Gold Machine

Puzzles and jokes.

The Wait Is Over

A common criticism (or accolade) of Infocom’s original Zork is that the setting lacks coherence. One might more charitably say that they are coherently incoherent. Trolls, swords, wizards, robots, time machines, and flood control dams populate a shared geography. It’s probably true that, in the time of Zork‘s genesis at MIT, many locations seemed primarily places to put puzzles and tell jokes, but that didn’t seem to harm its later commercial reception. In fact, by the time 1986 rolled around, many long-suffering Infocom games were likely wondering what had happened to all the puzzles and jokes that had initially drew them in. A Mind Forever Voyaging had neither in quantity. Trinity‘s jokes could be hard to hear, as they were often critical of the naive optimism of many adventure games (and, it must said, their players). Dave Lebling’s Suspect, on the other hand, was Suspect. While Lebling’s Spellbreaker is one of my favorite parser games (classic or modern), those who loved the silliness of Sorcerer will not get the same charge out of it.

The lone bright spot for a specific sort of Infocom traditionalist was Wishbringer, a humorous game filled with less-than-difficult puzzles. There is an old and probably only intermittently true joke about the prospects of entries in the annual Interactive Fiction competition: judges tend to prefer humorous puzzle games that are not especially difficult. This isn’t always true, of course, and it doesn’t really reflect my own rating practices, but there is no doubt that audiences craved these experiences in the 1980s and that many still do. Wishbringer was also, by coincidence, set in a different sort of Zorkian setting, and it takes place long after–some say long before–the events of the Zork trilogy.

I’ve said–repeatedly–that Brian Moriarty’s Trinity is the ultimate expression of the “cave game” prototyped by Adventure and Zork. I make that assessment according to my own aesthetics and hopes for the text adventure form. I admire its ambition, its unrelenting pessimism, and its fine language. Combined with its treasure-hunt plot and head-scratching challenges, Trinity fully realizes that Infocom promise of game-as-literature.

Another view might be that Trinity is in over its head, that its surreal misanthropy is perhaps less tolerable than AMFV‘s dearth of puzzles. Where are the puzzles and jokes, and what has happened to our Infocom? Leather Goddesses of Phobos is Steve Meretzky’s answer: the puzzle and jokes are in a sendup of 1930’s comic strips like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. That’s an oversimplification. More humor can be found in its decidedly PG-rated “sexual” content. While most contemporary readers will find this content tame compared to, say, a typical Game of Thrones episode, it nevertheless feels transgressive for a computer game from a large publisher like Infocom.

This mixture of innuendo and genre zaniness infuses a geography that takes cues from–and improves upon–the modular geography of Meretzky’s design for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Thanks to a system of black circles (reminiscent of the disks in Starcross), the player travels between distinct geographies: spaceships, a Sultan(ess)’s palace, Cleveland, and so forth. It isn’t worldbuilding that unifies this geography. Rather, it is a pervasive sense of silliness informed by an understanding that sometimes, a good game is just a place to put puzzles and jokes.

The Treasure Hunt

Soon after play begins, the protagonist (let’s call them “Lane”) is kidnapped by tentacled aliens, servants of the titular Leather Goddesses of Phobos:

>exit
Joe's Bar
   A brilliant flash of green light seems less unusual when followed by the appearance of tentacled aliens, as is the case with the current flash of green light. The tentacles wrap roughly around you as you faint.

   After an unknown amount of time... Well, let's cut the bullshit. 7.3 hours later, you wake. Your head feels as if it's been run over by several locomotives, or at least one very large locomotive, and your clothes are now unrecognizable...

The narrative voice, a key source of LGoP‘s humor, features metafictive intrusions like “Well, let’s cut the bullshit. 7.3 hours later, you wake.” While some players have found this passage jarring, overexercised, or even hostile, it is an intentional disruption of narrative expectation and only the first instance of ironic vulgarity to be found in Leather Goddesses of Phobos. These techniques have been a feature of Meretzky’s work since Planetfall. Recall, for instance, Floyd’s comments regarding metacommands like SAVE: “Floyd’s eyes light up. “Oh boy! Are we gonna try something dangerous now?”

Speaking of Floyd: Lane has a sidekick, too. They are the same gender as the protagonist and named either “Tiffany” or “Trent.”

