Wayne's World – Won!

by Michael

At the end of this game, we will be rescuing a princess.

Well, I have to take back some of my optimism about this game from the previous posts.  This last segment of the game made me feel as though I was constantly climbing ladders, dodging wine barrels being tossed my way.

I’m going to leave out a lot of the deliberations that went into my actions.  A lot of the puzzle solving in this last section came down to pure luck or brute force inventory application.  Sometimes, I could see where I might have been given a hint, had I arrived at a different screen first, but instead did not.

Last we saw, I found out my pookie had been babe-napped, and the money we raised to save the TV station had been stolen at the same time.

I dare you to say it three times, really fast.

Exploring the world after the tragedy, I made my way to the grocery store warehouse, where, housed within, was a meeting of the Secret Society of Sinusitus Sufferers.  Because that is the most likely place for a meeting, of course.

I could think of a better place for such a meeting.

“Well, we’re safe for now.  Thank goodness we’re in a bowling alley.”

But since that’s a location sorely missing from this game, here we are.  We find out from the leader that DRAG (remember the intro post for the game?  Decency Referendum Against Grossness.) has turned the town into a bunch of stuck-up, high-minded busy-bodies.  But, the members of this secret organization are exempt, because of some experimental cold medicine they import through the black market from Mexico.  

So how come Wayne and Garth weren’t hypnotized by the TV dictator like the rest of Aurora?  “I have a theory about that... I think it’s just because you guys are too cool!”

We ask for some of the meds, and we get them.  And a goal, I suppose.  How can we defeat them?  “Well, first you need to find out where they broadcast their signal from.”

Well, most of the other locations are useless to us, so let’s go visit our friend the scantily-clad mayor, who is sick with a cold and might be immune to this chicanery?

Says the politician inviting teenagers into his house while wearing just a bathrobe.

The mayor berates us for our low-brow television show and associated behavior.  “Did you think that you could take advantage of me just because I’m sick?”

Let’s share our medicine with him.  And with that (and some body morphing into a standing reindeer or something) suddenly his head is clear, and we apprise him of what’s going on.  He agrees to help us.  First, he opens up the Aurora bank account to us, giving us the remaining $15 in the budget.

Hmm, guess that’s why the TV station was running low on cash.

He also offers us his office to use to plan the rescue mission.

Having met this mayor, I suspect it's been more like cooking s'mores.

Dealing with some visual glitches in this room and exiting it, I somehow manage to find a map on his desk.  It’s not useful to me yet, but it also isn’t nailed down.

Hmm, fifteen dollars.  There were only two things in town that cost more than $5 when I explored before.  Renting the equipment was one of them, but since a) we already put on the show and b) it was stolen, that’s not likely to be a good choice.  The other thing was the box of stale donuts.  This was one of the few Garth puzzles, mind you, like at the convenience store, where different dialog choices come up depending on who’s asking.  But there was no hints given about this, I just happened to remember about using Garth earlier in the game to talk here.

Irma thinks he’s cute, so he gets an extra one for free.

Is that a Queen reference during this Rhapsody?  Well done, Capstone.

At Dr. Gadget’s lab, we deal with another honorary member of DRAG, the good doctor who must have been watching our show when we stole the timeslot from him.  He’s working on a new invention, top secret, of course, and at one point we ask if we could help.  (Why?  It’s a video game, darn it.)  It turns out that he needs a large rubber washer in an obnoxious size.

But of course, a day-old donut is probably rubbery, right?  (Actually, the yeast-raised ones do get that way.)

The doc uses it in the machine, and he disappears.  Maybe he’s invisible?  Who knows.  But he’s gone, so we can have our way with the room.  But all we’re going to really do is steal the extension cord.

Finally, an adventure game where we don't have to steal toilet paper from the cart to clog a toilet!  (Ahem, LSL6, Zak McKracken, PQ3, and others...)

