Previously on The Hardy Boys: The Hidden Theft: Crime is afoot in Bayport! Let’s not hire anyone competent to check it out, though. Instead, we as the Hardy Boys have been called to Spencer Mansion, to investigate the disappearance of a bunch of missing bearer bonds. We haven’t found them yet, but we have found out that Frank has a big embarrassing crush on Lily Spencer. I’m sure ATAC will be thrilled.
Having made the first bit of progress in the mystery, we’re now free to wander around the Spencer Mansion grounds. We’ll have to manually walk our way to all the points on the map, but once we’ve visited them the first time, we can just use this map to teleport there afterwards.
The first location we hit up is the nurses’ station, which is abandoned and has a makeshift grave with a cross outside. Not creepy at all!
Inside, we find a bunch of abandoned hospital rooms, which again, not creepy at all. In one room, we look under the pillow and find a blonde wig (with a strand of black hair in it) and a rag. Frank and Joe gasp that someone’s been living here. We can also inspect the vent, but it’s screwed to the wall, so we’ll have to find a screwdriver. Frank briefly looks out the window and sees a shadow, but it darts away before we can get a good look. SpOoOoOkY!
We then pop across the hall to find a locker room, and we can steal some supplies from it — namely gloves, gauze, and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Our notes update to say that we should tell Officer Riley about this.
But first, let’s keep exploring. The next location we come across is the caretaker’s cottage, where Thomas, Lily, and Lily’s mom live. We also want to jack a hubcap from the tire pile outside before going in. Not sure how we explain it to Thomas when we rock into his house dragging his hubcap along with us, but whatever.
Once inside, we can have a fairly long conversation with Thomas. He tells us that he’s rather hurt that Samuel would suspect him, given all that Thomas has sacrificed for him — not that Thomas is going to specify what he means by that, because that would make this too easy. He does hint that they both had a difficult childhood — Samuel moreso than Thomas, which Samuel may or may not be resentful about.
We ask him about the nurses’ station and the creepy cross, but he doesn’t know much about either, apart from saying that the nurses’ station is boarded up to stop people from squatting in it. Frank and Joe are like, “Yeah…that didn’t really work.”
(I just realized I said the conversation is fairly long and these paragraphs are actually really short. I mean, it’s long-winded, but we don’t get much out of it.)
Let’s talk to Lily’s mom (“Mary”). She’s got a weird transatlantic accent and also kind of talks like an Anne of Green Gables character. She totally hates Samuel Spencer, for some reason, and she totally would have stolen all his money, but she didn’t. Sure. “You realize what you’re saying, Mrs. Spencer!” the subtitles say, except Joe reads the line in the most bored voice ever. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t care about the voice acting so much if it weren’t for the fact that there’s all this punctuation in the subtitles that is in no way expressed in the delivery. Anyway, Mary says she’s fine with everyone thinking she’s a suspect and trying to arrest her if it draws attention away from her poor, innocent husband whom she would totally martyr herself for. This game is doing absolutely nothing for feminism, jeez. Mary also slightly elaborates on why Samuel is considered so unpleasant by everyone else; he’s both shady about his money and not even really charmingly sociopathic; he’s just a dick. Fair enough.
Anyway, we’ll now ask her about her past — which is not indicated by any dialogue, it’s just a conversation option labeled “Your past.” Sure. Mary says she’s from another town about a hundred miles away. She moved away from said town, then moved back to said town, then met Thomas and moved to Bayport. That feels brief. Do you think she’s left out some details there?
That’s all we can talk to the Spencers about for now, so we leave and head down a path called “BatchRoad2”, a name that I can only assume wasn’t meant to be left in the game upon release.
The next place we need to hit is the utility shed, which is where you’ll recall Lily saw someone skulking around. We see some ominous footprints on the ground, and inspecting them will allow us to pick up a “Mud Sample.” Presumably Joe just shoves some mud in his pocket and is walking around with it for the rest of the game.
Inside, we find a toolbox, but it’s locked we can’t open it, so we’ll have to come back.
Having found quite a bit of evidence, it’s time to go to the police! The Hardy Boys being such a big deal, I figure we can skip a lowly officer like Con Riley and go straight to the top. The police chief is friends with Papa Hardy, right? Nepotism!
So we use our map to motor over to the police station, where we meet with Chief Ezra Collig, whom the subtitles refer to by his first name. Nancy could never be that casual with Chief McGinnis. Chief Ezra warns the Hardys against thinking Thomas is innocent just because he’s less of a dick than Samuel, which is especially good advice in a mystery game where the asshole character is rarely the culprit.
