AW YES. I’m finally getting around to recapping the very first Nancy Drew game I ever played. I received this game for Christmas in 2004, when I was 11. Funnily enough, this was also the first Nancy Drew game for most of my ND-playing friends. I’m guessing it’s because A) we were all in that 9-12 range that these games are meant for when it was released, and B) we were all going through a horse phase in 2004. My parents actually bought this game for me because you can do a bit of riding and taking care of the horses, not realizing how actually scary it is. My 11-year-old self was traumatized by the ending, but also horribly addicted. The memories! *wipes away tear*
This game also marks the first major change in the user interface; the inventory panel has disappeared, and the dialogue box is much smaller. I remember reading somewhere — I can’t remember where — that this was done to make the actual gameplay box bigger and more detailed. Fair enough. I don’t mind it either way. The logo and intro screen are still the same, though.
So, the mystery! Nancy, Bess, and George are supposed to be on vacation at Shadow Ranch, which is…somewhere in the southwest? Wait, does the game ever say which state it’s in? I want to say either New Mexico or Arizona. Well, whatever. It’s all kind of stereotypically deserty and tumbleweedy anyway, so I guess the specific location doesn’t matter. Anyway, they’re staying with B&G’s aunt and uncle, the Rawleys. Naturally, Nancy couldn’t manage to book a seat on the same flight as her friends. Naturally, their flight was delayed due to bad weather, and Nancy was the only one to make it to New Mexizona.
And naturally cubed, the Rawleys aren’t even in their own house — they’ve been called away, so the ranch is left in the hands of their foreman, Dave Gregory. It’s just us and our suspects, without any pesky friends or relatives hanging around.
Nancy weirdly thinks it’d be a good idea to send a picture of Dave’s behind to her housekeeper. As you do.
“As beautiful as Shadow Ranch is, I’m starting to get a bad feeling about all of this,” Nancy ominouses as she signs off. Way to be a pessimist, Nancy.
And thus, we begin! A useful change: the task list now appears in the toolbar, so you can look at it wherever you are. Cool beans. Some kind of creepy, melancholy Southwestern-ish harmonica music plays in the background while we explore — we can look at the big-ass portrait of a woman on the wall. “Frances Humber, wonder who she was,” Nancy muses, like we actually care. Apparently Dave is still “fixin’” up the front porch, so the front door is locked. We can pick up a romance novel by “Charleena Purcell”, and look at a horse guide. We’re going to have to feed the horses and go riding later, so we should know this stuff. Of course, if you were going through a horse phase like 90% of girls do at the ages of 9-12, then the book doesn’t have anything you don’t already know. My 11-year-old self was offended that this game thought it needed to tell me what a fetlock was.
Anyway. There’s a roll-top desk in the corner, but it’s locked, of course. I wonder if Lani Minella rerecords that line every time, or if they just use the same audio clip from like, 1998. And there’s a chest with a bird pattern on top that we’ll have to unlock later. That’s it for exploring! We’re supposed to call the Rawleys, so let’s do that.
I actually called Bess and George first — they’re stranded in Omaha on account of a plane malfunction, and George is so bored that she bought a book about “19th-century clothing.” You’ll recall that George’s defining characteristic is her tomboyishness — although actually, the games don’t really make that explicit, do they? All the characters snark on how ~unlike~ George it is to be into clothes, but if you’ve never read the books, you wouldn’t really know why that was out of character for her. Well, whatever. She tells us to call her if we need to know anything about 1800s fashion. Gosh, I wonder if that will come up during this game. Anyway, we can’t talk to them any further without calling the Rawleys first.
The Rawleys’ names, by the way, are “Aunt Bet” and “Uncle Ed”. They’re at the hospital, as Ed was bitten by a rattlesnake the other night. And Bet has to stay with him, for gameplay purposes. They tell Nancy to get on with having a good time at the ranch, and give us a little rundown on all the people there: in addition to Dave, there’s also the “head wrangler”, Tex, and the cook, Shorty Thurmond. You know, it occurs to me that this game is a bit of a sausagefest. The only female suspect is Mary Yazzie — speaking of who, the Rawleys want us to deliver a letter to her. It’s in the roll-top desk, and the Rawleys tell us to get the key from Dave. Anything else?
“The horse, Bet. Tell her about the phantom horse.” That sounds pretty suspicious to me! Could we have stumbled upon a MYSTERY? Unfortunately, the Rawleys hang up before they can tell us anything. Well, now we HAVE to go through everyone’s stuff and ask them invasive questions. You can’t just leave Nancy Drew hanging like that.
