Awrighty, Round 2! I guess the first level is more the outskirts of the City of Wonder Land, and this is the main drag. That said, the manual calls this area the Valley of Peace.
These little mushroom dudes (MALKONIDs, which I assume derives from the prefix myco-, which makes things fungal, combined with mal-, which makes them harmful) get pretty upset when you hit them.
And they’re stingy! On the plus side killing it pushed me over 30,000 points, so my maximum health increased by one. The manual says multiples of 100,000 get you extra hearts, but I’m not complaining.
This is a shoe store. I’m not going there yet.
Instead I jump off the platform. There’s money between those buildings: A whole 1G. Meanwhile the mushroom respawns.
Up here I can get a shield, but first:
More cash! I’m a little bit short of money after buying those drinks in Round 1. I don’t normally bother with bars, because I pretty much know my way around Wonder Land, and there isn’t usually too much money to spare. Right now I want 120G, because with that I can buy the cheap shield (40G) and the expensive boots (80G) in this town.
Speaking of bars, there’s one over here! If you look closely, you’ll notice that I lost two gold and gained a heart of health between shots. That’s because I made a separate run through of the game, just to get drunk. Like I said, you can’t really afford to stop at every bar in the game if you want to have good equipment. This way I can ignore the bars in my main run, but still get all the information. Let’s see what they have to say in this town. I’ll get a couple rounds of ale, then some mead:
When you buy mead you find out that some dude is oppressing folks ‘round here. At least the drinks are cold. The first round of ale scores me some info: I might have an ally against the red knight in a cavern somewhere. Groovy. The second just gets the bartender fishing for compliments. Anyway, back to the main game. I was thinking about how to spend my money.
I buy the light shield and spend a little time trying to get money jumping off the left side of the platform. I don’t get any. There is a coin there, though. I guess you can’t reach it without shoes.
The question mark door is the magic shop. I won’t be buying any of that, but I thought it might be worth a browse.
The shopkeeper can see I’m wasting his time, and he locks me out. Jerk.
Just outside of town is a desert. And an arrow.
This cactus is hiding some gold.
This dude (a GOBLET) is why I prioritised the shield: it blocks arrows. After a few hits he drops a bag of cash. I need this to have 22G in it so I can buy leather boots.
Sadly, there wasn’t enough. On the plus side, this must be the cavern the barkeep mentioned.
Jumping above this step makes me 4G, so now I have enough. But I can’t go back to town.
The FANG BATS swoop when you get close, and drop hearts when they die. That’s good, ‘cause I’ve taken a few hits.
And because I tend to get hit by bats.
I take it out, heal up, and proceed. But what’s this?
Another fortune teller! This is the rebel the barkeep mentioned, and the sidequest I mentioned in the first post. You visit a string of people to get the Hero’s Emblem. Baraboro is in Round 4. We’ll have to keep an eye out for Catherine.
Since I cheaped out and didn’t buy shoes, I miss this jump. I’m flashing, and so invisible in the second shot, but I’m in the lava and down a heart.
The second attempt goes more smoothly. This bat swoops a little bit high, so you have to jump to hit it.
I screw it up.
Not pictured: the heart it drops falling into the lava. Blast!
This cheery fellow is an optional boss. He hovers and throws fireballs at you, and swoops when you close in.
I get hit a few times, and now I’m almost dead. I blame it on trying to play and screenshot at the same time. His yellow spot is all red now, so he’s nearly dead too.
Killing him gets me a heart back, a cool explosion, and a new sword! There are a few optional bosses hidden through the game. Most give you a sword upgrade, but some will refill your health or drop magic. Incidentally, when I did my bar run and found out that someone resisting the red knight was hiding in the cavern, I thought the bartender was talking about this dude, and I felt a bit guilty about killing him. Of course it was the someone beyond the wall, so I can relax about having killed the KING VAMPIRE.
I spent frickin’ ages getting up here with no shoes.
Three coins drop for a total of eight gold, and I move on.
Poor little guy. Not pictured here is me falling in the lava again. I’m gonna be real embarrassed if I have to use my revival potion in round 2.
Here’s another shoe shop. This is why I didn’t prioritise the shoes earlier or just buy the cheaper cloth shoes, which I could’ve afforded. I figured I could get here easily enough. Too bad I suck.
I spend the 80 bucks. A nice touch in this game is that you can tell by looking at your character how well-equipped he is. My cheap shield is pink (as would be the cloth boots), but my more expensive boots are yellow (as is my sword’s hilt, whereas the starting sword is red). The really good stuff is blue.
Jumping on the last step gets me a few gold back. On the right is the hospital. Normally I don’t use them, but I’m in kind of a bad way here.
For just 20 gold you get your remaining health added to your score, all your health back, and some good advice. As a nurse myself, I’m not sure how I feel about the depiction of the profession in this game. On the one hand, she’s very competent. On the other hand, she’s a cow. Plus she won’t help you, no matter how sick you are, unless you pay. Each time you visit, the price goes up. If I need healing again, it’ll cost 40G.
I immediately disregard the nurse’s advice and get hit by a stationary enemy.
In the arcade version there’s vertical scrolling, but on the SMS things are nicely compartmentalised.
In Monster Land pretty much every cloud has a golden lining. You might be able to get to that other cloud if you buy cloth boots at the first shoe shop and then ceramic boots at the second, letting you jump further, but I haven’t done that in ages. Actually, hang on, let’s find out.
Aww yeah. Those lovely blue boots give a nice boost to jumping distance, and also make no sense to me (ceramic footware?). They aren’t the best boots going, though. That’s the Legend Boots. It is possible to get those in round 2, but you have to resort to cheating. They cost 350G, and the second shop won’t stock them unless you buy the leather boots at the first one for 80G. There just isn’t that much gold in the first two levels. But! If you press the pause button like seventy times (or any button on controller 2 – the Master System has its pause button on the console itself rather than the controller, so if you’ve got two controllers the game lets the second function as a pause button) you get I think 45G. I believe it can be repeated as often as you like (within the limitation imposed by the hourglass), so it’s sort of like the worst simultaneous 2-player mode ever if you’ve got someone to hit the button for you. Anyway, back to the main run:
Trees are as profitable as ever. The arrow in that last screenshot will go on to hit me.
This jerk doesn’t even have the decency to drop money. That’s the gauntlet, which doubles your attack for a little while. That’s nice, but I don’t really need it right now.
This is the boss mushroom (MASTER MYCONID (note that the little guys are MALKONIDs. Apparently the manual writers didn’t have a very good style guide)). It throws lesser mushrooms at you. Sadly they don’t drop anything when killed. The boss itself takes two hits to kill. With the power of the gauntlet:
One hit K.O.! Poor little guy. It drops 48G in total, which is nice.
Here’s where I stand: Got the broad sword (up from gladius), a shield and shoes, the gauntlet is still in effect, I have a scroll to take to Catherine, and the key to the door to the next level. Speaking of which:
No round bonus this time, because I don’t have perfect health. I need to start playing better if I wanna get through this. Here’s the map of this stage:
It’s much bigger than Round 1 (and took a lot longer to assemble), so I broke it up into sections. Click it for a full-size version in one (wide) piece.
TL,DR:
Next: Round 3
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