The Epic CD-ROM Family Adventure: Part 5

Lisa Alexander - Hello again, Adventure Readers! When we left off, we had just found a key and a creepy message-in-a-bottle from Captain Flint outside of the Benbow Inn. The chest in Billy Bones’ room is still locked, so we should probably head there.

Another good reason to head there is that there really isn’t anything else we can possibly do. I mean, we can keep clicking around outside, but nothing there is changing. So we go inside to the first floor of the Benbow Inn, where we can still click around, but nothing has changed since the last time we were here. We go upstairs to the hallway, where nothing has changed. And we go back into Billy’s room, where—surprise!—nothing has changed. And then we re-approach the chest.

“Hey, Hawkins! Try this,” Stevenson says (before actually appearing on screen), and the key we just found slides to a stop on the floor by the chest. (Had we found the key before we approached the chest the first time, this would have happened immediately after Rizzo and Gonzo decided to look for a key and a sledgehammer.)

We can click on the lock, which does the same odd gapey thing I tried to describe before. Or we can click on Stevenson, who says, “Key in the lock! Key in the lock!” before he makes his parroty noise and whistles on his way out. Clicking on him a second time results in yet another encore of, “Boy, it’s really messy in here! And I’m allergic to dah—da-HA—daCHOO!” and him wiping his beak on his wing and saying, “Let—Let’s get out of here. But first, we really need to find the map.”

 

Or, we can click on the key. Now, if you just click on the key, you will pick it up and immediately drop it again. What we really need to do is click and hold, so we can drag the key to the lock. We pick it up sideways, but don’t worry—it automatically turns to go into the lock. Release it when it’s turned for the lock, and the key not only goes into the lock, but turns, complete with sound effect and pixie dust, before the chest opens and Stevenson makes what I can only assume is a celebratory parrot noise.

Gonzo and Rizzo once again lean into the frame to examine the now-open chest. “Ah, the smell of adventure!” Gonzo says.

“Rotting wood, mold, mildew—yup, that’s adventure alright!” Rizzo says, and they make some agreeable grunts that sound a little like “Uh-huh” when you put them together before they leave the screen and Stevenson perches on the open lid.

Click on Stevenson, and he—still very congested—sniffs and says, “Now. Dig around in there until you find the map. And while you’re at it… I’m gonna go get a tissue.” He dramatically sneezes his way off the screen and returns to his perch, so I guess he wasn’t terribly interested in the tissue, after all.

There are several items in Billy’s chest, all stacked on top of each other. For years, I thought you had to click and drag each one out of the chest, much like we did with the key, but guess what? You can just click on each of them, and they jump right out of the chest for you!

I have to hand it to the makers of this game—most of the items in this chest are fantastic. First we have a broken oar, which I suppose isn’t terribly funny unless you take the time to wonder why on earth Billy saved it. The second thing is definitely the best, though. Did you know Billy Bones had a teddy bear? And did you know that said teddy bear bore a striking resemblance to Fozzie Bear, particularly in his Pook-a-Looz form?

Once the Fozzie Teddy is out of the way, we see what looks like an odd pile of fabric. Click on it, and it turns into what I think is supposed to be long underwear. I’m hesitant to call it that for multiple reasons, one of which being that Billy’s long underwear appears to be the exact same size as his teddy bear.

Next we have a standard-issue mysterious bottle of poison, followed immediately by a familiar pair of funny glasses. Allow me to be a complete Muppet nerd and point out that these Groucho glasses bear more resemblance to the ones many a Muppet donned in The Great Muppet Caper than they do to the ones Rizzo found in Billy’s chest in Muppet Treasure Island, because the ones Rizzo found had completely filled-in eyes, and these do not. That bit of nerdiness aside, I love the fact that the game included the glasses.

Next is the second reason I’m hesitant to call that early item “long underwear”: a lovely pair of cannon-print boxers. Really? Double-underwear? So if anyone else knows what that other thing is, please let me know. Next we have a pair of old socks that have been mended multiple times, and then we have a pack of dynamite. And that’s where we get into trouble.

Unlike the other items, the dynamite actually makes noise as it drops onto the floor. Stevenson zooms off his perch and is apparently behind us with the dynamite. “YIKES! Dynamite!” he says. “Looks like Billy’s sea chest is BOOBY-trapped! We must be getting warmer.”

“Yeah!” Rizzo’s voice nervously agrees, and then we hear the fuse light and start to burn. “Now it’s lit!” Rizzo panics.

Which of our genius sidekicks had the brilliant idea to light the dynamite? I don’t know. Hawkins is apparently too fascinated staring at the map in the bottom of the chest to turn around and say, “No don’t LIGHT that!” But if I were to make an educated guess, I’d say it was Gonzo who lit the dynamite. That, or it mysteriously lit itself… At any rate, we can still hear the fuse burning. At this point, we have two choices: we can click on Stevenson, who still wants us to dig around in the chest until we find the map, or we can click absolutely anywhere else on the screen to pick up and open the map.

There’s a change of music as the map is suddenly open across the screen, and we watch as a dashed line appears, crossing the island until it stops at a red X, which briefly glows. I have no idea how to describe the music, but we don’t pay much attention to it for long as we suddenly hear Flint’s voice again. First there’s some piratey, kind of disgusting-sounding laughter I can’t begin to transcribe, and then he talks.

