Click Here for the Final Update
: I decided not to do that last post-mortem because it was just several pages of me getting very angry with the Allanson brothers. There’s one last sidequest we can do, and I’m only showing it off because I managed to softlock in it.
: You might recall way back when we first went to Excavation Town, we found a book in the library we traded for a napkin. Now that we’ve reached the final island, we can trade the napkin away.
: Note that she says “pen” but then hands us a “spicy drink” for the napkin.
: We can then go back to Excavation Town..
: And trade the drink for this pen.
: Back at the bar in Egg Harbor, there’s a guy who will.. actually, he softlocked the game the first time I talked to him.
SOFTLOCK COUNTER: 12
: Now if we go all the way the hell back to the other side of the continent, we can find the “Monsters Den”. That’s probably a typo, so..
Typo Counter: 164
: The key opens the way to this thing, which is the final weapon in the game that we can obtain without save editing.
: You can get a fruit from this tree, accessed by the red/orange-ish warp behind the Guide.
Typo Counter: 165 (What’s capitalization? I dunno.)
Typo Counter: 166 (Capitalization!)
: Dragon Mire has pretty okay hitboxes, but we don’t want to use him. We actually want to use the Heaven Sword or whatever it’s called.
: One trip back through the desert later, and we’re at the final dungeon.
Typo Counter: 167
: See, what I failed to realize about the Heaven Sword is that Brian Allanson actually DID code a “walking sword combo” for it - it’s the only weapon in the game that has one, and it’s both a blessing and a curse.
: I have to admit, the color dungeon actually does look pretty nice, and I don’t know why they didn’t just do the entire game this way and think of some other gimmick for the color shards.
: So anyway, the Heaven Sword actually HAS a walking sword thing - if you hit the attack button while moving, you do a dash in that direction. It boots Roy’s movement speed by several times at the risk of slipping out of bounds. The only problem is, uh… I kind of had to re-bind my screenshot key to get this shot, and I forgot to re-bind it so I didn’t get any screenshots after this part. Fuck.
: The good news is, I streamed it, so I can just download my VOD from Twitch and do it that way. No problem. Shit might get a little lower quality from here on out.
: God I just now realized that my mic is way too close to my head when I stream, so you can hear me breathing and god fuck. Anyway, after that room is a shitty dark room maze straight outta SMT 1.
: I wander around for a bit, using the sword dash to move, until..
: I go out of bounds. Now, you might think this isn’t a softlock because you can just go into the bag and die, right?
SOFTLOCK COUNTER: 13
: Wrong. I forget where it happened when I was streaming, but if you try to use the bag, Bivare will say something like “Ceila can’t get here right now!”
: Past the maze is this white void, and a couple of these weird holes that close over every few seconds.
: The idea is you run across them when the shutters are down, making this even more un-necessary padding.
: We have to go through four sets of these to reach the next room.
: The spear is key to exactly one puzzle in this entire dungeon, but you wind up carrying it with you the entire time.
: Man, it’s so much easier to capture action shots when you do this off a video and not just, you know, in real time.
: Anyway, the spear overrides your arrow button: the first time you press it with the spear in your inventory, you’ll throw the spear, which will stick into the ground where it lands.
: This means that you can “lose” the spear by throwing it and leaving the room, but fortunately Brian somehow planned for this. if you die, the spear will re-appear in your inventory when you return.
: One trip back through the maze later (which takes like.. almost three minutes on the video I have and feels like forever) we get back to the main room of the dungeon.
: This is another very poorly signposted puzzle that doesn’t work well in this format. See the gate on the upper level? It’s hard to tell, but it has a hole in it.
: If you walk right up to it, you can see that there’s a switch on the other side.
: The short spear (and ONLY the short spear) can penetrate through the gate and hit the switch. Arrows will bounce right off. Given that this place is a maze and that only that one room has the spear in it, there’s a good chance you’d pass by this a few times (like I did) before reading the guide because all of these later dungeons suck.
: Here’s what I don’t get about this entire dungeon, and honestly the latter half of this game. Outside of maybe the original NES release, mazes have never really been a thing in Zelda - at least, not serious ones. Why the fuck did Brian go this route?
: The next room is full of these dumbass-looking stained glass windows and a door covered in fire. To open it, we need to find seven sages (because Ocarina of Time reference) and have them open it for us.
: This guy here. This fucker right here. Let me explain how this works, because it’s some bullshit.
