SURVIVOR

DAWN OF THE FOURTH DAY – GROUP 1

The group gets spit out of the portal in a completely unfamiliar location. They look around curiously to find themselves in a perfectly normal city. Bowser questions their location first. “Whatever happened to that snowy place we were in before? Why’d he send us here?!?”.

Vaati sighs. “Probably just an accident. He’ll more likely then not come back to pick us up briefly.”.

A brief period of silence occurs before Jafar strokes his beard. “He’d probably of noticed by now. Perhaps he grew tired of the old setting? I certainly know I was. . .”.

Lemmy chuckles slightly. “Should we really be questioning it? It’s not exactly something to complain about.”.

Anne nods in agreement. “. . .I think he might’ve actually just let us off the hook. . .This is far from the deathtrap that the frozen wasteland was, so if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be off.”.

Anne just goes to walk off by herself for Jafar to attempt to open up a portal. “My portals still aren’t working. . .This is still a part of that fool’s game.”.

Popinski goes off after Anne as she continues on her way, causing Silver to sigh and come after them as well. “Did you not hear the old warlock, Madame? The Twilight King must have something planned. It’s not safe to just go off on your own. . .”.

“It’s a perfectly harmless city. I think I can take 5 steps without you holding my hands, thank you very much.”. Anne cuts Popinski a glare as he continues follows after her, then just sighs and rolls her eyes. “If you wanna be my bodyguard, I’m not stopping you.”.

Popinski continues to follow after Anne like a lab dog, but before long he passes a bar causing his eyes to go wide. Before he runs off into the bar, he turns to Silver. “Would you mind watching the woman, Silver? I have. . .Important matters to attend to.”.

Silver sighs as Anne rolls her eyes and turns to him. “If you’re worried about something happening too, go with him. I’ll be fine, thanks. . .”.

“If something happens, you’ll know where to find us. . .”.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Not that it will.”.

Silver shakes his head as he goes off into the bar where Popinski is to find him chugging two kegs of beer at once. Silver cringes slightly at the sight of it. “Shouldn’t you, y’know, pay for that. . .?”.

“It’s on the house! There’s not a soul in the place, so all the good stuff is left for us, my friend!”.

“What if the owner comes back. . .?”.

“This place isn’t exactly lively in case you haven’t noticed. . .Haven’t seen a soul besides the others from the winter wonderland since we got here. I’d be surprised if there even IS an owner of the place anymore.”. Popinski pours some beer from a keg into a mug and hands it to Silver. “Now try some! I insist.”.

“Uhhhh. . .I don’t drink. . .”.

“Nonsense! Have you even tried it before?”.

“Well, no, but-“.

Popinski laughs. “You don’t know what you’ve been missing!”.

Popinski proceeds to force the beer down Silver’s gullet for him to resist strongly at first, but eventually for him to start chugging it down himself. “Heh, better then I thought it’d be. . .Can I have s’more?”.

“But of course! There’s more then enough to go around.”.

The screen fades out and back in for Popinski and Silver to be stupidly drunk, with several shattered bottles thrown carelessly about the room. Silver’s continuing to drink as he stumbles about awkwardly while Popinski flails his bottle around, drunkenly singing the Russian National Anthem. They’re so incredibly drunk that they don’t manage to notice some zombies sneaking up on them. . .

***

Level 35
Play as: Soda Popinski, Silver

This level is simply a battle against the zombies rather then a platformer, and serves as your first introduction to the enemy you’ll grow to loathe far more then any mere White Wolfos. While Zombies are relatively slow and their only attack is to catch you in a grab to start pummeling away for 5% a pop, if they manage to hold you for 5 seconds it’s an instant KO as they turn you into one of their own. They’re still far from a threat, but their numbers are always ridiculously large, and more then one of them are allowed to grab you at once to make the grab harder to escape. If one grabs you, a good five or ten will be there to follow it up.

This level is fairly generous on the quantity of the zombies, but you have to deal with Popinski and Silver in their drunken states. Popinski can’t use any of his soda and is constantly treated as if he just went into a crash from having used all 6 bottles. Silver is treated as if he’s used his Neutral Special and Bair on himself, meaning your controls will be significantly screwed up.

***

Popinski smacks a beer bottle over the last of the zombie’s heads, causing it to fall over unconscious. Silver laughs stupidly. “Heh heh, I told ya the owners of the place would come back. . .”.

“Bah. How was I supposed to know? Nobody on the streets when I looked. . .”.

“Uuuuhhhhhhh. . .Should we go get that other chick?”.

“Heh heh, yeah, I’d love to have a drink with her!”.

“Not what I meant. . .Uuuuuhhhh. . . The owners of the place might go after her too, y’know. . .”.

“Not a problem. I sent Silver to watch her.”.

“Oh, yeah, right. . .”.

A brief pause occurs before Popinski takes up yet another bottle. “Another round?”.

***

Anne is seen going into a building for some big photography company of some sort. She smirks to herself as she looks over her pictures she took in Snowpeak. . .”Let’s see how much these go for. . .”. Anne goes up to the front desk for nobody to be there, causing her to raise an eyebrow. She goes into an elevator and goes to look around on the next floor to still find not but a soul, but then looks out the window to let out a slight shriek as she sees a horde of zombies coming into the building. . .She gets a brief flashback of Silver. “If something happens, you’ll know where to find us. . .”.

***

Level 36
Play as: Anne

This level is all one screen, but it’s very large vertically. There’s a bunch of stairs you can use to go up and down, but only you are capable of operating the elevator, the zombies too stupid. Your goal is to get down to the bottom of the building to the exit, which is near impossible due to zombies constantly flooding in. The idea is that you have to bait them up the stairs, then use the elevator to go back down to the first floor once it’s cleared. Zombies are still constantly coming out of the entrance, though, so don’t expect a completely clean slate. Furthermore, zombies are capable of coming in the elevator with you, and you’ll be trapped in a box double Bowser’s size with any zombies who got in for 10 seconds before you get to the other floor. Try to clear any zombies away from the elevator before you use it, or else you’ll just constantly get grabbed. While there probably won’t be enough zombies to kill you in the elevator, if one has you already grabbed when you come out on the next floor you’re as good as dead.

***

We’re now following Bowser’s group as they go through the streets, Morton’s stomach still growling loudly. “Why’d you have to be such an ass to those other guys, dad? Because you took so long to let them stay last time, we didn’t have enough time to eat. . .”.

Bowser folds his arms in annoyance. “How was I supposed to know that he was gonna take us away in the portal?!?”.

Vaati sighs. “Both of you have decent points. . .But that’s just the thing. We can’t know. So. . .We find food, we eat it. No talking, no fighting, we just eat it. Are we getting our priorities clear here?”.

Jafar rolls his eyes. “Is food all you lot can think about?”.

Vaati shrugs. “Finding food obviously shouldn’t be much of a problem in a place like this. We shouldn’t have to worry.”.

Morton looks around, constantly turning every which way. “So where’s the food then?!? Huh? Huh?”.

Vaati casually places a single hand on Morton’s bald head and spins him around, pointing in the direction of a supermarket. Morton stampedes past Lemmy, running him over and going into the supermarket. Bowser and Vaati go to follow after Morton as Jafar goes to give Lemmy a hand to help him up. “Errr. . .Thanks. . .”.

“Your brother running you over. . .A rather fitting metaphor for what’s to come.”.

Lemmy lets out a depressed sigh. “Did dad really find me that useless?”.

“Indeed, didn’t I tell you? He wants us to vote you off, seeing we’ll still have four to the three of the other group. . .And to tell you the truth, I can’t exactly say he’s entirely wrong, but we don’t want a dumb brute like your brother running around here, now do we?”.

Lemmy sighs. “Well. . .What about Morton? Is he on it?”.

“But of course. He’s the main supporter of it for rather. . .Obvious reasons. . .”.

“He’s. . .Really going to betray me? Wow. . .I thought I knew him better then that. . .Maybe if I talk to him I can knock some sense into him. . .”.

Jafar goes wide eyed very briefly, but hastily forces himself to go back to being casual. “You can’t do that. . .Even if you talked to him in private, he’d just tattle to your father like the overgrown baby he is. I’d really rather your father not know we’re going behind his back with this, as then things wouldn’t go nearly as smoothly.”.

Lemmy sighs. “Fine. . .So. . .You got a name, long beard?”.

“Oh, errr. . .Jafar. And yours? Not that I care. . .”.

“Lemmy.”.

“Good to meet you then. . .Moving on, we should probably get back to the others before they notice we’re straggling behind. . .”.

Lemmy chuckles and motions off to Morton and Bowser gorging themselves. “I doubt that’ll be a problem. . .”. Jafar rolls his eyes and goes into the supermarket with Lemmy to eat at a more rational pace, but before much feasting can occur some zombies start swarming in. . .

***

Level 37
Play as: Bowser, Morton, Lemmy, Jafar, Vaati

This level is a battle, but there’s far more space then you’d ever need for a battle. So. . .Why do you need to progress through the level? Because all your characters start with 300% from hunger and there’s tons of food throughout the supermarket you can use to heal yourself. If you just try to fight without healing, one grab means you’re dead, even if there aren’t any other zombies to follow it up.

***

Bowser smacks a zombie’s head off, but it continues to just keep coming at him. He breathes fire at it to knock off its’ arm, but the zombie just beats him with it like a club. The arm breaks in two from being knocked over Bowser’s head, but then the arm starts acting on it’s own as it climbs up his body as Bowser awkwardly tries to claw it off of him, getting grabbed. Some other zombies come up to Bowser during this, but Vaati comes over and blows them out the entrance with his wind magic. Bowser lets out a sigh of relief before hastily regaining his posture and looking about warily.

He goes to run out to fight them, but Vaati goes to block him. “No, you fool. Didn’t you see what was happening? You can’t kill these things, and by the time you do there’s several more of them in the last one’s place. Now help me barricade the entrance.”.

Bowser mumbles under his breath as he starts picking up and throwing stuff to block the entrance as Vaati starts hurling objects with his wind powers. They eventually sufficiently block it off for Bowser to laugh. “Let’s see them get past that, heh heh!”.

Suddenly Morton, Lemmy, and Jafar come running from the back, being chased by another horde of zombies. Jafar’s eye twitches as he sees that Vaati and Bowser have blocked off the entrance. “What are you idiots doing?!? Most of them are coming from the back anyway, you’ve blocked off our only escape route!”.

Bowser growls lowly. “Well how were we supposed to know there was a back entrance to this place, huh?”.

Vaati rolls his eyes. “Does it matter who’s fault it is? There’s not much time for pointless debate. Help me get around this.”.