Dave and Tex are outside, and Mary Yazzie is at another location entirely, so let’s talk to Shorty. He’s way, way too friendly. He’s all like, “Tell me all about yourself! Tell me the dark secrets of your past!” Hey, invasive personal questions within the first 5 minutes of meeting someone are Nancy’s thing, thank you very much! Anyway, his friendliness extends to offering up information about the phantom horse without us even having to ask, so that’s useful. Apparently, it showed up in the night, and five minutes later, a rattlesnake popped up in the Rawleys’ room and bit Ed. Shorty swears he actually saw the horse, which was glowing, on account of it being a ghost. It used to belong to a “Dirk Valentine,” who was an outlaw back in the 1880s or whatever. Dirk had a thing going with Frances Humber (she of the portrait in the living room — Shadow Ranch used to belong to the Humbers), but unfortunately Papa Humber was the sheriff. Dirk was hanged and his horse like…swore vengeance? Or something? Anyway, whenever its ghost pops up, bad luck follows. Wow, that was a lot of exposition in one conversation.
Let’s go talk to Dave, shall we? I feel like everyone who has ever played this game has ended up with a crush on him, but idk, I’ve never seen it. Maybe it’s the fact that he has no hair or forehead because he’s wearing that hat all the time. I dig his denim shirt + denim pants look, though. Anyway, we can ask how the snake got into the Rawleys’ room, and Dave offers up a perfectly rational explanation, which we’re going to choose to ignore in favor of the ghost horse theory. Then we can ask him for the desk key, and that’s about it. He tells us that Mary Yazzie doesn’t like the Rawleys, but doesn’t know why. ‘Kay.
The inventory panel is now a pop-up thing, and you can switch between items you can look at (maps, letters, etc) and items you can use. It’s mostly an improvement, although I think it becomes a little difficult when you need to get something out of the inventory quickly, and you have to bring up the panel instead of just looking at the sidebar.
Anyway, the roll-top desk is full of secrets. The Rawleys sold a trunk to Mary Yazzie (for $85). And we find a letter from a “Jane Nash”, who is Not Pleased that the Rawleys fired her. HMMM. Finally, we can grab this set of like three…prong…key…things? I don’t know. We need them for later.
So right now, our mission is to get the letter to Mary Yazzie. This means we have to get a horse and ride out to wherever she is. Let’s see if Tex can help us out! He’s all like, “UGH, another human being, GROSS.” Well, I guess it’s lucky for him, then, that there’s only one of us, right? Nope, now he’s all bent out of shape that he went through ALL THE TROUBLE of bringing in THREE HORSES. He’s super passive-aggressive about it. Anyway, he exposits how the horse-riding section of the game works: if we ever want to take a horse out, we have to talk to Tex first, and saddle the horse ourselves. Before we go out for the first time, we have to be able to pass his horse quiz, which I can only hope is easier than Holt Scotto’s stupid seamanship quiz. And we always have to have a hat, gloves, and a canteen of water in the inventory. When we’re done, we have to unsaddle the horse or we’ll get into trouble. Tex tells us that we’ll be riding “Bob.” And we have to get the canteen from Shorty, who will probably make us run a bunch of errands first, because that’s how these games always roll. So let’s get on that! See you later, Tex!
“IF YA LAST THAT LONG.” Okay, creepy.
I have so many questions about this poster, but I think my most pressing one is: is that Tex? Did he have a poster made out of his FACE?
Back in the kitchen, Shorty creeps about how he’s super excited to sit down and have a “real conversation” with us. Why is a grown-ass man so into ~getting to know~ an 18-year-old girl? I just grossed myself out. ANYWAY, naturally, Shorty has some chores for us before we can get a canteen — although in fairness, we offer to do the chores first; this isn’t like the other games where other person basically coerces Nancy into doing their chores by withholding whatever she needs. We have to pick ripe vegetables, gather eggs, and make a fire pit. Blah blah errands blah, it’s all pretty tedious but it’s not too difficult, so whatever. I stop to have a conversation with Dave about the other suspects ranch hands, and he’s not very forthcoming: he was hired first, then Tex, then Shorty; he doesn’t mind that Tex is grouchy and that Shorty is annoying as long as they both do their jobs. Which I guess is easy for him to say, since he doesn’t have Shorty trying to be bosom friends with him every five minutes.
