World 3 starts off almost identically to Round 3 in the SMS version.
Same disintegrating platforms.
Here's the flame attack, Burning Bullet. It's got quite a range on it.
I get another boost for my Psy-cannon. It was a full-height yellow wave, where will this take it?
Into the green! It's lost height, but is presumably more powerful. I made this gif the same width as the Burning Bullet one - note that the Psy-cannon doesn't go nearly as far as that attack.
Heading back along the upper path nets Lucia the next level of Burning Bullet. This was in the same place on SMS, but just sitting there like the life restore is instead of being dropped by the enemy.
Here's the powered up attack.
The level continues much like on SMS, with Lucia using Hydro-wave to freeze platforms to proceed.
Despite being at a much higher level, Psy-cannon takes way more hits to kill these enemies than Burning Bullet does. In fact everything in the level so far goes down in one hit to BB, even before getting it to level 2. On SMS, one of these roper enemies took ten hits at level one.
I get another BB power-up, which makes no visible difference to the weapon, and reach the end of the area. On SMS, there was a ladder upwards here, but on MSX the screen scrolls down.
I think vertical scrolling makes it much harder to follow the screenshots. Anyway, after dropping down the hole Lucia is faced with two paths forwards. She takes the upper path.
Which leads to this midboss, the same one as on SMS. It drops another Teleport upgrade (or Mega Spin, as I'm choosing to interpret what Lucia says in talk mode despite Drac's advice to the contrary). So far as I'm aware, none of these since the first has made any difference to how the power works.
The next room combines slippery, disintegrating, and spiked floors to make a tricky little sequence. I spend far too long trying to kill these floating jellies (a lot longer than the length of the gif).
Note the difference in HP and ESP between the gif above and the first screenshot here. I should have just turned on Barrier and run through these enemies, then shot at them from the other side to check if they dropped anything good. I carry on, continuing to lose health, and pick up another Explosion power up. This room exists in the SMS version, with I think pretty much the same layout, but Lucia enters it from the left there.
I carry on and the game grants me the chance to go back and try the other path through the level. Turns out the ropers' shots will cancel out Lucia's, so I wasn't able to shoot this one once it started firing on me.
OK, back to it. I get the Psy-cannon upgrade again, now for the Burning Bullet I just have to jump up to the left... looks like I've overshot a little in the last panel... just have to go back...
Lucia gives it a try and shakes her head. I can't jump high enough to go back, so that power up is lost to this run.
As is this one. On SMS they stick around unless you scroll them offscreen, but on MSX they don't last very long at all. I spend too long fumbling around and failing to run, and it's gone.
This time I'll try the lower path.
I face the same midboss, but in a nicer room. With my underpowered Burning Bullet it takes four hits to kill instead of three, but it drops another Psy-cannon upgrade, much better than the Mega Spin.
Level 5 Psy-cannon is the same as level 2, but green.
Lucia gets her revenge on the roper that killed her last time, and ほいみぃ だよんs her way back to reasonable health.
I spend quite a while trying to build some stairs here. Annoyingly, Lucia can't slide under the lower block, despite being only two tiles high when ducking and the block being the third tile above the ground.
Eventually Lucia makes it up there, and kills the roper for no benefit. Then she takes the lower exit of three, meaning all my efforts to climb up were wasted.
This leads to a large vertical room with no enemies aside from the floor, which manages to land a hit. Lucia has to go down and up the ladders and freeze a few blocks to make platforms to reach the door at the upper left.
Another one of these guys. Lucia gets another Psy-cannon upgrade out of it, granting her a full-height green wave.
This looks simple enough...
Yup. Down I go. A chance to get the power-ups I missed and try the other paths!
This time I get everything, manage to maintain a reasonable HP total, and take the upper path at the second fork.
This leads to a straightforward enemy corridor with a welcome Barrier upgrade.
At the end of the corridor is the same midboss as on the lower path, with the same Psy-cannon upgrade.
I do a bit better against the enemies that killed me last time, and carry on. In the last shot I've just picked up a large ESP refill and done a little bit of Excharging. Ideally I'd keep Excharging to fill my HP before picking up the other ESP refill, but I wanted to get it before it disappeared so I didn't.
I have to clear these blocks from the ladder in order to proceed here. Stepping sideways off a ladder is a bit more fiddly in this version than on SMS. I think when the ladder has dark blue sides like this one Lucia can walk off it, and when they're pale blue she can't, but I haven't really figured it out for sure. Plus the colours would vary by stage probably.