At City Hall, there’s finally something to do upstairs.  A janitor is there, cleaning.  No, not a cliche character in an adventure game at all.  He’s immune to the brainwashing because he doesn’t own a TV.  In talking to him, we learn he’s hungry.  Well, didn’t we just buy a box of delicious day-old donuts?  We get a pair of plungers in return.

If there’s any professional cleaners reading this, please tell me how likely it is for you to be carrying extra plungers with you to trade for a snack.  Two extra, mind you.

The maintenance man, busy dunking his donuts, is otherwise distracted and we can now visit the office he left open to clean.  

He will, ahem, "review her figures" at the meeting.  Too bad she has eyes for someone else.

We find a memo to someone named Cindi about the transfer of $50k in the budget from public television to finance some sewer reconstruction.  And a doodle on the memo lets us know that Cindi is the unnamed worker from the mayor’s office that called in to the show way back in the intro sequence.  Conveniently, her address is showing on the computer screen.  

Gee, I wonder where I should go next.

A very fine house.

What a beautiful house, with a precious guard dog tied up outside.  I’m not really sure why we’re here, but let’s distract the dog anyways.  He likes the lucky sausage, but I wonder if he would have preferred something else instead.  Distracted dog moves away from the tree, and a new inventory item we can interact with (and take):  the rope.

We can’t use the front door.  That would make too much sense.  Looking in the garage, there’s two cars there, so Wayne thinks everyone is home.  So, what to do?  Again, I’m not even sure why the heck we’re here, but I’ve kind of stopped caring about that in this game at this point.  

No, seriously.  But I guess we’re looking for answers about why the money was going for sewer repairs?

Well, from here, we can use the rope with a beam that’s above the dormer window, and tie it to Wayne’s hockey stick to make a swing seat.  Wayne’s too heavy, so Garth sits on it, and we pull the swing up to the window

Lost in your eyes.

Talking to her, we are presented with many different choices on how to proceed.

I just really want to meet Michaelangelo.  And April Ryan.  She's a babe.  She's babe-licious.

And she tells us that there’s a secret entrance in quadrant 64R on the sewer map.  And then, the secret rendezvous ends because her dad is coming up the stairs, so Wayne brings the lovebird back down to Earth.

Looking at the map, I find the map quadrant in question, but clicking on it just makes the map disappear.  So, I look at the travel map by getting in the car, and the approximate location, I think, is City Hall.

And finally, a game where we don't need to shove a giant ladder into our pockets.

So, I thought that I needed to ShopVac the coins out of the fountain.  I’m not sure why anyone would think of this, but how about using the SuckCut™ to remove the water? 

Looking at the vac’s inventory picture, I’m reminded that this isn’t 2024.  There’s a cord coming off of the vacuum, which means it needs to be plugged in.  Looking around the screen, using the old LucasFilm Games method, I find that one of the light poles is labeled different than the others (as LAMP POST rather than LAMP POSTS) and at the top of it is an outlet.

Another puzzle for the lightweight Garth, who is more “monkey-man”.  Using the pair of plungers, he can go to the top of the post and plug in the vacuum.  But that’s a big if.

Another glaring game bug:  if you have Garth climb up there without giving him the extension cord first, he is stuck up there in a state of limbo until you have Wayne walk to the car to leave the screen.  Then, Garth will come down.  But the game doesn’t let you hand him the cord while he’s up there.

Garth was shocked that this worked.

Quoting Mike Meyers: “That’s not my bag, baby.”

So, there’s a manhole cover under all that water, which is probably the sewer entrance we’ve been looking for.  Next comes a verb fight with the game: how to gain access.  OPEN MANHOLE COVER?  Nope.  PULL MANHOLE COVER?  Nope.  USE PLUNGERS ON COVER?  Nope.  It turned out to be PICK UP MANHOLE COVER.

But of course.

Pipe Dreams was an early favorite of mine from LucasFilm Games.

And now we are in the sewers.  And this is appropriate, because I was soon using sewer language to speak about this game.  Here goes:

The sewers are multi-level mazes that are so poorly designed.  

