Tecmo Super JRPG! Let's Play Secret of the Stars! Blind!

I don't know how lucky we were for his call for help to have failed twice in a row, especially give that the Echo Cat's calls for help never failed once, but I'm not going to look a gift vampire in the mouth. That's where they keep their fangs!



Holy crap!



More level-ups for everyone!



This... sounds oddly familiar.

What is the game trying to tell us here?



Because JBEAR apparently never learns, he's content to watch BADBAD escape through a trap door hiding under his throne.



BADBAD is now our comic relief. I am okay with this.



We continue to just watch as he climbs down the stairs and makes his actual escape.



We take a quick nap to recover before checking under the chair.



Score!

I genuinely thought that this treasure room might have just been a tease and that we weren't going to be able to actually get in here. I'm glad to have been wrong!

The first few chests aren't very exciting, but you need to build anticpation.



Why thank you game, I have been staying up rather late playing this.

(Any ideas?)



The dog-pill chest comes with fanfare as we open it.



The meatball chest does not.



Now that's more like it!



I again spend some time deciding who should get these shiny new shoes before ultimately deciding to give it to the person who seems to take the most hits.



All of the barrels on this side are also empty, just in case any of you thought that I got so excited that I forgot to check.



I suspect we won't be able to catch up to BADBAD, but there's no harm in trying.



As it turns out, the stairs dump us all of the way back outside the cave. I'm not sure how that works, but it's certainly convenient!



We've got everything that we need to go save the town, but I'm way over estimate again, so that'll have to wait until the next update.



See ya next time on Let's Play Tecmo Secret of the Stars!

QUEST LOG:

• There is a flooded room in the Aris Shrine on Heart Island.
• Architect's house west of Winds.
• Impassable "Victory" bridge south of Winds requires a key.
• Star Shrine south-east of Winds has an optional Fire boss and wants us to return later with more characters and/or higher levels and/or more Kustera.
• BADBAD destroyed the town of Winds and possibly kidnapped some kids?
• The town of BEEGEES has gone to the dogs.
• There's a basement in a BEEGEES home under doggo protection.

This is amazing.

So what I'm getting here is that you have KUSTERA and PENNON parties?

I was afraid that this game wasn't going to be able to live up to the promise of that incredible opener, but BADBAD has proven that fear unfounded.

Yes, the idea is that Badcat became Badbad (assuming it's something like 'Evil Cat' into 'Evil Human' in the JP script).

Cure-B's for combat-only ailments like sleep and so on.

It's been a decade-plus since I played through this, but I'm pretty sure the elemental trials are tuned for late-teens to low twenties for the MC, scaling up slightly per party member, and there are several ranks to go through.

You might want to put some of that behind spoiler tags.

Wait, just one pill? I'm hoping he put it in the water supply or something because otherwise that seems pretty unsanitary and difficult.

Hey! Family! Don't keep your fruit in dresser drawers. And don't keep so many dressers. And put them closer to your bedroom. Your whole layout is a nightmare.

No, no, BADBAD took the pill, and it made everyone around him turn into dogs. It gives you dog-transformation BO or something like that.

This game seems to become more weirdly charming (or charmingly weird) with each update.

Badbad has a basement full of illegally sourced aspirin and shoes, alongside his dog medicine.

I see nothing incongruous about this revelation

So his Japanese name's definitely Ware Ware, right? That's means he's like Wario twice but with less Mario. Make of that what you will.

So Waluigi?

For anyone looking to play along, one tip:

Ditch the music and play this game at double speed. It is SLOW.

- Eddie

I am unclear if I have a PENNON party or an AQUTALLION parties. The game seems to use the two terms almost interchangeably, but I don't think they're quite the same thing. (Not actually looking for an answer to this question, to be clear, nor am I actually looking for an answer to any question I pose in these updates. I'd prefer this play to remain blind until I'm finished. This is directed at everyone, not Mogri specifically.)

