La-Mulana: Still the world’s best fake MSX game

[Yimothy]

La-Mulana is an exploratory platformer first released back in 2005, in which the archaeologist Lemeza Kosugi enters the La-Mulana ruins in pursuit of his missing father. The original freeware version imitates games from 80s MSX computers, running in 16 colours and 256x192 resolution with flip-screen scrolling, single colour sprites, and a whole lot of Konami references that were removed from the later commercial releases. The commercial version also revamps the graphics to roughly SNES levels, mixes up the puzzles a bit and adds some stuff. I think, anyway. It’s a while since I played it on Wii.

La-Mulana is one of the most mysterious and demanding games that I’ve played, full of puzzles and secrets which require paying close attention and taking detailed notes (or looking up spoilers) to make any progress. In the early game death is always just around the corner but by the end the player character has enough HP that there’s little risk of dying outside of boss fights, and the challenge comes from figuring out what to do. It can all be figured out, but it isn’t easy.

I made a let’s play of the original version on the old forum, and now I’m gonna play the remake on Switch and see if my detailed knowledge of the original version will let me steamroll it or leave me stuck as I try to apply old solutions to new versions of the game’s puzzles. After that, if I haven’t had too much La-Mulana already, it’ll be time to take on the sequel.

 

[Yimothy]

Two hours in to the remake and I’ve beaten one guardian, opened the way to two more, got several items, and am stuck on a room guard in the fourth level, so my familiarity with the original is speeding up my run so far. This definitely took longer last time. I have noticed a few differences, mostly things that seem easier now or are more directly clued. A few things I got stuck on, like the red doors, have clues that just tell you how they work. The doors should have been pretty obvious anyway, but I guess I wasn’t the only one to have trouble with them in the original. The path to the first boss is spelled out much more clearly now, too.

It’s nice having the scanner and the subweapons allocated to different buttons. Pressing up to enter doors is throwing me off, though. I think I like the sixteen colour MSX style better than the remake’s fancier graphics, but maybe I’m just used to them.

 

[Mogri]

I'm interested in hearing more of your comparative experiences with the two. What's your impression on the combat? The bosses in particular seem like they changed considerably (some more than others).

 

[Yimothy]

The remake seems like it makes it harder to stay alive but easier to figure out the puzzles. That might be because I’m used to playing with a fully upgraded Lemeza and I already know how to solve a lot of the puzzles, though. Still, there are messages clearly spelling out things that gave me trouble in the original version, like the one-way doors, and some puzzles are noticeably simpler, like the sun/moon/star machine in the mausoleum and the blocks in lava puzzle (now a block, singular, in lava puzzle) at the end of the inferno cavern. There aren’t easily missed MSX roms all over the place and breakable walls seem less picky about how I break them - I think I’ve only found one so far that doesn’t break to any weapon I throw at it.

Room guards and other big enemies seem tougher. My usual method in the original version was to get close to the enemy and spam shuriken, but now they seem more likely to require accurate shots to specific weak spots. This also applies to some puzzles - the spot on the wall you have to shoot over a barricade in the temple of the sun is now a pot on a plinth that requires three shots through a narrow passage that gets you a shock if you aim too low. I died there the first time I tried it.

I’ve seen some variations from the original version already. The speed boots are in a shop that you can reach very early rather than behind several puzzles, which is a good thing. The ice cape is now where the grapple claw was. Speaking of which, Lemeza’s movement seems subtly different. I can jump against a wall and then move away from it on the way down, which I’m sure I couldn’t before (edit: I had a look at my LP and I might be wrong about this) - this should allow me to climb in a few places that would have required the claw before. Swimming seems different, too. I thought at first it was impossible to climb out of water unless the target platform was at the same level as the top of the water, but it turns out I need to jump without holding a direction to go high out of the water. Several ladders that had to be unlocked in the original are now just there, so I can access more of the labyrinth without unlocking it than I could before. Enemies in there seem to do more damage than they used to, though, and I never seem to survive in there for long.