So we’re supposed to call Bess and George back to tell them about the ~mystery~. The very tenuous mystery that Dave offered up a perfectly reasonable explanation for. But then again, has Dave been a super sleuth since 1930? I don’t think so. Somewhat weirdly, in the five minutes since she talked to them on the phone, Nancy has taken to calling the Rawleys “Uncle Ed” and “Aunt Bet.” Bess and George don’t seem to find this weird at all. Nancy lays out the mystery for them, and mentions the Dirk Valentine story. Bess is like, “How come his horse got to be a phantom and he didn’t?” Right? Asking the real questions. Anyway, Nancy tells them that she thinks the horse was a distraction, and someone is out to get the Rawleys. She’s all excited that there’s a criminal on the ranch, plus they must have an accomplice who wrangles the horse. Bess and George, on the other hand, are perturbed that someone is going after their relatives, as you might be. “You don’t have to sound so happy about it,” Bess says. For real.
The last thing is building the fire pit. We need some newspaper for kindling, which we can find in the living room. One of the newspapers that we look at is about bank robbers! Apparently a gang from Denver has been spotted in the “Tumbleweed” area*. I wonder if this could have anything to do with our mystery…?
*Given the magnet on the fridge that says “Tumbleweed, AZ”, I will presume that we’re in Arizona here.
Blah blah chopping wood blah. “Just call me Nancy Paul Bunyan Drew,” Nancy says when she’s done. What a nerd.
Over at the fire pit, we see a MYSTERIOUS NOTE with MYSTERIOUS SYMBOLS on it. Nancy steals it, because why not. Then we finish putting together the wood, and she says, “One extremely well built campfire, if I do say so myself!” Deflate that head, Nancy.
Anyway, now that all of our errands are done, we can take Bob out. Tex stands in the corral, looking REALLY CREEPY, and asks us questions. All the answers are in the horse book in the living room, but joke’s on you, Tex, I still remember every single bit of useless information about horses that I memorized when I was 11. He grudgingly lets us out on the trail, and we can finally go deliver that letter to Mary Yazzie.
Mary Yazzie, everybody! I like her voice a lot. Shorty has this weird, put-on Deep South-style thing going on, while Dave and Tex have more muted twangs, which I think is more typical of the Southwest? I think Mary’s voice actress is trying to do a typical Native American reservation accent; I don’t know how accurate it is since I don’t have much of an ear for accents, but it sounds pleasant, flat with a few kinda lifted, round vowels.
Anyway, we find out that her property borders the Rawleys’, and she wants to buy “a small piece” of theirs. Unfortunately, the letter we’re carrying is them shooting her down. Well, this is awkward. She tells us to look around (and not to hesitate to ask how much something costs!), but Nancy is only interested in the trunk the Rawleys sold her. Sadly, Mary hasn’t been able to open it, but agrees to let Nancy try. But we can’t open it either 🙁 The trunk has defeated even Nancy Drew! Well, let’s make conversation with Mary — she tells us a bit about her palomino horse, who she trained herself. So Mary knows how to train horses. HMMMM. She also exposits a bit about petroglyphs (carvings in the side of a rock). Nancy, at least, actually knows what a glyph is this time around. There are apparently a bunch further out from the ranch, so we’ll have to go there sometime.
Finally, we can play an arcade game, and we get a token. Alright.
(Also, we pass a set of tuning forks on the table, and Nancy will note that they are indeed tuning forks. This will be funny later.)
So, the trunk. Mary Yazzie had a display of Charleena Purcell books in her shop, along with Charleena’s number. Maybe, in her research for her Old West romance novels, Charleena might know how to open the old trunk? Let’s call her. Also note that, yet again, the Hardy Boys are phone friends and Ned isn’t. I’m starting to find this suspicious. Maybe he’s locked up in Frank Hardy’s basement or something.
Anyway, we call Charleena, who puts us on hold. “Reading a Charleena Purcell novel is like traveling through time to the old Southwest on the wings of love,” the answering machine tells us. HEE! Anyway, CP doesn’t usually take calls, but apparently she is VERY INTERESTED in the Dirk Valentine/Frances Humber story. She’ll help us out if we promise to tell her everything we find out about them, so she can write her Harlequin novel. Bless. Anyway, the trunk has the initials of Frances Humber’s grandparents, and a picture commemorating their wedding day, so the combination is probably the date: 4/9/11. (1911, not 2011.) Armed with this knowledge, we can go back in and open the trunk up, and Mary lets us keep a watch that’s inside.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch (literally! ohohoho, I slay myself), we put away Bob’s saddle, and notice a letter addressed to Tex lying on the floor of the tack room. Do we have an actual reason to get up in Tex’s business? Not really. Are we going to do it anyway? Duh, of course. It’s a birthday card from Tex’s sister, J. Nash. “Oh my God, Jane Nash is Tex’s sister!” Nancy says, out loud, while we’re standing right next to him. Tex doesn’t hear this, for some reason.
