Hey! Welcome to the Game Dungeon!
Today we have a special episode. Now in making this series, I admit there's a certain allure to finding a
game the Internet's never seen before. I've only pulled that off
once and that was just luck. But the thing is, while I'm
sure there are some more games people have never seen before,
they're probably not that great. If anything, "Bip Bop" is a
perfect example of what to expect when you're talking about an unheard-of game, because, y'know...it's kind of understandable
that this almost got lost to time. There's not too many of the old frontiers
left in gaming. We have to find new ones. So today, I'm NOT bringing
you an undiscovered game, but I'm bringing the next best thing. But first, let's rewind a little bit. When I covered "Nyet III", I couldn't...or
rather, I didn't WANT to beat it, so I let you guys tackle it instead. Well some of you tore into that in a
matter of hours and unveiled the ending, which I showed on the follow-up episode. In that, they gave us a clue--in
German--about their next game. Since that was developed by Proline Software, I deduced they referring to "Die Höhlenwelt-Saga: Der
leuchtende Kristall" or something. But lo and behold, that game is German
only, and I still don't speak German. It seems that's becoming an
increasing liability on this show. Anyway, viewer Barry Rowe does,
and he took this to heart. Not only did he crack open
access to some of the game files, but then he went on
to create his own software to translate THE ENTIRE GAME into English! Yeah, that's right! I'm not
bringing you an undiscovered game. I'm bringing you an undiscovered
game to everyone except Germans. I mean, this is really all
Barry; I'm just a loudspeaker. But man, we've got some
causality going on here. Since I showed Nyet III, you guys beat it, then I showed the ending, which led
us to Barry unlocking it for us. I guess this all works because nobody
had the time travel to do this. Whatever. Gaming history's
getting made now. I'm excited. This is like uncovering a lost temple in
the jungle that only Germans have been to. And even then, it's not a LOT of Germans. So buckle up! We're going to be
the first non-Germans to go inside and find out what this game's about. And this is no Bip Bop. We have professional art, a full
story, German voice acting... This is a real production on par with
some of the best 1994 had to offer. As I say this, I have not played this game. And YOU haven't played this
game...unless you're German. This is as good as game
discoveries get...for non-Germans. Let's go! [Subtitles by danielsangeo] Before we begin, I want to emphasize I know nothing about this
game except some screenshots. All I know is we have a
space trucker and dinosaurs. So, you know what that means.
That means this game has promise. Is this going to be like a cross between
"Space Truckers" and "Jurassic Park"? That could be a real shot in
the arm for games in general. Because while there's no
shortage of dinosaur games, space trucker games are few and far between. Now granted, there ARE a lot of space games that have you move cargo from Point A
to Point B, but that's not what I mean. Those don't give us any culture. I want to see you stop as Space
Waffle House for breakfast, come across a fight at a Space Road House, on long hauls, wonder if your wife
is cheating on you back planetside. You don't get that from most space games. We'll see what we get here. There's
a chance we might hit pay dirt. Okay, let's begin. [music] [music]
Oh, and you hear that? [music] Yeah! 44 kilohertz CD audio music! That means no compromises in the music
for games from this time. Hell yes. So we start off and we're space trucking.
This is exactly what I want to see. ["Eric 'Speedy' MacDoughan ist Raumpilot. ["Mit kleinen kurier und fracht
aufträgern verdient--"] Okay, pause, pause. We have
to make a quick pit stop. I'm as eager to get going as you are, but I need to explain what
you're about to witness. Barry's software "ZTranslate"
works by scanning the screen and trying to identify text
when it recognizes a pattern. So the German isn't changed in-game; it's his software intercepting
and translating it. What's more is, this is
kind of a fussy program. At first I ran it off the hard
drive. That was a mistake. It hammered it and led to the whole
system stalling every now and then. That was solved by moving it to my SSD, but the program still runs at
100% single-thread CPU usage. So it's huffing and puffing. Oh, speaking of which, I've
always wondered about this. Modern CPUs have multiple
cores, so in theory-- IN THEORY! --if I'm running a program that's
designed to use just one core with a program like ZTranslate,
and I still have available memory, then if I run another program
on the remaining cores, everything else should still
be buttery-smooth, right, as long as I'm not exceeding my CPU capacity? Well, in the real
world...uh...sometimes. Other times, no. That one program finds a way
to slow everything else down. I've never understood why
that does or does not happen. From my perspective, I may as
well be angering the computer gods because of an insufficient offering. Anyway, what this means is we need
to run ZTranslate, the game itself, AND screen-recording software
all at the same time. Yeah, this episode is
going to be fun to edit. Long story short, this is what
it looks like in real time. So yeah, while this may as
well be magic, it's slow magic. So I'm just going to have
to make judgment calls when to give you the
silky-smooth German footage, OR the choppy and stuttering English. This is going to be a little janky, but hey, you open up a lost temple,
you have to cut through the cobwebs. Plus, I don't know why, but I have a certain respect for software
that is really inefficient and finicky, but is also performing small
miracles that nothing else does. Okay! Truck stop's over!
