Section 3, on the other hand, is a nightmare: you’re moving through a corridor which gets flooded periodically, at which point you need to retreat to higher ground until the flood subsides. Section 2 has some tricky platforming, but is tolerable. Bats everywhere, especially around where you need to bounce off some mushrooms for two much-needed life pickups. Level 3 is the first major difficulty spike. The boss can probably be cheesed by just sitting at the left edge of the screen. Level 2 is absolutely swarming with enemies, but the only ones that are an issue are the clowns on unicycles. The boss messed me up a bit, too, but you’re safe on the left edge of the screen, and even if you wait for the acorns to drop, you’ll still have just enough time to get a hit in. The other issue is a nearly unavoidable leaf butterfly that comes at you from below right as you land on a platform that will start moving as soon as you land on it. The addition of moving platforms makes things extremely tricky, and there’s one section where a moving platform actually intersects with a static platform, which confuses the game engine and has actually gotten me killed once. Level 1 is still simple enough, aside from section 3 (spider webs and leaves). I wouldn’t be surprised if the scoring potential on Hard is considerably higher than on Normal, but I can’t yet play good enough to confirm that. On the other hand, enemies yield double the points when defeated, and since there are so many of them, they add up and very quickly pick up the slack. Other than that, you’re not getting much out of the level clear bonuses.
Castle of illusion youtube full#
Because throwing items are so rare, the only time you can even get a full stock (30) is in level 2. On Hard, however, things are a lot different. Given that you earn your first extra life at 40,000 points and subsequent ones every 50,000 thereafter, as well as the fact that Normal is very generous with the amount of throwing items it gives you, and it’s quite easy to rack up lives this way. On Normal, most of your score really comes from defeating bosses (10,000 points) and level clear bonuses: a flat bonus of at least 10,000 points, 1,000 points per unit of life remaining (or 10,000 if you’re at full health), and 1,000 points per throwing item you have left (up to 30,000). This actually completely changes the way you increase your score. Changes to the level layout, such as additional moving platforms or collapsing floors.Bosses are faster, trickier, and take more hits to defeat.There are a lot more enemies, especially flying enemies.If you lose a life, you lose all your throwing items.Much less items scattered throughout the levels, specifically 1-ups and throwing items.You start with only two units of life (although you can still fill it up to a maximum of five).Here’s a list of differences (although I probably missed some): Hard, on the other hand… is stupidly difficult. Normal is a simple enough difficulty, and one I can get through casually no problem with only a few lives (or tries, as the game insists on calling them) lost. This is primarily meant to be for me to look back on, anyway, so from here on out, raw, unfiltered thoughts galore.Īnd we’re starting this new era of the blog with a game I’ve been biting my teeth out on all morning and afternoon: see title. I won’t necessarily introduce the games any more than necessary, either, nor will I litter each blog post with screenshots if it’s too much of a hassle to do so. I’ll talk about whatever I want to, going into as much or as little detail as I want to. I took to Twitter to talk about the games I was playing instead, feeling like I’d set a standard for this blog that was too high for casual rambling.īut you know what? Fuck that.
Granted, it was starting to turn into a chore, and I was running out of ways to say “I’m still dying to the same shit every time” day after day. It occurs to me that I kinda stopped using this blog after I gave up on 1cc-ing Space Harrier.