“Hawkins… This be the ghost of Cap’n Flint speakin’! If ye want to find me buried treasure, you’ll need more than a map, to Treasure Island!”

(At this point, we hear some fanfare for “Treasure Island” before he continues.)

“You’ll need to find the four diamond-shaped rocks, I left behind. Now THESE four rocks, could be the KEY to the treasure—or, your GRAVE! HAHAHAHARGH HaHARGH haHARGH.”

Well, now we finally know what that “E” rock we kept finding was. The music keeps playing, but no matter where we move our cursor, it remains a “back up” arrow. Before we put the map away, there’s one thing I want to comment on. The date in the bottom-right corner says the map was made August 1, 1750. That’s consistent with the book, but if the Benbow Inn was established in 1875, as the signs downstairs read, and Billy Bones is in both places, he must be over 125 years old—especially since he was Flint’s first mate on the voyage when the map was made. Slight oversight there.

Anyway, click anywhere, and the map vanishes. “Open up!” we hear Blind Pew say, and there are three loud knocks on the door behind us. “We know you’re in zere…” And once again, we can hear the fuse burning on the dynamite, but we’re still staring into the now-empty sea chest.

Stevenson resumes his perch on the open lid of the sea chest. Clicking on him reveals his panic. “Hawkins I checked—and the pirates aren’t gettin' any friendlier!”

On the second click, he seems less panicked but no more patient. “Ya know, just between you and me? The fuse isn’t getting' any longer!” And he makes a parrot noise before he goes. (Not all of his parrot noises sound the same. In fact, he has quite the wide array of parrot noises… but how else am I supposed to describe them?) Stevenson has nothing else to say, and the only other thing we can do is back away from the chest—leaving the key there, since we don’t need it and Stevenson’s already got a rock to carry in his wing.

Looking at Billy’s room, we once again hear Blind Pew telling us to open up, and this time we can see the door bulging in every time he knocks. The window is open, and we can see a vegetable cart, complete with horse and driver, below. Gonzo and Rizzo pop up behind the bed.

“Looks like we’ve got two choices,” Gonzo says. “A, we jump two stories into the vegetable cart below, or B, we stay here and face the deadly, angry, and very well armed pirates!”

“And C?” Rizzo demands.

“There isn’t a C!” Gonzo says.

Rizzo is outraged. “There’s always a C! What kind of a game is this without a C?” (Since we can also see the ocean through the window, I’ve always thought it was a lovely pun about the sea.) Gonzo laughs, and they duck back down behind the bed, leaving us with the same music we’ve had at the sea chest and the sound of the burning fuse (which we can now see, by the way). Every ten seconds or so, either Blind Pew knocks again, “Open up!” knock knock knock, “We know you’re in zere!” or Gonzo and Rizzo pop up behind the bed and Rizzo says, “Come on, Hawkins!” before they duck back down.

Suspenseful enough for you? Make sure to tune in for the next article. I guarantee it will be dynamite.

The Muppet Mindset by Ryan Dosier

The Epic CD-ROM Family Adventure: Part 4

Lisa Alexander - Well, we’re back, and Stevenson is still perched in cobwebs. Must be awful for his dust allergies.

Sometimes, I really wish screen-caps could capture the cursor on this game so that you could see the lovely arrows that appear when clicking means you go somewhere. Am I getting too obsessive? (Note: That’s a rhetorical question. Please don’t answer.) These arrows have depth and everything. There’s a very noticeable difference between the arrow to go forward towards Billy’s chest and the arrow we had to go up to the second floor.

At any rate, you move forward to Billy’s chest, and Gonzo and Rizzo pop up in the bottom left corner of the screen to take a look. I’ll let you guess which is which:

“Hmm… I’ll look for a key.”

“I’ll look for a sledgehammer.”

“Mmm.”

Stevenson perches on top of the chest, and music plays. You know the instrumental bit under Billy’s voice at the very beginning of the movie, when he says “I was Flinty’s first mate, that voyage…” Yeah, that’s the music we’ve got.

Unfortunately, that’s about all we’ve got, aside from a corner of Billy’s bedspread and some lovely grain in the wooden floor and chest. We can click on the chest’s keyhole, but it just sort of stretches and shrinks back, kind of like the door-knocker at the beginning of Muppet Christmas Carol, except that it doesn’t change into anything else. It just makes a little creaking noise. Our only other click-options are to move away from the chest or tap on Stevenson. Obviously, we tap the bird.

He takes a deep breath. “Go find the key! Go find the key! Brawwwk!” And he whistles. Click again, and he repeats the bit I described last time where he tells us he’s allergic to dust. The bird doesn’t have anything else to say, so I guess we’ll move back from the chest.

Billy’s room hasn’t changed much. In fact, it hasn’t changed at all. In fact, Stevenson still says all the same things, including telling us to look in the chest. Funny—doesn’t he know we still don’t have a key?

