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Secret of the Solstice is a free Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game developed and published by DNC Entertainment in Korea and hosted by Outspark in the international English market. It is the second MMO published by Outspark, and includes many features common in the MMORPG genre such as an online persistant world, quests, and item crafting.

Secret of the Solstice features a cute, anime-inspired visual style. Player characters, monsters, and non-player characters (NPCs) are represented as 2D sprites while environments and background elements are rendered in 3D.

System requirements Intel Pentium 4 (1.0GHz) or equivalent, 256 MB RAM, nVidia GeForce MX or equivalent, 2 GB hard disk space, Internet connection (at least 128 kbit/s), and DirectX 9.0c or better

Description

Features

Hardware Requirements

Larry Laffer Journal Entry 3: “I haven’t got laid since I last wrote! However, I have laid the groundwork for what I figure will be an awesome score! Cherri Tart is a seriously hot performer, and she totally dug me. She invited me backstage and all I have to do to get some of that fine booty is hand over a piece of my land! OK, that does seem a little bit excessive, but Im sure it will be totally worth it! Plus Im feeling more than a little bit horny after my activities with Tawni were crustaceanally interrupted. Speaking of Tawni, I managed to scam the last twenty dollar bill off her, which I used to bribe my way into Cherris show. Im not going to say that my actions are all entirely honourable, but I’ll do what it takes to find myself a woman!”


So Im coming to the end of my initial exploration of Nontoonyt Island. By the end of my last post, the only place I knew I hadnt visited yet was the cave near Chip ‘n’ Dales. That would obviously be my next location, but I also felt like there was quite a bit of unfinished business. I’d not yet been able to do anything at Fat City, the Casino, Chip ‘n’ Dales, the Comedy Hut or the park with the TV. As for outstanding tasks, I was feeling pretty certain that sharpening the knife was going to be key to getting the grass, and that in turn would allow me to disguise myself as a salesman to trick Tawni. I couldnt think of why I might do that though (surely not to have sex with her again), but I didnt really have anything else to go off. First thing first though, I set off to see where this cave entrance led.


The answer turned out to be nowhere! While at first it looked like I’d gained access to a lovely looking beach, any attempts to walk over to it resulted in me falling off a ledge to my death (depth perception wasnt one of the highlights of the SCI0 engine). I tried looking around in the cave and eventually hit on the fact there were wild orchids growing on the walls. When I tried to pick them I was told to “move closer to the flowers near the cave opening (presumably it saved time to create the flower picking animation in one spot only), so that’s what I did. Larry then picked several of the flowers and put them away with the ginsu knife, the soap-on-a-rope, and the granadilla wood shaped like a giant black penis. (25 points) With the map fully explored, I set out to find something to sharpen the knife on.


While I expected it to take a long time to find the correct place to do this, it actually took about a minute. My first thought was that the fountain might be a good place to sharpen it, but “the fountain’s rough surface would only dull your knife.” At least it proved to me that I was on the right track!  I then tried sharpening it on the stairs to the casino, not really expecting it work, but it did! (50 points) I bee-lined back to the grassy patch near Chip ‘n’ Dales and successfully used the knife to collect some of the native grass. (20 points) Things were starting to move along at a rapid rate, and I hoped my instincts would continue to work for me. I typed “make skirt”, and was thrilled when Larry weaved “the wild grass into what you hope will pass for a primitive, island native outfit.” (30 points) I’d literally gone from 128 to 253 points in under five minutes and was on a roll! I knew exactly what I’d need to do next as well, so set out for the cabana.


I entered the first cubicle and typed “wear skirt”, which did indeed cause Larry to strip out of his leisure suit and put on the makeshift native skirt. (10 points) I then realised that I might also be able to carve the granadilla wood with the sharpened knife too, and this train of thought also turned out to be correct. (50 points) I wasnt certain if I would need anything else to complete the native salesman disguise, but I decided to go back to the beach where Tawni was to see what would happen. As soon as I arrived, Larry started calling out “souvenirs” and Tawni was completely fooled. “Genuine native-islander designer-labelled erotic carvings for only twenty dollars!” As you can tell by Tawni’s response below, she was fairly impressed by the small statue with the huge phallus, and she handed over her last twenty bucks. (25 points)


I had a think about what I might do next, and figured the twenty dollars would likely play a role. Where better to spend some cash than the casino! I went to the cabana and changed back into my suit, with Larry throwing the skirt away in the process. I then made my way to the casino and I actually spent a bit more time trying to use the lift at this point. When I was once again unsuccessful, I made my way up to the showroom to see whether I would now be able to get into the show with my free pass. I still wasnt able to, but tried giving the maître d’ the twenty dollars. “Well, well, look at this! I seem to have found a nice, front row seat available here. Allow me to show you to your seat!” (50 points) My roll continued and I’d now gained 270 points in a little over fifteen minutes! Part of me wondered whether that twenty dollars might have had an alternate use elsewhere, but the Leisure Suit Larry series isnt really known for alternate puzzle solution. Bonus points for sure, but not alternate solutions.


