Game 148: Kronolog: The Nazi Paradox AKA Red Hell (1993) - Introduction

 Written by Morpheus Kitami

Almost as long as we have recorded history have we wondered what would happen if history went a different way. What if the Persians won the Greco-Persian wars? What if Pope Leo X did away with indulgences? What if Napoleon won at Waterloo? What if the Nazis won WWII? Idle speculation or the odd piece of fiction for a long time, until the beginning of the twentieth century.

What it was that caused the genre to start picking up steam is not that tricky to figure out, people who were never there were sore they didn't live in a world where the American Confederacy won the Civil War or Napoleon lost. What prevented the genre from being dumped in the wake of stuff like Gone With the Wind is that actual historians became interested in the subject.

Enter J.C. Squire, himself quite the character, deciding to get a bunch of historians to write on the subject with a more scholarly interest. The resulting book, entitled If It Had Happened Otherwise is mostly notable now for having an essay from a pre-PM Winston Churchill.

As is of little surprise, after WWII ended people started wondering what would happen if the Nazis won instead. Unlike the original popular wave of it, this was less people being sore and more people being interested in another reality. Many, many novels and stories have been written on the subject, but the one you likely already know is The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick, itself, ironically enough, inspired by an American Civil War novel called Bring the Jubilee.

For this reason I kind of dislike the genre, writers focusing on two specific points in time we already get a glut of uninteresting material on. For every series like Belisarius, someone's written two or three about WWII or the Civil War in some way; On our screens we don't even get that, we get WWII and maybe the Civil War. Though if I'm being charitable, most historic shows might as well be alternative history. Actually, writing this, I didn't realize that a Youtuber I occasionally watch pointed this out a few weeks ago.

Which is a statement that sounds like something that would make me not like today's game, but adventure games don't have the glut of bad WWII stuff other genres have. Adventure games don't really involve Nazis, there are five games on this blog that do and three just have Hitler in them briefly. That's probably less than the number of cyberpunk games we've played. We don't even have an adventure game set in WWII proper, though that will probably change in the future. (Though I do wonder why instead of an 'Allo 'Allo platformer they didn't make an adventure game instead)

But Kronolog isn't just a game set in world where the Nazis won, it's set in the far future where Nazis won. The far future of 2020. One day I hope my descendants will live to see that year...actually I guess that joke might be the truth if they like adventure games too and we count 2020 as the year we actually cover 2020 games.

There are two versions of Kronolog, the American release, in which the world has been taken over by Nazis, and Red Hell, the European release, in which the world has been taken over by the Soviets. This isn't just Germany, where we all know if a video game has a Nazi, Adolf Hitler will rise from the dead and lead the country on a war against the rest of the world, this is in English. I'll be cycling between the two.

An actual screenshot from Isle of the Dead, no, I have not made a fake one.

What actually has me worried is that this was published by Merit Software, who also published Isle of the Dead, a game I have already finished. It shares no developers, but at the same time, publishing something like that is a bad sign for this. Merit also published another adventure game called The Psychotron, which is another alternative history game in theory. None of the developers on this game worked on that game or indeed any other adventure game, which kind of makes me wonder how this is popular enough that at least some people recognize it.

The actual backstory is as you can see in the screenshot. The Germans won because the Americans invented a time machine which the Nazis hijacked. How? I imagine that the Nazis managed to get an agent on the inside, who used it to change reality. Hopefully this isn't going to turn into some kind of Nazi magic crap where everything is perfect but Nazis are arguing all the time because the writer doesn't know how to write. Not shown, they apparently made a bunch of in-game background material which can be obtained via a PIM button.

Interface, no keyboard controls, yeugh. Commands are control panel/options, personal information manager (PIM), locator/map, inventory/briefcase, talk, walk, look and "touch. Right click cycles actions. Dialog happens automatically, and the manual informs me that our hero has to be next to things to use them, oh, and he can only walk in a straight line. It also implies that the game has a more Myst-like interface in that some objects get shown in detail when you look/touch them.

The inventory also has a set of commands, examine, combine and discard. The way the manual describes discard makes me wonder why the hell I would ever use it, because it removes the item from the game. Finally, the manual informs me that there are several awful things, a maze which sounds awful, a copy protection scheme that came on a piece of paper I couldn't find, I hope that means there's a crack, oh and the strategies section is a surprisingly helpful place if you never played an adventure game before. Save often, search everything, and be warned about anything that might kill the hero, like a timed action sequence where you light a bomb.