Onto the game now, for real! Back to space trucking, we
get an eleven minute intro, and it goes over a lot. So
here's the abridged version. We play Eric "Speedy" MacDoughan, and I'm sorry, but I'm not
going to call him "Speedy". That name is claimed in my brain by
Speedy Gonzales. He was there first. Anyway, he's a down-on-his-luck
space trucker. Of course he is. But the one thing going for him is he
met the woman of his dreams: Maomi. They were hitting things off great, but
then on vacation, she just disappeared. Since then, he's been looking
for her for over a year, until finally he got some info that she
was seen hanging around a strange being, and got into a ship with him and took off. Yeah, okay. This is a
good space trucker story. Your woman goes missing, then she's last
seen cruising around with some alien. What the hell? Well, we're going to have to
sort THAT out one way or another. So now we're heading towards
the mystery ship's destination. The game doesn't say how we got any of this
information or knew where it was going, but whatever, that's not important. Hey, look! Part of the game is in English! This isn't a translation;
this is the original game! So we find the ship, then we
find the guy who took Maomi. Wow, this might be a short game. His name's Cal. Well,
what's he got that I don't? Okay, the game says he did NOT kidnap her. Well... That's a start, but I think most
women look for more than that in a guy. Next he says there's a fabulous
planet beneath the surface. I guess that's why this game
is called "The Cave World". But then aggressive lizard people
came and conquered it 1,000 years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where's Maomi? Next, he says he's the ultimate
weapon against the lizard people, and is an android, I guess? Maomi
left me for an android?! Jesus... His creator got betrayed and Cal
had to flee before he was finished. Then Maomi found them and now
she's joined the rebels. What? MacDoughan says he's going to rescue her, and Cal here says I "know nothing of the
caveworld". I guess he's got me there. Now his creator is working on making
a special drug that's a small crystal. Yeah, we have those on my planet, too. Then Cal asks me to go get the
drugs, and meet up with the rebels, and tells me I'll be a hero. Oh yeah! That all sounds
like it's on the up-and-up. Isn't that kind of what
we did during the Contras? I don't know, MacDoughan. This
has trouble written all over it. It sounds Maomi has some serious baggage.
She did you a favor by disappearing. But he's in love so what are you going to do? Then Cal says he needs to
recharge, and now I'm on my own. So what we have here is a
fish out of water trucker stumbling into some mystical underworld, huh? Okay. Not a bad influence to be working with. And the game starts. It's your
standard graphic adventure. Just look at and interact with everything
and hope something will make sense. We'll see how far I get on my own. Now as I play this, I don't know
if this is more LucasArts-style, where you can indeed beat the game, or Sierra-style, where you can screw yourself and not realize it until hours
later. I guess we'll find out! Now this may be a little frustrating
to watch because there's a delay as I'm waiting for the translation
to kick in as I look at things. So it's kind of like talking to people on
the moon. I'm used to this sort of thing. It doesn't help though that MacDoughan
takes his time to walk everywhere. Newer adventure games will let you double-
click to hurry up, but this is old school. Well, if you're going to be a space trucker, the one thing you need to have is patience. And I should mention that
there's a bug with ZTranslate where it will chop off
the bottom of the screen. This means some text I
don't get a translation of. Let's hope nothing crucial
appears down there. See, this is what I mean. I feel like I'm getting the full
game explorer experience here. We are going where no
non-German has gone before. Anyway, while no one can ever really
be good at 90s adventure games, I'm making progress, and we have one
point so far for LucasArts-style. I try to press a red
button and MacDoughan says, "Hmm... I think that would up being
fatal if I pressed it right now." Ah. So that's the airlock. A Sierra game would NEVER stop you from spacing yourself by
pressing the wrong button. Well, it turns out, it's not space;
it's just a toxic atmosphere, so all I need is an air mask. And speaking of which, I know I can't
be the first person to think this, but this has bothered me
ever since I was a kid. You know, in the "Empire Strikes Back", where Han Solo lands in the asteroid
tunnel that ends up being a giant worm? Well, in that, they just
walk out with air masks. But wait a minute. They flew
in. The worm's mouth was open. Shouldn't they be walking into a pure vacuum? It's still just an asteroid in space.
An air mask isn't going to cut it. Yeah, yeah, it's science-fantasy, but
it's like they're not even trying there. What's the point in setting
things in space if it's not space? Anyway, I got stuck here at
first, but then I remembered I hit the green button that I
didn't know what it did twice. So how could hitting it a
third time not be the answer? Tada! The cargo bay. Let's go inside! ...uh... ...yeah... Inside, we have a workshop, and I'm
assuming I'll need this moon buggy. Oh, and if I go and LOOK
at the generator here... OH! Moment of truth! Yeah,
get a good look, MacDoughan. And he gets back up! So this is most-definitely
NOT a Sierra-style game. They would NEVER let
something like that slide. Now we still don't know if we
can screw ourselves game-wise, but I'm leaning towards LucasArts-style if the game doesn't even have the guts to
kill MacDoughan in the first five minutes. Regardless, here we run into problems. I look at and interact with
everything I possibly can. I hit this lever multiple times,
still don't know what it does... I remove a wheel-block
keeping the buggy in place... I find a battery, figure
out how to charge it... I keep trying to use the cockpit. I can't... Then it hits me! I left the key
back on the ship! Let's go get it. ...ehhh... Yeah, I'll skip ahead for you... Got the key, walk back out... ...ugh, yeah... Hey! The cargo bay's closed! I need to keep the key in the slot
in order to access the cargo bay! How the hell am I supposed
to move the buggy then? I tried pushing it multiple times. It
keeps telling me I don't have something. I'm pretty sure it's the battery,
but how do I put that in the car? I may as well be a caveman banging
the battery against the side! In fact, there's an option here which
I think means to blow up the battery, but I don't know for sure
since the translation clips. MacDoughan gets excited about the wheels. Okay...? I try the battery on the buggy, the
cockpit, the WHEELS, the workbench... Okay, I'm calling it. This is as
far as I can get without hints. I just can't figure it out. So I made it three screens. That's about
average for me for games from this time. People will talk about the
"good old days of gaming", and there's something to be said for that, but
I do not miss this. This is the other half. Okay, so it's walkthrough time, except no
walkthrough exists for this in English. This is going to be interesting. I'll start with the basics. "Walkthrough". Okay, let's see how that goes. "Push of a button (in
the cockpit) the bonnet." What? What button? I must've
checked the cockpit ten times! OH MY GOD! There IS a button! I somehow missed that the entire time I
was racking my brain in the cargo hold. Yeah, of COURSE I can figure this out now! And look at this. Even once the hood is open, it still doesn't work
when I insert the battery. There is a tiny sliver which you barely
notice as the slot INSIDE the hood. Now that is nothing unusual whatsoever
for games from this time, but man... It doesn't cease to amaze me. Even if this is German, it speaks the
universal language of Go Buy the Hint Guide. Well, that was the ticket,
I shove the buggy out, NOW I get the key, and we're off. MacDoughan reaches our destination, we
get a nice little transition screen, and--Oh no... We have a maze... Oh, and it's not JUST a maze.
