Wanderers from Ys

People have been saying that Infernax is like Castlevania. I haven't played a single one of those games...

...no hate, it's just that I used to be really into JRPGs and only recently got into more action-oriented games by way of Hollow Knight...

...so I wouldn't know, but what it really reminds me of is a Super Nintendo game from 1991 called Wanderers from Ys, which draws heavily on the Zelda II formula but is completely 2D. It's also extremely hard, and I never finished more than the first few levels despite playing it for hours as a kid. The graphics were a little primitive but still charming, and the music was super catchy. I loved the pixel art anime-style cut scenes, which had super-limited animation but looked so cool to me at the time. I also appreciated that there was a leveling system, and that you could find and equip new weapons and armor and magic just like a "real" JRPG.

There have been more games in the Ys series, but Wanderers from Ys was so hard that I never bothered to seek them out. Still, Infernax has made me curious. I downloaded a ROM of Wanderers from Ys, and I'll try to use (cheat codes) as explained in (this guide) to see if I can get anywhere.

(I still use ZSNES, but I'm open to suggestions for other emulators!)

The Adventures of Tulip, Part Eight

With the help of a walkthrough, Tulip has made it through Blighttown. Good job, Tulip!

Blighttown is a vertically-oriented shantytown clinging to the lower reaches of the castle's outer walls. It's like people decided to live on the construction scaffolding instead of tearing it down, but maybe this wasn't the best idea. Everything is rickety and unstable, and the game managed to give me a genuine moment of vertigo the first time a plank bridge shifted under Tulip's feet.

Blighttown is also filled with giant mosquitos for some reason. It turns out this reason is that it's perched over a poisonous swamp. Hidetaka Miyazaki is famous for loving poisonous swamps, and I was disappointed that the swamps Tulip previously encountered had no poison. I am disappointed no more, and I hate it!

Anyway, the theme of the poisonous swamp is "spiders." According to the walkthrough, this evening I will have to fight a giant spider in her spiderweb lair. I'm one of those weird people who think spiders are kind of cute, so I'm looking forward to it.