The view I had of the show certainly didnt suggest that I had a front row seat, but I could see well enough. After a few dancing girls did their stuff on stage, they made way for the real attraction. “And now, lady and gentlemen, the moment youve all been waiting for: the star of our show, Miss Cherri Tart!” The lights went out and then a spotlight fell upon a scantily dressed woman with feathers attached, gyrating and spinning on a pedestal. The audience showed their appreciation for Cherri by throwing dollar bills on-stage  After mere seconds, the pedestal was lowered into the stage and the lights came back on. “That concludes tonight’s two-hour spectacle, “Nontoonyt For You!” You must clear the auditorium now, as our second show begins shortly.” I was then informed that I’d come in late, so had only witnessed the last minute of what was a two hour show all up.


I knew that Cherri would play a further role in the game, since she is mentioned a few times in the tourist manual, but I couldnt think of how I might benefit from having witnessed the show. While I was standing outside the showroom, the answer became very obvious. A woman came out of the locked door and made a phone call. I walked over to her and introduced myself. “Hello yourself, Larry, Im Cherri Tart.” (5 points) I was then given the close up view of the “bathrobed beauty”, and began the usual “talk” in an attempt to find out what she might respond to. Larry asked her what she wanted to do with her life, to which she responded “I’d love to quit show business, get a little farm some place far out in the country where I could be alone, and raise organically-grown vegetables, fruits and herbs.” Larry then joked that he was in the opposite situation: “I have hundreds of acres of land coming into mu possession but I’d love to be in show business.”

This of course made the solution obvious. I typed “give land to Cherri” and got the result I expected. “Why, Larry, I’d do ANYTHING for a little piece of land.” (25 points) Unfortunately, Cherri had to run to another show, so she excused herself, telling me to come back and knock on the door when I have the deed to the land. OK, so I needed to get the deed to the land. How exactly was I going to do that? I looked over my map, wondering who might be able to assist with such a thing. My first thought was that there might be something in the mailbox at Larry’s old house, so that’s where I went. There wasnt anything there, so I had a good long think about it. I picked up the Tourist Manual and took a look through for anything that might give me a hint. There was an article on page 16 for “Attorneys at Law” named Dewey, Cheatem and Howe! The address listed on the ad was 555 Hibiscus, but of course that didnt mean anything to me. Had I missed a location entirely???


The map I’d produced looked pretty complete, and there were really only a few locations where I might have missed something. I began by visiting the strange park with the hanging lights and TV. I couldnt find any paths out of there that I’d missed, but there was a newspaper sitting on the side table that wasnt there previously. I picked it up and read it: “Coming Soon! Here! At our own Lounge and Piano Bar! Passionate Patti at the Keyboard. Watch for her – you won’t regret it!” Maybe this meant that Patti could now be seen at the bar in the casino? That wasnt my goal right now, but I was keen to find out whether I was right. I made my way to the bar in the casino, and was disappointed to find it was still completely empty. I did figure something out while I was standing in the foyer though. The manual described making leis (native flower arrangement), and since I had some flowers in my inventory, I tried typing “make lei”. It worked, and Larry weaved the wild orchards into a lei. (50 points)


I continued on my search for a hidden location. I walked from screen to screen, looking for any hidden pathways that I might have missed. When I reached the beach screen where Tawni had previously been, she surprisingly wasnt there any more  Her towel was still lying on the beach though, so I picked it up. (2 points) Interestingly, I noticed that as soon as I picked up the towel, a red lizard began scampering back and forth on the rocks in the foreground. I wasnt able to pick it up or do anything with it that I could figure out, but it can’t have just appeared for no reason. I started just trying things, and eventually came across the solution by blind luck. When I typed “use towel on lizard”, Larry said “OK”, then lay the towel down on the sand, took all his clothes off, and lay down to sunbake. This was all done in such a way that no private parts were shown, and once he was completely horizontal, the lizard stood up on the rock in a way to appear...well...just take a look at the image below! (30 points) While this gave me one of the biggest belly laughs in the game so far, I couldnt help feeling like I’d merely fluked it.


I can only assume that the tan will be necessary for something (or someone) later on, but Im not sure what. So I wasn’t having much luck finding the lawyer I needed, but my exploration was bearing fruit. I made my way back to the two jungle areas, as they seemed to be the most likely places for a hidden pathway. It’s here that I found what I was after! In the top right corner of one of the jungle screens, I was able to twist my way upwards and to the right until I came out on a new screen. I have to say that the pathway is pretty much indiscernible unless you know it’s there, which is only partly due to the low quality graphics in the jungle. I thought I’d been pretty thorough while map-making and I know Im not the only person to struggle to find it. Anyway, the company logo outside the building on the new screen was DCH. Dewey, Cheatem and Howe! I’d found the lawyer I needed and could now get the deed to the land and most likely score with Cherri! Despite having so much trouble finding DCH, this session was an incredibly productive one. I guess it was really just the pay-off session after completing (well almost) the early introduction and exploratory part of the game, but I enjoyed it a lot!