***

Level 38
Play as: Bowser, Morton, Lemmy, Jafar, Vaati

This level could also be considered somewhat of a battle, but rather then fighting the zombies you have to destroy all of the crap that Vaati and Bowser piled in front of the entrance to clear your escape route, and endless zombies constantly come from the back. The zombies will near inevitably swarm you if you just stay hacking away at the barricade forever, so once they get to you you’ll have to lure them away then run back to the barricade to do more attacking while they’re slowly making their way back. This is easier then it sounds due to you being able to jump up onto shelves and such to get to the back while staying out of the reach of the zombies.

***

The group runs out of the supermarket hastily for zombies to be swarming the streets absolutely everywhere. Vaati’s eye twitches. “Why did we leave our barricaded building again?”.

Jafar folds his arms. “It was far from a perfect defense, considering there was a giant open spot in the back. . .”.

Lemmy waves his arms about hastily. “Forget about it! Where are we gonna go turtle up in next?”.

Vaati looks about every which way quickly before pointing off to a skyscraper a bit in the distance. “We’re hiding there.”.

Bowser puts his hands on his hips. “Who made you the leader?”.

“Oh, terribly sorry, Bowser. You were just being all leaderly giving out orders every which way back there, you know. I’m more then open to hearing your suggestions.”.

“Uuuhhh. . .”. Bowser points off to another random skyscraper further off in the distance. “We’ll hide there instead!”.

“That one’s further off then mine. . .”.

Bowser growls lowly. “Fine. Whatever.”. Bowser leads the charge forward towards the building as he does a shoulder charge through a good amount of zombies. Morton follows in his father’s footsteps with a similar maneuver while Jafar and Morton make a path to make their way towards the building.

Lemmy tries to follow after them, but trips as the others get far, far, ahead of him. “Hey, wait up!”. Lemmy attempts to catch up to the others as he runs in-between the legs of some zombies. The camera shows his point of view for him to be unable to see any of the others as they’re blocked off by the zombies thanks to his height. He eventually starts running around in circles of sorts due to being unable to see where he’s going thanks to the hordes of zombies, eventually getting entirely surrounded. Lemmy screams for help, but the others all seem to have left him behind. . .Desperate, he dives into a trash can in his very limited vicinity and whimpers. . .But the zombies don’t open up his hiding hole.

Lemmy lets out a slight sigh of relief. ”Seems like they’re too stupid to see me in here. . .Though earlier they came through the back of that market without seeing us. . .I guess they can’t smell me thanks to all this garbage or something? Yeah, probably it. . .Though I obviously can’t stay here forever. No food, and. . .Yeah. . .Not exactly fond of being a piece of trash. . .”.

Lemmy finds a conveniently placed knife in the trash can and chuckles to himself very subtly as he cuts out a couple of small holes in the trash can. The camera cuts outside the trash can to show Lemmy standing up with two slits for his legs and looking out with a pair of eye slits. “Now to find a more permanent hiding place. . .”.

***

Level 39
Play as: Lemmy

Despite zombies ignoring you while you’re in the trash can, your moveset is severely limited to a generic whack, spewing up a banana peel like Diddy’s, and coming out of the trash can. You can go in and out of it at will, but the main problem is that you can’t jump while inside the trash can. You can pick up the trash can to carry over the parts you can’t just casually walk through in it, but these spots are also endangered by zombies and you can’t use any attacks while carrying it, so you might prefer to go through the parts where the trash can is capable of protecting you on foot to avoid being so disabled in the sections that require jumping. Whether you choose to go Rambo or play stealthy, though, it’ll be hell.

***

Anne is seen making it back to the bar where Popinski and Silver are staying, near entirely out of breath. “Surprised they waited for me. . .”. She then notices how horribly drunk Popinski and Silver are. . .“So that’s why. . .”. Anne rolls her eyes. “Alright, I’m here. Party’s over. We obviously can’t stay here. There were several zombies following me into the place-“.

Popinski throws an arm around Anne drunkenly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Madame. Just drown your sorrows with some ice cold beer!”. Popinski laughs as he offers a beer bottle to Anne for her to throw it against the wall, shattering it. This catches Popinski and Silver’s attention pretty clearly. . .

“If you idiots want to stay here, then stay here, dammit. Drink yourselves to death as the zombies come and eat your flesh off your faces. See if I care.”.

Silver laughs. “Zombies? Please. She’s obviously drunk.”.

Popinski nods in agreement. “Yeah, heh heh! Come have a drink with us, Madame!”.

Anne sighs and shakes her head in disbelief. “I’ve. . .Got some more back at my place. You guys wanna come with? Can’t believe I’m doing this. . .”.

“Sounds like a plan! Lead the way.”.

Anne sighs as she goes to take Popinski and Silver out of the bar. Outside there’s a horde of zombies waiting for them. . .

***

Level 40
Play as: Anne

While Popinski and Silver aren’t playable, they’re cpu allies that you have to herd along through the level, and if they die it’s a game over. Your own safety shouldn’t be much of a concern seeing you have more then enough stocks, but seeing both your allies are horribly stupid and Popinski’s in his crash state from too much soda (Silver’s stupider then Soda to compensate) they’re going to be the main thing killing you in the level. You’ll constantly have to free them from the grabs of the zombies, and what sucks even more is that your allies seem to have little survival instinct and just tend to mindlessly fight their way through everything. While fighting them off is possible somewhat with 3 characters on-screen, once you get towards the end you’ll want to abandon your allies and just run to the finish to clear the stage.

***

Anne’s group is cornered up against a building against a group of zombies. Lemmy spies them from his trash can. . .”So much for needing to vote those guys off. . .Can move right on to Morton. . .Though they’re probably my best shot at finding a place to survive here at the moment. We’ll just see how they handle-”.

Suddenly, a gun shot is heard and a zombie’s head is blown off. Several more gunshots are heard and all the other zombie heads start exploding, leaving their bodies spewing blood in mass as they collapse to the floor. The source of the gunshots comes out a window in a building on the other side of a street – a German man. He hastily motions Popinski’s group to come along. “Quickly! They won’t stay down for long!”. The man’s words are true as the zombies slowly begin to get up again despite being headless. . .The camera cuts to the inside of the man’s building as he unbars the door to let the group in, with Lemmy barely managing to subtly sneak in as Kaiser closes the door and hastily puts the barricades back up.

Anne notices Lemmy and becomes visibly annoyed. “What’re you doing here? Shouldn’t you be leeching off your father?”.

“. . .I wouldn’t put it like that, but I was separated from him. I’d be with him if I could, alright? Anyway, Jafar and that other magicy guy are voting for my brother, Morton, so if you wanna take a shot at our little alliance, that’s the way to go. There, do you trust me now?”.

“We don’t have any reason to believe you, and I find it more likely that they’re planning on betraying you then your brother and you just came to us to try to get our votes.”.

Lemmy gets a rather worried look as the zombies start banging on the door again, causing the man to visibly tremble as we finally get a good look at him. . .He’s a very unstable Von Kaiser with a wonky eye and insanely skinny – a lot of his bones are quite visible. Lemmy raises an eyebrow at him. “Just how long have you been here. . .?”.

Kaiser’s crazy eye twitches violently. “Longer then you’ve been alive, little one. . .Once they took down the Berlin Wall, all the zombies started pouring in from the other side. . .It seemed the Soviets were using the people on the communist side as test subjects. . .”. Von Kaiser pauses as he goes into a brief coughing fit.

“Have you been in this place all this time. . .? What do you eat?”.

Kaiser chuckles as he rips off a piece of the floor board. “I dine on nothing but the finest!”. Kaiser’s eye twitches some more as he chomps down the floor board. . .

Anne backs away slightly from him, weirded out. “We’ve got to get you out of here. . .”.

Kaiser’s eye twitches all the more as if it’s about to pop out of its’ socket. “Are you INSANE?!? Didn’t you see how many of them they were?!? That’s suicide!”. Kaiser hastily goes to block the door as Anne goes to approach it. “You must stay here. You MUST.”.

Anne glares at Kaiser awkwardly as she backs away from the door. “You’re not helping your own case as far as sanity goes. . . Changing the topic. . .Just when did this start, exactly?”

“I remember the day the wall fell like it was yesterday. . .A pale moon was rising, in the distance a wolf was howling. . .The leader of our side, Romero, was the one to finally knock down the wall, but I could tell just by looking at him. . .What lurked behind his senile smile, that bulbous nose, those oversized glasses?”. Von Kaiser pauses dramatically and looks about the four characters warily. “Pure evil! The armies of the undead didn’t attack him at all and followed his orders. . .He was probably one of the Soviets.”.

Von Kaiser’s gaze stops on Popinski as he says “Soviets”, his eye twitching all the more violently. “You. . .I remember you now! I fought you in the ring all those years ago back when I came to America. . .Vodka Drunkenski.”.

Popinski laughs. “I actually go by Soda Popinski now. Vodka’s a former name of mine. . .The WVBA insisted I change it for all the kiddies watching the fights.”.

Anne rolls her eyes. “The old one sounded more fitting. . .”.

Kaiser holds his head and lets out a slight cry of pain for Lemmy to look weirded out. “What’s wrong, mister?”.

Kaiser shakes his head as he gets up and picks up his rifle, priming it and aiming it at Popinski as his eye continues to twitch. “You’re one of those damn Soviets! You’re the ones who turned the Germans on the other side of the wall into zombies and brought it down to let them loose on us. . .And now you’ve come to finish me! Well I’ll have you know I won’t go down so easy, “Soda Popinski”. . . Ich bin eine Kampfmaschine!”.

***

BOSS: VON KAISER

Play as: Soda Popinski, Silver, Anne, Lemmy

Attacks:

Loose Floorboard: Von Kaiser stomps down, causing a floorboard the size of half a Battlefield platform to shoot up into the air and spin around. The floorboard does 15% and decent knockback, and the portion of the floor that’s opened up also becomes a pit you can be KOd in. Kaiser just walks around any of these by going into the background should he attempt to cross past them.

Fine Dining: Kaiser can only use this attack after using Loose Floorboard, causing him to eat the floorboard whole. This doesn’t randomly heal Kaiser, but he’ll proceed to spit out the four nails from the floorboard after eating it at you. The nails go in arch like arcs and while they only do 5%, they pin you down to the ground with a grab hitbox. The nails can stack to increase the difficulty of escaping. If Kaiser uses Loose Floorboard on a section of ground you’re pinned to and you don’t button mash out of the grab before the floorboard flips back down into the ground, you’ll be face down into the floor and get KOd.

MP-40: Kaiser takes out his rifle, aims, then fires. This attack is automatically targeted wherever you are, so a precise spot dodge is necessary. This deals 26% and extremely high hitstun.

Brink of Insanity: Kaiser’s eye twitches violently. The animation is rather subtle and it happens at complete random for brief periods of time, even while he’s performing other attacks. If you attack Kaiser while his eye’s twitching, he’ll perform a counter of rapid fire punches and won’t take any damage. The series of punches deal 32% with the last one dealing knockback that kills at 65%. Kaiser’s eye twitching increases as he loses health and devours floorboards. Best kill him off before he goes berserk.

