Adventure games

Background

One interesting aspect of some Speccy games was the occasional prize offered to the first person to complete it, such as Pimania (Golden Sundial of Pi) and Eureka! (a whopping £25,000, which is about £1 billion in today's money).

Martech's prize offering for The Planets was reportedly a telescope. Astronomer and 80s TV presenter Heather Couper was also involved, contributing technical details to the game.

...So I suspected there'd be quite a bit to The Planets for Martech to offer a pretty decent prize. I'd played it back in the day but barely scratched the surface. Nevertheless I hoped that being older and with the luxury of emulator snapshots rather than tape saves, I might get far enough to write an article.

However, The Planets just seemed to drag me in, and I even surprised myself by eventually making made it to the end of the game.

Afterwards I was surprised not to find a complete coherent solution online - just some tips and POKEs. The .rzx nearly gets there. So I've extended this article slightly by including my journey to its completion. So Spoiler alert - if you want to try to solve the game then don't scroll too far down!

The Game

It's 2007, and the Earth is heading for another ice age. Global natural disasters means it's not looking good for us humanoids. There's also been a mysterious deep space communication, and a strange alien capsule has landed somewhere in Switzerland. Possibly a schnapps-ule... (sorry)

As the game progresses, you'll also need to find similar capsules on the other planets. Each capsule has a clue/puzzle engraved on it, and you have to type the correct answer to open it and get part of a coded solution that will help you save humankind.

As you're already knocking around in space for some reason, your first stop is to return to Earth; the inlay basically tells you the code for Earth's capsule. Opening Earth's capsule grants you a space map that lets you travel to your other planetary destinations.

Essentially The Planets plays out as a series of mini-games. Or 'mini-activities' at least.

Interplanetary travel

Once you've dealt with Earth's capsule, you can travel to any planet using the map (and unfortunately a tape recorder if you're playing on a 48k Speccy - 128k users bypass the pain of multi-load). There's a chance you'll run into a meteor shower, and have to pick off the flying rocks as they spin towards you.

Incidentally, I'd been blithely sailing through these arcade sequences without too much trouble, just taking a bit of shield damage. That is, until much, MUCH later in the game after I'd recovered most of the capsules. I was horrified to notice that my shields were NOT being replenished between planetary jaunts. The Planets grants you but ONE life; one mistake and it's truly 'game over', and you're told that your incompetence has caused the termination of the Earth.

Fortunately I'd been economical enough in my space mileage not to encounter too many more meteor showers. And they're random, so I figured I could always do a bit of save scumming if the shield situation became too hairy.

I found out post-game that there's a way of automating your laser defences, using The Database. But more on that later.

So once you've reached the planet of your choice - in my case with at least one wing mirror hanging off - it's time for:

Landing and take-off

Tractor beam released, your landing craft starts dropping towards the planet surface. The trick? To fire your thrusters at the right time and land softly on the planet. Getting the timing right is important as you need to conserve enough fuel for your take-off later.

There's more than just the 'fire thruster' button though - you have to manoeuvre yourself towards the capsule's signal - a small square on the map, so that you land near to it. This can sometimes be off-screen when your descent begins; if you can't see it, you have to guess a direction to drift in and hope it comes into view.

You can access onboard information on any particular planet's gravity, which will give you an idea of a rough height to fall/plummet to before hitting thrusters. It was only the heavy gravity of Jupiter that gave me a bit of a battle.

Post-capsule, you have to do the reverse. Take off, break through the planet's gravitational pull and then slow down enough for your ship's tractor beam to grab you.

Sending your robot(s) out to find the capsule

Once safely landed, assuming you're close enough, you're presented with a nice scenic view of the surface of the planet. You're now ready to send out one of your bots (you have three) to find the capsule.

Planet landscapes vary from barren plains to mountains, rocks, lava, water and ice. Perhaps Martech's prediction of robot vision technology in 2007 was a bit questionable (or perhaps the robots had been at the space hallucinogens); but you're presented with a kaleidoscopic view of flashing squares representing these different elements, and have to make sense of what's safe and what's hazardous.