We can run through the case and suspects with Chief Ezra here — apparently Samuel used to say that there was a life-changing treasure in his safe, so the fact that it was just money was kind of anticlimactic, although Chief Ezra figures $200 million is a life-changing amount. He tells us that Samuel has lived in Bayport since forever and was kind of always an ass, but Chief Ezra thinks he might be a decent guy deep down. Conversely, he knows absolutely nothing about Thomas’s life prior to coming to live with his brother, but he also seems decent and his daughter is “sweet as an apple.” That’s…that’s not what the saying is, Chief Ezra. (This game was, by the way, made in collaboration between the Adventure Company and JoWood Productions. JoWood Productions was Austrian, which might explain some of the bizarre turns of phrase. Also, what is with Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys and Austrian video game companies?) Anyway, Joe chirps, “Frank likes apples!” and Frank tells him to “Stow it.” Indeed.
Anyway, the Hardys want to get into the Crime Lab to analyze the various clues we’ve found, but the only person who has a key is Con Riley, who’s stuck over at the Spencer Mansion. Ezra, you’re the police chief and you’re locked out of your own crime lab? Embarrassing.
So, let’s haul ass back to Spencer Mansion to talk to Officer Riley again. We lead him to the nurses’ station and he’s like, “Wow, there’s so much evidence here! Thanks for finding this!” Dang Officer Riley, maybe you would’ve found it if you’d like, walked the grounds for five minutes.
We ask him how to get into the Crime Lab, but he clutches his pearls that he can’t be letting civilians mess with police equipment. Well, can he look something up in the Crime Lab for us? Of course not, because he has to stand in front of this building doing nothing — sorry, I mean, he’s waiting for the scene to be sealed off so he can investigate. Well, is he going to seal it off? No, because then he’d have to move from this spot and someone could mess with it. But he can’t move from this spot until it’s sealed off. Hm. This is a pickle, isn’t it?
Anyway, so we have to get some crime scene tape and wrap it around the trees before Officer Riley will help us. Well, the police station should have some tape, right?
“All that stuff is in the Crime Lab. Ask Officer Riley for some.” CHIEF EZRA, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.
Alright, we knew it wouldn’t be that simple. It’s object puzzle time! Is there tape back at Spencer Mansion? Yes, there is, but I also wanted to go visit Bayport High School because the location unlocked back when we first left the Hardys’ house and I’m kinda curious about what’s over there. Maybe one of the Hardys’ classmates will shove them into a locker! I can dream.
So we roll over to Bayport High and head through the first door, which brings us to the computer lab. This gentleman with the loud pants is Phil Cohen (per Wikipedia, Phil, along with the Hardys’ friend Tony Prito, was one of the first non-WASP characters in fiction to not be portrayed like a total stereotype. Good for him). Ngl, when I first saw him, I assumed he was meant to be a pretentious indie-type, what with the vest and glasses, but then he opens his mouth and starts talking in this really high-pitched, neurotic nerdy voice. Guys, it’s 2008: “sweater vest” no longer means “nerd”, it just means “guy who talks down to you because you’ve never heard of Freelance Whales.” Also I feel like “nebbish and dorky” is, uh, not a non-stereotypical way of portraying a Jewish guy.
Anyway. Phil is all worked up because it’s too hot inside the computer lab, thus this one particular computer terminal, “Nexus” won’t turn on. Nexus is of particular interest to Phil because it’s connected to a closed online database — not the Internet, because you see, anyone can just go on the Internet and write any old thing, like that the Hardy Boys are total mouthbreathers who need their dad and/or Nancy Drew to solve cases for them, and it may or may not be true! (What I just wrote is definitely true, though.) Nexus’s database, however, is monitored by…someone, somewhere…and thus all information on it is guaranteed to be accurate. “A closed information system where all information is controlled by a moderator is a good thing and not ripe for abuse” feels like the kind of charmingly naive thing we believed in 2008.
The Hardys are intrigued by the possibility of using Nexus to research their case, but of course it won’t turn on because it’s too hot, so we have to cool the lab down. If we swing by the janitor’s room, the next door over, he’ll tell us that the A/C is on the fritz because they’re out of antifreeze.
