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Manhunter Journal Entry 4: “Just as I’d hoped it would, my new tracker recording has led me to the work of Phil. Not that it’s ever nice to witness his evil deeds, but finding the two bodies in the doctor’s house with the letter P carved into their foreheads has confirmed that I’m on the path to another confrontation with my enemy. A note I found on the doctor’s body has also given me some insight into what is really going on, but as usual my day has been filled with questions that I struggle to find answers to. I must trust that these answers will come if I continue to keep my eyes open and my mind sharp. The fate of the world depends on it!”


My last post finished with a strange occurrence on the staircase in the temple. After rubbing the jewel on the statue with the cloth (that told me to “rub jewel of heaven”), I witnessed a vision of an F, an oar shaped object, a P, and finally a ruler. It didn’t mean anything to me, so after a bit more investigation, I made my way up the stairs for the first time. Once I reached the top I entered a room that had a green dragon head coming out of the wall. I immediately thought of the Dragon gang that Tad Timov had been part of before his death, but that thought was temporarily forgotten as a bunch of ninjas surrounded me. At least they looked like ninjas! One of them forced me away from the dragon head and then kicked me off the screen onto a rather slippery pink bridge.


Before I even realised that I was taking part in yet another arcade mini-game, I found myself off the bridge and submerged in acid! The Murry’s took glee in telling me how it’s “remarkable how fast acid dissolves flesh!” I then spent the next couple of minutes trying to guide my manhunter across the bridge while he slipped all over the place. Once I made it across I was confronted by a large bearded man overseeing a normally robed man getting the dragon symbol tattooed on his hand. Tattooed isn’t the right word though. This was a branding, pure and simple! The robed man then very proudly displayed his new marking to me before collecting a scroll and walking off. The bearded man then pointed in my direction; clearly suggesting that it was now my turn to put my hand into the fire.


I must have paused for just a bit too long while I decided what to do, as one of the ninjas pulled out his sword and sliced me in half! Rather unexpectedly, my upper torso hopped up onto its hands and “walked” back over to my legs, reconnecting the two parts! As if this wasn’t ridiculous enough, my character then realised that he’d reconnected his two halves back the front, and spent some time readjusting. Once all that was done, I was given another opportunity to brand myself, so I went ahead and did it. As soon as my hand touched the burning hot dragon symbol, my character cowered in pain and ran around the room, eventually falling in the acid! I restored and pondered what else I might be able to try. I had nothing in my inventory that could help me get the branding without the pain, and attempting to pick up the scroll without going through the ritual also resulted in a sword through the guts.


In the end I decided to restore back to the staircase and go check out where the other suspect went. Perhaps I would find something down the track to help me get through this ordeal! After leaving the temple, I made my way to the right of screen where I knew there was another location to investigate. There I discovered a red door, which led to a room containing a meditating old man, sitting in front of five jars and a pipe. Interestingly, each of the jars had symbols on them, and I recognised the symbols for Heaven and Vision that I’d seen in Tad’s apartment. I soon discovered that I could take pinches of whatever was in each of the jars and put them into the pipe. I could then use the pipe, which would light it. Clearly I was going to have to choose the correct material to put in the pipe in the right order before lighting it, but how was I supposed to know what that order was?


The banner I’d seen earlier had to be a clue, so I pulled up a screenshot and studied it. The symbols on the banner did indeed match the ones on two of the jars, but no matter which order I placed them in the pipe, nothing happened when I lit it. Was there another one of these banners elsewhere in the game that would let me know what the other jars represented? Was there a sentence I was supposed to form by selecting the right jars in the right order? I thought about everything I’d seen earlier, but other than “The Castle is the Gateway to Hell”, I could come up with nothing. That clue wasn’t going to help, as I didn’t know if any of the jars represented those words, and any thoughts of trying to guess the correct combination were forgotten as soon as I realised I didn’t even know how many pinches I needed to put in the pipe before lighting it. Once again I was going to have to move on and hope another clue was forthcoming.