Certain hazards will drain your power quickly - too much, and you've lost once of your three robots. However, this part becomes much easier if you get your graph paper out and start mapping, as each planet's surface is a regular square grid. Keep your eye out for green squares as these tell you the capsule's nearby. You can also return to the landing craft at any time to replenish your robot's power.

Opening the capsule

Once you've returned the capsule to your landing craft, you can try to answer the cryptic clue engraved on it. If you're correct the capsule will reveal its contents.

To make things harder, the 'clue' revealed is in an alien language, which you'll have to decipher somehow. But more on that later...

Once done, it's lunar-lander-in-reverse to get back to your ship (just the FIRE key needed this time), then on to the next planet.

The Martech Database

As a diversion from roaming the planets looking for capsules, you have an on-board computer database. You can type stuff in and learn bits of useful info.

On boot-up you're confronted with your first hurdle in the form of a LOGON: prompt (it's not difficult to guess). Then you can find all sorts of information about the planets such as their atmospheric makeup.

Aside from 'helping with your homework', (minor spoiler) I later discovered that you may be able to find a way to ease your progress through the meteor showers with the right commands.

I spent a lot of time trying to figure how how to use the database to get me further in the game, to no avail. And it didn't matter as far as game completion was concerned. However, it's left plenty of unanswered questions (see the solution later for these) - such is the nature of our universe, right?

The Alien Game

The Alien Game - aka 'Weird' - comes as a separate tape program. In the inlay we're told:

"The Solar System, the strange alien game, the eight mysterious capsules are all interconnected. Together they hold the key to survival of life on Earth."

It turns out that this is a block-y puzzle-arcade game written by Jason Austin. Never published as a game, it appears Martech adopted it to use in The Planets.

Anyway there are 43 levels to this game. As you pass each one, you get a small amount of writing in the same alien code as you saw on the capsules.

Without giving too much away (until later), you slowly develop a cipher to decode the capsule mysteries. You don't have to complete all levels to get enough information to solve The Planets. And it's just as well; levels get quite fiendish, not helped by the fact that it's sometimes hard to work out what you need to do to complete a level.

Overall I found 'Weird' pretty tough - there are a lot of levels, though thankfully failing one doesn't send you back to the start. And the way it's been fitted into The Planets main game puzzle and theme works quite well.

Summary

I'm not sure how I'd describe this game. I'm calling it 'adventure', but it's essentially a complex mystery within an amalgamation of mini-games. I think it sort of works, as it had me drawn in quite quickly.

Its depth was appreciated by the magazines at the time with Crash, Sinclair User and Your Sinclair giving it high scores.

You need a bit of patience to begin with, but once you've gone through the process of retrieving one of the capsules, it's a case of rinse-and-repeat. It's also a nice game if you like creating little pencil maps on graph paper. I do.

Overall I really enjoyed playing The Planets - my overall experience was fantastic. Somehow each individual activity/minigame isn't earth shattering in itself, but they combine nicely; the whole is much more than the sum of its parts.

My only small criticisms: I would've loved to have some more pointers and instructions to the alien game "Weird" - mainly because I just couldn't figure out exactly how some of the later levels worked (despite getting the rough idea of 'Game of Life'). Getting through a lot of them was mainly down to luck. And secondly, having just one life in the game is perhaps a tad harsh. I put this down to the prize on offer. You can save your progress though.

If you think you might want to play the game, I'd suggest you stop reading now as there are spoilers below.

If you want to hear the self-indulgent story of my journey through the game, including how it ends, continue on...

---

Planets - my guide/solution to completing the game

** WARNING - SPOILERS AHEAD!! **

The magazines were loaded with The Planets tips - mainly the solutions to the capsules riddles. I had a few troubles, particularly with one of them, but was fortunate enough to get a hint without spoilering the other capsules.

Starting The Planets - landing on Earth to open the capsule

The inlay tells us you've followed orders and returned to Earth to inspect the capsule that has landed there. So first job - straight in with the (slightly) lunar lander-esque job of landing on your home planet.

