LP Beach

Let's Play Tass Times in Tonetown!



Tass Times in Tonetown is an illustrated text adventure from 1986, simultaneously published on a zillion different platforms, as was the custom of the time.

Was it a good game? Well... the reviews of the time praised its amazing color graphics. It also wasn't really ahead of its time, so a modern game reviewer would find little to praise here and several things to squint suspiciously at. So, no. But we're going to play it anyway.

Why are we playing it, if it's not so great?

A few reasons. One of them is as a healthy tonic against nostalgia. There's something to be said for remembering that the past was not merely full of classics, but also some stuff that was at least good enough to publish and make back what you spent on it. And despite my crack above about the reviews being most positive about the graphics, this came out the same year that The Legend of Zelda did. Look at that dog up there. The reviewers meant it.

I will look briefly at some of the other ports, but I will mostly be playing the Apple IIgs version of the game in this thread. This has the distinction of being the first commercial release for that system, so that also makes it interesting. I think the IIgs port is the best one of all of them, and it's for the platform with no prior art or tradition. The devs knocked one out of the park as the very first batters.

And speaking of the programmers, the credits list for this game is incredible. The main design is by Michael Berlyn and his wife. At the time this game out, Berlyn's most famous game was Infocom's Suspended, a deeply strange and complex game about mentally controlling a pack of robots to save your underground warren, with so much to keep track of that it's almost more sensible to think of it as a board game with a text adventure attached to it. (Alas, the most famous thing Berlyn is known for today is probably Bubsy.) The engine it runs on was written by Brian Fargo, who led Interplay at the time and was also the director for this game. And finally, three of the ports -- including both of the ones I'll be primarily looking at -- were primarily programmed by Rebecca "Burger Becky" Heineman, who was legitimately a legend in her own right, albeit a legend of the "very good at what she did, and everyone who knew her was glad to know her" variety rather than the "celebrity" kind. Overall, then, this is interesting because even if it's kind of mediocre, we get to see what comes out when a team of Very Major Players come together and get something shipped that will keep the lights on.

OK, but why are we playing it now?

Rebecca Heineman passed away last year. She was one of Interplay's founders and her credits list range from The Bard's Tale and Wasteland through Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep, and frankly I can't do justice to her career or to the sheer scope of the shadow she cast along the way. But that means that interesting things can follow in her wake; a few weeks ago her estate discovered her old source code disks for the ports of Tonetown she'd done, they were imaged at KansasFest 2026, and were then posted to the Internet Archive. With those, and a bit of data mining, I now think I can at least do this game justice.

"Tass?" "Tone?" What kind of zorking unheamy dapes are these?

Tophth your jets, gostak. We'll work it out. Like I said, this game is pretty by-the-numbers, so if you find yourself asking if its doing something revolutionary, just figure the answer is "no" unless we end up with a reason to believe otherwise.

But remember: just because it isn't revolutionary or particularly important doesn't mean it wasn't competent. This is a game you wouldn't regret playing, but overall I don't think it's a game you'd go out of your way to play, either.

And isn't that what Let's Play is all about? Let's go have ourselves a time.

• Update 1: Departure

Reserved for future probably-not-nefarious purposes

Departure

We begin in the middle of things, or in the kind of "the middle of things" that is traditional for text adventures:

This is your grandfather's main living area in a secluded, winterized log cabin, deep in the northern woods. The dining table has an order slip from the local pizzeria.
Spot is here, lying on the floor.

As you can see, we're prompted to scroll down if there's more text in one wodge than fits in the little area at the bottom. Once we're done we get our normal input, with a cute little happy face for a cursor:



We don't always have to type commands, either; clicking on a part of the illustration will sometimes do something sensible with it, and then we've got a weird sort of command-wheel there in the upper right, with TAKE, TALK TO, DROP, BUY, HIT, TELL ME ABOUT, LOOK, and ENTER, and a compass rose for navigation. These just fill text into the command region, though, so I'll be ignoring the mouse for the duration here.