As you enter, a woman sitting limply in the shadows stiffens and rises to her feet. "A human! They got you too? I've been here a week. When you opened the door, I figured it was a guard! Was it unlocked? I never thought of trying it. By the way, my name's Tiffany. From Alaska. I'm not too bright, but I'm strong as an ox, and I'm great with my hands. Maybe we can lick these Leather Goddesses together."

Tiffany does not seem to be as reactive as Floyd, which makes her feel less present. However, with a game size of 129,022 bytes, it is very unlikely that the Commodore 64 could accommodate an even slightly more vocal sidekick. On the other hand, Tiffany has a few ridiculous “death” scenes that preface an even more ridiculous tale of escape:

   A sickening explosion splatters Tiffany all around the room! As you struggle to control your shock and nausea, your eyes fill with tears. You hang your head in sorrow for a moment to honor your brave, loyal companion who gave her life that humanity might be safe from the terrible scourge of the Leather Goddesses of Phobos.

...

   You hear panting as Tiffany dashes up behind you, somewhat out of breath. "Good, you're still here! Thank God that time traveller who wandered by the hold had a matter reconstituter!"

Naturally, these humorous vignettes also serve a narrative purpose, as they deliberately remove the sidekick from play for specific settings or scenes.

Tiffany isn’t just there for the ambiance. In fact, it is Tiffany that establishes the primary objective for players: collect eight components for a machine that might defeat the Leather Goddesses once and for all:

  Tiffany trots over to you. "I've got a plan to bring these Leather Goddess jokers to their knees," she says, flipping you a matchbook. The cover of the matchbook is filled with scrawled notations. "If we can scrape up these items, I can whip up something that'll knock 'em cold! A Super-Duper Anti-Leather Goddesses of Phobos Attack Machine!!!"
 
>examine matchbook
The cover of the matchbook is filled with scrawled notations. You briefly open the matchbook and see that there are no matches left.
 
>read it
Most of the scrawlings are a "blueprint" for a vastly complicated device. Below that is a parts list:
   1. a common household blender
   2. six feet of rubber hose
   3. a pair of cotton balls
   4. an eighty-two degree angle
   5. a headlight from any 1933 Ford
   6. a white mouse
   7. any size photo of Douglas Fairbanks
   8. a copy of the Cleveland phone book

The treasures are suitably nonsensical, and Meretzky makes no especial effort to place them credibly. The Cleveland phone book, for instance, is not in Cleveland. Instead, it festers at the bottom of Infocom’s most obnoxious copy protection effort, a maze beneath the palace of a Martian Sultan(ess). The photo of Douglas Fairbanks is on a Venusian Spaceship.

Many of the puzzles have an unreal quality to them. There is an overlap, I believe, between a certain type of slapstick humor and the surreal. Perhaps the puzzles belong there. Kissing a frog will remind many players of the Babel fish puzzle in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, as both feature a humorous escalation. The reward is a common household blender:

>read blender
[taking the common household blender first]
"Dearest,
   Sorry to leave so abruptly; perhaps some day we will meet again, and finish what we began. Please accept this token of my gratitude for delivering me from enchantment."

Thrilling, Pulsating Action!

Leather Goddesses of Phobos contains a few compelling set pieces using timers to create forward momentum. While these scenes can be frustrating when the timing is off, they do offer a welcome sense of dramatic tension often missing from parser games then or now. In an unusually heroic moment, Lane rides a white stallion down the length of a warship before confronting “Thorbala, the Chief Assassin for the Leather Goddesses of Phobos.” Things cannot get too serious, naturally, so a bug-eyed alien monster harasses (the right verb depends on the lewdness settings) a young noble in the background.

Elsewhere, Lane confronts the Sultan(ess) in their palace, where they are posed a riddle with life-or-death stakes. If successful, they are rewarded with a tryst with a member of the royal harem before descending into perhaps an hour of copy protection. A more detailed explanation follows later, but timers play a central role in the catacombs episode.

Venus offers a goofball scene with a mad scientist, mind transferal, and apes. It is a sequence puzzle in which chocolate, scientist, hose, and experiment table must be manipulated at appropriate moments while a clock runs down. Some mild ape humor is optional.

Laboratory
   The scientist's madness is finally evident by his lab, filled with many expressions of insane genius, such as the two caged gorillas, one male and one female, the two slabs for strapping down human victims, and the huge red power switch. A closed door leads north; at the foot of the winding stone stairs is a black circle.

