Welcome back to The Goonies 3: Truffle Reshuffle as we enter the penultimate day of the site's E3 shenanigans. When I'm not thinkfluencing or being thinkfluenced in turn by missives from the overpopulated event halls of the LA Convention Center, I like to unwind and offer respite to others feeling the E3 enervation with an "Alternative to E3" blog series. That's what you're reading here. This year I've been poking my way through Eiji Aonuma's Marvelous: Mouhitotsu no Takarajima("Marvelous: Another Treasure Island", which in English has a sarcastic ring to it), which really establishes the guy's love of approachable puzzle design and cute character moments that made Majora's Mask and Aonuma's Zelda games to follow so memorable.
Last time, we had navigated the northern half of the island, past every trap and obstacle the "Patchies" pirates put in our way, and opened the final door to where the pirates were keeping our kidnapped teacher Miss Gina. They want a crystal ball we found, but we're determined not to let them win! Our heroes include: Max, the portly ladykiller; Jack, the designated platformer hero; and Deon, the unluckiest handsome leading man; Pluck, the hint bird; and Winky, a monkey of no particular importance who has to keep bailing us out because we suck.
Part 05: Getting Bored of The Goonies. How About Back to the Future 3 Instead?
Oh boy, my favorite. Minecart puzzles. I didn't snap any of these, because they're exactly what you might expect.At least the game is finding new ways to present the same obstacles. No boulder this time, just some fancy pressure plate door.Holy Jeepers, it's Christmas!Haha, Deon sucks. The item gods continue to scorn him. The other two color-specific chests have more luck rocks for Max and Jack. I let Deon open the last chest, the multicolored one that anyone can open, because I felt sorry for him. It was also empty.This was an interesting puzzle. We entered a room with falling rocks (they operated the same way as floormasters: hang around in any one spot for too long, and you'd get clobbered) and a shaky looking door. By using a nearby log as a battering ram, we rammed it into the wall, got many more rocks dropped on our heads and watched the door peel away to reveal this Road Runner-style deception.A spot on the left side of the room had dry paint though, so I figured the real door was behind a fake wall. I kind of enjoy this game's cartoon sensibility: it definitely feels like it has a western approach to dumb humor.The leader of the pirates, King Blue, has this elaborate entrance routine befitting a pro wrestler slumming it as a pirate lord. He managed to get the drop on us, so now we have no choice but to hand the crystal ball over. The Crystal Ball opens the way to Marvelous, the titular treasure of Captain Maverick, and it appears as if the pirates have won this time. But we don't have to like it, etc. etc. Oh, and he also takes our teacher with him for collateral. I'm starting to not like Mr. Blue here. Also it's kinda weird that cops and 17th century pirates co-exist? I realize this is a fantasy world where animals talk, but still...Anyway, the door shuts on King Blue before he's finished gloating and his attempt to take the crystal ball results in this wonderful bit of schadenfreude. Turns out Captain Maverick had traps of his own, who'd have thought?We quickly snatch the errant crystal ball after it rolls free of the podium, but another issue arises: where did all this water come from?Turns out we activated some ancient water pump system, because not only are we carried all the way back to the pirate ship by the current, but the dry dock's filled up. We might be saying goodbye to this island?The pirate ship had a sinister looking door with an enormous lock. We didn't find the key for it, but we have the next best thing: a Polly picklock.So here's the rub: in order to power the podium up to full, we actually need four crystal balls, not just one. The "activated" ball is moved to a different part of the inventory screen, and the race is on for the other three. There's no more crystal balls on this island though, so we need to power the engines (that took ten luck rocks, so I guess those things have all kinds of uses) and sail to another one. Is it kind of weird that a game strongly influenced by A Link to the Past managed to predict Wind Waker? Maybe Aonuma just likes sailing.This mini-game, where you have to hit the A button just as the compass swings directly north, was a lot harder than I was expecting. Doesn't help you have to scroll through about two pages of "you missed, slowpoke" failure messages each time. Well, it's not like I'll ever have to do this again...We're off! Time to explore a brand new island, with brand new traps to evade and puzzles to solve! We didn't forget anything, did we? Like, I dunno, around ten terrified schoolchildren with no chaperone and a dangerous island opened up to them after someone removed all the barriers? Nope? All right, I think we're set. Oh, huh. This game has chapters, confirmed. Guys, I don't think I'll be able to complete this in one more sitting... though maybe that's for the best. Retain a bit of mystique, you know?The second island is much different than the first. For one, we have what appears to be a frontier town that was founded by pirates. There's actual houses and other buildings here. They're also suffering a major drought, so I imagine that's something we'll need to fix at some point.Quite accidentally, we wandered into the middle of a