I opened up my tracker recording and changed to the second suspect while at the pier. Once the first suspect went off to enter the temple, the second one continued on, eventually entering a shop. Another marker appeared on the screen at this point, and after my suspect departed the shop they united on the footpath and carried on together. I exited the tracker at this point to go check out the shop. I pixel hunted outside it for a while but found nothing, so attempted to enter. I then received a message saying “Meanwhile inside...” and was then given a view of the shopkeeper admiring his latest trade, a severed finger! So it appeared that the second suspect had either sold or traded the finger that was removed from the mutant they’d murdered on the boat to the shopkeeper. The plot thickens!


I was already having trouble figuring out what was really going on by this stage of the game, but this discovery didn’t help at all. The first two suspects on day one killed members of the dragon gang. The two suspects on day two appeared to have murdered the second of those suspects (while the first one committed suicide) for his finger. Now one of those suspects appeared to have gone and joined the dragon gang while the other sold the finger to a shopkeeper. As much as I tried to make sense of it, I couldn’t! All I could do was continue on! When the shopkeeper saw me entering the shop, he quickly stored the finger below the counter. I moved closer to the counter and saw that this guy sold all sorts of magic tricks, masks, rubber chickens and chain snips. Most interesting, a big yellow sign behind him spoke about a game that I might be able to play. “Don’t have enough to get what you want? Play my game and win big. You can buy something better every time you win. But lose, and you lose it all.”


Strangely, despite pixel hunting the screen over and over, I could find nothing that I could interact with and I had nothing that I could use with the shopkeeper either. How was I supposed to play this game? For the third time in a row I was simply going to have to take the information I’d gained through my visit and move on. I opened the tracker once again, waiting to see where the suspect and his new accomplice went next. They travelled quite a ways north-east before stopping at the Transamerica Pyramid. The building had three markers moving around, and all of them were in the shape of an S. I had no idea what they could represent, and was still none the wiser when the two suspects rapidly moved towards one and appeared to grab it. They made their way back out of the building with the S in their possession. There was no point trying to figure out what the S’s represented by looking a tracker. I closed the recording and made my way over to Transamerica Pyramid!


The building itself was unsurprisingly in the shape of a steep pyramid, and there was something that looked like mud falling from its peak. The building next to it was almost entirely covered in the brown material too, but my pixel hunting revealed nothing apart from the pyramid entrance. Clicking this entrance took me to a close-up view of the building’s front doors, and there was a broken chain sitting near the doorway. This reminded me of the chain snips I’d seen for sale at the shop, so perhaps the suspect traded the severed finger for them so that they could unchain something (or someone) here at the pyramid? I entered the building proper and came across a rather strange sight! The pyramid seemed to have been turned into a mine since the Orb invasion, and a guard robot was currently punishing a slave by constantly zapping him.


The S’s I seen in the tracker recording must have represented slaves! What really drew my attention in this scene though was a large gun locked away in a glass cabinet on the wall. My curiosity got the better of me, and I tried picking it up. This broke the glass, but I was able to get the gun (which turned out to be empty), setting an alarm off in the process. I then watched as my manhunter made his escape back out the front door unopposed! When I re-entered the mine, I was able to go further inside, which kickstarted yet another arcade mini-game. I was shown a top down view, with my manhunter positioned at the bottom of the screen, a slave at the top, and the laser firing robot positioned in the centre of the room. As I tried to dodge the lasers, the slave at the top would move in the opposing direction, but I couldn’t last long without getting zapped.


When I first got killed, the Murry’s appeared on screen and said “this robot is quick, but there is a trick.” It didn’t take me long to figure out what it was too. If I moved as fast as I could in either direction around the robot, it would play catch-up and fire just behind me. Meanwhile the slave was able to move all the way around behind the robot and make an escape at the bottom of the screen. I followed shortly afterwards, and watched as the slave left the building. I was given a close up view of his particularly yellow face, and then both of us ran off in different directions. I’d kind of expected the slave to join up with me, so was surprised to find him disappear without any communication or reward. I can only assume that he will make a cameo at a later stage in the game.


