The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes - Final Rating

Written by Joe Pranevich

And here we are, finally at the end of the Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes. We solved a murder (or three), reunited a woman with her son, and explored the highs and lows of 19th century London. This has been a fun game, but it will also be a challenging one to rate. I know many of you have fond memories of this game, but nostalgia makes everything nicer. I had never played this game before. All we can do is start the rating and see where it ends up. As I explained in my last post, we will be doing a small experiment this time around by including some reader ratings for the game. I’ll include them as a counterpoint after I complete my own review.

Before we can get there, we have one piece of unfinished business: our “unexpected” contest!

The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes - Won!

Written by Joe Pranevich

Welcome back! Well, you’ve read the title already so you know that we are reaching the end of our Sherlock Holmes adventure. It’s been a fun ride. As I left off last week, I had just “solved” two more murders, the detectives hired by Anne Carroway, and captured their killer. Is that the end? Not quite. Although we have the triggerman, we do not have his boss: Lord Brumwell. My guess is that he is the ringleader behind all of these crimes, all in an attempt to keep the truth about Paul’s parentage (and his affair with Anne) out of the spotlight. My best lead right now is that the detectives supposedly had Anne’s missing pendant, but apparently not with them when Mr. Hunt killed them both. I’m going to start today by returning to their detective’s office to search for more clues where they might have hidden it, but we also still do not know where Anne is hiding and might have to track her down.

But before we get there, I have two quick notes. First, as you might have read on the Final Rating for Quest for Glory, I’d like to do an experiment: If you have been playing along or have played the game recently, I invite you to write up your own quick thoughts, just a couple of sentences, and send them to the blog. I’ll try to edit your thoughts into my Final Rating post as either an agreement or a counterpoint. We’ll see exactly how it looks when we get there and we’ll award some CAPs for anyone that participates. I also have a small CAPs contest for this game which I will talk about at the end of this post. Enough of that, let’s solve this case.

The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes - Murder on the 9:10 Express to Bedford

Written by Joe Pranevich

Welcome back! Last time out, we arrived at what I think will be the meat of the case: adultery. An aristocrat named Lord Brumwell had an affair, and a child, with a servant (and eventual opera singer), Anne Carroway. He accepted the child as his own but hid her parentage even as he kept his former lover on as a nanny. Years later, she was let go and was only permitted to see her son on brief visits outside his private school. Lord Brumwell caught wind that she was going to try to claim paternity-- she had a letter which proved that Paul was her son-- and so he hired a small-time crook to try to steal it from her. The robbery was double-botched both because he killed his victim and because he targeted the wrong sister, but completely by accident he got away with the letter anyway, only to pawn it off thinking that it was just a pendant. He tried to make the whole mess look like a Jack the Ripper crime, but we managed to pin it on him. Anne is now in hiding somewhere and we have to try to find her and prove that Lord Brumwell is the “real” murderer. It feels like we are nearing the end.

I ended last time having just visited Lady Brumwell, but while she knows about Paul, she doesn’t want to admit to anything. I had a lead of some foul-smelling and specialized tobacco that we found in her house, but the tobacco shop surprisingly didn’t have anything to say about it. Without leads, I checked and re-checked every location until I found something new: this time when I visit the murderer, Mr. Blackthown, in jail, Holmes taunts him that he had the letter all along and didn’t know it. Somehow this convinces him to tell Holmes where be pawned it. We run off to the pawn shop and the owner is reluctant to talk, but Holmes manages to convince him as well. He’s a very convincing detective! And I just have to keep hitting the “Talk” button! The shop owner provides us the address of the man, Mr. Moorehead, that he sold it to, but also a warning: another man, Robert Hunt, is searching for the same pendant. That name isn’t familiar, but the pawn shop owners tells us that he is “rough trade” and implies he is someone not to trifle with. Is he on Anna’s trail as well? A second criminal hired by Lord Brumwell or someone involved for some other reason?