Look, there's a book there. Of COURSE we're going to need those items. All right. This is going to take us a while. No, excuse me. This is
going to take ME a while. This is the price you pay for going in first. YOU get the easy version. vvvvrrrrIIIIIIIP! We make it WITH the items. What a great time to save my game. Ja, I would like to save my game. Ahh... So now we go through an airlock, because the game understands that
just because we're deep in the caves, the air isn't any more
breathable than on the surface. I mean, if it was an atmosphere density
thing, then that might be the case, but this was a vacuum. Just saying. And here is the cave world! Okay, I know it's getting old of
me applying science to fantasy, but this is another pet peeve of mine. We're inside the planet now. Cool. That's a nice blue sky.
Where's the light coming from? Yeah, we're just going to ignore that. "Torin's Passage" did the same thing. See, it's not that I'm
expecting realism from fantasy, it's that if you're going to break the
laws of physics in a really obvious way, give me something to go on. Like, okay, there's light down here
because it's magic. That's all I need. This isn't something only a
specialist would know about. Most people understand
that if you go underground and block the sun, things get dark, and there's goblins and...ah,
well, I'm just being nitpicky. Let's see what's here. Uh oh! Lizard people! I'll sort this out. Ah, he doesn't want me
talking to the prisoner. Y'know, if we're really operating
on LucasArts rules, I can't lose. So how about we DON'T play this smart? I'm going to keep insulting this officer. I'm not too impressed by
these insults, MacDoughan. I would expect better from a trucker.
Whatever. Let's just keep pushing. Yes, I DO have a death wish, actually. Let's see you do something
about it, tough guy. Ah hah! We did it! You CAN die in this game. Whoa, I didn't have time to read
that. Maybe that's an emulation bug. Thankfully we got it on video. Okay, well I guess I won't do that again.
Time to load. I'll try the guard this time. He doesn't say much, just keeps stressing
out that "the dragon is coming". Whatever. Unfortunately, I can't go down to the
platform, so I guess it's back to the hut. Hi! Me again. Well, I tried some more dialog options. Nothing really pans out, except this time, I DON'T insult him when he says he's
giving me one more chance to live. This is how wisdom works, kids. Unfortunately, I'm at a dead end, which... Oh, great. Something's happening
just from me wasting time. Perfect. Okay, the giant pterodactyl shows up. That's obviously where the
action is. Let's check it out. And here are. Before I get
a chance to talk to anyone, the pilot asks me if I want to go to
Wahringen or Südmeerfleck. Uhhh... Südmeerfleck it is! Well it doesn't matter. He wants
money and I don't have any. That makes me a criminal now,
so he throws me into the brig. Oh hey! Remember me? She's all doom and gloom,
says we're going to jail, and then later, she's going to be
sold as a slavegirl to a collie. Wait, what? I though the
lizard-people were in charge. Do I need to dust off
the Dog Monarchy award? Too early to tell. I'll hold off for now. Anyway, she won't shut up about dragons. "Every child knows that the Dragon
Masters once had the best dragon breeds. "The Drakken want to
forbid our dragon flying. "When the dragon masters all
disappeared, then the Dragon Islands--" All right, all right. I get it. Dragons. She's pretty somber, but she
lightens up and calls me cute when I say I'll bust her out of
prison. Works every time, guys. ["Nicht jedoch so, wie es
sich der hoffnungsfrohe..."] Ah! Voice acting. It's just telling us what we already know. We arrive at the warden's office, I try to bluff him, it doesn't go well. So as a Hail Mary, the translator breaks
down so naturally I choose that response. "And now off with you to the slammer!" Man... So here we are in jail. Well, this wouldn't be the first
game jail I've broken out of, and it probably won't be the last. "I don't think yelling 'Tear down
this wall!' is going to work." Ah, we have some 80s humor there. Alright. Oh, look at that. A dirt
floor. Yeah, we've got this. Well, there's no real talent
to what I'm doing here. It's just the usual
try-literally-everything methodology. I managed to smash my cot,
throw food against the wall, use a stick with rice mush to get the key... This is standard adventure game fare. Even though it...uh...
took me a little while. But even after all of that, I am stuck! I stole the key to my cell
from the sleeping guard, but of course, when I click it
on the door, it doesn't work. I try opening the door, thinking, hey,
even though that didn't work earlier, maybe now it does because I have the key. No... I start going around in circles
again, slowly losing my mind. I cannot figure it out. Okay, I really tried. Let's
see what the hints say. "Without losing a lot of time, he opens the
cell door and sneaks out into the hallway. "Incidentally, the key can also be
used open the back, small door." ...what the hell does that
mean? HOW DO I OPEN THE DOOR?! WHY DO I NEED A HINT GUIDE
TO OPEN THE DOOR?! See look! I use the key on... What?! I DID THAT! I DID THAT ALREADY! I HAVE PROOF! See?! Here's the footage
of the key not working! Dyeh...! Whatever. I'll take it. Don't
look a gift horse in the mouth. I'm still not sure what happened, but I am
someone who can take 'yes' for an answer. This whole incident reminds me of
another game: "Press X to Not Die". ["C'mon! I can do this!"] After breaking out, we still
need to get passed the guard. Now, after SAVING MY GAME in case
the key gods stop smiling upon me, I decide to cause more trouble. Well, the guard takes your key
and moves you to a different cell. And guess what? You're screwed. You can walk around but since there is
no way to win the game at this point, the game ends once you try the
same things you did last time. So this WOULD be another
point for Sierra-style, except I'm only giving half a point
since the game warns me not to do that, plus the time between doing something dumb versus getting screwed by it is
maybe thirty seconds, not FOUR HOURS. So this doesn't really count. The vibe I'm starting to get from The
Cave World is that it's like a Sierra game if Sierra games were designed by sane people. Anyway, I find another way around the guard. Getting some "King's Quest V"
flashbacks here. I inspect more cells and, hey-hey!