: The game keeps a “mercy” counter in the save file. I had seen it, but had no idea what it was for or how you did anything with it. What I think happens is that when you get into a fight with the random RPG text that appears, the enemies will run away if they’re low on health.
: Letting them run away builds up the “mercy counter” and having a high enough counter will cause this to give you a full heal.
: Instead, for about a single frame, the game will flash a message saying “Roy only showed mercy to his ene” and then immediately cuts off to a death screen.
: If you want to get a full heal off these for some reason, you can edit your save file. Just CTRL+F “Mercy” and set the number to a billion. I’m not sure what the threshold is.
: This dungeon is basically non-linear once you get the short spear, but we’ll do this one first.
: The water apparently makes it impossible to walk up these stairs we just walked up.
: This room is full of “speed goons”, who apparently can be mercied, but it didn’t increase the counter for doing so. The one in my save file has been at 11 since I restarted the game after it broke.
: Here’s something I want you to remember for a few minutes from now. See that ledge with the arrows on it? Keep that in mind.
: This thing here is actually a ladder - but as far as I can tell, the room it leads to is pointless.
: I’ve finished the game, and I have zero idea what the fuck he’s talking about.
: What we actually need to do, against all logic, is go into the bag and equip the jump doll that we picked up which had no apparent use.
: I should note that even with the jump doll equipped, the spear will over-ride your first jump attempt, meaning you’ll throw the spear first, then jump.
: We can then jump up this ledge. Great signposting there, Allanson. I mean, you can pick the doll near the start of the game and the thing is completely useless except for the final dungeon. Why not just.. I dunno.. have it be a pickup in the fucking dungeon!?
Typo Counter: 168 (Capitalization matters!)
: Each one of the sages will tell you how many of them are left as you walk away. I don’t know why exactly we need to do this, since it’s not like they’re imprisoned or anything.
: There’s a warp that goes back to the main room, and then we can go down the stairs to the right of where the dumbfuck spear puzzle thing was.
: I figured I had fucked something up, since the warp tiles usually warp you back to the start of the dungeon, but not this time.
: The sword statue is a warp, and I honestly don’t know what the point of this entire area is. I think they were trying to copy Ganon’s Tower in Ocarina of Time, but the point there was that you had seven puzzle rooms that had actual content in them.
: This room features stairs that cut Roy’s movement speed in half while he’s on them, and handrails that are arranged in about the least aesthetically pleasing way possible. By the way, if you go up the stairs where Roy is in this shot, it’s a dead end - you can’t go to the left.
: Up the stairs is one of those “darkness vases” from that one sidequest we did, but it doesn’t do anything.
: This is probably multiple typos, but I’m not entirely sure where to begin with it, so I’ll leave it alone. I think they were trying to make a pun on “Dalai Lama” but given that the Allansons seem to write on a third-grade level I don’t think they’re ready for that yet.
: Another filler room full of enemies. I honestly want to know what Brian’s thought process was when designing this dungeon.
: “Okay Andrew, so get this. The final dungeon is Ganon’s Tower from Ocarina of Time, only instead of puzzles we’ve just got a big confusing maze with rooms full of enemies that don’t present a challenge to the player so much as an annoyance.”
: These look like one-way doors, but I don’t think they actually are. You can see above where the vine on the right ends up - in a dead end room with no door leading out.
: There’s a room full of purple balls for no reason. They take one hit to kill and just kind of randomly float around. It’s like Dashcon in game form.
: Here’s my favorite thing about this room. See how there’s two staircases and it looks like we’re in some kind of second hub room?
: The second staircase goes right into a wall. Quality level design there.
: We also find the third sage here.
: There’s a part after this where I was following the guide and it has you solve a “puzzle” that doesn’t seem to actually change anything.
: If we go to the right from the main room, there’s a hallway full of pits that just makes us wait to get across. Great level design there. I mean, my absolute favorite part of any game is waiting.
: Oh, right. I didn’t bother to capture it because it wouldn’t be obvious looking at it in a still image, but if you fall into these pits there’s a good chance it just kind of fails to warp you to a safe spot and you’ll just fall in a loop until Roy dies, forcing you to redo the entire room.
: There’s a clone of that one boss we fought in hell here, only it doesn’t move.
: This is the other reason we need the spear.
: Throwing the spear into the statue’s mouth makes it explode into a warp statue.
: As far as I can tell, all this does is warp you back to the start of the dungeon. The guide tells you to do it and I have no idea why.
