ALRIGHT. I’m not actually sure what to say about this game — it’s cool, I guess. I’ve only played it once (twice, now, for this post), and it wasn’t one of the games I had as a kid, so it still felt pretty new to me. It’s not my favorite, but it’s not bad, either. Honestly, I’ve never seen anyone else list it as a favorite, either — it’s just not really that memorable, I think primarily because the characters aren’t as interesting as in other games. But they’re amusing enough, and the plot is solid and progresses nicely. Like most of the earlier games, it’s pretty short — there isn’t much by the way of sidequests or extraneous puzzles, which I’m personally thankful for. And the setting is great — I love theaters, and the theater in this game is very nicely designed, with pretty colors and tones. The graphics haven’t been hugely improved since the last game, but that’s all right. Also, upside: instead of setting the time with the alarm clock, the game covers three days, and fades in and out to the next day after certain events, which makes it feel a lot more linear.
Anyway, Nancy Drew is in St. Louis! I don’t know much about St. Louis, besides the fact that the lights aren’t shining anyplace but there, so this is my chance to learn, I guess.
So Nancy is hanging out with Maya Nguyen, a friend from high school who we’ve never heard of before and will never hear of again. She’s pretty cute, although I can’t look at her mouth or hand for too long without getting freaked out. Maya is a reporter for her college newspaper, and is on assignment to write about the new “Brady Armstrong” movie, Vanishing Destiny, which is of special interest since it’s premiering at a historic theater. Unfortunately, said theater, the Royal Palladium, is also getting demolished in about three days. Rough luck. The movie’s only going to run for three days? You’d think they’d give it a week, at least.
Anyway, some people (an organization called “HAD IT”) are protesting the demolition, since the Royal Palladium has been around since Harry Houdini, who apparently performed there once. You know what that means, right? SECRET TUNNELS! Secret tunnel through the mountain! Secret, secret, secret, secret tunnel! Yeah!
…sorry, where was I? Right. We’re getting in on Maya’s press pass, so the theater is closed to everyone but us (and the people working there).
Which is important to know, since literally five seconds after we arrive, Maya is kidnapped! She has an interview scheduled with Brady Armstrong, and goes into his dressing room to meet him. (“Go get ’em, Scoop!” Dorky Nancy says.) As she enters, a (male) voice comes on over the PA to test it, and then Maya starts screaming. (The subtitles, helpfully, say “Scream!”) We immediately barge into the men’s dressing room, but Maya is already gone. Wow, that was fast. After a few seconds, the phone in the dressing room starts to ring, and a creepy voice tells us that if the theater is demolished, the girl goes with it. Ransom call! The voice is artificially altered (how very Dwayne Powers of them), but it sounds like it was masculine to begin with. Nancy, hilariously, demands to know who the caller is. Nancy, they’re a kidnapper. I don’t think they’re going to tell you. Anyway, the villain hangs up on us (how rude), but the second we step away from the phone, it starts ringing again. Perhaps they realized they didn’t leave a number for us to call them back at.
Nancy immediately starts yelling at the person on the other end — they’ll never get away with this! Nancy Drew has been busting criminals since the Great Depression, and she will end you. The person on the other end is like, “Uh…my name is Joseph Hughes, and I’m the caretaker and I’m looking for Brady Armstrong? This is the phone to his dressing room?” Heh. Nancy tells him that her friend’s been kidnapped, and Joseph tells her to “calm down and explain what’s going on.” Uh, Joseph, we just told you what’s going on. Pay attention! Joseph says they must have taken her through the secret passageway (secret tunnel through the mountain!), and what’s more, we’re on an inside line. The call is coming from inside the house! He tells us to check the passageway while he makes sure all the exits are locked. Wow, he’s helpful.
Of course, since time is of the essence, we get interrupted. Thanks.
