He knows about timed hits! Let's play Super Mario RPG!

When we last left off here at Let’s Play Super Mario RPG, we had fallen through Exor’s maw into an alternate dimension, the home of our nemesis, Smithy. When this update is over we will be right on the evil mechanist’s doorstep.



Smithy’s home base is a fairly short and straightforward area; so much so that I didn’t even bother to take pictures of most of the “rooms”. It does have some cute references, like these Mario 3-inspired nut and bolt platforms, but it’s mostly a combat area.

Incidentally, this area has a couple of different names. The World Map refers to it as “Gate”, but the save screen calls it the “Factory”. The area’s music, however, is called “Weapons Factory”, and I’ve always liked the sound of that, so that’s what I’m calling it.

I’m listening to this remix of the theme as I write this, and so should you.



Anyway, the first half of the Weapons Factory (in between the entrance and the first boss) is populated by some weird enemies, like the annoyingly-tough-to-kill Hippopo there. (Just Whirl it and move on.) You really get the impression that you’ve moved beyond the comforting confines of Mario’s world and into far stranger waters. Just wait until you see the bosses.

As for the Greaper repaints, don’t worry — they’re not nearly as strong as their forbearers.



At one point you have to hit a switch to cause the path forward to appear, but in so doing you have to put yourself at the mercy of a swarm of erratically-moving Ameboids. Not that this is much of a threat – as you can see, you have to try to not do 400+ damage to these guys.



Hidden treasure chest count: 39/39

Whoo! Check back in the next update to see what the box monster back in Monstro Town has to say about our little accomplishment.



Right before another series of bolts, which leads to the first boss, we find the Ultra Hammer, a weapon for Mario. It’s not nearly as good as the Lazy Shell, but what is? It makes a decent second prize if you missed the Fertilizer or something, however.



After jumping into the void, Mario finds himself confronted by a gigantic alarm clock, who takes his business very seriously.



I’m not sure what it says about the Smithy Gang that their alarm clock is stronger than most of their lieutenants…



The clock comprises three enemies, in total: The face (called Countdown) and a pair of bells (called Ding-a-Lings). Countdown’s gimmick is that it will tell you the time, then unleash a powerful spell based on the time of day. This makes it predictable, but later in the fight it starts to skip ahead in the sequence, so don’t get complacent.

As for the Ding-a-Lings, they don’t have much in the way of defenses, and are content to spam status effects, the instant death spell Death Roulette, and the most powerful single-target spell in the game, Dark Star, over and over. Because of this, it’s best to use a combination of Geno Flash and the Lazy Shell to break the bells as quickly as you can, then go to work on Countdown. Countdown can deal some serious damage, but not fast enough to outpace the Princess’s healing, so once the bells are deal it’s only a matter of time before Countdown follows them.



Here’s the Dark Star spell I mentioned. It deals about 85-ish damage to a single target when used by the Ding-a-Lings. Culex’s version of the spell hits for 120-150, depending on level, which is just a hammer blow.



Countdown will randomly pause at 9:00. This is likely to give you a chance to regroup and brace yourself for Petal Blast and Corona, powerful hit-all spells that Countdown uses at 10:00 and 12:00, respectively.

The experience from Countdown is enough to push the Princess up to level 23. We could beat the game without getting into another non-mandatory fight in the whole game, but that wouldn’t be very much fun, now would it?



The Weapons Factory begins to live up to its name in the second half, because that’s the point at which you begin tripping over the Machine Mades, robotic duplicates of all the Smithy Gang members we’ve fought previously, complete with music. The Machine Mades have more or less the same skills as the original but are generally easier to beat, making them great for leveling.



Watch out in this room, the one with the three conveyor belts: An unseen assailant fires arrows at you as you try and pass through here, and he’s deadly accurate. If he hits you, you’ll be stunned for a few seconds, which is generally long enough for one of the machines to attack you. Try to move erratically to throw off his aim.