The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes - Lady in a Blue Dress

Written by Joe Pranevich

Happy new year! I hope you all had an enjoyable year and enjoyed our Christmas and New Years bonus posts. The good news is that I was able to make significant progress in Sherlock Holmes while relaxing near (but not on) a beach, so that’s something. Just a reminder that last time out, I had finally tracked down Sarah Carroway’s rugby-playing boyfriend, but he wasn't cooperative. At first he refused to admit that he was seeing her at all-- instead suggesting that his bookworm roommate was her real beau-- but once we talked to him enough he agreed that he was really her boyfriend, but he didn’t want his coach to find out. He then refused to admit that she was dead unless we brought him her death certificate. We found said certificate at the morgue, but the rule-following guys at Scotland Yard didn’t want to lend it to me. I was stuck.

I remained stuck for a while, but while I was waiting for Florida to realize that it’s not supposed to be 40 degrees Fahrenheit, I discovered that I was going about it all wrong. I asked the newspaperman back at Baker Street, the one that sells back issues as well as current papers, if he has the edition that announced Sarah’s death. He doesn’t, but he sends me off to Fleet Street to see if they have that edition. (Watson had this paper at the beginning of the game; I suppose he must have tossed it since then.) I head there, except that there’s no new location on my map! I head back to Baker Street and this time talk to Wiggins who agrees to go to Fleet Street for me. In the process, we discover that he actually has that paper already as he’s been using it as insulation in his coat. We take the paper and Holmes hands Wiggins some cash for a new coat.

Is there a way to nick the death certificate from the morgue? It seems more than suspicious that the coroner just left it out for us to see but not take. Is this one of the “alternate solutions” that I’ve heard so much about from the comments?

The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes - The Secret of the Old Smock

Written by Joe Pranevich

Welcome back! I ended last week stuck: I confirmed that Ms. Carroway’s “secret admirer” wasn’t directly connected to the murder, although it is still suspicious that he and the murderer hung out at the same pub. The tavern keeper at the Moongate pointed me in the direction of the man I believe to be the real killer, a taxidermist named Blackwood, but he didn’t know where the man’s office was and there appears to be no 19th century equivalent of the Yellow Pages that we can search. (Kids, ask your parents.) My only lead was a single taxidermied head hanging in the local tobacco shop.

I’ll spare you all of the random wandering as I found the solution right where I expected it to be. I had been imagining something overly-complicated like mounting a mirror on a stick, but the solution was actually just to move some packing crates across the room and stand on them. Obvious, right? It was not quite that easy because the store clerk initially refused to let us, but Holmes is very persistent and we talk him into it eventually. That doesn’t quite get me what I wanted since the plaque just says that the head was given to John Bradley, the store owner, in 1885. It was a let down, but not a permanent one as we can use the “move” command to look behind the head and find a label on the back of the mount: Oxford Taxidermy, 188 Oxford St. We have a new map location!

The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes - Fer-de-Fléchette

Written by Joe Pranevich

Grab your magnifying glass, it’s finally time to get back to The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes. Last time around, I ended on a down note: I was stuck after tracking down the name of Sarah Carroway’s, our murder victim’s, boyfriend “James”. Even with that, I wasn’t able to figure out which James he was on a rugby team that seems to have been filled with them. I also discovered that her sister, Anne, was a famous opera singer and may have gone missing or worse. I had many leads to follow, but none that the game particularly wanted me to follow and I was stuck. After failing to get anywhere, I asked for help and a few faithful commenters set me on the right path. I didn’t even need to look at their rot13-clues, it was enough to know that I needed to focus on the flowers from Sarah’s “secret admirer”.

My breakthrough came when I tried to study the flowers in Holmes’s private lab: we discovered, to no surprise at all, that the flowers were artificially dyed. However Mr. Holmes was also able to identify that they were dyed using an industrial cleaner with an iodine base. Armed with that analysis, we were able to ask Wiggins to focus in on flower-sellers that used that technique around the theater where Sarah worked. In almost no time at all (just had to leave the screen and come back!), he located the florist in question and we have a new destination on our map. Will this let me track down the “secret admirer”? Let’s find out!

The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes - The No. 1 Gentlemen’s Detective Agency

Written by Joe Pranevich

Returning to the scene of the crime.

Welcome back! Last week, we continued our exploration of Sarah Carroway’s alleyway murder, eventually navigating the crippling bureaucracy of Scotland Yard to secure the release of a key that she was holding when she died. Holmes seems to think that this is an important clue as it will let us back into the theater where she was murdered, to explore unhindered and to see if the key that she had hidden at her flat goes to anything there. As of right now, I feel as if we are in the early days of the investigation. We do not have a motive other than robbery, nor do we have anything that leads up anywhere near the suspect. All we can do is further investigate Sarah’s life and look for connections. I would like to apologize for this post being a bit late. Truth is, that I am stuck on the game and while it’s not “Request for Assistance”-level yet, I had hoped to make a bit more progress before sharing the next post. Nonetheless, here we are and I hope I manage to make some headway on the case soon.

