The Secret of the Red Blaze! Let's Play Gargoyle's Quest

I know I played this when I was really little, but I doubt I got very far (I even reached the first dungeon now on VC, so...). Malgor and the Bellzemos are looking really familiar, though! Now I'm all confused.

What?! I'm pretty sure I got this on my recent playthough of this game, but I didn't know what it did. I coulda been spared some grief.

Woof. The point of no return seems particularly harsh given how easy it is to miss picking up that item, but I suppose the game itself is so short that it's not too egregious.

Maybe you saw them in the manual? Or used a password from a friend or a magazine to go to a later dungeon?

Doing an economic analysis for this game is much harder than for Rolan’s Curse, because we can make certain assumptions about a human society that we can’t make about the Ghoul Realm. Do demons need to eat or drink? Do they sleep? How do they reproduce? What do they do for fun?

Economics is the study of scarce resources; and in turn, you only see certain actions and motivations when items are scarce (or are perceived to be scarce). The world of Star Trek is technically a post-scarcity economy, though that depends on the writer and the limitations of plots. (I could go on and on about the “replicator rations” economy that develops on Voyager and why it’s brilliant, and the Federation-Ferengi interactions and why they aren’t.) The best presentation of a post-scarcity economy I can think of is the novel Constellation Games, which I highly recommend.

The only economy we see in the Ghoul Realm is the trading of Vials of the Soulstream for Talismans of the Cyclone. The former are accepted as a currency, having some sort of scarcity value; the latter are desired as a scarce good. What does the Talisman do? It allows a hurt demon to revive themselves in the same place they fell, rather than being forced back to the area they last learned a Resurrection Spell in. (And we know that the ability to revive themselves isn’t unique to Firebrand from comments NPCs make in towns.)

You can’t buy or sell Essence of the Soulstream, which heals a demon who hasn’t yet been defeated. Apparently there’s no market for healing, only revival. Demons don’t value standing up to a lot of punishment, they value returning from defeat quickly. This is probably because even badass Firebrand only starts off with two life points; the average Ghoul dies in one hit. Being able to heal yourself isn’t useful if a single shot will kill you.

Where we really get into theorizing is figuring out what the Vials and Talismans actually are, and where they come from. (What’s the supply factor?) We never actually encounter a “soulstream” in the game, and in fact, all of the rivers we see are apparently made of deadly fire. Here’s my guess: The “soulstream” refers to the passage of human souls from Earth through the Ghoul Realm, and each Vial catches an individual soul. Because souls are limited, so too are Vials. (Though, in theory our continued population growth would then be causing massive inflation in the Ghoul Realm over the past few centuries.)

If you concentrate a number of souls together, you create the Essence of the Soulstream, which periodically generates enough energy to heal a wounded demon.

What about Talismans? Firebrand seems to use one up every time he revives, so they’re a finite commodity. The exchange rate changes across the land, so they’re probably not made by “crunching together” a bunch of Vials. They probably come from some other source entirely—perhaps there’s a cyclone storm that rages across the Realm periodically, and demon sorcerers can capture its essence in a limited number of Talismans each time.

Regardless, the different exchange rates make sense because of demand pressure: The areas with more expensive Talismans have harder random encounters. If demons die more often, they’ll want to carry and use more Talismans, so the price goes up.

The normal exchange rates for Talismans might actually be much lower—Two Vials each? One?—but because of the war against the Destroyers, the demand will have gone up significantly in recent times.

The fact that we’re only seeing a war-torn Ghoul Realm also makes it harder to hypothesize on the normal economic functioning. We don’t know how many towns or centers of production have already been destroyed; we don’t know if there are other non-combat goods that are demanded during peacetime. Perhaps Vials are normally prized because you can make the souls in them dance for your entertainment? Who knows?

Sentences like this are why I love that you're doing these analyses.

Gargoyle’s Quest Post #6 – Bymon and the Desert

Last time, King Darkoan powered us up and sent us to find some dudes and another magic candle.


Look at that jumping power! Look at that wing meter! Now we’re actually getting somewhere claiming that Firebrand is a badass.


Northeast of the Palace is the town of Bureido.


There’s apparently been some inflation while we were waking up the king. (I'll rant more about this later.)