: If we go straight through that door, we hit a falling tile puzzle that I’m not going to do yet. Oh, and some typos.
Typo Counter: 170 (2x Typo Combo!)
: Instead, we want to go through this new staircase which I’m not sure if it was there the whole time or not.
: This room is a puzzle that would’ve been way shorter had I noticed the ladder directly in front of Roy.
: This side of the room has two pressure plates and an arrow statue.
: The other side has an arrow statue we need to get across the hole. This should be simple - all we need to do is line it up so we can hit it on the other side, then walk over.
: Unfortunately, due to quality Allanson coding, the statue on this side will melt into nothing if we push it anywhere near the hole.
: Seriously, it’ll start melting this far back from the pit.
: This is about as close as you can get it without it melting. Fortunately, the other side doesn’t seem to have the same collision issues.
: This is also probably a typo, unless Ancient is being used as a proper noun kind of like it is in Final Fantasy 7.
Typo Counter: 171 (Rebirth! One word, no hyphen!)
Typo Counter: 173 (Ancient is either capitalized or it isn’t, and I’m going to assume it’s not being used as a proper noun so fuck that, two typo penalty, game remains on third down.)
: Before we do the dumbass falling platform puzzle we saw earlier, we need to do one that’s even more broken.
: This room looks like a dead end, only it’s actually home to the most broken puzzle in the dungeon.
: To the right is a red arrow statue. This one is special in that it’s used as a key, so we need to maneuver it while also teleporting around these disconnected platforms.
: On the other side is another regular arrow statue and a second spear. I don’t know why they give you the spear here, given that arrows (or the Master Sword beams) will work just as well.
: The next part of this horribly broken shitpile is getting this statue up to the top of this platform. The problem is that if you get it in this position, the statue will get stuck. This isn’t a softlock, but you basically have to finagle it around the corner.
: Pushing the red statue onto that switch creates a bridge, which fortunately stays around even if you move the statue off that switch.
: There’s six colored pressure plates here, and six statues to match the colors.
: The green statue here is where I managed to softlock the game. What you’re supposed to do is put a statue on the bottom of the tree corridor, enter from the left and then exit by shooting the statue at the bottom.
: Instead, I accidentally used the dash move to enter the gap in the trees without hitting the statue. You can’t call Ceila here and there’s no way to die.
: I tried to finagle my way out, but ultimately wound up stuck on this tree.
SOFTLOCK COUNTER: 14
: After reloading the game, I did the initial statue setup so I could cross (it more or less has to be exactly this way) and hit the regular statue to teleport to the other side.
: Instead, I wound up out of bounds.
SOFTLOCK COUNTER: 15 (2x Softlock Combo!)
: This is now my third time attempting this puzzle. Everything’s all set up again. Let’s just do this, and..
SOFTLOCK COUNTER: 16 (3x Softlock Combo!)
: Instead of teleporting to the other side, I get stuck on this statue. Quality Allanson coding right there.
: Anyway, here’s where the rest of the statues are. The purple one is behind the puzzle, just sitting there.
: The blue one is down here, and you basically have to do the exact same thing you did to get the red one, only it’s slightly less glitchy and softlock-prone.
: You then have to drag both of the statues you used to get the blue one over to the right side to get the orange one. This took me several minutes of manually pushing statues (rather than repeatedly warping them) because I didn’t want to softlock for a fourth time.
: After pushing the orange and blue statues halfway across the map, we get everything right and the door opens. The yellow statue starts on the green statue’s pressure plate, by the way.
Typo Counter: 174
: Now we get to tackle the stupid falling floor puzzle. Remember that sign that was like “You only need two switches to progress but all of them for treasure?” Yeah, that’s a lie. The treasure is broken, so even if you hit all the switches there’s no reward.
: Let’s just skip to the end of the puzzle, shall we?
: The thing on the right is supposed to be a teleporter that warps you back to the start of the puzzle, so you don’t have to do it in reverse. I think I tried it and it didn’t work.
: The final prize for all eight switches is another great heart.. only it doesn’t work.
: The chests don’t work either, but what would even be in them? We can’t spend money anymore, and we’ve done the big collection sidequest.
: We need to find the Goatse man, so he can remove this game from existence with his almighty Ass Laser.
: The thing is telling us to find the Ubie Doll so we can get past that one jump.. which is on the other side of the dungeon and that we already did. This might’ve been useful if this sage was, say, in the room with the jump.
