MEGA-CONTEST! The Room 34 Adventure Challenge

[Mayhem]

I had a stab at the boxart answer and got it wrong. I'm now stuck trying to get the key back... I can't get a couple of the letters for the clue. And I've no clue on the manuals quiz, so I'm cashing myself out of the competition and letting someone else try to earn $5 off the store. I will wait and see for the answers however...

[Doc4]

I still don't get the word search, I found all 10 in that shuffle gif and the "secret word" even though that barely made any sense.

[Gateway]

ARGHH!!!

 

I finally got all 26 titles, but now I'm staring at the puzzle pieces looking for the "secret word", but nothing is coming into focus!

 

I wish I had more time between my classes and homework to try for third prize, but it's 2Am now and I need to get to sleep.

 

[Room 34]

There is not a "secret word" in the puzzle. There IS something hidden that you need to find, but it is not a word.

 

If you compare the word search in the contest with the alternate one I posted in this thread, you should be able to find what you're missing.

 

[Doc4]

I'm just not understanding the clues here. I've still got a half finished word search that means nothing. I'm really going to need to see this one spelled out in the simplest of terms so I can understand what is going on here.

[Room 34]

WORD SEARCH REVEALED

 

Since the word search seems to be stumping a lot of people, and I'd like you all to have the chance to work on the OTHER puzzles, here, in 5 steps, is the solution. I will leave it to you to interpret what has been done in each step.

 

 

 

 

 

[Room 34]

OK... I am going to raise the stakes here for the third-place winner.

 

Both the first and second place winners got to the conclusion WITHOUT solving the Box Art Mystery. (If you answer most questions incorrectly, you just get another chance... but on this one, if you answer incorrectly the bat steals your gold key and you must solve ANOTHER challenge to get it back.)

 

So here we go:

 

If the third-place winner correctly answers the Box Art Mystery, I will increase the third-place prize from a $5 credit to a $10 credit!

[Mayhem]

Well that rules me out then... if I continue of course heh...

[Thomas Jentzsch]

... but on this one, if you answer incorrectly the bat steals your gold key and you must solve ANOTHER challenge to get it back.

Damn, I didn't even try to answer that one (low bandwidth). The other challenge looks way easier.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Stuck at the very last question...

[NE146]

Well I obviously can kind of see what's going on now.. but quite honestly why the heck on the first 'shifting of the tiles', does one of the 4 tiles remain in the same position? (in this case.. the blue one).

 

Between dividing the 20x20 into four 10x10's, then rotating them with one tile remaining stationary and then only checking every other letter no wonder I never got it

 

Oh and even now that I see all the games, I still have no clue what a potential answer could be

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Oh and even now that I see all the games, I still have no clue what a potential answer could be  

Take a closer look at the last picture.

[Room 34]

but quite honestly why the heck on the first 'shifting of the tiles', does one of the 4 tiles remain in the same position?

 

Chance.

 

I put together the "spaced" puzzle on graph paper, cut it up into 4 pieces, and "randomly" taped them back together to fill in the remainder of the word search. It just so happened that one of the pieces ended up staying put!

 

[Chuck Gill]

Damn, I didn't even try to answer that one (low bandwidth). The other challenge looks way easier.

 

 

Me too, I pretty much had to rely on boxes and manuals that I had. There are 2 more that I should have gotten. I tried looking at boxes on AtariAge but with only dial-up available where I live, it was taking forever.

 

I have a new appreciation for box art now.

 

Chuck

[joeybastard]

Oh and even now that I see all the games, I still have no clue what a potential answer could be  

 

Me neither. This contest is starting to give me an inferiority complex

[NE146]

And to be quite honest again, I have no clue what the significance of the

"X N O P O E I" is.. and also the highlighted "T N U R D A U Q T N" in the 3rd and 4th step.

 

Then the whole, moving the randomly placed (i.e. not rotated) tiles BACK to normal to read the 'special' letters of the thing.. (which of course is STILL only 'every other' letter in the whole puzzle) again, no wonder I couldn't figure it out I mean HOW OBSCURE CAN YOU GET!

 

Run Luke Run!

[Room 34]

I have no clue what the significance of the  

"X N O P O E I" is.. and also the highlighted "T N U R D A U Q T N" in the 3rd and 4th step.

 

C'mon now...

[NE146]

I have no clue what the significance of the  

"X N O P O E I" is.. and also the highlighted "T N U R D A U Q T N" in the 3rd and 4th step.

