Lagoon for SNES - the blind leading the blind

Originally Posted by Sprite

Oh man, this game.

When I was a kid, my mother had a rule that we weren't allowed to play games with magic in them, for religious reasons (she's since backed off of this stance). My brother and I would usually just hide whatever games had magic in them from her, or argue that it wasn't magic, it was technology or something.

Not Lagoon, though. I bought Lagoon from the local Radio Shack when they decided to stop renting games. I got home and played it for a couple hours and hated it so much that I immediately told my Mom the game was positively filled with magic and demons and other such trumpery and foolishness. She made me take it back to Radio Shack, and I gave the owner a sob story about how my Mom wouldn't let me play the game I bought and I know you said no refunds but could I please exchange it for another game please?

The owner was awesome and said no problem, take whatever game you want. So I picked up Metal Warriors instead.

Best. Exchange. Ever.

Hobbit Valley is full of pig monsters who throw picks and furry one-eyed slugs. The slugs are literally no threat and the pig monsters die with three windarangs. I level a bit while exploring, but find only 2 other exits to this place and nothing else of interest.



Assuming the pattern of north exit is the town holds true, I go north here.



Pooper!



All the people in this town are sick or know someone who has died or is sick. I like this progression; the closer I get to the source of the corruption the sicker people are getting.



Yeah, I get it. Only a Winner of Photons can possibly cure everyone. I'm on the case!







Oh man, what rare item or spell do I need to quest for to save these poor Popers? I'll start my investigation at the church, naturally.



As usual, the priest is the only person who can actually give me useful information.



What can I do, Father? Guide me!



...seriously? When I was a kid we used to pick mint out of a creek and chew it. Maybe mint is really rare in the localizer's home town or something.



Has anyone tried Wrigley's?



Six graves! That's easily half the population of any given town in this game. They didn't even have time to bury them outside the main square of the town. Horrific!



Siegfried castle is west of Hobbit Valley which is south of Poper.



I can only imagine what horrors of gameplay await me inside this place...



R.O.U.S.s in armor!

Four-armed snake monsters with scimitars!



...That was easy.



I'll explore this place more later, but on the way back to town I find some new armor and now my cape is brown. I like this armor best so far, actually.



That's what the dialogue box told me, but for all I know it's star thistle.



Maybe instead of a graveyard you should grow some of this nearby.



G-g-g-ghosts?! That's quite a passive-aggressive way to tell me to go down there man.

The peanut butter, which you put on bread and then give to me, is in the cupboard. Just in case you were curious where the peanut butter was.



Hidden passages in churches are rad to the max, btw.



Speak, oh furry-footed ghost.



Isn't that... er, you?



Welcome.



Yep. Got it.



*nodding*



*yawn* Yeah, I'm with you so far.



Grey Jedi are a cop out like midichlorians. Don't go there assholes.



WHAT THE BLEEP DO YOU CALL THE FIRST HALF OF THIS GORRAM GAME YOU FRAGGING EXPLETIVE GHOST



Maybe you don't know this about me, but I beat up a giant crab, a giant demon, a giant mythical creature, 3532 monsters and I found Thor's pendant. I mean, come on, the best thing you've probably done was manage to not go to the afterlife. Really more of a failure than a success, dig?



I'm totally aware of the linear nature of this adventure.



OHBOYOHBOYOHBOYGIMMIEGIMMIEGIMME



SWEET



Oh man that looks rad.



Yeah that also looks rad.









This is where a 'please' would be in order. Maybe everyone in Atland is socially inbred.

Don't doubt dis; DUMA's definitely a dead demon.



Yeah, yeah. Right after I torture some wild pigmen with my new spells and shop for better stuff.



Maybe you and your friends could make a little money selling mint to them. Just a thought. I realize this isn't something a hero would say, but it's hard for me to not think in terms of monetizing solutions to problems. Charity rarely works as well as incentivized industrialization. I think of it as an invisible hand governing a market.

What do you mean 'cancerous ideology?'



Time stops, giant tornado whirls around me. This is visually impressive but it's not as strong as I'd like it to be.