Session Time: 1 hours 00 minutes

This week, were playing a bit of a historical oddity -- Roger M. Wilcoxs Misadventure, originally written in 1980 for the TRS-80 computers and updated in 2012 to run under Windows (and not to be confused with Bob Krotts similarly-named series of adult TRS-80 adventure games.).  I ran across the authors body of work during a random internet search for TRS-80 adventure games I hadnt sampled yet, and as I havent been able to find the original version anywhere, Im happy to tackle this modern edition -- it still feels like a classic early text adventure, running in a Window with proportional fonts.  Mr. Wilcox has published free Windows conversions of quite a few games in a series of more than 20 adventure games he wrote for the TRS-80 back in the early 1980s -- some of the original source code has unfortunately been lost to the ages, but his surviving games have been converted and at this writing can be freely downloaded at http://www.rogermwilcox.com/apps/.

Misadventure was Wilcoxs first effort, and its not a very long or difficult adventure -- I was able to play through it in about 90 minutes including note-taking for this post.  The design is simple to accommodate a limited parser -- there are no hidden details to be EXAMINEd, and few verbs aside from the essentials; there arent even many red herrings or nested relationships, so found objects and puzzle solutions fit together in fairly obvious ways.  The story has something to do with time travel, though its not really a mechanic in the game -- the player is sent back in time as the game begins, and we just have to survive getting from point A to point B so we can return to our own time:


Normally I suggest that readers play these games independently before reading my further comments, especially when they are freely available as is the case here.  Misadventure may be an exception for experienced adventurers, due to its simplicity, but players new to these types of games may find it a good introductory experience, especially because it is easy to get up and running on a Windows PC.   Theres not a lot to discuss here, but in the interest of documenting adventures large and small, there will of necessity be thorough...

***** SPOILERS AHEAD *****

The story begins in a dusty 3-way intersection, after we are informed that the player is the first live citizen test subject for a time machine.  We cant travel back from underground, and were only given a flashlight to work with; apparently some twenty-five previous test subjects met with messy ends, so the setup is not particularly reassuring.

The parsers vocabulary is limited -- some generally-expected verbs like EXAMINE and OPEN are not supported.  And the map isnt quite as big as it seems when were first exploring it -- lots of apparently new exits loop back to rooms weve already visited.  The Windows stand-alone program is a little more old-school and cumbersome than Id like -- it intentionally hangs when we die, so we have to exit out and restart to play again; the system provides Load and Save features, but we cant Load a game if were dead, so frequent re-launches are necessary.

The map features a number of distinct rooms with potentially useful items in them -- generally one item per location -- and most of these objects will be needed to finish the game. The armory to the east of the starting point has a suit of shiny armor.  The treasury has a treasure chest we cant open, and the Magic Central room has a can of 3-in-One Oil and walls with letters X, Q and Y written on them.

The Room of Webs contains a snake-bite kit, guarded by a huge spider, and the complexs dungeon (kind of belying the sci-fi setup) provides a worn-down sword.  The Small Room pays homage to Zork Colossal Cave (thanks for the correction, Roger!), as There is a threatening little dwarf in the room with you! along with some insect repellent spray.  We have to be careful here, as the dwarf can kill the player instantly if one of his blows randomly connects.  (I think this is actually pseudo-random, as in my experience if I went there on the third move, I always died, so a more roundabout route is recommended.)

A huge snake bars passage north in the Hall of the Mountain Queen, so we will probably need to dispatch the serpent somehow.  The Room of Technology contains a phaser.  Theres also a Priests Temple north of the starting point, with no objects in it, and I never found anything interesting to do here; the usual standbys of KNEELing and PRAYing produce no response from whatever deity this Temple is honoring.

We can use the phaser to SHOOT DWARF, then use the insect spray to SPRAY SPIDER and take the snake-bite kit.  But the snake can still fatally bite us, so thats not useful as a post-hoc remedy.  I tried taking direct action against the snake, but didnt get anywhere with SWING SWORD -- Your sword bounces harmlessly off the opponents tough hide -- or FIRE PHASER -- There is nothing here worth shooting at. Believe me.  So I had to revisit this puzzle later.

The Magic Central rooms array of letters appears to suggest a puzzle -- SAY XYZZY does nothing (nor would I have expected it to), but SAY XQY returns, "Nothing happens.  Dont forget, the letters may not necessarily belong in the order they appeared."  SAY QYX is less enlightening, yielding only "I dont know what qyx is."  SAY XYQ seems more potentially promising -- nothing happens in the Magic Central room, but we dont get an error message either.

With the armor on, we can... still not walk past the snake. Hmmm.  We cant SHOW KIT to the snake or USE KIT proactively, but if we DROP KIT, then The snake turns white with fear at the sight of the kit, and flees for its life.  I guess its very sensitive to being disarmed, or else it knows something about how the kit works that the player is unable to discern.

Past the snake, we find ourselves in the Room of Concealment, with a panel on the east wall; we cant MOVE or OPEN it, or OIL it for that matter, but we can PUSH PANEL to enter a secret magical passage.  And if we SAY XYQ here, we find ourselves magically transported to the Large Room, with a giant already attacking. 

Fortunately with the armor on (it is worn as soon as we pick it up), The blow bounces harmlessly off your armor every time the giant tries to attack.  SWING SWORD is no good against the giants tough hide either, but SHOOT GIANT informs us that The giant cannot withstand phaser fire, so he dies.  We cant claim anything from the dead giant on the floor, but dispatching him allows us to travel south of the area.

We now find ourselves at the foot of a rusty iron door (hint hint).  OIL DOOR allows us to enter a room at the foot of a large wooden ladder.  We climb the ladder...

