Missed Classic: Gram Cats - Go Mad Yourself!

 Written by Morpheus Kitami

Apparently this agency isn't as secret as I thought if they have the logo outside their HQ...

Last time, our heroine with ESP, Sayaka had just been sent to a school full of aliens by Eagle, Earth's defense organization of questionable morality. Why? Because the aliens eat people, males, mostly, so we're sending a woman in, alone, because, well, she probably isn't going to be brutally murdered. Granted, with this kind of game it's less probable that she's going to be murdered. First anyway.

Anyway, new commands I've gotten since I've arrived are take, give, strike and enter. What Sayaka is going to hit, well, I doubt the usefulness of that command. Sayaka can change clothes here, to some kind of...very '80s shirt, and not back to her uniform. Apparently that's one of the selling points, clothing changes. Frankly, it looks worse than Sierra and Lucasarts, but what do I know?

What adventure games have been missing is the ability to explore a dungeon.

And much like Eagle HQ, the school is a dungeon, only less chance to wander around. Advance, return, those are the first two commands. As I'm on the third floor of the dormatory, there's not much point in wandering around. Nobody's going to answer Sayaka if she tries walking into random rooms.

There are four floors to the building, or rather, three floors and a roof. There's nothing on the roof now, but judging by the commands, we'll have to talk to someone up there. Right, better go out the front door. Go down to the first floor, and it's all dorms. The heck? What's the design of this building? I can clearly see the sky outside my window, and if this is a school, this clearly has to be the dormitory. It's almost like nobody involved in the construction of this place was concerned with education!

Going by previous game logic, the only two places something can happen is in Sayaka's room and the roof. So I guess I'm just going to look at the roof til something happens and that's something. Sayaka can look, but speaking results in no response. I spam every button in every order, hoping to get something, only for nothing to happen. Well, THAT was pointless. Or it seems that way, anyway, Japanese games aren't above making the player do arbitrary things to get rewards later. Since this is an adventure game, this might advance the plot in ways I would never think.

Sayaka's room has nothing new in it, and the roof is pointless, clearly I have to just manually knock on every room in the building until someone answers. That is in fact, the actual answer, and what I have to do to advance the game. At which point, you might wisely point out, though cleaned up for writing purposes, say something meaning "what is with this game?" or "is this game kidding you?" and the answer is, I don't know. Still, at room 202, I find a mysterious woman.

Despite her titanic eyes, she doesn't look bad, like some princess out of some forgotten fighting game

I can look, but that produces an unhelpful message saying that Sayaka stares at her. Thanks, Leisure Suit Sayaka. Sayaka introduces herself, explaining that she's new here. Which means Sayaka actually did randomly walk into a room. As per usual with games I play here, we may have thought this was going to be a lot better than it really was. The other person basically goes what a thing for you to say and welcomes her. I'm getting the vibe from her dialog that she's an alien. Mind you, I'm getting that vibe from everyone's faces. That said, I can't actually do anything here, Sayaka and this woman's dialog loops.

Room 301 has Rui from the start. I would show a screenshot, but unfortunately someone loves to draw things I can't show. She's pink hair striped shirt from the intro. Now she doesn't look badly drawn at least. Except for her oddly fluid eyelid closing. It's really creepy, and I'd take a gif, if there weren't multiple reasons that was impossible. I should probably figure out how to do that. She asks what Sayaka is doing here, Sayaka asks what she should do here, and Rui tells me to go to Room 101. Okay, is this like the game telling me the answer because this is a cheat or is this the game telling me the answer because this is literally the only way to advance the game? Because I suspect I might not care if the difference between legit and cheap is spending hours wandering around a dungeon for no good reason.

You know, the blinking thing is weird, some characters stare unendingly, others blink constantly, it's a really freaking weird contrast.

Oh, good, it's required. Wait, then why the heck was I able to enter room 202? That IS an alien, isn't it? Well, this is Miri, which answers all our questions from last time, except whoever the heck Mazaa was. If that wasn't someone, I haven't a clue what was going on there. I haven't been mentioning what happens when you look at things, because this isn't the game that's going to care about that. In fact, looking here gives you "What do you expect? Intellectualish." Sayaka, a master of words and observation.

You can tell because she has no bedsheets, intelligent people sleep entirely unclad even in the dead of winter. And there's that broken keyboard, a sure sign of an intellectual, she sucks at computer games, but she has a Kanji pad and two...speakers? Come to think of it, what the heck IS that computer? Hasn't the author ever seen one of those before? I also note it's dark outside, for some reason.

Miri is going to give Sayaka her new Eagle ID card. It might be a school ID card, but whatever the case, it's important. She says as much. I have to fill it in, which she says in many words. There's a frigging short story, but we get one line of text telling us that aliens are on Earth. Well, I can't leave, and I have no button that writes things down. I can try entering and oh, I guess the game assumes Sayaka wants to go to the toilet. Maybe the game's intro was intended to be sarcastic, you don't talk about toilets if you're a serious game about serious things.