Time stops, fireball goes into the air...



Little sparks drift gently down and everything onscreen takes 1/2 their health in damage. Also not as damaging as I'd have liked it to be, but maybe it will be efficient if there are a lot of enemies onscreen.

Well that's nice. Back to Sigfried's Castle!



I bet this doubles my damage while it's equipped. I further bet I'll never use it.



Sweet!



It seems I missed a shield somewhere. Maybe if I hadn't I'd have been able to beat that last boss without any grinding. Oh well, don't need it now.



The three-ball enemies there die with one hit of my sword, which is nice. I can't open this door however. But there is another door in the castle I bet I can open with this new key.



Yep. And it's the boss room.



Tee-hee-hee, I'm NASIR.



I liked the animation of this guy phasing up through the floor. I'm a little tempted to figure out how to rapid-fire screencaps so I can assemble a .gif of it, but nah. Too laz



This jerk's hands move up and down then clap together onto me while the helmet opens to reveal a face that spits 3 fireballs, one going down, one going either left or right and the third going diagonally between the other 2. It's quickly evident I need to level a bit before trying to tackle this guy. Also, I haven't fully explored this floor of the castle yet, so I leave.



This I might actually use.



This kitchen knife is more powerful than my previous dagger. I wish NASIR would bother to learn to use a spear or something.

DUMA goes down like a CHUMPA.



heh heh chumpa



Cool.



I think I know where that goes.



Here!



Yep. These stairs are also the first stairs I've seen. They appear to be painted on the floor because walking up them...



...doesn't cause me to move diagonally. Lazy programmers meet ambitious artists.



This area's sorta short and is filled with these cyclopses who can't aim their eye lasers at me. They seem to just randomly fire them periodically.



These guys are REAL strong but go down in three successful hits. The random nature of the combat system necessitates lots of healing between fights with them.



Thor! What's up bud?



Are you gonna take that Thor? Aren't we... destined to unite?

Aren't you my Darkness, I your Light?

As the sun sees no shadow, does my heart yearn for what it cannot attain?



We've shared such memories, you and I, Thor. Haven't we had the best of times? Remember when you lost your pendant and I went and got it back for you?



Noooooooo... my heart! It is breaking!!



Shut your stupid mouth BATTLER! I hate you!



Who the hell said that?!



I said "who the hell said-" ...wait, can you HEAR MY LP MYSTERIOUS RED TEXT VOICE?!

This is getting pretty crazy!



At this point an image of a castle being raised up into the clouds on a pillar of water is shown, but I forgot to screencap it.











Thor! I love you or something! Come back!



I've gotta rescue the missing half of my soul or whatever!



Nice view!

What's a humanoid shorter than a gnome? A brownie I guess. Pixies maybe.



This area's small. Pun intended.



I pronounce it "LYL-ah-tee."



Ugh. I hate these cute little bastards already.



'Kay. I sense a fetch quest coming on.



Bingo.



Nymphs. Right. And after that, brownies?



Maybe you could book a flight with Travelocity and visit them for once.



Gnomeo and Juliet was a terrible movie, btw.



Nympho powers?



That's a tall order!



As long as you're handing stuff out, do you know where I can get a fur mantle?



I haven't been paying enough attention to the useless NPCs in the various villages, so here's some of that.



Aren't you glad I shared those screen shots? Today everyone suffers.



I'm assuming it's you, so hand it over.



Oh. Oh kay.



It's actually a flame thrower I'm assuming. What you do is you threaten to burn a motherfucker if they don't tell you what you want to hear.



I pick yes.



I said I believed you. Damn, this fire really works!



Finally I can say I'm in a video game. Fitting it's this pile of crap.



What the heck was the point of ANY of this? This game was made by the laziest people ever.



I guess I was supposed to get a hint about who the liar was from this guy? Which makes no sense since 1) the liar was the closest gnome to the guy who gave me the flame, 2) all the other reasons. I'm baffled as to what the script writers were going for with any of this. I guess it's the most interacting with NPCs I've done so far.

