13:00. Let's play Terranigma!

Music: Stars, The Gift, Land's awakening

That weird. Kark is transported to a strange room where the constellations pass by in the background and the earth descends upon him. The camera suddenly zooms out from the sea somewhere on earth, until the entire planet vanishes into the void. A continent appears in the center of the galaxy, we're treated to a glimpse of a barren wasteland, and a map informs us that Eurasia has been resurrected. This is the first indication the game gives you that you're actually anywhere near Earth. Up till this point, the game has been all tiny fantasy towns and evil towers.

Like the introduction, the screenshots don't really capture exactly how impressive this little sequence is. The SNES isn't really the first system that comes to mind when I think of demonstrating a continent rising from the deep, devoid of all life, but watching this scene never fails to impress.

Surely the good people of #talkingtime will be proud of this accomplishment!


Oh, the residents of the weavers back in Crysta get unfrozen too. I guess that was why we were doing this in the first place. Whatever.

The sequence ends and we're dumped back out in the world map. There's nothing stopping me from going straight to the next tower, but given that we just unfroze Kark's girlfriend, a detour back to Crysta seems appropriate.



Most of the town's residents are still frozen solid, prompting Kark to make this heartfelt promise to next week's dinner. Inside the weaver's house things are a little happier. The bosslady has no idea what just happened, but Elle's a little quicker on the uptake, and promises to weave me some awesome clothes for my troubles.



Oooh. What could this be?

Next time: Magic Rocks and Towers 2 and 3!

I've never gotten very far into this game (not even as far as the infamous Bloody Mary fight), but I have no shortage of love for it. It has the same melancholy, sentimental appeal as Illusion of Gaia. I look forward to following this.


The blue sphere doesn't actually seem to match up with the ground you walk on. I haven't seen the layout in a long time, but could it actually be reflecting the world above?

I played this on an emulator eons ago, when the mighty lizard-kings ruled a parched earth of stone and savagery. My rom had a bug that made progressing impossible, but I cannot remember where or why.

So, are you going to be resurrecting Mu?

Of course!

Kark thinks he's getting a bitchin' hoodie but then he receives terrible demonic soul clothes.

I've always kind of wondered that myself. If I'm not mistaken, Terranigma has you resurrecting land masses from a vast ocean. If that's the case, it would make sense for the world outside to be all blue. But even so, the curve isn't right; it should be convex, rather than concave (or maybe I've mixed those two up).

It's possible to actually see underworld landmarks (Like the towers) on the blue sphere. So maybe that's the other side of the concave world reflecting through the crystal blue sun or something.

I dunno. It sure looks cool though.

This game is made to be played and not to be thought about, if you prefer keeping your brain in not-inside-out condition.

Does Beat intend to gloss over the more incomprehensible parts of this game with "And then some crazy shit happened"?

Maybe!

Nicely done so far, Beat! If you quit this LP, so help me lord, I'll hunt you down and make you finish it; but I won't break your ankles first ala Misery, I'll just give encouraging words--your very own Elite Beat Agent, if you will!

Awesome game, so good, and this was about the only game for which I'd try a LP.

So, y'know, no pressure

I am imagining your avatar doing this. There's no way Beat can ignore a yapping kobold.

No way. Woof.

Kinda late now, but the best way to take care of these guys is to knock them against a wall and then use the rushing attack, as the game calls it, to hit them over and over keeping them pinned down. And of course standing to one side so they don't hit you with your spear.

There's also a set of clothes in your equipment. But they're not equipped automatically, so you have to go put them on. Just imagine poor Kark running around naked this whole time.

So instead of updating my LP with the expected levels of diligence, I've been doing super important stuff like graduating and getting a job.

Haha! Just kidding! I've been wasting my time in #talkingtime. Realizing that this notorious IRC channel was greatly hampering my productivity, I signed a blood pact with wheels. We would update our LPs in unison on Friday evening.

That went about as well as I could have hoped for. Good news is from this point forward I'll be updating Sunday nights without fail. This is a promise I will totally keep and not flake out on. Honest.


Music: Magishop

Okay, so I promised you all an explanation for the magic shop. Really it's pretty simple. Those magirock things I picked up in the tower are all over the place in this game. If I go to a magic store, I can pay the hoodie bros to turn my rocks into pieces of jewelry, in this case Fire Rings and Ice Rings. Being an unwise spender, Kark blows all his rocks and 15 gold on these frivolities.



Once I but these things they get sorted away in the jewelry box portion of Yomi's little box of wonders. When I'm in dungeons I can select them and use them, causing them to turn back into MagiRocks.

The net result of all that is a spell system in which you have to pick all the spells you'll want to use before you even leave town. I'll give it points for originality, but honestly it's probably the worst MP system ever dreamed up. Fortunately it doesn't really matter because, well...