I could not possibly be more pleasantly surprised with what I've ended up with, given that I went into this blind. It's fun to play, and full of novel things to show off in a Let's Play. I can't wait to see what zany thing it has in store for me next.

Heresy.

(I genuinely don't find it to be slow, and that even with having the battle speed set slower than I would keep it if I weren't trying to make it easier to get screenshots. In my experiments, the battles just flew by when I set the battle speed to 0.)

There's a common Japanese phrase uttered by comedy-relief villains just as they're defeated, which usually gets translated to something like "I won't forget about this!" I betcha that's what our BadCat/BadBad is saying!

This game continues to impress me. I have half a mind to throw it on my Everdrive and take the Japanese version for a test spin, just to see how different it is...

The visual design is a li'l too sparse to hold my interest if I played it (this game has "Originally intended for Famicom" written all over it), but I certainly appreciate stuff like Badbad and the Pumpking/Echo Cat fusion and the hero's parents being destroyed by Homncurse.

Well, I did the thing.

I only played as far as meeting Uncle Save Old Man Save for the first time, but here are some observations so far:

• The game just has a very inviting feel that I think Jbear has expressed well. It makes me want to play more.
• "Plum-Plum" comes from プルンプルン, which comes out to something more like "Prun-prun," and probably comes from this onomatopoeia.
• The NPC who tells you about plum-plums describes them as "healthy, juicy" in English.
• In Likado, David's adventure hook is a lot more clear. In English, he says, "THE CREST OF STARS IS LOCATED SOMEWHERE IN THE MOUNTAIN." In Japanese, it's more like "The Crest of Stars is in a mountain somewhere on this island." Still doesn't stop us from bumping up against all the mountain tiles until we find the right one, but it at least feels like more of a helpful hint.
• Uncle Save calls himself "Save Jii-san," which could come out to something like Grandfather Save or Old Man Save, but I think we can all agree that Uncle Save is a perfectly cromulent choice of translation.
• "HOMNCRUSE" indeed comes from the same kana which more accurately would spell "Homunculus."

I'll probably play more, because this game seems fun, and I'd like to see how they came up with CAT BOO and BADBAD.

If you get to it, I want to know what the fusion of Echo Cat and Pumpking is called in Japanese. Can't help but wonder if this was some pun that got lost in translation.

I played all the way up to WINDS last night! I have much to report!

MAGIC

• FIRE in Japanese is..."Fire." Yep! No onomatopoeic DQ-esque spell names here, just English.
• HEAL was shortened from "Healing."
• COMA came from Coma.
• Oh, and one interesting mechanical note which I'm pretty sure Jbear didn't mention: not all beds are created equal! The bed in Uncle Save's house and Dr. Gari's lair recovers HP, but not MP! I had to trudge back to Sonya's house to get my spells back.

ENEMY NAMES

Many of these were translated fairly directly. Slime, Red Slime, Goblin, Stunrat, etc., all came directly from similar kana. A few were shortened, probably for character limits, like BONE from "Skeleton." Notably, fan-favorite PIGMAN was shortened from...Piggyman.

Then there's this guy...



"Doraneko" literally means "stray cat," but given this kitty's possible connection to the BADBADs, could the "Dora" also be a reference to Dracula? Unknown, and the translators decided to go with a literal treatment. Finally, when he's defeated, he indeed uses the phrase "覚えていろ！" which is usually translated as "I'll remember this!" and makes him sound like Team Rocket.

And how about our Disk 0 boss, Dr. Gari? Well, he's a fascinating example of subtext lost. In Japanese, his name is Dr. Garigari, which as you can see has several juicy and evocative meanings. If I were localizing this game, I might go with something like "Dr. Bonegreed" to keep the connotation, but it's not easy to translate this type of name, and I'm not surprised the meaning didn't come through on the SNES version.