Say hi to Brady Armstrong! I’m not sure why he’s pointing at us with the Cub Scout salute, but whatever. Like Rick Arlen before him, he smarms at us and asks if we want an autograph. He also calls us a groupie. I feel weirdly offended by this. Nancy says, “I beg your pardon?” and Brady says, “Take a breath and pinch yourself, because it’s really happening: Brady Armstrong, in the flesh. Go ahead, faint. I’ll be here to catch you.” My God, I think he’s even worse than Rick Arlen. Nancy tells him that she doesn’t have time for his shenanigans; her friend’s been kidnapped from his dressing room. Wasn’t Brady supposed to be here, anyway, since Maya was going to interview him? Hmm. Brady says that all his emails go through Simone Mueller, his agent — she was the one who set up the meeting with Maya, not him. Brady calls Simone “CEO of [his] life.” I don’t think he’s very happy with her. But we’re not here to listen to management woes, we’re trying to solve a kidnapping, Brady. To his credit, he offers to help, and I send him off to go help Joseph (who was looking for him, anyway). With Brady out of the way, we can search his dressing room. There’s a drawer in his dresser, but (sing it with me) “it’s locked.” Oh, well. And in the closet, there’s a magic wand on the top shelf that we need to take.
Now, following the story that’s been set up, the logical thing to do is check out the passageway to try and find Maya before the culprit spirits her away. Of course, then we wouldn’t have a game, so I didn’t bother (oops). The secret passage is pretty boring, so instead I decided to scope out the rest of the theater first, because I do what I want! Anyway, the door to the women’s dressing room is locked, so we can’t go in there yet. We can check out the portraits and posters in the hallway and lobby, which are all full of delightful puns if you’re a theater nerd, which I am.
Let’s call the police. That seems like a good idea. (Ignoring, of course, that Maya technically could still be chilling in the secret passage just waiting for Nancy to get her, which would make Nancy look really dumb. But we already know that’s not true, so police it is!)
The phone is in the ticket booth, and on the way there, we can see that HAD IT (Humans Against the Destruction of Illustrious Theaters) have set up shop in the lobby. More on them later.
So we call the police, who are about as helpful as any police in a mystery adventure series, which is to say not at all. They tell us that if Maya doesn’t turn up in 24 hours, we should file a report and they’ll investigate. Nancy protests — the building is going to be demolished with Maya inside if they don’t find her. The police disagree: “No competent kidnapper keeps their captive anywhere near the scene of abduction.” Okay, but have the villains in Nancy Drew games ever been competent? Sergeant Mac Ramsay (I might as well give his name) points out that there are no suspects nor any evidence. Nancy tells him she’ll call him back when she has evidence, because there totally is some and she’s going to find it, so there. Sergeant Ramsay’s just like, “You do that.”
Anyway, I might as well get this part out of the way — use the magic wand to pick up the gum in the auditorium, and save it for later. (Let’s all reflect on how Nancy Drew is now walking around with a plastic wand with used gum stuck on the end, like a completely normal person.) There’s also a shiny quarter up in one of the box seats, and we steal that too, because why not.
Up on the balcony, Nancy will note that there’s a gear missing from a set of three on the banister, and if you peer over the edge, you’ll see the missing gear in the ledge below. It’s too far to reach, so instead use the gum wand contraption to pick it up. Now we have used gum and a gear. We’re really making progress!
That’s all for the auditorium, lobby, and phone calls, and now it’s time to check out the secret passageway. Yeah!
He is the 1%.
Back in Brady’s dressing room, check out the portrait of an old guy laughing while money overflows from his pockets. Given that this was built in the 1920s, I can only assume that he’s earned all that money from bootlegging, like Jay Gatsby. Anyway, the portrait swings open to reveal a lever behind it, and when you pull on it, a door opens up behind Brady’s clothes rack. And forth we go!
And the secret tunnel leads to the women’s dressing room, where we meet Simone Mueller. She’s Not Pleased that we climbed out of her wardrobe while she’s on the phone (check the antenna on her cell phone! Oh, 2001), and tells us to beat it. We try to tell her about Maya, but she’s like, “Excuse you, I can’t find a stylist for my star. Some people have real problems,” and kicks us out. So that was Simone! Obviously we’re going to get along great with her.
I decide to play a game in order to get my mind off of Simone’s very hurtful rejection. The jazz machine game is pretty similar to other games that will pop up later in the series — I think there was a version of it with a roadrunner and coyotes in The Secret of Shadow Ranch and possibly The Curse of Blackmoor Manor. But this is the first game it appears in, and the goal is to get the yellow musical note to the dancers on the opposite side of the board, without getting blocked in by the pink notes. Once you do that, we receive our prize, which is…actually, I don’t know what this is. A token?
