Hello,
Like a lot of other people, I recently became aware of 4am's exhaustive efforts to disentangle old Apple II copy protection methods and the subsequent appearance of large quantities of never-before-preserved software. He managed to come up with one game I've not seen since Grade 1 of elementary school. But there are still a couple of titles for which I've been searching for a long, long time, and with so many new programs suddenly appearing, I'm concerned I might have missed them.
I was thinking this might be a good place to find someone who might have been following things more closely than I have. (I already posted about this at Atariage, but did not get any responses there.)
Here are some Mystery Games:
Mystery Game A - First person adventure game, set in medieval times where first you had to get into a castle or something. What I remember most is at the end the main objective was to get a jeweled chalice. It wasn't some huge expansive game (as few of these are) and it was aimed at the grade school age set.
Mystery Game B - This game featured a behind a catapult perspective. A target would be positioned along with wind direction, then you'd input the settings and aiming and attempt to hit the target. This could have been a game that was part of an edutainment title that would come up after doing math problems or something similar - I just don't remember.
Mystery Game C - This was an educational game that literally consisted of nothing more than wandering through a maze. You were allowed to take one navigational aid with you. Taking muddy boots would mean you would leave a set of footprints as you moved from room to room, while taking a ball of yarn would depict your character as a ball of yarn. Taking a map or a piece of chalk would show your character in its true form: a mouse. Different skill levels were available; one of them would award you the title of "Knight of Cheddar" when you completed the maze. I'm thinking it might be a Sunburst Communications title, but none of the ones I've seen so far match that description.
Mystery Game D - You would be shown a couple of different patterns of bees, and then be instructed to input a set of symbols. You would then see how the bees react to that set of symbols. The idea was of course to find the set of symbols that would cause the bees to react according to the pattern you were originally shown. This was probably one game in a collection of games. It was considerably more primitive than the typical MECC experience.
Any ideas?
Im sure this is wrong, but in some ways (but not in others), Game A reminds me of "Chivalry".
It wasn't first person and was turn-based (with dice) with mini-games. It was set in medieval times and you did have to get into a castle but I don't remember anything about a chalice. It was aimed at grade school age. Some quite nice rasterised vector graphics overall and there was music at the opening screen. I didn't like it all that much, but it was generally fun.
Well, courtesy of an E-mail message, the riddle has been solved, at least in part, and now I feel obliged to tour the posts I made to dispel the mystery.
Game A is possibly Chalice of Mostania.
http://gue.cgwmuseum.org/galleries/index.php?pub=2&item=10&id=2&key=0
Game B appears to be "Catapult Capers" from MECC's Conquering Ratios and Proportions.
https://archive.org/details/MECC-A209_Conquering_Ratios_and_Proportions
Games C and D correspond to "Mazes of Rodentia" and "Queen Bee of Menta", the two components of MECC's Mind Puzzles. It so happens that it's been on archive.org as of July, but as it was not in 4am's extensive collection, I would not have come across it.
https://archive.org/details/MECC-A780_Mind_Puzzles_v1.0