It's New Boston because they dropped the bomb there.

Without any more faffing about, let's start Kronolog/Red Hell. We get a series of newspaper headlines showing various historical events, the Nazis winning, the North American Democratic Alliance being founded as the Nazis take over America, Hitler being declared insane and a "triumvirate" ruling in his place, Nazis landing on the moon, and the Japanese using a particle weapon to deplete the ozone and create pollution. As we start, the war in Indochina is heating up, and rebels called The Unknowns are destroying the food supply. Our character, Mark Hoffmann, has developed bacteria which can eat toxic waste, and the game begins with him being summoned to Proconcul Zimmer's office in Washington DC. Since he's a member of The Unknowns, he doesn't know why he's being summoned and he's worried.

We might all be about to die, but at least we're snazzy dressers!

To start with, Hoffmann moves awkward, poor animation it seems.When the game said you can only walk in a straight line, it meant it, and when it said you can only activate things you're next to, it's very picky. This, I suspect, will be a problem. More interesting, however, is that our hero, Mark Hoffmann, gets different sprites depending on where he is in a scene. It's actually very interesting, and I suspect is why the animation for the far back is kind of wimpy and there's an awkward movement system. Other games sort of imitate this with sprite scaling, but I'm pretty sure this is just giving us different sprites for each "line" for lack of a better word. Quite randomly I use the pumps in the foreground, the fuel pump refills the car. I suspect this would screw me over later if I didn't.

His tone doesn't suggest sarcasm, but that might be a miscommunication between the writer and voice director.

Looking at the guard, he's actually the chief engineer at the aerodrome and went to school with Hoffmann's son. Let's talk to this guy, and what do you know, the game is voice acted. I wasn't expecting that, since this was only released on floppies. Poor quality, in the technical sense, average otherwise. He asks why Hoffmann is down here, perhaps related to that piece of Envirotek he made. He asks about his son Philip, who is an archaelogist currently down in New Mexico. He gives me a temporary access card and tells me to validate it down below. The guard takes Hoffmann's car somewhere else, and some cockroaches go after the leaking oil.

One of the things the manual noted is that you get items rather casually in conversation, no pinging noise or anything, just tossed in. Now I have a temporary access card, and should go meet Proconsul Zimmer. I note that whenever a dialog happens I have to pause my emulator to write things down. First, the non-PIM items, the map function actually tells me about the location I'm in, and the options also gives me the manual. Interesting, I'll have to check that again when I'm in Red Hell. Let's check out that PIM.

Firstly, apparently we have a 75th anniversary CD of NADA, remember it's 2020. I wonder if NADA was chosen because NADAnet is a good pun on ARPAnet? I don't know why the game is telling me I can win the CD when I already have it, but it does expand on the backstory, basically, because it tells us about how they dropped the "Speer" bomb on Boston and Leningrad. The Speer bomb, being designed by a Reinhardt Schmidt, who was conveniently captured in 1942 and taken to New Mexico, but thankfully Father Emilio Guiterrez de Cruz of the German-American Bund returned him to the Fatherland. A very German sounding name, but Spain is a part of the reich now.

Further reading, I realize I misread the 75th anniversary initially, I thought NADAnet was invented in 1945, it's of the end of the war. You'd think that would be a national holiday. Other amusing things, Japan conquered most of Asia and Oceania, although apparently Hong Kong is still in German purview, as they embargoed it, and thus Germany didn't send a representative to Emperor Hirohito's big moment in crowning himself emperor of the South East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere or SEACPS. Schmidt's son, Reinhardt Schmidt II was the first man to walk on the moon. Some guy named Winston Smith, who was the leader of the rebels, is arrested and his associate, Eric Blair flees to London...for some reason. (Surely there's a historical in-joke to this beyond a 1984 reference? Someone might win CAPs!) The first personal computer, the Reinhardt 8084, was developed in 1992, and now there are ten million of them. Take that, Atari!

A lot of this is reading, and fortunately there's no penalty for taking my time.

Weather report, another hurricane hit the southern states, not exactly shocking, but here in the northeast it's a toasty 100 degrees F, because even when the German empire rules over the world, us Americans still recognize the superiority of the Imperial system. Also, you can't breath outside anymore. There are too many UVs in the south east, the southwest has acid rain, and the northwest has an airborne virus which necessitates staying in-doors.