Not that it matters overmuch — the enemies here, be they the robotic Drill Bits, the bizarre Puppoxes, or the Machine Made Macks, are easy to kill and give a ton of experience. Mack, in particular, can be killed in a single round with some help from Geno Blast and gives a whopping 50 experience.




Gorging ourselves on experience from the Machine Mades allows our levels to begin skyrocketing.



Here’s Machine Made Bowyer and Machine Made Yaridovich. Bowyer doesn’t have any new tricks, but he can still turn the buttons off, so beware. As for Yarid, he’s swapped out his old Mirage Attack for a new one that splits him into four Drill Bit-like enemies, each of which must be defeated before the real one will reappear. (I killed him before he had a chance to perform it, though.) These enemies have the highest experience gains of any repeatable fight in the game, making them ideal for powerleveling.



Killing Machine Made Yaridovich results in the platform it was standing on exploding, allowing us to drop into the final area of the Weapons Factory…

…Where we meet up with these bizarre… puppet? jester? ... dudes, Cloaker and Domino, who fight us as a team. Cloaker is mostly a physical fighter while Domino is a magician, but neither is that great a threat at first.

When you defeat one of the pair, the other will turn tail and join up with a powerful snake mech. Domino is more dangerous than Cloaker, but Cloaker’s snake Earth Link is far more powerful than Domino’s Mad Adder and is much tougher to kill, so the choice is yours.



I personally like to kill Cloaker, myself. Domino starts using more powerful magic after joining up with Mad Adder, but the Safety Ring and Lazy Shell will protects us from the worst of it.



Plus, Mad Adder itself goes down in a handful of regular attacks. Earth Link has 3200 HP, higher defenses, and a much greater damage potential, making defeating it a chore. Whichever you chose, make sure to focus your attacks on the snake. Defeating Cloaker or Domino merely stops him from attacking; you need to kill the snake to win the fight.



Defeating the tag-team gives us access to the heart of Smithy’s factory, where a steady stream of Drill Bits is being churned out under the direction of Smithy’s corrupt executives.



…The first of which, the Clerk, we run across shortly after entering. The Clerk is receiving status reports on production from his sycophants, to the horror of Mallow.



Mallow hands out an ultimatum, but the Clerk isn’t about to take this lying down, and challenges us himself.



There are actually three fights using this basic framework: A miniboss, surrounded by a number of weak hammer enemies. Like the Jinx fights, each of Smithy’s execu-bots is slightly stronger than the last, but all of them use the same basic skills, namely an array of physical moves. Ignore the hammers and focus on the boss; if you kill the flunkies, the boss will just resummon them. Also don’t worry about healing, as you’re fully restored after every fight from here on out.



Even though Mallow didn’t actually participate in the fight, he’s quick to bring the trash talk once the Clerk goes down.



Towards the exit of this room, we encounter a suspicious-looking switch. Evidently Frogfucius never told Mallow any proverbs revolving around curiosity and cats, so Mallow jumps on it without thinking twice.

…With predictable results.



Really, I don’t know why we even bother saving Mallow anymore.



We try to leave the room again, only to be called back again. This time it’s Toad, who has evidently traveled through Bowser’s Keep and the Weapons Factory… alone… carrying the best inventory items in the game… for no reason. Okay, whatever, I’m game.



We’re actually completely stocked up from looting Bowser’s Keep and the Weapons Factory, so we don’t have any need for Toad’s junk. (We’ve actually been throwing away Max Mushrooms and Royal Syrups so that our inventory didn’t get full up.) When I was a kid, though, the fact that he sold Max Mushrooms blew my mind. Also, this one time only, Toad hands over a complimentary Rock Candy. Thanks, guy!



In the next room, the Manager is stroking his beard and laughing about the amount of power he’ll be able to acquire as a middle-management flunky in Smithy’s army, which is evidently a lot.

Bowser has a few words to say about that, though.



Not that the Manager cares.



I don’t know; I have to figure that spiky, fire-breathing turtles are automatically the center of attention in any room they happen to be in.



