TIS-100 Review

TIS-100 is a quite an unorthodox game, that emulates its plot and mechanics trespassing the fourth wall perfectly. This is why I’ve decided to write a review according to TIS-100’s format. This ‘review’ talks about my experience with the game in a way that, if you read between lines you can see glimpses of a detailed analysis. The game has an apparent dull visual aesthetics and mechanics, but it’s much deeper than it seems, with a ‘hidden secret’ to unravel. I think that, in a way or another, I’ve got all points covered.

Covered in a plastic bag, and stored in a cardboard box, I received a machine from Aunt Doris. As I unwrap the package, I find her letter attached, bundled with a book. Through the dust, it reads ‘Tessellated Intelligence System. Reference Manual’. The machine is large and has a very old-fashioned flavour, with several shades of light blue, no square edges and a lid opening up to reveal a speckless CRT-like screen and a worn out keyboard.

As I boot it up, the acronym TIS-100 appears all over the screen. The machine shyly rumbles and beeps. A black screen with white letters presents itself unintelligible. The manual! I reach out for it, somewhere among the bed’s sheets, but I lay hands on the letter. I never had had a close relationship with Uncle Randy, at least not as much as with Aunt Doris, but his recent passing did affect everybody in the family, directly or indirectly. In my case, I need to take care of Aunt Doris. Judging from her letter, I can tell she’s having a rough time. The letter also mentions that Uncle Randy always used to spend quite a bit of time with this machine — no wonder the screen is so polished. I remember this machine now! We once called over for a visit and he didn’t take his eyes off the screen. I suggested that he Googled whatever he was struggling with, and he flipped me off.

There’s the manual, half-hiding under my bed. I indolently stretch out my leg and kick it my way; I pick it up and start glancing through it. “Basic Execution Node”, “destination operand”, “interconnection ports”. I shift my eyes, from the manual to the screen, back and forth. I don’t understand a word, and I can’t believe Randy ever did. Further into the book, I find a few lines whose format is somewhat familiar: it’s coding. Not that I’m proficient at it, by any means, but my A grade in programming, back in high-school, still allows me to identify code, although not quite the language.

There’s only one ‘segment’ available on the screen, the rest seem to be locked out. I click on it, and a few lines of barely comprehensible code lazily blink before me. The aim seems simple enough: transfer the input value, across the nodes, through the diagram, to the output section. “MOV” is the command that will do the trick. Tic, tac, toe; done. That wasn't too hard now, was it Uncle? I can’t hold a giggle, but it’s soon smothered by a red window with red letters popping to the front of the screen. A large paragraph, littered with misspellings, talks about a ‘swap meet’, and it ends with “RANDY HAS A MYSTERY ON HIS HANDS!” Ugh, idiot, I hate when he talks about himself in third person. Well, I hated it; but even dead he still annoys me. Anyway! This note is clearly his! He hid it behind a coding puzzle!

Uncle Randy, you fixed cars for a living; there’s no way you devised coding puzzles I’m not able to solve! There, another segment just unlocked. Let’s see what you can do. “ACC” seems to store the value in the node you’re in, for later use. Doing so, we “ADD” the value to itself, doubling it. And now, easy peasy, we redirect the value to the output section. Same drill, a red window pops up. “…BERNIE AT IBM SAYS IT LOOKS LIKE USSR...”. I know that guy! He’s also friends with Dad, and he’s as repulsive as Uncle Randy was, may he and his stink rest in peace. Where do you want to get, Uncle?

“John!”, I shout to my mate, who’s just coming around to pick up some GameCube controllers. “Come here! Check this out! My Uncle Randy sent this to me. It’s an encrypted device. I’m unencrypting it!”, I looked at him, with a big smile on my face.
“Right…”, he says, “Stop playing with that, you nerd”. He wanders off, back to shoot zombies with the lads. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Randy was hiding something here, and I’m about to find out. You’re not smarter than me, Uncle. I don’t come to family birthdays already drunk.

As I recode nodes, some more unlock, and for every fix there’s a note by Uncle Randy. He found a ‘static memory’ — whatever that is —, but he was not able to access it. How did he even know what that is? This last note says “…GOVERNMENT PROJECT MAYBE, SOMETHING THE CIA COOKED UP TO COMB THROUGH SOVIET RADIO SIGNALS…”. This guy was tripping. I wonder what Aunt Doris saw in him.

Next node; “JEZ” sets a condition if the value stored equals zero, and “JMP” allows me to skip to different parts of the program, as long as I label the sections. Look at me, all computer-y with my Arts degree. It was getting tricky. Still, bring it on, Uncle. The next note implies that he’s been working on this machine for quite a long time, even before he met Aunt Doris. And he knew too much about computing. Was Uncle Randy the person I think he was? I can’t even drive, and he fixed cars.

“You don’t have an aunt called Doris or an uncle called Randy!!”, yells my girlfriend, “That is just a videogame! Are you even listening to me?!”. I am listening, but too busy to reply. I had tried to explain it to her: the commands, the coding, the technological slang… She just wasn’t interested. I guess coding is not for everybody. My brother, John and she had refused to help me, out of apathy for the machine. Dissecting coding wasn’t simple, and the manual wasn’t helping them either. Funnily enough, the manual seems to become understandable once you master each chapter in practice. Thanks for nothing, manual.

I have hit a wall. It’s been three days since I got stuck in this node, and I haven’t found the solution yet. I asked for help once, over the internet. I had it, but the program had changed by the time I logged back in, so the solution wasn’t valid anymore. There’s something here, I swear. I don’t know if Randy’s managed to reach the memory, but there’s something here neither of us could see. And there’s something about Randy too.

I’ve started thoroughly going over the notes I’ve collected so far from Randy. It doesn’t make sense. This machine was driving him up the walls, clearly. He wanted to… I mean, he needed to find that static memory. He lost contact with reality. He lost his job because of his obsession with TIS — and he was lucky he didn’t lose Aunt Doris. This machine? From a different universe? Intercommunication! What does that even mean? That can’t be true. Randy was definitely worse than I thought.

I’ve gone through the manual a hundred times, and I still can’t get a solution. I’m sick of the beeps and the rumbles of the machine. I close my eyes and the only thing I see is white letters. I only think of possible algorithms. I was at the machine when they called me today from the restaurant. They fired me. I don’t care, I hated that job anyway. I just have to find a new one, once I solve this. I need to find out who Randy was, and if he was the way he was because of this machine. This machine hides something, and I will find out what it is, no matter the cost.