.
In a break with my usual pattern, Im seriously
not going to recommend anybody actually play this one, at least not the version I found, as it proved to be broken in some key areas that make the game unfinishable as-is. There seems to have been a different, more playable version available at some point, as the CASA walkthrough by Dorothy Millard is different in a number of key areas, but I was able to get through this one, albeit with copious amounts of code analysis and genuine cheating to work around broken pathways. As such, my experience will include a great deal of frustrating code-level head-scratching, as well as the usual...
***** SPOILERS AHEAD! ***** As we start the game up, the title screen gradually gets covered by asterisks, probably to give us something to look at during variable initialization time, and then were asked to select a difficulty level, from (1) HARD to (6) EASY. I started with (1) HARD, but had to switch to (6) later on as it seems the main impact of the difficulty switch is the number of moves we are allowed before our lamp runs out. (Why we need a lamp even when were outdoors remains a mystery.)
We begin in
THE SUBMARINE DOCKING BAY (about the only hint that this game is meant to be set in Atlantis, as the rest of the map resembles Anytown USA) where we see an
IMMOVABLE DOOR and a
LAMP with no
POSSIBLE EXITS shown. We have nothing in inventory (both
INV and
I work), but well start out with the obvious -- we can
GET LAMP, since its right here, and try (and fail) to
OPEN DOOR.
MOVE DOOR produces a specific response, clearly written by a 1980s teenager --
"DUH!! CANT YOU READ, ITS IMMOVABLE." PULL DOOR produces no response at all, though
PUSH DOOR informs us that
YOU CANT PUSH THAT. But
EXAMINE DOOR reveals that
ON THE DOOR IS SOME TYPE OF BUTTON, and
PUSH BUTTON opens the door and sends us tumbling into a different room.
ITS TOO DARK TO SEE ANYTHING, of course, so well try to
LIGHT LAMP... or
ON LAMP... hmmmm, no response from the parser.
SWITCH LAMP?
YOU CANT SWIM HERE. Lighting the lamp before we push the button doesnt seem to work either. We can apparently safely navigate with no light source, but were not going to be able to finish the game this way. Peeking at the available walkthrough is no help, as lighting the lamp isnt mentioned at all. Looking at the BASIC code suggests that L1=0 indicates the lamp is unlit, but whats the verb? The implementation is at line 780... ah, we have to
RUB LAMP!
Okay, now we can see that were in a malt shop with a
GOLD SUNDAE SPOON * (a treasure, apparently) and a
DELICIOUS LOOKING MALT, with exits to the north, south, and west.
GET SPOON doesnt yield any immediate impact on
SCORE, so we will probably have to store these somewhere. Well try to take the malt, but we cant -- and
DRINK MALT produces no response at all from the parser. If we
EXAMINE MALT, we see that
THE MALT IS BROWN, AND SMELLS LIKE BURNT ALMONDS. Isnt that... vague memory bank access delay... cyanide? Good thing we cant drink it, then!
West of the malt shop is an auditorium, with nothing obvious going on beyond available exits in the four cardinal directions. A warehouse north of the auditorium contains a crate, but trying to
READ CRATE yields only
I WAS NEVER TAUGHT HOW TO READ THAT, and
OPEN CRATE produces
YOU CANT [sic]
DO THAT.
Escape From Atlantis geography is even more random than the adventure game norm, as directly west of the warehouse is a Japanese Geisha House with
A VERY BEUTIFUL [sic]
WOMAN. We cant
KISS her... and well refrain from going any farther at the moment. Her place of business is just east of the high school -- as we explore the neighborhood, this location will seem even more inappropriate, trust me -- where we find a
WOOD & GLASS TROPHY CASE. We cant
EXAMINE it, or
OPEN it, or even
BREAK it, at least at this point.
Directly across from the Geisha House by way of the high school is a church, where we can steal a silver cross, as long as we fool the gods with misdirection as we
GET SILVER instead of brazenly trying to
GET CROSS. We can try to
PRAY but theres no response.
On the street south of the church we spy a folded piece of paper -- but we cant examine or read it? Ah, we have to
UNFOLD PAPER and then
READ PAPER to learn that
ITS [sic]
THE COMBINATION TO A SAFE. (Im beginning to suspect that our young BASIC programmers hadnt figured out how to use single quotes within strings, but
CANT is spelled properly in other cases so this just seems to be a grammatical oversight.)
Theres a graveyard west of the street, probably associated with the church, and its clear that
YOU HAVE NOTHING TO DIG WITH if we try, so well have to return here later with the proper tools. South of the graveyard is another section of street, with a manhole and a large dirt pile.
