Earthbound – Day 43

–Day 43–

I remember from the last time we were here that the My Sanctuary location really isn’t far at all from the lab. For a brief moment I thought things would be looking up. Then we ran into this jackass who instantly starts insulting us, calling us stupid kids and arrogantly explaining to us what Stonehenge is. I guess it’s just going to be one of those days…

Anyway, the enemies in this area haven’t changed much either. There are still the same Bigfoot enemies Jeff faced the first time through here. The only change is that they seem to be much more numerous now. They’ve also gained a new friend in the form of Might Bear Seven. I’m not entirely sure what the “Seven” in its name is referring to, it’s interesting though.

Anyway, we have a job to do, and that is to reclaim the My Sanctuary. It’s just inside the cave entrance, so it’s no hassle at all to get there. Thankfully this really is the Fourth My Sanctuary location, we didn’t miss any like we did last time.

This one is guarded by the boss Shrooom! It’s a giant mushroom enemy, which scares me a little because of all the trouble they’ve caused us in the past. Sure enough, its opening move was to scatter some spores which caused Jeff to become mushroomized. Now he’s pretty much useless for the rest of the fight. Hopefully Ness and Paula can handle this on their own.

Poor Jeff, on top of being mushroomized, he also gets poisoned about half way through the battle. Other than that though, the battle went fairly smoothly. None of Shrooom’s attacks were anything the team couldn’t handle and before we even knew it, he was defeated.

We quickly walk through the opening to found ourselves at the Rainy Circle, a curious little spot of perpetual rain surrounded by the otherwise snowy Winters terrain. Just for a second, Ness caught a whiff of Pizza, but as the sensation fades he gets back to the task at hand and records the sound of the location.

Returning to Dr. Andonuts, he once again reminds us that Jeff wets his bed. This time he also notices that we’ve discovered what we were looking for. He then informs us that he has made the upgrades to the Sky Walker we had requested and that it’s ready to go whenever we are.

For Jeff’s sake, I thought it would be best if we all get into the Sky Walker as soon as possible and get far away from Dr. Andonuts. At least for now, I’m sure we’re going to require his help again at some point. After all, Apple Kid did hint to the fact that he would create the very device we would need to defeat Giygas. So for now, we all climb aboard the Sky Walker and head off to Summers.

Unfortunately, we have a bit of a hard landing on the beach and the whole thing explodes once again. We’re all mostly fine though, so I guess no harm done. Anyway, as would be expected of a place named “Summers” the town is a warm beach town, and to some extent a tourist trap. Looking at the map, the whole town is basically just one long strip of buildings lining the beach.

As nice as the beach is, I can’t help but feel like the experience might have been ruined by a bad first impression. I’m not even talking about the crash landing either. I’m referring to the fact that after talking to the very first person we see, we are instantly attacked by an Over Zealous Cop. Is this how they treat everyone or does this cop just have something against us personally?

We’ll try to get over that bad first experience and see what else the beach has to offer. There are quite a few people to talk to after all, someone might have some good advice about what to do next. Most of them don’t of course, and it even looks like one of the Sanchez Brothers has even opened up a little Gelato cart for himself.

After talking to nearly everyone, we do find one person that has some good advice for us. This person advises us that we should travel across the sea to Scarabia from the nearby port town of Toto. If I remember right, I believe the researcher back in the dinosaur museum also suggested we should head to Scarabia. I think he wanted a picture of a real live dinosaur I believe. So good, we have at least a clue where to go from here. But first we should check out the rest of the town.

The whole town is limited to just the one strip along the beach, so it doesn’t really take a lot of time to explore the whole thing. There are the usual tourists you would expect to see, hanging out in front of the elegant hotel and fancy restaurant. But a bit more unusual is the fact that Summers has its own museum as well as the “Stoic Club”, whatever that is.

Following the road to the eastern end, we find ourselves in the port town of Toto. This is where we will eventually charter a boat to take us to Scarabia, however we’re not ready to leave Summers yet. On top of that, there is apparently a large sea monster named Kraken that has been attacking ships lately and making sea travel very dangerous. We’ll have to keep that in mind for when we eventually leave.

As we continue to wander around Toto, we do stumble upon a useful bit of information. Apparently the Stoic Club is a private club and requires you to call ahead before you’ll even be granted entry. Thankfully this person is nice enough to give us the number, so we’ll just have to call it later if we even want to get it.

After leaving that person’s house, we get a very unexpected call from Jeff’s buddy Tony from back at the boarding school. Apparently Tony is busy collecting player names for a school project, breaking the 4^th wall, and asking for my personal name as the player of the game. Just a reminder, this is a SNES game which came out well before any online leaderboards or anything else of that nature, so I’m not really sure what this is going to be used for, especially with it being asked this far into the game.

For now I guess we’ll just head back to the hotel to let that 4^th wall break really set in. Join us again next time as we finish exploring Summers and hopefully head off to Scarabia!