Well, the answer is I just keep the conversation going. Miri tells me that they need to find some equipment or something to complete the card, but I can't leave, so what do I do? Talking just looks, there's nothing I can look at or take, striking is pointless. I just hit on it by accident. I enter again, and briefly (about a frame or two) I get an image of...uh...Sayaka using a squat toilet, looking embarassed. Later I get a good look at it, and I really wonder what kind of weirdo is playing this game legitimately. The kind of person who spends some time in jail I think. You could of course just continue spamming conversation, but either way you get teleported back to Sayaka's room.

Where I now have to figure out how to use a communicator to talk to Miri some more. "I forgot to say," a huge wall of text. Doron, who I think is the perverted kid from last time, is going to pretend to be my younger brother. Before you can point out this is an all-girls school, she mentions that, and says that he's training, so the girls will forget about him, much like I had to look twice to see him back at Eagle HQ. Either I'm massively misreading this or this game is getting incredibly stupid. Wait, we're just going to let an invisible pervert wander around an all-girls school? Wow, maybe Jobu really is the spiritual predecessor to The Illusive Man.

So, at this point the game opens up and I can now travel between three locations. The school, Eagle HQ, and a place that uses the Kanji for "hang", which is the town from the intro. I can enter the "hangout", but if I try to leave, the game "hangs". This applies to both rips I have of the PC-98 version, which means I have to try one of the others. The MSX version, as I mentioned last time, looks just as nice, but has an awful soundtrack, quite possibly the worst possible soundtrack. The PC-88 version has a decent soundtrack, but is aggressively dithered and looks ugly in practice. Like playing a game through a waterfall. Do I suffer or does everyone, that is the question?

First of all, it's not fair that I'm the only one who gets to hear the lovely MSX soundtrack. Kindly crank up your speakers and listen to this lovely music from the land of the rising sun. Reminder, I am not making the tracks any shorter than they really are, that truly is how long they are.

Now as a question this is strange, because each version is uniquely awful. The PC-98 version has no music, even if it did work; The PC-88 version looks like crap, it has aggressive dithering and I can't seem to remove the scanlines; The MSX version has that music. Also, both the PC-88 version and MSX version have problems with the maze, it's not obvious when you can go left and right on a crossroad. In the MSX version, this is seemingly something the game just doesn't show you at all. I was going to quit the playthrough at this point because of the maze issue, along with the game delaying the first time you could save, I assumed you couldn't in either version.

And the game now has buckets of loading. So, much, loading. Every single time something happens there's a delay, every screen everything reloads.

If it sounds like I'm miserable, I am. Even with speeding the game up playing in the MSX version is torture. Look at this, to my left and right are passageways. 50 CAPs if you can come up with a legitimate reason why I should be able to figure that out that isn't just "played another version" or "spammed commands". Imagine spending $60+ on this! I can't even save in this version and I did this crap twice. My disappointment is immeasureable and my day is ruined.

At least the PC-88 version works, and I can, you know, save. Either in-game or through save states. And my whining about scanlines was premature, one of my other emulators does not suffer from that particular disease. Huzzah. This isn't that much better, since if I'm too quick on pressing space again, I automatically activate the action again, which is a problem, say, in a dungeon. Really hard to get myself motivated to play through this game when during the best of times, and the worst of times I'm dealing with a concrete wall. For now I can't enter the hangout option, but if this ends up breaking like the PC-98 version, that's the end of it.

"Very pretty, the receptionist, isn't she?"

Right, let's get back to actually playing the game. Since there's nothing to do at the Academy, now, good. Let's go to Eagle HQ. I can't go anywhere without first talking to the receptionist, who if I'm not full of it, seems to be foreign, judging by the weird way her text comes out. She speaks in a lot of katakana. In the '80s it's not unusual for developers to avoid using Kanji as much as possible, but now that computers could show both sets of characters it's odd to see katakana in any great degree. This is sort of akin to having a character speak borderline gibberish to simulate a Scottish accent or throw in zee ztrange zay of zpeaking for zee mighty French, or the Belgians.

Now, I can enter through the entire Eagle HQ, first stop, the "kobii". Kobii? Lobby, sorry, got my ro and ko confused. They're very similar. Fun fact you will hear a trillion times during these Japanese games, the Japanese don't really have a L or R sound as we know it, instead they have some sort of unholy in-between that doesn't make any sense to the American tongue. I bring this up and it doesn't seem like anything of note happens here yet. Next up, the development room. Like a photography room?

Whoops, accidentally walked into a Rance game.

This isn't a photography room. I'm no photography buff, but I'm pretty sure they don't like candles in there. Koochi here looks like he's in the wrong game. Both in presence and in looks. By the way, that name is pronounced as in "cooperative" not as in "coup", they'd use a "u" in the latter case. Bizarre presence aside, this isn't the photo development room, it's the ESP development room. Sayaka has to figure out how five cards differ. The cards are mixed into one pile, then she has to get the right card, doing so for 5 times. And I didn't get the rest because of how the game cuts text off.