Same shit as before… Pound the Manager with regular attacks, then clear out the Pounders.



This is very much Bowser’s best moment. Words cannot express how awesome it is, so let’s just look at the screenshots for a while and then move on.



In the next room, the Princess delivers the whole “get off our lawn” spiel again, this time to the Director.

The Director is a no-nonsense fellow, however, and doesn’t waste any time with foreplay.

So, I uh, forgot to get a shot of the fight with the Director. He’s the hardest of the three, however, attacking quite often and for fairly respectable damage. In addition, the hammers thrown by his flunkies will sometimes cause fear, even if you’re protected, so watch out.



Mario is pushed up level 25 from the fight, a nice respectable level for taking on Smithy and Culex.



Now that nobody is offering to melt her down anymore, the Princess regains her spine. We save our game and move into the final room…



…Where Smithy’s last remaining employee awaits us, along with his newest invention, the Gunyolk.



The Gunyolk is the centerpiece of this fight, and has some powerful spells, but the Factory Chief is more dangerous. He’s fast and his attack power is through the roof. Even though he uses those weak bee moves (Thornet, Fungispike, et al), his strength is so great that he can deal 100+ damage with them, easy. Plus, the Gunyolk has a hidden weakness…



…It can be silenced with the Princess’s Mute spell, shutting down its entire offense with the exception of its ho-hum regular attack. This allows you to basically ignore the Gunyolk and focus on the Factory Chief.



Of course, silence doesn’t last forever. You’ll know it’s worn off because Gunyolk will immediately blast you with the Breaker Beam, but you can just silence it again — Mute has a very high stick rate.



A-yup…

After defeating the Factory Chief, Geno realizes that the production line is still moving, which means that we’ll have to defeat Smithy himself in order to win the seventh Star Piece and shut down his operation.



No, we’re not. Because the next update is random silliness time!

Next time: Fight against Culex

Haven't commented on this much, but I've been quietly enjoying it. Looking forward to the Culex fight.

I forgot all about this.

it is truly the essence of Bowser.

Bowser is a true warrior-poet.

For someone who doesn't (or can't?) fight, Toad's pretty badass. Not only did he plow through Bowser's Keep and the Weapons Factory without a visible scratch, but he's brought you a veritable fountain of items to buy from him as well. They're nothing special, sure, but the fact that he made it so far with such ease gives me the impression that you just do not want to fuck with him.

Also: Mmm, Rock Candies. Gotta love 'em, you could crush most anything with a good stock of them. Not that you'd really need them with the Star Egg and all, but hey.

Has the game gone into their motivations for conquering the Mushroom Kingdom yet, or does it just boil down to "we do it because we're evil"? Seems like a bit more trouble than it's worth to take over a world just for kicks... then again, evil hasn't always been exactly smart.

Bowser, King Koopa
Never gets any respect
Despite being great.

~haiku

Oh wow, I completely forgot about the factory area.

Maybe he used the bazooka that other Toad guard forgot way back at the beginning.

I once went back to the Mushroom Kingdom at this point just to see if the game accounted for Toad migrating to the Factory. Turns out it doesn't! He's still pacing around the castle, saying, "Good luck, Princess!" or whatever.

Like any shopkeeper, his inventory is infinite. He probably used those items to keep himself alive through the dangerous journey.

Also, the bazooka.

They should make a game about Toad and a bazooka.

So. When we last left off here at Let’s Play Super Mario RPG, we were standing on the very precipice, ready to face down Smithy and win the game.

But Mario RPG is a much deeper and more interesting game than you’d realize by simply playing the main quest. There’s a lot of weird stuff out there that would pass by a casual player — but not us. We’re going to find it all. And since there’s no better time to do meaningless busywork than when you’re staring down the last boss, we can now begin…

The Super Mario RPG Random Weirdness World Tour

We begin in the Mushroom Kingdom, a place we haven’t seen since we rescued the Princess so long ago.

