portico | Entries tagged with nancy drew

aaaaaand we're back! i forget how to write these.

castle malloy sees nancy in ireland to serve as maid of honor to kyler mallory, a brit who stayed with the drews as an exchange student some years before. nancy doesn't really understand why she's been asked to do this, as she and kyler are not close and seemingly have not kept in touch. but far be it from nancy to say no to something, so now she's outside a falling-down castle after wrecking her rental car outside the gates, throwing rocks at kyler's window because the old man who answered the door told her that the wedding was cancelled and to go away. fortunately for nancy's sunk costs, the wedding isn't cancelled it's just that the groom's disappeared. which is great for nancy who, like a herding dog, needs constant enrichment or she'll chew a door.

the facts are these: kyler inherited castle malloy (and simultaneously learned she was irish and that her grandfather had changed the family name to mallory) and was assured that it was habitable. which very well might be true but what is definitely also true is that half of it was exploded in WWII. like...literally.

it never rains in ireland so this is fine. nancy is going about, doing maid of honorly tasks for kyler (like printing the programs on a little letterpress, which is fun, and arranging the reception seating based on a set of logic problems, which is not), and also keeping an eye out for matt, the disappeared fiance. this eventually involves solving the mystery of what really happened in the 1940s, and what's that strange noise everyone keeps hearing? is there a ghost? (major spoilers follow)

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i took a little break from nancy drews, in part because i knew the next one on the list very, very well.

the phantom of venice is one of the series' strongest games. in it, nancy goes to venice, italy in the midst of a theatrical crime spree at the behest of prudence rutherford (previous "seen" in several games, beginning with secret of the scarlet hand), who previously owned a villa there and still has some sway with the house's current owner as well as, presumably, the italian police. nancy is there to keep an eye on one of the suspected members of the crime ring, whose office is clearly visible from the villa's upper floors. once there, she begins to suspect that the head of the ring is one of the other residents of the house, and proceeds to unravel the entire case.
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if white wolf is the nancy game that i keep replaying in spite of myself, then crystal skull is one that i almost never replay for no good reason.

curse of blackmoor manor may be the gothic nancy drew game, but this is for sure the GOTH nancy drew game. set in new orleans and taking place entirely in one stormy evening, crystal skull has it all: creepy cemetery, a robert smith lookalike, a white lady practicing hoodoo, an impressively crooked house, like 30 glass eyes...great time.
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i don't like this game, but for some reason i continually forget that i don't like it, so i've replayed it a few times. every time i do, i think to myself: that's the last time i'm ever going to replay that. and then i forget, and do it again. maybe putting it in writing is the ticket. so, DOOR: DO NOT REPLAY THE WHITE WOLF OF ICICLE CREEK.

there's nothing BAD in it per se, it just feels like a rehash of a couple other games i enjoy more, and includes several puzzles that frustrate the hell out of me every time. but i'll get to that. the white wolf of icicle creek sees nancy traveling to alberta, canada to investigate a series of incidents which seem like sabotage at a remote bed and breakfast. nancy gets the gig courtesy of bess & george's aunt and uncle the rawleys, whose ranch nancy saved 6 games ago. and they're not the only call-back--nancy also has to work with tino balducci (from the train), who is consulting by phone after he flirted his way into the gig (and is actually getting paid, which nancy of course is not).

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this is a game that's really more like 2 games in that i actually remembered that there were 2 different games where nancy went to hawaii. i was wrong!

the creature of kapu cave sees nancy going to a jungle on the big island to assist an entomologist. is nancy a bug expert? at all interested in science? is she or someone she knows acquainted with the researcher? no! a friend of her dad's literally saw an ad for a research assistant in an alumni journal and passed it along as nancy is canonically and eternally in some sort of gap year. the funny thing about this game is that nearly all of the mystery solving nancy does is wholly related to her internship, beginning with "where is dr. kim" and leading to "how do i analyze the contents of these frass jars." even the one bit of breaking and entering is in service of dr. kim's research! it's especially funny because you get the sense that nancy is NOT having a good time. the REAL mystery is down to the hardy boys.
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i think this is the first of these i've replayed that has really aged poorly for reasons unrelated to tech limitations at the time. the trouble was they made a video game about fashion in the early 2000s, objectively the least fashionable period in history. get ready.