With our mouse on the door, the cursor turns into an arrow to the right. Click, and the door opens just before we jump back to the hallway. Once in the hallway, we see Billy’s huge shadow downstairs as he moans, “The black spot… The black spot!” But once that’s over and Stevenson perches on the banister, the hallway is once again unchanged. And yes, Stevenson still wants us to go into the pirate’s room. So I guess he’s forgotten about his dust allergy? At any rate, if you or your child has a really bad memory, you could get stuck in an indefinite loop of going into Billy’s room, finding the chest is locked, and going to look for the key.

So we go back to the first floor, where—again—nothing has changed. We still have random laughter and pirates walking past the window every thirty seconds or so. However, Stevenson is no longer telling us to follow the pirate upstairs. Instead, when you click on him, he sneezes. Isn’t that helpful?

Since I didn’t say so last time we were here, I will mention that for some reason when I played this as a kid, I always wanted to go into the kitchen. You can’t, of course, but I always wanted to. It seems like if there’s a doorway that close, I should be able to go through it. Besides, I think I wanted to shoo Rizzo from the 19^th-century refrigerator.

What I also didn’t mention last time we were here is that when you move your mouse over the outside door, the cursor turns into the forward-arrow and a green EXIT sign lights up with a little “pop” sound effect. Click, and the top half of the door will open before we are suddenly outside.

Outside, we see Blind Pew laugh as he creeps around the corner. When he and his music are gone, Stevenson perches, and we’re allowed to use the mouse. (Like I’ve said, our cursor disappears when anything else happens on screen.)

Use the sixteenth-note cursor in the top left of the screen to hear trumpets, flutes, and drums in a piratey battle-march. The music drowns out the lapping waves, but we still occasionally hear a ship bell, Blind Pew’s laughter, a seagull, and a barking dog, plus thunder whenever lightning crashes down from a cloud that I think looks like it was plucked out of the “A Whole New World” sequence in Disney’s Aladdin. For some reason, the music also adds in some howling wind that you otherwise wouldn’t hear.

If you really love the thunder and lightning from the Aladdin cloud, you can summon it by clicking on the cloud. If you click on the upstairs window, Blind Pew can come around the corner just like he did when you first came outside. If you click on the Benbow Inn sign, it creaks back and forth. (For the record, this Benbow Inn sign is probably the most boring sign you can click on in the whole game.) If you click on the downstairs window, you can hear some general piratey laughter from inside. You can also click on the top and bottom parts of the door to open and close them, which I find much more amusing than it should be.

But there are two real reasons we’re outside. The first, of course, is to snatch that key hanging from the same wrought-iron as the sign. I have no idea what it’s doing there. It doesn’t seem like a very clever hiding place. The second reason is that message-in-a-bottle sitting on the ground. Yes, we are supposed to click that. Don’t believe me? Let’s ask Stevenson.

On the first click, he looks at the bottle and says, “Wow! That bottle is probably from a far-off island! Huh. Is a message in a bottle the best way to communicate? WRONG! But at least they didn’t call collect. The rates are so high.” He makes a parrot-y noise and returns to his perch.

On the second click, he says, “Right. Okay, if you ask me, I’d use the door! But, it’s just my way. But you’re the boss!” Then he makes another parrot sound and immediately says “Excuse me.” Apparently the parrot noises are involuntary, kind of like hiccups. However, this is the only time he excuses himself for one.

That’s all Stevenson has to say. He apparently has no intention of pointing out the key. Some help parrot. Anyway, you click on the key, it disappears with a sound-effect, and Stevenson shifts his wing with a “Hey thanks!” once again meaning that you have picked something up and put it in his wing.

Getting back to the bottle, I have to warn you before I click on it that I used to avoid these bottles when I was little because they creeped me out as much as Blind Pew. The difference is that now, Blind Pew doesn’t creep me out at all, and these bottles still do a little.

Now, when you click on the bottle, you hear the pop of a cork, and then the message is in front of you, narrated from beyond the grave by Captain Flint. (See? Creepy.) His booming voice has a slight echo to it—almost unnoticeable, really, but it’s enough to make it a little creepier. Anyway, the message goes like this:

HAWKINS!

THIS be the ghost of Cap’n FLINT speakin’! Ye may not know me, but this TREASURE yer after, is MINE!

(At this point, we hear what sounds to me like some seashells clanking together before Flint continues.)

Ye hear that? Well it’s not castanets! It’s me BONES rattlin’ with RAGE! O’er the SCOUNDRELS tryin’ to claim me gold. Now—heed me words, Hawkins. Keep your eyes open, and yer NOGGIN sharp, and ye JUST might be the one to FIND, the TREASURE. HAHAHAHARGH! If you’re lucky.

That last sentence is delivered in a whisper, upping the creepy factor again. When he’s done, we hear the same music we heard by Billy’s chest. Now, as you can see in the picture, the note is framed with seaweed and a starfish that presumably got into the bottle somehow, but if you look closely you can see that Flint’s spelling is better than his pronunciation, he did in fact sign his name, and his narration skipped one tiny part of this particular note. He says his bones are rattlin’ with rage “o’er the scoundrels tryin’ to claim me gold,” but he writes that his bones are rattlin’ with rage “o’er the thought o’ scoundrels tryin’ to claim my gold.” We can click on any part of the note or bottle to hear Flint read the message again. Moving the cursor anywhere else gives us the “back up” arrow, which means we put the note away in Stevenson’s wing. He doesn’t thank us this time or shift his wings. He’s too busy returning to his perch. Presumably, he was reading the note with us or something.