Let’s put this sidequest on hold, though, because another one is about to come up! Frank and Joe trip over Iola Morton, who’s emoing in the middle of the school quad. She tells the Hardys that her AP Chem teacher got pissed at their class and has set them the impossible extra-credit assignment of making him an aspirin. (Frank: “Hey, we have plenty of aspirin at home. You forget who my brother is.” Hee.) Joe’s like, “So just don’t do it if it’s extra credit?” and Iola’s like, “I have an A, but I want an A+!” I went to school with girls like Iola and they were terrifying. Also, I’m intrigued by the implication that Joe “You Can’t Not Prove Ghosts Aren’t Real” Hardy is dating an uptight high honors science student. Also-also, does this mean the Hardys should be in school right now? Why are we just blowing off class?
Anyway, Iola bangs on about how she doesn’t possibly know how she’s meant to make aspirin in a high school chem lab, and oh, the anguish the teacher is causing her with this extra credit assignment!!! We ask if we can help, and she emos that she just wants to be alone for a while. Jesus Christ, Iola, it’s a 10-point extra credit assignment, it’s not like you found out Joe is cheating on you with Bess or something.
We can pop by the science room and see the task on the board. There’s a lab area we can click on, so we’ll probably be able to make that aspirin after all, but let’s not get too deep into this sidequest while we’re still working on getting the crime scene tape.
(I actually did end up fucking around and making the aspirin while I was here, but in the interest of making this easier to read, let’s pretend I did everything in a logical, sensible order, the way I so often do.)
Our journal updates to tell us what to do next. Comic Sans font aside, the task list and journal in this game are both pretty useful! They update in a timely fashion and are straightfoward in explaining the plot and what to do next. Both the resolutions to the crime scene task and the A/C task are back at Spencer Mansion, so let’s skedaddle back over there. Before we leave, though, we jack a screwdriver from the janitor. Sorry, my dude! It’s for the greater good!
Back at the Spencer mansion, we pop open the hood of Samuel Spencer’s car (it’s parked right in front of the house; you see it right to the side when you approach the front door) and use the shard of glass we picked up in the study to cut a hole in his coolant tank. Antifreeze will drip out from the bottom of the car, and we use a garbage can lid (which you pick up from the high school) to collect it. Antifreeze procured and presumably precariously balanced in the garbage can lid, let’s go fix the crime scene!
Back at the nurses’ station, I finally remembered that roll of gauze we nabbed earlier, which we can use to cordon off the crime scene. Before we do, though, we pop back inside real quick and use our newly-acquired screwdriver to unscrew the wall vent, inside which we find a pair of muddy boots. When we go to the utility shed, we can compare the boots to the footprints to see that they’re the same.
We tell Con Riley that we kind of put up police tape and he’s like, “Well, I’m sure you didn’t do anything as dumb as just wrapping some 50-year-old gauze around the crime scene, so I can go let you in the Crime Lab!” This is dumb because he is literally standing right in front of the door.
Officer Riley meets us back over at the police station, wherein we still can’t actually use the Crime Lab, but he’s happy to run a search for us. In order to run a search, we need some kind of DNA from our suspect, which…do we not have a strand of his hair? Whatever. Alright, so we’ll have to do something else to get the suspect information.
Let’s wrap up the Nexus thing. We go back to school and try to dump the antifreeze in the janitor’s room, but Joe’s like, “We can’t do that, it’ll spill everywhere!”, like that somehow wasn’t a concern when we were running around all over creation with the antifreeze sloshing around in a garbage can lid. So we have to steal a beaker from the science lab, then pour the antifreeze in the beaker, then pour it into the A/C system. The janitor will leave to turn the A/C back on, and when he’s gone, we can steal a wrench from him, too.
Back in the computer lab, we can now use Nexus to google stuff. There’s not much we can search yet; we can look up some stuff about the Spencers, but Nexus doesn’t have any info on them. You can also look up what a bearer bond is if you’re me and finances confuse you.
Next, let’s do Iola’s homework for her. When her teacher said “Make me an aspirin,” he actually meant to build a diorama of the molecular structure of aspirin — I think? Is that what those lil drawings of all the little circles linked together are? (It’s been 15 years since I took chem and I nearly failed out of it even then, leave me alone.) Having done this, we can snap Iola out of her mood, because we need her for this next bit.
Iola’s…shoulders and arms are huge, Jesus Christ. I guess on the upside, she could totally beat up the Hardy Boys if she had to? Anyway, we need her to analyze the hair and mud and the rag we found, in order to turn them into clues that Officer Riley can use. Before we start, though, Iola says that she needs propane in order do the chemical analyzing synthesizing whatever with it. “I’m beginning to feel like an industrial errand boy,” Frank complains. Iola says that it’s not like this is real lab, this is just for high school chem class. Yeah, if only the police had some kind of lab they could use to analyze evidence themselves. Some kind of crime lab, maybe?