ITEM NAMES

Most of the basic equipment names fell victim to the all-too-common character limit problem faced by Japanese-to-English translations of the era. Still, a few made me scratch my head, like why not use "CAP" from the simple 帽子 instead of the awkward "NOMALHAT?" Even "HEADGEAR" could fit within the limits.

OTHER STUFF

The Pennons, the Aqutallion, and the Kustera: In Japanese, it's more clear that these are all titles (and the names are all the same). Lack of definite article and pluralization in Japanese was a hindrance on many hurried translators in the 80s and 90s, which created the confusion evident in the SNES translation. By the way, PENNON, probably comes from this. Perhaps a more natural-sounding English translation might be something like "HERALD?" Oh, and David was changed from "Davides."



If I remember correctly, the word used by this NPC that was turned into "cemetery" was ほこら, which comes literally out to "wayside shrine," and is a common term in DQ games. The area where you become a PENNON is described as "Star Shrine," or similar, using that same word, and you do meet a spirit of your father there, so you can see where the confusion comes from.



In Japanese, Dr. Gari says, "Homunculus-sama! BANZAI!" I like this translation.



I was so sure this was a neutering of "killed" or "slain," but Bosun actually uses a word that means something closer to "defeated," so this was an interesting choice.



This was shortened from something closer to "Mysterious Plateau," which obviously wouldn't fit in the character limits.



I'm delighted to inform everyone that BADBAD was changed not at all from Japanese. Winds was burned down by the Badbads. However, it's much more easily understood in Japanese that the Badbads is a group, and that they are also the thieves being referenced by this dude. He even refers to them as "Badbad-tachi," which explicitly pluralizes the name. It shouldn't have been lost in translation!



Finally, we have TINA. Interestingly, her name was changed from レイナ, which is the same kana that gave us Reyna/Lenna from FFIV! I wonder if Tecmo was worried they'd get in trouble with Square? Or did they think the name was too weird? Who knows!

That's all for now. I continue to love this game, and it's truly fascinating to discover where all of these weird translations come from. Jbear, if you feel like I'm stepping on your toes at all with this follow-along, please let me know!

Trying to reverse-engineer what "Aqutallion" was supposed to be has been driving me nuts, so I'm dumbfounded to learn it's possibly the one thing they got right.

News to me! I just thought that no beds restored MP, which I'm pretty sure I did indeed point out. In any case, there'll be another example in the next update of enhanced bed technology.

Speaking of, I'm worried this joke may have been too subtle, so Imma underline it:

Hello there everyone, and welcome back to Let's Play Tecmo Secret of the Stars! When last we left our heroes, they beat up Kid Dracula, who used to be a cat, and took his drug stash. Now we're headed to Beegees to party!



The dogs don't seem particularly inclined to take their medicine.



Perhaps some divine guidance is in order.



It looks like the priest knows what to do. I wonder how he's going to administer it to everyone. Put it in the water supply, maybe?



*shoves framed screenshot from last week into trash and replaces it with this one*

(Every time I boot this game up for a new session, I worry that this is the session where it stops being fun or funny, but it continues to delight at every turn.)



Anyway, he just throws the pill up in the air and it explodes. That's not how pills work! Or how anything works!



It evidently did the trick, though.



This is a cute gag: as it turns out, there was exactly one real dog in the bunch.



Um... did you before? Not cool, dude.



Um, actually, we let him go. Listen, don't worry about it.



Oh shit, are we about to get dragon punched?



Sounds like David has a play date.



Villains in this game continue to have the best names.



So, I was wondering why we hadn't found the kidnapped kids earlier; I guess it wasn't BADBAD after all? And apparently they're just... here in town? Although given earlier translations (I'll remind everyone that we were also told that BADBAD-HOUSE was in the south part of town), there's a decent chance that this actually means to the west of town.



[QUEST LOG (Update): The Ringo brothers have kidnapped the children of Winds and Beegees.]



The townsfolk don't have much of import to say, but they're mostly very grateful.