: This door leads to the last sage. We’ve been through multiple softlocks, filler rooms, broken bullshit… how much worse could this last door be?
: Nothing. Not even a puzzle. You just walk right the fuck up to it.
: We don’t even get to talk to it because the game then immediately goes to a cutscene of the seven sages forming a dogpile on the fire to put it out.
: Roy is then immediately warped to the fire door. I like that Brian did exactly one thing correctly in this game and that was not making me walk all the way the fuck back here.
Typo Counter: 175
: This only happens if you’ve done all the color weapon sidequests. If you’ve only done some but not all of them, the blatant ripoffs won’t be here.
: “Take courage”? What the fuck does that even mean?
: “…Roy… Bivare… You have no more continues. If you die here it is [Game Over] for you.”
Typo Counter: 176
: “What!?”
: “Just have faith. You can do this.”
: “We are ready… we made it this far!”
: “Yes, it is do or die for real this time!”
: “The enemy lies ahead. If you intend to finish this make a leap of faith from here to his domain below!”
: “It’s your choice, but remember that you owe me your lives. Go with caution. And remember.. if you fail it is [Game Over].”
: The final boss is made of the same broken bullshit as the bird king, so if you’re playing this for yourself, set your HP to 999999 and then go to the Game Over Zone via the bag (which you can access here for some reason) to max yourself out.
: “I must first begin by apologizing for all of the trouble I’ve caused you.”
: “I must first begin” is the best Andrew-ism since “The elevator began to shake, vibrating with motion”.
: “I must admit that you are both victims of circumstance. When I happened upon you at the Cursed Lands… I took advantage of you. You were in distress, at the loss of your loving wife, and I… I used that to my own benefit.”
: “What are you trying to accomplish with all this…?”
: We already fucking know what he wants! He wants to go back to the Game Over Zone! Were you not fucking listening during the giant Allanson Monologue at the end of hell- oh wait, yeah, can’t blame you there.
: “I want.. I want to get back.”
: So what you’re saying is you want to leave your home in Tucson, Arizona for some California grass?
: “Just beyond this floor is my home. Your ‘after-life’. Surely by now you know of my origins…?”
: “Indeed.”
: “I lost my graces and my right to that life.. I saw the opportunity to use you and your good natured way.”
Typo Counter: 177 (The one fucking time you choose not to use a hyphen, and it’s on “good-natured”?)
: “But alas, there is no changing the past. You’ve come all this way, gathered all of these elements of the after-life.. you have been a great deal of help to me. My only regret is how complicated your life has become…”
: “But surely you can’t blame me for wanting to return home. No one could blame me for that. I needed to do what I did.. and there isn’t anything we can do now to undo it.”
: “So what is the plan? You open the gate to the after-life and just.. just.. walk back in like nothing ever happened?”
: “The prodigal goat man returns..”
: “I’m sure in your mind you think you can just walk back.. but after what you did there isn’t any going back. Don’t you see how clouded your thoughts have become…?”
: “There isn’t any returning to what you were. You need to accept your fate.”
: “What strange words.. accept… my.. fate… I’m going back. I’m afraid it IS useless to stop me. I have no ill will against you Roy. I consider you to be my friend. You’ve done so much for me.”
: “And besides.. I often lent you my help! Without me you would never have spoken with the fish king. Without me you would have never gotten a [Heart of Color]. The heart of a Hero. I did that for you.”
Typo Counter: 178 (Random capitalization still isn’t acceptable, you fucks!)
: “Sure.. I did both of those things for me.. but deep down we know it is what you wanted. Now you have a choice.. you can either leave now.. or you can come with me to the other side. I assure you that it is quite amazing…”
: “I think I’ll pass on both.”
: “You’re not leaving this earth.”
: “Surely by now you must know what will happen if you kill me.. do you not? You end my life and I end up in the in-between… the place for those who fall short of perfection.. but just as I made my way from that world to this one.. surely I will find a way to go beyond the gate.”
: “I’m sorry you won’t listen to me..”
: “Then… LET US END THIS AND SEE WHICH OF US MAKES IT TO THE OTHER SIDE!”
: My favorite part of this is how they just didn’t bother to draw back sprites for half the characters on screen.
: “All of my friends in one place. I’ll start this party off then!”
: For the first part of the fight, the boss just sits there. If you walk up and hit him..
: One of the sidequest dipshits will show up and hit him for varying amounts of damage.