So we have to go back to the nurses’ station at the mansion to get the propane.
Then we haul ass back to the high school to give it to Iola. Jeez, I do feel like an industrial errand boy. I hate this game for making me agree with Frank Hardy.
So we give the propane to Iola, along with that mud we picked up earlier (sure), and the culprit’s boots. Iola does her analysis and confirms that the mud outside the utility shed and the mud on the boots are one in the same (she knows this because the mud outside the utility shed is apparently “very distinctive”. That’s convenient). This is weird because…we already confirmed this when Joe and Frank analyzed the footprints. It gets even weirder, too, but we’ll get to that in a minute.
Next, we can ask Iola to analyze the blue rag, but of course she doesn’t know how to do a blood analysis, so we have to haul ass to the Nexus computer and look it up. Then we go back and tell her how to analyze blood samples. I feel like another thing that makes this game, uh, less fun than it could be is the sheer tedium of these tasks. You have to go to the high school, then immediately turn around and go all the way back to the mansion to get the antifreeze to fix the A/C. Then you start analyzing the clues but oh no you need propane and have to go back the mansion again to get it, then you have to go back to the school to use it, then you have to walk to the computer lab to look up the blood stuff on Nexus and — it’s just a lot of travel time and you don’t stay in any location long enough for it to feel worthwhile. Anyway, Iola will note that along with blood, it has some glass and fingernail bits in it (quoth Joe, “Ew!”. While I agree with him, I can’t help but feel that Nancy Drew would be less of a punk-ass baby about this). The Hardys realize the culprit wrapped the rag around his fist to break the window. Iola also IDs the blood type as AB-, which conveniently is the rarest blood type.
Finally, we can analyze the hair sample, which thankfully doesn’t need any more bullshit to get it done. Iola says the hair was cut recently, so Joe says we’ll need to drop by the local barber.
But first, back to Con Riley. We present him with our evidence: the culprit’s blood type, hair color, and…shoe size. Wait, what? Yup, after all that analyzing and pattering on about the mud on the boots, the evidence we actually glean from them is the culprit’s shoe size. Sure. Whatever. Anyway, Officer Riley manages to pull up a profile of the suspect, who goes by the obvious alias of “John Johnson” and isn’t local to the area. How do they have him in their system, then? Whatever (x2).
Discovering that the culprit got a haircut recently will unlock “Bayport Street”, the town’s main drag, as our next location. When we go over there, we can enter the barber’s, where we see a terrifyingly tan Chet Morton getting a haircut. Generally, the graphics in this game aren’t terrible — compared to similar games of the era, anyway — but there are times when it’s really obvious they just used whatever janky assets were available to them.
We show the barber (who’s a total Italian stereotype named Giuseppe) the headshot? police sketch? something of the suspect, and he says the guy did indeed get his hair cut here recently. “Do you remember his name? Did he pay with a credit card?” Joe asks. “What am I, the pope?” Giuseppe complains. What? Does the pope take credit cards? Is this a joke about buying indulgences? Or maybe the writers were just like, “You know what Italians love? Referencing the pope.”
Anyway, Giuseppe’s running a weird promotion where people can leave up to 2 of their business cards to be entered in a raffle for a free haircut. I fail to see why business cards are the method of entry, apart from facilitating the plot. The culprit left his card — you know, with his real name and address on it — because I guess he figured a potential free haircut in a town that he isn’t even planning to come back to is worth blowing his identity over. As you do.
Giuseppe says the culprit only had 1 business card on him, so Frank says we just need to go through the cards, and whichever one doesn’t have a matching pair is our culprit’s.
So this next bit is basically just a matching game, easy-peasy. Once we’re done, the remaining single card belongs to a dude named “Dougal Siepp”, whose business is a “masquerade emporium”. That doesn’t sound weird or sketch at all. The emporium is somewhere in New York City, so we’ll have to go there next.
We bring the card back to Giuseppe and then we…have to do the dialogue about Giuseppe not recognizing the culprit all over again. Sigh. Okay. After that, we can ask him about Dougal Siepp; Giuseppe doesn’t recall much of use, but he does tell us that Dougal Siepp was weird because he didn’t laugh at Giuseppe’s jokes at the right times. A sure sign of a criminal!
That’s the end of this chapter, so let’s head to NYC to start the next part of the mystery. Up next: the Hardys are shocked to encounter obnoxious theater kids in New York.
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