 

C'mon now...

 

Still no clue about the XNOPOEI , and with the Quadrun, what's with the framing T's?

[Mayhem]

Me too, I pretty much had to rely on boxes and manuals that I had. There are 2 more that I should have gotten. I tried looking at boxes on AtariAge but with only dial-up available where I live, it was taking forever.

 

You did better than me then. I got 3 straight off and found another 8 through AtariAge's archives and that was it. Couldn't get the other 12!

 

And damn you Room34 for dragging me back into this

 

I've now got the chalice back to the Gold Castle (after defeating the bat and the last dragon), but still one last thing to do. Hmmmm

[Thomas Jentzsch]

3rd!

 

No cheating this time.

[bjk7382]

3rd!

 

No cheating this time.

 

Congratulations! Spend that AA store credit wisely

 

I can't wait to get my Amiga mouse so I can actually play that game I just got. I tested it and it works, yet I still can't play.

[Gateway]

FINALLY!

 

I killed Grundle!

 

I feel even more stupid now, because the answer has been under my nose the whole time. In addition to my large 2600 colection in my room, I have my other large collection.

 

I missed third place, but I'm still determined to complete this adventure, for my own sense of accomplishment. But I'll have to wait until after work...

[Mayhem]

Finished... fifth. If only I'd spotted the little "trick" at the end earlier... curse my feeble eyes

[Room 34]

Congratulations to Thomas and the other finishers!

 

Now that we have no less than FIVE people who've finished the contest, I am going to post the solutions...

 

[Room 34]

ROOM 34 ADVENTURE CHALLENGE SOLUTIONS

 

All will be revealed. If you intend to continue working on the challenge for fun, stop reading here!

 

Atari Trivia #1

 

CHALLENGE: Which Atari 2600 game shares its title with the nickname of the programmer who created it?

 

SOLUTION: SOLARIS

 

EXPLANATION: Doug Neubauer's nickname was Solaris. In fact, an early version of this game was intended to be Atari's 2600 tie-in with the film The Last Starfighter, and that prototype, as described by Matt Reichert, identifies its creator as "Solaris," not "Doug Neubauer" as in the released version.

 

Atari Trivia #2

 

CHALLENGE: O.J. Simpson might enjoy this game, which, strangely enough, was not released by 20th Century Fox.

 

SOLUTION: TOWERING INFERNO

 

EXPLANATION: O.J. Simpson was in the 1974 film Towering Inferno which was released by 20th Century Fox. 20th Century Fox released several Atari 2600 games based on its own films, but this game (which does not directly tie in with the film but uses its title, a 20th Century Fox trademark) was released by U.S. Games.

 

Atari Trivia #3

 

CHALLENGE: An alternate title of the movie on which this Atari-produced game was based is the name of a completely different series of games featured on one of the 2600's competing systems. What is the title of the Atari-produced game?

 

SOLUTION: KRULL

 

EXPLANATION: An alternate title for the film was Dungeons and Dragons. Mattel produced a series of licensed ADVANCED DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS games for the Intellivision.

 

Atari Word Search

 

CHALLENGE: It's a good old-fashioned word search... but not quite! See if you can find all 26 game titles in the word search. (Each title is an Atari-branded North American release.) There's more than meets the eye in this puzzle. And once you've discovered the secret, you may find your way to the ultimate answer for this particular challenge.

 

SOLUTION: STAR WARS

 

EXPLANATION: This is really two word searches in one. The first, immediately apparent puzzle, contains 16 titles. The pair of broken "RUBIKSCUBE" appearances is a clue that the puzzle itself is like a Rubik's Cube and needs to be reshuffled. The broken "RUBIKSCUBE" appearances even indicate where the puzzle should be cut into 4 smaller squares. By rearranging the squares, then removing alternating lines, a second word search is revealed, which contains the remaining 10 titles. Reshuffling the 4 squares to their original positions, and reading only the letters remaining after all words have been found and alternating lines removed, starting from the upper right, you get the hidden question: "What movie series spawned four Atari games?" The answer of course is Star Wars. The steps in getting to the question are demonstrated in the following 5 images.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Atari Trivia #4

 

CHALLENGE: Which prototype Atari 2600 game is based on a movie, but was long believed to be based on a different movie?

 

SOLUTION: PLANET OF THE APES

 

EXPLANATION: The prototype now known as Planet of the Apes was long believed to be Alligator People, due to the mislabeling of a copy of the prototype.