And...

The game is abruptly over, as we find ourselves in the middle of some large-scale historical battle, and are swiftly rescued by the TIME RAY in the nick of time before we are trampled to death, winning the game as the first successful time traveler!  This final event seems to come about through sheer luck and no particular feat accomplished by the player, but victory of a sort is ours!




The game scores us based on how many valuable items we came back with, and since there arent many items or any apparent inventory carrying limit to deal with, this isnt hard to pull off.  (Actually, we only have to bring back one such item to *REALLY* win the game -- if we bring back none at all, then the effort is considered a loss.)

Misadventure is very straightforward -- nothing is hidden, no details or complex puzzles need to be explored, and most of the objects available have fairly obvious applications.  It was a quick and simple play, but sometimes thats just what I want as my weekly deadline here approaches.  I expect more sophistication from Mr. Wilcoxs later efforts, but I found this one a pleasantly brief diversion.

(UPDATED 03/07/2013:  Corrected a couple of Euro-centric errors!)

This week were back in point-and-click animated adventure territory with Teen Agent, created circa 1994 by Polish developer Metropolis Software House.  It was originally distributed as shareware, with the first of three sections given away for free, and later sold commercially by an international hodgepodge of small publishers before the developer declared it freeware in recent times.  According to Wikipedia, it was the first CD-ROM game developed in Poland, although Im not sure why it had to be on CD, as there are no voice-overs and the graphic style is simple; the entire game only takes up about 12 megabytes (I use the word "only" circa 2013, of course.)

This title screen really doesnt do Teen Agent justice -- it looks like it was slapped on at the last minute for the sake of a cool new VGA fire effect:



The Lucasarts-influenced design features plenty of humor, presented with VGA backgrounds and characters rendered in simpler EGA style, perhaps because the Amiga was a key target platform at the time.  Were playing the PC DOS version here, which doesnt have any problem with the color palette but struggles a bit to render the games sample-based soundtrack -- the Amiga had hardware for such things, while this version has to emulate it for the Soundblaster and occasionally stutters a bit.   The excellent score by Radek Szamrej still comes through nicely -- it has a bouncy 1980s Commodore 64/Amiga demo-scene charm, and while the various music loops tend to be short, they dont wear out their welcome.  Some of the English text, translated from the Polish, is a bit odd, with more than the usual number of typos, but the game is completely playable and the humor still comes through well.  There are no dialogue trees, however, so character interaction is a bit limited.


As always, I encourage readers to sample Teen Agent before proceeding here -- its one of several animated adventure games available for free at GOG.com.  Its a substantial game, but not too difficult -- at least there arent any unfair dead ends or sudden deaths, though there are a few visible seams in the storytelling and some of the puzzle solutions are, shall we say, obscure at best.  Its still worth a play, or at least a sample, and the price is certainly right these days.  If you do intend to be a Teen Agent yourself, you should stop reading here and come back later, as the following discussion gives away everything I discovered while playing; in other words, there are...


***** SPOILERS AHEAD! *****

The prologue establishes that the (American?) government is trying to stop an apparently supernatural band of thieves, who are causing gold to vanish right out of the worlds vaults:




An efficient but addle-brained government agency called the RGB (even the acronym is a secret) is charged with solving extraordinary problems.  They need a hero, so they consult with a psychic to pick a random name out of the phone book -- as it turns out, our hero, a typical teenager named Mark Hopper.  The promise of possibly meeting girls in the line of duty is all Mark needs to go off to training camp.



Standing near the guard shack, Mark can engage the guard in conversation to learn that he cant get into the training camp without "documents" of some kind.  The guard makes no bones about the fact that he will have to shoot if we just try to sneak in, and we cant step back out of the area, so this puzzle has to be solved here.  A butterfly flitting around cant be clicked on, and the guards magazine is not accessible either.  We dont have a variety of options, either -- no range of icons or text parser, just pointing and clicking.  This isnt even a puzzle, as it turns out -- it just took me a while to find the inventory sub-screen.  If I had glanced at the manual, I would have known that we actually have to move the cursor to the upper edge of the display.  Once weve done that, we just have to select the pass and then use it on the guard to gain entrance.  Theres no verb interface here -- we can left-click to examine an item, and right-click to generically use it; at least items of interest are highlighted with text when we mouse over them, so we dont have to waste a lot of time trying to examine undefined items.

Now Mark is inside the RGB facility, where he finds a trash can, the Cantine door, and a couple of other mysterious doors.  Door 001 introduces Mark to a hardcore training officer who assigns him three trials a la The Secret of Monkey Island.  The first is an escape challenge from behind a locked door.  Theres a bare bed, from which a spring can be liberated; a hanging bare light bulb, which can be pulled down, freeing the bare end of the wire; and a switch on the wall.  We can talk to some crates outside, which is really just a clickable "outside" stand-in, and yell for help until someone finally brings food.  Now we can connect the live wire to the metal food bowl, using the switch to deliver a charge.  The captain arrives, Mark automatically zaps him, and now... hes welded to the bowl?? ?  We can get the door key from him -- hes not dead, actually, just dazed -- and escape the cell.