Look who it is! It's Sullen Lady. I'll save you from the collies. "Ah... I'm from the gas works and wanted
to know if I could check the meter. "Gotta file a report here." She's surprised and less reserved about
attacking the guard than MacDoughan. So she smuggles us out of here pretending
to be one, with me as the prisoner. We get another nice transition, then we're riding on a military transport
pterodactyl this time, not a civilian one. Here the game gets weird. I can't talk to the soldiers. If I look at the lizard man, the text
says, "I would rather not irritate him." So naturally your only
option is to irritate him. You can even try to blow your cover
on purpose, which I find fascinating. 'This officer is not an officer!' "This man is not a man!"
You can laugh manically... If you insult him, then
yep, back to jail, forever. The conversations frequently loop
back on themselves endlessly, but it's really just a
trial-and-error process. Maybe something is being
lost in the translation, but it all feels kind of insane. "It's a matter of TASTE!" Get it? Uhh... "Why does this guy say so much nonsense?" "I do not know, officer." Anyway, the whole thing was just
a stall tactic so we can jump off. Sure, let's go. Taste the ground! We make it! ...then we immediately follow-up with ANOTHER semi-insane infinite
looping conversation where I try to tell Sullen Lady I'm
looking for the rebels so I can find Maomi, but the game won't let me do that. I hope we don't have more of these. Anyway, she says she has to return to
her people and I can't come with her. I'm not sure I blame her. So, time to wander. I have to say, this part
of the game is gorgeous. What a nice day for being underground! Alright, that's it. I'm
going out on a limb here and saying the game is
never going to explain this. Prove me wrong, game! So we head into a town,
which takes...a while. ...Eric "Speedy" MacDoughan, everyone... ..."Speedy" MacDoughan... I, of course, proceed to look
at and interact with everything. In a nearby bar, I have the
option of ordering drinks, but you know what? I've gone
to jail multiple times now, I really don't want to go back, so I'm not going to drink here for free. Lucky for me some guy at the bar
offers to pay me to deliver a package. Fine. I'm not even
going to ask any questions. I find the recipients: three
brothers hanging out at the airfield who are apparently burgeoning Marxists. Whatever. Here's your mail. Looks like it's sneezing powder. They offer to pay me for revenge. Sure, let them pay me first, though. But after going back to get the money, I think we may have crossed a line, guys. You see, once I have the money, I'm pretty sure I need to spend it on some
of these pies to throw in the guy's face to get revenge for the brothers. If I buy the pies, though, I can't actually
use them and the dialog goes nowhere. But here's the thing: I could ALSO spend
my money on some other items at the store, OR just spend it at the
bar and drink it all away. I'm not 100% here, but I think this is the
turning point where you screw yourself. If you spend your money at the bar, I think
this means you can't complete the game AND the game won't tell you. You're screwed. So the votes are in: This
is a PURE Sierra-style game. Not a drop of LucasArts DNA in this. Now granted, this isn't nearly as egregious
as some of the crap Sierra games have pulled, and this is relatively avoidable, but that
doesn't matter--a line has been crossed. If the game is willing to do this to me, all bets are off with how
fair it's going to be. I HAVE to consult the walkthrough now. Um... I'll just say...I figured it
out, but it slowed me down. Oh, and look at this. I missed the
glove while talking to the brothers. Yeah, the glove.
How could I have missed that? Oh, and while I checked this out
earlier, I didn't look under THIS rock. Yeah, I only looked at
some of the other rocks. Look under the rock, dummy. Yeah, look under the rock
to find the police badge. Yeah, okay. That's what I thought.
This game's showing its true colors. And on top of that, we may be
breaking records here. I'm not sure. While the scenery is wonderful, this might be the slowest mandatory walk
I've ever seen in a graphic adventure game. I clocked it. If I want to get
from the mountains to the airfield, it takes me over a minute and a half. There might be slower ones; I
do not underestimate this genre. In fact, I even have a piece
of a map I found in a cave. Gee, who would ever want to use
that to fast travel? Not us! It doesn't do anything! No shortcuts! But back to the mountains, since we can
afford climbing gear now, we scale them. Huh, looks more like a giant mesa. And despite the riveting view as I
scramble from bush to bush along the cliff, I wasn't able to figure out
how to kill myself here, so, no death sequence. Sorry, guys. Towards the top, we find a
cave, and look! It's a dragon! Yeah, I mean, that's a dragon. I was calling this one a pterodactyl, but
I'm wrong. The skull's the wrong shape, but it's some kind of pterosaur. The game calls these dragons, but
give me a break. This is a dinosaur. But yeah, THIS is a dragon. It's got
that horned skull thing going on. I'm glad we cleared that up. I have a long conversation with
the dragon with branching paths. It just shrieks. [shriek] Now I checked the walkthrough
for this next part. Apparently the correct move here
is to knock it out with a rock, so you can dislodge a thorn in its tooth. Yeah, throw a rock at it.