Go find Bymon: Check.


Get his candle: Check.


I think there’s something to be said for early jrpg conventions like the silent protagonist, because it means we can assume either that Firebrand asked these people about Bymon and Majorita, or just that he glowered at them until they whined something useful to us in their overwhelming fear.


Here’s the post-palace password.


There’s a second town, Bymon Village, not far away.


Sheesh! There’s been serious inflation as I walked here from the last town!


Not according to the box art!


That ain’t good…for them. They obviously haven’t heard what I did to the last macguffin thieves.


Remember this for later, even if it isn’t exactly true.


I can get a second password, despite it being only a few steps since the last one.


This guy challenges me.


He’s a mini-gargoyle who moves diagonally. He takes a lot of hits, but isn’t too hard if you’re careful.

He gives us a new set of armor, which translates to an additional health point. Can’t argue with that!

(He also blocks the way to Barone Bymon, so you need to beat him to continue.)


You should just leave stuff lying around like this, Barone. Somebody might assume it wasn’t for me and I’d have to burn their faces off.




Byron gives us a rather odd yes/no block. If you say yes, which I interpreted as “Yes, I’ll go get it,” he says this.


If you say no, which is apparently, “No, those bastards won’t get away with this,” he’ll let you continue.


I find it amusing that Bymon offers to tell me where Majorita is, but a townsperson tells me that for free.


So we head out into the desert east of town.


Our goal is that hole. It’s hard to screenshot, but the desert tiles randomly slide you around, making it hard to get to the hole without hitting a bunch of random encounters with Gorillars and Twin Mawwwwwws.


This is the Desert of Destitution. The first part of it is a giant, spike-lined hole. (I feel like something similar was in Battletoads, and likely the level that made me throw down that game forever.) Now, you’ll need to memorize chunks of it to get through, but the expansive new wing meter means it’s not nearly as impossible as it looks.


Also, remember that your wing meter instantly recharges if you land or stick to a wall. And there are a number of safe spots, you just need to know where they are.


Don’t blow all of your wing power looking around, though, as there are horizontal stretches like this.


Once you’re through the pit, there’s an easier segment: A pit of sand filled with Bone Fish and Vials. It’s actually pretty easy.

This skull…flower…thing will sit there and spit fireballs at you.


Whereas this nasty thing—another variant of man-eating plant, one suspects—will relentlessly pursue you, and takes a lot of shots to kill.


The official artwork for the “man-eating plant” looks a lot more like this than the previous enemy of that name.


Work your way down to this set of destructible blocks, taking care to not force yourself to touch those spikes to get through.


There’s an easy-to-reach Heart here. That must mean a boss battle is coming up.


Yep! This is Zakkudruzer. He’ll hop from platform to platform, spitting fire-sparkles at you and trying to run you over. He’ll often pause before jumping, which is a good time to hit him if you’ve got room to dodge afterwards.


He also shoots spark-balls, being a tank and all.


As usual, after beating him the floor rises and the door opens.


Here’s Nintendo Power’s desert map. (I have to wonder if they actually finished the game and learned the bosses’ real names.)




We get an upgrade from retrieving the candle.



The Claw is another breath weapon, selectable from the pause menu. It fires slightly slower than the Buster, but it has another ability which we’ll see soon.


For now, let’s snag a new password.

Secret passage…?


Oh, over here!


There are TWO free talismans over here. Don’t miss them!


The passage let’s out south of town, once again leaving us with no way to backtrack.

I have to wonder how much of the limitation in backtracking was specifically to let the password system work properly. Honestly, I kinda wish I had the programming skills to crack open this game's password system (and other 8-character ones from, say, Rolan's Curse) and see how it works. I can't decide if I'd rather be impressed at how efficient it is or disgusted at the reverse.

Next time: Majorita getting all prophetic!

Gargoyle’s Quest Post #7 – The Secret of the Red Blaze


The CD/DKNS successfully retrieved, we’re off to meet Majorita.


Dude blocking my way. When has that ever gone well?


Have I talked about Sand Imps before? Here’s a good shot of one from a random encounter, if I haven’t.


And a description.


Once again, we’re headed to the hole. This one looks more ominous.