I carry on. The path forward over the disintegrating blocks looks a bit dangerous...
But it's not.
The background in the first panel here I think is quite pretty. Not sure if it's intended to suggest a frozen forest in the distance (I think we're in a cave, so probably not), but it does to me. I Excharge up to full health, and get an ESP restore by crossing over 70,000 points, so I'm at full HP and very nearly full ESP. In the last panel there's a path upwards to a ladder...
Which I fail to take. Oh well. I'll get another shot in Talk Mode.
There's an upgrade to Hydro-wave just before the upcoming boss room.
I try it out (double shot!) building Lucia a bridge to get across, but she bypasses that with a running jump. The series of disintegrating platforms before the boss was retained in the SMS version. I switch to Burning Bullet and enter the chamber of...
Glacier! First thing I have to do here is switch back to Hydro-wave and build myself a path upwards. The pattern of freezable blocks is different to on SMS, and I once again fail to make anything useful on the first attempt.
I manage to fall back down and hit the stationary hazard in front of the boss.
I take a full blast from Glacier, but it's actually not that harmful.
Once I manage to make a path to a point from which I can land a hit, it's all over very quickly. Lucia gets Cooling Down for her troubles.
Yattaa! I save my game. Let's check out our progress:
We're getting there!
Next time:
The Forest Shrine/Cemetery (I think? Haven't gone past this screen yet).
This is an ESP amplifier. Use it and read this bonus material!!
Let's translate!
んばり まっす
Nbari Massu
Ganbarimasu cut off by the edge of the screen, meaning "I'll do my best!", just like at the start of World 2 but with が missing instead of ん.
I try out the middle path at the second fork, since I didn't get to it in the main run. I spent ages melting blocks so I could jump to the upper platform, only to find that there's nothing up there. Ugh.
While I was up there I had Lucia try out Explosion.
ちゅどん
Chudon
I'm not having any luck with this one. Maybe an explosion sound effect? Sort of a kaboom equivalent?
I carry on. Note that my ESP is lower than before: I kept trying to blow up the roper until I ran out, and it was still alive. Anyway, this area has a whole lot of blocks to melt in order to proceed. It is the most annoying of the paths through the stage.
The Barrier power-up is nice, but there was also one in the less-annoying upper path.
I'm getting the hang of these fights.
This one's still got my number, though. Back to the start!
I manage to do just about everything wrong this time, missing the first Burning Bullet upgrade, taking the high path for the useless Mega Spin power-up at the first fork and the lower path with no Barrier power-up at the second. I do manage to kill my nemeses, though.
And I pull off this jump!
It leads me to this side room with a health restore I don't need, a Psy-cannon power-up that lands in a spot I can't reach, and a Hydro-wave power-up that I manage to get.
Along with the one on the main path. Talk Mode Lucia now has a full height Hydro-wave.
あなたは だあれ?
Anataha daare?
"Who are you?"
このわたしが
Kono watashi ga
"This is me"
ワールド 3 の ボ ス
Waarudo 3 no bo su
I think this is "World #3 Boss". Or, looking into why there's one hiragana symbol in all the katakana, the の is a possessive particle, making it "World 3's Boss". I forgot briefly that there was another panel and thought this was its entire name, which would have made it my favourite so far.
グレイウヤャャ
Gurei uyayaya
"Grey uyayaya"? I can't tell what the last two characters are supposed to be. My guess is they're an echo of the ya fading away, which might make it "Grey Uya", but what that means I don't know. I'm not totally confident of the big ヤ, either.
On the concept art I posted after the SMS level 3 the name is グレイシア ("Gureishia"), which Sensenic sensibly gave as "Glacier". Not sure why it's different here, but I think these lines should be read together as:
I am World 3's Boss: Glacier...er...er
Though with the echo it would sound more like "Glacia...a...a", I guess.
Sensenic:
You got it right, and I think the answer to what happened here is as simple as a typo: at that lower resolution the katakana characters シ (shi) & ウ (u) can be rather similar - if you look at it that ウ looks like a curve in the lower right with 2 dots in the upper left, same as シ (or ツ (tsu), for that matter, which is the one that usually gets mixed with it).
Dracula:
The way Glacier introduces himself, このわたしが," is literally like saying "This I is," which is pretty pompous.
I have a pretty easy go of it this time.
やったあ !
Yattaa!
"I did it!"
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