The Prisoner: Zero Escape, 1980 Edition

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EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

I've always wanted to check out The Prisoner, and I love the Zero Escape series, so I'm deffo bookmarking this. My advice for every action is to do it while yelling "I am not a number!"

# ¿ Feb 24, 2017 18:06

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 23:26

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

Reviewing the video, I believe, based on the code for the Clues program, that it's reading from the file, PR.LOST. So, perhaps next time you quit the game, you can check that one out.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2017 04:42

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

Domus posted:

I think it's unfair that you get a game over just for repeating 230 back to them. You can't tell people it's your number, but you should be able to do anything with it that wouldn't indicate it belongs to you. Like I would think refusing to echo 230 would be more of a tell than anything.

Well, as far as we know, just typing "2-3-0" in the memory game doesn't necessarily get you a game over, it's just better to be safe than sorry. I mean, if the emulator is capable of saving and loading states, it might be interesting to test it, just to see, but I wouldn't think it counts as revealing your number unless it's all a single prompt (such as in the Castle, or typing it as a complete input in a text box, rather than broken up between several).

# ¿ Mar 2, 2017 02:15

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

Actually, on the topic of Missile Command, that game kind of had some deeper messaging baked in than just "hey, stop some missiles". Here's one of quite a few articles on the subject. Basically, Missile Command was seen by its creator as all the fears of nuclear war caused by the Cold War channeled into an arcade game. He deliberately designed it to tell a story of mutually-assured destruction where all hope is lost, which is why instead of "game over" when all your cities are destroyed, the game instead says "the end". It's pretty interesting, someone using the minimal resources involved in making an arcade game to tell a story of that nature. You could consider Missile Command and The Prisoner (the game) two sides of the same coin, early game developers pushing the boundaries of what the technology they had available at the time would allow them to do, creatively.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2017 06:59

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

SelenicMartian posted:

The original Monopoly, The Landlord's Game from 1904, had two rule sets, one of which ensured everyone got rich and the other would lead to one player coming out on top, as everyone else was in debt with no ways to get out. Elizabeth Magie made it as an illustration of some idiotic policies regarding property ownership.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Landlord%27s_Game
Then her patents were bought, one half of the game was removed, and her name nearly erased.

The part where everyone in Monopoly ends up hating both the winner and the game itself is 100% intentional.

PBS's Youtube series, Game/Show, did an episode exploring this, including talking about how popular house rules like getting all the money lost through taxes and the like when you land on Free Parking end up just dragging the game out and making it less fun for everybody, because of how early a winner tends to emerge, as well as other ways in which Parker Brothers screwed up the mechanics by trying to turn an anti-capitalism game pro-capitalism.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2017 16:31

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

Mraagvpeine posted:

I wonder how the original game was supposed to have been played, especially the half that was lost.

Fortunately for you, the Parker Brothers did not collect and burn all extant copies of the original Landlord's Game, so the rules have indeed survived into the modern era, as seen here. Enjoy!

# ¿ Mar 2, 2017 19:21

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

hyphz posted:

Also, if the graphics were any better the game over sequence wouldn't be as terrifying

Now I kinda want to see a game over demonstrated, I tried looking this up but I couldn't find any existing videos of this.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2017 20:06

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

Clearly, you need to swing over the pit using the rope, only reasonable thing to do when you've got a rope and a pit.

EDIT: By the way, the reason the answer at the end was your resignation code is because you were torturing yourself, obviously.

EclecticTastes fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Mar 7, 2017

# ¿ Mar 7, 2017 22:29

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

Pittsburgh Lambic posted:

I'm pretty sure that library minigame was incinerating your books. Christ.

According to Wikipedia, yes, that graphic is supposed to depict the books being burned. :eng99:

# ¿ Mar 8, 2017 07:11

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

I don't think you mentioned it, but Slot #2 is using slogans for The Party from George Orwell's famous novel, 1984. War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength. These were ways The Party kept the populace docile and unquestioning.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2017 23:14

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

Twilkitri posted:

So for the village simulation, as far as I can remember your original attempt showed that:
- Decreasing Gates while there's a lot of Security results in Security eventually restoring Gates
- Decreasing Security while there's a lot of Ext. Comms. results in the outside world eventually restoring Security
- Decreasing Security also causes the population to start killing each other

and while you were decreasing Ext. Comms. the simulation ended. (Because too many people had died?)

So one option might be to try zeroing Ext. Comms., then Security, then Gates from the start and see if more people escape than kill each other. (Or find out if there's something else which restores Ext. Comms. that didn't get a chance previously.)

Why would The Island reward you for letting people go? The entire idea is to "teach" you the "value" of the Caretaker's authoritarian methods. Clearly, the correct move is to reduce some stuff, but then restore it, to demonstrate that you've learned to embrace The Island's methods. Or just idle for some amount of time until the game decides you've done it, one or the other. I wouldn't put it past this game to make the waiting portion take an unreasonably long time.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2017 15:09

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 23:26

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

You forgot you were going to use your bank account number, next time, just use that, it's the only other uniquely-identifying information about you besides your resignation code. I doubt anything else would work.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2017 18:12

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > The Prisoner: Zero Escape, 1980 Edition