Let's Play Psycho World (MSX) World 4 - Forest Cemetery

Here's World 4. I haven't got a name for this world, so I made one up. There are (I think) graves, skulls, and skeletons in this stage, so Forest Cemetery makes sense to me. I also considered "Forest Ruins", "Forest Shrine", "Haunted Forest", and "Spooky Forest".



The game switches you back to Psy-cannon when you load, so here it is taking out the first two enemies of the stage. Even at this green power level, it's taking forever. I miss out on a Burning Bullet power up because it takes me too long to kill the moth.



Here's Lucia's new attack ability, Cooling Down.



And here it is in action. Unlike on SMS, the frozen enemy can be stood upon, and even at level 1 the effect lasts long enough to be useful.



That said, if I freeze and bypass enemies instead of killing them, they won't drop any power ups, so I abandon pacifism and kill this snake. It doesn't drop anything. Moving forwards I reach an apparent dead end.



The tree branches block my progress.



Luckily, Burning Bullet solves this problem for me. Take that, natural world!



It's also much more effective against the enemies than Psy-cannon was.



As in many games, the undead are weak to fire.



The promise of a Barrier upgrade lures me into a pit of life-sapping goo.



I get the power up, burn some more tree (luckily the game doesn't have a gravity system for unsupported branches), and carry on over a collapsing platform. Ahead is one of the familiar roper enemies from the Country of Ice.



! It disappears when attacked and reappears once I've gone past to start firing at Lucia. I take it out quickly, but if you try to run past then you'll have to dodge a lot of these projectiles.



I carry on and clear the first area. Unlike the past few levels, there are no branches to the path in World 4, or even optional side rooms that I could find.



Lucia fights a giant frog in a pit of toxic muck, scoring a Burning Bullet upgrade. It's got high, middle, and low coverage now. Then I Excharge back up to good health.



The next area has an enticing power up sitting amongst some suspicious greenery.



When the greenery is moving, it'll harm Lucia. Shooting the grey bit in the middle disables it, and scores enough points to tip me over 80,000, granting a partial ESP refill.



I get some handy health and ESP ups, taking Lucia back to peak condition.



I don't know what the point of this room is.



The next room has a midboss, this armoured lizard. Lucia only seems to be able to hit it when it's jumping. It drops a Cooling Down power up.



As seen here. It's the same as before, but goes further.



There's another one of these strange plant machines.



And some cute collapsing mushrooms.



And some more power ups, for Barrier and Psy-cannon. Hopefully Psy-cannon will be useful again soon.



And then straight on through the stage. There are a fair number of HP and ESP restores here, so Lucia's in good shape. A lot of areas on the ground look like they might be hidden passages to side rooms, but so far as I can tell none of them are.



The next area has something different. Can I ride these heads?



I cannot. Instead, Lucia must burn away the branches before jumping to the platforms and across to safety.



There's just a snake over here.



There's another Lizardman and some cool statues in the next area. The room is a bit better suited to the fight and I take this one out quicker than the first, scoring an upgrade for the Psy-cannon, which is now white.



Here's something I noticed (you can see it in the gif above): the statue's eyes match the colour of Lucia's attack. Plus its stance kind of mirrors her attack pose.



The next room has another midboss, a giant fish. The water isn't toxic this time, but Lucia can't seem to hit it from there. It's pretty easy to stand on the platforms and hit it as it jumps up.



In case you missed it in the four frames of the above gif it was visible, here's the Cooling Down power up it dropped. I did miss noticing it when I was playing, so I didn't take a shot of that attack at level 3. Sorry gang!



Once again Lucia tunnels through a tree to proceed.



Here's the boss, Double Viper! It looks pretty cool, but its only attack is to fire moths at you. I use Barrier a few times at the start of the fight but can't be bothered to keep activating it. Dodge a bit, kill the moths, and attack when you can and it won't take long. Unlike earlier stages, it drops an HP refill, and I don't lose control of Lucia. What's on the next screen?



Ultra-sonic and the entrance to the Pyramid. And that's World 4 cleared! Let's check the map:



I'm not actually sure if the forest clearing here is supposed to represent this level. Maybe there's a later stage that better fits and I'll be moving this tick to the dense forest between the Country of Ice and the Pyramid. Speaking of which,

Next time:



Pyramid.



This is an ESP amplifier. Use it and read this bonus material!!



んばり まっす!
Nbari Massu!

Once again Lucia's good attitude is cut off by the edge of the screen. I'm coming to suspect Talk Mode was thrown together in a hurry at the end of production.



I don't remember what I thought was notable enough about this fight against the fish to make a gif of it, but here it is. Maybe I wanted to show I could beat it without all the Barrier usage of the main run?



あなたは だあれ?
Anataha daare
Who are you?

ダブル バイパー と
Daburu Baipaa To
Double Viper To

よばれています
Yobareteimasu
It has been called

Google translate tells me と could mean "when" or "and", and the last phrase could be "it is called" or "it has been called". Not sure how that helps me, but my bad translation of this scene:

Lucia: Who are you?
Boss: I have been called Double Viper

Dracula:
Double Viper is saying "I am called Double Viper," pretty much like you thought.

やったあ !
Yattaa!
I did it!

So far we have three "Yattaa!"s and one "Lucky!". I noticed that the one time I got "Lucky!" Lucia was low on HP, while all the Yattas were above 50%. Maybe that influences it?



Here's the concept art for this boss (this is the last of these that I have). The name is again spelled differently, and I'm pretty sure that this time it's not just because I've mistaken the pixel font character for a different character. I can't figure out the text on this image, so any help would be appreciated. Is there a better name for the stage on there? As in the other concept art images, there are a bunch of attacks shown here that do not feature in the game.

Dracula:
I don't immediately see anything about the stage's name. The boss's name is "Double Viper (Twin Head Wyvern)."

Sensenic:
It's different, yes: in the design document "Viper"'s "Va" first syllable is written as "ヴァ" = "Va" whereas in the game it's simplfied to バ = "Ba", since the sounds are close enough (or maybe the small "a" was too hard to read in that font or sth).

The former is a rather recent construction of sorts forcing a "u" vowel to have a fricative sound, in the same way that U & V are similar letters (the former was derived from the latter), and with the small symbol to provide the vowel for the syllable - This kinda goes against the stablished rules for modifying syllables in hiragana and katakana, but it's the logically closest thing they had, I guess.
Traditionally, though, the "V" sound was just transliterated into the "b" sound (see f.ex. Love -> ラブ "Rabu"), and here you get to see both transliteration possibilities side to side - Neat for learning!

Quick stuff from the document, without scrutinizing small kanjis too much:
Stage's name is just "Jungle". Remember the KISS rule! XD
Left head was fire elemental and was supposed to shoot fire balls, which were supposed to keep burning in the floor? (because it's grass, you see) in the shape of advancing fire pillars?... if I'm reading this right, any way, too small to be sure.
Right head was water elemental and would shoot..... a "Sonic Beam", that did ESP damage. Another boss Lucia was supposed to take her new shot from.
Boss's big attack was a big fire cannon that it would announce by closing its big gaping mouth first

More naming inconsistencies - now the name is outside and the species between parentheses. Eh.

Lastly, here's the in-game map, along with the map from the ad for the game, and the map from the back of the box. The mountains I've taken to be the Lava Zone on the in-game map are not present on the other maps, and the muddy-looking area at the middle left is labelled "Lava Zone" in the ad, and is red instead of brown on the back of the box. I don't know what that's about.