Patch

There's always one, isn't there? One legendary gamer among the rest of us mere mortals. I meant to add Ikaruga too. In fact, the Gamecube had some rock hard games.

Hmmm. *Consults book of law*. Yes, yes it is. I would turn yourself in if I were you. A hot air balloon seems plausible, but it might require the controlling of wind direction, which sounds familiar. You've got to give it to Aonuma with his ambiguous titbits: Eiji, when do we ever know what you are meaning? But that's really got me thinking. Since the dawn of er, Zelda, the games have followed a fairly consistent format of explore, dungeon, new item, explore, dungeon, new item, with sidequests along the way. So is he talking about a totally different fundamental structure to this? Or is he simply saying that 'Link now has a hot air balloon!'? He's such a tease.

Haha, I could name loads of Speccy games that fit into this category. One of them was SpinDizzy. It took ages to finish and when I finally got the last diamond, there was a bug in the congratulations screen that meant it was shown for about a sixteenth of a second before disappearing. Beyond annoying. Let's see: F-Zero GX's Story Mode on Very Hard. Ouch. Getting to the Master levels in the original Super Monkey Ball (GC) was pant-wettingly nerve-racking. Goldeneye and Perfect Dark were challenging on the hardest difficulty. Completing Brawl's Boss Battle mode without losing a life was tricky. Mario Sunshine's blue coins without a guide! I remember spending ages playing through Turok 2; that was tough. Super Mario Brothers 2 (Jp). Seriously, did they recruit the world's elite arcade gamers to design that game?

I hear you. Substitute Zelda 2 with Zelda 1 and this is my position. I think we'll both de-smash ClassicGamer's record completion time of two years.

Progress recently has been slow thanks to a busy life and some gold-collecting duties (the indispensible Magic Bikini cost a fair bit. Those Japanese designers really want you to work for it, don't they?).

I'm like that too. I'll spend an hour or two one evening and then wonder 'What did I actually achieve today?' Cool that someone else is playing too, although at this rate, you'll be finished long before me. I'm just over the 40 hour mark and I've been playing for weeks. Those would be useful indeed. Sounds like a second-play-through kindathing. Or when I get overwhelmingly defeated by bosses perhaps.

Cheers! Let's ignore the fact I hadn't noticed it was there... I probably won't bother with it much either. I figure the only way to make money from it is to constantly save / reload until a profit is made. Which is a bit tedious and feels like cheating.

Yep, playing further, I found there is one by a crossroads near Argonia Castle that only comes out at night. More progress:

OK, you've redeemed yourself slightly. Maybe I won't have to hunt you down after all.

Gah, WTF did you do that for? I didn't ask what their relationship was and I didn't want to know. You should have spoilered tagged it at the least. Do you crave attention that much?

I'm sure you're right. Your comment implies there *is* a relationship between them then. Sorry Grazza, there's probably a proper name for them. It's in the area NE of Argonia Castle. Are these 'Monster Coin' monsters random at all? Or do they always appear in the same place reliably every time? I could have sworn one appeared on a path that I had travelled a few times and never seen before.

I haven't updated this thread for a while. I've been playing Dragon Quest regularly for a while now. An hour or two every couple of nights has seen me get about 30 hours in now.

Cool. This could be the closest we'll get to having an actual life-size monkey ball peripheral. Maybe the Balance-Board levels are aside from the main levels? Based on past console Monkey Ball games, the chances are that this will be just as hard as the others. More so if you force yourself to use only the balance board for the whole game! Just imagine the wire grinds on A15 and E9 using a balance board!

Yes indeed. The boomerang and whip can be so satisfying, especially if you kill a whole set of enemies with them, after whittling them down with the others. I saw mention of a Fisticuffs-only walkthrough somewhere recently. Something to save strictly for my fifth play through the game...

Not at all. It's mainly the story that I would consider spoiler material. I hope you don't mind me hijacking your thread like this (it seemed wasteful to create a new thread). A bit more progress since last time:

Probably my most watched Youtube video of ALL TIME. Seen it three times now.

I haven't had much time recently, but I have made some progress since my last update.

Dang, I miss the weekend stuff that happens here. Happy Birthday for like, ages ago.

I made a fair bit of progress over the weekend.

Thanks as always for the tips. I'll be concentrating on finishing the game first and foremost. Based purely on the length of the game as it is, it will take considerable drive and determination for me to continue playing after that! Much appreciated though, mate. Yes indeed - I haven't mentioned that yet. The music is a mixed bag for me. At first I loved the orchestrated feel, then I found it to be irritatingly repetitive (probably down to me levelling up in the same areas at the beginning) and now I'm very much enjoying it again. I haven't been able to get it out of my head all day today! I need to open up some more areas I guess.

I've now completed the Waterfall Cave, defeating the hilarious Hammer Head dude along the way. I was at level 8 and didn't have any trouble with the boss. Thankfully Yangus woke up from being cursed fairly quickly. I did the side-quest mentioned by Kirby; I thought I would have trouble with this due to red / green colour blindness, but thankfully the distinction was obvious! I'm 5 hours in, which might seem like a lot, but I spent quite a while trying to get enough gold to buy the best equipment from town including the boomerang, before attempting the Waterfall Cave. I'm glad I did - the 'rang made short work of most battles. I can't kill the raptor creature outside town yet though. He's a bit hard. I did run past him for the nice item though! Next stop: Checkpoint.