Adventure game-logic, guys. Now the dragon is hungry, but I spotted
some nuts earlier so we need to get those. Back down the mountain... ...this takes forever... ...seriously... ...then off to get the nuts. Ah hah! Now we're acting like a Sierra game! But after that, I got stuck here because the walkthrough said I
need to pick up the 'dragon fire'. What, this stuff I almost
missed? The dragon flakes? It doesn't work. Oh, turns out I didn't
attend the dragon conference. Yeah, the dragon conference. I forgot to mention, the entire
damned town was talking about that. A policeman promoting it, a poster, a
scalper at the airfield selling tickets... This is apparently a big deal that
only happens once every four years, where dragon trainers talk about
raising dragons to the public, even though the people think it's
about as boring as it sounds to me. What's more is, after buying my ticket,
nobody even checks it at the door. Anyway, it's not exciting. It just fills us
in on a couple details we needed to know. Oh, and I had to go ALL THE WAY BACK
DOWN from the cave to get to the town. I clocked it again. At first, I went to the scalper. Yeah,
that only took me 2 minutes and 55 seconds of unskippable walking to reach him. I'm serious. This might be a record, guys. Let me know if you've seen a longer
sequence of unskippable walking required in an adventure game
where nothing else happens. No action, no dialog, all you
do is sit and watch him walk. This gets an award. Oh, and speaking of the
local culture, remember Cal? Well he has near holy status here. He is such an iconic figure here that it's
a common phrase to say "Cal be with you." Everyone knows who he is. I can't help but think MacDoughan was
a little hasty coming here on his own. If he had waited for Cal to recharge,
things might've gone down a lot differently. To put this in perspective, say your
girlfriend went missing in Rio de Janeiro, and you didn't know anyone or
anything about the culture there. Would you rather look for
her completely on your own, or have Jesus Christ Himself come
along with you to give you a hand? That's the amount of pull
Cal seems to have down here. But back to the game... Of
course, from the tavern, I have to head ALL THE WAY
BACK UP to the dragon... ...gah... NOW I can pick up the dragon flakes. Then I head HEAD BACK DOWN the cliff again, throw it at the monster
to get it to look away, grab the nuts, SCALE THE CLIFF AGAIN, then we feed the dragon, become
best friends, and off we go. So we make it...uh...somewhere...
Wherever the dragon wanted to go, I guess. Works for me. And we have a lost isolated
temple by the jungle! Wow, that metaphor from the
beginning is paying off! This is exactly the sort
of thing I was thinking of. Remember, you guys are the
first non-Germans to see this. Inside is a dragon statue. That's about it. Ah well. "I hope that people like
me are tolerated here." I doubt it. Upon leaving, we meet some sort of hermit
who's upset that we're trespassing. Typical hermit. Turns out, he's the guy Sullen Lady told us
to meet, and he knows where Maomi might be. Right on. He gives me another chunk of my map, too, and warns me that these are very
precious as the Drakken have banned maps! Wow, what kind of monsters are these? And NOW we can fast travel
because we have a dragon! All right. I get it now. So off we go to Berg-Wolkenheim. We park our dragon, get some info, and learn that Maomi is being
held captive by the barkeep. That means we're red-hot close now. I trick him into letting me see her
by pretending money is no object for his outrageously-priced rooms, and tada! It's Maomi! She is surprised, but not that happy to
see us; she's just sort of mildly pleased. She doesn't even give him a hug. The whole thing feels kind of cold. I'm pretty underwhelmed for everything
I've gone through to rescue her. Oh, I learned that the barkeep is a
collie. Doesn't look like one to me. Must be some slang I don't know about. So, no Dog Monarchy, guys. False alarm. We go through a looping dialog hell again. Nothing interesting is being said; it's
just half-madness from the translation. But Maomi is able to sneak out
while we distract the owner. Outside, we have a long chat. She gets really upset at
the idea of my rescuing her as we fly away on my
dragon and get out of here. See, that was the big hang-up: Even
if she had been able to escape, she was still stuck on this cliff, and she wouldn't be able to
get away without a dragon. Well, now I have a dragon, but
that's not good enough for her. Then she gets all defensive saying
she can take care of herself. Yeah, that's why you were
locked up as a slave for months, to which you yourself said you were
never going to get out of there. Then she says she has to free her people, even though she wasn't born here, and has
literally never been here before last year, and how she has to help Cal...blah, blah... Dammit, Cal's an android! He's
just running his software! She doesn't--Then she talks
about how Ginbart can help her. Who the hell is Ginbart? "Ginbart is fine,
and he knows more than you!" Okaaay? Finally, she says she's
not coming back with me because we'd be easily
tracked so we should split up, even though that still
leaves her stuck on Clifftown where people are going to be looking for her. I don't know, guys. This doesn't
strike me as a stable relationship. MacDoughan can do better. Have you ever dated someone where
they have really strong ties to some sort of exclusive clique they're with, to the point where they're always going
to treat YOU as a perpetual outsider? With Cal, this Ginbart guy,
her talking about her people, that's really the vibe I'm getting here. MacDoughan is not the love of
her life; he's the third wheel. So, since she clearly has her own
agenda, I talk to the stablemaster-- who can't believe I have a wild dragon-- and after a long chat, says I need
to seek out the Dragon Masters. Fine. Whatever. I'm out of here. Now I haven't played
the rest of the game yet, but I'm going to go out on a limb here
and say Maomi is never going to be happy. Even if she liberates all of Cave World,
which is a pretty tall order in itself, she's going to find some new
cause to become obsessed with. MacDoughan is always
going to be second-fiddle to whatever group Maomi's
fallen in with at the time. He should just get out of here
and go back to space trucking. He has all he needs now to
write his own country song. Girl of his dreams left him for an android, he gets arrested trying to save her, busts out of jail, tames a
dragon, and she doesn't even care. As far as I'm concerned,
we've already beaten the game. The plot was to rescue Maomi.
