After loading back up from a saved file, I manage to get out of Vinctogon without any trouble (and no more unexpected Bomber Pigeon encounters.) Speaking of Bomber Pigeons, I'm pretty sure they inspired the Bomber Duck enemy that occasionally appears on rooftops in
Okédoké. A pigeon would make more sense in that situation, but I think I made them ducks instead because it'd be easier to draw them with the 8-bit style "only 4 colors to a sprite" rule. I'm not sure.
Anyway, now that I've finished my random trip to Vinctogon, it's time to go back to that cave I passed by earlier: Mt. Goribo. This game was probably the first one to feature a location by that name; there was also a Mt. Goribo in my attempted
Final Fantasy 6 hack, the 2006
Fnrrf Ygm Schnish, the barely-started 2007 RPG Maker XP game
Legend of the Barfoo, and most recently
Fnrrf Ygm Schnish: Alleghany Hell School (which I plan to release a demo of this year if at all possible.)
Inside the cave there are lots of new critters, with this one probably being the toughest of the regular random encounters. On the left side of the cave, anyway...
On the right (where all those skeletons are), the random encounters are ridiculously strong. I can't remember if there's some great item hidden back there or if it's just an area you don't want to go into at this point in the game.
Also, here's the first "revive KO'ed hero" item! That might come in handy.
(Actually I kinda wasted it on the way to Bunprego because I forgot that he fully heals you before the fight. Whoops.)
Upon reaching the top level of the cave, I find a bunny... and also randomly get glitched one space to the right of where I should be standing. Weird.
Anyway, this is J'daahi Bunprego, who in this game is the guardian (and creator) of the orbs, which have a major role in the game. What are the orbs? Well...
They're not just decorations, of course. XD
Anyway, to prove your worthiness to use the orbs, you have a brief fight with Bunprego. He uses various elemental attacks, but I keep using Enduo's Blubber Slam (I didn't mention that he finally learned the Blubber Slam recently, did I?) until he's beaten.
After the fight, Bunprego explains how the orbs work. Apparently there were ancient tribes known as the Hudawuda in this area at some point, also, and the orbs have some connection to them also.
Basically, the orbs work like a
Final Fantasy 3/Final Fantasy 5 style class-changing system. Activate one of the orbs (so far it's orange for Enduo and blue for Joguo) and it will give you a list of options for classes you can change into. Currently both Enduo and Joguo have access to the Trainer and Swordmaster classes, while Joguo can also become a Gunner.
Enduo's Blubber Slam is more useful than
anything either of his available classes will be able to do, so I'll keep him in his normal form for now. Joguo, on the other hand...
Yep, he's a Pokémon trainer now! Except... well, without any actual Pokémon, just various random monsters from the game (some of which show up as random encoutners, like the hornet and mutant frog he already has... others, not so much.)
Some of the summonable critters actually
are Pokémon, or at least spoofed versions of them. Those will be showing up pretty soon, as they're the next two summons Joguo will learn.
Now that I've gotten the orbs and leveled up some more, it's time to make a return visit to Vinctogon. Specifically, to Mejuai's house up in the mountains.
And shortly after entering the house, you'll get some creepy textboxes and the whole place will fill up with fog. Apparently some creepy thing is searching for Mejuai and doesn't believe that you don't know where she is.
You can trigger this fight before getting the orbs, too, but at that point it's probably unwinnable unless you've overleveled your characters (or at least just leveled up enough to already have the Blubber Slam and a decent amount of HP.)
The creepy thing turns out to be creepy
things, and those creepy things turn out to be Yikkiths -- Moronism beings that resemble gigantic floating jellyfish. This probably wouldn't be as hard if not for the fact that the fight starts with you surrounded, meaning they get an attack or two in before you can do anything. They also have a bad habit of putting the heroes to sleep and confusing them, which can make it hard to fight back if you're unlucky. Fortunately, Blubber Slam does a huge chunk of damage (50+ per hit, usually 60+... enough that it only takes a couple hits to take out each one, along with Joguo's regular attacks adding in another 8-10 damage here and there) so after a couple tries I manage to beat them.
