Looking back at old ROM hacks -- KL Final Fantasy, part 4

At the end of the last one of these I posted, I'd beaten Osama bin Laden (finally!) and gotten a canoe from the town of Scumm Pond, which opens up several new areas that I couldn't reach before.  And also makes it possible to run into a bunch of new critters that didn't show up anywhere else before this point... like these:

 Zukkus, as seen at the end of the previous post... except for some reason they're  green and purple here, while they were dark blue and tealish before.  I'm not sure which is the correct palette, but there's definitely some oddball palette inconsistency stuff going on with the Zukkus.

Also: Gatordiles! I suspect the stronger version later in the game may be called "Crocogator," but I can't remember for sure.

And here's some Plecos!  Well, they don't quite look like plecos, but that's because I just left the fish sprite from the base hack in there rather than ever getting around to changing it.  At least they look like fish, unlike the "Victreebels" that still looked just like FF1 trolls. XD

 And now, on to the volcano... possibly waaay underprepared.  Expect this trip to not last all that long. XD

 Oh, that's why these things seemed like such chumps the first time I ran into some -- they're magic-focused enemies and the one I saw before never used any spells before getting killed.  When they use Warp instead of physical attacks they are much more dangerous.

 These seem a bit out of place inside a volcano...

 FIRE CAMEL!! If only I'd ever actually gotten around to editing the sprites to look like a camel...

 And... the exact same helmet Kurb already had.  Well, that's a bit useless.

 Holy crap those are big ol' centipedes.

And four of them is a tough fight at this point, too.  Thankfully, Kurb's Wudimok does a decent chunk of damage to them (as do Kurb and Froog's physical attacks -- Froog is rapidly becoming my strongest character in terms of attack power, what with the Black Belt damage formula starting to give him huge amounts of extra hits now.  I think he started getting something like 5 or 6 hits around this time.)

 Yeah... don't think I'm quite ready for the volcano just yet.  After leaving the volcano and healing up a bit, on to the ice cave instead.

 The ice cave is apparently home to a variety of ghosties and undead things, in addition to the more expected ice monsters.  These ones all cause paralysis, and the Boos also hit pretty hard (of course, they're Mario enemies.  You've got to be pretty strong to keep up with a guy who goes around jumping 4 times his height into the air and near-effortlessly smashing apart brick blocks the size of his entire body with his bare fists.)

 As mentioned above: undead things.  Specifically, mummies.  Why are there mummies in an ice cave, rather than in a desert-type place or something, I don't know... ask Squeenix. XD

 Also, Ice Nums! Which are pretty easy to beat if you have higher-level fire magic, of course.

 Finally, the enemy that the Cockroach sprite was intended for all along -- Yuggs!

 Which are resistant to earth-elemental attacks, apparently.

 Also, appropriately for an ice cave up in the mountains, you can find an abundance of Grylloblattids here.

 This turns out to be near-useless, as Muyeo's regular armor already has better defense.  I figure the Myuu Robe has some sort of elemental resistances built in, but since Muyeo's by far my strongest character in terms of defense I decided to just stick with the regular armor for him.

 This on the other hand is not useless -- an improvement over Kurb's Nummite Sword, and it's fire-elemental on top of that! Should be pretty handy in here with all the undead and ice critters.

I can't remember what happened, but Claws ended up getting knocked out and I had to bail out on the ice cave for now.  On the way out, I ran into another new enemy -- "Cock of the Rock."  Presumably they can turn you to stone like the original game's equivalent, but I never saw it happen, thankfully.

 After healing up, I come back to the volcano... using the ship this time so it's a little quicker and involves a lot less random Zukku battles on the river. XD

 Almost immediately after encountering the Cock of the Rock in the ice cave, now I'm running into a palette-swap in the volcano -- the Turd Burd.  Seems extremely non-threatening, doing hardly any damage and dying in one hit from almost anyone's attacks.  I figure they have some special thing to them that makes them dangerous in some situations, but whatever it was I didn't see it in this fight.

 Also, Sand Wurms, which would've been much more appropriate in the desert area than here.  Also, I'm pretty sure I remember the original game having Gray Worms here instead... weird.

 Finally, Claws gets a weapon upgrade! And, appropriately enough, it's a stronger set of metal claws -- Nummite Claws, to be specific.

 Here's a new enemy -- Giant Nums.  They're replacements of the Giants from FF1, appropriately enough.

 Also these guys, Red Num Statues, which are... seemingly much less of a threat than the standard Numnum Statue enemies I ran into before.  Weird.

 Also, Cyclops Turds.  Apparently a cyclops' head isn't the only thing with one big eye.

