#also got a copy of the acme novelty library

[thingsifindonthegroundsometimes]

falling falling falling falling now i hit the window falling falling falling falling now i hit the ground, dying dying dying dying now i hit the window, dying dying dying dying now i hit the ground

alive alive alive alive (HOME SWEET HOME)

[thelabyrinthoftime]

Mind The Gap

I wrote a little bit about how I started playing this game as a kid, but didn’t get to finish it until many years later. I first played it when I was 9 and played it occasionally for a year or so. It’s easy to get stuck in the game, especially when you’re a kid. I can remember making it to the other side of the mirror maze for the first time, and quickly realizing that I reached another dead end (a card key was required to advance), and I remember being trapped in the section of labyrinth that’s past the mountain road- it was a while before I found the helmet, and for a long time, I felt like I reached a hopeless dead end with the construction site. I never put the pieces together that the numbers on the wall corresponded to the tile puzzle in the movie lobby. Even then, I’m not sure if I could have figured it out.

Some time later. I’m thinking I quit playing it after I had seen all that I could see with my progress, I remember noticing some other kids playing the game and looking around at everything. It was fun to just “look”. Actually, it’s still fun to play the game just to look around, and I still hunt for images, usually in the form of close ups and weird angles, that I’ve never seen before, but back then, it was the mid 90s, and we all feel in an interesting Goldilocks zone. A few years older, and we would have been adults, and maybe the novelty of the game wouldn’t have been marked with so much heart pounding excitement. As a kid, the imagination does wonders to extend those 8 bit images on the screen. How I wish I could still get THAT excited and lost in my own made up world at the sight of some pretty images. Had we all been born a decade in the other direction, computer games- even computer technology in general, would be taken for granted and there would be no novelty from such a game.

 Anyway, they happened to look at something I never paid attention to- the door to the south was sealed with a large screw. My mind immediately connected it to the ACME screwdriver, and my jaw dropped.

I convinced them to let me take control of the game for a minute while I retrieved the screw driver from the other end of the Labyrinth. I remember the three of us being on the edge of our seats as we bravely opened the large metal door and stepped out on that dark city street:

And before we can venture too far out, we’re struck by lightning! I’m sure we jumped, but it was followed by:

And then it went to the Surreal Maze, a place so bizarre, the game was unable to map it.

It probably took a few days or longer to get past the maze, and I arrived at the Ziggurat, and found a way to open the doors on the sides of the steps up to the top, but when I got inside:

And the game wouldn’t let me continue because it was “too dark”. I reached another dead end, and years later, I found out that this was the kind of dead end that you can’t undo.

And this was as far as I got in the game, and shortly afterward, that was the last time I played that game as a kid.

IT DROVE ME NUTS! What was inside that Ziggurat?

I also wondered about that city street, and the red light that foreshadowed your inability to cross the street. Because of the illustrations on your map, it’s obvious that there’s no where to go, but as a kid, I believed there had to be a way to get into the garage, or enter one of the buildings on the side. I even waited patiently for the light to change color. I wondered about what was across the street, too.

And for a game that had such a WOW! factor for me, it haunted me. I no longer had access to the game past a certain point. I tried to set up a time to purchase that very copy of the game even though I didn’t have a computer, let alone a Mac, that I could play it with. I would be a little more content if I just had that orange and black disc, but it never panned out.

For the next nine years, I would have the occasional dream about what came after the Ziggurat. I’d dream about night time at Revolver Springs, I’d dream about that damn Subway, and that feeling that something strange was about to happen. I remember dreaming about an area where you free fall in that endless sky... which is probably closer to the scenes at the end of the game than I realized, minus the falling part, and I remember dreaming about fantastic two story library with a spiral stair case. I think I was under the impression this was the end of the Labyrinth.

