It's Dangerous To Go AT ALL: Let's Play Zelda Classic

McClain/Ganon: You're in the wall! Why are you in the wall!?!

Worm: I'm playing Snake!

I just kept saying that this level is bullshit with every new stupid room. My son kept saying yeah Daddy, I completely agree!

In this episode, Ganon is still annoyed by the last dungeon, spends too much time talking about another game, and is missing a key.


what is the best parenting?

The best part is that my wife was in the room as we were watching and kept looking at us like we had two heads while I was teaching him about the importance of balanced play mechanics.

You've gotten a lot better at fighting darknuts. Just in time, too! I actually finished Randomizer Modern a couple days ago, with 162/183 treasures. The FINAL final dungeon was technically kind of hard, but I was basically a tiny god so it didn't matter much. There were a few dungeons I had to turn back from and come back later, but I didn't get permanently blocked. You'd think the designer would make the randomization script such that you can't get stuck; i.e. no flute behind Digdogger, no candles underneath burned bushes etc. There are four levels to the candle in that quest anyway, so you're likely to find one before too long. And yes, there are flippers. It's also nice how the quest bucks the usual ZC trend and has HP reduced enemies. A lot of the easier dungeons have things like wimpier Gibdos and Pols Voices. It's balanced out by the generally poor design of the level 4 and 5 dungeons. They're always huge, homogenous blocks, filled with constricted room layouts and lots of staircase passages. Because the Zelda 1 dungeon maps were too useful, I guess. There was one especially egregious one, where the way forward was through a staircase you had just exited (it didn't lead back to the same room you had entered it from). The game mechanics aren't technically limited by Euclidean geometry, but it's still always awful when a game breaks it like that. It also made Pols Voice and Vire super annoying, because you can't hit them in the air any more.

I think a stream of Randomizer Modern would be pretty entertaining. If only to see how much the game blesses and/or craps on you.

So had you played enough randomizer to tell me how the dungeons worked? I got that 1-X and 2-X were from the first two normal quests, but I didn't think the 4-X ones were the right ones from this quest.

The dungeons are the same every time, and you're right that they're not drawn from the semi-official 3rd and 4th quests. I don't think there even is a semi-official 5th quest. The location of the dungeon you did in your last video is still a dungeon in Randomizer, but it's 5-7, not 4-7. I don't remember what 4-7 in Randomizer was, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't that. The dungeon locations and layouts aren't randomized, either. If 3-X, 4-X, and 5-X were drawn from a previous quest, I have no idea which one. I'm guessing they were all made from scratch for Randomizer, unless someone knows better?

I am 95% sure you missed something in that odd little Star Tropics style room. It's just puzzley enough to reach that top left corner that I would be shocked if pushing a block didn't make something appear in it.

I finally got myself set up on twitch. If you enjoy this nonscense, add me at McClainStreams. I'll eventually start doing these recording live (probably, if it doesn't fuck my my hypercam) and after I'm done with this LP I think I want to do some stuff with a group.


In this episode, Ganon finds a woman living in a hole in a wall, gets desynced by a random blackout, and figures out the designers are running out of ideas.

*Not really sure what happened in the second half of this video. My screen just went black, but on the recording it just started skipping frames after that.

**Random Aquamantis should be a band name.

If anyone knows, you can just tell me. I felt like I got everything out of that level, but maybe?

You're fairly familiar with what items to expect in Level 9 in the old quests.

Don't let that throw you off in this quest.

So... Darknuts.

When they're fairly close, they tend to shortest path/fewest turns their way over to you, so the fair way to handle them is to just kinda keep moving like a knight in chess, stab, run.

The cheap way is to face to one side, let them walk right into you, and at the last possible moment, stab the air. Your sword's hitbox kinda overlaps you for some crazy reason, and hitstunned monsters don't hurt you. So... timed correctly, yeah, you stab the air and run through them and totally don't feel like a huge bug exploiting cheater.

With this many crammed in though, yeah, worth learning the trick.

Especially since hey, you got the dodongo warning. Quit wasting bombs.

