Sunday, November 17, 2013

Game 21: Little Ninja Brothers (NES) - Taking No Prisoners, Sparing No Lives

This is a pretty good summary of the game
My plan may come to halt once I near the end, but the game is a bit more manageable now that I've skipped nearly every boss. Every time I find one I leave town and head off in another direction. It's done wonders for my survivability.
You don't sound brainwashed at all
I arrived in the town of Yokan to find everyone praising Blu Boltar as some sort of savior. Of course, once I heard he was in town I knew my next step: leave. Actually, I did try my hand at reaching him once, but failed miserably. It's obvious something fishy was going on around there, and confirmed this when I found some resistance to the Yoma Clan underground.
That's more than I've seen them do so far
In their midst were two celestial beings (a dog and a monkey), but they were just uselessly bickering. Why? They forgot why. "So what's it going to take to make them to stop," I wonder. Oh, Jack just said, "stop," and they did. With their help I learned how to use the 'M' bonus I was collecting. The bonus appears randomly from blocks, and once I have six I can now use a special Mighty Ball attack.
And, all it does is turn the enemy blue
I also received a new sword after participating in a running goal, which I again passed by losing. I'm not sure what the point of those screens are since they're easily completed at even a moderate pace.
I tried using the sword during my assault on Blu Boltar, but the hit box is really finicky
I filled back up on supplies since I collected quite a bit of gold during that attempt. Previously I stated I can only carry 8 of each type of item, but I spoke too soon. There's an item that will fully heal Jack, but I guess the developers thought it was overpowered and limited it to one. One! Well, I guess I'll just move along to the next town.
No relation to Roger
In the middle of nowhere I met the rabbit celestial being. He acted more as a sign post and fortune teller. At some point I'm going to need to bypass a Fire Castle to reach Mt. Cone-Rum, and face the great demon King Gulp. Before I left, Rogee pointed me towards Shorin, the town of Kung-Fu.
Is that a question? Also, gesundheit
Shorin offered up some new armor (Lee's Robe (Bruce?)) and a new protective talisman (sigma). There's also a Golden Claw somewhere in town. It remains quite hidden. The town holds the key to the Blue Bell, but it's only offered to the most worthy fighter in all of Shorin. The fight to the top is tough. I'm still not sure how to beat the first monk, Hoe-mer.
That's a nice ball and chain, but it doesn't seem to go with your hit box at all
I'll struggle with him later. Nearby was another Yoma Clan chateau, which held the only candle in all the world. The match I had bought earlier turned out completely useless in the cave to the west of town. Getting to the candle was difficult, once again the tower had one particular set of enemies that proved the game wasn't going to let me off easily.
Here, have some invisible enemies that shoot projectiles
With candle in hand I made my way through the cave. I was surprised to find myself face-to-face with a samurai. Not that a samurai in this world is surprising (especially when there are other enemies that are much more out of place). It was the fact the battle was turn-based. Here I thought that was saved for bosses, and that's what I mistook my first encounter for without realizing the game had changed the rules.
Tiger Tank is much more surprising
I realized after I beat the samurai, and squandered half my healing bun reserves, that these were random encounters. There's absolutely no reason to even consider battling enemies in this fashion. I ran from them all; even QP Fox, who seems to be some kind of special enemy as he's the only one named when I fight him in action battles.
Normally it just says 'enemies'
Are you the same QP Fox, or does QP stand for something?
A desert awaited me on the other side of the dark cave. Here the game decided it would bestow both types of luck on me. With an obscene encounter rate I worried I might not make it very far, but I was able to run from the majority without issue. The remainder I battled or used a skateboard to escape. I passed by the Fire Castle, and made my way to the town of Chatzy.
I double dog dare you!
It's strange to reach a town this deep into the game, and find it nearly devoid of better equipment. There are a couple of new throwing items, but they're much too expensive and very situational. A fire shield looked promising; however, when I tried to purchase it I was told the mirror shield I had would sell for four times the amount, and thought better of giving up such a prize.
I'm starting to wonder how long this game actually is
To the north of town is another cave, but my candle wasn't bright enough to light the way. Instead, a shop in town sells a torch for 1000 sen, and I only had 100. I figured it was a good time to head back to the evil queen while I try to save up for the torch.
This must be the deeper darker cave
This time around the evil queen didn't stand a chance. The combination of six levels, Lee's Robe, and Talisman Sigma allowed me to dodge and deflect nearly every attack. It was quite the 180.
This is the last half of the deflection antimation...
nice try Google... anyone know an easy way to create GIFs? If so, I'll promise more animations
As promised, more animations.
This is with Easy Gif Animator, which seems to mostly work, but in the 2 minutes I played around with it I can't find a way to adjust framerate (this is at about half speed). I still have 18 uses left on the free trial though, so unless another option presents itself I'll keep messing with it.

