Let's Play Money Making Game (Zelda: Second Quest)

The things you have to do to appease those old men.

Chapter Four:
In Which Red Bubbles Cause Much Ire


Having saved up enough from his excursions into Hyrules seedy underbelly, The Dude buys a slab of unidentified meat from a Slightly Younger Man in a cave. The Dude assumes it isn’t exactly “Grade A” meat, nor does he ask what the Meat came out of. Also, he does not comment on the lack of proper refrigeration for the meat.


Armed with what is apparently a rotting slab of… we’ll say Beef, The Dude can now bypass the hungry Goriya in Level 3. The Dude’s next item is just beyond him.


An Upgrade to the Boomerang, making it travel faster and further. It’s no Magic Wand, but it’s something. Hey, the Magic Wand, maybe he’ll get that next? But first…


The next Triforce piece, we’re getting close to the home stretch now.

The Dude does, in fact, decide to make The Magic Wand his next goal. Well, not directly next, but his next dungeon is going to be Level 8 so he can get it next. It’s a fairly well hidden dungeon though. It’s incredibly well hidden, in fact.


Yes, the entrance is buried under a rock, beyond a river, infested with giant fish men. Also, the mountain is prone to avalanches. After muttering some curses under his breath about how that’s a particularly silly place to hide a dungeon, The Dude… bravely trudges in the opposite direction, there’s something he’s been meaning to do for a long time.




Specifically unlock the entrance to Level 9. It, too, is buried under an innocuous rock, but at least it has the justification of being the final dungeon, so it should be hard to find. I seriously doubt The Dude will be able to advance any further. Of course, every time I write something like that I get proven wrong. So, here we go, lets get the dungeon items and kill Ganon again!


Aw nerts, I was right this time.

Well, The Dude soldiers forth again. There’s another item that can be found nearby though.



“I can’t think of any rock puns” yelps The Dude, as he shoves aside another small hillside, revealing a Staircase in a different part of the landscape.



The Dudes massive landscaping undertaking rewards him with a prescription for more Potions. They taste awful, but they work. Armed with a new scrap of Paper, The Dude heads back to the improbably located Level 8.

Though encountered before, Level 8 is simply LOUSY with Red Bubbles. The normal flicker-y kind merely robbed The Dude of his ability to press the A Button to stab the bajeezus out of stuff for a few second. The Red Variety takes away the power permanently! Well, permanently, until he touches a Blue Bubble, at least. They’re just as despised as the Blue Darknuts and Wizzrobes, in The Dudes eyes, possibly even worse since they cannot be killed.
Also, Bubbles are the Hyrules only example of a Blue monster which is less dangerous then its Red counterpart. Good to know.

Normally, the Blue Bubbles are, if not in the same room as the Red, at least very close by. In Level 8, the Blue Bubbles are mostly stored in a room on the far side of the Dungeon. The Dude already hates this place.



Besides being infested with Bubbles, Level 8 also has a problem with Dodongos. Luckily, The Dude discovered a handy trick with them that didn’t really come up in his first Quest. A properly placed, yet non-intrusive, Bomb Blast will stun the dinosaur, temporarily making it vulnerable to his sword. Very vulnerable to his sword.

They-Are-immediately-killed-if-they-look-at-anything-sharp vulnerable.

Dodongos seriously do not like smoke.


After exploding the insides of many Dodongos, stabbing the hell out of many Goriya’s and shouting curses that would make a sailor blush and retracing his steps every time he bumps into a Red Bubble, The Dude FINALLY gets his Magic Wand back. Now he is safe to exterminate monsters even without his awesome sword.



There’s also another Hungry Goriya blocking his path, and the Path to the Other Dungeon Item. He has enough money to buy some unidentified meat-like-product, but decides to explore the dungeon a little further first.


More Flashing-Super Ropes

More asthmatic dinosaurs

The Dude just chuckles softly when he see’s these things now.


Hey, all right! The Dude can expand his Bomb Pocket and almost have enough money to get Meat-on-a-Stick! The Dude gladly thanks the Old Man for his sewing skills.

Without the Meat or an extra Key, however, The Dudes trip here is cut a bit short. He leaves the Dungeon with the intent of getting the one which may, quite easily, eliminate his need for the other.



He also buys some arrows, ruining his financial safety. Oh The Dude, it looks like you’ll need to play some sort of game that makes money, now.

A game? To make money you say? I am intrigued by this turn of events. Please tell me more!

Is the third quest running from the cops who are trying to bust your arse for counterfeiting?

The Dude is probably already wanted for Grand Theft Raft...