So let’s confront him! He snarks that we should be home in our “nice soft beddy-bye”, instead of out here in the gritty world of cattle ranching. He’s all like, “City folk can’t take living out here. It’s too ~RUGGED~” like yeah, with the electricity, and the running water, and the marked riding paths so we don’t get lost. Super rugged. Anyway, Nancy is undeterred and brings up Jane Nash. Tex picks up that we were snooping and kicks us out.
I stop by the kitchen and have a really short conversation with Shorty — he remarks that Mary Yazzie is after a particular piece of the Rawleys’ land — not a big one, but she really wants it. She says she feels “spiritually drawn” to it, but Shorty thinks she’s up to something. He sighs that he’s so glad we’re here — he likes to converse, to share information…”You like to gossip, don’t you,” Nancy says. Yup. Well, in fairness, he and Nancy have that in common.
Now that we know how the square keys from the desk work, we can use them to open the chest in the corner of the living room. We find…another watch. It looks just like the one we took out of Mary Yazzie’s trunk, but I guess this one belongs to a different Humber. Anyway, we also find a letter addressed to Frances Humber. Nancy notes that it looks like it was never opened. Until we got here, anyway, since obviously the next step is to read it. It’s from Dirk Valentine! Like Joe Akers before him, apparently he never learned to write in cursive. And neither did Meryl Humber, Frances’s father, whose diary is also in the chest. Apparently, Meryl did not approve of Frances and Dirk banging, as Dirk apparently liked to rob stagecoaches in his downtime. Frances was all like, he steals from the rich and gives to the poor! but Meryl writes that the coach Dirk robbed was carrying “hard-earned wages” for the miners. Oops. Anyway, as we already know from Shorty, the whole thing ended with Papa Humber arresting (and eventually hanging) Dirk, and Frances was all like, “Papa don’t preach!” and ran away and never spoke to her dad again. Papa Humber was sad, as he knew he did what was best for Frances and also probably for all those people Dirk was stealing from, but he lost his daughter in the process.
So that was uplifting! The letter from Frances to Dirk, on the other hand, was written after his arrest — presumably he gave it to Papa Humber to give to her — and telling her how to find his buried treasure, as he’s pretty sure Papa Humber’s not going to let him come ’round anymore after this. There’s a map of a rock, and a string of numbers to get us started. Sweet! I mean, it sucks for the Humbers and Dirk and all, but now Nancy has a mystery to bust open, so thanks, guys!
(Sidebar: I feel like both Frances and Papa Humber’s versions of the story could be true? Which is to say, Dirk probably treated Frances really well and all, but that doesn’t discount him being a criminal. It’s possible he developed a fixation on Frances — or really loved her, either way — and was down with other people suffering as long as his lady love was happy. Or she might have been in the “ditzy” category of Dark Mistress.)
MOVING ON. The game takes place over three days, so I’m trying to break the recap up accordingly, but they’ve really crammed a lot of stuff into each day. We can open up the two watches now — you just have to press the numbers until you get them all in order, and the order is completely random. Papa Humber’s watch has a watch pick inside, and Frances’s has a picture with “Green bottle under” written on the back. Our first clue!
I pop back in to apologize to Tex, and he rather nicely admits that he didn’t mean to be so rude — he “just got a little flustered.” Aw. Then he says that his sister is kind of flaky, and he doesn’t really blame the Rawleys for firing her. Alright.
Finally, we can progress to the next day. Shorty sings a song for us while Dave and Tex presumably question their life choices. Tex finally peaces out and tells Shorty his cooking is shit, and Dave agrees, but slightly more nicely. Shorty is all like, “That was LAMB RAGOUT, you UNCULTURED SWINE!” He stomps off huffing that he’ll show them, he’ll show them all!
Then the phantom horse shows up! SPOOKY. Actually, it occurs to me that between being set in the Southwest, and the whole ghost horse thing, this game is essentially the Phantom Stallion. Those books were my jam when I was like, ten. ANYWAY. The horse gallops by and the pump in the water house bursts. End of day one!
Up next: We investigate some mysterious rocks, visit a ghost town, and take a journey into Frances Humber’s teen angst.
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