Spy's Demise

Spy's Demise
Title screen of the game
Game No.	525
Voting	4.00 points, 1 votes
Developer	Alan Zeldek, Wayne Barbarek
Company	Penguin Software
Publisher	U.S. Gold (Electric Dreams)
HVSC-File	/GAMES/S-Z/Spys_Demise.sid
Release	1983
Platform	Atari 400/800, C64, TI-99/4A, Apple II
Genre	Arcade
Gamemode	Single player
Operation
Media
Language
Information	Series: The Spy Strikes Back (Sequel)

Description

Spy in Action

In the game "Spy's Demise", the player, as a spy, zigzags through the nine floors of a heavily guarded building, dodging security guards who repeatedly cross his path. At the end of each floor, a line of a nine-part encrypted clue awaits. The goal of the game is to collect these clues, piece them together, and ultimately decipher them. Along the way, the spy also collects useful items such as pistols, floppy disks, and cameras.

Backstory

The game's protagonist, a spy for an agency, sits comfortably in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel in Bangkok, sipping his drink (shaken, not stirred) and overhearing two KGB agents discussing an encrypted message. The message in question, if someone were to decode it, would grant access to computer data so valuable that the person would be set for life; however, previous attempts at decryption by Ukrainian specialists have apparently been unsuccessful. Growing increasingly bored with his job and longing for retirement, the spy decides to take the risk: The message, divided into nine individual lines of code, is stored on the different floors of a diplomatic mission in Pyongyang and must therefore be collected, pieced together, and decrypted. Even when the spy discovers on-site that the embassy building is secured by patrolling guards, he remains undeterred and gets to work.

Design

The game board consists of 11 horizontal corridors, displayed to fill the screen, which the player character must traverse sequentially from bottom to top in a zigzag pattern. Seven guards periodically cross these corridors. If the player character collides with one of these guards, they lose a life and start a new attempt to traverse the current corridor from the beginning. In higher levels, only the upper part of the building is traversed and controlled by the guards; they patrol more frequently along a shorter route, significantly increasing the difficulty.

Looks easy...

...but the slightest mistake can cost you a life

Graphics

The game field is displayed in multicolor bitmap mode (bitmap starting at address $6000, video RAM with color information starting at $4400). The spy is composed of four differently colored monochrome sprites (sprites 0–3), another sprite (sprite 4) forms the smoke cloud upon their death, and the last three sprites (sprites 5–7) represent a blinking, round bonus object. All other elements of the game are part of the bitmap display.

The discovered secret codes, however, are displayed in monochrome text mode (see section "Solution", video RAM at address $0400, ROM character set mapped into the VIC address space at address $1000).

To detect whether the spy has collided with one of the guards, the game relies on the sprite-background collision detection of the VIC (register at address $D01F), and to collect the flashing bonus object, it relies on sprite-sprite collision detection (register at address $D01E).

Sound

During the game, one of seven two-part theme songs plays in turn (see section "Theme"). Otherwise, events in the game are only accompanied by short sound effects.

Hints

The goal of the game is to guide the player character (a small spy with a briefcase) in a zigzag pattern from the bottom to the top of a building's horizontal corridors. The character must avoid colliding with any of the seven guards who periodically patrol vertically and regularly cross the spy's path. Each time the character completes a floor of the building, another section of a nine-part coded clue is displayed. After completing the ninth floor and displaying the full clue text, the game ends with a return to the start screen.

A countdown timer measures the time required to traverse each corridor (starting at 250, it decreases by 1 every 120 ms). If the timer has not reached zero when the spy reaches the end of the current corridor, the player receives the remaining timer value added to their score.

Bonus item

As the spy traverses floor after floor, he inevitably collects the items shown in the following gallery, which are placed along the way. Consequently, this does not award any points and has no discernible function in the game. Only one bonus item (see image on the left), which appears sporadically and disappears again after a while, grants 150 additional points when collected.

Object 1 (Radio?)

Object 2 (Camera?)

Object 3 (Pistol?)

Object 4 (Floppy disk?)

Object 5 (Laptop?)

Object 6 (Bomb?)

Screen Layout

Typical scene from the game

Controls

While the title screen is displayed, the player can choose between the input devices joystick (J ), keyboard (K ), and paddles (P ). Pressing one of these buttons starts the game.