Now that we have the key and the bottle, we’re free to go inside, find the map, light some dynamite… What, don’t believe me? Stick around. If you’re good, I’ll eventually show you all the goodies Stevenson keeps under his wing.

The Muppet Mindset by Ryan Dosier

The Epic CD-ROM Family Adventure: Part 3

Lisa Alexander – Once we go to the second floor of the Benbow Inn, we’re in a hallway that really seems pointless. It’s there because logically, going up the stairs wouldn’t deposit you directly into Billy’s room.

Immediately, we hear Billy in his room. “The black spot… The black spot!” he moans, and Gonzo scurries in from the left side of the screen. “A real black spot? Can I see it? I’ve never seen a real black spot before, Mr. B!” Gonzo rushes into Billy’s room and closes the door behind him as Rizzo comes running after with a “Hey, hey, hold that—“ Of course, the rat slams into the door and wobbles out the word “door” to finish his sentence as he stumbles back to the left side of the screen. Once he’s out of sight, we hear a crash and he says, “Hey, watch out!”

That’s some nice slapstick, right? We all love when Steve Whitmire’s characters are the butt of a little slapstick (case in point: Bean Bunny), so if given the option, we will gladly watch Rizzo run across the screen, slam into the door, and toddle back over and over and never tire of it. Luckily for us, there’s a way to do just that. In the bottom corner of the screen, there’s a random piece of wood. I can’t for the life of me figure out what it’s supposed to look like, but if you click on it, Rizzo runs across the screen again. “Hey, hey, watch out!” he yells, running into the door on the word “out.” Then he dizzily groans as he stumbles back the way he came and apparently crashes again once he’s out of our sight.

The hallway is really very boring. The loudly-ticking grandfather clock seems like it’s there just to make sure you get bored in the hallway. Occasionally, you’ll hear some dishes breaking or some laughter, presumably from downstairs, and once in a while you hear a little thunder. Like I said in Part 2, you can always move your cursor to the upper-left corner of the screen, where your cursor turns into a musical note and clicking means you get music. I’m not very good at describing music, and in the hallway, it’s not something pulled from the movie. Actually, the music sounds kind of bored. It’s waiting for you to go into Billy’s room already. Let’s face it—standing in the hallway isn’t a very exciting plot point. However, the music does mean you don’t hear the ticking clock.

As usual, clicking on something else makes the music stop, and the clock comes back. On the right side of the screen, you can see the same window the pirates were walking past when we were on the first floor. Click on it now, and Blind Pew hobbles out behind the random wood thing. “I’ll be coming back with some friends to take back our TREASURE map… and, whatever ELSE we can lay our eyes on. GET IT? Our EYES? Lay our EYES on? Ahh! I KILL me!” He’s so busy laughing at his own joke as he leaves that once he’s off-screen, he trips and crashes into something—possibly the same thing Rizzo keeps crashing into.

The only other interesting thing in the hallway is the grandfather clock. It’s in serious need of repair, based on the fact that the only number on the face is a three, and the three is right about where the ten should be. Clicking on the face of the clock will make it jump out and swing around on a spring, accompanied by a cartoony noise. Clicking on the little double-doors under the face of the clock will have one of three results. One, a blank piece of wood will stick out and go right back in. Two, a smug little green bird will pop out and give you an amused look before it gets yanked back into its place with a startled “cuckoo!” Three, that same bird will pop out and obediently cuckoo before it’s yanked back in.

There is also a bottom panel on the clock that you would probably never think to click on unless you happened to roll your mouse over it and saw it light up. If you click, there’s a puff of smoke, and suddenly a yellow diamond-shaped rock with the letter “E” carved in it is sort of hovering in the air just in front of the clock. If you click on it, you hear a gravelly voice echo as it says, “HAHAHARGH! Ya FOUND the first rock, and yer STILL alive! Yer doin’ better than most! HahahaHARGH!” Then there’s a little chime noise as the rock disappears, and Stevenson shifts his wings with a, “Hey thanks!”

If you’ve never played the game before, you have no idea what just happened. In fact, you’re probably a little creeped out. This is one of very few complaints I have about The Game: It’s way too easy to find this rock before you have any clue what it’s for and hear that voice before you know who it is. At any rate, Stevenson’s little wing-shift means that he is now carrying that rock in his wing, which is probably physically impossible, but hey, these are Muppets.

Stevenson is bored here, too. It doesn’t show the first time you click on him, when he says (with some fantastic intonation), “Now, if you ask ME, I’d go into the pirate’s room. I’d LOOK for the treasure map. Then again, who am I? I’m just your—ADVENTURE PARROT! On the ROAD to ADVENTURE! That’s all.” But the second time you click him, it’s clear enough. “Okay, right, it’s not like the hallway’s not a lot of FUN, but I’d still like to go into the pirate’s room. PLEASE?” He hops with a little parrot noise on his way off.

And the bird’s right. There is absolutely nothing else to do in the hallway. If you move your cursor around enough, you’ll find that your options are to go into Billy’s room or go back downstairs, so into Billy’s room we go.