Chapter Five:
In Which little is done. Primarily to stretch out the length of the Lets Play



Abandoning the green temple, The Dude wanders the country side, finding a curiously verdant, dead tree surrounded by somewhat invincible killer flowers. Logically, The Dude enters the stump expecting to find some method of earning money.



Sensibly, an Old Man has set up an illegal gambling parlor in a place that the authorities wouldn’t think to look. The Money Making game is a fairly simple way to earn some extra Rupees without slaughtering countless legions of the damned. You spend 10 Rupees to pick up one of the coins scattered before the old man, each one having a chance to either increase or decrease your total at random. The Dude opts for the Center Rupee, as that is the way he does things.


And hey, he wins! The Dude now has enough money to buy another slab of General Purpose Meat. And conveniently, the Cheapest Meat in Town� is right outside. The Dude buys a… loaf(?) and heads back into Level 8.



And so, The Dude fed the hungry monster, in lieu of stabbing it silly, and there was some mild rejoicing. Of course there’s still the lack of a key that prevents access to the Dungeon Boss. Luckily there is another item in here…

The Dude sallies forth, into unplumbed depths.



The Dude continues sallying forth, shoving a block as he does so.


‘Allo, what’s all this then? It seems like The Dude ignored an item on his first quest, but its place was changed anyway. The Dude now has the Magic-er Key. Normally Magic Keys are thusly called since they can be used to unlock any door, and are destroyed in doing so. This key is somewhat sturdier. The long and short is that The Dude now has infinite keys, indicated by an ‘A’ next to his Key Total. The Powers That Be say that the ‘A’ stands for ‘Almighty’, but it may have more to do with the fact that the Nintendo typically used hexadecimal notation to indicate a number too high for usual integers to express.


As it would happen, The Boss is yet another pack of Dodongos. Unfortunately, The Dude is rather lacking in terms of armament. He can only afford to miss 2 blasts before the fight becomes unwinnable.



Luckily one of the beasts saw it fit to drop another satchel of explosives. How it got them is a question best left unasked. Anyhow, The Dude killed the crap out of the increasingly-extinct dinosaurs and fed on their precious heart, granting him more power still, also, a Triforce Piece. Score!

Next up, Level 6.



Sadly, surviving a gauntlet of Wizzrobes and Bubbles left The Dude in somewhat rough shape to take on a Gleeok armed with 3 heads. In short, his wit and bravery was met with laser-y oblivion. But, like Chumba Wumba before him, The Dude gets knocked down, but gets back up again. You’re NEVER going to keep him down. But he is hurt pretty badly, and if a full complement of hearts wasn’t enough to survive, three probably won’t work either…

To the Apothecary!



The Old Lady was quite accepting a torn, tattered, previously used, and several weeks old prescription for Medicine, so long as The Dude paid her. Or maybe Medicine is over-the-counter and just ridiculously expensive. Once again, this is the sort of thing that The Dude simply accepts without thinking about it too much.

The Dude returns to Level 6 and manages to destroy the Gleeok that beat him previous. Sadly, there were no wandering artists who managed to immortalize these deeds. Nor were there any for his other battles through the dungeon. Well, there was one, but it was of The Dude facing down several dissipating clouds, and honestly, I’m unsure of what that was supposed to be.

Luckily, The Dude at least remembered the boss battle enough to describe it in perfect detail.

“Die Lobster! You don’t belong in this world!” bellows The Dude at the crab, currently engourging itself on seafood.
"It was not by my hand that I am once again given fish!" gurgles the monster. "I was brought back by humans, who wish to give me tribute!"
"Tribute!", cries out The Dude, incredulously, "You steal mens Soles! Enough Talk! Have at you!"

He stabs it with his steely knife, but he just can’t kill the beast.

“Oh, right, right, arrow to the open eye”

And so, The Dude shot several arrows into the open eye of Gohma, heroically killing it in the most painful way possible.

“That’s what you get for getting all up in my grill, Spider-ass!” boasts The Dude, admiring his own quick wit, “You get Arrowed!”


Here we are, 7/8ths of a Divine Instrument assembled. Only one left to go, and then its time to duel with a giant pig man!

Fun Fact: Should you find yourself swordless and Blue Bubbles are eluding you, a swig of a Potion or visit to a Faerie Spring will restore use of your shining blade.

Faerie i knew, potion I did not. Would finding a fallen-enemy faerie do the trick, or does it have to be the spring kind?

This would have been useful information when I was playing the game.

Death also restores your sword-arm. Good to know.

That is the most awesome/horrible pun I have heard in a long, long time.

Chapter Five:
In Which a Distaste for Level 7 is commented upon




As irritatingly obtuse as the location of Levels 8, 6, 2 and… well, just about every Dungeon in the Second Quest are, Level 7 may well be the worst. It lies concealed under a completely innocuous shrub on a screen full of shrubs. Also, Level 7 is infested with Blue Darknuts.