Head Pound: Kaiser pounds against his head for as long as you leave him be. This increases his amount of eye twitching the longer you let him do this. The amount of damage you need to deal to Kaiser can be anywhere from 20-40 at random, and after you deal the correct amount of damage Kaiser extends out his arms to both sides and lets out a cry before doing his signature spinning punch for 24% and knockback that kills at 45%. Try to not use any attacks with high end lag to get him out of this. . .

Kaiser Combo: Kaiser comes after you and performs an undodgable grab once he gets there. He’ll then proceed to say a certain amount of words, more if he’s low on health. The words are links, rechts, and cuckoo, and he’ll then proceed to perform uppercuts in those directions (Links/left, rechts/right) or a jab in the case of “cuckoo”. You have to dodges in the opposite direction of the punches or simply spot dodge in the case of the jab, and when Kaiser is low on health he can do up to 8 of these punches in a row. The uppercuts deal 18% and upward knockback that kill at 60% while the jab deals 12% and high hitstun, meaning the next punch in his combo will hit. If you get unlucky and get a imbalance of left/right uppercuts and have to keep rolling in a specific direction, you might have to just take a punch to avoid rolling off the stage. This can be remedied by going to the center of the stage when Kaiser comes to grab you.

Shoe Shine: Kaiser takes out a towel and shines his shoe with it, getting off a bunch of muck with it. He then proceeds to whip the towel forward, causing all the muck he got off his shoe to fly forwards. If the muck hits it does pushback triple Mario’s FLUDD and causes foes’ movement to be cut in half for the remainder of their stock, and the attack is largely lagless. Kaiser likes to use this attack before a Kaiser Combo to try to get you to the edge of the screen.

Unleash Hell: When Kaiser gets down to his last sliver of health, the zombies break in from the barricaded door, causing Kaiser’s rate of eye twitching to double. If you have muck on you from Kaiser’s shoes, the zombies will exclusively target you, though otherwise they’ll also help you finish Kaiser. Kaiser will always counter their attacks whether or not his eye is twitching, but this makes him vulnerable to your own attacks.

***

Kaiser falls to the ground in defeat with his usual TKO animation, but then the zombies burst in the door and start swarming in. Anne goes over hastily and grabs a-hold of his sniper rifle, handing it to Popinski. “You know how to use this, right?”.

Popinski looks over the gun in puzzlement due to his drunkenness for Anne to just sigh and take it back for herself. After a bit of hesitation as she fumbles around with it, she shoots a couple zombies, then proceeds to rapid fire on them. . .But the gun quickly runs out of ammo. Anne’s eyes twitches as she rapidly pulls the trigger and looks in the ammunition hold. “Bastard used all the ammo. . .”. Rather conveniently for the group a portal appears and sucks them up. . .Though not so much for Kaiser.

***

The other characters are seen atop a rooftop, having successfully barricaded the zombies to block them from coming up. Bowser grumbles as he turns to Vaati. “So whadda we do now? No food, and we took so long to get up all this way that we have to sleep on the top where it’s cold out.”.

“Is food all you can think about? We’re not going to have food on hand at all times, and we just had plenty back at the market. . .As for the cold, I’d hardly think you’d consider this a problem after Snowpeak.”.

Bowser folds his arms and grumbles in annoyance as he goes off to a corner of the building to pace back and forth. Seeing his opportunity, Jafar approaches Morton subtly. “Been waiting for a chance to talk to you, Morton. . .”.

Morton raises an eyebrow. “You know my name?”.

“I learned it from your father and brother. . .Anyway, that’s unimportant. What –is- important is that they your father and brother want Vaati and I to vote you off. Something about your uselessness and how you’re not a “real” member of the group. . .Your father wants you gone just because you don’t share his bloodline.”.

“. . .How do you know about that, huh?”.

“It’s rather obvious, to say the least. . .Your father told me. Needless to say, I find that a rather poor excuse to get rid of you when you’re so much more useful then that scrawny brother of yours. We’ll have to beat them to the punch and eliminate your brother.”.

“. . .Even if that’s true, I don’t wanna kill off my brother. . .Can’t we just get rid of the other three guys who branched off from us instead?”.

Jafar rolls his eyes. “He’s even more sickeningly goody goody then his brother. . .Perhaps we should side with the pint-sized turtle instead. . . It’ll be easiest to get rid of your brother soon, as otherwise the others will get suspicious.”.

Morton shrugs his shoulders. “Does it matter? We’ll outnumber ‘em anyway. . .”.

“You’re not supposed to think that far, you spoiled brat. . .Perhaps this one’s smarter then we give him credit for. In any case, we’ll have to side with the more gullible one. . .You’re probably right. Best we keep your brother around while we can, but don’t you feel. . .Betrayed or anything?”.

“Not particularly, cause I don’t really believe you.”. Morton turns to Bowser and calls out to him. “Hey, dad. Who are you voting for?”.

Bowser laughs. “That muscle man who’s standing in-between me and my woman, of course!”.

Morton turns back to Jafar and glares, but Jafar manages to keep his cool. “Do you really think they’re just going to tell you they’re voting you off? Your father is more cunning then that. . .”.

Morton folds his arms and sighs as he starts thinking on Jafar’s words, but then a portal appears and sucks the group into it.

***

DAWN OF THE FOURTH DAY – GROUP 2

Group 2 is seen being dropped out of a portal, now without either Ryuk or Mustang. The group looks around, surprised at their new location, though before anyone can say anything another portal opens up and Zant gets kicked out of it. Ryuk comes out of the portal shortly afterward and cackles.

Hades smirks at Ryuk. “Not bad, Ryuk my man. What you plannin’ to do now that you’ve taken that guy out for the count?”.

“Oh, don’t worry. He’s still alive. . .”.

“. . .Wha? Finish him off while you still can!”.

“. . .That won’t be necessary. I’ve killed his master who he gets all of his power from. He’s harmless now! He’s going to be taking my place in this little game. . .”.

Raven glares at Ryuk. “Don’t tell me you’re still gonna keep this thing going. . .”.

“Oh, but of course, my dear! I never was that much of a participant anyway, if you didn’t notice. I was always just an observer. . .Not much is really changing here, now is it?”.

Hades chuckles. “That’s the way, Ryuk. So let’s leave these idiots behind and-“.

‘Oh come now, that wouldn’t be fair, now would it? What would the others think if I let you come with me?”.

Hades’ fiery hair starts burning slightly more as he clenches a fist, but he calms it down and chuckles slightly. “Heh heh, good joke. Now let’s go.”.

Ryuk smirks. “I’m serious.”.

Hades’ fiery hair erupts as he throws up his arms in rage. He sends a massive fiery blast at Ryuk, and when the dust clears Ryuk is nowhere to be seen. Hades does a fist pump and lets out a “Yes!” for Dingodile to shake his head. “Oi, if you actually burnt him to a crisp, dontcha think there’d be some ashes left over or somethin’, mate? He probably just fled with one of his portals.”.

“. . .Dammit, get back here you coward!”.

Zant chuckles as he weakly gets up, causing Hades to turn to him. “Just what the hell’s so funny, huh?”.

“His friendship with you was nothing more then a feint. Seeing I was watching you all, he needed someone to share his fake plans with so that I wouldn’t realize his true intentions. . .He used you.”.

Hades grumbles to himself and folds his arms as he paces to and fro, then ultimately just sighs. “So. . .Where are we then? Why aren’t we in that snowy place?”.

“Variety is the spice of life, is it not? I’d seen enough of you freezing your tails off. . .”.

Macho Man puts his hands on his hips. “You don’t think we’re pathetic enough to not be able to survive in a place like this, do you?”.

Zant chuckles. “Oh, wait and see, my friend, wait and see. . .They’ll be attracted by our smell soon enough.”.

“. . .Just what are you talking about?”.

“I just told you. Wait and see. . .”.

Macho Man does an overly flashy punch to Zant’s head, but just waves his hand off in pain as he smacks Zant’s helmet.

Raven sighs. “You’re already likely enough to get voted off without being spiteful to us. You’re one of us now, whether you like it or not. Now tell us what’s going to happen.”.

“Pfft. Don’t give me false hope. I know I’ll be the next from this group to die. No need to sugar coat it. I’m the whole cause of this, am I not?”.

“That’s true, but if you actually prove yourself useful we might be willing to put up with you a while.”.

“I’m not going to pretend to have uses I don’t. Nearly all of my power came from my master. Without him I’m useless.”.

Negative Man crawls over weakly. “You can’t be more useless then I am. . .”.

Raven is as emotionless as always. “Then you could at least tell us what’s going to come after us. . .”.

“As if I’d believe you. You’ll just stab me in the back.”.

Dingodile folds his arms. “You’re not exactly a guy with a lot of credibility either, y’know. . .”.

“I don’t expect you to believe me. I expect to be voted off and die a horrible death.”.

Zant mumbles to himself as he walks off into the distance. Negative Man watches as Zant goes off. . .”He’s the only one who understands. . .”.

***

Hades can be seen walking through the city by himself, grumbling to himself. Before going on for long, he sees Richard come out from a building and folds his arms in annoyance. “There’s nobody in this entire city to kill. . .At least that last place had those wild animals to quench my bloodlust. I’ve been looking around for a good while now. . .Did they all run and hide when they heard we were coming?”.

Hades chuckles. “Heh heh, their loss if they did. Just offering them an invitation to the underworld. No soul, eternal torture, no way to end your existence. . .What’s not to like?”.

“Indubitably! Just a friendly visit to the underworld for some crumpets and tea. Perfectly reasonable, no?”.

Hades attempts to say something as he chuckles some more slightly, but then he loses his train of thought as he sees Zant pacing off in the distance. Hades goes over to him for Richard to follow after him. Zant just glares over in their direction. “And what do you want?”.

Hades puts up his hands and shakes them. “No need to be like that. How’s about a deal?”. Hades quickly throws an arm around Zant. “I’m willing to make an alliance with you. Seeing Richard and I here are pretty much immune to everything here anyway, we don’t really mind you being a deadweight. Sides, the others’ll probably all think everybody else is voting for you anyway or think it’ll be easy to take you out later, so they won’t waste their votes on you. That means if we all vote together. . .”. Hades raises his other hand up skyward. “Bada bing, bada boom! We’ve got somebody else voted off.”.

Zant’s thoughts on this are hidden due to his helmet giving him a perfect poker face, him pausing for a good while. “A rather intriguing offer. . .I suppose with me beating myself up earlier, I’ll probably be underestimated, much like Negative Man. . .I’ll still get some votes of course, but with the two of you on my side, survival is possible.”.

Richard comes up close to Zant. “So then, seeing that we’re friends now, would you care to tell us where those people you hinted to earlier are? It’s been over 30 minutes since I last killed something!”. Richard puts up his hands as if ready to receive a whisper. “I won’t tell, I promise!”.