 

Atari Box Art Mystery

 

CHALLENGE: Can you solve the mystery of the box art? Examine the game board. Identify each game from the box art detail shown. Once you know all of the games, the true mystery in this challenge awaits you. Can you unlock the deeper meaning behind the puzzle?

 

SOLUTION: RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK

 

EXPLANATION: The full box cover of each game in the puzzle is shown below.

 

 

Taking the first letter of each game's title, we have:

 

JPNACJKSRESYICSDRKYSPJV

 

Each "S" title actually begins with "Space," which is a clue that these represent spaces. Changing each S to a space, we have:

 

JPNACJK RE YIC DRKY PJV

 

It's a cryptogram! The number of letters in each word is probably a big hint, and the resulting decryption is: RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.

 

Those who failed to solve this challenge on their first attempt were instead directed to complete the Atari "Crossed-Words" challenge upon their return to the Gold Castle.

 

Rhindle's Riddles

 

CHALLENGE: Rhindle has gotten bored waiting for you, so he's been perusing the Atari archives. He will spare your life if you can identify the games whose manuals contain each of the following sentences:

 

1. "The more you play the game, the more keenly you'll anticipate the appearance of other cars."

 

2. "SMASH! POW! CRUNCH!"

 

3. "After awhile, you'll learn to judge traffic flow and make the right move at the right time."

 

4. "Get set for some fast action, 'cause there's trouble ahead!"

 

5. "It's also a good idea to use a note pad and pencil to keep track of vital information during each mission."

 

6. "War has been declared and you find yourself deep in enemy water with no help."

 

7. "The white line located at the top of the screen is the Critter Counter."

 

8. "Stanley starts out well-equipped, with both an umbrella and a pith helmet."

 

But Rhindle's not about to let you get off that easily. Once you have identified each game, the real challenge begins... Rhindle has chosen these games, in this order, for a specific reason. Can you find it?

 

SOLUTION: GREMLINS

 

EXPLANATION: This challenge turned out to be quite easy, thanks to the power of Google. (I attempted to thwart Internet searches by choosing mostly games whose manuals are in scanned format in the AtariAge archives, but I neglected to actually search elsewhere online for the text.) The games, then, are:

 

1. Grand Prix

2. Breakout

3. Freeway

4. Stampede

5. Stellar Track

6. Polaris

7. Quadrun

8. Coconuts

 

But what to make of this list? If you take the first letter of the first game, the second letter of the second game, the third letter of the third game, and so on, it spells out: GREMLINS.

 

Atari "Crossed-Words"

 

CHALLENGE: The bat has decided to give you a chance to regain the gold key and enter the castle. You must first solve this "crossed words" puzzle. Each row in the puzzle contains titles of two Atari game cartridges. Some may be prototypes or unreleased, some may be Sears alternate titles, but all are games that were given CX numbers by Atari. (The number to the left of each row is a hint... it is the sum of the two games' CX26xx numbers.) In each row, the yellow box is the dividing line: it is the last letter in the first title and the first letter in the second. A few of the letters have been filled to help you get started. Once you have filled in all of the titles, the yellow column will yield a hint to the solution of this challenge, once again the title of an Atari 2600 game (though not necessarily one produced by Atari themselves).

 

SOLUTION: ALIEN

 

EXPLANATION: The game titles are completed in the image below.

 

 

The hint written vertically in the yellow column spells out WEAVER FILM, which of course is a clue to the answer, ALIEN.

 

Those who failed to solve the Box Art Mystery (i.e. everyone!) met this challenge at the Gold Castle.

 

Grand Prize Mystery

 

CHALLENGE: You may have noticed that all of the challenges' solutions have something in common. Now it's time for a little bit of math and a lot of non-video game trivia. But don't worry... the information you need should not be hard to find. Once you've determined the common thread between all of the solutions, find out the year of the first instance of each. Calculate the mean (sum divided by count, rounded to the nearest integer) of all 7 answers' years, and enter it below to complete the contest!

 

SOLUTION: 1977

 

EXPLANATION: Each challenge's answer was a movie title. If you find the mean of all of the years, the result is 1977.

 

If you solved the Box Art Mystery the result is exactly 1977. Otherwise, the result still rounds to 1977. The years of the movies are as follows:

 

Solaris: 1972

Towering Inferno: 1974

Krull: 1983

Star Wars: 1977

Planet of the Apes: 1968

Raiders of the Lost Ark: 1981

Gremlins: 1984

Alien: 1979