Mostly. One man's curse is another man's dream come true, cruelly taken away without his consent.




Yes, that is easily the best thing about being human. Got it in one.

Never heard of 'em.



Aw, now I feel bad.



Don't worry, pal; it happens to the best of us.



Still unclear if this is a job, or a calling, or a family/clan name.



Woo! Now we just need to find Ken and we're in business.



Oh ho... so, if I'm interpreting this correctly, it sounds like the Kustera can form up parties as well, with a limit of five from a pool of eleven. I thought that perhaps we'd only be able to control them one at a time, but each new one would join at a high level with advanced gear.



Interesting... I'm not sure what this could be referring to. David certainly didn't seem to have any unique abilities, at least.



Um... hey, what gives? How come you didn't immediately climb into a tent?



Ah, I see. I guess he'll make his own way over to Old Hill?



Listen, if you think that dogs can't wear dresses, I have a Google Image Search or two to recommend.



We're like four hours in and we just found our first Inn. I honestly didn't think that this game had them! Anyway, the price is dirt cheap.

Speaking of, look at that gold total. We're loaded!



I am pleased to report that, unlike just sleeping in any ol' bed, paying to sleep in these beds restores our MP.

If we've got so much dosh, we'd better check out what we can spend it on.



Alright, so it sounds like Asprin either cures a specific kind of ailment called "Illness" or a generic family of ailments. Whichever it is, my money is on CURE-B covering the same ground, so presumably we'll only need these if Tina is incapacitated. I decide to pick up an extra one, just in case.



It seems as if Restores are for in-battle revival. This would not have been my first guess, or my second! Since we already have one, and they're rather pricey, I think we're good for now.



Let's find out if this Clinic is a plot building or serves a mechanical function.



It seems as if it's the latter! We definitely have the ability to cure one of these magically, and possibly the other as well, so I don't see us making much use of this.

This does have some interesting implications, however. I figured that "illness" was not likely to persist outside of battle, since CURE-B can only be cast during battle, but apparently it does. So maybe CURE-B does something else entirely! Also, given that this clinic doesn't offer any other services, it looks like status ailments in this game might be divided into "poison" and "not-poison".



Even if we don't end up using this place much, I love the cute little doctor sprite, and since Phantasy Star was a such a formative experience for me, in-game Clinics always make me feel right at home.



The weapon and armour shop is honestly a big disappointment, especially with this much money burning a hole in our pocket. Not even any Hard Suits for sale.



At least we can confirm that Tina's cane doesn't do anything special.



Note the 'X' next to Tina's name here-- the MIDSWRD is the first piece of equipment we've found that she's unable to equip. She should, however, be able to equip JBEAR's hand-me-down short sword.



Which is good, because the mid(dling) sword was a pretty marginal upgrade for the cost.



We're actually nearing inventory capacity (4 pages/32 items, it looks like), so I do a bit of selling off-screen to make even more cash and free up some space. I hope that the next town has better stuff to spend it on!



Uncle Save is nearly as happy to see us as we are to see him. He's easily my favourite uncle.



Oh, Uncle Save, you cad. Apparently we could have saved here in Beegees all along, but Uncle Save had been turned into a dog too.



Well, since we just saved, this seems like a good time to poke our heads into this presumed kidnappers' basement.



Again, I am forced to wonder "figurative, literal, or both?"



The mayor is apparently in charge of guarding the kidnappers?



YOU ARE THE ONE WHO SAVED THIS TOWN. ALL OF US HERE APPRECIATE IT. BUT, THE RINGO BROS WHO LIVE IN THE MOUNTAINS MAY BE STRONGER THAN YOU. THIS I FEAR.... BY HOMNCRUSE'S RULE, THE RINGO BROS KIDNAP NEIGHBORING KIDS FOR EXPERIMENTS. WHAT...? YOU ARE GOING TO DESTROY HOMNCRUSE AREN'T YOU? I SEE... YOU ARE ANCESTORS OF ACTOS STARS... O.K. I PRAY YOU AND YOUR PARTY CAN DESTROY THE RINGO BROS AND HOMNCRUSE. HANG IN THERE. THE RINGO BROS' HIDE-OUT IS TO THE SOUTH OF HERE. GOOD-LUCK!