There’s a short dungeon here, mostly occupied by Dreadwings and Ghoul Knights.


It’s not necessary yet, but I can show off the Claw’s power: It makes a little foothold when it hits a spike, so you can (carefully!) climb up spiked walls. (Despite what we were told by townsfolk, it only works on spikes.)


Down at the bottom, there are a couple of long stretches with Ghost Flames on the only non-spiked ground, and a couple of Gloom Eye ambushes. Nothing particularly tricky or terrifying.


Nintendo Power still gives us a map for this area, though.


We end up in this small cave.


Totally-Not-Majorita tells us how this place works.

We snag his Vials before we begin.




When you USE the candle, the room goes dark and four different guys (or appear perhaps one teleporting Majorita) appear in sequence to exposit at you.








Apparently most gargoyles aren’t red, and that mutant red color indicates a descendent of the Red Blaze. Unless you were fooled by the box art or had a recent head injury, you’d probably have figured out the game’s twist by now. Actually, you’d probably have figured it out from the first mention of the Red Blaze, even if I hadn’t spoiled it at the beginning.




These guys are the closest thing to a boss for this area, and not very close at all. They only take two hits to kill, but you need to hit them from behind, because their fronts are shielded. It’s not that tricky, unless you’re careless. (They appear as random encounters in the final area, too.)


Nintendo Power calls them Skull Tanks.


Apparently the Eternal Candle will shore up our weaknesses, like perhaps Firebrand’s continuing tendency to pop like a balloon when poked twice.


Afterwards, this bridge is another annoying mini-dungeon. It’s actually not that tough, especially if you’ve gotten through everything that came before.


As usual, you need to avoid both the bottomless pits and the lava-water.

There are very few places to stand; walls tend to be the only places to find purchase.


You’ll need all of that extra wing meter, because there are vertical stretches like this one that require careful maneuvering.


There are also blind jumps where you can only spot the safe platform because a Ghost Flame is sitting on it.




And it ends with this laugh riot. Don’t fall!


Here’s the full map.


And then we’re in Rushifell’s Domain.

Next time: What’s a “Rushifell”?

It's similar to a Lukifell but a little different.

Gargoyle’s Quest Post #8 – Rushifell’s Domain


Welcome to Rushifell’s Domain.

Apparently, in the original Japanese, Rushifell is known as “Lucifer”. I can see both how the original wouldn’t get past Nintendo Standards & Practices at the time, and also how that particular Engrish translation could have arisen.


This is the last town (called Rushifell Village in other sources) in the game, so getting a password here is particularly important.


Apparently getting the Eternal Candle from Rushifell will be more difficult that we might have hoped, as he’s decided he wants to be the Red Blaze. Well, won’t that be fun.


Some people are still on our sided, though.


And damn, those Talismans are expensive!


Skirting around the town’s outer wall lets you reach one more guy to talk to.



This guy is the game’s only recurring NPC, and he gives a rather vital clue.

There are five of these passages. The one furthest to the right (shown here) is the correct one.


First, let’s go through one of the wrong ones.


These flying killer plant-things will chase you through the entire level if you don’t deal with them quickly. They don’t respawn that often, though.


There’s a ton of Vials lying around (which is a little sad—if you’ve picked the right path, there’s nowhere left to spend them!)


This is a maze of spiked walls, similar to the Desert, but with a couple of changes. The major one is that you have the Claw, so there are walls you need to climb using it.


Here’s another Vial, above a dead-end pit full of spikes.

You need to climb this set of walls by making a zigzag of Claw platforms to use to recharge your wing power and jump higher. It’s actually easier than it looks, as long as there aren’t any plants around.


There’s even a mercy heart heart the end. And another Vial.


But that exit is just north of where we came in, nowhere near our destination. D’oh!


This entrance is the correct one. The map is identical, but this time, we enter from the left.




It’s actually easier going in this direction, because you’re dropping past most of the spikes, rather than trying to climb up them.


The reason Firebrand is missing a head here is because three plants, stacked on top of each other, are overtaxing the emulator I’m using.


You do still need to climb a wall using the Claw, but it’s manageable. Just jump straight up, hover, fire, and glide over to the new platform.