Zant shrugs his shoulders. “I’m honestly surprised they haven’t come out yet. . .But remembering what you said earlier, I doubt you’ll take that much joy in killing them, seeing they’re already dead.”.

Hades smirks slightly. “So undeads then, huh? We can still have some fun with that.”.

Richard pouts. “Pfft, how? There’s no thrill in beating on a lifeless husk.”.

“We won’t be beating on them. . .We’ll be controlling ‘em. You can do that too, right? Together, we’ll destroy the whole damn town.”.

“. . .Not as good as killing actual living beings, but it’ll do.”.

The zombies finally start pouring in for Hades to chuckles to himself as he and Richard start controlling them. Zant comes along to watch for Hades to glare back at him disdainfully. “Look, twilight king, baby. We’re friends and all, but I’ve got a reputation to keep up, see? I can’t be seen with you. If the others realize we have an alliance, you’ll be seen as more of a threat and be taken out in a snap.”.

Zant just grumbles to himself as he goes off into the distance for Hades to turn back to the zombies under his and Richard’s control for them to be doing the thriller dance. Hades raises an eyebrow as he turns to Richard. “What?”.

***

Level 41
Play as: Hades, Richard

This level is a fairly standard romp through the streets, but your Down Specials are replaced with taking control of a zombie. The problem is you can only take control of one of them at a time and there’s a decent bit of lag on it and the zombies always come at you in swarms, so you’ll have to kill off a decent few yourself before you start taking control of them. Once you have a few zombies, though, you’ll be more easily able to convert more of them to your cause as you use the rest as meat shields. This is far from optional – if you don’t get enough of them by the level’s end, you’ll be overwhelmed by the zombies for sure.

***

Zant is seen off in an obscure building by himself, messing around with his spells. Some of his various hand motions cause nothing whatsoever to happen, infuriating the twilight king. “Hardly any of my spells still work without master’s power. . .The ones that do are so weak that they’re barely worth using. Was I really this weak before? Really? Never know what you have until it’s gone, I suppose. . .”. Zant sighs. “Not that it matters. I’ll probably be among the first to get killed off. Hades will only be willing to ally with me for so long before risking revealing that he’s an ally of me and exposing himself. . .Could just threaten him to tell the others that he’s with me if he leaves, but why would they believe me? I have no credibility. I’m the cause of all this.”. Zant shakes his head. “. . .That’s the humiliating thing about this. I could care less that I lost all my power and that my death is inevitable. It’s the fact I did it to myself.”. As Zant goes further into self reflection, he fails to notice some zombies coming up to him. . .

***

Level 42
Play as: Zant

This level is just a battle and the quantity of zombies isn’t anything that startling, but Zant’s button inputs are randomly swapped around to represent him having to get used to his newly downgraded state. The controls are re-randomized every time you retry the level, and considering you haven’t played Zant since the very beginning of the game you’ll have a hell of a time learning him here.

***

Raven can be seen coming into a gas station. She looks about the place warily before somewhat uncharacteristically attacking the snacks, gorging on them out of hunger. Upon hearing somebody barge in, she hastily tosses away the bag of chips she was eating from and wipes her mouth off, putting on her usual blank expression as she turns around. She rolls her eyes as she sees it’s just some zombies and levitates a shelf at them to knock them over, then looks outside to see a horde of the zombies coming on. ”Oh Please. . .Is this all he was talking about?”.

The zombies come to approach Raven, but she just casually flies up and over them and goes up on top of a roof. She looks around at the sheer quantity of zombies and gets a slightly uneasy look. “The others should be able to handle themselves. . .Right?”. As she looks around, she notices Negative Man in the middle of a zombie infested street, completely surrounded. She sighs and goes to fly down to him for him to look up at her. “Leave me. . .Save yourself. . .”.

***

Level 43
Play as: Raven

You have infinite jumps to represent Raven’s flight in this level, meaning avoiding the zombies yourself is easy, but Negative Man is on the map and his death grants you a game over. He won’t try to budge from his spot at all, just using his various attacks to try to force approaches on the zombies to try to “save you” by sacrificing himself. You can just fight the zombies yourself to clear the level, though that’s far from easy. Your alternative option is try to lure the zombies to the edge of the map and into some bottomless pits, but when Negative Man is attracting them to himself so much this isn’t exactly easy either. A decent strategy is to make a wall and use your fair to grab Negative Man through it to get him behind your wall away from the zombies, though that’ll only block him off from one side, seeing as the zombies are coming from both directions.

***

Macho Man and Dingodile are seen eating together in a restaurant. Dingodile can’t get enough of it, though Macho Man seems to be less then thrilled about it. Dingodile eyes Macho Man warily. “What’s wrong, mate? This is some of my best stuff right here. Roast duck’s a delicacy.”.

“It’s. . .Okay I guess, I just prefer the stuff back in Hollywood.”.

Dingodile frowns. “Sorry that my cookin’ isn’t up to your fine standards. I did the best with what I had. This place doesn’t have that many spices.”.

Macho Man attempts to change the topic. “I just wish that everybody didn’t run off like that earlier. . .I told ‘em we should stay together for when whatever those guys the twilight guy was talking about show up that we’d be ready. None of them listened.”.

“Just as well, mate. You don’t wanna come off as some bossy leader giving out orders. . .You do remember what happened to the last guy who tried that, right?”.

“Well yeah, but he only got voted off cause of me. I wanted him out so I could take his spot as the leader.”.

“Even when he was the “leader” he didn’t have that much authority. Those undeads are always gonna be off doing their own thing, and the rest of us generally don’t take kindly to leadership. All you’re doing is painting a gigantic target on your back by claiming that title. If anything, it’s best to try to be in the background.”.

Macho Man sighs. “You’ve got a decent point there. . .Oh, don’t think I ever got your name.”.

“Dingodile’s the name. Yours?”.

Macho Man smirks and strikes a slight pose as he says his name for Dingodile to roll his eyes. “With a name like that, I doubt you’re used to bein’ subtle, are ya?”.

“It’s kind of hard to get sponsorships if you just stay in the background all the time, and I don’t have anything I wanna be subtle about. Everybody should see how great I am!”.

“. . .Errr. . .Yeah. That attitude of yours is really gonna have to go. That’s not your –real- name is it? If you want to be taken remotely seriously here, you should probably go by something more normal. . .”.

Macho Man stares blankly at Dingodile for the halfling to raise an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me that’s your real name. . .?”.

Macho Man smirks. “Yep. Legally got my name changed. All macho all the time, baby!”.

Dingodile facepalms. “Well then, what was your name BEFORE you were “Super Macho Man”, then?”.

Macho Man folds his arms. “And just what’s wrong with Super Macho Man?”.

Dingodile rolls his eyes. “Look, if the others ask your name, you’re. . .Darius. Got it?”.

“. . .Darius? That’s a stupid name.”.

“Certainly better then “Super Macho Man”. . .And it won’t make you stick out so much. While we’re here, why don’t we get you some actual clothes?”.

Macho Man gets a shocked expression. “But then how am I supposed to show off my manliness?!?”.

“. . .The whole point of this conversation went right over your head, didn’t it?”.

Macho Man sighs. “I get the point that I shouldn’t be that bossy or try to be a leader, but I can’t change who I am.”.

Dingodile sighs also. “Fair enough, I suppose. Just make sure you don’t tell them that name of yours unless asked. . .Moving on, who you planning on votin’ for?”.

“That twilight king who started this all in the first place. Don’t have to think about that one twice.”.

“You can’t make your votes based off grudges. May as well just be randomly throwing them out. You have to think strategically about these things. . .”.

Macho Man rolls his eyes. “You voted for Richard last time because he lied about you eating the food. That’s not a grudge?”.

“Yeah, but he was destroying all our food too, so we didn’t have much choice. This time I’m thinking we should vote for that other undead. Without him and that death “god”, Richard’s clueless. He just follows after ‘em like a lost puppy. Seeing one of em’s already out of the game, there’s just one more left to strand Richard by himself.”.

“If you want to get rid of Richard, you could always just vote for Richard instead of voting for the people who control him. . .”.

“Richard isn’t capable of doing anything meaningful on his own. As things stand, though, he essentially makes the other undead’s vote count for double, making them a competent threat. As for the Twilight King. . .Do you really think anybody’s gonna make an alliance with him? EVERYBODY hates him. Sides, it won’t be hard to get the others to vote with us to get rid of him later on.”.

“Fine, fine, you’ve made your point. I’ll vote with you for that other undead.”. Macho Man finishes the last of his roast duck. “You got any more?”. Dingodile, having already finished his own duck a good while earlier, gets up and goes to go back into the kitchen. Before he gets there, though, he notices zombies approaching the restaurant. Macho Man questions why Dingodile stopped in place, facing away from the zombies. “What is it?”.

“No more duck left. Gonna make toast.”. Dingodile primes his bazooka and chuckles.

***

Level 44
Play as: Dingodile, Super Macho Man

For some reason or other, Dingodile’s crystals are unavailable in this battle. As a plus, though, Macho Man is a cpu ally active on the map (Or Dingodile if you’re playing Macho). Both characters here have pretty obvious roles – Macho tanks while Dingo snipes down the zombies. Macho Man is essentially Dingodile’s replacement for his crystals here. Your cpu ally dying isn’t a game over, but they won’t respawn and without them things become significantly harder.

***

Macho Man and Dingodile are seen struggling to defend themselves against the zombies. Macho Man’s doing his best to bottle-neck them in the door to prevent them from swarming while Dingodile blasts the ones outside through a window, but they eventually start making their way past Macho Man and pushing him back from the door, causing them to start swarming in. The screen cuts to Raven flying over head and spying the two of them down below and shaking her head, sighing slightly. She levitates some chunks of the ground up and hurls them at the zombies to get their attention, flying down significantly lower to get them to start coming in her direction, just barely staying out of their range. Dingodile and Macho Man peek out from the resturaunt to see what’s happening for Raven to look over at him. “I’ll lure the zombies away for awhile. Get to somewhere more safe in the mean time, alright?”.

Macho Man nods. “Sure thing. . .But what about you?”.

“. . .Look at me. I can fly. These things can’t touch me.”.

Macho Man goes to say something more, but Dingodile grabs him by the arm and pulls him away. “Don’t question a good thing, mate.”.

***

Level 45
Play as: Raven

While Dingodile and Macho Man aren’t constantly attracting attention to themselves like Negative Man was, your goal here is to lure the zombies through a whole level’s worth of terrain. You still have infinite jumps for “flight”, but if you abuse them to make that much distance they’ll just head back after Macho and Dingo. You have to also constantly poke the zombies with attacks to encourage them to keep coming after you, as if you just run their attention will be drawn to Dingodile and Macho Man due to them actually defending themselves with attacks due to being unable to run.