The second trial is an interrogation challenge -- we must obtain a secret password from our captive, the captain again.  The room contains some promising items, but blunt swords and model guns arent going to work on this tough guy.  We can leave the room and pick up some rope from the trash can outside, as well as do a little more exploring of the grounds.

A camouflage tent isnt of much use, but we can see a mysterious object outside the fence.  A bird hangs around near the mud pool that comprises part of an obstacle course.  A brick climbing wall provides for a Pink Floyd joke, but is not good for much else at this point.  The Cantines bartender indicates there are only three men on the base, and no women, "no cry" (the game is full of random pop culture jokes like this.)  Theres also a door at the back of the bar Mark cant currently open.

Some crumbs from one of the bar tables seem like they might have something to do with the bird, but we cant use them with the bird or throw them onto the pole or into the mud pool to attract its attention.  And Mark doesnt have the upper body strength to get all the away across the rope suspended over the mud pool.

We can stick the bedspring in the solid ground in front of the brick wall, and acquire a shovel on the other side of the wall (why we couldnt just walk around behind the wall is never explained.)  We can also take a branch from a plant near the wall.

The branch can be used to tickle the captain, who drops his swiss army knife.  With the knife we can cut the fence near the tent, and discover that the tantalizing mysterious object is... stuck in the ground.  Mark can dig it up with the shovel, to find... a kaleidoscope?  It was apparently confiscated from the guard at the entrance -- we can give it to him to get his Soldier News magazine... and steal his grenade while hes playing with the scope.  No wonder the RGB is in trouble!

We cant scare the captain with the grenade, or use it to blow open his desk or locker, but if we offer him the magazine hell give up the password, COFFEE -- these guys are apparently hard up for entertainment.  Saying the password to the tea-drinking barman gets us to the third task, playing hide-and-seek to find the captain.  We also get to take the empty coffee cup along with us.

It looks like the guard in the shack at the entrance might be the captain, but how can we confirm that suspicion?  If thats not him, and hes hiding in the tent, we cant try to frag him by throwing the grenade in.  We can tie the rope to the grenade, leaving it attached to the pin, and use this unexpected combination to blow open the desk drawer in the captains office, pocketing a... some medicine.  (One annoying thing about Teen Agent is that the protagonist often picks up revealed items without saying anything at all about what they are, so we have to go into the inventory screen to find out whats just been acquired.)

We can mix the medicine with the bread crumbs, and use the mixture on the post where the bird is perching to drug the poor creature into a more portable form.  We can also get some mud in the mug, after falling into the mud pool yet again.

The mug looks a lot like the barmans tea mug, but we cant just replace it (nor is it clear why we would want to.)  The medicine is used up, so thats not what we want to do.  But we can get the bird to perch on the radios coat-hanger antenna in the Cantine [sic?], and then swap the mugs out, so apparently we want to do that for some reason.

The bartender drinks the mud and drops off for a moment -- Im not sure why -- and we can now access the storeroom at the back of the bar.  The boxes and barrels are generally unsearchable, and a locker here is secured, but theres somebody or something blinking through a hole in one of the barrels.  We cant poke the hole with the tickling branch, but we can just click on it to poke the captain in the eye with a finger, revealing his whereabouts and completing the training and the first act of the game.




The second act takes Mark Hopper to a small village where a wealthy local man is acting suspiciously -- he may have something to do with the mysterious thefts.  We have nothing in inventory but a small tube of super glue.  (This was originally the pay-to-play portion of the game, starting from a clean slate after the shareware first act.)

A boy in the village is playing basketball against a wall; we cant determine his name, unless its literally "Sonny" and hes just having us on.  We can steal a comb from a car nearby.  Sonny is too weak to get the ball high enough to put it through the basket; if he does manage it, we learn, his grandfather will take him to the zoo, so we probably want to make this happen so we can poke around the homestead uninterrupted.  Inside the house, grandpa is smoking and wont let us borrow his fan on such a hot day, or take his shotgun.  But he will let us take a single handkerchief from the mostly empty drawers in a large bureau.

The neighboring house has a large panting dog who looks a bit like Scooby-Doo and blocks access to a valve on the outside of the building. The old lady who owns the house wont let Mark borrow her feather duster or a wax apple.  But with one sight of the young girl of the house, Anne, Mark is completely smitten.

Another path leads to a cave whose entrance is blocked by a thorny bush.  In the other direction lies a field with a scarecrow -- Mark can find a needle in a haystack here, with surprising ease, and pick up a rake and sickle.  Theres also time for some animal abuse, as we kick a hen to obtain a feather from its tail, consider catching a mouse, and realize we cant steal the diving fins from the scarecrows feet because of the large crows perching on his shoulders.  The sickle is too blunt to cut the thorns away from the cave.  The boat at the lake has a broken paddle, and we cant seem to restore it to working order with the superglue and/or the rake; theres an island visible in the middle of the lake, and an old-fashioned well with no bucket or rope.


Theres a forest area with another house nearby.  A large nut hangs in a tree, but we cant reach it and the squirrel keeping himself busy nearby seems disinclined to assist.  Inside the house we can acquire some rotten cheese, and a chainsaw with no fuel.  Theres also a cupboard with a suspiciously notable heart-shaped hole in its doors, and a sooty fireplace.

