Taking a completely different approach is Kemco-Seika's Deja Vu, which is based on a compu ter game by Icom Simulations. Kemco-Seika also released the popular Shadow-gate for NES, and Deja Vu is played almost exactly the same way. An on-screen window shows a picture of what your character sees while you select your actions from a menu of commands. Deja Vu is 'role-playing' in the strictest sense, because you play a single characr ter in what is essentially an interactive story.

Dec 31, 1990  For Deja Vu on the NES, GameFAQs has 9 FAQs (game guides and walkthroughs). For Deja Vu on the NES, GameFAQs has 9 FAQs (game guides and walkthroughs).

The setting is Chicago in the 1930s, when gangsters were running wild. At the beginning of the game, your character wakes up - in a restroom stall, of all places - and you can't even remember who you are. There's a needle mark on your arm, and you feel as if you've been drugged. It seems obvious that your lack of memory is the result of foul play, not cheap gin, but who's responsible? If you were that much trouble, why didn't they just kill you? And just who are you in the first place?

Deja Vu has a definite storyline. Little by little, you figure out not only who you are, but also who left you in this sorry state and why. It's a classic RPG - as you move through the game, you find the right item that leads you to the next piece of the puzzle.

Actually, this game is so structured that you can't progress unless you find all the clues. When you get stuck, it's usually because you're looking for something that's small and easily missed, or because you haven't figured out the right way to get the item using the game's commands.

The story in the NES version is very similar to that of the PC version, although it has been adapted slightly to fit Kemco-Seika's player interface. The game has colorful graphics and a good sense of humor, and it's not very difficult. Because the route you have to take from clue to clue is so rigidly defined - A leads to B leads to C - all you have to do is find the right item. Deja Vu is thoroughly enjoyable, but RPG veterans will probably find it little more than a snack.

With its intricate pixel art universe where every object was mouse-controllable, the inaugural MacVenture game was like nothing seen before.

• 1Revisions
• 3Unused Graphics
• 4Unused Text
• 10Debugging

Revisions

There are three known versions of this game, published in 1985, 1986, and 1992. Only the last one has a standard version number, which is 2.5.

The releases can be distinguished by the MacVenture engine's hidden self-identification command: highlight the Self button and ask yourself What version?. The game will state whether it is a debugging, demo, or release version, and which one:

The 1986 version erroneously calls itself 'scenario number 2' (meaning the second MacVenture game, Uninvited).

Title Screen

ICOM's address and phone number were updated.

Interface

In the initial release, the text window has a blank title bar while you're playing an unsaved game. As of 1986, it shows the name Untitled.

1992 saw further UI changes:

• Windows were originally maximized by double-clicking their title bars. The grow box in the lower right corner would be inverted (white on black) until the title bar was double-clicked again. This functionality was replaced with standard Mac OS zoom boxes in 1992.

• Command-key shortcuts were added for Open, Save, and Quit.

• The Save dialog was redesigned:

Revised Audio

The final revision replaced the synthesized sound effects with digitized samples. (Due to the complicated MacVenture sound format, the following are line-in recordings from a Macintosh Plus.)

The funeral march was also redone, bringing it closer to the original Chopin.

Revised Text

Although the phone line in Miss Vickers' office is disconnected, her phone will respond to precisely one thing: any use of the letter Q, which was skipped on most older telephones. The message indicating this varied slightly between revisions.

The fake telephone used to access the hidden door in Siegel's office has no reaction to the letter Q.

Rudeness Detection

In the 1980s versions, using these twelve words will get you chided for your 'profanity' or 'crude and vulgar language':

The 1992 release added another 44 terms for a total of 56. (The most esoteric, golden bozos, comes from the same Steve Martin SNL monologue that popularized its synonym hooters.)

Note that the misspelling of the last two words means that their proper spellings go unrecognized.

File Names

Two of the files in the 1985 version are called Déjà Objects and Déjà Execution. The revisions have Déjà Object and Déjà Random instead.

Dual-Scale Objects

The Luger has two sprites: a large one for when it's sitting at the front of the gun shop counter, and a regular-sized one that avoids visually overpowering the rest of your inventory. So do the other guns: you can trade them in for credit, and they'll appear on the counter at the same scale as the Luger.

But that's not all. Three of the items found in your coat at the beginning of the game—the sunglasses, monogrammed handkerchief, and pack of cigarettes—also have larger forms, which can only be seen by taking them out at the gun shop.

We can reasonably speculate that plans were abandoned for many objects to appear larger in the game window than in your inventory, that the feature was retained only to make the guns look right on the counter, and that it was therefore enabled only in that room.

Unused Graphics

Partially Offscreen

The Mercedes is flagged as undraggable, so there's no way to see that its sprite extends well outside the game window.

The open hood is draggable, but is only momentarily visible during a death cutscene so you never have a chance to interact with it.

Sugar's Smile

The close-up of Sugar Shack after she shoots you is made up of two elements: an image of her frowning, and a pasted-over smile. Neither the smiling nor frowning versions are ever seen as apparently intended, because the smile is superimposed one pixel lower than it would take to line up with the frown. The result is an ambiguous 'Mona Lisa scowl'.

Compare the animated mockup at left to the final:

Unused Text

Joe's Bar

The poster of Ace triggers a flashback cutscene whether he's still amnesic or not, which overrides this terse description:

Mercedes

The back door and visible tire of Siegel's car have custom descriptions that are ignored in favor of generic ones ('It looks like a back door'):

That explains why it's permanently stuck, and is the sort of trick you'd expect from a mobster whose bar doubles as a low-budget Bond villain lair.