I hate your guts gnome.



Don't remind me of my beloved Thor at a time like this!



When two people really love each other very much...



...That actually made me smile. Thanks for that.



Gnome Plain.



Gnome Plain is a very tiny area. What you're seeing in this screencap is about 25% of the whole area, no exaggeration.



I'd be worried about sliding mechanics but I'm fairly sure the programmers of this game were VERY lazy, so I'm not.



Sand people!



These semitransparent creatures are about the strangest things I've seen in a video game in a long time. They have a cylindrical form which shoots red balls and a morphing, jellylike form that pursues me ineffectively. Pretty neat actually.



I remember not buying one of these in the Dwarf village.
Oh hey, I just remembered my new crystal, and that it is water themed.



Pretty straightforward.



I can see that coming in handy.



That looks interesting. Let's try all these out.



Yep, that's what I was expecting.



So's that.

The waterfall-looking one is merely a white flash that damages all enemies onscreen.



I don't know what this is or does, but I'm glad I have it.



Boss room! *state save*



Ok, so in this room there are these 6 turrets shooting ice crystals in cardinal directions and a giant icy ball rolling up and down the room between them.



After a bit of experimenting, I discover that by bashing my body into the turrets while slashing with my letter opener I can destroy them. Naturally I get hurt a minimum of one time on each one as a result, meaning I have to kill the boss with diminished health.



I proceed to do this to all 6 and then the icy ball in the middle...



...changes into this guy, who stops occasionally to shoot 8 ice crystals in a ring. I can hop over them like with all other projectiles.



Killing this boss is a simple matter of destroying the turrets and then letting the ball run into you while you slash the sword rapidly.



You might say now he's a hot THIMALE.



I have lots of balls now.



Oh baby.

This concludes this update of Let's Never Play Lagoon, Not-Blind or Otherwise. Thanks all four of you for reading, and Sprite, that story was awesome and rings true for me as well. It was like reading about something I might have done in my own childhood.

It's full of those cool round pools you see in caves.



Sup sugar baby, where the nymphs at?



ZERAH is the dude who talks in red, right?



You know me so well.



Mmm. Thanks. Honestly the last few of these have been a little disappointing.



That's what I came for baby! Oh yeah!



Phantom Hill huh? I'm expecting ghosts. I'm not expecting parrots.



Is this the most boring screen cap ever or what?



The parrots are kinda hard insofar as they follow pattern 3 of enemy movement AI, namely they try to do circles around NASIR like the silver foxes.



That reminds me to try out my new spells.



Cool.



Alright.



Reminds me of Golden Axe. Pretty darn neat actually.



This is labeled as an 'earthquake' but it looks more like exploding fireflies.



Water dragon!



This area is full of birds and ladders and that's it except for this mysterious hole. I jump down after a state save.



I do keegles.



I'd have to check a dictionary, but is it possible you mean further? No, I'm pretty sure I'm wrong about that, actually. Farther is accurate.



This girl teleported around the room releasing fireballs in random directions. The closer to death she got, the faster she teleported. She was actually pretty hard for that reason, but I have a rewind button, so.



No reward sadly.



Like a chumpa.



Back outside there is a new stair that appears.

Hey I recognize that hat. My dad goes to the same synagogue I think.



Why don't you explain what it is you WILL do?



Let me guess, he uses a pendant to do it? Oh irony!



Our love is stronger than you, old man. Soon you will be dust and then Thor and I can rule over the progressively shorter humanoids of Atland as Kings.



This area of the game's pretty dense with boss battles!



Uncle grandfather!










7




Since it's not really clear, they are fighting.

Hop on Pop is a good book.



I'm listening while I hover.



Ah, you hear voices. Explains the tinfoil hat.













Why didn't you give this to me when you first sent me off to do all this business? Are you some kind of sadist or just an idiot?



Cool.



Oh my, everyone wants a piece of NASIR today. *blush*



...The Magic Dragon!



Wake up, Cloud.



Another jumping area.



Yes it is as boring as it looks.