The Return of Samus



Okay, confession time: I actually did this part some time ago. Samus has a chance of appearing in the Mushroom Kingdom Castle’s guest bedroom in between rescuing the Princess and defeating the Axem Rangers. We’re obviously past this point. I took the pictures several weeks ago, however — I just couldn’t figure out a good place to digress and say “Oh, by the way, Samus”, so here she is.



At least she’s nice enough to tell us what she thinks she’s doing, unlike that antisocial Link.

The Return of Toad



Kishi mentioned that Toad does not actually relocate once he shows up at the Weapons Factory to serve as the final shop: He appears in his usual spot at the Mushroom Kingdom as well. And so he is.

The Princess’s Decoy



You’ll recall that when the Princess first joined us, she made arrangements to ensure that no one would notice that she was gone. When we examine the Princess’s bedroom, we find this uncanny doppelganger awaiting us.



It’s actually the Princess’s chambermaid, using her mysterious powers of shapeshifting to deceive the unwary.

Beetlemania



When we last talked to this annoying little kid back in our first pass through the Mushroom Kingdom, he told us to piss off. Now, however, he’s beaten the game that held his attention for so long, and like any good gamer the moment the game fails to hold his interest he starts looking for someone to pawn it off to. He’ll hand it over for 500 coins…



At which point it becomes an option on the menu.



In the kid’s game, we control a beetle which can move horizontally and fire stars at the incoming shells to rack up a high score. Try to destroy the shells in such a way that their exploding debris knocks out other shells — this both clears the field and gives you tons of points. If you get hit, pound A to get back up.



There’s no reward for getting a high score or anything — this is just for fun. Once we’re done, we restore state to get our money back (we’ll be going through the 1000 coins in our wallet a couple of times over before we’re finished today) and move on to Tadpole Pond.



There’s nothing new to see here, but Frogfucius will congratulate Mallow on finding his true home.

The Mystery of the Shy Ranger



You’ll recall that this enemy, the Shy Ranger, always ran before we could attack it when we first encountered it in the Pipe Vault. A character needs to have a speed score of at least 45 to get off an attack against the Ranger (for reference, Geno’s default speed is 30, and he’s faster than all but a handful of the enemies in the game).

With a combination of Work Pants, the Feather, and the Jinx Belt, however, we can raise our party’s speed to the point where we can deal enough damage to the Shy Ranger to kill it. If you’re looking for Metal Slime-type rewards, though, forget it — the Ranger gives up only 20 Experience Points and a pittance in coins.

Rewarding Obesity



In Yo’ster Isle, one of the eggs has hatched into a young Yoshi with a cutely-high-pitched version of the classic Yoshi noise. He looks a bit hungry, though, so we start feeding him Cookies.



After 20 Cookies, if you leave and return, the young Yoshi will have become, well, this. You can continue to feed him Cookies to receive items, but it takes a ton of Cookies to get anything and the Yoshi doesn’t hand over anything worthwhile anyway. The most interesting thing is the unique Yoshi-Ade item, which acts as a Bracer and Energizer combined into one, but we’ve got Geno Boost, so… yeah.

Ovinomancy



Time to check out what else the Moleville Miner’s Store has on hand.

The first item he has for sale is the same one he’s been selling since he first opened: The Lucky Jewel. When used in battle, this item gives you a chance to play the “Lucky!” game at the end of the battle to double your experience. Its primary use is in lowball games, where you deliberately lose the minigame in order to forfeit the experience from forced fights, allowing you to keep your levels low… obviously, we have no use for it here.

What else you got?



Ah! The Mystery Egg! Even the shopkeeper doesn’t know what this does, but it’s actually the seed for, if not the most powerful, at least the funniest item in the whole game.



To unlock its secrets, first run over to Marrymore and suit up the Princess with a B’Tub Ring.



Then, have the Princess use the egg in battle ten times. This doesn’t do anything, but be patient…



Because after ten uses, the Egg transforms into the Lamb’s Lure item. This item, which never gets used up, transforms enemies into sheep. Yeah, you heard me! Sheep!