I turned to the tracker again and watched the two suspects and their slave leave Transamerica Pyramid and make their way quickly to a building titled “Dr,’s House”. Here they appeared to knock on the door, and when it was answered, they left the slave and departed. I closed the MAD and raced over to the house, which turned out to look awfully like something Norman Bates would thoroughly appreciate. Inside was a scene reminiscent to the hospital scene in Manhunter 1. A blue body was lying on a table motionless in a room filled with medical books and implements. I took a closer look at the body and found it had been badly mutilated. Not only was it missing its right arm from the elbow down, it also had a P carved in its forehead and an S on the left forearm. Could this be the slave? Did they really save him just so they could kill him for some evil purpose?


Putting my cursor on the P revealed it had been “carved with a dull knife”, but the S gave me no such information. This all reminded me very much of the first game and in particular the body hanging in the closet. I looked back at my screenshots of that game and found that Phil was carving P on his victim’s foreheads. Did Phil kill this man or merely mark him as his own while he was a slave? The answer came quickly, as when I checked out the back room of the doctor’s house, I found the doctor himself slumped across a table, also with a P carved into his forehead. So Phil was back to his old tricks again! At least now I knew that my current path was connected to my old foe. Also on the table was a urine sample, although I wasn’t able to pick it up. Its relevance wasn’t immediately obvious to me, but I thought I would just try using the remedy flask on it and it worked! So now I had some urine! Um...awesome!


My final discovery in the doctor’s house was a note stuffed in his pocket. It read: “My friend, I have discovered the Orb’s evil purpose. Earth must die for them to live. They must be stopped before it is too late. My life is in danger, they suspect that I have the card. I will deliver it to you as soon as possible. It is up to you and your friends to save mankind. My creations can help but must be freed by an Orb. You must reach Hell, but all entrances are guarded. Only there can they be stopped. The Orb’s have a new helper. They call him Phil and he is dangerous – be careful! God be with you. N. Goring.” Well that goes some way to explaining what’s going on, but the biggest thing I took from the note was the name at the bottom. The author spoke of “his creations” and my newspaper clipping showed a scientist called Noah G. that created the mutants. Could his name be Noah Goring? Stay tuned to find out!”

Marc-Henri Journal Entry 4: “Emmanuelle is mine! A few days ago my dream of seducing her looked like it would always remain a fantasy, but since that time I have educated myself in the ways of eroticism to the point where she could no longer deny me. I have bedded a masked woman from the carnival, twin sisters (at the same time), and a sensual woman named Sam multiple times, all with the intention of increasing my erotic potential. Yet even after these conquests made me the walking pinnacle of seduction, finding Emmanuelle proved a challenging exploit. It is done now, and I don’t plan on letting Emmanuelle out of my sight (or my bed) for a long time to come.”


I’ve finished Emmanuelle! I can’t begin to tell you how happy I am about that, particularly as the last couple of hours were tremendously tedious. I could easily fill another couple of posts with everything that I went through during the ten hours I played the game (six since I last posted), but I think it’s safe to assume that everyone’s ready to move onto something more enjoyable. For that reason, I will forego my usual session playthrough approach and get straight down to business. Be aware that I must have restarted Emmanuelle over forty times since I first loaded it up, so everything you’re about to read was discovered by pure trial and error. Basically I just kept trying things out in an attempt to understand the game mechanics behind everything, if indeed there were any to discover.


Unfortunately, discovering what was required of me to complete the game was only half the battle. The randomness of so many sections made achieving everything in the one playthrough near impossible, as you will soon see. I’ll split the game into three distinct sections to make this description as straight forward as possible. 1. Find the statuettes. 2. Sleep with the women that each statuette relates to. 3. Find Emmanuelle. I’ve already described in my previous posts how to find the three statuettes, but it can be summarised as follows. The first one is with the man in the casino and can be collected by giving him the aphrodisiac received from the guy in the boat. The second one is found in the waterfall at Iguacu, and can only be picked up if I purchased the toucan (yes, the toucan!!!) or received the harness from the helicopter pilot. The third one is found in the opera house, but can only be collected when the opera house is closed (which occurs randomly).