 I'm not sure why the name of this enemy used a space (so that it cuts off at "Tan") rather than just mashing the words together to make "HeavyTank."  Either way, it's a stronger Tank enemy and overall nothing too special.

 GREAT FIRENUM!  Yep, running into stronger Giant Nums already.  This was an easy enough fight, thanks to Kurb having found a Freeze Sword which is even stronger than his Roast Sword and also ice-elemental.

 And... here's the boss.  Dr. Gero is a little more directly related to the individual "Fiends" in this game than Garland was to the ones in the original game... well, two out of the four at least, I don't know what connection he has to Osama bin Laden or to the Kraken replacement.

 Yep, it's Android 18.  Except, of course, graphics are not changed so it looks like "blue snake-butted multi-armed girl" instead. XD

 Froog + the Fast spell = tons of hits.

 Anti-Fire spell really helps out here, at least when she decides to use Fire Bomb.

Unfortunately, nothing really helps much against this, so I ended up losing this fight.  Looks like it's going to be another "come back later for a rematch" situation like Osama was.

 Reloading from my pre-boss saved state, and instead of attempting the #18 fight again I'm exploring some of the side-rooms down there.  Those cross gravestone things look a bit out of place... I'm guessing it's one of those "original Japanese version had this, American NES version replaced them to remove religious references but ended up adding a better-looking sprite in their place, and then the people who made the base hack I built this one on top of were all 'Japanese original version must be better!' and ignored the fact that the replacement sprite actually looked better than what was there before."

I can't actually remember what was here instead of the crosses in the NES version, but I'm guessing that's what the situation was here.

 And finally I get a screenshot of the "Poo" attack in use.  All of the turd enemies use this attack, and it doesn't do a great deal of damage (in the 20s range generally), but still... Poo.

 Also, a completely unchanged red dragon guarding the treasure here.

Speaking of which, it's Roast Armor, which is an improvement over what Muyeo's currently wearing and presumably provides some elemental resistance (either to fire or ice... can't remember which one it was in the original FF1 or if I changed it at some point.)

Now, time to wander around leveling up and finding stuff before coming back for the rematch with Android 18.

 Here's a blocked waterway that will later become unblocked, but still equally useless as it is when blocked because there's no ports or river access to 90% of the areas on the other side.

 The one exception being that castle's moat which is *right next* to the ocean like that.  But you can get there via airship anyway, and you need the airship to make it possible to sail the not-air-ship in there to begin with.

 Oh hey, here's something I can get to.  It's a castle, but which one?

 This one, it turns out.  Where "Papug, King of the Idiots" (that's seriously his title, it'll come up when I get to the elf town later) has stolen a crown and hidden it in the Cave of Yuck.

 Also, new enemies, though not particularly interesting ones.

 Found a glitch! From the Ice Cave entrance, you can walk up onto the mountains (and the other way around.)

 

 Apparently shrooms that get you high also break you out of magically-induced comas.  Predecessor to Okédoké having joints and blunts as the "revive" item?

 The Cave of Blurby is indeed in the north... what this elf apparently forgot is that so is elf-land, and it's actually further north than the Blurby Cave.  So his directions are utterly useless (the airship thing is true, at least.)

 Found another currently-inaccessible town.  It's looking like I'll need that airship before I can really do anything else at this point, which means... to the ice cave!

 Yep, Cock-of-the-Rocks can indeed turn you to stone.  Thankfully this only happened once, and I had a Soft potion hanging around so it didn't last long.

 The icy equivalent of the Great Firenum.  While the Great Firenum came from my never-finished Kirby Lands sequel Staff of Parupoo, there was never an ice-elemental equivalent of it (or Ice Nums in general) in any of those old games.

 Here's the gray lava, whatever that's supposed to be.

 Ice Dragons, which seem to have been toned down slightly from the original game (they don't spam their hits-everyone ice breath every turn so much, instead using mostly physical attacks plus ice spells and Super Bite.)

 And here's a glitch -- the door randomly cloned itself!

 A new enemy -- stronger versions of the Squidface.  They don't do the insta-death-hit thing, but they do get multiple hits and do some decent damage.  Not too threatening alone, though.

 This would've been a Krappaddoo-like creature if I had ever changed the graphics, but as of right now it's a D&D Beholder type thing.  Not much of a boss, but it didn't die in one turn at least.

 

 And now... the airship!

Yep, that's the airship! Now I can get to... pretty much everywhere left in the game, though a few places aren't really accessible just yet.  I think that's going to be it for this one -- next time, more random exploring of all the new areas that just opened up, lots of leveling up and such, and maybe that rematch with Android 18.