The Second Quest sucks.


Luckily, Darknuts and Bubbles can't cross running water. Or stagnant water. Or Ladders. Anyhow, little danger so long as The Dude doesn't move from this spot.


No such luck here. The Dude just stay's in the entrance and drops Bombs.


All right, I'm starting to get the idea that nobody wants me in this place.


At… at least there’s lots of stuff to block them?


NO! NO, THAT IS A BAD VIDEO GAME! BAD! YOU GET NO TREAT!


The Dude comes face to face(x4) with yet another Gleeok. The usual song and dance occurs, with the Dude Deftly Dodging the Dragons Dangerous D…attacks, while simultaneously striking, separating the serpents segmented skulls. He succeeds!

“Well, you’ll never get a head, losing your head like that”.

Seriously, The Dude said that. He’s a terrible person.


Hey, and there’s another Triforce Piece. Not too shabby. I think that’s all of them.

But… The Dude didn’t get the Dungeon item. That’s just not cricket.

The Dude encounters another semi-puzzle of finding the one movable block in a room full of unmovable blocks to either unlock a door, or reveal a staircase. In this case, it's a staircase.


The Dude encounters a room full of realtively benign Pols Voice and Red Darknuts, as well as the significantly less benign Blue's.



And here we have the Magic-er Candle. The Dude’s already burnt down every important tree, and the Upgraded Wand can light dark rooms, so this is utterly useless for The Dude. Neat.


Yep, that looks like everything. Well, there’s No meat, but The Dude doesn’t need any of that malarkey.

However, he would do well to get some more money and pharmaceuticals.


Hey, first try. That’s awesome!

The Dudes wallet is full, his medicine purchased. He has The Triforce, so he can go in.



Time to put this thing to bed.

I remember really, really hating level 7 because somewhere in there is a "shortcut" that takes you back to the beginning of the level, and it's already pretty much a straight light gauntlet. And the last dungeon has some truly evil one-way wall trickery.

Chapter Six:
In Which A Little Piggy Goes Whee-Whee-Whee all the way... To HELL!

Now on the final leg of his journey, The Dude scampers back into the depths of Death Mountain. Previously it was a staggeringly vast dungeon with a layout shaped rather like a skull. Now, it’s a bit smaller, the layout is a bit simpler, and it’s shaped vaguely like Ganon’s head. The Dude’s not about to complain.



As soon as he enters Death Mountain proper, The Dude is accosted by a pair of Blue Lanmola. They move at fantastic speeds, but they prove little match for a face full of Laser Sword delivered from a safe distance, or rather, about 8 or 10 faces worth of Laser. Having succeeded in killing a pair of lightning-fast worms, The Dude advances further to the… left?



And face into a room full of much worse worms. Luckily, his Magic Shield protects him from the statues, and the rooms prove little match for his Lasers. One does devour him whole, but it is killed before it can digest his shield. It should be remarked that, while he’s utterly incapable of quipping, The Dude’s pretty badass.



After slaying a room full of Vires and unlocking a door, The Dude encounters another pack of Lanmola, the slower, weaker, Red variety. They… they don’t survive for very long. He heads through the only exit,


“Okay, not going through here. I’m going to try that other door I saw a while back” says the Dude quickly, as he ducks back through the door he just opened.



That afore mentioned room leads to this chamber, the closest his quest has to an actual puzzle. Only the center block can be pushed, and pushing it blocks the exit to the room The Dude is trying to reach. The Dude blasts open the far right wall, leading back to the Red Bubble Room, and returns, causing the block to reset, he then pushes it again, safely out of the way, and moves on to the next chamber.

Wow, that’s a heck of a run-on sentence.

One one-way room and a blown-open wall later…



The Dude kind of wishes he wasn’t in such a rush to get here now. Even armed with a Magic Sword and Shield, The sheer number of Wizzrobes in this room is enough to shake the ground. The Dude charges forth, brandishing steel and strikes down his cloaked foes, but not without causalities. Specifically, he lost all but 3 of his hearts.



Oh boy, here’s another unhelpful old man. You’d think with the fate of the world hanging in the balance, they’d be a bit more generous with the enchanted weapons and nebulous advice. At least some freely offer extra heart containers, but even then, they’re pretty well hidden. Old people are jerks.

Anyhow, rather then blasting open a wall this time, The Dude just walks through the wall, blowing the old guys MIND.


After bashing some Like-Likes, and running like hell from some Wizzrobes, The Dude encounters a good ol’ Patra. While he could stay and fight the hovering eyeball-bat-thing, the dude decides to just run head-long into the nearby brick wall.