kidnapping case and told to sort it out for the local sheriff. If a child's been abducted, it's usually best to just send more children in after them. It's like fighting fire with fire, sorta.We find an old lady on the edge of town. She gives us some hints to the town's history, as well as some details on the kidnapper. Christopher Benson, the pirate mentioned in the title, is her husband who vanished several decades ago. His close friend Indio was arrested and executed soon after Benson's disappearance for stealing the town's "treasure", which was never recovered. Indio's daughter is who we think the kidnapper is.We also learn that the old lady is King Blue's mother, which makes Benson his father. That is one ripped looking kid. What have you been feeding him? Damn.Talking of feeding monsters, in order to get out of town we need to ply the sheriff's dog with a bone. This is to ensure you don't wander off without getting the scoop on the kidnapping, I suppose. I know how funnelling works.The area to the right of the town is this acrid desert, filled with these enormous spiky plants. The plants are comprised of three parts: the big flower at the end, the thorned vine and the tail-like root, which you can see poking out near the top right.The goal here is to get Max in kicking range of the root, which forces the flower to open temporarily. That's where Deon steps up with his trusty baseball. The "trick" is getting both Max and Deon standing in the right spot, and quickly switch between them. Some plants are blocking other plants, though, so there's a very particular path through this area.I don't think it's just the item gods that hate Deon - it's apparently all of them, because no grade-schooler should have to deal with scorpions this big. The scorpions have this really neat tactic where if you hit them once, they charge directly at you. You have to hit them again to take them down, but man, it sure was fun finding out that first part.We eventually reach Miss Gi- wait, Sisko, the daughter of Indio. As might be expected, she rescued the child from the flowers in the desert and waited for help to arrive.Our reward for rescuing the kid is... a task to put flowers on Indio's grave. Cool. What every boy wants. Well, it might give us more hints as to what the problem is here.Until now, this asshole bird has forced us away from the grave if we should get close. With the wreath, however, he identifies us as friends of Sisko. I thought we were Max, Jack and Deon, not Dax , Jake and O'Brien?Now that the bird's gone, we can finally desecrate this grave. Way to fail to Hachiko your master's tomb, you dumb crow.Inexplicably, we found a photograph underneath the monument instead of, well, a body. This is starting to get weird. What kind of fluctuating technology level does this world operate on?Damn straight. I bet you're eating crow now, huh? Oh, wait, perhaps not.You can ask a number of folk around town what the deal with this picture is, but it's easy enough to work out by context. That's Indio on the right, Benson on the left, and the town's treasure - not so coincidentally the next crystal ball we need - in the center, but how do we.... wait, "time machine"?A man trying to siphon water out of the town's only remaining well remembers Indio and Benson's work with time machines, because that's a thing everyone was immediately willing to take seriously, and hands us this note. It relates back to the mansion where Benson disappeared, of which the old lady is currently the caretaker.While she doesn't come right out and say it, the old lady wants us to do these chores for her before she'll give us the key to the mansion on the edge of town. I suspect this is a "have you been paying attention so far" checklist.The first task involves carrying this loose plank over to the gap and then hammering in the nails. Moving the table across the room is self explanatory.In order to teach these windows, we had to rely on our old totem pole routine. Kind of fitting, given we'll soon be pursuing a Native American through time. That's a sentence.The room is now full of light, but also a few cobwebs still, but the old lady is happy enough with our progress. Now watch as she gives us two quarters for pennywhistles and moon pies.The key to the manse is hidden underneath a ship miniature. I haven't mentioned it yet, but I love all these detailed cutaways to parts of the environment that you can manipulate. The art team for this game really went all out. I just wish I didn't keep bumping up against resolution issues with these screengrabs.Now to retrace what that note told us about the clock in the old mansion. We have to go back thirty minutes to 9:30, and then ahead an hour to 10:30. The clock operates on safe rules: gotta hit the marks without going over.Aha! The secrets of time travel are about to be revealed to--what the dickens?
Let's just leave it at that bombshell for now, why not. The next and final part of our little Marvelous soiree will hopefully encompass the rest of the second chapter, leaving the third and fourth for another time. How is everyone enjoying this year's Alternative to E3? Want me to keep going with this game once E3's over? I'm enjoying it quite a bit, so I might just blast through rest in my own time while I do wiki prep for Summer Games Done Quick and attend to any number of other blogging tasks that demand my attention. Let me know what you think in the comments below, and I'll see you tomorrow for the final update as E3 draws to a close for another year.