: The boss teleports around once he takes cutscene damage, and then starts hurling these gigantic magic things at you. They take off like a third of Roy’s HP each and are very hard to dodge - the hitboxes are deceptively huge.
: Not pictured - two or so minutes of me following the boss around and repeatedly hitting the sword button.
: Once his first HP bar ends, the boss turns into.. this. I remind you that you do not get any kind of healing between when you start the first form and now.
: The second form has exactly one attack - it’ll fire two columns of bullshit at you, and then a third down the middle. You could dodge this, or you could just sit here and hit him - there’s a sweet spot where you can hit him but he can’t hit you.
: This screen would be a legit epilepsy warning.. if this wasn’t a screenshot LP. The walls flash constantly and it hurts to look at.
: The boss just kind of turns into a blatant ripoff of the SNES Star Fox version of Andross.
Typo Counter: 179
: This is another reason why you just want infinite HP. The boss fires skulls at you on this seizure-inducing background and everything hurts to look at. Just stick Roy in the middle of the screen and hold down the fire button.
: Oh look, a dumb joke about how the boss is 3D… even though I’m pretty sure it’s just a sprite.
: The boss is more or less on a timer now.
Typo Counter: 180
: Once you run the timer out, you get this scene of Roy falling onto the boss. The random dipshits will be here if you met them all.
: “This.. was the only way. Phew.. he put up one hell of a fight. Didn’t he? What a… hey Roy…? Roy..? ROY!? What’s wrong? Why are you just standing there…?”
: “I.. I don’t… I’m not sure what’s happening. I…”
: “Come here.. take a step back..”
: “…I cannot. I will not.”
: “What!? You’re freaking me out.”
: “I’m sorry Bivare, but my time is up. I knew it would be soon. I’m not going back with you.”
: “What do you mean? We won Roy! Just take my hand and we’ll head back down now. …Roy?”
: “I can’t… I have to meet someone..”
: “…who?”
: “I’ve been looking for you my dear.”
: “…Roy… hey…”
: “…”
: “Bivare… I’m sorry this is the only option.”
: “Are you coming with me or are you staying?”
: “You know I’m coming.”
: “…I know…”
: “I am sorry..”
: “…I know… but don’t be.”
: “Well… I guess my game is over.”
Typo Counter: 181
: “You’re going to love this!”
: This entire bit of nothing dialogue is just slowly killing me to transcribe.
: “Roy… no… don’t… leave me here alone..”
: “I’m sorry Bivare.. but…”
: “I know. I wouldn’t dream of stopping you now. What.. do you think is over there…?”
: “I honestly couldn’t even guess. Mom… Dad… Mark.. and.. Jane. She and I will live on the other side.”
: “Biv… I’ve been living on borrowed time. No one ever gets to die as many times as I have. I’ve had a good run…”
Typo Counter: 182
: “We’re THE TWO BROTHERS… our work is famous. It can’t just be me.. that doesn’t work at all.”
: “Roy, it is time to go. Biv, it’ll be alright.”
Typo Counter: 183
: “Why is everyone okay with him going on..? Fine. I’ll just come too.”
: “Bivare… it was good seeing you. I’m very sorry it had to be like this Bivare.”
: “Jane.. it’s time I think..”
Typo Counter: 184
: Seriously though, this dialog is so.. nothing.. that I can’t even write jokes about it. It’s just bad.
: “NO ROY!! ROY COME BACK!!”
: “I… Roy… this isn’t how it was supposed to happen! We had so much left to do! So much left to create.. to discover.”
: “Biv. Listen to me. You need to go live your life. Go back home and live your life.”
: Go back home and be a family man.. oh, wait.
: “There is still so much left for you to accomplish.”
: “We already discovered the after-life… what’s greater than that?”
: “Goodbye Biv.”
: “Goodbye!”
: “Take care man.. it’ll all work out!”
: Where’s the “Chief Plagiarist” credit for Andrew?
: Yeah, no, we’re never coming back to this pile of shit again.
: And with that, I’ve conquered the Allanson Gauntlet. Both of their games now have complete screenshot LPs. Surely that’s the last we’ll hear from them.
: Well, assuming they’re not wrong, I’ll see you on January 14th when YIIK gets this big patch they’re talking about. I doubt it’ll happen.
TOTALS:
Typos: 184
Softlocks: 16 (15 in actual gameplay, 1 during a speedrun)
Save-Breaking Bugs: 1