Once I had the three statuettes, I had to figure out how to use them to increase my erotic potential to a level that would satisfy Emmanuelle. There were no instructions found anywhere as to how high my erotic potential needed to be, but I decided early on that I was going to aim for 100 to make sure. My attempts at tracking down Emmanuelle so far had not gone well, so I wanted to make sure I had a high enough potential when we did finally cross paths. Sleeping with women in the game generally made my energy and erotic potential go down rather than up, but by mere accident I came across an encounter where it did actually increase in my second session with the game. As it turned out, it was by far the most difficult of the three encounters to discover! The manual suggested that the first thing I should do in Brazil is seek out Mario. It gave no hints as to where he might be, but it did say that he would dictate the “three laws of eroticism” to me. While investigating random rooms in the Salvador hotel, I randomly came across him.


Mario was behind the first door on the first floor, and I’d assumed at the time that he would always be found there. Finding him not only resulted in my character being informed of the three laws (which are all in the manual anyway), but it also resulted in me using one of the statuettes. “Ah, my dear Marc-Henri! I was waiting for you! Emmanuelle runs from you and she is right! Erotically, you are so profane!” He continued: “But all is not lost! Eroticism is an art which you can learn through willpower and application... Only these things are really erotic; the extraordinary, the uncensored, the UNUSUAL! Eroticism hates equilibrium. Eroticism prefers ASYMMETRY. Beware of complete satisfaction! Eroticism needs NUMBER. One more point! In this country are 3 statuettes which represent these rules. Finding them will bring you nearer to Emmanuelle! Come on; put on this mask! I’m taking you to taste the real carnival; the one which makes you lose your head!”


I didn’t realise at the time how damn fortunate I was to have that mask in my possession, as Mario was never in that room again. It would take me quite a few hours of playing before I finally discovered how to find out where he was in each particular playthrough. Once again, finding out Mario’s whereabouts is completely random! I’d already seduced Nancy the hotel slut in Salvador a couple of times without anything interesting happening, but on my third attempt she suddenly told me a very useful piece of information. “I think you might like to meet Mario; he’s a teach of eroticism! He looks like a Florentine marquis; he’s thin, tall, with piercing, deep black eyes...he’s staying in room number 304.” Finally I knew how to find Mario each time I played the game, which meant I could get the mask and visit the carnival.


I could always visit the carnival in Salvador without the mask, but every time I’d tried I’d received a message stating “you can’t stay here! You’re not in fancy dress!” and then was sent packing. With the mask in my possession I was able to seduce the women there. Since the Law of UNUSUAL is “You must never see your partner’s face”, it seemed clear that the woman on the right of screen with the mask on should be a target. Sure enough, when I slept with her, I saw a different screen than usual, with a hand appearing through the blinds to drop some panties before the standard sex scene. One of the statuettes was also flashing, and my erotic potential increased by about 25 points, convincing me that I’d found one of the critical encounters to completing the game.


At the end of my last post I’d just figured out that Sam the helicopter pilot appeared in two places in the game, and since the Law of NUMBER is “you must have multiple relations with the same partner”, I’d figured sleeping with her in both locations would be the way to go. That line of thinking turned out to be correct, but it wasn’t particularly easy to make it happen. Since seducing women is a bit hit and miss in general (as it is in the real world), there was no way to guarantee that I was going to successfully sleep with her twice in the same game. In most seduction instances it was a matter of leaving the screen and coming back to have another shot, but since I only knew of one way to get to the garden party where Sam was, and that opportunity only came up once during the game (when the woman appears in the hotel lift), failing to seduce Sam at the party led to an apparent dead end.


I eventually found out that on random (there’s that word again) occasions, visiting the opera house in Manaus led to a scene where I could chat with the governor and get an invitation that way. I now realise this is the use of the opera glasses I purchased in the fevolas, and not discovering the statuette as I first thought. Having this option meant I could try that approach if I failed to seduce the woman in the lift or Sam at the party on the first attempt. If I could manage to sleep with Sam in the bar of the Iguacu hotel and at the party in Manaus, then I was rewarded with another panty dropping scene and more erotic potential points. That left only one more potential increasing encounter, and that was the one that avoided me the longest. During one of my very early visits to the beach in Rio, I came across two near naked women (twins?) trying to get my attention. My attempts to seduce them at the time had failed, and I didn’t see them there again in any of my subsequent games.