And apparently there's some sort of alcoholic beverage stashed away in this barrel. I'm assuming this game must have been made after I randomly stumbled across the Swarm's underage drunk party pictures that had inexplicably been publicly posted on the internet, because otherwise putting booze in Mejuai's house would be a pretty random thing to do. XD
Speaking of Mejuai, here she is, and she appears to be angry. She sees Enduo and Joguo coming out of her house and assumes they were robbing the place. Turns out she was only really worried about them finding her Orb, which was apparently hidden well enough that you couldn't find it.
When you explain the orbs to her, she decides to tag along, with one condition...
...that being that you visit a particular island in the southeast at some point along the way, where her "family" (code word for "group of alien invaders I came here with") landed before coming to Vinctogon. There's a lot of obvious "Mejuai is really an alien" hints in this chain of textboxes -- I didn't remember it being
that obvious when I made the game, but apparently it was.
Oddly enough, the one time Mejuai visits that island in the game has no special dialogue or anything. I think I probably forgot that she mentioned wanting to visit the place by the time I got around to making that part of the game.
And she's already level 11, while Enduo and Joguo are still back in the upper single-digits. Apparently I
did expect people to overlevel a bit when playing this game back in the day -- I can't imagine having Enduo and Joguo reach that level
already without a bunch of grinding on random encounters, and I'd rather not do that. So for now Mejuai will randomly be a few levels ahead of the others.
The next actually-important area is further north, but there's also a random town to the east along the coast, so I'll visit there first.
And that city is apparently full of rats. Also, I've used Mejuai's Pink Orb to switch her to the "Dancer" class, which is the only one she currently has access to. Her default state has no special abilities whatsoever, though, so this is an upgrade for sure. Being able to silence enemies or put them to sleep definitely comes in handy.
And at the end of one street, there's a crowd of people watching two hobos fight, one of which randomly yells out clues to the Hobo Code while doing so.
And it turns out that this is a "Hobomon" battle. The gang members around here apparently make hobos fight as if they were Pokémon.
Also in this city: the Chicken Warlord restaurant, where you can
finally get decent healing items (rather than the dinky little Donuts that only restore 20 HP.)
Her explanation for how she has cat ears and a tail that are actually attached. Apparently somebody spilled some mutagen again.
I'm guessing probably the one with green hair.
And to the east side of town there's a road that leads to the beach, which is... pretty empty and pointless.
It does have some new enemies, including the "Krunchy Krab" which is pretty tough for this point of the game. Oh, and Joguo learned a new summon, which is obviously a Pikachu but with a different name.
After a couple of beach fights he learned the second (and last) Pokémon summon in the game -- Karp! Which is actually
not useless... it does barely anything to
most enemies, but any water-oriented enemy takes massive damage from it instead. This is going back to an old joke between me and my sister that Splash was only useless above water, and if a Magikarp used it underwater it would be absurdly powerful instead (this was before Dive was introduced to the Pokémon games, of course.)
This guy's sprite is clearly a different style than everyone else in the game and I have no idea why. XD
And here's the town's Food Lion equivalent... Food Tiger. Yep. The most obvious spoof-name ever.
Off to the west, tucked away in the mountains here, is the tiny little town of Yoa. There's nothing particularly important to do here, but you
can meet the relatives of the next character who'll be joining the party.
If I'm remembering right, "Yoa" was derived from "Iowa" which is known for... well, corn. Except apparently all the corn is gone in this game because "something weird happened" (I don't think the game ever specifies what this "something weird" was.)
Jakarjo, a name which originally belonged to a Blurby with a cape and two knives in my old
Ninja Cockroach comic. For some odd reason
Uggy Barfoo reuses the name for a completely different and totally unrelated character -- he's a human with spikyish blonde hair who wears a black leather jacket and a headband.
And here's his parents, randomly. I don't think anyone else's parents actually appear in the game (aside from Enduo's dad, who poisons you with a horrible fart if you try to talk to him as he's sleeping in his bed. XD)
And heading north, crossing the "Beeg River"...
...and fighting some Funky Carrots...
...and summoning a Karp, which does 530 damage to a mutant frog...
...we finally reach the big city, Swont-Ghina, which is basically the Washington DC equivalent of this game's United States equivalent. The name's even a weird anagram of "Washington." I think I'll stop there for now. Next time: snowy places, caves, wolf dudes, Jakarjo, and a return appearance from Bunprego!
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