I’ve seen at least one example of the game messing with my expectations so far: breaking the wall that used to hide the life jewel in the village now reveals a nest of bats, making it much harder to reveal the new hiding place of the jewel just above it. Or maybe I should have just come back after getting flares.

So far I haven’t taken any notes, relying on my familiarity with the original and the new in-game notes app for clues I don’t recognise. It does mean I don’t have a list of seals I need to break and shops with stuff I haven’t bought yet, which will probably come back to bite me. The switch’s screenshot button is pretty handy, too.

 

[Yimothy]

The remake seems to be diverging more as I get further in to it. I got the mirror from a chest instead of a boss (which I was able to reach thanks to the new circle of illumination around Lemeza in the Chamber of Extinction), there’s a puzzle to unlock the Confusion Gate that wasn’t there before, and getting in to and through the teleport maze is different. The serpent staff isn’t where it was before, replaced by a weight switch of uncertain effect (maybe it dislodged the pyramid top, opening the way to the Anubis room which has a new room guard who seems to be invincible and have an instant death attack). I haven’t found what I need to get access to fairies yet, though I have a clue about it which I really should pursue. I got the chain whip in the same way as before but there’s an instant death trap in its room which would have frustrated me more if I hadn’t left and saved after beating the room guard before it on about the fifth attempt. If I was still having as much trouble with the grapple claw as I had in the original that would have been infuriating. There’s a lot more instant death in general, actually.

Still a lot of fun and I haven’t looked anything up yet. Hopefully I can get all the way through with just the spoilers I already know from the original.

 

[Yimothy]

I’m currently throwing myself at the Viy over and over. It’s still quite a difficult fight, and I don’t seem to be able to cheese it like I could in the original - it’s harder to land hits with the rolling shuriken and even when they do connect they don’t cancel the enemy attack like in the original version. I’ve reached a second phase in the fight but haven’t managed to beat it. It’s got an attack that is actually aimed slightly above where you stand. I keep jumping to try to dodge it which takes me right into it. Even so, none of its attacks do much damage, aside from the contact damage when you fall to the bottom of the screen which will end the fight in seconds.

In other areas, I’ve gotten the double jump (which can now be used at any point in a jump, not just while ascending) and found the software that lets me warp to reverse fields, so my navigation has gotten a lot easier. I’m a bit stuck in the confusion gate, though. There’s a whole lot of blocks with fairy pictures on them which I think I need the key fairy to unlock, but I haven’t figured out how to summon it. I got it the first time I summoned a fairy (and used it to change the shop in the spring), but never since. I assume there’s software that makes it happen every time and otherwise it’s random, but it’s a frustrating thing to be stuck on. If the items are in the same place as the original then the body armour (which would make the boss I’m stuck on easier) and the item I need to open up the endless corridor (which would eventually get me in to a couple of other fields) are stuck behind this fairy the rng won’t give me.

I still haven’t looked anything up. Hoping I can keep it that way. Speaking of which, don’t tell me how to solve the problems I’ve been mentioning, I want to figure it out myself.

 

[Mogri]

Heck if I can remember anyway! There are lots of software combinations in the remake, some of which have something to do with faeries, but I don't even remember if the game indicates you've got a combination.

 

[Yimothy]

There’s an indication when you combine software. I’ve got three that I know of at present, two of which are utilities that combine with specific upgrades for more features. The other is two of the game softwares. I don’t know what that one does. There are also times when a single game soft does something, like the one that allows reverse field warping. I don’t think there’s any indication for those.

 

[Mogri]

I will say that I don't think software combinations are ever required to beat the game... but I could be wrong about that, too

 

[Yimothy]

Since my last post I’ve played a bit more. I still haven’t figured out the fairies, but I found the item needed for the endless corridor in a different location but via the same method as in the original. There was a new puzzle to solve before I could do it, which took a little while but I got there. Then I beat the boss I’d been stuck on, actually pretty easily. It seems like the subweapons must be pretty weak - I’d been using shuriken because you can’t get close to the boss to attack it and falling to the bottom of the chamber deals huge damage, but this time I learned that if you jump at it you can land a melee hit and the contact damage will throw you back on to a platform. Once I started doing that it was all over in probably under a minute.