However, since the Law of ASYMMETRY is “there must be an odd number of partners”, this scene seemed a likely candidate for the use of the third statuette. I questioned this law in my last post, since having an odd number of partners could be satisfied by having one partner, but as a few of you mentioned, it was safe to assume that the game wanted me to have a threesome. The problem I had was that I couldn’t make the women reappear to have another crack at every man’s dream. Eventually it was one of my screenshots that gave me the info I needed, as it clearly showed me arriving in the yacht from Salvador. The only way to make the two women appear on the beach was to get on the yacht with the very accommodating woman in Salvador and travel to Rio that way, despite the fact that this caused me to lose energy and erotic potential points in the process.


Only then was I able to attempt to seduce the women, and failing pretty much created a dead end (going through the travel process again reduced my erotic potential further and further to the point where I couldn’t recover). This was made worse by the fact that seducing these women appeared impossible! I recorded all of my answers and the results, and it appeared to me that there was simply no way to remove the remaining clothes they were wearing, in spite of how scant they were. It turned out that seducing the girl on the right is much easier as she responds to anything relating to music or art, and once she agreed to sex, her sister would very handily invite herself along. The resulting sex scene didn’t visually include three individuals, but it did increase my potential points, meaning I’d found the final encounter needed to complete the game!


So, to finish the game, this is what I was going to have to do, in this order. Purchase the toucan, the pandiero and the opera glasses from the woman in the fevolas. Get the aphrodisiac from the sailor at the beach. Go to the casino and give a cigar and the aphrodisiac to the gambler to get the first statuette. Travel to Iguacu by plane and get the second statuette from the waterfall. Seduce and sleep with Sam at the hotel. Travel to Manaus by plane and visit the opera house to get the third and final statuette. Seduce the woman in the lift to go the governor’s party and then seduce Sam there again to increase erotic potential. Travel to Salvador by plane and then get on the yacht at the beach to sleep with the woman and travel to Rio. Seduce and sleep with the two girls on the beach to increase erotic potential further. Travel back to Salvador by plane and seduce Nancy at the bar to get the room number for Mario (repeat the process until she gives it to me, but dont actually sleep with her). Visit Mario’s room to get the mask and go to the carnival. Seduce the masked woman, leaving her mask on, to increase erotic potential to 100. Find Emmanuelle.


Easy right!? Even once I’d figured out this whole process, it took me over two hours to actually put it into practice. There are just so many things that can go wrong on the way, with failed seductions due to no correct pickup lines being the main culprit. When I finally did play a perfect game and got 100 erotic potential, I still had to find Emmanuelle to complete the game. I began asking the barmen and the concierges at each of the hotels if they knew where she was or where her next port of call was. I received nothing but “I’m sorry, Sir, I have no idea!” messages for over half an hour, and soon enough was running dangerously low on cash. I was down to about $3500 when finally one of the barmen said “Yes, Miss Emmanuelle did have a drink here. She intended to leave for Iguacu.” Excitedly I hopped on a plane to Iguacu (taking my cash level down to $2500) and spoke to the barman there. “Yes, Miss Emmanuelle did have a drink here. She intended to leave for Salvador.” Aaaaagggghhhh!!!!!!


I had a terrible feeling that the game was going to lead me on a wild goose chase, and that I was going to run out of money before finding Emmanuelle. I considered heading straight for Rio and trying my hand at gambling in the casino, but feared losing the trail that I’d spent so long trying to pick up. I crossed my fingers and hopped on a plane for Salvador. Apparently Emmanuelle was on the plane, as I was suddenly shown an image of what I assume was my character seducing her. “Emmanuelle...I’m going to make you howl!” was all my character said before my game was abruptly and unsatisfyingly thrown back to a C prompt. I guess it’s a fitting way for such a horribly designed and implemented game to finish. As a final note, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all those involved in making me play Emmanuelle. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. ;)


Session Time: 6 hours 00 minutes

Written by Aperama

Ageless, Faceless, Gender-Neutral, Culturally Ambiguous Adventure Persons Journal #1: Its hard to be positive about being a B.A.T. operative. The pay is lousy and mostly goes towards food and drink – hell, they didnt even land me here on Selenia with any ammo – they barely give you any idea of what youre ready to face.. and theyre so devoted to secrecy that I had to have my debriefing meeting with a strange guy in a toilet. Oh, and its not until NOW that they tell me the planet Im on is going to blow up in ten days! Naturally, they didnt give me enough to fly back out of this rock.. guess its time to start pumping people for clues. Watch out Terrapolis, here I come!

