OK so here we have Round 3: Wizard’s Castle. We also have a new enemy: the EEL WHIPS. That’s actually what the manual says it’s called. Aside from making no sense to begin with, it’s one of only three enemies with a plural name in the manual (the others being the DEATH MASTERS from back in round 1, and another that’s yet to appear), so I assume EEL WHIPS is actually the singular form. Anyway, these jerks float around and drop GOLD WATER JUGs instead of money when you kill them.
They also drop GOLDEN HARPs. I would’ve thought gold would be too malleable to support the tension of a harp’s strings. Maybe it’s an alloy.
And GOLD NECKLACEs. These don’t look so golden. All of these items are worth points only, so they push you closer to getting your max health up. That’s great, but I think you get enough points in the game to reach the upper limit pretty reliably; you don’t need to worry about getting all the points.
Little bit of hidden cash here.
These guys generally aren’t worth the bother, but that guy on the left will knock me off the ladder if I let him. But he’s too high up to hit!
The trick is patience. That way you can kill the guy you can reach (for a GOLDEN MIRROR), and the other one’ll move out of the way. And you lose a heart to the timer.
Oh hey, a bar!
It’s a new bartender! She still says the same thing as the other dudes when you buy the same drink twice in a row. Actually almost all the bartenders do. Anyway, she lets you know there is a store sells armor, and chides you for drinking underage. Doesn’t stop her selling it to you, though. Also, notice that in my bar run I have sixty more gold than I do in the main run.
I trade a few hit points for four gold and move on.
I think I might’ve missed some hidden gold on this staircase. I’m kinda sucking up the place.
I just noticed that in the first shot there there’s a ladder going back down. I wonder if that means you can climb back down. Or if there’d be any point in doing so. Hmm. Anyway, not pictured is the free heart I got for jumping in the little corridor I’m standing in in the last shot above. Anyway again, this room is full of snakes. Now that I have the BROAD SWORD, I can kill them in two hits instead of three. Here’s me trying to jump on one instead of hitting it with my sword:
This isn’t Mario, that’s for sure. Wonder Boy doesn’t even have fireballs!
Or does he?! Actually the magic shop is not worth my time or money, but if you’re curious: Thunder flash hits all enemies on the screen for minor damage, and the fireball is a fireball (!) that flies from you towards the nearest enemy. It usually misses if the enemy is moving.
Jumping here gets you some gold.
I have no idea what the purpose of the floating platform in this room is. Maybe it does something in the arcade version, which has vertical scrolling. Maybe if you have better boots it lets you shortcut up through the roof. Maybe it’s just there to waste your time. Notice that I lost a heart to the timer while I was jumping on it. I’m sure you usually get a timer refill on the way up the stairs to the left, but it didn’t turn up this time.
?
!
It’s that armor store the bartender was talking about! Sadly, I can only afford light armor.
It’s pink. The conveyer belt there is I think the only one in the game. In leather boots, as I am, you can stand still by holding forward. In cloth boots or barefoot you move backwards. In ceramic or legendary boots, you move forward slowly. There’s some hidden gold on the stairs past the belt, which I missed, so I’ve thrown in a shot from my bar run. Note that I got the knight armor in that run. And I didn’t get hit so much.
A short trip across the battlements later, we reach the end of the stage. Swinging the sword in mid air is not necessary to get the hidden gold, but I like to do it anyway. There’s no stage exit, just a menacing looking door. There’s only one thing to do!
Inside is the stage boss of the Wizard’s Castle, the
When he comes at you high, you jump and he hits you:
Aww, nards. Then he hits you again:
Then you hit him a couple times and he dies:
Yeah! Collecting the coins finishes the stage. I get back a heart for killing the boss, and another for finishing the stage, putting me on three. That’s kind of pathetic for this stage of the game, especially since I’ve been to the nurse once already.
Here’s the map:
I'd like to tell you I drew this as a child, but sadly this is the work of a grown man. Because it was taking me so long to piece together the screenshots to make the maps of the first two stages, I decided to try something different this time: Coloured pencils. Rather than risk sullying the result with accuracy or consistency, I drew it freehand from memory. So there might be some inaccuracies. I have a feeling there’s a hidden coin missing at the first set of steps. I had to turn down the brightness to get some of the lighter pencils to show up, too. All in all, as a time saving measure I think this failed.
Here’s bonus footage: How the knight fight is supposed to go.
And of course the TL,DR version:
In the forum thread where I first posted this, someone asked for GIFs of the magic items, so I made the following supplementary post. Unfortunately I didn't keep the raw materials of the GIF, so I can't restore it to include all frames like I did with the boss fight above. The black box in the text is an inline spoiler. Click it to reveal the text.
Behold:
That's the TORNADO MAGIC, followed by the 8 BOMBS. I guess the bombs aren't really magic, come to think of it, just grenades. The damage seems to be on par with the sword, but I don't know if it gets stronger as the sword does. Magic is actually pretty useful in a few situations. There are some enemies that are low to the ground, so you can't hit them until they move upwards. Much easier to deal with them if you've got something to throw at them.
I've got .gifs for lightning and fireballs as well, but they contain SPOILERS for Round 4, so you'll have to wait until the next update.
Also I found the hidden gold at the first set of stairs in Round 3:
Couldn't find any at the second stairs though, so I've updated the map:
Next: Round 4
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