J.J. Thompson is the guy who built the Palladium, but he really looks more like a cross between a cowboy and Walt Whitman.
We have two suspects left to go meet, so let’s do that, shall we?
Out in the lobby, someone else has showed up to hang around the HAD IT banner. Meet Nicholas Falcone, founder of HAD IT and generally obnoxious dude. He greets us by calling us a “teenybopper” (rude) and when we tell him that our friend’s been kidnapped, he just snarks that women are “always losing themselves” over “Charmstrong.” “No, I’m serious, she’s been kidnapped!” We tell him about the ransom call, and he’s all impressed by the kidnappers’ dedication to the cause. Nicholas, this is not the time. Nancy tells him as much, and he says that whoever has Maya won’t hurt her, they’re just “making a statement.” Hmm. How would you know that, Nicholas? He tells us that Maya will be fine, “trust him”, and Nancy says that she’s going off to find clues, but she has questions for him. “Fight the power,” he tells us. Okay, then.
Our final suspect is up the stairs and in the projection booth. We’ve spoken to him on the phone, but now it’s time to meet Joseph “Joe” Hughes face-to-face.
And…wow. His face is creepy. It’s kind of waxy-looking, and his eye area looks really dead. Yikes. But he seems friendly enough; he’s all appalled that the police won’t start investigating Maya’s disappearance for 24 hours. Hey, at least someone else is concerned about the missing girl, Brady (and Simone and Nicholas and the St. Louis police department). Joe tells us that the only other people who have been in the theater all day — ergo, our only suspects — are Brady, Simone, Nicholas, and himself, although he can’t be sure, since he’s just going off of what he’s seen. Nancy points out that he included himself in the suspect list — which I think is #9 on Things Villains Do To Throw You Off Their Trail — and he says that he’d be disappointed in our detective work if we didn’t “put [him] through the wringer” like any other suspect. Fair enough. Actually, Joe’s kind of weirdly enthusiastic about the whole thing — he says, “Now! What’s your plan of attack?” like he’s planning to watch from the side while eating popcorn. Although in fairness, Nancy is weirdly enthusiastic right back — “Operation Bust-A-Kidnapper is about to begin!” She’s such a dork.
Joe helpfully tells us that we can find blueprints of the theater with the county records division, which might show secret passages that no one knows about. “Ask for the original plans, not the ’56 remodel.” Gosh, he’s helpful. He tells us that he’s spent the last forty years finding his way around the theater, so we can ask him for help anytime. Thanks, Mr. Egan Hughes! “Don’t let the turkeys get you down!” he tells us. Yeah, we’ll…keep that in mind.
Before you leave the projection booth, let’s repay Joe’s kindness by stealing a projector bulb from the Acme box behind him. Fight the power!
Speaking of, for the next couple of minutes I just go back and forth talking to Nicholas and Joe. It’s a little boring, but we learn some interesting stuff. I went back and forth a couple of times, but I’ll just group the conversations together for the sake of convenience. First up, Nicholas!
Nancy doesn’t know what “411” means, and Nicholas tells her it’s “vintage slang.” What a hipster. We ask about his dedication to saving old theaters, and he tells us that old theaters should be celebrated, not “bulldozed to make way for cardboard megaplexes.” Fair enough. Nicholas reveals that the man behind the bulldozing is a “B. Thompson,” descendent of one J.J. Thompson. J.J. is the man who built the Palladium, but we don’t know this yet. Man, B. Thompson has no respect for his ancestors. J.J. bootlegged all that alcohol for you, man! Anyway, no one knows what B. Thompson is planning to build on the Palladium site, which Nicholas thinks is fishy. Also, he claims that he was outside, “harnessing public outrage,” when the kidnapping happened, which is a pretty solid alibi, what with all the witnesses, so we’ll leave it.