Speaking of ignoring the mouse, if we press ENTER without actually giving a command, we swap between illustrated mode and text mode:



It can take upwards of a second to update the illustration, so if we've got a lot of navigation to do, or if we got ourselves murdered and need to quickly replay a bunch, text mode is the way to do it.

Presumably we aren't going to get murdered here, though. Instead, there is a dog. Time to put this game to the harshest of tests:

:LOOK SPOT
Spot's name, oddly enough, comes from the spot on his back.
:PET SPOT
He would purr if he could but he can't.
:TALK TO SPOT
Spot wags his tail and smiles.

Test passed. The manual doesn't actually tell us what we're supposed to be doing in this game, mind you, and the game hasn't seen fit to suggest anything either. 1986 is early enough that it's reasonable to expect the player to meet you half way and just mess around in the environment you dump them in. They weren't actually that careless, though; the player will have read the back of the box and knows that your grandfather has gone missing and that the point of the game is to find him, and the game's feelies include a newspaper from Tonetown itself that make it clear that "Gramps" is known to them as well and that he's gone missing.

They also, uh, didn't trust the player very much because the manual and the back cover copy basically tell you most of what you'll need to do to solve the entire first half of the game but without openly treating it as hints. I'll be ignoring those until we actually get to the point where they don't spoil the LP.

Anyway, here we are, bold adventurers, presumably summoned to visit Gramps and have arriving to find he's not here. Time to get adventuring, and by "adventuring" I mean "taking everything we can and looking at everything we can't."

:LOOK TABLE
There's an order slip on it.
:READ SLIP
You can't help but notice that the anchovy and pepperoni combo has been circled. It's gramps' favorite, but always gives him terrible nightmares.
:GET SLIP
Who needs a greasy order slip!
:W

You're in a hallway off the living area. A bedroom is to the south, while the lab door is off to the north.
:N
You try the door, but it's locked.

Aha! A tangible goal! But first, a bedroom to the south.

:S
You're in a messy bedroom. Gramps was never the best housekeeper, even though he keeps a spotless laboratory.
Spot sits by the foot of the bed whining softly.
:LOOK BED
The bed hasn't been slept in for a day or two.
:LOOK CLOSET
It appears as if all his clothes are still here.
:LOOK DRAWERS
Tsk Tsk! Where is your mind?

It's bent to the task of looking for clues, game. There absolutely could be clues hiding in the sock drawer. At least we have reason to believe that Gramps' disappearance is recent.

Incidentally, despite the graphical compass rose, it doesn't indicate exits, and as you've seen, the text itself is a little casual about actually telling us where exits are. Playthroughs are going to include a lot of this:

:S
Into the wall?
:E
Into the wall?
:W
Into the wall?

That said, we didn't check the first room as carefully as we should have, because we missed a spot. Let's just head back there, and...

:N
You're in a hallway off the living area. A bedroom is to the south, while the lab door is off to the north.
:E
This is your grandfather's main living area in a secluded, winterized log cabin, deep in the northern woods. The dining table has an order slip from the local pizzeria.
:S

You're in a small, familiar kitchen.
Spot is here, barking at the kitchen counter.

On the Apple IIgs version we actually get a little "Woof, woof" sound clip that plays after every command we type.

What is it, Spot? Did Gramps fall in the well?

:LOOK COUNTER
Sitting on the counter is an odd-looking cookie jar.
:LOOK JAR
There's a key in the jar!

"Obvious objects" get drawn front and center in the screen.

:LOOK KEY
It's a metal key.
:GET KEY
You got a key.
You're in a small, familiar kitchen.
:LOOK SINK
Adventurous souls aren't stuck in the kitchen.

Hey, maybe adventurous souls just want a snack!

: DRINK WATER
Aaah! Tastes just like the water grandma used to make.

One of the things that got me to do this LP was the ability to datamine the files more easily thanks to the source code release. This got me, among other things, the complete verb list.

The last entry in the verb list is "BURGER." Well, we are in the kitchen. Maybe we can do better than just water.

:BURGER
Death and disfigurement for all who chant the unholy word. A blood-stained axe lops down and leaves you headless.
It seems that the game has ended. Would you like to try again? (Y/N)

Wow, rude. I guess we would like to try again.