Well, you can tell that we found a politician, because the Mayor sure likes to talk. Apparently they've been experimenting on the missing kiddos. That seems bad! Special shout-out to some choice punctuation choices in there, like the ever-popular interrolipsis, the rarely-seen four period ellipsis, a hyphenated "good luck", and, my personal fave:



O. K. B. O. O. M. E. R.



I was so excited to check out this basement that I almost forgot to check the formerly inaccessible part of this house for loot.

Almost.



It looks like the mayor has an escape tunnel underneath his house. Just what kind of shady stuff is this guy up to?

Moments later, we pop out where you might expect.



That cave was so short that we didn't actually get into any fights, but a quick return trip to give it a more thorough once-over makes it clear that there are no encounters to be had.



The local landscape is very pretty, but there doesn't seem to be much of note.



Are... are they holographic? They do have a kind of cool 80s future colour-palette, but somehow I doubt it. (Dracula, help.)



Notably, since Tina no longer seems to be swinging a stick, it looks like the weapon sprites are updated to reflect the currently equipped weapon, which is an unexpected and welcome touch.



Tina and JBEAR are able to take out one of the birds in a single round of attacks.



Wow, these birds ain't no thang.



...is what I thought right up until this happened.



Let's try CURE-B!



Whelp, that didn't work.



Check out JBEAR's cute, snoozey Zs, though.



It looks like SLEEP status may lower DEF? That makes sense, if so.



The attack also re-inflicts sleep, denying us the knowledge of whether or not being attacked removes the condition.



This probably isn't going to work either, but we need to find out for sure.



Nope!



Fortunately, JBEAR has had enough snoozing on the job, proving once and for all that this character is definitely not me.



The battle otherwise concludes uneventfully.

As expected, the castle that we saw earlier is just to the south, and my hopes of it being a friendly castle are quickly dashed when it becomes clear that this is a geographical dead-end with no other destination in sight.



These overly literal names will probably stop being adorable at some point, but we're not there yet!



The music in here is spooky.



Check out this rad battle background! I think this is the same background that we had for the volcano boss fight, but I didn't stop to appreciate it then.



Update: Spiders still suck out loud.



But at least we're able to kill it in two turns of all-out attacking.



Well it looks like we're going to need all hands on deck for this dungeon.



We still have paths to both the left and right that we could check, but before we begin this dungeon in earnest, let's take this opportunity to check on Dave.



He's still where we parked him, at the shrine, and it looks like Ryu wandered his way over to join up. I figured we'd have to go home to Old Hill to pick him up! The fact that Ryu joins at level four implies to me that the game expected us to have done a bit more fighting with David to this point.



Oh shit, it's Ryu the ninja. In, I'll remind you, a game from Tecmo.

He continues the trend of everyone showing up for the party with no hat.



He does, however, show up rocking some healing magic, and will thus be a welcome addition to the crew.



Well, this is probably a bad idea, given how the tile on the left went for JBEAR last update, but we're standing right here, so we may as well give it a try. What's the worst that could happen?



Unlike last time, at least here we start on an exit tile, so we can beat a speedy retreat if we don't like what we see.

Let's try down first, I guess?



Down looks intimidating, so let's poke our heads upstairs instead.



We're not in Kansas anymore. None of the nearby geography looks familiar. Note that the gravestone represents the dungeon that we just exited from, so presumably that's another similar dungeon across the water, or perhaps a second exit point from this one.

Back inside, we're able to open the gate, as expected. It would have been a pretty short dungeon otherwise!



Ryu sure has a look to him. Hunching like that all the time is really going to ruin his back long-term, and I am very unclear what exactly is happening with that hair.