The mansion is watched over by a guard; this must be the place we are here to investigate.  Branching paths here also lead to a meadow where bees prevent access to another valve.  At the back of the mansion, a hollow tree looks interesting, if we could climb it -- some sort of creature keeps tickling Mark when he tries to do so.  We can pick a potato from underneath a nearby plant, grab a rock, and attempt to pick up a hedgehog, though its too spiny for Marks bare hands; it has a pine cone stuck to its back.

We cant throw the rock at the crows, or grab the mouse using the cheese (at least not just the cheese.)  The mansion guard has dropped a wrapper reading "LOVE CANDY," with a heart design.  The mansions owner is one John Noty, who has been consulting with a mad scientist, according to the guard, who also gives Mark a chocolate candy.

Now maybe were getting somewhere -- Mark can trim the candy into a heart shape using the cupboard door in the cottage, then wrap it in the discarded wrapper to produce an impressive-looking gift.  Giving it to Anne yields her ribbon as a gift in return -- she doesnt want to get fat, but Mark insists she take the candy, saying that even Obelix has friends (hes the rotund viking Gaul from the European Asterix comics.)

I needed a walkthrough here -- my sticking point turned out to be a waiting/timing puzzle of the sort that always give me trouble.  If we hang out near the mansion guard for a while, hell eventually drink and drop a partially full bottle of whiskey.  We have to catch him in the act -- while hes actually taking a swig -- to get him to hastily drop it so that it lands far enough from his post that Mark can grab it.  The walkthrough also indicates that the whiskey can be used as fuel for the chainsaw, which I wouldnt have guessed, necessarily. 

We can talk to the squirrel to get him angry enough to throw the nut down, though it immediately gets lost in the grass and we have to repair the rake -- not by tying or gluing the comb to it, but by using the ribbon to force its ragged teeth into a more useful formation -- to recover the nut.  The chainsaw cant be used on the thorns blocking the cave -- theyre too thin for it to be useful, apparently -- but we can use it to saw a branch off the hollow tree in back of the mansion, and then superglue that to the broken paddle to make a useable oar.



Rowing out to the island (which features a very Monkey Island-esque Caribbean musical theme) we can pick a couple of flowers.  Giving one to Annes grandmother allows us to borrow the feather duster.  We can also give a flower to Anne, though this doesnt accomplish anything new.

The next walkthrough hint I needed was to help me find a lever inside the open car door at Sonny or whatevers house.  We can use this to open the trunk, finding a toolbox containing a car jack and a wrench.  Mark can use the spanner to lower the basketball hoop, getting Sonnys basket and trip to the zoo taken care of.  With grandpa out of the house, we can borrow his fan and shotgun.  Threatening the crows and then firing the shotgun sends them flying off so we can grab the divers mask and fins from the scarecrow.  Diving near the shore doesnt produce anything interesting though... ?

The carjack can be used to... um... lift up a rock near the cave entrance to recover a bone underneath it.  Giving the bone to the dog per established adventure game tradition lets us access the cellar beneath grandma and Annes house, though we find its too dark to see clearly and theres no light switch handy.  Aboveground, we can use the fan to dry the laundry hanging outside the house, and then take the clothesline rope after telling grandma she can collect her dry laundry.

We dont need a lamp -- there is a switch in grandmas cellar, but its not visible until we have closed and reopened the cellar door; the slamming shut apparently knocks some grime off the walls below, revealing the presence of the switch (and also getting rid of a spiderweb on a shovel -- trying to get the shovel prior to this results in a rather lengthy and funny stretch of Spider-Man fantasy/nightmare text from Mark.)  The axe inspires a Jason Voorhees daydream, but we cant take it with us even though it seems like it could be very handy.

Walkthrough time again -- we can use the handkerchief to block the mouse hole and trap him with the cheese!  I had the right idea but the handkerchief didnt seem like the right tool for the job.

Okay - and this is one I would never have gotten without the walkthrough.  Remember the well with no rope?  Were supposed to turn the handle to sharpen the sickle.  Yep.  Now we can cut the thorns in front of the cave away, and look in a hole with a message above it concerning gold at the end of the road.  This puzzle is also pretty obtuse -- we have to put the mouse in the hole, and then before he comes back out, glue the rock over the hole, forcing him to use an alternate pathway, pushing a gold nugget out in the process.

We can use the feather duster in the cottage fireplace to gather coal dust, then use it on the wild potato to end up with a painted potato that looks a lot like a grenade.  This next bit makes no sense at all -- we can now toss it into the hollow tree, it gets thrown back a few times, and finally an owl emerges from the tree as the painted potato explodes in Marks face.  Trying to climb the tree now isnt quite successful, but triggers a cutscene as John Notys guards try to inform him about suspicious activity concerning a young man trying to enter the mansion grounds, which Noty doesnt want to hear about right now.

As the number of unsolved puzzles shrinks, paradoxically it seems I need more and more hints.  We can swap the nut for the wax apple at grandmas house, and then... trade it to the hedgehog for the pine cone stuck on his back, even though in the end he doesnt want the fake fruit.  We can then... combine the pine cone with the needle to produce something of as-yet-undetermined purpose.