Hang on, an adult adventure game focusing on mini-games? Doesn't ring a bell.

And now a mini-game. There are ten cards on the table, five face down and five face up, the ones face down merge into a single pile, and I pick one as an answer. It's not like a spin thing where you could reasonably figure out which card is which, so there must be some other trick. But what? It's not a particular card back and it's not a predetermined selection of cards, as you can replay as many times as you want. Not that I would put it beyond the cruelty of the game's designers to force the player to restart their computer in order to get the best ending. There is no way to reload the game short of restarting, and I'm not going to be replaying this game for a better ending than whichever one I get. I also note that you always pick from five cards, that is, none disappear.

I'm gonna get back to this. Next up, the information room, which I can't enter. The next room I can enter is the training room. This seems less ESP and more physical. I can't do anything here, though I can apparently find a woman doing something that would get you throw out of any quality gym. This leaves the command floor and I can't enter it. Drat. Well, I either have to brute force the development mini-game or I missed a room. No. Hey, maybe I missed something in the lobby.

"Man sitting". Yeah, that's what it says, and people think western games are uninformative sometimes.

Well, I look around. Dunno what I'm expecting to find given that everyone I know about is currently in the alien Academy. Turns out I met with a random dude. I'm sorry, is this Eagle HQ or is this a mall? Ah, I shouldn't be absurd, malls don't have gyms in them anymore. This is "Makkoi", or McCoy. I nominally remember hearing I should find him, but apparently I didn't write that bit down. We talk in circles. "I'm McCoy; You're Sayaka." "Good day." "I'm McCoy; You're Sayaka." "Good day." What solves this endless loop is looking again, then a waiter gives one of us a big, iced red drink in a wine glass. What's the drinking age in Japan? 20? Well, this probably isn't Sayaka's then, though Eagle isn't exactly being run by Flash Gordon, is it?

Remember, everyone loves this girl and everything she does, even though she seems off-model more times than not.

If my reading of McCoy's explanation is correct, it's supposed to boost Sayaka's mind. Whew...wait, that sounds like something someone with evil intentions would say. He does yap on about the beneficial properties of the stuff for two whole boxes of text. Then he disappears after I drink it. Okay, guess he must have really been a doctor. He mentioned the training room, but that's the same. So's the development room. So what the heck? Guess I have to look things up again. Seems like I missed a conversation with Miri, which looking to where I'm currently at, so to speak, really puts this game as the sort of crap where randomly doing one thing magically causes something else to pop up.

This nets me a conversation with Rui that says what I've already known and Sayaka better know by this point too, that the school is suspicious. That's it. This is something I had to do because...I guess Sayaka doesn't know the full extent of what the aliens can do. She still doesn't, and frankly events seem loosely connected so far. And it doesn't help.

Turns out I should have read the part of the walkthrough where the writer says the player doesn't have psychic abilities. In short, the game expects you to do it over and over again until you win. I don't know what the odds of that are, beyond bullcrap. I'd quit here and now if I didn't have an emulator with save states. If I had to guess based on behavior from using save states, it seems to be linked to parts of the background music. Because even from the same state it was randomized, but within certain parameters. I suspect this was too intellectual for the intended audience.

Anyway, winning this mini-game allows me to continue, and if I try to advance in the training room again, what happens is that woman decides to do something to Sayaka that would get you thrown out of all gyms. I guess this is Sayaka's power? Psychic lesbian who turns women into raging lesbians? Well, if this game wasn't trying to be awkward to describe, I couldn't decribe it at all.

That finishes off Eagle HQ, and I can't do anything at the Academy, because, to translate a Japanese insult into English, the designer, the most noble of men, is a hack who makes the player wander around for no reason. I meet with mystery purple hair, now mystery...what do you call pale pink? She has new dialog; she effectively says Sayaka's visit to her room is purposeless. Almost like some great man couldn't be bothered to give me the slightest bit of direction and didn't design their game to account for that.

As it turns out, what I'm supposed to do is harass this woman. Why? I don't know, but there's nobody else and Rui is saying the same thing over and over again. Sayaka asks if she's seen any strange goings on, the dialog loops and oh, was she one of the women on the roof? Whatever, that's all I'm getting out of her. Now can I talk to Miri? Yay...Sayaka says something about her training, Miri asks how it went, and Sayaka says not well, just a little bit. Miri expresses that even that is useful, and then kicks her out of her room. I guess this is as good a place as any to end this session.

Right, sitrep. I'm halfway through, judging by the walkthrough. (not a lot that can be spoiled when half the commands on the walkthrough are speak and listen) This is going to be a problem child. All of my guesses regarding the content of the game have been hilariously wrong. This may end up delayed until after October, I'd like to play something else before I switch over to horror games for a month and every time I fire up this game I regret it immensely. At least if that halfway bit is true, all this will be over in another 3 hours.

This Session: 2 hours 40 minutes
Total Time: 3 hours 20 minutes

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!