Thursday, July 18, 2013

TEXT PLAY: Lufia and the Fortress of Doom (Taito, SNES 1993): Issue #19: In Search of Wal-Mart

It looks like I was wrong on a lot of counts last time.

First of all, it wasn't as long an issue as I thought it would be. And then, when I said I didn't think there was an items shop in Odel, I had my doubts about how likely that really was. Turns out it's just on the castle side of the moat that runs through town. It's not in an obvious spot, which made it a little difficult to find. But it does prove that items shops in games like this are like Wal-Marts in the real world, or at least in the US. These days, a place has got to be pretty damned small to not have its own Wal-Mart, which is actually kind of sad when you think about it.

And then there's the matter of actually getting to Arus. You'd think getting through would be nice and easy now that I know where to go and the bridge is fixed. That's what I was thinking, too. Turns out, though, it's a real search to figure this damned thing out. At first, it seems like the bridge that Piron and his buddy fixed is kind of like a road that at least used to be up by the airport in my town. The city put this road in there, back in the 70s, I think, as kind of an express route to the airport. Partway through building it, there was a public vote, as I understand, that wound up canceling the project. The “Road to Nowhere”, as we called it, was there for a good 30 years, before they took it out back in the late 90s or early 2000s, but it's been awhile since I've thought to look for the old useless road by the airport.

Of course, the bridge isn't that useless, but the route through this cave isn't as obvious as I'd remembered, either. It's kind of a twisting path that goes down a level in the cave from where we've been. It's not a long trip, distancewise, once we figure out where to go. There's a turnout with some treasure chests in it about halfway to the path that leads to the basement level of the cave What makes it long is all the random battles against monsters that can use a lot of the same spells we can. These guys can really dish the shit out. I wound up losing party members, but was lucky enough to keep finding just enough reviving potions to bring them back, which really kind of sucks. Making matters worse is that on the bottom floor of this place is a door with a magic seal on it that only Lufia can open. There's a cutscene where everybody else tries it first, of course. Once that's taken care of, it's an easy enough trip back out on the other side.

And better yet, Arus is really not that far away from the cave. At least that wasn't so hard. The townsfolk compliment Lufia on her magic skills, and she runs around in a local field of her favorite flowers. The townsfolk also tell us that we've just missed the guy we're looking for, and that he's in a place called the Tower of Grief. Like we haven't had enough of that lately. Might as well go looking there for him. But not right now, since it's time for a break from playing so I can do other things.

So, we'll pick up with this next time, when we go to the Charlie Brown Tower.

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