It doesn’t work on bosses, or even slightly stronger-than-average enemies, and it doesn’t have 100% effectiveness, but come on. Sheep.

But wait, there’s more! If you then proceed to (successfully) use the Lamb’s Lure 48 times…



…It becomes the Sheep Attack!

This item turns the entire enemy flock into sheep. You don’t get any experience or coins for doing this, but who can pass up the opportunity to ovinize his foes? I know I’d do it. A lot.

The Snifit Apprentice



While looking for enemies to feed to the Lamb’s Lure, we run across the Snifit Apprentice, who’s running the obstacle course in Booster Pass over and over in hopes of attracting the attention of the Snifit bigwigs. When he sees Mario, he’s certain that beating such a famous guy will rocket him up the Snifit corporate ladder…



Sadly, he’s barely stronger than a standard Spookum, and goes down like that. I’ve heard all sorts of rumors about stuff that happens if you let him win, but I’ve never had the patience to strip all my guys naked and then defend for the 300-odd turns it would take him to kill an even decently-leveled group.

The Moleville Trading Game



Remember this guy? He’s been working on Fireworks since the Coal Mines were liberated, but now we finally have a use for his skills. Fireworks cost 500 smackers, but they’re the initial item in a fairly lengthy trading sequence.



First, we trade the Fireworks for a Shiny Stone at the pur-tend store. Then we save state.



A girl in the shop is in the market for a Shiny Stone, and offers us her Carbo Cookie for ours. We hand it over.



Finally, the girl on the bucket outside is ravenous for a Carbo Cookie. She mutters something about a misplaced Frog Coin, and wanders off to look for it. Since Mario lives by the eternal rule of “move your feet, lose your seat”, he immediately pounces on the girl’s bucket.



Which drains directly into the Midas River…? And that isn’t even the weirdest part. If you run the course again and get to the bottom, the guy at the bottom who hands out Frog Coins isn’t there — just a note telling you to keep whatever coins you picked up. But there’s no possible way to earn more than 100 coins on the Midas River course, so you’re essentially trading 500 coins for a fifth that amount at best. Strange stuff. If you run the trading sequence again, the bucket girl will just hand you a Frog Coin, as if we haven’t already found more of those than we could ever spend.

Anyway, we restore state to get our Shiny Stone back, and move on to Booster Tower.

True Love



We climb all the way to the top again, to Booster’s inner sanctum…



Holy crap! It’s Valentina!




The best part about this scene is that after it’s over, Mario will recoil from the door as though it’s the most disturbing thing he’s ever seen.

Lots of people have never gotten over the fact that there’s never been a true sequel to Mario RPG. If you go to GameFAQs and look at the user reviews for Paper Mario, you’ll see lots of 1’s and 2’s, on the frankly frivolous grounds that “It’s not Mario RPG 2”. I’ve more or less come to peace with this — the Paper Mario games are generally superior anyway, in my opinion. Sometimes, though, I start to think about it, and I become a little depressed. There are two main reasons for this:

1) We’re never going to see Geno again in any serious capacity.
2) We’re never going to see Booster/Valentina: The next generation.

The Battle of the Bellhop



Next stop: Marrymore. All this running around has me a little pooped: Let’s stay at the suite.



The thing about Marrymore’s suite is that it has a lamp, which means you can choose to stay longer if you’re so inclined. (Although there’s no reason to do so other than to show off what I’m about to do.) However, the management will charge you an additional 100 coins for each night you stay beyond the first.



However, if you can’t pay up, you’re pressed into service as a bellhop until you work off your debt.



You have to do all the usual bellhop chores… Lead them to their rooms and point out all the amenities. Occasionally you’ll have to deliver room service.

If you do a good job, the customers will usually tip you generously. It’s nothing worth going bankrupt over, though.

Wishing Update



A quick stopover at Star Hill. Nothing’s changed here, but since we granted their wishes, the stars for Frogfucius and Mallow’s parents’ wishes now say different things.