I return to the scene of the crime, hardly pausing to notice the chalk outline or the pool of the blood that remains on the ground as I headed for the door. Our new key works and I can get into the theatre! Why we keep insisting on entering via the stage door, I have no idea, but in a few moments we are back to the dressing room. I expected to find it empty and explore in peace, but that was not to be.

The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes - “P” is for Pixel Hunting

Written by Joe Pranevich

Last week, we started into this “Lost File” of Sherlock Holmes, investigating a murder possibly committed by the infamous Jack the Ripper. We searched the crime scene and interviewed the witness, discovering a complex (and richly detailed) case involving an attack by a man wielding a serrated scalpel, a broken-into dressing room, a secret admirer, and an actress that stood to gain by the death of her partner. We also found oily black hair samples on the doorframe. There are so many clues to sift through and sort, I hardly know where to begin but Holmes (with our help) is piecing it together. Already, he is pretty sure this isn’t a “Ripper” case, rather something much more interesting. We shall see!

After ending last time, I replayed the whole first section again just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. This game is a bit of a pixel-hunt and I managed to find and pick up some white powder residue from the corpse that I missed before, as well as some cigarette butts. The game suggests that Holmes might be able to analyze the sample back at his flat so we take off, not to the dead woman’s home as I intended to last time, but back to where we started.

The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes - “Murder,” He Wrote

Written by Joe Pranevich

It’s very strange coming back to graphical adventures after playing so many text ones, but it is time to take a look at my next main-line game: The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes. Based on your score guesses, this is a fairly well-regarded game and I am curious how my experiences will stack up to yours. Mythos Software is such a “young” team in 1992 without any major game credits; if they could have come out of nowhere to have a top ten game, I will be very impressed! Last week, we watched as a young woman was assaulted behind a theatre by an unknown assailant. Scotland Yard is investigating her murder, but they have requested the assistance of Sherlock Holmes to help crack the case. That is where we come in! As the game begins, Holmes and Watson are in their flat on Baker Street ready to head off into the world and explore.

Before I run out, I spend some time familiarizing myself with the interface. The game is clearly Lucas Arts-inspired with a small set of clickable verbs on the bottom of the screen. Names of objects appear as we mouse over them, which is a nice touch, but even just poking around the flat I can already tell that some things will be a pixel-hunt. My starting inventory consists of a stack of Sherlock Holmes business cards and the letter from Scotland Yard requesting help. The most unique feature that I see so far is the “Journal”, but I’ll have to explore it more later. As best I can tell immediately, it logs conversations and events that Holmes has in the game, plus it is searchable and printable. Since the only thing in there is the introduction, I will have to come back to it in a few hours to see what it looks like when it has more stuff in it. I’m awfully impressed by it, but let’s play the game!

Game 92: The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes - Introduction (1992)

Written by Joe Pranevich

Greetings, friends! It’s time for me to brush off my mouse skills and play a game that requires clicking: The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes. Despite being released at the height of my youthful game playing, this one is completely unknown to me. I really was a Sierra-snob growing up, but I got better. I reviewed the first game in the Consulting Detective series almost a year ago and I am looking forward to seeing another approach to adapting the characters.

Like so many of these licensed games, the developers do not have a strong adventure game pedigree. This is the first adventure to be developed by Mythos Software, a studio only two years old and thus far dedicated to arcade-style games. It was founded in Arizona by James Ferguson in 1990. James’s team was joined by Electronic Arts team members R. J. Berg and Eric Lindstrom, for game design and story respectively. Mr. Berg and Mr. Lindstrom were both new to their careers with their highest profile work in narrative games being documentation for FairyTale Adventure and Keef the Thief. One potentially shining light on the team was Christopher Erhardt, the producer. We haven’t come across him yet, but he was a former Infocom employee who was brought in to help the company adapt to graphical games. He also produced the Infocom release of Quarterstaff. It’s a new team, but I have high hopes!