Welcome back! The plan this time is to stop messing around and make some progress. To that end, I've taken Piranha-Man to his obvious destination: the sea. With these blocks smashed, I'm free to carry on.
Pretty standard stuff so far.
There are a heck of a lot of ropers down here.
A little further on I meet a new challenge: moving blocks. They're fairly easy to dodge.
Carrying on, I come to an intersection and take a left.
All that's over there is a nurse, and I don't particularly need healing right now, so I leave.
I seem to be getting a lot of charm stone drops.
I dunno about you guys, but I think this sunken ship is pretty cool. Must've been a hell of a storm to flip it upside-down like that.
There's an entrance to the ship up there, but first I'm gonna explore the sea floor a little more.
I find some more blocks and take a hit. The damage is negligible, it's more of an annoyance.
Sweet!
I make my way back, braving the moving blocks once more.
I love how the door is upside-down. Good attention to detail. The inside of the ship has kind of a spookiness to it.
Especially since it's full of these guys. They pop up out of the ground when you reach the right point. The red ones just pop up and wave at you, but I don't let that lack of threateningness stop me from taking a hit.
These guys also make another appearance.
I got some frames of a shadow-man coming and going. I guess I shoulda taken enough for a .gif. Oh well.
Carrying on I run into some green shadow-men. They're much worse than the red ones, because they throw fireballs at you. A lot of them will also hide until you've gone past them, so you wind up with projectiles coming in from both sides.
Whoever built this ship had the amazing foresight to shape the roof of this corridor so that the door could still be reached with the ship upside-down.
And to nail these barrels to the floor. The approaching cyclops has the potential to be an annoyance: they take a lot of hits. Still, that just means hitting them back further and further until they die.
Even with shadow-men interfering, it goes smoothly.
Phew.
They just keep coming!
Aww nards.
I get knocked back for a while, then take my revenge.
Finally I get through that corridor. Fire stones are a much more manageable enemy: they don't move.
They're still an annoyance in the company of other enemies, though.
Now really, how was I supposed to get past these enemies without taking hits?
The trick, I think, is to time your jumps right. Too bad for me!
Yesssss!
Noooooo!
I wonder if the barrels that're now on the roof were originally loose on the floor and fell when the ship flipped, or if they were stuck to the roof even when the ship was upright?
Left alone, shadow-men will send fireballs after you, making progress more difficult. I go back to get rid of this guy.
Cyclopses are not what I need in these tight quarters. On the one hand they're easier to deal with because once you hit them back into a barrel you can just keep hitting them until they die, but on the other hand they move towards you. I hit this one after it jumped up onto the barrels, and then it fell back down. I move in to follow up:
...and for once everything goes smoothly. If you let them recover from hit-stun, they'll throw a fireball at you, as in the second shot there. Luckily, I managed to avoid it, and the cyclops' cruel fate was sealed:
A health drop! Sweet.
Blue shadows! They hit harder, and they're everywhere. Good thing my prince armor is encouraging more item drops, so I'm keeping my health up.
This again! I managed to race in and take it on on equal footing, but that second cyclops coming in from the left is a worry.
Or not. I manage to take out the first one in time, and the second is just as easy.
I even manage to take it out in time to get the potion the first one dropped. Too bad I'm already carrying as many potions as I can.
Another door! Inside:
Captain Dragon!
It jumps around and throws hooks at you. If you stand in the right place, they bounce right over you.
What you want to do is smack it one when it lands.
On recovery, it'll jump again without throwing any hooks. When it lands, hit it again.
Or, miss completely and dodge another set of hooks.
Let's try that again!
Shoot.
Double shoot. On the plus side, the damage from the hooks is miniscule.
I think I swung too late this time.
Left with nowhere to hide, I take another hit. This goes on for a while. Ideally you want to hit the dragon as it lands, after which it'll jump away. If you hit it when it lands after that, it'll jump forwards. If you hit it on landing after that, it'll jump away again and the process repeats. I never quite manage to get the pattern down in this fight, but eventually I win anyway:
Ka-blooie!
Here's the .gif.
I manage to score all the cash.
The sprite transforms me into child Yimothy's favourite form: Lion-Man.
! That weird building from the start of the game is the bottom of the ship! And the door in it is upside-down, just the way we like it.
Here's lion-man's sweet attack move. Note that it hits everything above and in front of him. He's so cool.
Even the crabs are giving him love hearts.
You might remember this from earlier in the game. Nobody else so far has been charming enough to buy the master shield. Lion-man is, but sadly he isn't rich enough. There's only one thing to do!
A short grind later, I have the cash.
The master shield gives a pretty great defence boost, but only to lion-man. For everyone else it's not so great.
With his amazing ability to hit things above his head, lion-man smashes the conspicious breakable block in this room and enters the door that appears.
It's good to be home.
Next time: what almost new area can lion-man reach?
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