Beating the Viy opens the door by the waterfall in the village, just like in the original version, but unlike in the original you can’t see the door until after beating the boss. There is a patch of background that looks slightly off where the door winds up going, but I’m sure I only noticed that because I’d been expecting a door there. Anyway, that’s gotten me into a new field which I expect to open up a few more, so after feeling stuck for a while I’ve got lots of things to do again.

I’m also making more progress in the endless corridor, but I’m stuck on the second level of it. I got stuck here in the original version, too, in that case because I solved the puzzle straight away but the game didn’t recognise it and so I spent ages trying different things before going back to the first thing I’d done and having it actually work. I’m hoping not to repeat that experience. The puzzle appears to be basically the same but with a different clue and presumably a different numerical solution. In the original there was a clue in the manual (or you could get it from your general knowedge). In the remake I think the clue is referring to the seals. It says something about how people are born, live their lives, reproduce, and ascend with the mother. The seals are of origin (which was conception in the original) life, birth, and death. I think the solution is to walk past the glyph for the number for birth (2), then life (3), then origin (1), then death (4), assuming reproducing refers to the origin of life and ascension could be about death, but it hasn’t worked so far. Another possibility is that there are more clues somewhere I haven’t found yet.

 

[Yimothy]

A few more hours in and I’m starting to feel pretty stuck. I still haven’t figured out the endless corridor puzzle - I’m now thinking I need to find a number that ends in nine, since the room layout means I have to walk past a nine to get to where the puzzle ends - and I’m also stuck in the tower of the goddess. I’ve super Mario’d the pot in the mausoleum that flooded the tower in the original, but I’ve only been able to flood a small section of the tower. There’s a second seal in the spring that I think I need to break to flood the rest, but none of my weapons are working on it through the wall and I can’t find a way to get in direct contact with it. Flooding the small section also made the gun platforms appear in the tower, killing which opened the chest containing the item that unlocked the exits from the tower in the original, but the chest isn’t there in the remake and taking out the platforms doesn’t seem to have done anything.

I have figured out how to choose which fairy I get. I’m sure there is a software combination to do it, but I haven’t found that so instead I’ve learned which summon animation leads to which fairy. If you go offscreen before the fairy appears you can reset it, so I duck offscreen until the one I want comes up. It’s inelegant, but it works, and I’ve been able to unlock various hidden things now, including power-ups for both defence and offence. I still can’t beat the time freezing enemy in the labyrinths, though.

One big difference in this version is the way the drops from pots work. In the original pots would have set drops of cash, ammo, weights, or nothing, and they’d reset each time you loaded the game. It meant there was always enough cash and ammo available. In this version those things only seem to drop once and then you get random drops of one or two coins or spears or whatever, so there’s never enough. Actually there are a decent number of large one-off cash drops, so for most of the game I’ve had enough, but I’ve also had to spend a lot on weights (they added a whole pile of doors that require a weight each time you pass through that serve no obvious purpose beyond wasting resources) and subweapons, so at the moment I’ve got 400 coins worth of stuff I want to buy but no obvious way to get the cash beyond grinding. There is a fairy which increases drops which would speed it up, but that also means grinding the summon point until the right fairy comes up.

The change to how health works I think is also for the worse. In the original when you reloaded you got your VIT fully restored. In the remake it stays the same. They added the hot spring in the village which refills it whenever you want, but in effect all that happens is you wind up warping back to the village and hiking to the spring all the time. Experience is now a random drop you have to collect instead of something you get automatically from every enemy, so it seems to fill up and trigger a refill way less often now, and even when it does quite often I’ve just been back to the hot spring and filled up anyway. It’s getting to be less of an issue now that I have more health, the defence boost, and access to fairies, at least.

I feel like I’m complaining a lot, probably because I’m stuck on so many things and getting frustrated. It remains an excellent game that I’ve been playing whenever I get the chance and thinking about potential puzzle solutions for whenever I don’t.