“The black spot caught me!” Billy moans as he trudges out of the room with his hands on his face.

 

Rizzo comes in and frantically paces as he delivers what is quite possibly my favorite line of the entire game. “Oh… Oh, this is bad, this is bad! Pirates, black spot, danger—and worst of all, the refrigerator’s empty! Oh…” Then he leaves to the left of the screen, and the door closes all by itself.

If we click on the black spot that’s on the floor by Billy’s bed, the spot grows and shrinks as Rizzo’s nervous voice explains, “The black spot is the universal pirate symbol for death and doom!” If you click on it again, you get Billy’s voice. “Ahh! The black spot! So that’s how it ends for old Billy—the black spot! And all for a stinkin’ treasure map.” Then he makes noises like he’s dying, which is actually the only allusion to his death in the entire game.

Now, I can understand why the creators of the game might have decided not to show Billy’s death—it was obviously an issue in the movie, too. (“He died? And this is supposed to be a kids movie!”) However, I take issue with the fact that they don’t mention it at all, and it kind of amuses me that they bothered with the hallway when they omit this plot point. Really, without Billy dying, we’re stealing the map instead of oddly inheriting it, and I’m not sure that’s so much better in a Family Adventure than Billy dying. Other than the child-friendly thing, I can’t figure out much reason for them to have omitted Billy’s death than the fact that the way the game is set up makes it impossible for Billy to grab us by the shirt and tell Jimmy-Jim Jimmy-Jim Jim-Jim-Jim to take the map—especially since in the entire game, we the player are addressed as “Hawkins,” a clever little trick to allow the player to preserve his or her gender. Somehow, “Hawkins-Hawk Hawkins-Hawk Hawk-Hawk-Hawk” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

I’ve mentioned that you have the option of music on most screens of the game, which ends as soon as you click something. Here, it’s not an option, and it doesn’t end. The same music from the hallway keeps playing, but Billy’s room is much more fun than the hallway.

There’s some dirty laundry covering the floor, and if you click on it, Rizzo pops out with one of two things to say. He might crack a joke and say, “I dunno what's more dangerous—being socked by a dirty pirate, or bein' in here with a pirate's dirty SOCKS!” holding up an orange sock for emphasis before he burrows back into the laundry. Or, he might emerge and say, “PHEW! I think Mr. BONES should do his LAUNDRY once in a while!” in which case he will then turn and look at Billy’s bed (which is empty and sloppily made with a skull-and-crossbones print blanket) before he hesitantly adds, “...On second thought, don't bother. And they say RATS smell bad...” before once again settling behind the pile.

If you click the window over Billy’s bed, you get a little thunder and lightning. There’s a wood-burning stove by the door, and if you click on the big pipe above it, it makes some clanking noises that would probably cause me some serious concern if they happened in my own house. If you click on the stove itself, it makes a little smoke puff inside. If you haven’t already found that mysterious E rock in the hall, that will also appear in a puff of smoke on top of the stove, which is much more logical than the stone just hanging in mid-air, but who wants logic? Clicking on the rock would have the same results as it did in the hallway, and you would still have no idea what it was.

Billy has a portrait of his mother hanging on the wall beside his bed. You can’t tell that it’s his mother—or even that it’s female, quite honestly—until you click on it. The portrait suddenly becomes much less dingy as the woman turns her head towards the bed, her bottom jaw moving kind of like a nutcracker’s and not at all in sync with her words as she goes all Jewish-mother on her son. “Billy—did you remember to say thank you after stealing the treasure map?” “Billy—did you remember to brush yer tooth?” “Billy! Did you remember to check the expiration date on yer explosives?” Now I know that sounds like just about any mother, and since her accent is even thicker than Billy Bones’, I might not have pegged her as sounding like a Jewish mother if she hadn’t gone for the guilt trip: “BILLY! Why couldn’t ye be more like Mrs. HOOKS’ boy? He calls her every week, no matter WHERE he’s pillagin’!” (Note: In the novel Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie, it’s said that Captain Hook is the only man the old Sea-Cook ever feared, so this isn’t the first time Hook has been connected with characters from Treasure Island.)

This room is also probably my favorite place in the game to click on Stevenson. He really shines here.

He starts out cheerful enough on the first click. “BOY, it’s really messy in here. And I'm allergic to da—daHA—da-CHOO!” He groans and wipes his beak on his wing before he looks at you with his eyelids drooped and continues, now sounding thoroughly congested. “Let—let's just get outta here. But first, we really need to find the map."

On the second click, he’s still plenty congested as he says, “Ya KNOW Hawkins, whenever I'm looking for a treasure map, I happen to look in the treasure chest in the MIDDLE OF THE ROOM!” He sniffs and adds, “Oh, but that’s just me. Hint hint, nudge nudge.” Then he wipes his beak on his wing before miserably trudging off. At this point, I like to be a smart-aleck and point out that the big sea chest is on the side of the room, not in the middle, but I like to give the bird a hard time. (Yes, I know he can’t hear me.)