Going over the rest of this in order, we have three pages worth of news reports, which is frankly quite a lot for a game I was suspecting that even if it was good I would find very objectionable. Yesterday, The Unknowns apparently hacked a message into the news that the planet was dying. References to rations, like protein and saccarine rations, truly, the future is so dystopic that even sugar substitutes are being rationed. Rommel may still be alive, or one of his grandchildren. While reading the story on corn hybrids, I noticed that the font is terrible, I thought that it said that the anti-bacteria corn company's stock increased by 3AM to 46AM when it was actually 3RM to 46RM. Or...is it Americamark as opposed to Reichemark???

Keeping on the news, gotta admit, even during our worst real world oil spills, we've never had people state they'll take every effort to recover the affected birds and fish so we can eat them. A lot of talk about how despite that they're winning, more belt-tightening is needed and a truly massive amount of sabotage is going on, by the Japanese, the Unknowns and on occasion Islamists. This said, considering that the Japanese are taking massive losses too, either way things are not going well for anyone.

One of the articles talks about an art robbery, where they bypassed a laser security field using sharpened transparent rods. I think that's a puzzle solution. I suspect this is basically it. Other things I noted include stuff like how they're reinvestigating quantum mechanics, I wonder if that was also dismissed by the Nazis as Jewish mysticism. Everything is named Volks something or another. Volk you, volk me, volk everything. Oh, and this strange fashion called Grunge is becoming popular with the kids in Hollywood. State security is investing the psychological profiles of the people into this fashion. Guess they hung all the goths.

Children's corner talks about geography and technology. Like how Russia is divided in two, and Japan just rules most of east Asia and oceania, whereas the Germans rule...everything else. Technology is things like the car, the security card which is an id card and a credit card.

Finally, we have Hoffmann's personal files, messages that were sent to him. His journal tells me that he's worried that nothing will be fixed before the planet collapses and that their efforts are futile. He thinks his son is going to join the resistance, but he can't know for certain because every Unknown cell is divided into five people for security reasons. I then go over to advertising circulars, find one on a buy one get one free CD club, and find out these are secret messages. Apparently, the Nazis are planning on putting nuclear warheads on their space station in violation of international treaties. I didn't really think that news story was all that out of place.

It's not that frightening if they're using it for a party trick, because the next thing you know they'll be using it to get the hostess out of her garments.

Most of these just go over how the stories the Nazis are talking about are lies, the planet's basically already dead, jungles are all gone, the plankton in the ocean is dying. Oh, and we have information that the Nazis are trying to turn back on an old time machine, not for any actual purpose, but to surprise guests at a party by retrieving Reinhardt Schmidt. Another article mentions that he was a mediocre scientist but his specialty was espionage. The writer surmises what I did, that he stole it. The Nazis are actually using the bugs Hoffmann developed in whatever kind of warfare that would count on, which someone mentions is a silver lining. More stereotypical supervillain stuff, they'll freeze themselves in a cave for 20,000 years.

Personal messages are more legitimate, one confirming an appointment with the proconsul, one telling us that Envirotek's credit is being by by 50% because the State is no longer going to clean up the toxic waste dumps with the bugs, and Philip is asking him to stop by because he needs money. Apparently some lady one of them met is now waitressing.

I definitely wasn't on my PIM...

Inside is this charming place, Speerist revival. Revival of what? Your guess is as good as mine. Using the device in the center of the room shows me the copy protection, thankfully cracked, and then talk to the Proconsul's secretary. He's not here, but he left something for me. Right, well, let's see how this would have gone in Red Hell.

The opening crawl is mostly the same, even down to the NADA name, just with historical names changed around. Stalin is Hitler, triumvirat is troika, and the Japanese are still up to their ozone depleting tricks. Mark Hoffmann is now Mark Constantine. The game is mostly the same, but the backstory changes in strange ways. It's still Reinhardt Schmidt, but instead of giving the bomb to the Germans, he gives it to the Soviets, who destroy the Germans, then sponser successful revolutions across the world before eventually coming to dominate America. Oddly, the Soviets don't dominate the entire world outside of Japan's space, Afghanistan and the Middle East give them problems and Italy is nowhere to be seen. This isn't too absurd, since the reason why Japan became the power it did today is because it was one of the first (if not the first) non-colonial powers to beat a colonial power.

I'll give them something, this is a lot better written than I was fearing, owing to the publisher. I also note that the Home of the Underdogs review, mentioned on some websites, straight up tells people to consult a walkthrough. We'll see how true that is, because the last game I played with that reputation was vastly overblown.

This Session: 1 hour

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