In wanting to have that experience again, I’d think about scenes from my own life, and how it’d be framed on the game screen with the icons at the bottom:

Somewhere in time, I discovered Art Deco. My love for Art Deco is connected to this game. Anytime there’d be a TV show that’d use the stock music heard in the game, I’d stop whatever I was doing and listen. There was a local commercial that used a different cut of the “sad piano” music (pastoral colours). Nickelodeon had access to the same stock library. There was one of those news stories by Linda Ellerbee that used the track, and there’s a classic episode of SpongeBob Squarepats all (six or seven) Labyinrth Heads like myself remember- the Hall Monitor episode where Patrick- alone at night with a walkie-talkie going “WEE WOO... WEE WOO” (a bad police car siren imitation) while he thinks something horrible is stocking him down an empty street.

There was an episode of the show Dream On that used the track, too, but I know nothing about the show, or the episode, or what was going on or why it was used.

My taste in music was no doubt colored by the game as well. I love stock music.

Back to those “in between” years, the internet became a more common thing to see and mess with when I was in middle school, and I’d eventually find the game for sale on eBay, but I had no way to get it... and still no way to play it. HA!

Then in 1999, I found a walk through of the game. This is the very reason I am extremely stubborn about going online for help when I’m stuck in a game. For all the “haunting” the game did, I ruined the game by reading about what followed post-Ziggurat. I learned that you needed to flip the levers in the Museum, and then- MOST IMPORTANTLY, go into the mine room, close the door, and find the lantern hanging, which was required to continue into the innards of the Mayan Ziggurat.

So... fast forward six years later, it was still “heart pounding” to see all these new areas, to see what that gold key unlocked, to see the inside of the Ziggurat, and to see what was on the other side of that strange door in the Cretan Maze. There was certainly more to see, more to do, but it all felt hollow because I knew what to do. Even though I read that walk-through years ago, I committed it to memory.

My first PlayStation game I ever owned (and still have) is RPG MAKER. Great game, great to use as a title maker when making home videos on VHS, and it taught me a lot about game programming. My own game development never got close to completion, save for a really lousy “port” of The Labyrinth of Time I made- this being before I finally got the actual game. I wonder if I still have it on one of my old memory cards. I bet I do.

But... yeah... it was great to experience TLOT again, but it was, at the same time, hollow, because there was nothing left to do but get to the end of the game, there was no idle exploration, no head scratching, just an attempt at closure.

But the game itself isn’t what makes it so special. I’m surprised that fans of vaporwave haven’t discovered this game. As my father might say, they’d be all over it “like stink on shit”. THIS is definitely a game that has...

Ａｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃ. . .

The ray traced images, the 80s stock music, even the fact it’s a forgotten game would just make their heads explode. I’ve always said the game is like an art gallery or museum. One scathing review of the game when it came out suggested that TLOT should have been stripped down to its images and sold as cut rate clip art. Rather than take it as something bad about the game, it should speak to the quality of the art... and the...

Ａｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃ!

I know I shouldn’t expect Bradley W. Schenck to make Labyrinth 2, but... DAMN! I wish he’d revisit TLOT in some form. It doesn’t have to be a game, if he’s sworn off ever working on a video game ever again. Back when I had money, I would have paid a nice sum of money to get large prints of scenes from TLOT, and I would have bought an equally expensive poster frame to hang it up in, too.

Anything from the Surreal Maze would have been amazing, especially if they were lenticular holographic posters. I loved the colors and patterns in the Mirror Maze, the detective’s office... really, only the most mundane settings would fail to get my money, and they were few and far between- like I probably don’t want a poster of a cave wall, or the gray muck that was the passageway to King Minos’s tomb... but if that were it, I’d probably cough up a few bucks anyway. These days are different, though, as far as my money is concerned. If my situation improves, I need to check out some of the writing BWS is doing these days, which feels like an extension of the “retro futuristic” stuff we see in the game.

I wish I was more motivated. I’d love to learn how to make ray traced 3D images, and see if I can emulate the look and feel of the game. I’d love to learn how to code to the point of being able to create a TLOT style game with a similar engine. The game doesn’t seem that complicated, but it’s still beyond my puny abilities to make a game.

Nonetheless, it’s on my bucket list.