Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga (GBA) – Part 06 – Beanbean Castle Town

-Beanbean Castle Town-

The barrel of Chuckola Reserve ends up crashing ashore with enough force to shatter. Thankfully, it would seem Mario actually drank all of it while in the barrel and now it’s sloshing around inside him.

We rush inside to Lady Lima and the Queen, who has been in a deep sleep ever since we knocked her out earlier. With the Chuckola Reserve inside Mario at the moment, we unfortunately have no choice but to spit it all into the Queen’s mouth. Disgusting.

The Chuckola Reserve seems to have done the trick however. Within seconds, the Belly Blech Worm jumps from the Queen’s mouth, scaring poor Luigi in the process. It does unfortunately run off before we have a chance to kill it. I hope we don’t encounter it again.

In any case, the mission was a success. The Queen is back to her normal self. She does however remain to be a rather large woman, especially in comparison to our petit Princess Peach. She’s so large in fact that just sitting down causes everyone in the room to be launched several feet into the air.

We don’t want to be rude however. Technically this is our first official audience with the Queen. Now that the Queen is back to her normal self, we can finally fill her in on everything that has been going on as of late. We tell her all about how Cackletta stole Princess Peach’s Voice as well as the Beanstar. After hearing all of this, she seems to be just as confused as we are as to why Cackletta stole Peach’s voice in the first place.

Thankfully an informative cut scene fills us in on our missing details. As we already know, the Beanstar is a powerful magical item that can grant the wish of its user. To prevent it from being used for evil, it was cast into a deep sleep and will only wake to the voice of a great beauty.

It would seem only Princess Peach is pure and noble enough to possess such a voice. So now it makes perfect sense. Cackletta obviously stole Princess Peach’s voice so she could use it to awaken the Beanstar and trick it into granting her wish.

It doesn’t take anyone long to figure out what Cackletta’s ultimate goal is, she wants to rule the world. Now that she has Peach’s Voice and the Beanstar, it looks like she may just succeed. The Queen doesn’t seem very concerned though. Apparently she has seen this plan coming for a long time.

Not only did she see it coming, but she has apparently already prepared a counter to it. She doesn’t go into any detail of what her counter plan actually is, but she assures us it is better than Cackletta’s.

I would have liked to stay and ask some more questions, but we were interrupted by one of the Queen’s aids informing us that Prince Peasley has returned to the castle. The queen felt this was perfect timing and instructed us to go meet him at the castle entrance.

If you’ll recall, the Prince was on a secret mission when we encountered him before. We were never given the details of his mission, but now we learn that he was trying to track down Cackletta on his own.

Not only that, but it looks like he was successful. After taking the Beanstar, Cackletta apparently headed southeast towards Woohoo Hooniversity, The local research institution.

According to the Queen, Woohoo Hooniversity would be the perfect place to try to awaken the Beanstar. To that end, Cackletta has already taken over the facility and is no doubt close to achieving her goals. Not one to wait, the Prince heads off on his own to try and stop her in whatever way he can.

The Queen sees this as a great opportunity to reclaim Peach’s voice, and informs the locals that we are to be granted passage to Woohoo Hooniversity. Looks like we know where we’re heading next. Though we do now have quite a bit to explore in the Castle Town.

In fact, the Castle Town seems to have been fully restored in the time we were gone. That mean’s all the buildings are restored, all the people are back in good health, and the shops are back open. So time to walk around and see what good advice we can pick up from people around town, and see what new items the shops are selling.

To our surprise, there is even a hint store in town now. I like when games give you hints like this. Something you just forget what it is you’re supposed to be doing. Unfortunately the hint we just got was nothing more than a reiteration that we need to go to Woohoo Hooniversity. So that was a waste of money right now.

There are even a couple of side quests you can do right here in town. First one we stumble upon is this guy who has lost his pet Beanlets. They’re hiding all over town and we need to find them for him.

The Beanlets are mostly easy to find, even if they are small, green, and blend in with the grass a little. Thankfully most of them are out in the open, and they don’t run away or anything. So it shouldn’t be too hard to find all 5 of them.

Once we gather them all up, we return them to their owner and he rewards our efforts with a Golden Mushroom. If you don’t know, the Golden Mushrooms restore your HP and BP to max. It’s a small reward, but it’s still a nice thing to hold onto. You never know when we’ll need that.

The other side quest we can do is to recover the Beanstones for an elderly Beanish Scholar. It’s not entirely clear, but apparently the Beanstones were left behind by an ancient Soybean society. We’re given no other hints on how to find them other than the fact that ancient Soybeans were on the short side.

This quest is a bit harder than finding the Beanlets mostly because there are no visible markers as to where the Beanstones are hidden. Instead we must first shrink Mario down into his tiny form. From there we just randomly wander around town until an “!” pops up over Mario’s head.

Now that we know where one is, we restore Mario to normal size, switch around the party order, drive Luigi into the ground, and then he pops up with the Beanstone. It’s probably going to take a while to search the whole town, especially since we’re given a very small radius around the Beanstone that will still show an “!” mark.

Eventually, we do find all 10 of the Beanstones and return them to the old Scholar. Just like with the other quest, we are given a reward for our efforts. This time we’re given the Bros. Rock, a Badge which “Hugely boosts POW & Bros. points” when equipped. Not a bad deal for finding a few rocks.

The biggest side quest of them all however comes in the form of the Starbeans Café. Here we can bring all those various beans we have been getting from digging, battling, or playing mini-games and brew them into unique coffee blends.

There are 4 different types of beans to be found, which blend in different ratios to make one of the 7 different types of coffee. For my first blend, I decided to make the Chuckoccino, assuming it would be most similar to a traditional Cappuccino.

No sooner do we finish our brew does Luigi get a scare from his past. A ghost, similar to those found in Luigi’s Mansion, sneaks up behind him to scare him. Luckily, Professor E Gadd, also from Luigi’s Mansion, shows up to take care of the problem.

Turns out, Professor E Gadd is actually the owner of the Starbeans Café. Not only that, but the whole Beanbean Machine is his latest Invention. Apparently he got bored back at the mansion and decided to become a barista instead.

As the owner of the café, he naturally wants to sample any new coffee combinations we happen to make. It gives him the energy to continue his Ghost research I guess.

He is at the very least very grateful for the sampling and will reward us with his latest inventions to help us on our quest. In exchange for the Chuckoccino, he gifts us the Greed Wallet which will double the amount of money we receive from battle if equipped. Now THAT is a good reward.

Not only that, but each of the coffee brews also grants a permanent stat boost to whoever drinks it. We don’t have enough beans right now to make any of the other blends, so we’ll have to keep a sharp eye out for more as we continue along our adventure.