the premise of danger by design is that nancy has been asked by a person called amy grunhild--probably a friend of nancy's dad but i honestly can't remember--who is one of the fashion designer minette's financial backers to look into why minette has been falling so behind. nancy is placed as an intern in minette's paris studio, which nobody looks askance at because minette is so notoriously a terrible person to work for that her assistants are quitting all the time. so this is the atmosphere that nancy arrives in.
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last train to blue moon canyon marks the end and the beginning of a number of things in these games. it's notably bigger than previous games--the first to come on 2 cd-roms, a trend which would continue until the most recent game. it's also the first time where you can play as a character other than nancy. and! the hardy boys are here. that's right, after teasing us with phone conversations for years, her interactive finally let us see some of nancy's pals. just don't get used to what they look like (more on that later).

the premise of last train to blue moon canyon is that lori girard, a paris hilton clone, has gathered a group of people on an old steam train which once belonged to a man called jake hurley. he had a mine which he would never reveal the location of, but the train was fitted out to take him and his tragically short-lived wife, camille, across the country in comfort. lori's plan is to take the train out towards where he was last seen to give the group time to solve how to find the mine and ideally what happened to him. naturally, everyone except for nancy and the hardys are immediately uninterested in solving those mysteries, but the hardys can't be going about getting underfoot, so they post up at the dining table and offer encouragement. nancy does all the work.
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in 2005, the character of nancy drew turned 75, having made her debut in 1930's The Secret of the Old Clock. to celebrate, her interactive's nancy drew went back in time to 1930 to solve her first ever mystery (which was actually based on 4 nancy drew books--Old Clock, The Hidden Staircase, The Bungalow Mystery, and The Mystery at the Lilac Inn.

this game does a lot of things differently from previous and subsequent games. first off--nancy can drive! yes, nancy's blue roadster finally makes an appearance, and she tools all around town in it. nancy is also carrying cash money for the first time, which she can earn by delivering telegrams, and subsequently spend on gas and assorted other sundries. of course it's 1930, so most things cost a nickel. also, nancy's DAD is here. sort of. you can call him.

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i thought this one was going to be easier than it was, because i have replayed it a lot, but there are so many moving pieces that i kept remembering that a thing was supposed to happen but not how to make the thing happen. ANYWAY STILL VERY FUN.

nancy is called all the way to england at the behest of a neighbor, whose daughter linda married a british diplomat a few months earlier and has since starting acting....strange. nancy arrives at night, in the dark, and is startled by glowing eyes and subsequently told she was imagining things in short order, and thus our stage is set. blackmoor manor has a lot of moving parts because nancy is solving puzzles that have been set out by one family for a single purpose over the course of 600 years. fun!
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deception island may be my fave nancy, but this next stretch are all close seconds. i've replayed them all a LOT and they're all good.

the secret of shadow ranch is another vacation mystery, and it all starts before nancy even arrives. she has been invited to stay with bess and george's aunt and uncle (periodic reminded that bess and george are cousins), the rawlings, who live on a small ranch in arizona. they bought it 3 months earlier, after selling their successful dress shop. nancy was supposed to arrive at the same time as bess and george, albeit on different flights, but their plane was diverted due to a mechanical issue so nancy arrives alone AND to the news that Uncle Ed and Aunt Bet are in the hospital because Ed was bitten by a rattlesnake that found its way into their bedroom the night before. at the same time, a glowing phantom horse showed up! lots happening to occupy nancy, who is all alone on the ranch belonging to these people she's never met with only their hired hands for company. totally normal vacation stuff.
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alright gear up folks, this one is my favourite nancy drew. i've played it roughly 3 million times.

the reasons this game rules are many: takes place on the san juan islands off the coast of washington state (a place my family visited when i was 13 and which left an indelible impression on me), there's a WHALE and a WHALE MUSEUM, nancy goes kayaking and eats endless bowls of clam chowder, there's a hidden passageway and cairns and a lighthouse and the best of her interactive's old ladies. i love it.
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out of the woods of pennsylvania and up the coast to the jersey shore, it's time for

nancy is called onto the case by the amusement park's owner, who is (you guessed it!) a friend of her dad's. in paula santos' defense, she does seem like a good person and a fair boss. no comment on her decision to bring in her friend's teenage daughter to solve the case of who is messing with her park. the messing is as follows: someone stole a horse off the the (antique!) carousel, then it started powering up and spinning on its own (that's the full extent of the haunting), and finally the roller coaster came to a halt in the middle of a ride, leading one guy to claim damages in the range of a million dollars, at which point paula closed the park and called in the teenager.
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alright y'all it's dogs time

a couple halloweens ago i decided to replay all of the nancys that were about ghosts or hauntings, so this was pretty fresh in my mind. nevertheless it was still fun because not only is this one about dogs it's also about a speakeasy!
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i took a break to do nothing but play powerwash simulator for a while but we're back on the nancy train now.