With the evil queen banished, the lily spirits took back their castle. The melody that played afterwards was very pleasant.
One might almost say it's almost magical... like, magic... of Scheherazade... go buy our other game
I now had the antidote, but when I arrived in town I realized there was no way to actually use it. I was told to put it into the spring, but how? Maybe I just wasn't at the right place, maybe there was a hidden area to the town, maybe if I just trip into the lake...
Uhh, 'use' button? Where are you?
Maybe if I just stumble upon the correct square
With the antidote in the spring everyone in town returned to normal, or at least their own version of normal.
Don't worry about Jimmy, he's always been that way
The mayor was very eager to thank me, offering anything I desired in reward for my service. I requested the prism bell, and now we're up to three. I'm fairly sure one resides with Blu Boltar, and I know for certain the blue bell is at Shorin. This means I'm only about half way through the game. Maybe I can get through it this week.
The password is now taking up all character spaces
Elapsed Time: 2h20m (Total Time: 6h00m)

6 comments:

  1. "So I want you to defeat this man."

    Heh, I just can't bring myself to play most games that have this as a plot anymore. I need a little more complexity to justify my hours of grinding and/or figuring out an RPG battle system.

    Blogs like yours give us the best of both worlds - the encapsulated experience of playing old games in the fraction of the time it would take. I hope that one day you can coalesce your project into a sort of RPG history book (or ebook).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Plot is not a reason to play some of these older games. It seemed like the developers just didn't see the point in putting in the effort to develop the most basic of stories. I don't think I'm anywhere near good enough to write a whole book on the subject. I'll leave that to Chet and others. Maybe in another decade of writing I'll consider it. Thanks for the vote of confidence in the mean time, and I'm glad to offer some service of time saving for the otherwise curious.

      Delete
  2. Hey man, nice blog! Interesting enough, I was planning to do a blog just like this of my own starting in January. I love RPGs, but can never seen to finish them... I start new ones all the time, but after 2-5 hours, something comes up and I move on. Thought maybe blogging about the RPGs I play. :D But yeah, love the blog!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm not sure how a blog will motivate you to finish games, but whatever works. I can tell you for me, this blog slows down my progress quite a bit. If I were playing these games on my own, only reviewing them in a single post once finished, I think I'd double the amount of completed games. One thing a blog would help with is knowing where you left off. You can review your post and know where you are and where to go depending on the details you put into it. Good luck with finishing your backlog.

      Delete
  3. Is there a master list of your forthcoming adventures somewhere? I just learned about the Buck Rogers RPG on the Genesis from the Addict's blog. I can't play along with the Addict, but maybe I'll finish it in time to better appreciate your posts on it here. :) I'm also working on Traysia intermittantly.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. In the side panel I put a list of lists where I track the games I'm going to play. Only the Google list is in order though: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ai5kQ-T8y0x4dGd2amZLVE4tSTBLdWN2S2VEbGtfbnc#gid=0

      Buck Rogers is still a year or two away at my current rate. We'll see what happens over the next year. Traysia actually comes shortly after Buck Rogers. I'm looking forward to getting through this game. I'm not going to get through end of the game year before January like I planned. Seems something always comes up to distract me, but we'll get there.

      Delete