Schmuck bait heart near the end.


Nintendo Power’s map.

If you’ve picked the correct path, it’ll lead you to Rushifell’s Palace.


You’re greeted by the man (demon) himself.


But we need to catch him to challenge him.


Rushifell spares no expense in making your life hellish. The Horny Toads are there to greet you.


Then a stretch of spike-lined floors leading to a blind fall…


Spike-lined drops with these drill-things that move back and forth across them…


Spike-lined climbs…


(A mercy heart)


Falling ceilings…

A new kind of flying spike thing…


Long rows of monsters lining the floor…


A gorillar guarding a schmuck-bait heart (which is annoyingly flashing in this shot)…


Giant metal balls…


More falling ceilings…


A series of breakable blocks that you need to hover over spikes to break some of…


…and the battle against the man (demon) himself.


Rushifell has two main attacks. He’ll throw the yellow stars at you, which are fairly easy to dodge, and he’ll summon that sun-thing which will chase you around the room. (There can only be one of those, so if you avoid it he won’t re-summon it.) You need to hang from the blocks parallel to Rushifell’s head, avoid getting hit, and hit his head when his arms are down. Oh, and don’t touch him—that’s instant death. (The screen flashes when you score a successful hit, though.)


This map is actually a smaller size than the rest because the dungeon is so large. (I apologize for the last bit of text being illegible, though—it’s mostly just an admission that there’s more game after this that they haven’t provided maps for.)


After we beat him, Rushifell admits who the real Red Blaze is, and readily hands over the Eternal Candle.




This strange telepathic conversation really doesn’t make sense to me, though: Is it Firebrand’s ancestors? The entire Realm? The original Red Blaze using the royal we?


We now have all the best stats and every item. Darkfire is our final breath weapon.

Next time: Final bosses suck.

I could never get past Rushifell as a kid, and even though I beat this game a couple months ago I can't remember what happens next. So exciting!

I'm pretty sure this happens on real game boys, too.

Yes, but those generally happen because the part of the screen with his head has been separated from the part of the screen with his body due to blunt force applied to the system. :P

Gargoyle’s Quest Post #9 – Breaking Breager

And here we are at the point the vast majority of players of this game never reach.

So, first off, despite us having run out of Nintendo Power’s coverage, I do have one more of their maps for you, now that there aren’t any spoilers left in it:


The world map. Which doesn’t include any of this final post’s areas. Until I finally got past Rushifell, I never knew this segment (which includes two more dungeons) existed.

You know what we don’t have access to after all of that nonsense getting past Rushifell? A password. If your Game Boy was running low on batteries following dying in Rushifell’s Palace a lot, well, sucks to be you!

I actually feel this is one of the worst bits of game design I’ve ever seen. This is both a really hard game and a portable game—passwords are critical. Remember when we got the Falcon Wings, or right after the royal palace, when there were two towns that game passwords in quick succession, without a dungeon in between them? If there were technical limitations, it would have been no trouble to move one of those towns (and password locations) to here. Then the Vials that you picked up getting to Rushifell wouldn’t be useless, and you’d have the option of stopping and consolidating your achievement after beating two dungeons and a hard boss. Because there are still two dungeons to go plus an even harder final boss. All that making the final password being in Rushifell’s Town does is make this area effectively “locked content”—it assures that virtually no players would actually see it, and plenty of them would be good enough players to reach it but would be stopped by technical limitations. Terrible, terrible design.


Anyway, I mentioned dungeons: First, we’ve got this bridge, which is a great place to check out your new powers. Such as infinite flight!


Darkfire is…situational. You can only fire one shot at a time, but it’s much stronger than any of your other attacks.


The bridge is pretty much all lava-covered platforms and the occasional malgor. It’s interesting fighting them with infinite flight, because you can just back away until they stop, and there’s no fear of running out of wing power and falling.


Infinite flight is actually a bit of a game-breaker. I suspect that if you could cheat it up early on, many of the game’s challenges wouldn’t be so bad.


This is essentially a breather dungeon, if you got through Rushifell’s Palace. It’s here to let you get a sense of your new powers.


Then we have Breager’s Palace, which throws you right into the thick of things.