***

Raven flies on top of the building from earlier where she dropped off Negative Man. “Why did you bring even more of the zombies here. . .? Have you finally realized what’s going to happen to us and trying to hasten our fates?”.

“No. . .I was luring them away from some of the others. They would’ve probably been eaten alive if I hadn’t come along.”.

“Then you should’ve let them be eaten. . .No point in delaying the inevitable. . .”.

“If you’re so eager to see us all die, you don’t have long to wait. This game is going to inevitably kill off most of us.”.

“True. . .But are the lives we’re leading in this game really worth living? We have to struggle to even survive. . .”.

Raven squints slightly. “Will you stop it?”.

“I thought if anyone would understand, it’d be you. . .You said that even before this game happened that you knew you were going to die soon. . .”.

“. . .I have an actual reason for that, though. I –know- I’m going to die on a specific date. . .”.

“How do you know?”.

“I’d really rather not go into the details. . .”.

“Go figure. . .It’s always the same. . .”.

With that, a portal appears and sucks up Raven and Negative Man. . .

***

REWARD CHALLENGE

The two groups gets spit out of portals, appearing in the palace of Twilight. Ryuk is seated on Zant’s old throne, causing much confusion for Group 1 as Zant is seen over with the other participants. Ryuk cackles as he stands up and comes before the first group. “Greetings! I am Ryuk. I’ll be your new host for this little game of survival. If  you’ll recall, I was a participant in the second group, but things wouldn’t be fair if they just lost one of their players, now would it? Hence why my good friend Zant here has taken my place in the game.”.

Ryuk turns to Zant. “I thank you for making a decent enough host before I could take the mantle. Also have to thank you for the use this superb palace. Hell, you’re even the one who started this all in the first place! Can’t thank you enough, Zant.”. Ryuk slaps Zant mockingly on the back for him to just stand there, unable to think up much of a comeback and in no position to threaten him.

Ryuk cackles as he goes back to his throne. “Now that that’s out of the way, it’s time to establish what this new management is going to mean for you all. . .There isn’t so much going to be a reward to the winners here so much as a punishment for the losers.”. Ryuk brings a zombie through a portal. “The losers. . .”. Ryuk snaps his fingers, causing the zombie to grow wings. “Are going to have to deal with these. Let’s see you hide on the rooftops and fly away from them now, huh? Heh heh. . .”.

“The actual challenge is far from a pleasurable one either. . .You remember those Shadow Beasts we all had so much fun with in Snowpeak? You’ll send out one member of your team. . .To be torn to shreds by them. To “win” the challenge, you have to be knocked out by the beasts first. I bet you’ll all leap at the chance to participate in my challenge, unlike Zant’s, yes? This should also make a large statement about who you pick. . .Whoever you send out to be devoured by the Shadow Beasts should be the weakest of your group.”.

Group 2 near instantly all turn to Negative Man. “Don’t look at me. . .I can’t win anything. . .”.

Raven speaks up first, knowing Negative Man best. “You’re the one who’s always so eager to get beaten up. . .”.

“But getting beaten up here is a good thing, and I can’t do that. . .”.

Hades gets an idea as rubs his hands together eagerly, coming down to Negative Man’s level. “You must’ve misheard him. See, the goal is to survive as long as possible. That’s why we want you to play for us, see?”.

Negative Man looks weirded out. “What makes you think I can do that. . .?”.

“. . .Nevermind that. In any case, we’ve decided on you. Make sure to survive as long as possible.”.

Hades boots Negative Man out among them for him to burst into tears as usual. Hades laughs and talks to the other members of his group subtly. “With his negative mentality, he’ll do his best to get killed off since he thinks he’s supposed to survive now.”.

Raven glares at Hades. “I can’t believe you’re just manipulating him like that. . .”.

“Called sadism, baby. It’s what I do.”.

The camera cuts to group 1 for Bowser to laugh heartily. “I can take the most hits, I’ll survive the longest easily. Let me do it!”.

Vaati facepalms. “The goal of the challenge is to be the first to die, you fool.”.

“. . .What? That’s stupid. Why would he do that?”.

“Probably just wants to see us suffer. Sadistic bastard.”.

Bowser sighs. “Then who do we send out to get the crap beaten out of them?”.

Vaati hastily points to Anne. “Send out the whore. Women are the most frai-“. Vaati hastily dodges a smack from Anne before he finishes his sentence.

Bowser laughs. “Couldn’t agree with you more, but I wouldn’t want her sexy body bruised up that much. . .Uhhh. . .Why don’t you go? You’re real small and stuff. You can get beaten up fast.”.

Vaati’s eye twitches as he motions off to Lemmy. “I’m not as small as that little runt over there.”.

Lemmy chuckles. “Yeah, but I’ve got my shell and scales. Natural armor. You expect those robes to protect ya?”.

“I hardly see how that’s relevant when you’re so small that I can’t see you when I squint.”.

“WHO ARE YOU CALLING A MICROSCOPIC ANT THAT’S SO SMALL HE DOESN’T HAVE A WEIGHT CLASS?!?”.

Lemmy charges up at Vaati, but he casually holds him back with one hand, causing him to run in place. “He’s proving my point here. . .”.

Bowser grumbles. “Fine. Send him out.”.

Vaati smirks as Lemmy hastily turns to his father. “Dad, no!”.

Bowser glares at Lemmy and points off to Ryuk. “You heard me! Go!”.

Lemmy scowls at his father as he goes up alongside Negative Man. Ryuk chuckles. “That was a heart warming family experience if I ever saw one. Now let’s begin the slaughter.”. Ryuk snaps his fingers, causing a door to open up and Shadow Beasts to start pouring out of it. . .

***

Brawl
Lemmy Vs. Negative Man

A “Brawl” is hardly an accurate term to describe this, seeing your goal is to die to the Shadow Beasts. The stage is completely walled in and you have stamina rather then damage so you can’t just casually walk off-screen to kill yourself, meaning you have to compete with Negative Man to attract the attention of the Shadow Beasts. Negative Man is much more suited to attracting the attention of the Shadow Beasts with his moves to encourage approaches, while your traps are rather irrelevant. Your only real advantage of Negative Man is movement speed, meaning you can run off to any straggling Shadow Beasts while he’s pretty much bolted in place. You’re best off trying to leech off of Negative Man’s baiting of the Shadow Beasts though by staying next to him and attacking the beasts once they get close to get them to attack you instead of him. . .Not easy, but it’s hard to be more emo then Negative Man himself.

***

Negative Man is seen getting scratched up horribly by the Shadow Beasts, crying. ”I can’t die. . .I can’t. . .Those guys need me to survive to win this challenge. . .”. Negative Man gets up forcefully, flinging the Shadow Beasts off him, then does a headbutt on a Shadow Beast to scare it away. Lemmy gets knocked out by the Shadow Beast cleanly for Ryuk to laugh and snap his fingers, causing the Shadow Beasts to run back off into the door from whence they came for it to close. “We have a loser!”.

Hades’ eye twitches as he stares at the “triumphant” Negative Man. Raven smirks slightly at Hades. “That’s what you get with your “approach””.

Hades ignores Raven, going straight past her, his anger boiling. His hair eventually outright erupts into flame. “You were supposed to die, you idiot! Isn’t that what you love to do?!? How could you POSSIBLY mess something like this up?!?”.

Negative Man bursts into tears for Dingodile to roll his eyes. “It’s what you told him to do, mate. . .”.

Hades just grumbles to himself as Ryuk cackles and summons two portals, each of which suck up the two groups to send them back to the zombie infested ghost town. . .

Buy your tickets now or log on to roqofthe80s.com for your chance to win ‘em!

Its Been A While, But….
Brutal Legend, produced by Tim shafer’s double fine featuring Jack Black, Ozzy & Lemmy “kill master”

Yes dears the guitar is a major part of this game

This game’s genre is extremely hard to classify as it randomly swaps between a Hack .n. slash and then steaths into a heavy metal RTS which gets you confused after listening to Ozzy for about half an hour (yes head bangers included) which kicks the arse of Halo Wars , im mean really I think they way this game has produced the RTS parts of the games are ingenious, they are amazing and I love them. I love them ….. and I Freaking Love them.

Ok, to be fair this unit has rob Halford (of Judas Priest) on the back of the bike but this is still cool right?!...Right?!?!

You are Eddie Riggs who are the best roadie in the world, but you are a roadie to the shittist “metal” (they are like the Jonas brothers mixed with panic with some nu-metal influences…so they blow) theres a big accident on their stage, big fiery demon comes up kicks their arse and you get taken to the land of Metal…youve heard it all before right?…. thats right NO… thats why its freaking good….its a game devoted to heavy METAL!!!… Eddie Riggs has 2 weapons on him, a freaking axe (picture at the top) and another Axe of the stringed verity (top again) the guitar can fire electricity and fire and play solos to do  things (such as rally points, summon cars & it is the most important thing you have)…. the world is influenced by album covers & theres a Freaking mt. Rushmore kind of thing which i made it so i can have Ozzy, and Lemmy because them 2 together = BRUTAL!!!…. I don’t want to go into the story too much but I can say, the script and story is fantastic, and it has the strongest storyline I have seen in a while…

"Ok.....big evil demon thing... give me back my axe...no my other axe"

The sound track is fantastic for a METAL fan, tracks from bands such as; Mastodon, slayer, megadeth, Ozzy, Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Testament, Static-X, Manson and the list can quite frankly go on for ever the full set list is on wiki or something. The multiplayer is actually fantastic from the off its balanced and works perfectly, theres been a few times when I’ve got raped due to retardation or general shitness, it takes a lot of skill to play with a certain faction and it shows that a decent RTS can be made on a console platform. and its AWSOME!!!

Black, Red & Chrome how original

The Good:

The Story is awesome
The Soundtrack, has a good diversity of Metal Tracks from lots of genres such as glam, Thrash, Black & Industrial
The guitar shoots fire and lightning….I wish I made that up…Really
Ozzy is the guardian of metal..nuff said
The RTS aspect of the game Actually works unlike every other one to date (for consoles that is)
The world looks beautiful (for a place inspired from demons and evilness)
and its FUN!!… remember that… yes we are getting a few fun games recently and its good times

The Bad

The Controls are clunky and sticky but you don’t really notice it
They try to make Eddie look to badass on the front cover (its almost as bad as the Batman cover)
It gets boring after a play through

The Ugly

Lemmy’s Mole/wart thing..

Ok, Long Story Short Typed In Mole With Out Thinking & This Ugly motherfucker Shows Up

SURVIVOR

DAWN OF THE THIRD DAY – GROUP 1

Popinski, Anne, and Silver are seen getting up from a cold night’s sleep in their little cave. Silver shivers as his stomach growls. “I barely got to eat any of the meat that I brought up the mountain. . .”.

Anne rolls her eyes. “It was right there and nothing was stopping you. You gave your meat to the stupid turtle. . .It’s your own fault.”.