See that land, hundreds of yards below me?



Optical illusion. It's actually 3 inches down.



Finally, the final area (?). I'm ready for this. So ready.



These angels appear to be holding some kind of tablet aloft, but again it's an illusion since I can walk on said tablet.



Noted.



(unenthusiastically) Yay.



A draw bridge leading to Lagoon Castle.



Gah, what a garish tileset.



Donatello, where's your shell?! Can I have your autograph?!

Clearly this castle got more attention than any previous areas. There are statues, wall hangings, floor designs and three types of enemies right away.



These guys look like Mr. Mime and shoot fireballs. They're hard enough to kill that I'm reminded of my new magic spells.



This is a cheap fireball made of lightning. Or sound maybe. Thunderning.



Even though it costs 35 mp per shot, which is what the dragons cost, this is by far my new favorite spell. Three electric balls home in on the enemy. It's great.



This costs 50 mp and hits everything onscreen as a bolt descends from the sky.



This costs 80 mp and is a stronger version of the previous lightning spell.



More examples of the almost not lazy amount of time spend on this castle.



These guys look cool.



I finally find a door in this massive area and state save in case it's a boss.



It's floor 2. I have no idea why I went through a doorway and wound up emerging from a hole in the floor, but at this point this game can't possibly surprise me with inconsistency.



Floor 3. Wow, I want to say 'good job guys' to the devs but it would feel a little like, as Sharkey once said, congratulating a 30 year old for finger painting a pony.



Gold appears to have been utterly useless post dwarf village. I'm going to be totally unsurprised if there's nothing to spend this crappy amount of cash on.



Floor 4. Floors 3 and 4 are as plain as plain can be. Bricks and floor tiles and pitfalls.



Stop giving me money when I know I'll never be given the chance to even spend it you awful awful game.



One eye of these skulls shines and winks. It's probably the coolest tile in the game.



Lizard men. They follow enemy AI #1: walk toward me forever and bump into me to deal damage.



These guys can't change direction, which is unique. You have to stab their eyes. Nice callback to boss #3 I guess.



Bra-da-da-da~! This will absolutely come in handy for boss fights, where the only use for MP is to power rings.



These huge, slow moving, high damage enemies are utterly immune to magic as far as I can tell. They're worth quite a chunk of xp, so I farm them for a bit, but it takes 2 entire health bars on average to kill one of them, making it sorta slow going.

Originally Posted by Guild

This is most likely the last shield since I'm out of room in my inventory for new ones.



Raggafragga.



Oh hey, by reading my own LP to confirm I deduce that this is where I can use the Moon Stone to create the Moon Blade, which I'm convinced is also the last sword in the game. I guess that just leaves the Moon Armor and maybe a Moon Ring, yeah?



Well, here's a shaft of moonlight.



There's something I've been wanting to say to you, oh deity father: You gave me a weird name.



Next time send written instructions. Stone tablets? Something.



Again, telling an oracle to tell a man in a tinfoil hat to catch your sons is not sufficient forewarning. You're clearly an idiot.



Uhuh. I'm listening.



Thanks dadgod.



...this thing's the size of a number 2 pencil!



Yep. Last sword.



I find this thing back inside the castle. I have no idea what floor or where I am at this point, just sorta wandering aimlessly around killing stuff and hoping something will pop out at me.



Oh ho! A princess in a mirror. Try as I might, I can't figure out how to bust her out of here.

I spend so long trying to figure this out I eventually break down again and open a FAQ. It hurts my pride a little less the second time.



It turns out I was supposed to put that statue onto the crest on the floor (???). Nobody told me this!? Wtff game



I guess Thor's my brother, princess, so technically I'm available.



[joke about sex deleted]





Don't say anything more about it. I understand.



l8r sk8r



Argh, lots of these guys now.



Sweet! This armor looks bad ass. Gold armor with a red cape?



I'll take it.



Snazzy.



Ruh roh! *state save*

Do you have any idea how many people have said that to me today?





