There is one exit not described in the Chateau; it claims east and south are the only exits but you can go north as well. The prospect of trying all eight compass directions plus up and down everywhere else to find the potential missing treasure is not one I fancy. On the whole though this version had less bugs than a lot of published works.
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Of all the tough puzzles in the toughest of the old mainframe games the one that sticks in my mind the most is the teabag in Brand X (the full game later rebranded Philosopher’s Quest). There you have the ripest example of the Cambridge games’ difficulties. Most of the puzzles in these games are very hard but fair. This one is definitely unfair.
I accept that you are meant to learn and restart over and over again in these games (a deeply unfashionable stance in modern text adventures of course) but this particular puzzle is really beyond the pale.
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Poking into here because I’m doing some setup work for a game upcoming on my list (Phantom’s Revenge). Interesting to see the copyright in the file is listed '83, when it definitely shows up in a Dec '82 magazine, but given the break in time I can see why that’d be a little fuzzy (I’m still calling it '82).
For my current purposes I’m calling Phantom’s Revenge as by Dian as listed in the magazine. I am 100% sure Hermit’s Secret was adapted straight off Original Adventure code, so likely somewhat based on Chuck Crayne’s. So I can see making a co-authorship argument, but I’d rather go off what I have documented and discuss the caveats in the post proper.
Monster Rally does throw an interesting wrench into things! I’m also willing to buy the theory that the pair were not all that fussy about credit and willing to interchange without thinking much about it. This wouldn’t be the first instance where people have been pretty loose, even Scott Adams was willing to put sole credit for someone else when he contributed to a game despite his salesmanship putting himself (and his afro) front and center.
(Speaking of Scott Adams, there’s a new Redwall game that came out on Steam two days ago, I don’t know if he was involved at all; his text adventure based on Redwall is still up for sale. I really should just cold email him sometime, I know he likes to chat.)
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I found Phantom’s Revenge to be the most interesting of the (let’s call them the Craynes’) games. The back story is nicely developed and the last part rewards careful consideration of the historical narrative underpinning it. Apart from Castle Elsinore which is also story based (although Shakespearean the plot is very flimsy) their games aren’t strong on story but I must say I enjoyed them all. I haven’t played Granny’s Place as it is I believe not possible to complete it due to a bug.
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Apologies to all for the necro-posting, but I have just solved Monster Rally. Well, almost: 225 out of 226 points, all treasures found. Only the Last Lousy Point resists me.
@anon36083151: I don’t know if you finally found all treasures, but in case you didn’t, I have. Judging by your posts, you may have got the Last Lousy Point, because each treasure gives 5 points exactly, but you got to 221. I will gladly trade the information about the treasure you missed for how to get the Last Lousy Point. This is my being lazy. In case you’re no longer reading this or uninterested, I’ll plough on and find it myself, unless I run out of patience. 
All - I believe have a fairly complete and accurate map. Once I get to 226/226, I’ll write a solution and maybe a hints file and post the lot (may take a bit as I have other matters to attend to, but I will). It’s a shame that CASA admins are not updating the backlog, because there is no published solution for the game and I wouldn’t like it to languish indefinitely in the queue. If anyone knows of a place where maps / solutions can be posted in the meanwhile, please feel free to suggest it.
By the way: I’m also of the opinion that Monster Rally is more Chuck’s than Dian’s. It clearly was based on the same codebase as the other games, but it has enough differences both in content and style. Also, I have a hunch.
Granted. However, out of the Cambridge mainframe games, my vote goes to Fyleet for the Most Annoying Puzzle: the maze where either the N/S or the E/W axes are randomly blocked at each turn. That was just AARRGGH.
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I’ve been wondering about that myself. Perhaps we could set something up on the IF Archive.
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Well I’ll be… I started a new playthrough to optimize things out, and when I was well into the last quarter of the game I noticed my score so far was 191 points, meaning I actually had the Last Lousy Point. But I can’t for my life figure out what in blazes it was I did to get it! Where is a transcript when one most needs it?
I have tried several times to reproduce all actions but did not trigger it again. I’m beginning to think it might be random or buggy. The game is in fact a bit unstable: it has stray pointers out the wazoo, some conditions don’t trigger correctly, at least two locations mark non-existing exits, and can be crashed spectacularly in one of several creative ways. It kind of reminds me of the very first version of The Hobbit on Speccy, but without the charm.
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It’s done. 226/226 points, everything in place, and ending triggered correctly.
It turns out that the Last Lousy Point can be bugged easily. The game logic expects it to be automatically granted exactly 10 to 15 turns after depositing all treasures, as long as we are aboard the ship when the timer ends; this also triggers the ending. But it can be triggered too early because the game is extremely sensitive to typed input, and the use of non-printable characters (just by accident, for instance, hitting a function key) can send the internal state of the game to kingdom come. For an egregious example of normal input which crashes the game, just type HIT as a command by itself and enjoy the hijinks.
If the Point is triggered early by chance, which can non-reproducibly happen, the game doesn’t end (as the ending condition has already happened, as far as the game is aware of). I had to play through three times typing very carefully in order to confirm a reliable playthrough in between 600 to 650 turns. There seems to be a random window of turns (at most 750 to 800) where the game expects the player to finish. A walkthrough can now be written, although the different random events in the game will force the player to make adjustments.
I don’t relish dealing with another such entropic bugfest any time soon. In light of no other suggestions I’ll post the solution to CASA, but if anyone needs the map, hints or a walkthrough before it is published (who knows when), just get in touch with me either here or there - I’ll be happy to help other fellow adventurers deal with this mess.
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Your map and solution are now on CASA…
https://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C9428/Monster+Rally.html
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That was quick and unexpected, but much appreciated in any case. Thanks Strident.
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Not a problem. Although I’ve personally stopped editing the site, until the bugs around the database are sorted, I don’t mind going in and manually adding any of the more urgent files in the queue. I just can’t do anything that updates any actual game information; which is incredibly frustrating, as that’s the side of things I personally work on.
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