Silver groans in annoyance. “Guh. . .Well that’s in the past. We can’t do anything about it, now can we?”.

Popinski nods. “Silver’s right. Complaining accomplishes nothing.”.

Anne folds her arms. “Then what do you suggest? The blizzard outside is still going. We can’t get anything to eat.”.

Popinski motions off into the distance of the cave. “Come now. Surely there must be SOMETHING in here we can eat. . .Let’s go have a look around.”.

***

Level 24
Play as: Soda Popinski, Silver, Anne

The enemies here are exclusively twilight ones, so that’s a pretty bad sign right off the bat. There aren’t many platforming gimmicks present here save for some icicles falling from the ceiling making for a fairly run of the mill level. The only real problem is that the stage has a confusing layout with doors leading you back to earlier on in the level and such.

***

Popinski can be seen swinging about a Shadow Beast as he holds it by the tentacles, bashing it into walls and such until it finally ceases to make any noise. Popinski laughs at this as he carelessly tosses the beast away. “No puny beasts can challenge the might of Soda Popinski!”.

Silver looks at the Shadow Beast lusciously. . .”Do you think we could eat that?”.

Anne shakes her head. “It looks pretty nasty, and I think I saw some of those back at that “twilight king’s” palace. Knowing him I doubt he’s just drop food in our laps.”.

Silver sighs. “You’re probably right. . .”.

The trio continue on a ways to reach a dead end in the cave. Anne looks absolutely disgusted. “So now what do we do now? There’s nothing here.”.

Popinski folds his arms and strikes a thinking pose before eventually noticing a single Ice Keese fly about through the caverns. He dashes after it as Silver screams “FOOD!”, running up alongside him. Anne just stares blankly before casually following after them. . .

***

Level 25
Play as: Soda Popinski, Silver, Anne

While all the material from the last level is reused here, all those doors that led you back to the start now lead you to new areas. Essentially, this level is a miniature great maze (Emphasis on the mini), complete with the map. You don’t have to explore every nook and cranny and find some obligatory doors, but instead you’re simply tracking the Ice Keese. That’d be nice and simple. . .If it wasn’t constantly moving. It moves a considerable bit faster then you, meaning you’ll probably have to cut it off by looking at where it’s going on the map (It keeps moving when you look at the map – it doesn’t show up on the pause screen).

***

Popinski tackles the Ice Keese to the ground and laughs, easily KOing it. He picks up the smashed keese in his fist and squeezes to finish it off, then puts it on the ground and gets ready to gut it. Anne sighs as she finally catches up, having uncaringly followed after the others. “What’s the point of gutting that thing? We’ll just get sick and die anyway if we eat it ra-“.

As Anne is speaking, Silver snatches the Keese away from Popinski’s grasp with his levitation powers then just scarves it down his throat whole, his eye twitching violently. Anne cuts off her sentence as she looks at Silver in horror. “What?!? I was hungry, godammit! You made it more then clear enough you didn’t wanna eat it anyway.”.

Even Popinski looks somewhat weirded out at Silver. “You could’ve at least waited for me to gut the thing, Silver. . .”.

Silver looks at the blood dripping from his mouth, beginning to realize how ravenous he’s become. “Good god, did I just do that? Really?”.

Anne’s disgust turns back to her usual spitefulness. “Yeah. You did.”.

Silver sighs as he wipes the blood off and shakes his head violently. “So. . .Uhhhh. . .Change of topic? Eheh heh. . .Who’re we gonna vote off?”.

“Does it matter? There’s five of them, three of us. They’ll all vote together and take one of us out.”.

Popinski strokes his mustache in thought. “Not necessarily, Madame. What if their little alliance falls apart like the government of the puny Americans?”.

“. . .It’s been going stronger then it ever has, for your information. . .”.

“That’s true, but it’s still not saying much, Madame. While I admire the man darker then a Russian night sky and how he’s started spreading the wealth with his goals of working towards communism, those damn conservatives will never let him get away with it.”.

Anne’s eye twitches considerably. “He’s not a communist, you idiot, he’s what America needs.”.

Popinski laughs. “Taking money from the rich who inherited it and won the lottery and giving it to the poor common man struggling to get a job? That would be the wonders of communism, Madame.”.

“You seem to have a. . .Strange definition of the word. . .”.

Popinski stares blankly at Anne. “He’s spreading the wealth evenly, is he not? That is communism at it’s finest. I’m actually a pretty big fan of the your new President.”.

Anne doesn’t reply as a period of silence occurs. “Maybe he’s -not- as dumb as he looks. . .”.

Silver breaks the awkward silence, somewhat removed from the situation seeing he has no idea what they’re talking about. . .”Uuuuhhhhh. . .Yeeeeaaaaaahhhh. . .Back to what I was saying, who should we vote off? Yeah, they’ll probably just all band together and pick one of us off, but Soda brought up something interesting when he said that one of them might betray each other. . .”.

Popinski nods. “Yes, as I was saying. . .If we want to survive, we have to predict who the traitor will attempt to vote off.”.

Anne shrugs. “They probably won’t kill off the turtles since that’d make their alliance fall apart. . .I’d predict that if a betrayal happens it’d be the turtles ganging up on one of the mages. Probably the younger one since the old man and the big turtle seem to be friends.”.

Silver nods. “Sound enough logic. So we’ll all vote for the wind mage then. . .”.

***

Jafar, Vaati, and Lemmy are seen sleeping around the fire at Bowser’s camp while he and Morton are still keeping up the fire, the blizzard still going strong as ever. Both Koopas look absolutely exhausted. Morton looks as if he’s about to collapse for Bowser to come over to him and hold him up. “C’mon, son! This can’t last forever. . .We’ve gotta keep going. . .”.

“That’s easy for you to say, dad. . .I need more then just sleep. I haven’t eaten anything for 2 days. . .No. . .Energy. . .Left.”. Morton falls asleep in Bowser’s grasp, collapsing into the snow.

Bowser looks around with a hopeless look on his face. “Get up, Morton!”. Bowser goes to shake him up, but nothing happens. “Stop playing around! Get up already!”. Bowser shakes him more violently, but still nothing seems to happen. Knowing that he can’t do this by  himself, he attempts to shake the others up, but they all seem to be frozen stiff. Bowser starts shivering himself from the insane cold. . .”This isn’t good. . .I’m gonna have to find some shelter. . .”. He hurls his two children over his back and goes to leave the two mages behind without much of a thought. . .”I’ll probably need those other two in order to vote off the muscle guy and the hedgehog. . .”. Bowser grumbles under his breath as he hurls them over his back as well and starts trudging through the snow. . .

***

Level 26
Play as: Bowser

This is a reused level from the previous day where Popinski’s party went through the blizzard. . .But the main difference is that you have four corpses to drag along with you of your frozen comrades. They’re treated like dead characters in stamina mode, and you have to keep pushing them along. If left alone too long they’ll start sinking into the snow. In addition, you have to use a fire attack on each corpse at least every 30 seconds. Thankfully the stock count is fairly generous to account for you having to drag along the others, but that’s not gonna be the way you lose the level anyway.

***

Bowser sees a cave up ahead as he carries his group along. . .The same cave Popinski’s group is using. “Finally. . .I can use this place as a shelter. My fire should last in there. . .”. Bowser dumps the bodies of the others down carelessly as he arrives in the cave. He forces himself to muster the energy to breathe a good sized fire, then collapses and falls asleep, having nothing left. The fire revitalizes Jafar, Vaati, and Lemmy after a brief pause, them finally getting up.

The eldest of the three rubs his backside in pain. “Where are we. . .? And why do I have a aching pain in my back?”.

Vaati looks around a bit before noticing Bowser and Morton are both in a deep sleep. “Those two must’ve carried us over here. . .”.

Lemmy looks happy at this. “Heh heh, my dad’s such a hero! He kept the fire going all night long and brought us all the way here. Without him we wouldn’t be here right now.”.

Jafar nods in agreement. “Indeed. Your father has proved himself to be quite useful.”.

“You think there’s anything we can do to repay him? Huh, huh?”.

Jafar strokes his beard. “We could search this cave for some food or something. . .”. Jafar smirks slightly as he gets an idea and strokes his beard more quickly. “But you’d probably be best off doing that yourself to prove your worth to your father. Considering you can’t even breathe fire yet, your brother is probably looking a lot better in his eyes.”.

“You really think so. . .?” asks Lemmy, looking rather worried.

Jafar nods as he fakes an overly serious tone. “Well, quite. Your father was talking to Vaati and I about voting you off. Isn’t that right, Vaati?”.

Jafar glances over at Vaati for him to just nod hesitantly. “Oh, right, right. Heh heh. . .I like where he’s going with this. . .”.

 Of course, I was against it. You stick above many of the others in terms of usefulness.”.

Lemmy chuckles slightly. “I stick above the others? I’m. . .tall?”. He smirks.

“Oh but of course! You’re far more useful then that dimwitted brother of yours. All brawn and no brain. That’s what I think. . .But your father isn’t convinced. You’d best go find some food.”.

Lemmy looks uneasy. “Uhhh. . .Okay, eheh heh. . .”. Lemmy chuckles nervously as he goes to leave.

Jafar waits for a good few seconds after he’s out of sight before bursting into laughter. “All too easy. Children are so GULLIBLE.”.

“Heh heh, that –was- pretty good. . .Though what do you expect to accomplish with that?”

“The immediate benefit is that he gets to explore the cave for us while we have to do absolutely nothing, but I’m also trying to get on his good side and brew up some conflict between him and his brother. Once the other three outside our little group are gone, we’ll be in the minority as the turtles eliminate us. We have to eliminate one of them before then. . .Probably one of the kids. If we eliminate Bowser, then the children won’t be as easy to manipulate and might turn against us. Besides, the children are rather annoying to have around in general, wouldn’t you agree?”.

Vaati chuckles. “You seem to have things well thought out, to say the least. I like your plan, though it’d probably be more preferable to eliminate the bite sized turtle before the bulkier one, seeing that one’s at least somewhat useful.”.

“Oh, I’m well aware of that. With my approach, the smaller one will be the one to bring it up, thus sticking out more as the rebel.”.

“You really –have- thought of everything, haven’t you?”.

“For the most part, yes. I’m still contemplating how to get rid of you.”.

Jafar laughs for Vaati to laugh along with him. “You’ll have your work cut out for you on that one.”.

The screen cuts to Lemmy as he wanders off into the cave in search of food. He peaks his head around a corner to see Popinski’s group, then hastily ducks back before they can see him. “Crap. . .Crap crap crap crap. . .Dad made it pretty clear that we’re enemies with those guys. . .Considering dad booted them out of our old camp, I doubt they’ll let us stay here in theirs, especially seeing they were here first. . .And considering dad and Morton are out cold we probably won’t be able to beat ‘em. . .I’ll have to stall ‘em or something. . .”.