The character can then be moved left or right: When using a joystick, it must be moved in the corresponding direction; when using the keyboard, the CRSR ⇓  keys move left and the CRSR ⇒  key moves right.

When paddles are used, their buttons move the character left or right; the rotary knobs are inactive. Pressing both buttons simultaneously gives priority to the left direction.

Control is made more difficult by the fact that the spy can only stop at the two ends of the corridor, but is constantly moving in between — continuing his path even when the input device is inactive.

Regardless of the input device used, the background music can be turned on and off with the key combination CTRL +S . The key combination CTRL +R  ends the game and returns to the start screen.

Tips

• Since it is extremely difficult to prevent a spy flanked on both sides by guards from colliding with them, in many tricky situations it can be a good decision to simply return to the starting point of a corridor and wait for a more opportune moment.
• If the spy is briefly trapped between two guards, he must be kept in position by quickly changing direction left and right until the guards clear the way. This movement pattern should be taken into account when choosing the input device.
• Many corridors can be traversed in one move if the spy starts moving at precisely the right moment. If you memorize the position of the guards at which the spy must begin, the corresponding lines of the game board can be navigated safely.

Solution

The solution to "Spy's Demise" is simply to traverse the entire diplomatic mission building undetected by carefully planning your starting time and lightning-fast evading approaching guards. Success in the game thus relies primarily on practice and quick reflexes.

Solution Word

The nine coded lines of the secret message, which the spy collects during the game, contain a series of short puzzles. The solutions to these puzzles reveal the individual digits of a telefone number. The successful player can then call this number, request a specific contact, and claim their prize.

The secret message consists of a total of 144 symbols (nine lines of 16), each representing a single letter (see the left illustration in the gallery below). Identical symbols represent the same letters. A plausible decryption can be found at digitpress.com (see the image on the right and the explanation below).

Encoded solution clue...

...and the decoded equivalent

According to "digitpress.com", the individual puzzles and their presumed solutions are:

MICE WITH VISUAL DEFECTS ... corresponds to number "3" (beginning of the children's poem "Three Blind Mice")
FLEMINGS BOOKS MINUS ONE ... corresponds to the number sequence "12" (12 books plus the short stories of "James Bond" author James Fleming minus 1)
STATES BEGINNING WITH K ... corresponds to number "2" (the two US states of Kansas and Kentucky)
CAMERA FEET ... corresponds to number "3" (tripod)
GOLF CRY OVER TWO... corresponds to the number "2" (the exclamation "Fore!" sounds like "Four", divided by 2)
BANDIT ARMS ... corresponds to number "1" (one-armed bandit)
EIGHTY SIX PARTNER ... corresponds to the number sequence "86"
EAGLE PAR FOUR... corresponds to number "2" (reaching a hole in golf with 2 strokes under par is called an Eagle)
ASK FOR LSANDERSON... the name "L. Sanderson" of an employee of the software company Penguin Software

Taken together, this gives the telefone number 312-232-1862, which must be called after decryption to claim the prize from an employee named "L. Sanderson".

Cheats

There are several cCracks with a trainer function on the CSDb. The most diverse configuration options are offered by the version "Spy's Demise +3" from Crypt (first image in the gallery below). If you answer the question "WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE IMMORTAL?" with "Y" ("yes"), you can freely walk through all floors of the diplomatic mission and then view the complete, but still coded, secret message.

If one only wants to display the complete, still encrypted secret message, one can alternatively traverse the first floor in an "honest" way, so that the first line of this message appears. Using the code table in Appendix E of the C64 manual, one then determines the corresponding screen code for each displayed symbol, then triggers a reset and searches for the relevant byte sequence in main memory (which, in the address range $0803 — $9FFF, is not changed by a reset). The desired message is located at address $25B7 (decimal 9655), allowing it to be displayed on the screen:

Complete secret message, read from memory and displayed using the PEEK command

Votes

Voting of the C64-Wiki users (10=the best vote):
4.00 points at 1 vote. You need to be logged in to cast a vote.
C64Games	7	June 20, 2006 - "sehr gut" - 2989 downs
Lemon64	6,42	January 16, 2024 - 19 votes
Electronic Fun with Computers and Games	3/5	Vol. 1 No. 11 (September 1983)"
Rombachs C64-Spieleführer	8	September 1984 - "Verdict 2"

Critics

Stephan64: "A simply designed game that is also very difficult to play and quickly becomes frustrating. The goal of collecting all the pieces of the secret message initially seems a long way off — and those who persevere and actually make it to the end will, in most cases, be left scratching their heads in front of an incomprehensible jumble of colorful symbols. Only thanks to the pleasant musical accompaniment does "Spy's Demise" receive a generous 4 points."