Our two Kustera can take out a single Bone between them each round, which makes this encounter survivable.



That said, we won't be able to push very far with our current healing resources.



! Loot!



We head downstairs, hoping to find a path over to that chest. This place has a pretty maze-like feel to it.



Fortunately, this path dead-ends immediately with an unexciting chest.



Okay game, you can't just a call a bunny bad when it is clearly extremely good. Just look at that very good bun and his very dapper vest. (Inb4 this turns out to be Cat Boo/Badbad's latest incarnation.)



...Okay, the bunny might be slightly bad.



Fortunately, it dies before getting to do that a second time.



The next battle proves to be slightly more our speed, although neither Kustera is yet able to take out a Gobbo in a single strike. Both of them get a level-up afterwards, however, which ought to help in that regard.



This passage too quickly dead-ends, but that's quite a lot of gold! We're already almost up to parity with our main party in that regard, at least.



What initially looks to be yet another dead end with treasure (which, let's be clear, I am very into) actually keeps going.



Hopefully we won't need this, but good to have on-hand all the same.



I guess we're going down again!



Oh no-- choices.

Fortunately, the encounters don't seem to be getting more difficult as we descend.



Time to retire, boys. This dungeon is really paying out. It seems like maybe these shrines will be where our Kustera play catch-up to the main party?



I was initially worried that this encounter might give us trouble, but it actually proved to be easier than the trios of Bones, and gives both of our Kustera a bump to level six.



Uh oh, I may have spoken too soon about the difficulty. This encounter... has me worried. It feels quite soon to be running into a palette-swap of the bugs.



Ow!



The worry is well-founded!



Fortunately, Ryu is able to live long enough to escape. That was a pretty sudden difficulty spike!



Hrm. I wonder if the "Zombi" (I feel compelled to point out that we've seen much longer monster names already, so they aren't bumping up against a character limit here) will prove similarly out of our league.



Nah. It dies before it even gets a chance to attack. Also, our level-ups in here thus far have already served to largely trivialize the Bones.



We could likely win this fight, but it would hurt enough that I think running is the better call here. Also, we have no means of magical curing and a finite supply of antidotes.



I'm starting to get legit lost at this point. There's a number of branches that we've passed up now.



! Treasure rooms help dull the pain!



! And it's good loot!



Um? We seem to have found a quest item. There's a little jingle and everything. Hooray?

I, uh... I didn't forget a quest, did I?

[QUEST LOG: We have some Iridium now?]



The weapon upgrades continue to be minor improvements. Oh well, at this point we need every little bit that we can get.

This rat tail is a welcome find, given that we only have one and we're likely to need it soon.



Similarly, with MP at a premium, this may well prove vital.



The longsword is noticeably, well, longer than the midsword in battle.



This pair of Pumpkings "work together" and immediately roast the whole party for high damage twice in one turn, so this is apparently a very swingy battle.



After that, we're officially running on empty, but fortunately David loaded up on carbs last update, so we can keep pushing for just a bit longer.



And we're immediately rewarded for doing so!



Huh. Neither character can equip this (note the big 'X'). Either we're pushing deeper than the game expects, or this isn't a weapon at all!



Well, if it does anything, it doesn't do it outside of battle.



With no spider in sight, this battle seems worth taking.



We are, of course, immediately punished for this decision.



Fortunately, we do get another pair of level-ups in exchange, including this key pick-up for Ryu.



I sure do wish that his MP would go up faster, though.



The very next step gives us this utterly trivial battle. The encounter table in here sure seems wacky!



Ryu takes the opportunity to flex, giving us our highest damage roll of the game thus far.



We get back to some place that we've evidently already been and I have no memory of having passed up this stairwell, so we're now well and truly lost.



But going just a bit further south helps me to get my bearings. We're un-lost again, everyone!



That said, this seems like a good time to bail anyway, especially since we just leveled.