***

Level 27
Play as: Lemmy

This is the second level Popinski’s group went through where they were chasing the Ice Keese, completely reused, but it plays radically different, as your goal is to stall his party for a set amount of time before they reach your starting location and get to Bowser’s party. They’re actually playable characters on the map working their way towards your end of the level from theirs, and you can see them all on the map. While they’re hostile to you the random enemies will also attack them, and considering there’s three of them and one of you they’re definitely a larger issue for them then you. While you can just try to KO them, a 3 on 1 proves exceedingly difficult and they respawn infinitely.

Your priority should be to lay as many traps as possible throughout the level to hamper their progress, though that won’t clock down nearly enough time. Thankfully Popinski’s group is fairly aggressive against you and will pursue you a decent ways, even through doors. A particularly nice strategy is to set up a warp pipe at the end of a room that’s a dead end and lure the group all the way in with you, then go through the pipe back to the start and re-lay all your traps. Granted, they can just use the same pipe you did, considering how laggy it is to use a pipe and how only one person can use them at a time, you can just destroy the pipe before they’re able to go through it. Unfortunately you can’t do this over and over as if you prevent them from using the pipe they’ll just destroy it, but it should buy you enough time to clear the level.

***

Lemmy sprints back to the rest of the group in fear. “Wake dad and Morton up, pronto! The others are back there in the cave! They’re coming, they’re coming!”.

Vaati looks far from alarmed. “So? We can take them ourselves easily enough, and those two wouldn’t exactly prove useful in such drowsy states.”.

“Don’t you remember when the chick beat all those twilight beasts when we were all done for? And you know that the muscle head is way stronger then you. . .”.

“You know that was a fluke on the woman’s part, and the other one is all brawn and no brain. A simpleton like him won’t prove much a problem.”.

“A fluke? Heh heh, I still remember that picture she showed us of you runnin’ like a coward.”.

Jafar raises an eyebrow. “Did you really?”.

Vaati squints in annoyance. “If having any form of survival instinct is cowardly, call me a coward, dammit. You lot were fools for sticking around as long as you did, if that bitch hadn’t of showed up you’d of all died. I, on the other hand, would’ve been the sole survivor.”.

Lemmy folds his arms. “Fine, fine, whatever. But the point still stands, she was able to take those beasts out while you couldn’t.”.

“Only because she could see, dammit. Hardly fair. How am I supposed to fight in the dark?!?”.

Lemmy sighs. “Fine. I guess we have a chance against them. . .”.

Jafar chuckles. “There’s no reason to be so worried, young turtle. There’s nothing they can do to force us out. We’re not allowed to kill each other, remember? They’ve nothing to threaten us with, and as Vaati points out we’re more then capable of fighting them should they be stupid enough to try it. . .But that probably won’t be necessary. We’re civilized here, are we not? I’m sure we can have a rational discussion and work something out. Much less considering that I’ll be the main voice of the group rather then that brute Bowser. . .”.

Popinski’s party finally arrives for all three of them to look exceptionally annoyed, Silver the most so. “What the hell?!? You tell us to get lost off your turf and leave us without a fire, shelter, or any food, then you come and steal our new camp?!? Wow. Freaking WOW. You guys really ARE assholes.”.

Lemmy hastily puts his hands up in a “stop” expression and waves them about frantically. “No, no! We didn’t know you were here! You’ve got it all wrong!”.

Jafar nods and speaks in a tone of voice that seeks sympathy. “Indeed. While Bowser and his son over there are capable of producing fire, they can’t keep it up forever in a blizzard that massive.”.

Silver still looks angry. “So? You left us to die, why shouldn’t we do the same to you?”.

Jafar frowns. “I was right when I thought that the hedgehog would hold the largest grudge against us. . .He –really- needs to go. . .Because we’re capable of providing you with fire, remember? Look at the nice fire we have going right here! Let us stay with you and we’ll let you warm up all nice and cozy next to it as much as you want. . .”.

Silver looks ready to object, but Anne hastily speaks on her group’s behalf. “Fine. We’ll let you stay.”.

Silver twitches as he turns to Anne. “What are you saying?!?”.

“I’m thinking practically, here. We can’t afford to hold any petty grudges. Whether you like it or not, we need them. . .Then again, I suppose you wouldn’t mind seeing you seem fine eating meat raw, much less without even having the animal gutted and cleaned.”.

“. . .You’re never gonna let me forget that, are ya?”.

“Not planning on it.”.

Jafar attempts to change the topic, unaware of what they’re talking about. “So then, I trust since you lot were here first you know if there’s anything edible inside here?”.

Popinski shakes his head. “No, just the monsters of twilight. We’ve cleared most of them out, so if nothing else they won’t kill us in our sleep.”.

Anne sighs. “Fire is all well good, but we still have nothing to do for food.”.

Lemmy points outside and hops up and down eagerly like the brat he is. “Look, look! The blizzard’s starting to die down!”.

The others turn to look for Lemmy’s words to hold truthful. Popinski looks slightly wary. “We should probably go out and hunt while we can.”.

Silver runs out hastily. “Don’t have to tell me twice!”.

“The point is that the blizzard could come back up at any time and that this is just a temporary recluse. We’re probably in the eye of the blizzard.”.

Jafar rolls his eyes. “You do know blizzards don’t work like that, don’t you?”.

“Are you questioning my upbringing? That is what they teach us in the schools of my glorious homeland.”.

“. . .What else did they teach you in these schools?”.

“How to drink and such. You know, the essentials.”

“. . .”.

***

Level 28
Play as: Soda Popinski, Silver, Anne, Jafar, Vaati, Lemmy

This level doesn’t have a time limit despite what Popinski would have you believe, but Jafar isn’t exactly right either as the blizzard will pick up again shortly after you come into the level and will become stronger and stronger as time passes by. While this has become essentially what you’re used to with slaughtering a set amount of White Wolfos, they’ll get buried in the snow before long and you’ll have to intentionally fall into snow pitfalls to get to them as the snow piles up. The wolves actually perform better in the snow when they’re not getting buried by it and are actually faster, while you become all the slower, so they might actually become a legitimate threat other then in tracking them down. Eventually you’ll even start taking constant damage from the blizzard and be blown back a lot to the point of it blowing you off screen entirely. This means you have to hurry, but the level encourages you so much to take your time by making lots of snow pitfalls with no wolves hidden in them and lots of out of the way goodies, and spread out wolves.

***

Back in the cave, Bowser and Morton finally wake up. Morton looks around curiously. “Where are we, dad? What happened?”.

Bowser folds his arms. “I had to drag you lot back here since you couldn’t help me keep up the fire any longer.”.

“Heh heh. . .Sorry about that. . .”.

Bowser sighs. “It’s not your fault. . .Not like any of the others were helping. Just slept through it.”.

Morton’s stomach growls loudly. “So you got any food?”.

Bowser’s eye twitches. “I dragged you all the way through the snow in the freezing blizzard and you expect me to find a way to feed you on top of it?!?”.

“Well. . .No. . .”.

“I’m hungry too, dammit. Don’t think you’re alone.”.

“How are you hungry?!? You had that whole huge feast all to yourself! I haven’t eaten in two days. . .”.

“Well, technically I had to share it with that stupid guy in the speedo. . .Of course I don’t have to tell him that time when we all ate and he got left out, heh heh. . .”.

“No, he was over with us watching you gorge yourself. . .”.

“No, that OTHER stupid guy in the speedo. Y’know, on the other team or whatever?”.

“. . .How can there be TWO guys stupid enough to wear speedos in the snow?”.

“How the hell do you expect me to figure that out?!?”.

Bowser sighs as a brief period of silence occurs. Some noise comes from outside the cave as the other six members of the group come in with their haul of White Wolfos. Morton drools at the sight of them, but Bowser is more concerned about the presence of Popinski and Silver. Bowser snorts angrily. “Why are you guys letting them stay with us in OUR base camp?!?”.

Silver squints at Bowser. “We were here first, you big lard.”.

“My ass you were. I walked all the way through the snow with all the others on my back. . .”.

Popinski laughs. “That’s not something to brag about, turtle man. I did that every day to get to school back in Mother Russia!”.

“Guh. . .Whatever. Seeing you were so nice to go out and get some food, I’ll let you stay. . .IF you apologize for not believing me when I was obviously right.”.

Silver’s eye twitches. “You were lying and you freaking know it!”.

Bowser laughs. “Keep saying that, hedgehog. Keep saying that and you can kiss my fire and nice sheltered cave goodbye.”.

“And you can say goodbye to all the meat we just got.”.

“Heh heh, I don’t need your petty food. I’ve already had my fill.”.

Morton instantly turns to look at his father. “You said you were hungry! And what about the rest of us?!? What about ME?!?”.

Bowser grumbles under his breath. “Fine. Whatever. You can stay. . .”.

Silver rolls his eyes. “I should damn well hope so after all that. . .”.

Popinski starts gutting the wolves and they then eventually start cooking them by the fire, Morton drooling all the while. Just as Morton’s about to take a bite into his meat, a twilight portal conveniently appears and sucks the group in.

***

DAWN OF THE THIRD DAY – GROUP 2

The death lords can be seen lounging about in the main room at the entry point of the Snowpeak Ruins. Richard is calmly sipping a cup of tea while Ryuk lounges on a couch. Hades seems to be the only one who can’t relax. “How are you two so calm? That army guy might not buy into your lie, Ryuk, and now that the others have found out that you set up the half breed, Richard. . .”.

Ryuk chuckles. “I already told you that worrying about me isn’t necessary, Hades. . .But you have a point with Richard, as there’s five of them and three of us.”.

Hades ponders how to stop Richard from being voted off. “Which of them is the most likely to vote for somebody else? I’d put my money on the big muscly guy. He doesn’t seem too bright, and I doubt he appreciates that army guy taking over as the leader. We’ll have to try and talk him into voting for him. . .”.

“Be my guest if you want, but I doubt you’d be able to change that fool’s mind on the matter anyway. Granted, I see it difficult for the others getting him to vote for Richard. . .He probably doesn’t mind the lack of food so much seeing he got to eat far more then necessary on the first day, and as I said, he seems to be the stubborn type.”.

Hades nods in agreement. “Yeah. Definitely got a point there. . .”. Hades turns to Richard. “You’re the one who’s life is on the line here. . .Aren’t you worried?”.

Richard puts down his tea calmly and lets out a relaxed sigh. “Not at all. This lovely beverage makes everything better. Try some, I insist!”.

Richard hands the cup to Hades for it to be filled with blood. Hades looks at it puzzled. “Where’d you get this?”.

“Oh, that nice fellow outside was kind enough to give me some of his.”.

The camera cuts to Yeto who’s been thrown outside the mansion, dead, then cuts back to Richard who looks overjoyed. Hades smirks slowly then laughs as he gets what Richard’s saying. Richard takes out Yeto’s heart which is still beating and shows it off like it’s a prize. “And now for the main course! These are always best when fresh. . .”.