The Dude encounters another Blue Lanmola and a probably movable block. Rather then likely dying at the many, many hands of an enormous centipede, the Dude decides to quaff his Medicine. Opening the bottle like that caused it to lose its carbonation, and also changed its color from Red to Blue. It works just as well, but it tastes kinda gross now. The Dude decides that he’s probably just going to swallow the rest in one gulp when he needs it.



It seems that killing the Lanmola has made it so it’s possible for The Dude to puch the block. Perhaps his battle caused it to loosen, perhaps The Dude just wouldn’t have been too distracted to move it while there was sumpin’ to kills nearby, maybe a wizard did it. The Dude doesn’t know why these blocks are immobile while there are monsters around, but it’s not really an issue at the moment.

Under the stairs, The Dude gets his Red Ring back. It is mighty kind of Ganon to just leave it lying around to make The Dude nearly indestructible like that. Real class act, that pig.



More durable then ever before, The Dude returns to the Patra and kills its ass dead. Something tells him that the unlocked staircase would lead him straight to his enemies doorstep. Since The Dude is lacking the Silver Arrow needed to kill him, The Dude decides to leave for now and heads back to the dungeon entrance.



From the Entrance, The Dude advances forward, through a couple more illusionary walls and encounters another Patra. Nothing particularly nasty so far, except for a room riddled with a maze-like amount of blocks that was full of Wizzrobes, of which there is no visual record.



Passing through the right wall form the Patra, The Dude battles another small hoard of Wizzrobes, and a conspicuously out of place block. To nobodies surprise, it turns out that the block can be pushed to reveal a hidden staircase.



And hey, what do you know? It’s the Silver Arrow. It’s only real use is to facilitate the death of Ganon, and we’re about to go off and fight that mean ol’ piggy again.

The dude retraces his steps back to the previously mentioned Patra-guarded staircase, descends and passes though another invisible door, and on the other side…



Woah, geez.



“Give up, whelp!”, snarls the Dark Lord “There’s no chance for you to win!”
“Are you kidding? I’ve got a Red Ring, Potion, Silver Arrows and a Buttfore!”
“Buttfore?” inquires Ganon, “What’s a Buttfore?”



“For Pooping, silly”

As before, Ganon, being the big jerk-ass that he is, spends most of the battle invisible, only letting the direction of his fireballs indicate where he is. Luckily, as before, he still only appears in a few set locations, so it’s somewhat easy to determine where exactly you’ve got to poke him.



After being run through a few times with an enchanted sword, Ganon kind of stops moving and changes color. Say “Goodnight Gracie”!


“And that’s how I became the Prince of a town called Bel-Aire” cries the Dude in triumph, not really caring that there was no proper context for that statement. Nor was it the correct lyric.

And thusly, was Hyrule saved from the Forces of Darkness. Again. And probably forever this time.



And this confirms it. I mean, obviously Hyrule must have never had any problems ever again to merit a statement like this. Yessir, Hyrule is safe as houses now.

Sure would be nice if they got The Dude’s name right this time though.



Bless you, TEN TEN. You design so good!


And KON CHAN, without you, the Sword probably wouldn’t have made that AWESOME sound whenever it shot a laser. That alone kept me going in my darkest hour.



It would seem that the Second Quest had me dying less then the first. I’m as surprised as you are. But, the game says I’m great, so who am I to disagree?

Next!

Some Other Stuff Maybe?

Okay, maybe I'm stupid, but why don't I see Shigeru Miyamoto in those credits?

Oh, and awesome job, The Dude!

s. miyahon is miyamoto.

Is it just me, or does that last screenshot look like something's corpse being stabbed by a triforce piece?

Yep, it's Ganon's ashes with the Triforce of Power resting daintily on top. Ganon's death is pretty graphic for a first-party NES game.

That's what you get when you're playing with powah.

If this Let's Play has taught me one thing, it's that

If this Let's Play has taught me two things, it's the jerkitude of old people and this:

Wow, that was a whirlwind, done as fast as it started! Good job, Octopus.

Awesome.

I have no idea how you were able to beat this, I have a hard enough time trying to leave the first screen in the game.

Yeah, I realized that's what it probably was a little while after posting that comment. I never actually made it to the end of the original Zelda though, so I've never seen it myself.

Ah, I figured it was something like that. Thanks.

Is that because of the limited characters for the NES? Or did he just not use his name for a reason?

I think it's so no other company would know his true identity and try to hire him away from Nintendo. Regardless of whether I'm right or not, I read the answer's in Chris Kohler's Power Up!, but I'm unable to dig the book up at the moment.

Isn't it just a mistranslation because the last kanji in his name can be read as hon?