You don't have much choice here. Only by opening this capsule will you get the map which you need to visit the other planets.

My landing tactic was to plummet to a certain height (as low as possible) before firing thrusters. Then perform a few last minute adjustments (i.e. key prods). Around 4,000 metres felt like the right time to panic.

This bit took me about 5 goes, adjusting for previous failures. Afterwards I reflected that it was quite a nice design that this is the first activity you do. Muck it up? No problem, start a new game and immediately try again.

Fortunately you don't need to send your robots after Earth's capsule - it's been retrieved. But you do have to open it. Luckily this is a puzzle you don't have to solve, as you're told the answer in the inlay.

• Clue: ENIGMA
• Answer: LIFE

After opening this capsule, you retrieve a long range map, letting you travel to the other planets in the solar system.

After taking off and settling back into orbit, I decided to start my capsule search from the sun outwards, starting with Mercury.

Travelling to other planets

Most trips to other planets are similar. As mentioned earlier in the article, there's a chance of encountering a meteor shower, which is hazardous as your shields don't get restored between trips.

Just a note to say that I only discovered at the end of the game that the Martech Database has a feature where you can switch an auto-laser system on, which makes short work of the meteors. You access the database using the book icon (in the bottom right) on screen.

After deducing the login, the HELP command lists a few other commands you can enter.

One command, ACCESS, prompts you to use the syntax ACCESS=nnnnnnn. Looking later at old magazine tips sections told me that ACCESS=5012753 is what you need to enter. I still haven't figured out how you can discover this number, but it gives you high level access commands, including LASERON and LASEROFF.

If anyone can tell me how a player discovers this number, please do..! Perhaps there's a cryptic clue somewhere in The Planets that I missed. Or perhaps it's just the equivalent of a POKE - a feature deliberately hidden, unless the player trawls through the game's memory. Who knows...

Mercury

So onto the surface of Mercury. After a successful descent, I had to send my robot(s) out to discover the capsule.

It didn't take me long to work out that each planet surface is a regular map that wraps around. It doesn't change game on game either, which means out comes the pencil/paper combo.

I was tearing my hair out for some time with this first riddle. Even more so when I discovered the answer - take a below and you may understand why:

• Clue: ISTI MIRANT STELLA
• Answer: 1066AD

OK, so I thought this wasn't a bad clue. ISTI MIRANT STELLA ("they wonder at the star") appears on the Bayeux Tapestry, in a scene where a group of people are looking and pointing at a celestial object:

It's pretty cool that we (well, not me specifically) since figured out that the object they're looking at is Halley's Comet. This formed the basis of my first guesses, such as Halley, Comet etc.

Eventually I moved onto dates, since the most famous scene on the tapestry is probably the arrow-in-eye shot in the Battle of Hastings. Now I'm sure in their life everyone's been asked - at least once - the question "When was the battle of Hastings?". And what did you answer? 1066? Yep, possibly one of the most famous dates in our history - how many people need to add the 'AD'? We wouldn't want to confuse it with 1066 BC would we??

Sheesh. And no spaces between the number and the AD either, OK? Fine, I'm just slightly bitter as I this was the one capsule clue where I had to admit defeat and look up the answer. After which I started gluing my hair back on.

Anyway, back into orbit and on to the other planets.

Venus

Not too difficult a landing and take-off here. The capsule is tucked away between a few hazards though, so it took me a bit of careful hazard-mapping to find it.

• Clue: MGM/RR
• Answer: NEWTON

I liked this puzzle. I was genuinely scratching my head, wondering if it had something to do with MGM films or something. Until it struck me, like an apple falling out of a tree, the answer was staring at me all along. On the screen. In the little equation on the right hand side.

Mars

So onwards to Mars as I've done Earth ("completed it mate"), giving it a wave as I pass. The descent to Mars was pretty uneventful, though the capsule was slightly 'off grid' (I had to veer around a bit). The planet's surface didn't seem to be overly hazardous, though my Mars rover robot had to travel a fair way to grab the capsule.