Its tempting to
GO MANHOLE, so we do, finding ourselves in a
MAZE OF TWISTING PASSAGES. We find a ladder and a
WATCH * treasure here, and we have enough items in inventory to make mapping possible. As it turns out, there are quite a few landmarks available anyway, and the mazes geography is straightforward and fairly consistent -- which is good, because we cant actually
DROP anything! A pool of water lies north of the ladder -- we cant
EXAMINE POOL or
EXAMINE WATER, but if we try to
GO POOL we cant --
"I DONT LIKE THIS, THERE SEEMS TO BE SOMETHING MOVING ON THE BOTTOM." The maze consists of just a few rooms, it seems, and semi-wraps around, so if we get lost, heading in any direction for a few moves will bring us back to the ladder.
Its worth exploring a bit, though, as east and south of the ladder is an
UNDERGROUND LABORATORY containing a large machine and a dusty sign;
I CAN ONLY MAKE OUT THE LETTERS E, T, AND M FROM THE DUSTY SIGN. The machine features a button, so why not
PUSH BUTTON? This reveals that its a time machine, and we become dizzy... and are sent back to the very beginning of the game, selecting the difficulty level! Very funny, Mr. Ally.
Restoring my save state (the game has no built-in save feature, so an emulator is really valuable) I avoid pushing the button, but my lamp goes out suddenly, without warning. Restoring again, I discover that we can
READ WATCH to see that it reports time in terms of the lamp going out, and it appears well have to be conservative with our lamp light.
I navigate in the dark for a bit, just for fun, and learn that if we enter the Geisha House in the dark,
ALL OF A SUDDEN A BEUTIFUL [sic semper]
WOMAN COMES OUT OF THE DARKNESS AND STABS YOU RIGHT IN THE HEART. YOUR [sic]
DEAD!!! So the lamp is going to be a pretty important element here.
Starting over, I opt for a lower level of difficulty in case the length of the lamp light is what that controls, and also decide to explore the map differently -- its fairly large for a TRS-80 BASIC adventure game. Theres a hotel south of the malt shop, with a sign -- ah, this is the
DROP * TREASURES * AND SAY SCORE location. But the
DROP verb still isnt working, which concerns me a bit. The drop verb implementation is at line 370 -- the way the system manages inventory is by keeping a string array, and it stores location information using an array that allows ten slots for each room. But it doesnt look like the
DROP command is even reaching this code, as I add some debug statements to try to figure this out. Line 170 compares the users input to a data array of 33 verbs -- and
DROP should be verb 6. But this is really weird -- the data statement at line 1180 only contains a handful of verbs???
Just
NOR, SOU, EAS, WES, GET? Ah, no, the line of code actually contains some embedded backspacing to prevent cheating of exactly the type Im trying to do! But it appears that its not recognizing the
DROP verb, no matter what I try to do here. So Im going to expose the verb list by replacing this line and see if that helps:
1180 DATA NOR,SOU,EAS,WES,GET,DRO,UNF,CUT,BRE,REA,JUM,WIT,CLI,EXA,GO ,FUC,SWI,OPE,SCO,RUB,SHA,WAT,POU,MOV,DIG,KIC,SAY,PUS,LOO,INV,ENT,HEL,EAT
And... nope, now its not recognizing
any of the verbs. Maybe its an early Model I upper/lowercase issue, and we cant tell onscreen if it is typed in upper or lowercase? Nope, heres the actual bug -- the commands are abbreviated to three characters in line 1180, but the command
DRO actually turns up with 4 characters, not three, when read from the DATA statement! Deleting the extra byte value x01 character in line 1180 seems to fix the problem. (I also discover that, having peeked at the verb list now,
DRINK MALT is not fatal but the less traditional
EAT MALT certainly is!)
Okay, back to the adventure! Dropping the spoon scores us 10 points out of 80, so there must be 8 treasures to find.
West of the treasure store location is
THE DOCTORS [sic]
OFFICE, empty at the moment. West again leads us to a greenhouse with a
DYING PLANT, which is probably in need of water, though theres none here, which seems rather odd considering this is a greenhouse.
This is definitely an odd little town -- next to the auditorium is a bank with a bank vault, perhaps wisely built right next to the police station further west, where we can steal a gun from the unstaffed office. West of the police station is a motorcycle shop, with a motorcycle available.
With the vault combination from the folded paper, we can
OPEN the bank
VAULT -- talk about poor security! -- and
LOOK VAULT to liberate a bag of gold coins; we must
GET BAG rather than
GET COINS. Well round up the silver cross and watch again for treasures sake -- the watch indicates we have 530 moves left until the lamp runs out, confirming my hunch that this is what the difficulty setting controls. Weve got 40 of the possible 80 points now.
Where havent we been yet? North of the malt shop is a grocery store with a
VERY HEAVY SHOPPING CART. Its so heavy we cant
PUSH it or
GET it, and we cant
GO CART or
EMPTY CART. So well move on for now, heading west to visit... ah, were back at the warehouse. So it seems weve mapped out the world, more or less, and we can start breaking down the puzzles.
Can we
SWIM in the pool of water down the manhole? Not until we enter it, apparently, and the game wont let us do so. Can we ride the motorcycle anywhere? No, but we can
GET MOTORCYCLE and drag it around, even up and down ladders.