   It seems that the cage contains a rubber hose.

   Tiffany follows you.

   The mad scientist bounds down from the first floor, activating a (guaranteed 100% effective) Vaporo-Zap Energy Barrier across the foot of the stairs.

The climax of the game also has a pleasantly propulsive activity, since “danger” increases as Tiffany constructs the Super-Duper Anti-Leather Goddesses of Phobos Attack Machine.

>give headlight to tiffany
Tiffany grabs the headlight and quickly incorporates it into her contraption.

   A Phobosian Chomper is faster than a cheetah, meaner than a Tyrannosaurus Rex, bigger than a sperm whale, and as hungry as the state of Texas. We mention this because fifty of them just entered the plaza and spotted you.

   Tiffany, hammering and twiddling madly at the growing machine, yells, "Okay, things are going teriff! Hand me a mouse."

Visit Scenic Cleveland!

Most of Leather Goddesses of Phobos‘s geography is located in a fanciful version of Mars with a breathable atmosphere, liquid water, and human-like inhabitants. These locations are initially gated behind puzzles, but eventually the player can travel freely across this geography using a system of black circles (or “holes”) that serve as teleporters.

Besides the already-mentioned Sultan’s palace, there are several pun-inspired docks along Martian canal to facilitate transportation. They have names like “Hickory & Dickory Dock” and “Wattz-Upp Dock.” Figuring out how to navigate the length of the canal is a major concern of the game, as the available barge only permits one-way trips.

Eventually, the player will get off-planet to Venus, home of not only the mad scientist and his apes, but also a curious salesman.

Back Door
   You're near the rear entrance of a house, to the south. Trails enter the jungle to the east and the west.

   An extraordinary number of door-to-door salesmen are camped out here, having been booted away from the front door, but still hopeful of making a sale.

   Tiffany trails along.

   A salesman approaches you. "You look like a doll who can spot a good deal. One of my machines could change your life! Let's barter; offer me something as an even-up trade."

Via a process of trial and error, we discover that the salesman will accept a flashlight in return for something called a “TEE remover.” Players of Emily Short’s Counterfeit Monkey will already know what this is, which is a bit of a loss: making the intuitive leap and guessing for oneself is very satisfying. Removing the “t” from a jar of “detangling cream” is such a bizarre and inventive solution that there is a dream logic to it.

This puzzle is radically unlike anything in Counterfeit Monkey, a game in which word magic is essential to the world. A letter remover in that game is part of a coherent system of play; it’s a game mechanic. The problems to be solved are word problems. The problem in Leather Goddesses of Phobos is “what the hell is this thing?” While I don’t personally enjoy word games or word puzzles, the TEE remover is my favorite puzzle in LGoP.

I think it’s likely that, because of Counterfeit Monkey, the TEE remover might tie with the Babel Fish as most famous Infocom puzzle, though in truth “Infocom fans” and “People who love 2012 parser games” are not a perfectly overlapping group. Who knows? The Babel Fish was honored with a T-Shirt, and I believe it was the only Infocom game to be distinguished in this way. Of the two, my personal favorite is the TEE remover.

So far as Cleveland goes: it is likely all one expects, if only moreso.

A Brief Note Regarding the Worst Copy Protection That I Have Personally Experienced in Over Four Decades of Playing Computer Games.

I have noted several times that Steve Meretzky seemed far more interested in copy protection feelies than the rest of the Implementers were. Sometimes, this turned out well. Sorcerer‘s Infotater, for instance, is a delightful widget (folio edition) or booklet (gray box). It has charming artwork and humorous text. It exemplifies the appeal of the physical editions of Infocom games.

Then again, there is the stark unpleasantness of the “code wheel” packed in with A Mind Forever Voyaging. It’s ugly, contains far more factors than necessary, and serves no worldbuilding purpose. The diagetic rationale for this wheel, if I can recall, is that PRISM needs to log in… to himself. Presumably he locks himself out, too. This code mechanic was part of Meretzky’s initial design notes!

One feelie would be a print-out of codes. These codes are built into the simulation process to prevent outside tampering. You would need to supply an appropriate code to run a given simulation. This would be an anti-piracy device.