That's right. The spells are fucking useless. There is all of one fight in the entire game where it will come in handy, and that's far, far away from where we're at right now. For the vast majority of the game those rings and rocks will be collecting dust in a box-inside-a-box, just as god intended.


Music: Crysta

Oh right. The blue guys are still blue. I guess I should go on an exciting adventure to save them or something.


Music: Underworld

TOWER TWO HERE WE GOOOOOOOO!


Music: Tower

The first floor has these giant, spike-lined pits with some sort of giant pool of water at the bottom, but we can't fall down it, so it's little more than a visual flourish.



Kark also kills some bugs and gets another stupid, useless magirock. The treasure chest you can barely see behind Kark in the second image there contains 30 gems, so basically it's worthless.



The soul in this room tells me that I should pay close attention to the color of the jewels on the statues foreheads. Basically all the giant totems in this room have a green dot on their foreheads, except this one, which defies tradition with a red dot. Kark, enraged at the statue's nonconformist ways shoves it aside, and finds the stairs to the next level.

If you get hit by the fireballs these guys spam, you're treated to cartoon Kark burned to a crisp and the text "Kark's Toasted!" How hilarious! Kark, however, doesn't see the humor and quickly sends the little enemy to its grave.



The soul the enemy releases tells us in no uncertain terms that golden switches are the fucking awesome. Unfortunately, all that's to be found on this level is this stupid, useless red switch. Needless to say Kark is pissed.



So we head back downstairs and to the other side of the room where we push the other statue with a red dot aside, and go upstairs.



Cadets are bastards. This is a fact. They have a spell where they can toss a little spinning blade at you, but the thing they do most is toss "looks" at you. Most of the time these looks immobilize you and you're stuck in place for a few seconds. Sometimes Kark will return the look and the cadet will be stuck in place.

Not this time though.



Hitting this other red switch opens the gate that you can just barely see in the corner of the screenshot. I head downstairs and up to floor 3.



The third floor Has more switches and more totems. Big fucking surprise. Pushing the first button on the left side of the room does absolutely nothing.



A cadet hiding behind the totems hit me with a look, but Kark managed to turn the tables on his floating fiend. How do you like me now, Cadet?!

Anyways right. Buttons push door opened, I hope I never have to see another totem again.



Oh fuck you, game.

MEANWHILE, IN #TALKINGTIME


Fortunately for all involved parties, this Puzzle is mercifully quick. Push the totems with the red dots, door opens, Kark leaves. Were it up to me, I would see him burn every one of horrible tiki gods to the ground, but sadly it's not my choice.



The final floor contains this curious red button. While the obvious choice would be to jump across the chasm and smack it in person, it's actually impossible to leap across. Kark solves this problem the only way he knows, by throwing pots.



The guardian is most pleased by our pot throwing, and is happy to allow us entry.

And you know what that means! Time for stuff to get crazy again!

Music: Stars, The Gift, Land's awakening

That was cool.

The screenshots don't convey it very well, but when we zoomed out from the sea this time Eurasia was already in place. The two bolts of lighting you see in the second row there are actually a part of many, but you get the general idea.

I think the neatest part of this whole sequence is it's depiction of a dead south America. The dead Eurasia in the first update had some of the Himalayan mountains devoid of all life, but they're not really all that lively normally anyways. South America, on the other hand, shows us the amazon river, minus the rainforest. Dead earth isn't exactly turning out to be a very fun place to be.

We only see two villagers resurrected this time, and while my memory's a little fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure they're the miller dudes from, the first update.

NEXT TIME: Tower 3! And maybe some other stuff. Maybe.

I choose to interpret this as meaning that Cadets are excessively awkward and shy.

I love it when people quote my embaressing mistakes.

You should never be afraid to make an ess of yourself.

Nodal's wisdom is irrefutable.

I loved this game so much. Glad to see it getting a decent LP.

And, just to add fuel to the fire, I really enjoyed Soul Blazer when I played it, and then I played this and was like "They made everything better! Better story, better action, even that crazy thing with the hair."

Then I went and played Illusion of Gaia, and threw up. I hate that game so much.

Not long ago, in an IRC channel near you...
Ordinarily I would be very distraught about Nodal's dark plans. But there's a critical error in his logic.

I'm a skeleton.

I'm already dead.

Update comes tomorrow evening!

Hooray! You know, I can't find any info on what server #talkingtime is on, for some reason. Care to share the details so the rest of us can join in the fun?

Esper.

Seems obvious in retrospect.

And by monday I mean finish writing, start formatting and realize oh shoot it's 1:30 and I have to get up early tomorrow.

That'll teach me to try and do two towers in a single update.

Two towers in nine days are still better than in fourteen.

Take your time, man. Rome wasn't built in a day.

Not with BEAT building it, it wasn't!