The diving equipment is difficult to use -- while we can see some objects worth investigating underwater, Mark cant stay down very long and he cant talk.  This seems like a puzzle, but its really just an artificial roadblock imposed by the story structure.

We can use the pine cone/needle with the feather to produce a dart -- throwing it at the bee hive summons a bear, who distracts the bees as they chase him offscreen.  Now we can enter an underground passage -- too dark to see -- that leads to a trapdoor just outside the mansion, triggering another cutscene as Notys staff tries to warn him about the boy trying to get inside the mansion.

Now we can get back to one of those things that I find aggravating in adventure game designs -- we cant grab the anchor while diving until we have triggered that second cutscene.  It has nothing to do with whether we have the proper diving equipment, we dont have to find a way to increase Marks air supply -- we just arent allowed to interact with it until the story is at the right point.  So now we can pick it up, and tie the rope to it to create a makeshift grappling hook.

Trying to use this improvised climbing gear to get over the wall triggers a third cutscene -- Mark reportedly "may be dangerously [sic]" - but Noty just tells the guards to keep him out of the mansion.  We also see a giant robot guard/servant of some kind meandering about.

Trying to bribe the guard with a gold nugget is unsuccessful, but triggers yet another scene -- Noty is getting impatient as Mark keeps trying to get in.  We can also try to dig under the wall with the shovel, and now Noty himself steps outside to take Mark on, attempting to bribe him off with a hundred dollar banknote before going back inside the mansion.  It turns out to have "NEVER! ANNE" written on it -- apparently a returned payment for a proposition refused?  Asking Anne about it confirms Marks suspicions, angering him enough to punch out the guard and break down Notys front door, gaining access to the inner courtyard and the climax of the game.



Act III takes place inside the mansions grounds, with a very Axel F.-style theme playing as Mark tries to get inside the main house.  Our inventory has been reset, stripped back down to nothing but the ever-useful tube of super glue.  Theres a window that cant be opened, a strange sculpture near the front door, and nothing else... except as it turns out we can just open the unlocked front door.



The kitchen features a rotund chef, and Alex cant mess with anything in here while hes around.

Another room contains the robot we glimpsed earlier -- Mike the Robot speaks bad rap-speak, or a Polish white persons impression thereof, revealing that he is a robotic safe that can be opened only by his owner, identification being based on view, scent and "da voice."

The mansions luxurious bathroom has a tub, a sink with a hole thats pointed out though we have no immediate use for it, a dusty mirror, and one of Notys dirty socks, which Mark refuses to touch with his bare hands.




A study/rec room of some kind features a large TV and a bottle of cognac -- Mark considers drinking it, but decides he doesnt want to "deprave the kids."  Reading a newspaper discovers the remote control hidden in it, and examining the fashionably round couch turns up a cork hidden underneath it.  Oddly we cant use the cork with the bottle, or the remote with the TV (it just plays static when we click on it, and using the remote on it seems to make no difference.)  Trying to use the hi-fi system notes that we have nothing to play.  Theres a VCR, which has no record function, that the remote does work with -- but it has no tape in it, apparently.


Upstairs is Notys large study, and his six desk drawers appear to constitute a puzzle.  Each drawer has an interior of a different color, and adjacent drawers cant be opened.  The trash can contains a piece of paper, which has nothing interesting written on it but can be... combined with the cork to make it larger?  Okay.  One drawer has a dictaphone in it, but it has no batteries; another has a polaroid camera, all set to take a picture (probably of something incriminating as the story develops.)

So it appears we have some puzzles to deal with, after exploring a bit.  I missed seeing a pair of pincers in the cognac bucket earlier -- tongs, essentially, which we could use to pick up the sock, except we need something to store it in.  We can stuff the augmented cork in the sink, and fill it up with hot water, so that must be a useful thing to do.  We can steal a bottle of chilli [sic] (this is the European spelling, I have learned!) in the kitchen that looks a lot like the cognac bottle, and try to swap it with the cognac -- but Mark is pretty sure it wont fool anyone.  We need to use the hot water in the bathroom to remove the OLD MEXICAN CHILLI [sic] (wouldnt that be pronounced Chee-Yee in Mexico?) label, dress up the cognac bottle, and switch it.

After we put the cognac in place, Mark suggests that the cook try spicing up the stew -- the poor man puts the cognac in, instantly gets drunk, realizes the stew is ruined, and leaves the room in disgrace.  Theres a little Inuit hiding in the refrigerator when we open it, prompting Mark to conclude hes going "slightly mad."  With the cook out of the way, we can grab a rolling pin and beat the batteries out of the radio... though they appear to end up above the kitchen somewhere?  No, thats just suggested by the debris animation -- theyre still there in the wreckage of the radio, two 1.5 volt batteries perfect for powering the dictaphone.  Theres nothing recorded on it, but its working now.

I needed to reference the walkthrough again to find out that theres one special book in the study upstairs -- not really visually distinguishable, and only discoverable by hovering the mouse pointer over each of the dozens of books on the shelves.  This particular book can be examined to find the title "Charlie Brown and company."  While we can just luck into the dictaphone discovery by opening all six of the drawers, we have to leave the brown drawer open and tug on the book (its noted that its stuck in place earlier) to reveal a secret compartment on the shelf below, containing an unlabeled videocassette.