With no way in the final game to remove, damage, or even examine the tire, its implementation as a separate object would seem to be altogether pointless.

Finally, the open hood can't be examined because popping it sets off the car bomb. Here's what you would have read:

Street Mugger

The street mugger and his assorted injuries all carry descriptions, but the injuries aren't selectable and trying to examine the mugger results in immediate death by gunshot.

Alley Mugger

...which explains why trying to look closer only gets you knocked out.

Sugar Shack

Another character who'll attack before you can examine her.

Alligator

Not only do you get eaten instead of receiving the first description, but you're given no chance to examine the dead alligator before being whisked back to the screen you came from.

Bum

There's an unused version of the bum's tip with slightly different wording.

Pete's All Nite Gun Palace

You get generic 'no effect' messages if you try to barter at the gun shop.

Taxi Cabs

This should probably be the result of trying to punch a cab driver, but all you get is a generic failure message (e.g. 'The cab driver seems unaffected.')

Ace Harding's Office

Several strings are associated with the hit man, but if you enter the office he shoots you dead before you can try anything. (The 'too far away' message is probably in response to trying to punch him.)

There's also an unused description for Ace's signage when the hit man's silhouette no longer darkens the window:

Sternwood Estate

The butler will unfailingly answer the door knocker...until you sock him, after which you can no longer use the knocker because the game will skip directly from the mansion lawn to the vestibule.

A longer, jokier version of the ransom note.

Windows

These don't seem to apply to any window in the game.

Mirrors

All four mirrors draw on a shared set of properties, including descriptions for before and after you recover your memory. That means that you never see the unique text for the mirror in Siegel's apartment:

Or the one in the Sternwoods' guest room:

Elevators

Yet another class of items whose unique descriptions are suppressed: open elevator doorways.

Non-Responses

Talking to someone who doesn't have an answer for you should prompt one of these reactions:

Instead, people use the same set of failure-to-communicate responses as inanimate objects, even when these make no sense in context. ('The clerk can't hear you', 'You can talk to the clerk all you want, but if he answers ...')

Unused Endings

Being arrested before your memory is restored leaves you a hospitalized vegetable, and being arrested afterward triggers a summary of your trial and how the evidence stacked up for or against you. Either way, this generic ending doesn't show up.

You can elicit various reactions by ripping off the newsboy, the cabbies, and the gun seller, but none of them impact the ending.

This hint points at needing to shade the incriminating notepad with a pencil, but it doesn't appear even if you've taken every necessary step to win except that one.

An early, and completely different, draft of the victory ending. (Instead of a 'Citizen of the Week' award, the finished game grants a diploma from the Ace Harding School of Investigation.)

Credits

The animated 'magic lamp' about box misspells Terry Schulenburg's name as 'Schulenberg'. The initial release contains an unused basic about box that spells his name correctly:

This resource was deleted in the revisions, but the typo in the actual credits wasn't corrected.

Easter Egg

A very obscure easter egg exists near the beginning of the game.

Mac Game Free

First, go out into the hallway by the women's washroom and take the fly on the doorframe into your inventory.

What, you never noticed the fly? Here it is, highlighted in red:

To click it, you need to position the black tip of the mouse pointer directly over that pixel.

Next, take the fly with you into the women's toilet stall. Open the toilet and place the fly into the toilet window.

Now open the Mac's Control Panel and set the system date to 1/23/45 at 12:34:00 PM. Close the Control Panel.

Finally, click Self, Operate, and the toilet (not the flush handle).

You'll be transported to an altar where the Holy Grail awaits you. (Except in the 1986 edition, where it's mysteriously nowhere in sight.)

You can take and open the Grail, but nothing fits inside it. Neither the altar nor the Grail have any associated strings or code, nor is there any way to return from this location as it has no exits.

Unused Pronoun

STR# 132 defines the four pronouns that can be assigned to an entity in the game world. Guess which one never is:

• he
• she
• it
• zipnick

This is one of a few places the developers poke fun at their boss, ICOM founder Tod Zipnick, along with the Todd Zipman urine sample and 'Zip is a dip' washroom graffiti.

Developer Message

The creators aimed this line at anyone who managed to decrypt the game's text:

They didn't foresee that one player's feat of reverse engineering would permit their games a commercial revival 30 years later, or they might have greeted him with an ASCII high five.

Unused Code

Speaking of Sean Kasun's efforts, the last two opcodes documented in his reverse-engineered MacVenture spec are apparently never invoked.

He remarks, 'I swear those last 2 are a joke. I've never seen them actually used.'

Debugging

Object Inspector

Text exists for a feature that reports the properties of an object in the game world using natural language.

Error Handling

On encountering an error, the game will attempt to report what it was doing at the time.

These are the possibilities:

• doing something important
• unpacking data map
• opening
• getting boot volume
• looking for data disk
• quitting
• starting a new game
• opening another game
• allocating memory
• checking handles
• reading data file
• saving
• unpacking graphics
• making text
• looking for a font
• cleaning up
• printing

Another five were removed in the 1992 revision.

Mac Game Tpb

• filtering: stack overflow in
• filtering: stack underflow in
• filtering: nth (primitive) reached too deep in
• filtering: swap (primitive) reached too deep in
• filtering: the text kludge lives in

If the error is fatal, you have a chance to save your game on the way out:

Still another dialog warns of a RAM shortage...

...and the 1986 release introduced a variant for insufficient RAM at launch.

Deja Vu Mac Game Store

Build Date

The following is visible in a hex editor at the beginning of the 1986 application. (Rez was a resource compiler included in the Macintosh Programmer's Workshop from Apple.)

The actual creation and modification dates in that revision span June and July.

Deja Vu Mac Game Download