First, the orientation changes with EVERY screen.  Say for example, you exit a screen using a left=hand tunnel.  You might end up in the back right of the next room.  Or the left again, barely noticing the screen has changed.

Next, there are no characteristics to help you plot your course.  Reviewers here and elsewhere have complained about certain mazes.  In Zak McKracken, for example, at least the Mars maze had different symbols over the doors and random objects around here and there.  Here, each room looks identical, except for where the holes are.

There’s no quick escape if you make a mistake.  In Monkey Island and some other games, if you enter the wood maze (with or without the instructions) and make a wrong turn, within a few more screens you’ll be back at the start.  The game designed that as a protection so you wouldn’t be walking in circles.  Here?  You’re on your own.

Mapping this was near impossible, and I stopped caring at one point.  So, I started to use a walkthrough in order to get through the maze travel.

So, let’s go exploring.

Because I’m not sure how to caption this, here you go.

At one point, we come across a frog king of some sort, in a throne, who tells us upon entry that we have been “chosen for our strength and courage, to finish an age old epic quest that has destroyed all who have gone before you.”

Our quest is to seek out and destroy the spirit of the wicked and evil sorceress of Abdevonia and... well, I’m not typing all this.  

There’s choices in this list for every generation.

He bestows upon us a special power, by way of shooting us with his scepter wand thing, and the power we gain?  A squirt gun.

It seems he’s in the wrong game, and quickly makes a magical exit.  Wayne: “Wow!  For a moment there I felt like Timothy Leary.”  Wow.  This game is continuing to be really educational for our younger and overseas readers.

As usual, I look around the room and get many humorous descriptions of the items, including the throne being made of cubic zirconia and plastic, but everything appears to be nailed down.

Meet our co-star, Abby Normal.  (And you thought I was going to make a Young Frankenstein reference, didn’t you?)

Another room we can land in is a black & white lair for a mad scientist attempting to reanimate a corpse.  Somehow, this feels slightly familiar.  There’s a beaker of acid to be taken, and even in black and white, there was a subtle visual cue that it was an object to interact with.  Other than the doctor’s coat, it’s the brightest item in the room.

The characters ignore us; it seems that we have simply stepped into a movie without interfering with it.  Again, we can look and get funny responses, but the room exists as both an artistic expression and a venue to give us an item.  That’s it.

We come upon a securely locked door...

...without a Q-Tip™ in sight.

So more exploring gets us to a locked door.  Looking at it, there’s a separate item for the hinges.  Hmm.  The acid doesn’t work on them directly, but if you use it in the squirt gun, aim, and fire, down comes the door.

And by placing the fireberries...

...we are able to see more clearly.

Hey, downstairs are some red and blue tunnels!  They still all look alike and are a pain in the #@*$& to map, but hey, they’re different colors!

I wonder if he lost his job because of us today.

There’s a guard sleeping in this room, and he talks in his sleep.  He’s talking about not leaving his passcard in his locker again.  Given this game, this is almost definitely a clue on where to find one of them.  There’s a lunchbox here too.  Taken.

If you re-enter the room again after you have the card, you’ll hear him sleep-talk about the combination to a safe.  Also useful knowledge.  And conveniently, I was taking screenshots.  Pretend you’re an average gamer, and have to rely on pen and paper?  Fortunately, he tends to repeat himself.

The lunchbox, by the way, has comic book characters on the side of it.  No details as to whom.  Sadly, I can’t open it.

I’m selling these fine leather jackets.

Another room finds us a couple of young men guarding what might very well be a satanic pentagram on the ground.  They won’t let us pass without our passcard.

And the blog returns to Police Quest 1: In Pursuit of the Death Angel.

We find a locker room, with a man in a towel.  Wayne asks the obvious question about where the showers are.  Probably just wants to scope out the babes.

He’s curious why we’re there.  So am I, for that matter.  But it turns out that we have Parker’s lunchbox, and we should return it to his locker.