His congestion seems a little clearer on the third click, when he’s just short of frantic as he says, "Let's open up this chest fast, okay? Just in case this black spot thing is contagious? Ah ha! That's all I NEED!" And he makes an almost strangled-sounding parrot noise before he goes. (Seriously—think about the noise Kermit makes when someone grabs him by the neck, and then imagine that sound as it would come from a parrot.)

On the fourth click, I think he might try to tell you something, but he can’t, because he sneezes again and then goes back to his perch. In this room, his perch is a cobweb, which again is physically impossible and also doesn’t seem like a very wise choice for a parrot with dust allergies.

Our next step is obviously to go to the chest, but we’ll do that next time. Until then, maybe Stevenson can find a smarter place to perch.

The Epic CD-ROM Family Adventure: Part 2

Hey folks! Lisa the Intern here again with part two of my series on the Muppet Treasure Island computer game. If you recall, we left off with the opening credits.

The Epic CD-ROM Family Adventure: Part 2

Lisa Alexander - Once the credits are over, you find yourself standing in the Benbow Inn. There are two tables right next to each other, and Billy Bones is sitting at one of them with Gonzo and Rizzo behind the other. “And no one knows to this day what happened to the treasure, or the treasure map,” Billy says to your sidekicks. (By the way, Billy Bones is still played by Billy Connolly. How cool is that?) Then he turns to you and says, “Maybe you’ll find ‘em. Eh, Hawkins? …Hawkins?” Apparently incredibly entertained that no matter how loudly you answer, he’ll never hear you, Billy bursts into laughter. It’s about at this point that we start hearing some nice instrumental background music strongly reminiscent of “Something Better.”

“Tell us another story, Mr. Bones. My favorite’s the one about the one-legged man!” Gonzo says.

“Oh… the one-legged MAN! I told ye never to mention that cursed beast. Now get back there and finish brewin’ me stew. I feel the horrors comin’ on. Be GOIN’!”

“The horrors—oh, I think I’ll be goin’ now,” Rizzo says to you, and he shudders as follows Gonzo into the kitchen. We hear Gonzo’s distant laughter as dishes clank around in the kitchen, which apparently makes Billy angry, because he stands up and storms into the kitchen.

There’s a drastic change in music as the top half of the door opens and Blind Pew walks past, waving his stick around. We can see him through the door and the window as he says, “Ah! Billy Bones, it’s ME! Blind PEW! Come to settle a SCORE!” Then he laughs as he leaves our sight, but we do hear him crash into something.

Once Pew is gone, the top half of the door magically closes again, and Billy trudges out of the kitchen and up the stairs, adjusting something in his pocket. When he’s well out of sight and the music has stopped, we hear him shout (in a manner far less dramatic and drawn-out than in the movie), “THE BLACK SPOT! NO!”

Then Stevenson appears on the railing on the second floor, and we can finally start to actually play.

Some sound effects set the mood. We can hear the fire crackling in the fireplace—a fire we can catch a tiny glimpse of behind a table if nothing else is happening on screen. Once in a while, we hear thunder outside, or multiple men laughing, or Blind Pew laughing, or some dishes being handled in the kitchen. Every thirty seconds or so, a pirate from the movie will walk past the window, each accompanied by a different piece of music with varying levels of creepiness. You may see Mad Monty, Clueless Morgan, Angel Marie, or Spotted Dick. If one of them is walking past—or, really, when anything is happening on screen during the game—your cursor disappears until it’s over, meaning you can’t do anything, which is a little annoying sometimes.

At any point in the game, if you move your cursor to the top-left corner of the screen, it will change into a musical note. (A sixteenth note, to be exact.) Click, and you will get music until the next time you click somewhere else. Here, it’s an abridged instrumental of “Shiver My Timbers,” and it also stops the pirates from wandering by every thirty seconds.

But now that we’re free to use our mouse, what do we do with it? Well, there are all sorts of things we can click. The lamest one is to click on the stack of dishes we can see in the kitchen, which briefly shifts and makes some dish-noises. Slightly less-lame is to click on the fireplace, which creates an entirely pointless but nifty-looking puff of smoke. The rest of the things you can click are much more fun.

One of my personal favorites as a kid was to click the sign above the kitchen, which reads “Benbow Inn 1875.” When you click on it, a dish comes flying across the screen with a neat whooshing noise, and as soon as it’s out of sight, you hear it crash into smithereens. Your dish may be a bowl, plate, or cup, and may fly at varying heights.

You can also click on the kitchen doorpost to hear Rizzo raiding the kitchen. His comments are on random, so they’re not always consistent. You can hear “Where’s the food? No leftovers leftover!” and then hear “Ooh, cheese! And it turned all brown and yummy!” You can also hear him worry, “Geez, the refrigerator’s almost empty” before you hear him contentedly sigh, “Mmm! So much food, so little time.”

If you click on the table closest to the kitchen, a variety of things can happen. One, a random pig can come out and snootily say, “With those tall tales of his, Billy is a bigger ham than we are! Hm!” before he trots back into the kitchen with his snout in the air. Two, a different random pig can come out and chuckle, “Huh! Buried treasure… Ah, don’t believe ol’ Billy. I’ll tell ya, the whole matter’s hogwash—uh, if you’ll pardon the expression.” He laughs before he goes back into the kitchen. (I have no idea why Hawkins—or anyone, for that matter—is allowing all these customers into the kitchen.) Three, Gonzo and Rizzo poke their heads out and stare up towards the stairs. “Looks like Mr. Bones is checked out for the evening,” Rizzo says, to which Gonzo answers, “Boy, y’know he hardly ever sleeps in his room anymore!” Rizzo chuckles as they tuck themselves back into the kitchen.