At that point the conversation ends, but you can just click on him again to keep it going. This time, Nancy asks why Nicholas is so into saving old theaters. “You seem so personally invested.” This is a weird thing to say, since I don’t think Nicholas actually does seem personally invested? But Nancy’s intuition is dead-on, since Nicholas turns out to be the grandson of the woman who designed the theater’s plasterwork. Her name was Louisa Falcone, and J.J. Thompson never paid her for her work, and then denied that she had ever done any work at all. That wasn’t very nice of you, J.J. Grandma Falcone lost all her money in the Great Depression and couldn’t afford to keep making art, so the theater is the last work she ever did. But at least she “kept on truckin’ in the true Falcone style,” as Nicholas says. But he doesn’t want to just save the theater for history — he wants to save it for justice. Great justice. Anyway, he asks us to keep an eye out for any proof of Grandma Falcone’s work while we’re on the search for Maya, and Nancy agrees because she’s a total pushover. “You’re cooler than I thought, Nancy,” he says. I would’ve let him twist a little, just for being a jerk when we first met him, but Nancy is a better person than I am.
On Joe’s end, we can ask him about himself and his plans after the theater goes down. Joe tells us that he has a brother living in Greasewood, Arizona, which…is actually a real place! Population 581 at the 2010 census! Joe says that there isn’t a theater in the town (I wonder why), so he and his brother are going to open one up. Nancy asks about the demolition — the Palladium has so much history, she’s surprised the city isn’t more interested in preserving it. In fairness, if the Palladium is still standing in 2001, it’s lasted a lot longer than most picture palaces, most of which were demolished by the ’70s. But it still sucks, to be sure. Joe says that the Historical Society has been working like “the dickens” (Samantha Parkington would be appalled at his language!) to get the Palladium declared as a landmark, but “someone” at city hall has been stalling. Hmmm.
Finally, there’s a key-making machine in the lobby that we can ask about (which I looked at between conversations, oops), which he says has been broken for a while — but he’d love to get it fixed up, so we could send a key to our “sweetheart”. Or we could use it to duplicate a key to poke around where we don’t belong! Sorry, what? Also, we ask who J.J. Thompson was, and he tells us that J.J. had the Palladium built with magic shows in mind. Also, he had kind of a big ego, as evidenced by the imprints of his face everywhere. Heh.
Before we leave the projection booth, we should take a little square card-thingy that says “Let’s go out to the lobby!” and look through the projector manual. On the last page there’s an imprint of a key, which seems to be missing. (“There was a key here,” Nancy helpfully tells us. Yes, Nancy, it was really hard to tell from the key-shaped outline in the paper.) Hmm. I think I know what we’ll be using that key-making machine for.
So earlier, after Simone kicked us out of her dressing room, we passed by this gigantic crate backstage. If you look down, you’ll see the crate is blocking a trapdoor! Yeah! Secret trapdoor through the mountain! I mean — sorry. The crate is too heavy to push off the trapdoor, because Nancy is kind of a weakling, for someone who’s been known to haul herself up elevator cables. So instead we go around to where a bunch of ropes are, and pull on one of them until a “CLUNK!” sound effect comes up. That’s the sound of a giant metal hook hitting the ground, and we can attach it to the crate and use the rope to haul it off the trapdoor. Woo! Time to go through the secret trapdoor! Yeah!
And at the bottom of the trapdoor is…puzzles. Of course. For the first puzzle, the goal is to turn all the blocks until they’re all spades; the second is basically one of those flip-and-rotate-until-you-make-a-picture puzzles.
The picture puzzle unlocks a box, which reveals a sort of rotating…thing. Well, anyway, the two gears that will make the spinny thing at the end turn are missing, but luckily we’ve got both of them — the token thing we get from the jazz machine, and the gear we picked up with our magic gum wand. When you put them in place, a compartment opens, to reveal…
A key and a letter! Important staples of any Nancy Drew game, to be sure. The letter is from J.J. Thompson to Harry Houdini, congratulating him on his “stupendous” show at the Palladium in March of 1925. J.J. is duly impressed by Houdini’s escape from the “Watery Grave,” and also somewhat disappointed since he, uh, bet $50k (in 1920s dollars!) against him, and kind of can’t pay up. Rough life, J.J. However, he’s offering Houdini a deal: instead of paying him in money, J.J. will give Houdini 50% ownership of the theater. (And Houdini will agree not to sue J.J. or defame his name in any way. Hmm.) Apparently Houdini agreed, since his signature is on the bottom of the letter. “Stupendous!”
Of course, Houdini died in 1926, so…that partnership didn’t last too long.