 

[Yimothy]

I wound up looking up a wiki for the puzzle in the second level of the endless corridor. In my LP of the original I got hopelessly stuck there after getting the solution right on my first try and the game not recognising it, so I spent ages trying out every other thing I could think of before going back to the correct solution. In this case I had figured out three of the four numbers correctly, but whatever the connection is between reproduction and the number five I didn’t figure it out and still haven’t even knowing it’s the answer. Apparently it doesn’t matter if you also activate other numbers, so long as the required ones are in the correct order relative to each other, so I could have just done all the numbers from zero to nine and it would have worked. I might have tried that if I’d been coming to the puzzle without the baggage of having been stuck on it for so long in the original. Ah well. Hopefully I won’t have to look anything else up.

Solving that puzzle let me finish the rest of the corridor and got me into the ninth field where I have accomplished nothing. I have an item I need to use there and a clue saying to be guided by the map, but I don’t have the map. I also picked up the key to the labyrinths, so I can explore them properly now. Hopefully I’ll find something there that will resolve my other major sticking point at the moment, opening the exits from the tower of the goddess. I’ve done what was needed to open them in the original, but it hasn’t worked in this version.

The money issues I was complaining about have receded now that I’m getting in to new areas again and finding some large drops. I’ve found a couple more software combinations, but still have no idea what they do.

 

[Octopus Prime]

I was making good progress in my own play through of the remake a few months ago (was exploring the Chamber of Extinction, IIRC), But took a long enough break that I couldn’t possibly pick it back up without replaying it entirely.
Might just pick up the sequel instead since it plays a lot more smoothly.

 

[Yimothy]

I’ve let myself down again and gone back to the wiki to figure out how to flood the rest of the tower of the goddess. It turned out to be relatively obvious - I’d seen the relevant clue and had an idea what it meant, and I’d scoured several areas looking for what it was referring to, but somehow I’d only looked in the top half of the relevant place and not the lower part where it was. I think I’d gotten hung up on the idea that I’d semi-permanently screwed up the puzzle after finding a hidden fairy that said it could reset a screwed up puzzle for me after I beat Tiamat. After getting through the endless corridor I’d done most of what there is to be done in the base shrine of the mother and the twin labyrinths, and gotten access to the dimensional corridor, which is where Tiamat is and which was full of reasonably tough minibosses, all of which have to be beaten to reach Tiamat if it works like it did in the original. I had one of them respawn on me, which makes me worry I’ll have to defeat them all in one run and thus might never actually beat this game. It was seeming like an uphill fight to beat Tiamat and reset the puzzle I might have screwed up and so I wound up looking up whether I had screwed it up or not and so saw the solution. Now that I have that done, hopefully I can get the rest on my own.

Sad to see the hidden Minmay doll replaced with a coin chest.

 

[Yimothy]

I’ve used the wiki again because the Chamber of Birth is an absolute bugger of a place. I wound up looking at a lot more of it than I wanted to because I didn’t know exactly which puzzle I needed to solve to make progress, too.

I was actually pretty close to figuring it out - there are background images of various items Lemeza has by this point, and you have to hold those items up in front of them. I’d spotted the background skull and activated it for myslelf, but missed the snake (which was what was stopping my progress) and the woman statue. I’d also missed the puzzle in the infinite pit room - I think what happened was I tried to scan the altars while I had the cogwheel equipped instead of the scanner and gotten a shock, so I thought I was supposed to use the cog there after doing something else. If I’d had the scanner equipped then I would have gotten some text which I’m pretty sure would have allowed me to figure out the puzzle on my own. It wasn’t helped by the fact that if you take a hit in the infinite pit or jump into it the wrong way you wind up stuck with no way to recover except warping out of the field. If they’d put the altar before the pit so that I could have warped directly back in instead of having to hike through the tower of the goddess every time, then trying to figure out the puzzles would have been way less of a hassle. Anyways, once I knew basically what to do I was able to figure out the rest of the field. Palenque was way easier than in the original, though maybe that’s because I had the defence boosting item this time.