Rombachs C64-Spieleführer: "Spy's Demise is the predecessor to Spy Strickes Back. The two games are therefore very similar in their backstory and gameplay. However, Spy's Demise is significantly more difficult to play, and the frustration threshold is reached much more quickly. In terms of visual and audio presentation, both programs are roughly equivalent (Judgment 2)."

Miscellaneous

Cover

The games "Spy's Demise" and "The Spy Strikes Back" were distributed by the company "U.S. Gold" on a single disc. The following illustration shows the cassette cover.

Cassette cover containing the games "Spy Strikes Back" and "Spy's Demise"

Inlay

The shared inlay of the cassette version of "Spy's Demise" and "The Spy Strikes Back" contains the backstories on the outside and the instructions for both games on the inside.

Cassette inlay (outside)

Cassette inlay (inside)

Cassette

Cassette for the game "Spy's Demise"

Theme

During the game, one of a total of seven two-part accompaniment melodies plays. The following gallery shows five examples of these musical pieces in standard musical notation. For creative reuse, the sheet music for all melodies is also available as a PDF document (File:SpysDemise Theme PDF.pdf) and in ABC musical notation (File:SpysDemise Theme.abc.txt).

Sheet music for two accompaniment melodies, reconstructed by logging all write accesses to the SID

Example sheet music for another accompaniment melody...

...and for two more melodies

Bugs

The spy-related items scattered throughout each floor not only don't award any points when collected, but are likely completely ignored during gameplay. This is suggested by the fact that they can apparently be collected piecemeal — which, as in the following animation, is usually a bad idea when dealing with a bomb.

A bomb is collected piecemeal

Fastloader

The cassette version of "Spy's Demise" uses the Novaload fast loader. The scrolling text displayed on its loading screen (right image in the gallery below) advertises another game from Penguin Software: "LOOK OUT FOR EXCITING PENGUIN PRODUCTS - SPY'S DEMISE - SPY STRIKES BACK".

During loading, two three-part melodies shorten the waiting time (second row in the gallery). Only the first few bars of the second melody are played, as it starts shortly before the end of the loading process. The complete sheet music is therefore taken from the fastloader of the sequel game The Spy Strikes Back, which uses the same music to accompany the loading process. For creative reuse, the sheet music is also available as a PDF document (File:SpyStrikesBack Loader PDF.pdf) and in ABC musical notation (File:SpyStrikesBack Loader.abc.txt).

Fastloader start screen Novaload

Loading screen with scrolling text

Musical notes of the first accompaniment melody in the fastloader (identical to the melody from the game "Spy Strikes Back"), reconstructed by logging all write accesses to the SID

Sheet music for the second accompaniment melody in the quickloader

Video Recording

Sequence from the game

Trivia

The publisher, Penguin Software, announced that anyone who decoded the encrypted message could win a "Spy's Demise" T-shirt. According to an article in the computer magazine Antic , only four people had succeeded in doing so before the release of the sequel game, "The Spy Strikes Back".

Highscore

The following high score list invites you to immortalize yourself with your highest score. The list is sorted in descending order by the score achieved. The number of lines of the secret message found can also be entered as a "level", but (since it is not visible in the screenshot) it has no influence on the placement.

Topscore of Ivanpaduano

1. Ivanpaduano - 4268 - 2 (08.09.2024)
2. Stephan64 - 3.716 - 1 (16.01.2024)
3. Nobody - 0 (tt.mm.jjjj)

	#2 Stephan64		#3 Nobody

Links

• C64Games.de - Game No. 2473
• Lemon64 - Game No. 2440
• Gamebase64.com - Game No. 7273
• CSDb - Release No. 45535 (Crypt)
• CSDb
• ready64 - Game No. 4975
• Spy's Demise at MobyGames

• Universal Videogame List
• Decoded note at "digitpress.com"

Magazine

• ZZap64 test report
• Electronic Fun with Computers & Games test report (p. 64)
• Antic test report (p. 82)

Videos

• Video at YouTube von Polaventris