Let's begin!
We start with Professor Lemeza Kosugi, basically a Ninja Indiana Jones, travelling to the legendary land of La-Mulana looking for his father, Shorn Kosugi (perhaps named after Indiana Jones' father, Sean Connery?). This sequence can't be skipped when you start a new game, so I sat through it about a million times while I was trying to figure out my video capture setup for the LP.
The game starts with Lemeza dropping into the Traveller's Village. If there's a way to talk to the villagers wandering around I don't know how to do it, so instead I enter the nearest hut.
Inside is the elder, Xelpud. Like the game itself, Xelpud's name is a reversal of one of the developers, in this case the main programmer, Duplex. Xelpud is friendly enough, but he doesn't seem too upset about Lemeza's expected fate.
Back outside I try out the game's jump physics. Lemeza can change direction in the air, but not freely. If you jump straight up, he can move left or right from the apex of the jump. If you jump forwards, you can slow down but not change direction in the air.
Pressing F1 pauses the game, allowing Lemeza to take a meal break. According to the manual, he loves curry.
I also try out the menu buttons. F2 brings up the item window, showing Lemeza's MSX laptop and his whip, and lots of blank space for all the other stuff I'll be picking up along the way (according to the manual, Lemeza set off on his adventure fully equipped, but everything besides the MSX and the whip got confiscated at the airport). F3 brings up the MSX window, where I can select software to load into the computer. At the moment, I don't have any. Pressing F4 runs the selected software, or brings up a blank screen when nothing's chosen. At the border of each of these screens you can see the edges of the screen of Lemeza's MSX. In the fiction, he's looking at the computer. After checking these screens out, I enter one of the other huts.
Inside is a merchant. The wares may be cheap, but I have no money at all (see the counter at the top right), so I can't afford anything yet.
The other hut also houses a store that I can't afford to buy anything in yet, so I move on. I can go right or left, but everyone knows you should start an exploratory platformer by going left, so I do. The game has flip-screen scrolling, which I think is fairly authentic to the MSX, which was bad at scrolling. I suspect a lot of games left the scrolling out and just cut from the edge of one screen to the opposite edge of the next, though.
The next hut is also selling stuff I can't afford, so I jump the gap to the left and smash a pot. That's archaeology! Because I'm standing right up against it, I collect the item that drops before it appears on screen, but if you watch my cash total you'll see it go from 000 to 010 as the pot breaks.
On the next screen I meet my first enemy, a snake. One hit from the whip takes it out, but note that there's a slight pause before the whip strikes which can make landing attacks tricky. I don't think I'll show it off in this update, but I believe you can hit enemies behind you during the wind-up.
The pot on this screen drops a weight, which Lemeza can leave in certain places to activate mechanisms.
Make that two weights, in fact! Neat. My path forward is blocked: the cliff edge being drawn all the way to the ground indicates that I can't walk past it, so I have to jump up over it. Cliffs that don't go all the way to the ground, like the two on the right side of the screen, can be walked past.
On the next screen I blow the timing of the whip strike and take a hit for it, getting thrown back to the previous screen. I probably won't be showing a lot of screen transitons, because scrolling makes for really big gifs.
I carry on upwards, finding a strange symbol in the cliff face. Looking at the manual, I think this is a Life Lock. I'll need the Life Seal to open it. The guy in the hut up here tells me how to beat a many-eyed blue Algol. An Algol?
Oh. This big blue guy with the eyes everywhere must be an Algol. I don't have the Serpent Staff, and it makes short work of Lemeza. But what is an Algol?
Wikipedia:
A ghoul (Arabic: الغول, al-ghuûl), is a demon or monster originating in pre-Islamic Arabian religion
Oh, a ghoul! Thanks, Wikipedia!
And that's it! Gee, I didn't even make it into the ruins! I hope you've enjoyed Let's Play La-Mulana.
Maps:
The game has several areas, and I'll be mapping each as I come to them. I'm not sure if they fit together into a cohesive overall map (I hope they do), but that should become clear over time. Because I don't know how big each area is or at what point within each I'll start off, my intention is to use a coordinate system, with 0/0 being whichever screen I enter each area on, and other screens numbered according to how far above, below, or to the side of the first room they are. So Xelpud's house is on village screen 0/0, and the Algol is on village screen -5/1, five screens left and one screen above the starting point.
Village:
Clues:
Village:
"The Algol with the blue body and the many eyes. Legend has it he is weak to the Serpent Staff."
To-Do:
Village:
-Kill the blue Algol at -5/1, probably with the Serpent Staff.
-Read signpost at -4/1
Life Locks:
-Village -4/1
Next Time:
Part 00: Maze of Galious
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