The final dungeon is a giant maze of spikes and lava that wraps around infinitely. You need to work your way up.

Much of the dungeon is spent switching off Claw and Buster. Dreadwings appear in a couple of spots, as do the Giant Cyclops Bats we’ve been seeing since the very beginning.


This heart doesn’t really qualify as schmuck bait when you have infinite flight—just aim carefully, glide in, and glide out.


You’re also very, very carefully spotting your jumps, though infinite flight means you can usually get back to the platform you started at and try again, if you can tell you’re going to hit a spike.


Some of the low ceilings with spikes are really annoying, because remember, you just got a jump increase from the Eternal Candle, and Firebrand can go higher than ever before. It’s easy to shoot right up into those spikes.


“Spikes above and lava below” is a very common scene.


There are also a number of these breakable block traps, where you need to glide in, destroy the top blocks, press A twice to very slightly move down, and destroy the other two blocks, then glide back to a safe platform and take a new jump, to make sure you can get through without hitting the fire. (Because remember, you can’t stick to breakable blocks.)


You can use Claw to stick to these spikes, even though they look different than the others.


You can actually cling to the row of blocks between the lava on top and spikes on the bottom here, but you need to be very precise to do it.


This last malgor will respawn if you retreat. Darkfire is actually useful here, because you can kill him in two hits.


This door exits the action scene.




The game actually provides a bit of kindness in its final hours: This path before Breager means you won’t have to re-do the Palace, and then it just hands you FOUR free talismans. Which you’re likely to desperately need, after having navigated the tunnel, Rushifell’s Palace, the battle with Rushifell, the bridge, and then Breager’s Palace. Keep in mind, we haven’t had a chance to spend Vials or get a password in all that time.

Hmm…a king, you say? That sounds appealing. Maybe I’ll say yes. I can always stab you later.



DO NOT SAY YES. Breager will absorb all of your upgrades, leaving you with your starting abilities, and then put you into the final boss battle, where a single hit will pop you like a balloon. This is the last and ultimate bit of schmuck bait. If you say yes, you’ll have to re-do all of the previous dungeons and the Rushifell battle in order to beat the game.




Breager is basically a nastier version of Rushifell. He’s got two extra arms and takes up a larger area, but he still has the fireball-shots and the homing-sun.


He’ll throw out more than one homing-sun, but you can now use Darkfire to shoot it down.


And you need to hover to hit his head when he drops his arm. Hope you’re really good at dodging, because you have very little room for error, here.




Breager is not a good loser.


Then you’re teleported back to the king.

These guys cheer you on.


Including our recurring NPC.


And apparently Firebrand is given dominion over the Earth. Sucks for us, eh?

(Actually, if my theory about the monetary system of the Ghoul Realm is correct, dominion over the Earth is basically the Fed Chairmanship of the Realm--it gives Firebrand control of the money supply. This would be like appointing Ben Benanke's successor based on which soldier was most distinguished in Afghanistan. It's not really an optimal plan.)


The king was restored, Firebrand became a legend, and all was well until the sequel.










The credits tell us the actual names of most of the bosses. It’s actually interesting how few real bosses there are, given the length of the game. (And four eyes from the Big Tower Monster apparently doesn’t even count.)

Honestly, I think the pacing of this game is problematic. In addition to the password problem I ranted about at the beginning of this post; there’s the fact that you’ve got a mix of real dungeons and mini-dungeons with wildly divergent difficulty levels, rpg elements but with no leveling or build control (just essentially grinding for 1-ups), and a world map that pretends to be open but is effectively a straight line (with no backtracking or sidequests).

I suspect that a bunch of my love for this game is entirely nostalgia value, I can’t deny that. I never got into the sequels and I never really got into the original Ghost ‘n Goblins series.


But this guy? In my mind, he’s still the biggest badass in the Ghoul Realm, and always will be.


Thanks for reading, everybody!

You know, until just this moment I never thought of the fact that Demon Crest is a pun off Demon "Quest".

Nice job, Beowulf! You made what is probably a balls-hard Gameboy game look pretty easy.

GQ was one of those games I put down and then came back and finished at a later date. I remember being stuck on that damned plant boss for the longest time.