Wonder what we’ll find in there?  Yep, a passcard.

Back to the satanic ritual room, the guards wonder why our ID says we’re aged 61 years.  “Uhhh.... that’s a typo.  I’m 16.”  

This may be the first time in history a teenager claimed to be YOUNGER to gain access to a restricted venue. 

They then give us a quiz, and I honestly don’t know if they expected anyone not to just brute-force it.  I cheated, but later found out there’s actually a logic to it, but I never saw where it was explained.  Here goes:  each question they ask has one word highlighted.  The first question I was asked had the word “GO” emphasized.

The old rhyme: “One for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, and four to go!”

So, for this question I would choose the fourth answer.

This makes almost as much sense as the math quiz in Monkey Island 2, but with less of an obvious hint.

Scotty, beam me down.

Hey, that loot looks familiar.

So passing the test gets us access to the satanic warp room, which ends up being a room with an extra ladder (if Sierra can make StairQuest, I suppose Capstone can make their own version on Chutes and Ladders.

In that second picture, you’ll note that Garth seems to be levitating with his head through the ceiling.  Soon after, the game will be glitching (again) and be off by a floor.  These are well-documented glitches online, along with the mayor’s study/office, and can be fixed by saving and restoring.  Ugh.

Anyways, in the safe is $50,000 in stolen Benjamins, and some keys.  Don’t know what they are for, but hey, not nailed down.

Looks kind of like the band The Presidents of the United States.

Some more exploring finds us a room with the dictator transmitting in front of a spinning spiral, hypnotizing Aurora and the world.  They’re using our broadcasting equipment (well, okay, Eugene’s) which is, for some reason, locked up in a cage in the middle of the room.

Above the cage is a pipe that has a dirty rag stuffed in it to clog a hole.  So, I suppose the puzzle is to drown the equipment to get it to short circuit and stop transmitting.  I’m not sure how to do that yet, none of my inventory items do the trick.  So, we’ll come back.

Okay, so somehow Pookie isn’t affected either.

Look, we found Cassandra and I suppose others that weren’t initially brainwashed at the start of the broadcasting.  I try to unlock the cage with the keys and let her out, and she’s not having that.  “I don’t want to leave until you’ve defeated DRAG.”

This segment confused me, because of a bug in the game logic.  I figured out afterwards from looking at the maze walkthrough what the problem is.

We need to talk to Cassandra, and choose a specific dialog choice.  If you don’t choose it, going back to talk to her doesn’t offer it again, so unless I’m missing something, you get dead-ended.  Again, ugh.

Basically, she says the next step is to stop the broadcast.  Well, so far, we agree.  If I choose the option “Relax, we’ve got everything under control” after that, if I go back to talk to her, the third dialog choice disappears.  But it’s the one I need: “I know where they are broadcasting from.  I need your help.”  Only then will she let us unlock the cage and get her out.

Another 90s film being referenced here, I guess.

Back to the demonic recording studio, it seems we need to use everyone to solve this.  If Wayne climbs on Garth and Cassandra climbs on Wayne, we can reach the rag.   Tarzan girl pulls it loose, spraying raw sewage all over the place.

Transmission stops, and the spiral backdrop falls over and splats the dictator.  Mission solved. We got the money back and stopped the brainwashing.  Cassandra says she’ll get the rest of the prisoners out if we go and tell the mayor, so let’s do that.

“And furthermore, I declare this day to henceforth be known as Wayne’s World Day is Aurora, a public holiday.  May you live long and prosper.”

Okay, a Star Trek reference.  Which I suppose makes sense for the final scene, where we see an alien watching our show.

So, this ends our journey to the seedy underbelly of the TV show industry, unless they made a game from the movie Stay Tuned.  Gosh, I wish they had done that.

I’ll be back soon to give this my final thoughts.  I have to think about it some more.

Session Time: 2 hours

Total Time: 4 hour 40 minutes