• Clue: 89875517800000000 (!)
• Answer: EINSTEIN

Fortunately after solving Venus I was ready for more equation-related shenanigans. Again - the answer is staring at you on-screen. It relates to that rather famous equation involving the speed of light (squared) and a wild-haired scientist.

By this stage I had <smug mode> on after my puzzle-solving prowess (apart from pesky Mercury), and was quite enjoying the lunar lander/mapping/puzzle cycle.

Jupiter

This was the first time I was properly tested with landing and takeoff. Jupiter's savage gravity caused quite a few crashes whilst searching the grid for the capsule (it's off to the left IIRC). Later breaking orbit involved some heavy thrusting (ooer) and nervous glances at the dwindling fuel gauge.

Surprisingly the surface contained few hazards, so capsule retrieval was pretty simple.

• Clue: THE DEEP SPACE PLAQUE
• Answer: PIONEER

Nothing too cryptic about this one. This relates to the Pioneer 10 space probe that was sent to Jupiter and beyond, carrying a plaque to act as an "Earth says 'Hi'..!" message to any extraterrestrial life encountered on its journey into outer space.

Incidentally, I didn't know all this already - I just did a bit of Googling, and once I discovered the mission, I figured it'd probably be the name of the mission/probe. And it was.

I suppose back in the mid-80s the investigation would've probably involved a trip to the local library or something. I'm considering Googling for stuff fair game as long as I'm learning about space-y stuff.

Saturn

Saturn's landing was pretty uneventful, though again I had to do a bit of searching around the grid looking for the 'dot' signifying the capsule. The surface is fairly hazard free as well. I didn't map much of it before finding the capsule, so never found that monolith thingy in the picture.

• Clue: THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY MARVEL
• Answer: GALILEO

I didn't Google the clue directly, but after Jupiter I figured the clue would involve Saturn somehow so did a bit of reading up. Turns out that Galileo had noticed Saturn's rings in (incredibly) the early 1600s, mistaking them initially for three separate bodies. The clue is a quote attributed to him after this discovery.

I also later discovered that Galileo was apparently a Marvel character.

Uranus

Once again I had to hunt for the capsule when descending, but landing was quite easy - in fact I managed it at the first attempt.

I can't tell you much about the surface, as I only mapped about 20 squares (out of 200-odd) before stumbling on the capsule.

• Clue: PRESCELLY WHEN
• Answer: 21JUNE

Ooh, this one was a proper doozy of a puzzle. I spent A LOT of time mulling over this one over a few days.

What I'd worked out was:

• Prescelly (South Wales) had a link to Stonehenge - types of stone originated there, prompting discussion over how and when things may have been transported
• The WHEN in the clue had to be a hint that a date was needed

As you can see I tried quite a few YEARS, looking up any year that might have had a vague significance to Stonehenge's construction. I eventually moved onto solstices and other Stonehenge-y related days of the year, focusing on months and days.

So eventually I got there - being careful after being burned by the not-putting-spaces-in-your-answer trouble with Mercury's clue, I typed in the correct answer, prompting a celebratory jig around the living room.

Neptune

By this stage I was getting used to the variations in planet gravity; this one only took 3 attempts to land, though I could probably have done it first time if I hadn't been trying to 'perfect the plummet' to save fuel.

Again, it didn't take me too long to find the capsule. Lots of blue in the on-screen sensors - fortunately your robots can traverse water easily enough.

• Clue: IV X MCMLVII
• Answer: SPUTNIK

This one seemed straightforward compared to the previous one - clearly this is going to be a date, so it was just a case of finding what space-related event happened on 4/10/1957 (that's A.D. in case you were wondering).

In this case, it was the launch of Sputnik 1 into Earth's orbit. Nothing more to see here, so onto the final ('is it or isn't it?') planet.

Pluto

As I flew through space I was starting to feel very nervous and excited in equal measure; nervous because in my last trip I'd had the shock revelation about shields not being replenished. Excited because I felt I was nearing the end of the game (I wasn't but more on that later).