The dimensional corridor is quite hard this time, too. All the passageways get closed off behind you and you have to defeat so far up to three room guards to get back to the save point and exit (warp still doesn’t work there). I wound up grinding for exp drops for health top ups between each one, so I didn’t find this to be a positive change, especially when I was dying on subsequent guards. I’m dreading the room with the life jewel, which was hard enough in the original. I hope there’s a lamp of time refill thing in there, otherwise it’s going to be a tremendous pain to get.

 

[SilentSnake]

Chamber of Birth was where I finally had to look up answers, so don't feel bad about looking things up there. Chamber of Birth is rough.

 

[Ludendorkk]

In general you shouldn't feel bad about looking up anything in these games, they are hard as hell

 

[Yimothy]

I feel like the late part of the game I’m getting to now is quite hard, not just from a puzzle point of view but also execution. I spent a while trying to get through the passage that leads to the top of the Tower of Ruin, but there’s a series of timed blocks in there that I just can’t seem to get right which are suspended over spike which, unlike everywhere else in this version of the game, do damage when you’re standing in them (in other places you only take damage when you first contact the tip of the spikes). It’s very tricky and you only get a couple of shots at it before running out of VIT. Plus it’s several minutes hike to get back there between attempts. And after several attempts I realised there’s a door at the end which I haven’t unlocked yet, so there’s no point going there at present. If it’s like the original there’ll be a boss at the end but no real way to grind to refill all the VIT I’m losing getting to it, so I’ll probably be making another zillion attempts before I get it.

I’ve now beaten all but one of the sub bosses in the dimensional corridor. I’m not sure where the other one is but I haven’t actually gone looking for it yet. The room with the life jewel, as predicted, was pretty miserable. You have to use the lamp of time to reach it, but there’s no way to refill the lamp in there, so after each failure there was nothing for it but to reset and start again. Even once I got it I then had to beat a fairly tough sub boss to get out again. This version of the game seems happier to waste your time than the original, which itself was pretty tough but had a lot less instant death and much more frequent VIT top-ups.

In happier news I’ve finally figured out which software combinations allow me to choose which fairy I’ll get. I’m not sure I’ll be deliberately summoning many more fairies, but that’s still progress.

 

[Mightyblue]

You're going to want/need the key fairy combo to preserve your sanity, if nothing else.

 

[Yimothy]

I think I already got pretty much everything key fairy related by entering/exiting fairy summon rooms until I got the fairy I wanted.

I’ve finished off all the guardians and gotten the magatama and a couple of mantras. I got the medicine which I remember working in the original version, I wonder if they’ll have changed it up for this one. I’m still missing one of the softwares. I think I’ve checked every shop, but maybe it’s in a chest or something. I think I have everything I need to finish now, so I can probably let it slide.

I had to use the wiki again to find the last of Tiamat’s sub bosses. I actually had the relevant clue about swinging my weapon in each direction still in my in-game saved messages. I’d thought it was referring to the dance of life, but kept it just in case, and then ignored it when I actually needed it. I’d figured out the other clue telling me which rooms I needed to go to, but didn’t know what to do in them.

The guardians mostly seem to have been easier than in the original, despite all my complaining earlier about how much harder it is to stay alive in this. Being able to reload to just before the fights instead of having to hike back helps too. Tiamat was way easier, I think I got her on the second or maybe third attempt once I’d figured out how to dodge the wave attack. Baphomet was harder than in the original just because they took away the option to cheese it with spears, but still pretty easy. Sakit might have been harder than in the original if I’d taken him on at the start of the game, but was very easy with a maxed health bar, twice-upgraded whip, and increased defence. I actually got stuck briefly before remembering that I hadn’t taken him out yet.

Alright, I’m in the home stretch. I’d kind of expected my familiarity with the original would let me waltz through the remake, but I’ve got about 25 hours on the clock and it’s been pretty challenging. I’ve looked up more solutions than I’d hoped to, but I’ve figured out a lot of stuff on my own as well. What a great game this is.