Playing the video reveals footage of John Noty singing Singin in the Rain to the camera -- its incredibly annoying, and were grateful this is not a "talkie" game, but we can record his voice with the dictaphone and snap his picture with the polaroid camera.  Now we just need the sock to convince Mike the Robot to open his, er, himself, it would seem.

We can get another piece of paper from the studys trash -- I thought at first this might be a reappearance bug after weve used it with the cork, but we actually do need a second piece of paper.  We can ignite it using the hot plate in the kitchen, and... what?  The fridge now contains something normal in place of the phantom Eskimo -- some meat, frozen to the shelf -- which we can free with the burning paper to end up with some veal in a plastic bag.  Now we can put the veal in the stew, for the sole purpose of freeing up the plastic bag so we can get the sock!  (Using the bag on the sock or trying to combine the bag and the tongs does nothing useful -- we still have to use the tongs on the sock, and now Mark can carry it using the bag in inventory, instead of refusing to do so.)

Now we can get Mikes safe open, revealing a jar and a book.  Now a cutscene ensues, in which some kind of mad scientist tries to visit Noty, trying to talk his way past the guard who calls him a "filthy terrorist."  Notys not happy with his work either, but he says his new invention is tested and can be demonstrated.  Its a shrinking potion -- no, wait, thats just a side effect.  The scientist demonstrates that he can now pick pockets easily, with "THE TIME PILL!"   It speeds someone up to one thousand times normal speed for a few seconds -- but he doesnt quite know how he made these pills; he isnt much of a scientist, apparently.

The story breaks down a bit here, as the jar Mark found in Notys office seems to contain these same pills already and Noty has apparently been using them.  The scientist still wants Noty to build him a new lab, offering the time pill patent in exchange for his financial support.  Its time for Noty to do a Day of the Tentacle-inspired "TAKE ON THE WORLD!" joke, and then Mark must hide as he comes into the study.  Theres a nice surreal visual gag here, as the only safe hiding place turns out to be the "lower left edge of the screen," dangling Mark briefly outside the games reality.

This next puzzle is odd -- Noty leaves a door handle behind in Mikes room, and while the bathroom door can be opened with its knob as usual, theres a second hole on the far side of the door, causing it to open "backwards" and leading to a completely different room.



Theres a huge whirling fan in here, which can be handily bypassed using the jar of time pills we took from the safe earlier, and now we catch the villain and his scientist ally plotting.  Unfortunately, Marks entrance is none too discreet -- his attempt to attack Noty using the time pills is blocked by an invisible force field.

Fortunately, as Noty is about to kill our Teen Agent hero, the military arrives to save us.  Marks unknowingly been carrying a hidden camera in his hat, so they knew what was going on (and provided very little help along the way.)  The RGB doesnt really care about capturing Noty, but Mark wants a little revenge before he hands over the time pills to his employers.  We find Noty in the rec room, inside the wardrobe, packing up his ill-gotten money before fleeing.



We have to hit him on the head with the chili chilli bottle to knock him out.  As the ending unfolds, we learn to Marks dismay that lovely Anne was just another agent, here to keep an eye on Marks progress and give him motivation.  But Mark gets made an official RGB secret agent, and victory is ours!



There was never a sequel to this 1994/95 game, though it seems were being set up for one as Mark finds one last time pill that accidentally got left in his pocket:

Teen Agent is a competently executed point-and-click adventure game, and I hadnt heard of it back in the day so it was fun to discover it a few decades after its release.  Its got a good sense of humor, and while many of the puzzles are silly theyre not quite aggravating.  Good fun from our friends in Eastern Europe!

Description: Part of the Men of War series of strategy games oriented around a fusion of tactical thinking and an action-packed direct control mode, Men of War: Condemned Heroes tells the story of one of the infamous Soviet penal battalions during the WWII. These battalions are famous for being formed under Stalin’s “No step back!” order #227. They consisted of court-martialed officers that were given a chance to redeem their crimes, or incompetence, in blood by serving as the lowest enlisted rank in a battalion that was assigned the most dangerous tasks. These battalions’ images are surrounded by many myths, and this game tells the truth about these regiments based on real evidence from their former members. Take command of one of these notorious companies and lead it to victory against all odds through most of the war on the Eastern front. Fight from desperate battles in 1942 in the area of Volyn in the Ukraine, to the massive operation “Bagration” in the Brest area, Magnush bridgehead and Warsaw area in Poland and finally to attacks on the German Altdam and Stettin near the end of the war.

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Hot_Shots_Golf_Out_of_Bounds_PS3.rar

Title: Dragonball Z Battle of Z PS3-DUPLEX
Genre: Fighting
Developer: ArtDink
Publisher: Bandai Namco Games
Release Date: January 28, 2014
Platform: PlayStation 3 (PS3)
Size: 2.14 GB / Split 4 part 550 MB + Single Link
Mirrors: UpFile, BillionUploads, Uploaded, KingFiles

Free Download Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Z PS3 Game delivers over-the-top anime action and intensity, presented in new cell-shaded HD graphics. Focusing on team battles, players will be able to battle online with or against their friends in frantic 4-player co-op or up to 8-player vs. Battle of Z’s expanded team battle and co-op modes allows players …

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