this is the one game in which nancy does something which i have also done: gotten an internship at a museum in washington dc. i'm sure i replayed this game at some point after one or all of my various museum internships there, but i cannot remember my reaction. my reaction this time was mostly that the game's choices about where various things were located on the metro were VERY funny. the museum? red line, practically in maryland. nancy's hotel? other end of the red line, also practically in maryland. the art dealer was extremely far south on the green line while the mexican consulate was over by the pentagon (which is in virginia, for the record. i have not checked but i assume the consulate is not). i did remember being charmed by the overlay of images from gallery place and metro center whenever nancy traveled, and that rang true. but that's about the only thing in this game that feels like dc, to me.
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alright, now we're getting to the thing. this is a game with a lot of growing pains (her interactive hasn't QUITE figured out how they want these things to work), but it's headed in the right direction. (nancy does refer to her previous case in all caps on the phone to george, like she would in one of the books. this never happens again.)

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ok. nancy drew number one. i did not finish this play through, for two reasons. first: it is a bad game. second: i thought i was playing the remastered version, which i know i have and just assumed was first in my nancy drew binder (a real thing i have) but must be further in. this is relevant because when i got frustrated and looked up hints, i was looking at the wrong game. by the time i gave up in a huff, i was not in a place to investigate just which game i was playing, so i did not realize my mistake until....right now. perhaps i'll attempt to come back to the remastered game. not today, though.

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wow that cover art is really overselling the color saturation in the theater.

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at the rate i'm playing these i may get through all of them before the new sound card arrives to let me play games 1-2. ah, well.

Nancy Drew: Treasure in the Royal Tower (Game) - Giant Bomb

Nancy Drew: Treasure in the Royal Tower (Game) - Giant Bomb

treasure in the royal tower (2001) falls into the other category of nancy drew story/game: Nancy is Just Trying to Take a Vacation. like jessica fletcher, however, it is never to be. which is all to the good, i think, because like a herding dog nancy drew needs to be employed at all times. i think if she actually tried to relax while snowed in at this hotel she would have lost it. fortunately for all of us, she observes (after writing her usual letter--this time to george--on personalized stationery catching us all up on the state of things) that her radiator is clanking and goes down to reception to see about getting it fixed. the hotel manager, dexter, is so swamped with things that he immediately starts assigning nancy tasks to do in return for him fixing her radiator maybe, someday. nancy, Dog with a Job, leaps at the opportunity. (i somehow missed the opportunity to give the letter to dexter to be sent during this conversation and subsequently carried it through the rest of the game. sorry george.)

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i have been meaning to replay some of the nancy drew games for a while now, but robyn borrowed my disc drive for school and then hid it from both of us, so i've been stymied. happily, they unearthed it last week, just in time for me to decide to make a fun new year's resolution to replay all of the nancy drew games in order. you have probably noticed that it's both not the new year yet and also that this isn't the first game. to the first: i am grieving, and my time-honored grief tradition is computer games. to the second: the first two games are so old that i had to order an external sound card in order to make them work. there's nothing wrong with my current sound card, the games just don't like it. i feel the same way about lexus drivers, so i don't hold it against them. anyway, here we are with game number 3: message in a haunted mansion.

i have played this game many, many times. it's been out since 2000, and i played it first then or soon after. there was also a gameboy advance release in 2001, which my brother gave me at some point, so i played it on that, too. it's been a long time now, but i found i still had most of the game memorized, accidentally taking some actions before the game could point me to them. it took me around 3 hours to play the whole game this time, but, again, i didn't spend any of that putzing about trying to find the next hint. i played it so fast that the game didn't even deliver the titular message to me until i was about to confront the culprit. that said, i still had a blast revisiting it.
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