This curious fascination reaches its eye-watering nadir in Leather Goddesses of Phobos. An unmappable maze (things dropped disappear immediately) can only be navigated with the help of a packed-in map. This is acceptable copy protection, isn’t it? Even with the map, though, nobody’s going to have a good time. Some of these paths are cave-ins, so the provided map isn’t completely accurate:

That isn’t all. An otherwise likable 3d comic book has been dragged into this nonsense. The comic is great. The retro-style artwork is a perfect fit. The story is fittingly ridiculous. The 3D effect is a great detail (provided you have the glasses). However

Without the comic, players would never know that traversing the maze requires hopping every five turns, clapping every nine turns, and typing “kweepa” every eleven turns. Tracking the intervals might prove difficult, so some players prefer entering every command after two turns or so. For an idea of what this might involve, the transcript of my catacombs experience was 6,823 words long in Verbose mode.

While Jimmy Maher calls this experience “polarizing,” he is the only critic I’ve found with something nice to say about it. I find it incredible that something this unpleasant escaped Infocom’s well-regarded quality assurance. I couldn’t have mistaken the catacombs for fun in the dark. Someone at Infocom must have had second thoughts, too, as the Solid Gold edition includes more comprehensive hinting and even a cheat:

[3 hints left.] -> If you don't want to type all those directions we've put in something special for those of you who are fed up with clapping, etc.
[2 hints left.] -> The turn after you've gone down into the catacombs (but haven't moved) type $CATACOMB to cheat your way through. You'll end up at the Ladder Room with the raft and the Cleveland telephone directory.
[1 hint left.] -> You're welcome.

So far as I know, this is the only time Infocom added a bypass like this. Extreme times, extreme measures, and whatnot. Still, it has to be said: it’s impressive that so many of us persisted! Few games could get away with half as much.

The Big Finish

At the conclusion of Leather Goddesses of Phobos, Tiffany constructs the Super-Duper Anti-Leather Goddesses of Phobos Attack Machine, and the enemy is vanquished in the nick of time.

Through the smoke of battle, you see a banana peel squirt from the Super-Duper Anti-Leather Goddesses of Phobos Attack Machine.
   The peel lands a few feet away, as the Super-Duper Anti-Leather Goddesses of Phobos Attack Machine gives one final shudder and self-destructs in an orgy of flames and shrapnel!
   The attacking forces continue to close, and certain death is only seconds away when one of the Chompers, loping toward you at nearly Mach One, steps on the banana peel, and slips a few inches to one side before righting itself. This is enough, however, to nudge a tank into a crater, tripping one of the samurai robots!
   More and more of the attacking forces plow into the mess in the crater, like some improbably fantastical football tackle. A stray grenade lands right in its midst, and the resulting plume of debris shears the fins off the leading warship. Your heart leaps as the entire Main Attack Fleet of the Leather Goddesses of Phobos plummets toward the ground. The mass of flaming metal strikes the ground, and a tremendous explosion knocks you senseless!

In its own way, this writing is as good as anything in Trinity, in that it perfectly suits its artistic aims. Its blend of overheated language, high camp, and slapstick pratfalling is just what Leather Goddesses of Phobos requires. It’s a shame that the desired sequel never came. That isn’t to say there wasn’t a sequel; there was. Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2: Gas Pump Girls Meet the Pulsating Inconvenience from Planet X (1992) was a graphical adventure game written and designed by Steve Meretzky and published by Activision.

In the interregnum between Zork Zero and Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2: Gas Pump Girls Meet the Pulsating Inconvenience from Planet X, Meretzky made the Spellcasting 101 games for Legend entertainment. I didn’t buy those games, because I was a single college student and didn’t want “fantasy bikini game” boxes lying around when dates came over. LGoP2 looks more like a Spellcasting 101 game than an Infocom one, so I’ve never been interested. Before it begins to seem that I’m kicking post-Infocom Meretzky around, let me clarify. An important and vital element of the “lewd” fun in Leather Goddess of Phobos is how artfully it avoids the fraught toxicity of so many “sex games.” There is no real exploitation, no demeaning gaze, no weird objectification. Leather Goddesses of Phobos is a work of comic sexual mischief, and its chief pleasure is harmless transgression, not titillation. In mentioning those other games, I mourn the loss of what makes LGoP special and unique.

Sex, gender, and mischief deserve a dedicated post, don’t you think? It’s good, unclean fun, after all.

Next

Tiffany and Trent.