Ive ended up with a character thats pretty well even across the board who specialises in conversations (not to mention electronics and stealing). Looks like your average adventure gamer to me!

B.A.T. is not a game that I think I will ever – or could ever – love. Its already managed to annoy me with its interface rather heavily (in a rather short play session, might I add) by being extremely inconsistent. If you click on the screen when it has the standard cursor (which according to the manual is the falcons eye, the symbol of B.A.T.) it brings up B.O.B, the arm computer system. It looked to me at first that this was also the load/save option, though that was actually the pre-programming set thing that I couldnt wrap my head around in the manual on the first glance. Anyhow, in and of itself this is straight forward. Unfortunately, it doesnt work quite that way. It can appear/not appear at seemingly random, with the conversation icon sometimes coming even in the sky or the ground. Utterly maddening. Not being able to reliably bring up what is essentially the main interface is simply ridiculous. The combat interface is utterly ridiculous, being even less tactical than the previous game Elvira was. Unless Im missing something, it consists of selecting a weapon and clicking like a madman until the other person dies (or you do.) Uuuugggghhh.

All because the geniuses in B.A.T. didnt even give me ammo to go with my guns on introducing me to the city. Not so much as a robotic sausage. Life.. dont talk to me about life..

Anyhow. I decided to focus more getting a feel for the interface in this post as opposed to trying to make big storyline leaps (given only two of you are going to read these posts anyway, I cant emphasise enough just how painful the interface really is.) The B.O.B. screen is definitely interesting, admittedly. From what I understand, its possible to set up a few things through it, for instance having it automatically translate robot or alien when youre conversing with one of those – but I really dont see the purpose behind doing so. It feels like Id be spending longer messing around with the interface than I would really be comfortable with. As is, its quite annoying that I have to do the manual translations, even though it seems that the majority of the species Im encountering are either human or alien – it feels a lot like Im having my gameplay stretched out. I really dont want to have gameplay stretched out. (Im really depending on the French gods of gaming to have pity on me at this point!)

I find myself wondering if these screens will give me any sort of warning that Im about to starve to death without having to constantly click on them, as Im utterly sure I wont remember to look..

Anyhow, I do suppose what little Ive played through should be explained. On landing in the spaceport and messing around with the interface for about ten minutes before even finding the area I was due to enter, I went to the unirace restrooms (although, as the game says, they are equipped for all types of anatomies, theyre not very pleasant), I spoke to a police officer who gave me a few clues. Apparently, Vrangor (evil genius extraordinaire) has access to some very strange places, to find Merigo, I should try the seedier parts of town, and when I asked him of the city, the only access to the engines is in the old building. I can only imagine this is him suggesting that the engines are a weak point to be targeted by bombs? Im not even completely certain what the engines are for, given Terrapolis is supposedly a city built on a plateau in the largely arid Selenia. Anyhow, in going to the slightly ajar restroom stall, our local contact (complete with his B.A.T. pin badge on the right hand side of his coat) gives a quick monologue/summary of what the manual and back cover have already told us. Vrangor is crazy. Selenia is strategically important to the Earth, as it has large quantities of raw materials, and Vrangor is threatening to blow the city of Terrapolis if all of Earths interests dont leave it within ten days. While Vrangor has hidden his tracks well, Merigo has been located entering the planet via an ecg wave (his brainwaves, Im guessing) and as such, were loaded up with some guns, five hundred Krells (the local currency), a credit chit with 1000 Krells on it, and a hologram of Merigo to show to whoever might have seen him. Neat!

Sweet, equipment! Now why couldnt we have met somewhere OTHER than a toilet stall? Working here really is the.. well, you know.