Now that
DROP is working, lets make sure weve explored the manhole maze thoroughly. We can
RUB SIGN in the underground laboratory to confirm that the newly less-dusty version reads
"EXPERIMENTAL TIME MACHINE." We found that out the hard way earlier.
Im feeling like a dead end is approaching, and that whole command bug situation is making me nervous, so I take a peek at the walkthrough at CASA to see if Im on the right track -- and discover that it appears to be for a significantly different build of this game! At the very least, m attempts to
JUMP DIRTPILE with the motorcycle are coming to naught. Line 470 of the code suggests that this should work, with several variations, but it doesnt seem to be recognized, though the
JUMP verb is available. So well cheat by breaking out, forcing location variable LC = 13, and continuing. (Looking at the code some more, it looks like the intended use is to
JUMP DIRT followed by
WITH MOTORCYCLE, as two separate commands in sequence. But this doesnt actually work -- a flag thats meant to be set by the first command doesnt stay set, so the
WITH portion never does anything useful.)
On the other side of the dirt pile is a gas station, where we can acquire a gas can. East of the gas station is a library, where we can
READ an old scientific
MANUAL to learn about the theories behind time travel. Interesting. We can
SHAKE CAN (I would not have guessed this without a hint in the .CAS files accompanying README) to reveal a
SPANISH DOUBLOON *. So thats five treasures.
Can we do something new with the time machine now? It doesnt force us to restart the game, at least, now that weve read the manual. We cant exit the area after the button is pressed, as weve moved from the lab to a
WET & SLIMY UNDERWATER CAVE. There doesnt seem to be anything to do here, though we can
PUSH BUTTON to return to the lab, in our own time.
Time for a little more cheating, I fear -- it looks like the only object we havent seen yet is a crowbar, meant to be found in room 23. This is the bottom of the pool, which the code wont let us reach -- any time we try to enter the pool, it just prevents us from doing so, and there appears to be no logic or condition that will allow it. So well break out, set LC = 23, continue, grab the crowbar, and then return to LC = 21. Im beginning to suspect this version of the code was being "improved upon" by Shaun Shelton or some other unnamed accomplice from Tom Allys original, but never quite got finished!
With the ill-gotten crowbar, we can
OPEN CRATE in the warehouse to reveal a canteen. Can we
GET WATER at the pool of water? Nope, nor can we
FILL CANTEEN. Weve visited all the possible locations, it seems. Can we
BREAK CASE now that we have the crowbar?
BREAK WOOD? Nope, but
BREAK GLASS is fatal as the trophy case shatters and cuts us to ribbons.
What do we need for digging? A
SHOVEL, apparently. I wonder where that comes from? Im in do-whatever-it-takes-to-finish-this-game mode now, so Im happy to comb through the code and find out that watering the plant should reveal the shovel at line 820. But how do we fill the canteen? Ohhhh, we dont have to -- its already full, or at least the code lets us simply
WATER PLANT and
FOR YOUR GOODNESS A SHOVEL SUDDENLY APPEARS. This is the downside of getting stuck early and peeking at things -- the walkthrough for the more playable version requires that we
FILL CANTEEN, and the code here clearly doesnt have a
FILL verb, so I made a bad assumption that this puzzle even existed.
Now we can dig in the underwater cave in the past to find some
DIAMONDS *, and in the graveyard in the present to find a buried casket. We can
OPEN CASKET -- and are strangled by the occupant! Can we
WEAR CROSS? We cant, but carrying it would traditionally work against vampires, and it seems to keep this corpse quiescent long enough for us to examine it and take a valuable
NECKLACE *. We cant
CLOSE CASKET, so well just head out of here now.
Since weve got the hood open on the games actual code, lets follow up on a few apparent red herrings -- it appears that we cant do anything with the grocery cart, we cant use the gun anywhere, and while we can employ a verb starting with CHR$(102) at the Geisha House, we just get stabbed in the back during the festivities, though the verb does produce a humorous response if employed elsewhere.
Okay, we have seven of the eight treasures now. What could the last one be? Theres still that trophy case -- and a
CUT verb -- and we have some
DIAMONDS * now. And yes! We can
CUT GLASS to discover a
JEWELED TROPHY *. This school district must have quite the intramural athletics budget! And now we have eight treasures stored, and victory -- of a somewhat disreputable sort -- is ours!
We are, if not
A FIRST CLASS ADVENTURER, a first class cheater at least. But I make no apologies, as this version of the game seems to be broken in several key areas -- as far as I can tell from reading and tweaking the code, we simply cant reach the bottom of the pool, or jump the dirt pile with the motorcycle, or drop treasures to score as required. So given that the version of
Escape From Atlantis I tracked down was otherwise unfinishable without a little BASIC skulduggery. Ill just call the operating environment part of the puzzle, and venture onward.