Beetles Are Us



An enterprising Snifit in Seaside Town has evidently tired of chasing down beetles for Booster, so he’s now hiring chumps to do it for him.



For the extravagant price of 150 coins, you can go to Booster Hill and do the barrel-jumping event again, only with disgusting flying insects instead of a distressed damsel as your aim. And if you’re lucky, you might even win back your 150 coins. (I do not have a high opinion of this event.)

Johnny’s Security Network

The only interesting things in the Sunken Ship are in the very final room, where Johnny hangs out. We Sheep Attack our way through the Ship to check things out.



Johnny was blocking this pipe the last time we were here, but if you look into it, you can spy on some of the previous rooms in the Ship.



This is necessary if you don’t take a good look around during your first pass, because it will be the only clue you have as to the existence of the hidden room containing the Safety Ring.



Johnny himself is happy enough to see us, but not so much if we jump on his head.

Hidden Treasure Chests: Resolution

You might recall that there’s a chest monster in Monstro Town who’s been keeping a close tally of the number of hidden treasure chests that we’ve uncovered so far. And surely he wouldn’t dedicate himself to such a mundane task if he didn’t have a reward waiting for us at the end, right? Well, now that we have them all, let’s chat with him and see what he has to say.



Goddammit. Yes, you read that right: Thirty-nine hidden treasure chests and a buck will get us a whole cup of coffee. But then, we didn’t start hunting hidden treasure chests for the money, did we? No, we did it for the… uh… Why did we do it, exactly?

Too late I learn that the children are the real hidden treasure chest.

Fight Against Culex



Well, I’ve been talking him up all game, so I guess it’s time to unlock the hidden bonus boss Culex and throw down. Culex hides behind the sealed door in Monstro Town, but a Shiny Stone will break the barrier, allowing us to travel to the Big C’s realm.

You might notice that Culex doesn’t quite… fit… into the Mario RPG aesthetic.





For some reason I’ve always really liked Culex’s opening taunt. I realize he’s just a parody of overblown godlike final bosses, but his dialogue seems cooler to me than most “real” RPG villains.

Also, Culex’s music is taken from Final Fantasy IV, “Battle 2”, the first boss battle theme. However, I didn’t play FFIV for the first time until many years after the fact (the GBA remake), so I've always associated this music with Culex: It'll always be Culex's theme to me. And the victory theme, of course, is the traditional Final Fantasy victory theme.



I doubt anyone who posts here regularly will need to be told this, but before you ask, no, Culex does not come from any particular Final Fantasy game. His design is derived from the general aesthetic of the SNES-era Final Fantasies (he’d fit right in as an Elemental Lord or one of Kefka’s forms, wouldn’t he?) but he is an entirely new character.

Anyway, Culex is by far the hardest boss fight in the whole game, largely because he surrounds himself with the four elemental Crystals, each of which is, alone, more powerful than most of the game’s storyline bosses. Not only do you have over 12,000 HP total to wear down (in a game where the final boss only has 8,000, and other bosses rarely rise above 2,000), but you’ll eat powerful magic attacks multiple times a turn every turn until one side is dead.



The Crystals themselves don’t have any tricks or gimmicks: They just power out the strongest magic attacks in the game every turn. Each of them, as you’d expect, is invulnerable to its own element, but weak to its opposite. For that reason, some people like to use Mallow for this fight (who, along with Mario, covers all four elements), but I prefer Geno: Geno Flash is not elementally aligned and thus hits all enemies evenly.



As for Culex himself, he’s got a handful of powerful spells, including Flame Stone, Meteor Blast, and Dark Star, as well as the most powerful regular attack in the game, and Shredder.

Culex’s regular attack deals well over 100 damage to anyone not wearing the Lazy Shell, and it’s difficult to block. Because Culex doesn’t have any frames of animation, the only signal you get that he’s about to use it is that he stops bobbing up and down for a split second, and by that time, it’s probably too late.