Pluto's wimpy gravity meant that descent and ascent was a fuel-economical breeze. The capsule was quite a way off-grid, so it took a bit of poking around to see it.

After dispatching my first robot I ended up mapping most of the surface before discovering that the capsule was only a couple of squares away from where I started. But it didn't matter. I'D FOUND THE LAST CAPSULE!

• Clue: AT FLAGSTAFF
• Answer: CRATER

I found the answer quite quickly to this from the NASA website, where I discovered that Flagstaff was where much astronaut training took place, in a barren and crater-y (craterous?) environment. Perhaps it's where Michael Jackson learnt to moonwa... <snip>

So what next? I'd now solved all the capsules, and the SCORE command in the Martech database said I had completed 100% of my task. But I hadn't saved the human race (to my knowledge). Scratching my head, I launched back into orbit.

Deep Space

I'd noticed that you could go beyond Pluto on the map. So maybe this was it? Travel into deep space and, having solved all the capsules, get the 'Congratulations' screen?

Unfortunately it wasn't to be. After travelling there (all 4+ million km), I just sat there gazing at the drifting stars, without a planet in sight. So what next?

Translating the alien language

Upon solving each capsule, you're presented with some cryptic symbols. I was stitching these together in MS Paint as I progressed.

We're told in the inlay that the Alien game "Weird" on the other tape would provide a clue to solving the mystery.

The eventual solution took me days. In fact, I did give up and watched the .rzx playback, to discover that the .rzx author had got to where I was - with a score of 100% but not quite at the end of the game.

So back to the 'Weird' game.

After completing - well, mostly surviving - a level in the game (mostly not knowing how you did it), you get presented with a code.

After completing a few levels, it dawned on me that the symbols corresponded to planets - in the example above, it's MERCURY, followed by a few similar symbols that I later deciphered as numbers. Some planets only have one level, others more (Jupiter has a whopping 12 levels).

The difficulty here is that while some levels can be survived by literally doing nothing, later levels get very tough. I eventually had to admit defeat and resorted to a little self-discovered POKE or two to skip the odd level.

Ultimately it didn't make too much difference. The planet names only contain a certain number of letters between them all, so completing every level still isn't enough. Using a combination of determination, deduction and... errr... let's admit it for what it is - cheating - I eventually got a full alphabet.

Great..! So back to the clues I got earlier. So let's see how these map to the capsule codes...

This is what I loved about the game - I was looking at these letters, they just didn't make any sense or coherent message.

It was only after a decent night's sleep that I had a closer look, and it suddenly jumped out, like a magic eye picture. Start by reading down the page, two columns at a time.

WELL DONE FREIND (sic)! ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS GO INTO DEEP SPACE AND HOLD HIBA

So there it is..! Incidentally if you complete the final level of 'Weird', and therefore the whole game, it gives you the characters HIBA. So I proudly present the final (final) end of the game:

Unanswered questions

This is a long game to get through but it's been cool to get to the end of a game that I previously considered unpenetrable.

Despite getting to the end, I had a few unanswered questions. If anyone can shed any light on any of this, please let me know - it'd be great to find out.

• What is the story of HIBA? I'm guessing it's a new planet in deep space, which will save Earth's population by letting them settle there.
• What is the significance of the ACCESS code 5012753? Aside from hacking the game (or reading Crash tips), how is the player to figure this out?
• There's a database command - CODE - which is met with 'PLEASE USE PART OF YOUR ANA CODE'. At one point I managed to get this to return particular numbers when I typed in a single digit 0-9. But the numbers made no sense to me. Later when I went back to an old snapshot, I couldn't do this again.
• What are the rules for the Alien game 'WEIRD'? I completed so many levels without knowing exactly how to play it.
• Did anyone complete the game and win the telescope? I don't recall seeing any Speccy magazine articles about it.

If you can help, feel free to get in contact!

• Email: davep@thirdharmoniser.com or
• twitter.com/thirdharmoniser