Heres probably a good point to mention that the inventory system is legitimately horrible. Each item is listed singularly, and the only selection is made with a NEXT button, meaning that if my inventory should bloat, itll be quite difficult to work out what Ive got exactly. So, Ive been given two weapons (a hacker, a weapon that shoots several thousands of missiles simultaneously, and a Haas 10 which is a pistol-like missile launcher with heat-seekers and dumb-launchers) – but no ammo for either. Luckily, I dont plan to spend much of this game shooting if I can help it, as the combat is really that bad. (And yes, this is a homemade video by yours truly, but this is first chance to plug the Adventure Gamer YouTube channel, which will no doubt see occasional uses from the writers around. Also note the way I find someone to talk to (and shoot at) – its literally random as to whether or not you manage a hit. I also left the full DosBOX screen up to make it clear – combat is that fast even at 3000 cycles.) From the spaceport, we end up in a random sort of travel lounge place, I imagine its supposed to be – theres a vending machine to buy some food along with a club, so this is essentially the Duty Free area of the spaceport. Apparently, the club (or pub as the game calls it in spite of it having the word CLUB written in the staircase leading to it) has a reputation for being one of the shadiest places in town. A number of visitors have been found dead, too! Oh no!

Whats with that little E.T. looking thing?

I still dont fully understand this. The little screen you find in the corner requires a bribe for information on the city for no apparent reason, though you can just leave, with a picture of what looks like a gun poking towards you.. but it has no payoff aside from this thinly veiled threat.

Given that the Space Pub/Club/Bar/Place To Imbibe Overpriced Drinks was largely a bust (unless I was missing something important in there and just couldnt work it out from the interface), the next screen is Astroport Square, a place that is teeming with people. Its pretty much what youd expect coming out of an airp-- er, spaceport – overpriced hotels, overpriced fast food. Again, the place seems largely to be useless, though it does serve its function of leaving a place to keep your B.A.T. agent healthy. Im imagining that one of the meters on the B.O.B. unit (getting so sick of these acronyms) is indicative of how much rest youve managed to give to them, with drink and calories being the other key health indicators. Still, Im not going to worry about it until its needed – so after buying a Dish of the Day special at the Mecafood Center™, its on to more interesting places..

The hot quarter, Im assuming, is like the Red Light district

However, the central junction has a gun shop

Just for the record, here. I selected the Hacker, which has AG-1080 charges. I had to double check, as this read awfully like A610-80 to me in that font..

So, after having ammunition to go along with my willingness to pump people for information and steal from them recklessly (as is the true adventure gamers way), I went on a spree of information gathering. A skunk (essentially, a human street punk) told me that someone near the park mentioned Vrangor, and one Crisa Kortakis has a lot of influence here on Terrapolis. (A Glockmup, a traveler native to MIGA, not very intelligent but very proud, often destined to carry out dirty jobs and often used as assassins or robbers as theyre 9 foot tall, mentioned that influence and money were going to be my best way to make my way around Terrapolis, so Im doubtless going to have to find her at some point.) Showing the hologram to a Kradokid (one of the races populating the planet Sabellius, resembling lizards with only one eye and extremely intelligent but very fraternal) has them suggesting they might have seen them on Tri-Dee – and any attempts to speak to a Stickrob (a robot that is slightly less intelligent than a human) is simply greeted with the note that they dont tend to care much about the goings on of humans.

Of course, I find them a lot more entertaining when theyre speaking through  what looks like the Galactic Standard Alphabet...

So, while Ive technically not gotten very far, I felt I had to end before the interface completely destroyed my brain. Still, I have a clear set of directions – Ive got to share my hologram of Merigo around as openly as I can manage and track him down. Even though the manual suggests that the Glo(c)kmup (in the manual its Glokmup, in the game a Glockmup) arent to be trusted, something tells me that the direct mention of Crisa Kortakis means that Im going to have to hunt them down, too. This game already feels like a chore, and I havent even gone past an hour of play yet.. I really hope that this picks up!

If only..

Session Time: 1 hour
Total Time: 1 hour

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