Comments on: Anatomy of a Simon’s Quest: V

By: vaterite

vaterite — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 17:13:55 +0000

@Kirin

It’s not so much veracity, just that the brown ones don’t do anything except speak to you. The other colors all affect the game in some way, selling stuff/swapping crystals etc.

By: jparish

jparish — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 16:54:48 +0000

@Kirin It’s not that cut-and-dried. The grey guys are always merchants or quest chain participants, and the oddly colored cloaked guys throughout the world perform various tasks for you, but everyone else wears brown and may or may not be telling the truth.

By: Kirin

Kirin — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 16:08:20 +0000

I had no idea the veracity of townfolk in this game was generally correlated with sprite color. That’s surprisingly helpful.

By: jparish

jparish — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 13:26:02 +0000

That… is actually very correct. Huh.

By: Victory Peak

Victory Peak — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 12:07:21 +0000

“but that’s exactly why you’d assume these guys would be a little friendlier to the one man who can save them from becoming ambulatory juice boxes.”

Isn’t this right here the thing though? Simon Belmont is not the one man who is going to save them, he is the one man who is going to resurrect Dracula. To these townspeople he’s probably a raving lunatic intent on adorning himself with Dracula’s bodyparts.

I mean, it obviously doesn’t work from the player’s perspective, but it seems to me these people have good reason to prevent Simon from questing.

By: Ben Roberts

Ben Roberts — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 05:44:46 +0000

I think many kids–like myself at the time–simply assumed that there was some inscrutable logic at work which we were not worthy to comprehend. I would read stuff in pilfered or borrowed issues of Nintendo Power that gave me the impression that there was some cryptic cabal of hooded patriarchs ruling the game industry who devised the bizarre logic underlying our favorite 8-bit titles and whose word was law.
Air Shooter defeats Crash Man? Sure!
Pressing a secret combination of buttons and directions give you extra lives in Contra? Of course!
Kneel for five seconds with a red crystal equipped to summon a mystic cyclone? Why the heck not?
In other words, I just felt like EVERYTHING at the time was either trial and error, or governed by such insane mirror-universe logic as to make no practical difference. It was the games that were RATIONAL that blew my mind.

By: MetManMas

MetManMas — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 05:11:46 +0000

Yeah, that’s the thing, really. The actual solutions to many of Castlevania II’s puzzles that the nicer villagers will share are often just as batshit insane as the blatant lies the asshole NPCs will tell you.

Speaking of lies, this is off topic a bit, and will make no sense unless you’ve played Viva Piñata, but I swear Leafos is at least partially related to those lying NPCs. Much like CV2, Viva Piñata has outright crazy quota to meet (in its case, for piñata appearances, visits, residents, romancing, and evolutions), and if you try talking to Leafos now and then, she has no problem feeding you lies like a Dragonache appearing if you become a Dragumfly Master Romancer or a Cluckles becoming a Parrybo if it eats five different colored flowers.

But of course, sometimes she’s telling the truth, like with Cocoadiles watering plants with their tears, and somewhat with the Sour Crowla getting sick and you calling the doctor (letting it drink medicine is a requirement to convert it). In-game logic, huh?