This is your grandfather's main living area in a secluded, winterized log cabin, deep in the northern woods. The dining table has an order slip from the local pizzeria.
Spot is here, lying on the floor.

Right. Fine. SOUTH, LOOK JAR, GET KEY, NORTH, WEST.

You're in a hallway off the living area. A bedroom is to the south, while the lab door is off to the north.
:N
You try the door, but it's locked.
:UNLOCK DOOR
You open the door and rush inside.

I know we can't all be Hadean Lands, but I really do miss doors that unlock themselves when you hold the key.

You're in Gramps's lab. It looks like it could use a good dusting. There is a half-eaten pizza and a fishbowl sitting on the lab bench.
You see a book.

OK, we're definitely about to get in trouble. Let's do what we should have done earlier.

:QUICKSAVE
Your game is saved.
:LOOK PIZZA
It looks mighty old.

... sure, I guess we did just save. That means we can do unwise things with impunity.

:EAT PIZZA
It's cold,slimy and rather repulsive but you manage to gag some down. You wish you hadn't.

This actually doesn't kill you or anything, but if we wish we hadn't, we can make that happen't!

:QUICKLOAD

We get more distinct load/save options as well, but the quickload/quicksave system is handy for when we're messing around.

:READ BOOK
The book is opened to a page whose date is just a few days ago. It says, "Shouldn't have had the pizza. Fell asleep with hoop on. Fear the worst. Grabbing some picks for barter. Am going thru to examine pizza-nightmare damages. Rips in space are feared to be...." Except for the first part of the book, encrypted with arcane symbols and mathematics, that's all you can make out.

As a Doomed Apocalypse Log, this leaves a bit something to be desired, but at least we've got a bunch of stuff to take here.

:GET BOOK
You got a book.
You're in Gramps's lab. It looks like it could use a good dusting. There is a half-eaten pizza and a fishbowl sitting on the lab bench.
:SEARCH FISHBOWL
A bunch of guitar picks sit in an otherwise empty fishbowl.

"Grabbing some picks for barter," he says in the journal. Presumably he means these. The Tonetown Times actually references this too; one of the articles discusses a town meeting where they decide to continue using "p" as their currency instead of switching to floppy disks. Well, we can grab some too.

:GET PICKS
You got a bunch of guitar picks.
You're in Gramps's lab. It looks like it could use a good dusting. There is a half-eaten pizza and a fishbowl sitting on the lab bench.
:I
You have a book, a key, and a bunch of guitar picks.
# of guitar picks: 50.

As you can see, the inventory actually tracks the number of picks we have, and it will update it as we buy things throughout the game. This is the most mysterious thing in the game; there's a bunch of game logic tracking all our purchases, and this is the only place in the game we can get money. You'd expect that this means we'll have to carefully marshal our funds and ensure that we only buy the things we'll need to beat the game, maybe needing to restart due to unwise budgeting or something. But no. 50 picks is ludicrous overkill; it's technically possible for us to run out, but we have to intentionally bankrupt ourselves to do so. To the extent that there's a puzzle here, it's finding the pick stash in the first place.

The last location in the cabin is to the east of here.

You're in the eastern part of the lab, standing before a silvery hoop which is large enough for you to walk through. A generator is bolted to the floor in the corner.
Spot is here, leaping through the hoop like a circus dog.

Spot is basically Navi in this part of the game.

:LOOK AT GENERATOR
A small plaque reads, "Brainwave Generators. Just throw switch for a jolting experience."
:THROW SWITCH
The generator springs to life and a hum of power pulsates through the mysterious hoop.
Spot leaps up with a glance over his shoulder, lets loose a little yip as he leaps through the hoop in a burst of bright sparks!

Well, if it's good enough for him...

:LOOK HOOP
It's about the size of a hula hoop.
:ENTER HOOP
You get dizzy for a moment, then find yourself in another place.

Next stop: Tonetown. Now that we've fully explored the cabin, though, here's a fun question to tide you over: How the Hell did we get in here? There's no front door in any room.