Chapter 61: Oh Noooo!

After a terrible game of race and chase through the dark of the Graves mansion with bats, spiders, and the most evil ghost you’ve ever seen (and you’ve seen a lot of ghosts in the last 24 hours), you stumble out the door carrying the urn like a football into the night. “Noo nee noo noo, noo nee noo noo,” sings Melvin. “That place was like the twilight zone. I’m so glad we got out of there!”

But the door crashes open behind you, and the furious ghost of Mister Graves is upon you. He screams with rage, and becomes enormous. “GIVE ME THE URN!” he bellows. “NO ONE WILL DENY ME IMMORTALITY!” His enormous vibrating form looms up, as big as the four-story mansion, and then dives down at you in a burst of ethereal energy. By some strange instinct, you pull the lid off of the urn, and a massive vortex emanates from it, twisting the giant ghost into a great whirlpool before you. He swirls around and around shouting, “NOOOO! YOU CAN’T DO THIS TO ME! MY IMMORTALITY!” As he spins faster, the vortex starts to suck him into the urn. “IN THE NAME OF GRAVES,” he shouts, “I CURSE YOU, PLAYER!” His voice is distorted as the vortex gets smaller and faster, sucking him in. But you can just make out his final words as the vortex disappears into the mouth of the vessel. “MAY THE POWER OF THE URN… TURN YOU… INTO A FROG!” And with that, suddenly he is gone, and all is silent.

You and Melvin look at each other, still on guard. But everything is indeed calm, as you sit in the mud, where you had fallen, cradling the now silent urn in one hand, and holding the lid in the other.

“I guess he’s gone,” says Melvin.

“I guess… so,” you say, breathing hard, your exhalations forming great clouds of vapor in the cold, wet night. But you are nervous. “What about the curse?” you ask. “I don’t want to be a frog!”

Melvin looks you over. “Well, you don’t look like a frog to me. You look like a player who just got another treasure.” He smiles, not that he has a mouth.

You smile too. “Hey yeah!” You look down at the urn. “We sure worked hard for this!” and you place the lid back on top of the urn. But as you do, there is a horrible flash of spectral electricity that shocks your hands, and you feel the urn somehow sucked into your body, and feel your skin, muscles, bones, and organs all distorting and changing horribly. When the flash of light is over, you realize the urn is gone, as you look at your empty hands. Except… they aren’t human hands. They are webby and green.

“Holy Konami!” shouts Melvin. “You’re a frog!”

You look down, and see that he’s right. You are an enormous, human-sized frog… your shirt is gone, but somehow you are still wearing a pair of orange pants. You try to stand up, but realize you are much more comfortable crouching like frogs do. You try to speak, but all that comes out is a great “RIBBIT!” You look around, but the urn is nowhere to be seen.

“I can’t believe it,” says Melvin. “That urn got sucked into you, and turned you into a frog!”

“Ribbit!” you say.

“Okay, stay calm…” says Melvin. “We’ll just…” the rain stopped a while ago, and the sun has just started to come up, casting a red and orange haze over the city. “We’ll just head down into the city, and… find you a doctor. I’m sure a doctor will have a way to… turn you back… and, uh, get the urn, and… yeah. Come on, follow me!”

Incredibly self-conscious about hopping around the city, you follow Melvin to a doctor’s office, who refers you to a specialist, who refers you to a veterinarian. The vet just shakes her head. “Have you considered going to a mad doctor? When dealing with cases involving magic, sometimes it’s the only alternative.” She gives a recommendation, and you hop to his office, which is in one of the four huge skyscrapers in the center of the city. The front door of the building has an imposing sign:

WARNING: BIOHAZARD: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY

However, there is a glass side door with a small sign reading “Julius Jekyll, MD, DDS.” Behind it is a dusty staircase leading down into a dark basement. You awkwardly hop down the stairs, and find all kinds of bizarre equipment in an enormous laboratory that seems to be dark and abandoned.

“Hello?” calls Melvin into the eerie space.

“Ribbit?” you say, forgetting that you still can’t say human words.

“Why hello!” chirps a voice right behind you, so shrill and loud, that you both jump, and now that you are a human-sized frog, you really jump, high enough that you hit your head on the ceiling. Rubbing your throbbing head with your froggy hand, you turn to see a terrifying sight: a bald man in a lab coat. That doesn’t sound scary, but this man has bright red skin, huge wide eyes, and a disturbingly large mouth. “I’m the doctor, can I help you?” he says, grinning and staring.

