Let's Play La-Mulana: The Mother Has Been Waiting

Ah, the MSX. Maybe.



Looks like this was made by the well-known Kobami corporation.



We're going deep into the past.



Credit where it's due.



This may be before humans, but there's something alive in there.



Kaboom!



I guess that explosion was the mother.



That must be her.

Welcome to Let's Play La-Mulana, the world's best fake MSX game. It's an exploratory platformer modelled on MSX games of yore, hence the MSX (Maybe) title card and the low-res graphical style. It was released in Japanese in 2005 by GR3Project, aka Naramura, Duplex, and Samieru. The title, which could maybe pass for meaning "The Mother" in some language I don't understand, is actually the director, Naramura's name with the syllables reversed - Na-Ra-Mu-Ra became Ra-Mu-Ra-Na, or La-Mulana. It got an English translation a couple of years later, and that's what we'll be playing here. It has since undergone a major graphical overhaul and some other changes for release on the Wii, and that version was ported to PC and Vita. I have played through the Wii version, with copious use of online guides, but I've never gotten more than 20 minutes into the original, so I might be a little optimistic trying to go straight to LPing it. The plan is to play it kind of like my Link's Awakening LP, making maps and a list of things I need to do and clues I find.

The plot of the game is that the hero's father, a historian, has disappeared searching for the ancient civilisation from which all other civilisations descend. The hero recieves a letter from his father saying that he's found it, and so sets off to find his dad and see the site, La Mulana, for himself.

I'm hoping to do this without resorting to guides, which probably means I'll need some help.

2020 Comment:
Here's my last LP to date, what I think of as my magnum opus in the field, La-Mulana. I hope that doesn't sound too pompous. It's a magnificent game, and one that almost required me to be producing an LP for me to figure it out. Even recording all my play sessions and going through them in detail for screenshots, I didn't manage to sort it all out on my own. I had previously played the (much modified) Wii version using extensive spoilers, so I had a head start on some elements, I had people in the thread helping me out with some puzzles, and in the end I wound up looking up a few obstinate secrets online. I was at least honest in the thread about what I'd figured out and what I'd looked up.

This LP originally ran from November 2018 through to August 2019 in fifty-six parts. That's more than one update a week, which is ridiculous considering each took hours to make and I have a wife, kids, and a full-time job. How did I manage that? In my Link's Awakening LP I found the dungeon updates to be a real drag compared to the overworld stuff, so I was a little worried with La-Mulana since it's pretty much all dungeon, but the game and the LP certainly got their hooks in me. I hope you enjoy it.

Table of Contents:
Part 01: Algol?
Part 00: Maze of Galious
Part 02: Beginning
Part 03: Guardians?
Part 04: Puzzle Solving
Part 05: Literacy
Part 06: Death Death Death
Part 07: The Stars Align
Part 08: The Giant Awakes
Part 09: Giant Killer
Side update: Getting La-Mulana to work
Part 10: Life
Part 11: Udjat
Part 12: Eternal Maze of the Sky
Part 13: Vehicles
Part 14: Extinction
Part 15: The Claw
Part 16: Painfulness
Part 17: Temple of Moonlight
Part 18: Feather
Part 19: Graveyard
Part 20: Another Maze
Part 21: Confusion
Part 22: Zap
Part 23: Fishing
Side update: Let's Play the Yimothy Way; or, Let's Play Let's Play La-Mulana
Part 24: Still Confused
Part 25: Shu
Part 26: Frustration
Part 27: Puzzling
Part 28: Everything
Part 29: Double Mazes
Part 30: Twin Labyrinths
Part 31: The Lamp of Time
Part 32: Frustration, Relief, More Frustration
Part 33: Tower of the Goddess
Part 34: Elephants
Part 35: Explosives
Part 36: Machinery
Part 37: Suddenly it's an STG
Part 38: More SHMUPping
Part 39: Enûma Eliš
Part 40: Syntax error in 1220
Part 41: Circuitous
Part 42: Letting Myself Down
Part 43: Sagacity
Part 44: Yimmers' Folly
Part 45: Tiamatricide
Part 46: Drive the Wedges
Part 47: Let's Play PR3
Part 48: The Mother Has Been Waiting

Part 49: What Did I Miss?
Part 50: [Sigh]
Part 51: Oh, Hell
Part 52: The Hell That Still Continues
Part 53: Enough

Maps