Hm. Cool enemies. These guys are vulnerable, but after a bit of battling and rewinding I find it more expedient to simply kill BATTLER and ignore them. They zoom around the room barely even able to damage me anyway.



Bah, missed the explosions on this death.



...in battle!



I walk north and I'm on this balcony thing. See that island in the distance?



You have to jump to it, apparently.



And if you miss you die.



So I had to do that one twice.



At the island there's this mini church.



The guy inside is an elf, I believe.





They apparently play-tested enough to feel back tracking might be necessary at this point. I'm shocked at the consideration for my hard-earned $0 I spent on this rom.



Oh hey, a stairwell.



This cave wall reminds me of a Sonic 2 stage.



These guys are hella tough and very hard to kill.



These guys are very quick and very very damaging. Lightning spell them back to the abyss.



I rather like their sprite though.



One Ring to keep track of the hour! Experiments reveal that this ring makes enemies stop while MP drains at a double rate as most rings. And guess what? It's the last item you get before...



...the final boss's's rooms's. Making it utterly useless as it also does nothing to any of the bosses. I guess if I wanted to grind more it might come in handy.



This guy is hard! He does more damage than me with a whip of his tail (he literally weilds it like a whip) and moves relentlessly towards me. I eventually beat him by using an Elixer, which instantly refills all HP and MP.



Dead.



Dead dead.



To enter the underworld, first draw a door then knock three times upon it.



I feel ready for seven more bosses in a row. Wish I still had my elixer though.

Willby? Rightback!

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And nowwww back to the show!







Well then why did you make it so hard for me to get here?





Bother who?



Wharwilf!



This guy has no health bar!? I simply pin him to the wall and whack him to oblivion.





It's been exactly 22 seconds.





...ild.






This guy is freaking hard. The red things that circle him act as a barrier and move inwards and outwards as they spin around him, knocking me perpetually away from him. The best I can do is to hop and slash toward him rapid-fire style, occasionally landing a blow. The only upside is that the spinning red things barely do any damage, even if they hit constantly. And as if that weren't hard enough, when he runs out of health he transforms...


This awesome birdthing can kill me in three hits, or .8 seconds of constant damage if his hitbox ever overlaps mine. After 20 minutes of frustrated experimentation I discover his weak spot.



By standing exactly here and jumpslashing every time he approaches I can whittle him down s.l.o.w.l.y, but every time I mess up I practically have to restart the fight.



Thor! My brother! Let's forget all the strange feelings I had for you earlier, ok?



...oh dadgod, what have I done?















*sniff* I won't. *choke sob* brother...

Something something, Double Dragon!





Alright, so this must be the final final final boss. Here we g-



F&%#ing cheater! Note how much damage a single hit from this guy does.



This guy teleports behind me and then whips. He's hard but not nearly as hard as the four winged owl thing Thor transformed into was.

Duty! Duty! Duty!



My ... my goodness!



I think...



I'm not certain but I think...



I think it's finally over!



Oh wow, and there's no dialogue for this last bit whatsoever. I'll make up my own!



"My soul will never find rest now that I'm a hunk of metal around your neck!"



"You can watch me hump the princess, Thor."



"I'm gonna hump the dickens out of that princess."



"Huh?"



"Nope."



"..."



-_-



"Awww..."



"Whatever!"



"My name's Johan. I'm not in this game."



And so our intrepid warrior has an existential moment beneath a beautiful full moon in which he wonders if he's a character in some kind of awful video game.









But he's not. He's a character in a book.



THANKS FOR READING!

This has been a real pleasure to create. I mean that half sarcastically of course, but the GOOD kind of sarcastically.

Originally Posted by Guild

I walk north and I'm on this balcony thing. See that island in the distance?



You have to jump to it, apparently.



And if you miss you die.



So I had to do that one twice.

Originally Posted by Guild

See that land, hundreds of yards below me?



Optical illusion. It's actually 3 inches down.

Originally Posted by jpfriction

Dammit, I think that's the spot I kept getting stuck at as a kid. I never thought to just, you know, jump down there. Stupid game. Good LP. Stupid game.