Or four, and the best if you ask me, a tourist rat couple you may recognize from the movie come out in front of the table. (Everyone else was behind it.) In the movie, they briefly danced in front of the Electric Mayhem on the Hispaniola and later commented on the show and the food during Boom Sha-ka-la-ka. Their names are apparently Donna and Randy, and they’re already decked out in Hawaiian shirts and leis as they sing, “There’s gotta be somethin’ bettah… somethin’ bettah!”

“Yeah—there’s gotta be somethin’ bettah than this place,” Randy says.

“Maybe we’ll find it on our vacation! Bristol, here we come!” Donna says excitedly. “Did you remember the traveler’s checks?”

As their back-up music suddenly turns tropical, Randy says, “Don’t leave this place, without ‘em!” They laugh as they trot off to the right.

If you click on the window that pirates keep passing, the top of the door magically opens itself and Blind Pew creeps past with his creepy music. (He really creeped me out when I was a kid, so all this creeping that’s hilarious now was really nerve-wracking back then.) He might repeat what he said earlier about settling a score, or he might call, “Billy Bones! It’s your old pal, come to see you! HA! See you! Zat’s a joke! I cannot see!” He laughs particularly hard before leaving our sight and crashing into something outside. Or he might say, “Mm… I know you’re in zere, Billy… I can smell your breath, way out here!” And then of course he laughs, and we hear him crash into something outside.

Since clicking on the window puts us right next to the door, I will mention that putting your cursor over the door makes the cursor into an arrow pointing out and makes a green EXIT sign light up above the door. Yes, you can go outside, but I’m playing this in the longest way possible to show you all the intricacies of the game, so we’ll get there later.

Another click-option is the moose head above the fireplace. Oh yes, he’s the same moose head from the movie, and he’s another one of my favorites. Now, he can be a remarkably lame click that only results in him looking around. Or he can be funny and sneeze. Or, he can pull out a lovely British accent and deliver one of the following three gems:

"Hmm, let's see... Rats... Geeks... Scurvy pirates... Yup! Just another ORDINARY night at the BENBOW Inn!"

“You know, my brother’s on the wall of the HARVARD club! Hm… Mom always said he had a head for school.”

“You’re expecting Bullwinkle?”

I have no idea who performed him for the game and gave him that lovely voice and accent, but I have missed the moose head.

And I’ve missed Stevenson even more, so let’s click on him. On most screens, he has multiple things to say. When he runs out of things to say, he gives a quick “AND I repeat” before appearing on screen to talk. My intention is to give you as much of Stevenson’s dialogue as possible, because he’s just too wonderful a character to remain unknown.

The first time we click him, he says: “Follow Billy, okay? Why? Treasure Island? Buried treasure? A treasure MAP? Get the connection? There WILL be a quiz!” And he makes a cute little parrot noise before he goes.

The second time, he says: “A better idea. You want a better idea? Well I say: Follow the pirate!” That last line is delivered in an exciting whisper and punctuated once more with a parrot noise.

That’s all he has to say here, and since we are playing in the longest way possible, we’ll listen to him. When we roll our cursor over the stairs or ceiling, it turns into an up arrow. Click, and upstairs we go.

Can you tell that this is going to be a very long series?

The Epic CD-ROM Family Adventure: Part 1

Never fear, readers! The Intern has triumphed once more over The British Correspondent. We'll Let Ryan decide how to deal with him later, but in the mean time, this week has gotten me in the mood for pirates, and I happen to have a new piratey series to begin. Remember the Muppet Treasure Island computer game? No? You didn't even know such a thing existed? Well, that's why I'm here to enlighten you.

The Epic CD-ROM Family Adventure: Part 1

Lisa Alexander - In 1996, Activision produced the 3-disc Windows PC game “Muppet Treasure Island” on CD-ROM to tie in with the release of the movie by the same name. I loved this game as a kid and played it endlessly until my family got a new computer that didn’t have the game installed, and my dad said our old games wouldn’t work on this new computer. It was years before I found out that you can adjust some color-settings to make the game work on Windows XP, and by that time, I had already moved on to Vista. Luckily, Mom’s new netbook runs XP.

Getting back to the game after so many years is great. This was really my introduction to The Muppets, and now that I’ve joined the ranks of Obsessed Muppet Fans, I have an even greater appreciation for it. But sadly, it seems to me that even most Obsessed Muppet Fans aren’t aware of the game. It’s chock-full of Muppety goodness, so I thought I would share.

The top of the jewel case proclaims this to be “The Epic CD-ROM Family Adventure,” and it’s just exactly that; it’s family-friendly, it’s an adventure, it’s on CD-ROM, and did I mention that it is totally EPIC? So please, join me as I take us on an Epic CD-ROM Family Adventure.

First we see a rusty-looking door inscribed with Muppet Treasure Island—the fancy script from the opening credits. The cheerful music can eventually get old. There’s also a rusty speaker above the right corner of the door—presumably the source of the music.

