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The MIST2000 Treasure Hunt: Puzzle #6, explained!

This puzzle doesn’t require mastery of any of the classic artforms of the underground computer artscene, though implementing it demanded a fluency with the same hexediting that would have been called for were I trying to crack or train a piece of fresh warez. But I get ahead of myself. Puzzle #5, recently explored, pointed us to bit.ly/degreesofbeanwithbacon … and there we found, yea, the very archive of Commander Keen 4: Secret of the Oracle that we could have expected. (Not quite the very archive, mind you – most of you remember the game in EGA, but for bonus nostalgia, I tweaked the CGA-only version.) But this installation is not “stock”: while most of the files are the untampered originals, some of what you will find here bears fingerprints more recent than John Romero and Tom Hall’s.

Much to my dismay, I was unable to re-ICE the tweaked game state back to the ID standard “needs to be De-ICEd first” distribution format, adding one more to my list of “obscure forgotten file compression formats revived for the MIST2000 treasure hunt” candidates, but those are fine points tangential to their function for passing along codes to explorers.

So where is the new business? You can begin where any search on a BBS would begin, perusing the archive’s FILE_ID.DIZ:

You’re doing well, now take a break!
Relax so you won’t make mistakes.
Try a round of Commander Keen 4!
Don’t worry about achieving the highest score.

OK, that tells us… everything we need to know, but let’s fire up the program just to make sure.

Yup, it’s Commander Keen 4. Are explorers expected to achieve a position on the high score table? Well, no: that would require 10 000 points, which would be time diverted from my precious treasure hunt (on a probably more fun endeavour; you might simply fail to return!) So play a bit (or not; sitting through a couple levels’ demonstrations will also get you there – so yes, this is another puzzle that can be solved by patiently sitting through on autopilot after being set into motion), but when you’re done, do take a look at the conspicuously-mentioned high scores table. Hey, it at the top of the list there that our next code resides! Also, some elite greets.

This method of embedding a secret message was, incidentally, first imagined way back in the conception of the BBS treasure hunt that was the ~1991 seed for how this puzzle series would ultimately unfold. The technique for embedding arbitrary text (well, within tight string limits) was explored (I was always fascinated by the literary implications of the protagonists of Altered Beast brawling with the credits roll upon completion of the Genesis cart – hm, my childhood memories appear to have overstated the case) in preliminary experiments for my incomplete, unreleased machinima WIP for MIST1014 – you can see a poem hiding here:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibRMhd3y_OE&w=480&h=360]

But I digress. We now have everything we require in order to progress to puzzle #7, located at bit.ly/pillarsofwisdom without a shred of pretentiousness.