 

[Yimothy]

And I beat it. Just over 28 hours, according to the in-game timer. That’d be a lot more if I wasn’t going in knowing half the solutions from the original version. I wound up looking up a couple more things: I wanted to know what the weight point that you only get access to in the true shrine did, since it didn’t do what I expected and remove the barrier to reaching the final boss room. When I looked that up I accidentally saw how to remove the barrier, which I might have gotten by myself (I’d noticed the fairy symbol on the barrier and was planning to return with the key fairy, which wouldn’t have worked by maybe when that failed I would have thought to go back to the fairy in the room in the endless corridor who had been telling me to come see her when the time came). I also, after losing to the final boss repeatedly for an hour (I was getting pretty close!) and giving up for the night, looked up where the one bit of software I hadn’t found was out of curiosity. That led to me accidentally seeing the software combinations list. I loaded up the weapon power up combos and beat the game on my next try.

I think in total I looked up less than ten puzzle solutions, which I think is pretty good for La-Mulana. All of them I can see how I was supposed to figure it out for myself (aside from maybe the software combinations, which would require just ridiculous trial and error to figure out). I had some complaints while I was playing it, but what a game. Has there been anything else like it? The sequel, presumably. I’ll take that on sometime soon.

 

[Ludendorkk]

La Mulana 2 DLC announced

La-Mulana 2 DLC ‘The Tower of Oannes’ announced

Publisher PLAYISM and developer Nigoro have announced La-Mulana 2 downloadable content “The Tower of Oannes.” It will launch for PC via Steam, GOG, and the Humble Store in 2021.

www.gematsu.com

 

[Yimothy]

The newly-added map “The Tower of Oannes” ranks with the previous installment’s Hell Temple in difficulty!

Having spent some time in Hell Temple I’m not sure I’m looking forward to this. But I haven’t played LM2 yet, so if the DLC is there when I do I might give it a go.

 

[Mightyblue]

iirc the devs kinda pissed off the community somewhat as LM2 was released sorta half-baked; it was functionally content complete, but there were a ton of bugs and instead of fixing some of them the devs spent more time patching out certain exploits and unintended puzzles solutions. I assume after a few years they're pretty much done tinkering with it, but the video LP I watched last year you could hear the frustration in the LPer's voice as time/updates went on and the devs kept changing things.

 

[Nodal]

iirc the devs kinda pissed off the community somewhat as LM2 was released sorta half-baked; it was functionally content complete, but there were a ton of bugs and instead of fixing some of them the devs spent more time patching out certain exploits and unintended puzzles solutions. I assume after a few years they're pretty much done tinkering with it, but the video LP I watched last year you could hear the frustration in the LPer's voice as time/updates went on and the devs kept changing things.

I burnt out on LM2 after I got through almost the whole game only for a puzzle solution to rely on me having either written down something hours and hours ago or remembering it.

 

[Ludendorkk]

Started another run of La Mulana 2 instead of continuing with my save from last year (as one does) and I'm getting to that midpoint(?) part of the game where you have like a dozen different threads to pull on and trying to remember which of the puzzles you need to work on next and its just, so much. The density of these games is truly astounding. Am I having fun? Ahh, who can say...

 

[Ludendorkk]

Broke through where I stalled out last time (the Hall of Malice), defeated Surtr, Echidna, and Hel (I used a walkthrough to get through Eternal Prison, which I don't feel bad about). Surtr shows off the devs love of random projectile spam but fell into place once I figured out how to bait the necessary attack patterns to win, Hel is a pretty tough fight but a good one, and Echidna feels like Tiamat 2.0 in that she feels like a boss that was designed to be fought by a completely different character than the one you control and I had to grind to get the absolute best equipment in order to eek out a win. Unbelievably it appears that the end may be in sight. Hopefully this is enough progress to access the DLC when it comes to Switch in like 2 years

 

[Ludendorkk]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1570628319720378368

Well I guess they are making Maze of Galious now