There's a trick for Dodongos, too. The "dislikes smoke" hint is very literal. If you can hit them in the face with a bomb blast without them eating it first, they'll be stunned. You can then kill them instantly with your sword, and they'll always drop bombs when killed this way. It's ordinarily hard to time, since a Dodongo's movements are random, but there's another trick to it. You can plant a bomb in one's mouth, then immediately lay another. While they're chewing on bomb #1, bomb #2 will blow up in their face and you can stab them for a two bomb profit. Virtually every quest ever made in Zelda Classic just expects you to already know this, hence six Dodongo to a room bullshit. You can also feed them a single super bomb for instant death, and they'll refund the one you spent. Not relevant in this quest, but it makes killing them faster in others.

And to anyone trying out Randomizer, levels 3-4 (Grave) and 5-4 (Pendant) are the ones I've found so far with the nonsense stairway shenanigans. Make sure to try the stairway passages from both ends in those levels. There's also a secret overworld to find if you're really obsessive about searching.

Interest piqued.

If that were all that the randomizer threw at you, I would enjoy the game quite a bit.

But level 4-8. Raft. Screw you, four-headed Gleeok with six fire statues! (Spoiled for those who haven't kindly sat and spun on the randomizer's middle finger.)

That's not even the worst thing in that level. There's a modified Gleeok there that does way more damage. Also a stairway to an item in the boss room, because fuck you. I think the intent is for some situations to be blatantly impossible until you get better equipment. I also made a poorly formatted checklist for all the dungeons, because I am insane and got all 183 of the treasures in the game.

http://pastebin.com/Sr9uztEh

Spoils all the dungeon names and how many treasures they have (end of dungeon items don't count), in addition to which world they're accessed from and stairway shenanigans. Didn't screenshot the locations because I was lazy, but virtually every screen on the overworld has something on it so you'll eventually find them all if you're thorough. Secret overworld hint: the only place in the entire game super bombs are needed.

So, it might be useful to find items, if I actually knew what half of these things did. I honestly have no idea. Only 'new' item I've identified is the hookshot, and I've apparently found one that does as much damage as the white sword (which I've yet to find).

There is a Zelda Classic wiki that has most if not all of the items from that quest listed. (caution: loads incredibly slowly!)

Also, some of those puzzles sound like absolute bullshit that violates the basic mechanics of Zelda. Some of the absolute worst "puzzles" in SMBX levels that I've seen use similar "reenter the door you just came out of" bullshit.

You know what quest I used to enjoy in a bad way was the old Demo Quest.

It was romhacky, sure, but it was made by PhantomMenace and meant to show off what the engine could do way back then.

Gonna test some stuff on the new stream, if anyone's interested.

In this episode, Ganon gets all the clocks, bombs all the Dodongos, and finds no items.

The secret trick to defeating darknuts is not to kiss them.

And... either you need to push EVERY block, and dead on, if you're to the side it doesn't work in this, or... blow the whistle in every room, or check more walls, or... there really just isn't anything in there?

If you are talking about the weird wrong in Level 7 with the tiles over the water and the corner of land, I tried everything there. Unless you know there's something there, then I'm thinking there's nothing there.

No, I'm talking about 8 here and its weird lack of items to be had. Maybe they're trying to get clever with the whistle? You seemed pretty thorough in looking through, and it's a weird unwritten rule to suddenly break.

There are definitely items to be found in Level 8. Remember the Level 9 clue.

Oh, well I'm sure I missed some stuff since I didn't even get the map. And I think I spotted a gapped room that probably has something.

Hm. Well, there are two items I can think of that might be in there, provided they didn't pull some weird item switcheroo. One isn't very valuable, but the other definitely is with how these dungeons are built.

Sorry about that, I totally missed your post! It was called Zelda Classic Gauntlet, and I think the download is right here. Like his other stuff, it's really technically neat even if it's not the most balanced thing in the world from a gameplay standpoint.

It's gotta be the magic boomerang and the skeleton key, right?

That's what I thought when I wrote that post, but looking it up, apparently they totally DID pull a switcheroo. The boomerang is in Level 8, but, rather than the magic key, it's the silver arrow that's hidden in there. The key and the ring are both in Level 9.

Well Red was pretty strongly hinting that the traditional level 9 items might not be in level 9, so who knows? Or maybe that Level 9 will have 3 items? I'm not expecting this quest to play by any rules.

Also, holy shit, I'm almost ready to go to the last dungeon!

Must ... resist ... urge ... to ...... click .....

I guess the silver arrows are less of a useful upgrade than the magic boomerang is, from a practical standpoint. No fucking way the red ring is anywhere but Death Mountain. I'm just guessing though. Didn't read the spoiler text since I'm posting from my phone.