On the other end of the room is a game called the Amazing Monty, where the amazingly annoying Monty shows you the ace of spades, then shuffles three cards around, and makes you find the ace. He does this thing where it looks like the card is on the right, but it’s the queen of hearts every frickin’ time. Anyway, I eventually find the ace of spades, and I’m rewarded with…flash paper! Yay, I guess. The paper comes with instructions, but they’re not actually important, so you don’t have to remember them, thankfully.
That’s about it for the trapdoor room, so let’s head back aboveground and harass our suspects some more about this new information.
We’ll start with Nicholas Falcone, since we did promise to help him avenge his grandmother’s name against J.J. Thompson and all that. We tell him that while we didn’t find anything pointing to his grandmother, we did find some stuff relating to J.J. Thompson and the theater.
Nicholas: “Well, don’t just stand there! Start breakin’ it down!”
If you insist, Nick.
We break down, accordingly, J.J.’s deal with Houdini, and the subsequent split in the Palladium’s ownership. Nicholas is happy to hear that J.J.’s shitty attitude bit him in the ass, but even happier to realize that this means that B. Thompson — who inherited the theater from J.J. — doesn’t legally own all of it either, and can’t have it demolished. The next step is to find out what happened to Houdini’s half of the ownership, and Nicholas is surprisingly nice when he says that he’ll get online to do some research, while we keep looking for Maya. He runs off, and we’re free to look a little closer at his stuff. The HAD IT pamphlet on the counter behind him has some more important information for us now — it lists the phone number for the County Administration, who Joe told us to call to get the theater blueprints. So we’ll have to do that soon. (Also, hilariously, the HAD IT pamphlet lists Nicholas as “Nicholas Fight the Power Falcone.” Amazing.)
Before we can step to the phone, though, Joe comes on over the PA and tells us to come see him in the projection booth. Let’s go see what he wants.
Maya’s press pass has turned up, although not with Maya attached. Joe tells us that Brady found it, although he didn’t say where. Hmm. But Nancy is still excited: this counts as proof, right? The police will totally start investigating now, right? Joe tells us to get some rest — ha! Do you even know who we are, Joe? Nancy Drew stays up all night and detects hard. She doesn’t need silly things like sleep. But both dialogue options give in and say that we’ll go back to our hotel once we call the police, so we might as well do that. We get back on the phone with Sergeant Mac Ramsay to tell him about our newfound evidence, and he continues to suck at helping — he suggests that the pass, which was clipped to Maya’s shirt, might have fallen off, or she might have thrown it away. Nancy gets all indignant, but has to admit that the pass isn’t damaged or anything like that. Sergeant Mac takes this to mean that he can keep putting off looking for Maya. Weirdly, though, he tells Nancy that the police can’t go chasing after every “kid” that disappears, and that most “juveniles” reappear when they’re ready. Except Maya is 19, so she’s an adult? Sergeant Mac really sucks at his job if he doesn’t know people over 18 aren’t minors anymore.
But then! Nancy mentions that Nicholas Falcone is at the theater, and Sergeant Mac tells us that Nick Falcone isn’t above resorting to “extreme tactics” — and a year ago, a theater that HAD IT was protesting at was saved when the demolition boss’s daughter went missing and the demolition was called off, with the same ransom phone call and everything. And Sergeant Mac suspects Nicholas was behind it, since he was macking on the boss’s daughter at the time. Hmm. Sergeant Mac tells us that he doesn’t want Nicholas Falcone making his team look like a bunch of chumps, which I guess is fair enough. I’m sort of torn — I get why Sergeant Mac doesn’t want to waste police resources going after a situation that strongly resembles a hoax they’ve already seen, but it’s not like they have to cave to Nicholas Falcone’s demands just to investigate Maya’s disappearance. Whatever. Anyway, Sergeant Mac tells us to get some rest too, so we might as well do that.
Gah! Joe is so creepy-looking. He tells us that he heard the whole thing (was he listening in? creepy), and presumably he sleeps at the theater, because he’s keeping an eye on things till morning. And that’s the end of day one.
Up next: We find Maya! And then the kidnapper moves her again. Nicholas Falcone learns to be in with the law and down with the truth. Simone has a cat named Miss Sparkles.
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