Done! We're just free-styling now. I don't think MacDoughan has
any real goals at this point; he's just doing what
other people tell him to. So with that, we enter Wahringen
as directed by the stablemaster. In case you lost track, this is the
same city where we broke out of jail. I'm sure returning here is a great idea. Oh, and since this is obviously
a European-themed city, naturally the music sounds like
it's for a Caribbean parade. [lively steel drum music] So far, most of the music
in this game is enjoyable, but then it does something slightly
weird, but it still works overall. I'm wondering how much benefit
the CD audio adds, though, especially when you hear
the distortion guitar. [guitar music] Anyway, in town, I'm not certain, but I think I found a way
to screw ourselves again. At first, I just tried talking to
these guys about the Dragon Master. I apparently picked a bad choice, and then
they clam up and won't talk to me again. Ever, it seems like. This is new. Every other conversation
had guardrails against screwing yourself, and let you start over on a loop. But now, I'm pretty sure the
game is unwinnable again. This is pure Sierra, guys. Thankfully, I saved my
game as soon as I landed, but damn, this is getting aggressive. So THIS time I used the walkthrough to
get a name of a new contact from them. Following the dragon trail. Also, I needed the walkthrough again
since I didn't realize THIS was an exit. Yeah, there. Adventure games, man. Here, things get interesting. If I go inside to this outpost, the walkthrough tells me to rat out
the rebels I was just talking to, and I get a sizable reward.
That's impressive. MacDoughan is playing both sides. He's winning the confidence
of the rebels to help them the same time he's selling
them out to the lizard police. I wouldn't have thought the game would
let me do that, let alone REQUIRE it. I thought him trying to blow the cover of your partner-in-crime earlier
was just a one-time fluke. See, I assumed you were going to
rescue Maomi, stop the oppressors, live happily ever after...
Y'know, a typical hero's tale. That may still happen, but
this is kind of a big detour. This would be like if, in
"The Lord of the Rings", Frodo sold out info on Farmer Maggot to the
Black Riders, so they could go and kill him, then just continued on his
quest like nothing happened. It's...weird, but I'm not complaining. And it's a good thing I get the money, too, because I get charged for stable
fees for my dragon upon leaving. Dammit, I already paid
these at the cliff city. Is this just a one time thing for
each location? I have to check. Okay, let's get out of here,
come back, and take off again. No! He charges you every time! That means if you don't know exactly
where you're going next in this game, you're going to get penalized,
and may screw yourself THAT way if you need to buy something essential later. Oh and I forgot to mention: You can waste
more money at the bar in Cliff City. I don't think even Sierra games penalize
you for traveling back and forth! Wow... So back to Cliff City, which thankfully
is free IF I don't leave this screen, the old man who knows everything
sends me back to the first town. And here I have to buy an ADDITIONAL dragon
conference ticket, which costs a lot more. The first dragon conference ticket
was only for the general public. But now since I OWN a dragon, I have
to pay for ANOTHER ticket. Christ... Oh, and yes, there is a stable
fee here too on top of that. At the second dragon conference,
I sort of provoke the speaker into revealing information about
some ancient site of importance? I'm not sure anymore. I asked a lot of questions, so a spy heads
out to report me to the fraud police. They come to apprehend me, but I throw a
pie in their face and tell them to leave. They're stunned, but end up doing it,
because deep down, they're really frogs. Back to Cliff Town, I ask about
what the dragon master told me, and I discover Maomi was HOLDING
OUT ON ME WITH A MAP PIECE?! ARE YOU SERIOUS?! I'm the one globetrotting
everywhere solving YOUR conflict! What do you need a map for?! You're standing here out in the
open waiting to be captured again! You're not even hiding! Just dump her right now, MacDoughan,
don't even think about it. Withholding the map from me like I'm some-- And here we are in Südmeerfleck. THIS stable master wants SEVEN coins to
watch my dragon. This game hustles you. Anyway, the prices must
reflect the real estate since we have this Mediterranean
Bay-looking area with gigantic stone arches. I love stuff like this. If you're
going to have a fantasy planet, you really shouldn't hold
back with this sort of thing. More arches! MORE! Anyway, there's a LOT of conversation with
the locals that's not too interesting, BUT I get the final map piece. Hell yeah. From there, I'm led to tracking
down some dinosaur in the desert. There he is. I ride him and--WHOA! That's too fast! Well...I like the pseudo-3D desert ride. Okay, let's check this in editing. Yeah, nothing too important. It just
says the dinosaur knows things. Great. Well, it DOES know things, because it takes me to the lost temple
everyone was telling me to go to. Right on! Let's keep the discoveries coming. Here we have another dragon statue,
except this one hasn't been looted! So take a valuable gem and...the Holy Grail, I guess. I don't have many
regrets about grave-robbing. These people are savages;
they don't even allow maps. Heading back, I sell the Holy Grail
at a pottery stand for 100 coins. She initially tries to lowball me with 80, but she IMMEDIATELY says "yes"
when I haggle with her for 100. This is a completely ancient artifact
made out of precious jewels and metals from a temple no one has been
able to find for centuries. If I had to guess, its value
is probably in the millions. But whatever. This should
help me pay my stable fees. This all leads to more clues which sends me
back to the old man who knows everything. I also check in with Maomi
and get a reminder that I need to deliver the drugs to
the rebels so I can become a hero. Of course. How did I forget? The old man sends me to his hermit buddy, and BOOM! Static waterfall. Come on... The art's been
pretty good up until this point but you're asking too much, game. I need my three-frame animation if
you're going to show running water. We can get away with this for a pond, but
this is breaking the immersion for me. Grr... Putting that aside, this hermit
is friendlier than the last one. Apparently, he was following up trying
to find the ancient temple like I am, but just wasn't able to solve the riddle on
how to find it, so he retired here instead. He also points out that in the thousand
years the lizard people have ruled, no one's attempted a
large, organized rebellion. Those are some words of wisdom, people.