“Uh,” says Melvin. “We were told you were a, uh, mad doctor. Is that right? It says M.D. on the door.”

He stares with his bulbous, terrifying eyes. “What else could M.D. stand for?”

Melvin shifts uncomfortably in the air. “We… just weren’t sure – all four of these skyscrapers look alike. We didn’t know which was yours.”

“THEY ARE ALL MINE!” he shouts. “ALL FULL OF MY SECRET SURPRISE!”

“Your… secret surprise? What... is it?” asks Melvin, uncertainly.

“Oh, you know. Nuclear reactors, virus factories. Typical Mad Doctor stuff,” he says nonchalantly.

You and Melvin look at each other, both pretty sure you should leave.

“My friend here has been turned into a frog,” says Melvin reluctantly, “or… most of the way into a frog, anyway.”

The Doctor smiles unnervingly. “This was a human person, you say?” asks the doctor, taking out three different stethoscopes to listen to your… heart? “How did this happen?” he asks, placing stethoscopes on various parts of your frog body, and listening intently.

“It was a curse from a ghost that got sucked into a magic urn, and then, uh, the urn got sucked into the frog. Well, I mean, got sucked into the Player, who turned into a frog… or, mostly into a frog.”

The doctor nods thoughtfully, grinning the whole time. You notice that he never seems to blink. He continues to stare at you. “Does this have anything to do with the recent ghost infestation?”

Melvin is surprised. “Yeah, actually, you see…”

The doctor waves him away. “No explanation is necessary,” he says with finality. “You see, the ghost was sucked into the urn, the urn was sucked into your friend. Hundreds of ghosts were sucked into a hole in the sky. There is only one answer: you must find that hole!”

Melvin scratches his head, not that he has one. “Yeah, uh, see, the problem with that is, I think we closed it up.”

“Nonsense!” shouts the doctor. “You know the poem perfectly well: Only they who opens closes / Even if it cuts off noses. You didn’t open the sky hole, did you?”

“Uh, no…” says Melvin.

“Then you might have shrunken it, but you did not close it! So! We must find it! It won’t be easy…” at this, his eyes turn into disturbingly narrow slits, and he looks around shiftily. “Because sky holes are always on the move!” His eyes go wide again, and his grin continues to be disturbing. “Are you ready for my prescription?”

You and Melvin look at each other with trepidation. “Uh, sure?” says Melvin.

He takes out a pad, and starts writing. “You, little flying square, should fly around, and look above the clouds.” He tears off a sheet, and hands it to Melvin, who has no way to grasp it, and so it flutters to the cluttered floor of the lab. “Now, you, giant frog,” he says, while furiously scribbling on his pad, “Good thing you have those sticky flippers! You should climb the outside of this building, and keep an eye out for sky holes while you do.”

You look at Melvin and say “Ribbit.”

Melvin looks at the Doctor, “Why climb the outside? Why not just take the elevator or the stairs?”

“THE CONTENTS OF THE SKYSCRAPERS ARE SECRET!” he shouts. “You must climb the outside. But don’t worry! I will help by constantly opening and closing the windows, and by dropping flowerpots, buckets, and other helpful items on you while you climb. If you get to the top, and don’t see the sky hole, I’ll pick you up in my blue helicopter, and take you to another building.” By now, he has scribbled out several pages from his prescription pad, which have all fluttered to the floor. He then opens his great mouth disturbingly wide, tosses in the pad and pencil, and chews them up. “Delicious!” he shouts, turning to run up the stairs. “Come on! Come on! We don’t have a moment to lose!”

You and Melvin nervously follow him up the stairs. “This… doesn’t make a lot of sense,” says Melvin. “But… I guess a lot of things in the Atariverse don’t?” You are up on the sidewalk now, looking up at the ridiculously tall building. “Sure you want to do this?” asks Melvin.

“Ribbit,” is all you can think to say.

Place the Crazy Climber cartridge into your Atari 2600. Set difficulty switches to b, and use game select “Building 1, single player.” Play until you have climbed all four buildings. Post a link to a video in the comments section of yourself completing the challenge.