As for Shredder, the function of this move was a highly-debated secret back in my noob days. It doesn’t deal any damage or cause any noticeable effects on the field, leaving a lot of players wondering what it was supposed to do. I heard tons of theories — it removes Red Essence, it decreases the chance that luck-based events will work in your favor, it lowers your characters’ stats temporarily, it was supposed to cause status effects but some programmer made a mistake so it actually did nothing. The actual function of the move, as it turns out, is that it removes all buffs from your characters — Geno Boost, Power Blast, stuff like that.

The Safety Ring and the Lazy Shell are practically requirements for this fight, allowing you to protect two characters from most of the incidental damage that makes this fight such a chore. Still, some damage is going to get through, and the third character is going to die a fair amount. There’s nothing you can do about this except cast Come Back and proceed with the fight.



Amazingly enough, this is the very first Kerokero Cola I’ve used all game.



The Culex fight surrenders the most experience of any battle in the whole game. With the Experience Booster and the Lucky Jewel, a character can gain over 900 experience from this one fight, unheard of in Mario RPG.



As it is, the 244 experience we did get was enough to bump the Princess to level 25, where she’ll probably end the game.




The Quartz Charm is a pretty bitchin’ item. It gives the wearer full protection from instant death and a 50% boost to attack and defense — it is, essentially, a full-time Geno Boost. I like to give it to the Princess to maximize the amount of damage extracted from attack items and to close the one hole in the Lazy Shell’s defenses: Instant death.



Heh.

The Dream Cushion



Nimbus Land’s inn has a bizarre little sideline: For 30 coins (on top of the usual 30 coins just to rent a room) you can use the “Dream Cushion”, which causes Mario to have a dream during the night.



Most of these dreams are just harmless little vignettes featuring characters we’ve run into in the past, but…

…One, featuring Toad, is a little scarier.



Mario’s disposition is not helped by the fact that Toad will visit him the next morning. He does give us a pair of Red Essences to stop the shaking, though.

The Return of the Casino Seeker



If you still haven’t found the Casino yet, our fellow traveler will appear in the Nimbus Land inn after defeating the Axem Rangers with a leaflet containing some helpful hints:



This sounds like gibberish, but it actually tells you everything you need to know to find the casino.

Three jumps: Jump once to reveal a hidden platform, twice to get on top of that platform, and a third time to get to the exit
A Bright Card: Required for entrance
No Chomps allowed: The only Chomp Chomp in the game is situated right outside the entrance

Donkey Kong Keep



The final room of one of the action courses in Bowser’s Keep is a barrel-jumping parody of the first stage of Donkey Kong, complete with a Chained Kong waiting at the top.




In our trek back through the Weapons Factory to return to Smithy’s doorstep, our characters gain what will be in all likelihood their final levels. Our goofing off behind us, it’s now time to end this thing.

Next time: Fight against Smithy, who likes transforming.

Now we know how he was able to get into the factory with all those items.

Hey, neat!


Before I ever played any of the Final Fantasys where this sprite style is used (i.e., any of them before FFVI), I just assumed you were seeing him from far in the distance.


And before I played any Final Fantasys at all, I was dumbstruck at good this music was, and that it would restricted to a one-time encounter with an optional boss. Good times.


And the door to Culex's place just doesn't get locked; it disappears from the rock wall entirely. I always liked that.

this is so awesome.

previously unknown useless easter eggs in games I've played to death and back blow my mind!

I wonder, what's the limit to the number of Snifit #'s? Someone should test it out sometime...

Seriously, I'm not even joking here. If I've said it once, I'll say it again: between Super Mario Bros. 2 and this game, you do not fuck with Toad. He'll break your ass if you so much as try.

Truly, a game that was ahead of its time.

Man that's awesome!

So, uh, I wonder how many snifits that place can hold >_>.

...You know, now that I think of it, Culex reminds me a lot of Zeromus's appearance from FFXII, right down to their posture and colour schemes, not to mention that Culex borrows music from the latter's game. It's almost eerie, sort of.

Could just be a coincidence, though.