It's Locked

Over the past several months, I've had several conversations where I've mentioned Nancy Drew computer games, and the people I'm talking to are like, "What?"

Apparently, there are a lot of people who don't know about these wonderful PC games. My parents didn't have a gaming system when I was growing up. So while my peers were playing Nintendo games where a plumber and his brother drive race cars with a dinosaur and a princess, I was solving mysteries and fighting crime with Nancy Drew, girl detective. And when I say, "me," I mean, "me and my little sisters who were watching me play."

So, lest you be unfamiliar with the ways of Nancy Drew, here are a few things you should know about these amazing games:
1. Nancy's always in danger.
Which you already know if you know anything about Nancy Drew. Girl's a danger magnet. Just look at these Nancy Drew game titles:

#2: Stay Tuned for Danger
#9: Danger on Deception Island
#14: Danger by Design

I'm just waiting for the game titled Danger. Or more descriptive, Dangerous Danger.

2. There's always unexpected entertainment.
Nancy says weird stuff. Like, really weird stuff. And she talks to herself a lot. And to inanimate objects. And every time she finds a locked door, there's this jiggling-lock noise. And then Nancy says, in this dreary monotone voice, "It's locked."

She does that every. Single. Time. She finds a locked door. Which is a lot of times. And as far as I can tell, they use the exact same sound clip in all 30+ games, so she says it with the exact same inflection every time.

Also, in one game, whenever you sent Nancy into the bathroom to wash her hands, she would quote another game. Or sing a song about a guy named Mystico.

3. You will be challenged.
When you're Nancy "Danger" Drew, you have to do all sorts of challenging stuff. Some of the challenges are things that the game provides resources to help you with, like organizing ancient Mayan artifacts or translating French words using a tourist dictionary. But some challenges come with zero instructions, like that time in Stay Tuned for Danger where you have to defuse a bomb. You have to figure out what tools to use to defuse the bomb, and how to defuse the bomb without blowing it up, and you have to do those things before the bomb explodes in your (well, Nancy's) face.

Also, sometimes the clues you need are extremely well-hidden. Once, we couldn't find a clue to help Nancy open an electric panel, so I decided to write out all the possible combinations that could be entered in the lock. We then tried each one of them until we found the one that opened the panel. The process was an exquisite mixture of agony and accomplishment.

4. You will feel smart.
The structure of the game allows you to try ridiculous things. Like putting poisoned jellyfish on other people's sandwiches. Or untying a chandelier and watching it break into a bazillion pieces. Sometimes, Little Sister and I will try something unbelievably ridiculous, only to discover that it actually is a good move. Once we clicked on a pair of chattering teeth like a hundred times. Imagine our surprise when we heard a clucking sound and found an Easter egg in our inventory! And yes, in Nancy Drew, Easter eggs are literally Easter eggs.

Also, at the end of every game, you confront and defeat the villain. Little Sister and I are quite fond of predicting how Nancy will beat the villain. We've gotten very good at it. Last time we predicted that a marshmallow-eating alligator, which was correct, but did not predict that said alligator would swallow the very valuable crystal skull, which happened. Well, you can't win 'em all.

5. But you will become even smarter.
Because Nancy Drew games are set in the real world, they contain all sorts of interesting information that actually isn't as useless as you might think. In the Nancy Drew games, I've learned information about world history, regions, and cultures that has helped me in school classes and in my travels. Which further emphasizes the truth that learning can be fun. And/or you can force people to learn stuff as long as you put it in computer games.

6. You will get creeped out.
The first several Nancy Drew games share most of the same soundtrack. The theme song, which plays in the background of several scenes in those games, goes something like this: "Doo-doo-doo-doo doo-doo-doo-doo. Doo-doo-doo-doo doo-doo-doo-doo. DOO doo, Doo doo, DOO doo doo doo-oo-oo."

And now that you perfectly understand my lyrical rendition of said theme song, you can agree that it's a bit creepy. It always made me and my sisters feel a little...uneasy. But we knew that Nancy was really in danger when the music would get really fast and wild with a lot of percussion and crescendo!

The summer that Baby Brother was born, Bessie stayed with us for two weeks while her parents were in South America. She watched us play Secret of the Haunted Mansion.

"There's a ghost that sometimes appears in that mirror," Little Sister and I told Bessie, "and it's really scary."

Older Sister was skeptical. "These games aren't that scary."

Then the ghost appeared in the mirror. Everyone, including Older Sister, screamed.

Well, there you have it. I hope I've convinced you of the wonderfulness of Nancy Drew computer games. Because they truly are wonderful. In fact, they are so wonderful that I feel about ready to do some sleuthing in real life.

Earlier this week, Little Sister and I had this conversation:

If we ever end up doing it, the first thing I'm going to do is test the lock and then announce drearily, "It's locked."