Acts of defiance get you nowhere. You need large-scale organization
for anything to happen. The hermit knows things. But I guess he doesn't know that much
since he's been looking for the entrance to the secret temple for the bottom
half of his life, it sounds like. I'm guessing we're going to
find it without too much hassle. In fact, I remember seeing a
comic on this sort of thing. Well, I actually get stuck
since the walkthrough mentions needing to cut down a bush,
but I can't get over there. MacDoughan refuses to
go into the water again. What am I supposed to do? Well after some soul-searching,
I figured it out. You have to tell him to go in there AGAIN. Agh, I hate that crap. Everything's
a dead end, unless it isn't. So, NOW he can cross the pond, we
trigger some sort of sequence... Coming back--Oh! Okay! Apparently
MacDoughan can walk on water now. No wonder he didn't try to take Cal with him. He doesn't need Cave World
Jesus. He's his own Jesus. Well that's too bad because I need him
to get back in the water so he can die. Here's another one of those plant things. And hey, look! He needs
to come back up for air. This was NOT common in graphic
adventure games back then. And I tried. I couldn't get him to drown,
nor could I get him to fight with the plant. He's less eager to kill himself than most
adventure game protagonists. Oh well. Goodbye, doppelgänger! Goodbye! Now from here, the walkthrough says
I need to talk to the hermit again. I do that and--Uh oh.
Uh... ZTranslate? Hello? Okay, I'm relaunching this. No. It's just not working here. Okay, this is going to be an
interesting conversation for me. I'm pretty sure "Wasser" is "water"... Uh... This isn't good. So I try some process of elimination... I...think we can disable the plant now. Yeah, we do. Okay. We have to eat a weird bulb on
the plant to breathe underwater, push the other pyramids, and the door opens. Yeah, I'm pretty sure the hermit
could've figured this out. Behold! The dragon gate!
Beyond this point lies dragons! ...I'm assuming. I think this game took a
step back, looked at itself, and decided it didn't have
enough dragon references. Yeah, there we go. Inside, it's just another temple, though, this is by far the most
impressive dragon statue so far. I kind of feel like we're missing out
by not having some mystical music here instead of the same tracks
we've been getting. In fact, I was getting my hopes up
because earlier it was mentioned that this place was in the
dark side of the world. Ooooh! I thought for sure THIS was the entrance. No. All we do here is loot another gem, and then head back to the first dragon
temple which magically has a new gem, even though there's no reason at all
to suspect that would've changed. I mean, that's kind of the whole deal with
isolated temples; they're just...there. And with all these gems, we head back to an
earlier ancient dragon statue near the town and tada! Cross a bridge. A little underwhelming for requiring
priceless gems from around the world. I mean, I could've done that with two logs
and some rope. This is Engineering 101. The path past the bridge
is absolutely gorgeous, even though these waterfalls
should be moving...! And here we are in the
lost dragon city, I think. I've honestly lost track
of all the dragon lore. Oh! And look who it is!
Yeah, NOW she shows up! Anyway, she explains that she was
playing me to do her dirty work-- at least, that's my interpretation-- but before we really get into this, there's a new guy that shows up saying he's
the ancient guard and we need to leave. From here, we have the longest
conversation in the game by far. The short version is, he's
part of a secret order, but one of his members has been kidnapped, and he has a key to the temple
here which contains the drugs. Oh, and I was confused. The drugs
are for Cal, not the rebels. Huh... Yeah, he's pretty hostile towards me, but as soon as I namedrop that I know
Cal, his tone changes completely. One thing I think is a little weak here is he talks about what a
fantastic secret this place is, cut off from the
outside world for centuries. But c'mon, you literally have a
path leading straight to the temple. All it takes is a simple
bridge and the gig's up. I mean, this is just up the road from town. Somebody like me was bound to find this. If I was living in that town, I would've
found this place in a month, tops. Faster if I was looking for it. But now we need to find this key
the rebel member was holding onto. Well the walkthrough says we have
to head back to the guardpost. But wait, let's pay our stable fees, fly off, then talk to THIS guy to hold our
dragon again. God, this is getting old. Here, we run a nutty scheme
where we buy a bunch of nuts, tell the guard we're delivering them to the
base, so we get our pass to head inside. Oh look. This is where I was arrested. Here we cause some chaos. We find an intercom, and tell everyone
that fuel is leaking on the airfield and it could go up in flames. That sends the whole base into
alert looking for the fuel. Look at them. There they are. Yeah, even though commoners
move around by pterodactyl, it looks like the lizard people
have shuttlecrafts. Typical. With more guards out of the way, we raid
the key cupboard, head back INTO jail-- Wow, I wonder if we'll get to say
"hi" to that same guard again. I bet he'll be surprised to see me. Well, I don't see him. Instead we go to the jail cell
where the rebel guy was held in hopes that he stashed his key here
before he was condemned to the mines. And here, no joke, I have to shut the door, then look at the hinge pin to
the door NINE TIMES IN A ROW! And of course, the first
response is utterly mundane to make you not click more than once. "A door hinge. Completely normal." Yes, it is. Why would anyone keep looking at that? This is an above-average
level of player antagonism, even for games like this of the time. Whatever. I find the magic rod. I guess this is the key? I leave and--OH NO! THEY CAUGHT ME! I didn't look at the
walkthrough closely enough! I should've exited the back door! That means I have to start over from my save! GAAAAAH! vvvvWWWIIIIIIIP! Okay! Back at the dragon temple. "Oh, I was so worried something
might've happened to you!" Oh, really? "Not so much about YOU! More
about the success of our mission?" Yeah, just keep it coming, Maomi. Hey, maybe I should break this key in
front of you. What do you think about that? Whatever. Take your stupid key. The guardian puts it in a slot
and some pedestals rise up. Okay? Now he needs me to go get three
mirrors. This is never going to end. Maomi can't come with me
because it's too dangerous. Yeah! It probably is! FINE! BYE! So I head back to the tavern I ratted out, and hey! Look who's not in jail! Well, to be fair, I told the
guard they meet there at 8, so they probably won't get
arrested until this evening. And...they want me to harass the guards? Actually, it's not even clear
what they want me to do. We're letting the walkthrough
take the wheel now. So, I go and throw a stink bomb at them. Yoink! Then I come back and they
tell me to go to Halantoor. I don't know where that is. Bye...! So, you know what that means. Back
to the old man who knows everything. He says Halantoor is that
first temple I went to. Huh, really? Oh look! Now there are three
mirrors just lying there. For an isolated plateau inaccessible by foot, somebody's visiting this temple a lot. Fine. Three mirrors. Let me just park my damned
dragon again and let's go. And we return. Uh oh! Translator down! Oh, don't do this to me! Not now! Uh... Uhhhh.... Okay, we're back. Sort of... "That's not important!