Parchment-posters hang to either side of the door on the graffiti-covered wall. The one on the left reads “Starring Kermit the Frog as Captain Smollet” and of course has a drawn picture of Kermit as Smollet. The one on the right reads “Starring Miss Piggy as Benjamina Gunn” and shows Miss Piggy with a pearl-and-feather headdress, peaking out from behind two big jungle leaves. (The diva gets scenery, you see.)

To the left of the door, there’s a blue button that says “More.” I wonder if anyone ever clicks it. To the right, there’s a red button that says “Quit.” On the door itself, there’s a green button that says “Play” (unless you haven’t installed it, in which case it says “Install”) and it’s flashing at us, so we’d better click it.

It’s not the first time we’ve played, so Stevenson the Parrot (Named for author Robert Louis Stevenson, of course) greets us. “Hey Hawkins! Nice to see you again!” Then he slips off the screen and narrates as each button he mentions pops out at us. “If you want start an adventure from the very beginning, tap the “New” button! If you want to load a saved adventure, tap the “Load” button. If you want to explore your favorite world, tap the button for that world! If you want to leave your adventure, tap the “Quit” button.” (The first time you play, you skip all of this and go straight into a New Game.)

We’re obviously in a backstage-sort of area. Most of the buttons are TV screens, except for “Quit,” which is one of those giant switches that should power down everything. There are cords and weights just waiting to go into action… or gathering dust. It’s hard to tell. Meanwhile, whoever’s running the music seems to have ADD (and I can say that, because I have ADD, too). The music keeps changing mid-song between various instrumentals from the game and movie in no particular order. I just heard the same snippet of “Something Better” twice in a row. And then we go back to what’s supposed to be tropical island music.

Let’s get on with it and click “New Game.” The scene suddenly gets much brighter as the “New Game” screen goes to static and (barely) reveals Bunsen and Beaker. Beaker points us out to Bunsen, and the static bounces them up and down the screen as they try to talk. “Oh, welcome! I am Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, and this is my assistant, Beaker!”

“Memememo!”

The screen goes static again, and a stage-manager-type-voice calls from off-screen, “Yeah excuse me Dr. Honeydew?” (Which sounds more like “Dr. Honday-loo”) “We need Beaker in Bristol RIGHT away!” Beaker promptly shoots across the screen, much like his entrance in the movie. “Opsie-doodle! Thank you sir,” the stage-manager-type voice calls out as Beaker crashes off-screen. “Ah, Mr. Kermit? Yeah, come one out and ah, introduce yourself to Hawkins? Thank you, sir.”

The door opens, but Kermit (dressed as Captain Smollet) slides in from the right of the screen to stand in front of it. He barely says “Hi-ho and WELCOME to The Game” before Fozzie (dressed as Squire Trelawney) comes out from the left of the screen.

“Hey, Kermit! I got some great new pirate jokes for The Game!”

“Well not now, Fozzie, you see we’re—“

“Wait, wait! Did you hear the one about the pirate who kept falling down? They called him—Black-and-Blue Beard! Ahh! Wocka wocka!”

“Any more jokes like THAT, Fozzie, and you’ll wocka wocka the plank!”

“Hey—that’s FUN-NY! Can I use that?”

“Uh, sure. But first you have to take your place in Bristol.”

This time, they actually use the door as Kermit herds a reluctant bear out of the first room and pushes a button to make sure they actually go where they’re headed. In theory, anyway. He moves his arm as if to push a button, but the animation doesn’t quite match up.

The stage-manager type voice makes itself known again. “Okay, now where’s the parrot? Ah ha! STEVENSON! You’re the HELP character! Go  and—HELP already!”

Stevenson clears his throat before he pops up in the bottom-left hand corner of the screen (where he will always be if we can see him talking to us). “Hiya, Hawkins! Hey, welcome to The Game! Now I know you’re asking yourself, ‘Self? Why is this parrot calling me Hawkins? Wasn’t he the hero of Treasure Island?’ Right, right, WRONG! YOU’RE the new Hawkins and HERO, and I’m your Stevenson. I’ll be on my perch.” He zooms off, and then hurries back to tell us more. “Here’s something else—just tap on me once if you need any help. Tap on me twice if you’re ready to see your stuff. Anytime you’re ready, I’M ready.”

Stevenson leaves again, and Kermit comes rushing back in through the door, apparently successful in depositing Fozzie. “OKAY START THE OPENING! YAAAY!” he shouts in his oh-so-Kermity-way, and he lets out a little “Bope!” to give the button a sound effect on his way out, which is absolutely adorable because the button already has a sound effect. The opening credits start, and we presumably follow Kermit through the door for a better look.

The opening credits have the same font as the opening credits in the movie. They show against a black screen as Billy Bones tells us the same story he tells just before “Shiver My Timbers” plays in the movie. An instrumental version plays in the background. All of the characters in the game are the same as in the movie, except at the very end:

Introducing Stevenson

As

Your Adventure Parrot

And starring

YOU

As Hawkins!

The music ends with the instrumental version of that last, “Dead men tell no tales!” And the screen goes black.

The Game has begun.