Here are the mirrors!" "Just calm down." Okay...okay... "Are you still healthy and fit?" I guess? I probably need to eat. All right, enough chit-chat.
Here are the mirrors. We give them to the guardian. He places them. Ooh! This is looking impressive. Yeah, I'm not even surprised we have a
puzzle that involves RAYS FROM THE SUN! All right, so now we look the statue
and, hup! There are the drugs. Hooray. "Now you are a big hero, Eric!" Sure am! "Congratulations. I...ah, have to go
now. I'm up to something...with Gusmar." OH! THAT'S THE GUARDIAN! SO THAT'S HOW IT IS! OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE NEW, HUH?! YOU DISAPPEAR ON ME, I SAVE YOU FROM SLAVERY, BUT YOU'RE ALONE WITH HIM FOR HALF AN
HOUR AND THAT'S ALL IT TAKES, HUH?! You two-timing... "I'm sure you'll be very heroic again
and have your glory. Alone. Farewell." THAT IS SO COLD! DAMN, GUYS! I AM NOT JOKING! I had no idea this was how
it was going to turn out! I was just speculating earlier. I figured her being so aloof was just
how Germans portray a love story, or else they were trying to have this comic
dynamic where MacDoughan's interested in her and she's always busy with something else. Yeah, she's busy with someONE else! I was even more right than I realized! MacDoughan got played! Oh, who is this? Just some guys coming to
break my legs just to top this all off? Oh, it's Cal. Yeah, he wants his drugs. Fine. Take 'em.
I don't want any part of this. Although, apparently Cal doesn't
know what to do with the drugs. I think he just assumed it
would solve all his problems. Well, he wouldn't be the first. "You did it, Eric! "From now on, you will be remembered as
one of the greatest heroes of our world!" What do YOU care? Didn't you just dump
me? Why are you still talking to me? Talk to the hand! ...wait, that's it?! That's
the end of the game?! Oh my God! IT'S A CLIFFHANGER GAME! But wait! There's more! A frog soldier shows up. "Surrender or die!" He says he's taking us all to the mines. But Maomi pulls out a smoke bomb
and goes classic ninja on us. So it looks like just Cal and
friends are going to the mines. AAAAAHHH! "The SECOND adventure"! There IS no second adventure!
This is all they made! I did find another game set
in the same universe, I think, but it looks like it's just
some digital card game. But whatever. That doesn't count. Yeah, no credits or anything.
Just dump to the menu. Wow. What to make of this. Now I know how I'll routinely mention how
weak endings often are to old PC games, but adventure games are
the exception to the rule. When I think of every classic adventure game, they pretty much all have solid endings. This may actually be the worst ending
to a graphic adventure game I've seen! I don't want to say it's THE worst,
since there's a lot I haven't played. Plus maybe I'm repressing the memories and
forgetting some. That can happen with me. Well, this definitely was a
game, with effort behind it. I'm glad we got to see it, even though I think the screenshots gave us
more hope than the game actually warranted. It was VERY antagonistic, but that was totally normal for
adventure games of this time. The walking and money traps made it
slightly worse than average, though. We really didn't get much space trucking in, and honestly, it was even a
little light on the dinosaurs. So, not what I thought it was going to be, though my relationship counseling
was dead on. All-in-all, I'm left kind of unsatisfied, but there was definitely a
taste of something in there. But hey, that's exploring. You never
know how it's going to turn out. On that note, what might be more
notable than the game itself is Barry's software here. I'll say this now: There are dozens of German-only
graphic adventure games from the 90s. I've run into them by accident
while scouring through abandonware. A fair amount of Czech and Polish ones, too. It's possible this may
trigger a virtual land grab, for seeing who can show
these games in English first. They're now up for the taking. ...or not. If The Cave World is any
indicator of what to expect, we may just see some secrets
remained buried also. That's the episode! Stay tuned for another... Well, I guess I'd better do
another follow-up episode. I mean, look at what happened
when I did the last one. All right, I'm going to Space Waffle House. [music]
I love the sort of "seeing something that should never be seen by anyone" -type of feel that Ross' Game Dungeon gives. The only other show that gives the same kind feeling is Best of the Worst by Red Letter Media.
The world's jankest sitting animation.
Yes! Love Ross's videos, he's goes into such detail about these random, generally unknown games of interest. I'm happy he's still making these.
OK, aside from the continued excellence of Ross's Game Dungeon, I have to point out that the real-time OCR and translation is a super neat concept.
Seems like a neat game. I never really played any of these point and click adventure games but they are interesting from an outsider's perspective.
I like the art though. Definitely getting some Roger Dean vibes from the pterodactyls/dragons and the giant stone mesas and arches.
WELCOME TO THE GAME DUNGEON
I love it when he posts a new video I watch em all the way through. I sometimes marathon em too
Oooh glorious day, a new video from Ross. I love the deep dives he takes. This will be a treat when I get back home, can't wait.
Man I played the shareware version of Solar winds so much
I get in trouble with the boss for hour-long shits... anyone have a summary?