Raven comes into the room and stares blankly as Richard devours the heart (God knows how, the camera doesn’t show it.). Her presence causes an awkward silence among the three death lords. “No, no, don’t mind me. Continue. I want to hear what other sorts of fascinating things you three talk about.”.

Hades reflects Raven’s stare. “This isn’t a place for little girls.”.

Raven attempts to retort Hades, but is interrupted by Ryuk, who cackles. “She’s not an ordinary girl, if you haven’t noticed. She wasn’t phased in the slightest when Richard feasted upon that yeti’s flesh.”.

“Don’t insult me with something like that. I’ve seen worse. Much.”.

Ryuk laughs. “Just what have you seen that’s –so- terrible? Were you traumatized as a child from your parents being shot? Raped? Or perhaps a combination of the two? Stop pitying yourself and acting like you’re so special. I see these sorts of things all the time.”.

“. . .It’s a lot more complicated then that. . .Just forget it. I’m obviously not gonna tell you.”.

“Oh come now, you’ve intrigued me. . .Tell me what it is or I’ll just find out on my own.”.

Raven’s expressionless face finally changes as she squints very slightly. “You couldn’t if you tried.”.

“Believe me, I have my ways, girl. . .”.

“Only one of us is going to get out of here alive, so if you plan on using some sort of powers after this stupid little game either you or I will already be dead. Probably both.”.

“You’ll see soon enough, girl. . .”.

Another period of awkward silence occurs before Richard stabs his fork of truth into a rat that comes out from underneath the chair he’s sitting on. He extends it out to Raven,  the rat still alive. “Hungry?”.

Raven doesn’t respond to Richard, but Dingodile enters the room and hastily runs over to Richard, grabbing the rat off of Richard’s fork and holds it in one hand. He primes his bazooka with the other hand and points it at the rat. “Gonna make toast!”. Before he can fry the rat, though, it manages to go through his fingers, causing Dingodile to just fry his hand. He frantically chases after the rat, but it just runs into it’s hole in the wall, leaving Dingo stumped. All three death lords laugh at Dingodile for him to get up in annoyance and dust himself off as his stomach growls.

Richard notices Dingodile’s hunger and beckons him over. “Here, have some tea. Courtesy of the owner of this fine establishment.”. Richard hands Dingodile his cup of blood for him to look grossed out and to casually throw it on the ground, causing the cup to shatter and the blood to splash all over the ground. Richard frantically puts the pieces of the cup back together and goes to scoop up the blood off the floor, but the cup just falls apart again causing Dingodile to burst out into laughter. “Beginnin’ to understand how I felt when you incinerated all the meat, mate?”. Richard just looks heartbroken, but says nothing. “Now then, take into account how much more food you destroyed and how I actually needa eat. . .And yeah. And I didn’t even do that on purpose.”.

Richard just continues to sulk for Hades to come over to his side. “C’mon, Richard! I’m sure that friend of yours has got some more if you really want it.”.

Richard’s face lights up as he giddily runs out the front door, then Negative Man, Macho Man and Mustang come in. Mustang folds his arms. “Having fun lounging around? There isn’t anything left in the yeti’s kitchen. We’re gonna have to scavenge the place for food, seeing there’s a blizzard going outside.”.

Dingodile rolls his eyes. “Like it matters. Richard would just burn all our food again.”.

Negative Man sighs. “He’s right. . .We’ll all die of starvation. . .”.

Mustang looks around slightly. “Well he’s not here right now, now is he?”. Mustang smirks slightly. . .

Richard comes back into the room from the front door with a fresh cup of blood. “You called?”.

Dingodile’s eye twitches briefly. “Uhhh. . .Actually, changed my mind on the blood, mate. Care to go fetch me a cup?”

“Oh? That’s wonderful! I’ll go off and get you some!”.

Richard goes to leave for Dingodile to start heading further into the mansion hastily. “C’mon, let’s go before he gets back.”.

Mustang nods, then he, Negative Man, Macho Man, and Raven go along with Dingodile. Hades looks at Ryuk briefly for the death god to not at him subtly, then Hades sighs and gets up to go along with them. Mustang turns his head back to look at Ryuk continuing to lounge on the couch. “You too. Get off your ass and help.”.

“Don’t you remember our deal? I’m already going out of my comfort zone for you. Don’t expect any more favors.”.

Mustang just clenches a fist and continues on. Macho Man follows after the others from a distance and glares at Mustang from behind. . .”Just gotta keep this up a little longer. . .Once this guy gets voted off, I won’t have to deal with taking orders. Without him, there’ll be nobody else to step up to the plate and be the leader. . .Not like that Richard guy’s a problem anyway. If he tries to pull off shit like that again, he can get acquainted with my fists.”.

***

Level 29
Play as: Roy Mustang, Super Macho Man, Dingodile, Raven, Negative Man, Hades

You’ve got most of the cast at your disposal for the level. There’s no content reused here as you go to explore parts of the mansion that haven’t yet been touched on. It’s an upward climb as you go up through some attic-y sections of the Snowpeak Ruins. Rather then pits that simply lead to your death, though, you’ll fall down all the way through the level, potentially to the bottom if you don’t DI properly to land on a platform. You might notice that at the bottom floor there are some vulnerable spots in the ground. . .If you fall on these spots from high elevations, you can get hidden goodies. One of them requires you to fall from the very top of the level, but there’s an absolute cache of goodies. While you might be unconcerned about them, when you inevitably make some falls try to aim for them so you don’t have to come back for them later.

***

Ryuk is seen still lying on the couch. . .”Well. . .This is boring.”. Ryuk sighs as he gets up. “I suppose I could take a look around the mansion too. . .Not that I’ll be helping those fools, of course. Heh heh, if I find anything edible I’ll just destroy it. It’ll be fun to watch when those idiots get so hungry that they just eat each other.”. Ryuk cackles as he sprouts wings and starts ghosting through walls, looking around the mansion at his own leisure.

The screen fades out and fades in for Ryuk to enter a peculiar room – Yeto’s massive bedroom. Inside is a piece of the Twilight Mirror, causing Ryuk to cackle. “So this is what was making the barrier around the house. . .I thought it rather odd for the twilight king to just randomly block off the place.”. Ryuk inspects the mirror a bit before he hears the others fiddling with the door on the other side. “There’s no way I can let these fools get their hands on this. . .It might give them a fraction of his power.”.

***

Level 30
Play as: Ryuk

This level takes place on the same terrain as the last one, but is a stealth level. Get spotted once and you lose. That’s it. Five of the six characters are hovering about the map rather randomly, and you can see their locations on the map. Thankfully Ryuk’s ability to go through walls is kept in-tact in this level, giving you much easier escapes then you’d normally have. While it’s not that difficult to get to the end, Dingodile is at the entrance and is blocking off the point you need to get to, trying to lure out the mouse that got away from him in the previous cutscene. You have to lure him away by using the death note on him to make him wander around like the others out of fear/curiosity, and you can’t just casually use it at the start, as it targets only the nearest enemy. This means you have to wait a good 40 seconds for Dingodile to have his heart attack, during which time one of the others will inevitably come down to your level and force you to run around a good bit awkwardly before you can make it back to the start.

***

Ryuk ghosts through the floor of a room Mustang is in , but as he comes down into the next room he ducks back through a wall as he falls into a room with Macho Man, getting away just before he turns his head. He passes a couple of the others on his way back to the entrance where he lets out a sigh of relief, but then hastily flies out as he notices Dingodile at the mouse hole from earlier, shoving his bazooka up the hole and firing rapidly. Richard, who is still cutting away at Yeto (At an angle we can’t see) is the one who finally manages to see Ryuk as he comes out of the mansion. “Whatcha got there, Ryuk?”.

Ryuk sighs at finally being caught, but then cackles after a brief pause, getting an idea. “Why, it’s for you, Richard! Consider it a gift. . .A gift of destruction.”.

“Destruction? Oooh! Let me see!”.

Ryuk chuckles as he hands the shard of the twilight mirror to Richard. “Be careful with it now. . .It’s delicate. Anyway, what say we pull a little. . .Prank?”.

“A prank? Elaborate.”.

“Suppose there’s no need to sugar coat it with you. . .We’re going to burn the mansion down with this shard’s power and watch them struggle to make their way out.”.

“So we’re going to kill them all? While I’m all for it, I do remember you saying it wasn’t exactly the brightest of ideas to kill them seeing that’d lure out the twilight guy out to kill us. . .”.

Ryuk cackles. “We’re not killing them. Like I said, it’s just a prank. A harmless little prank. . .They’ll survive. After all, they have Hades with them. I imagine the Twilight King would agree with us in finding this entertaining, if anything.”.

“And if I get voted off. . .?”.

“Relax. I’ll take the blame. They need me. I can do anything and get away with it, and there’s not a damn thing they can do about it.”. Ryuk cackles as the screen fades out. . .

***

Level 31
Play as: Ryuk, Richard

This is the level on the roof of the mansion from the previous day, though the game is kind enough to put you on the roof right off the bat rather then making you go up it. There’s also some extra content, as the game lets you go beyond the chimney. Your goal here is to just spam your fire attacks (Including Ryuk’s famous dtilt) to start making the mansion burn up, simple enough, but if you just do it mindlessly you’ll be sitting in the level for a good 20 minutes. Your Down Specials are replaced with taking out the Twilight Mirror, and if you use this next to fire it’ll ricochet all about in the four cardinal directions and amplifying the fire in that location. There are some rather obvious points where you’ll want to do this to cause a chain reaction of fire to start building up pretty quickly, the most obvious of which is the chimney.

Once you’ve got that whole place burning, you’ll have to go back to the start and go down the part you went up the previous day, and considering the fire is capable of hurting you you’ll have your work cut out for you as you make your way back. The smart thing to do is not use any fire as you go along and just get to end of the level and work your way back as you light the Snowpeak Ruins ablaze, but who has the patience for that?

***

The group is seen all together in a room save Macho Man, who enters the room after a brief pause. Mustang asks “Find anything?” without even turning to look at him for him to shake his head. Mustang squints at him. “Then look again.”.

“Dude! We must’ve searched the whole place like 3 times by now. Stop telling us to find stuff that isn’t there.”.

“What’s your brilliant alternative plan, then?”.

“Well, like half of you guys can make fire anyway, so why don’t we go hunt through the blizzard for some food? This obviously isn’t working.”.

Hades nods in agreement. “The guy’s got a point. Hell, I’m an undead. I don’t feel the cold at all. If you really want me to, I could just go fetch you lot something myself.”.

Mustang’s eye twitches. “. . .And why didn’t you tell us this earlier?”.

Hades chuckles slightly. “You never asked.”.

Suddenly, the roof lights on fire and starts falling apart, causing Negative Man to burst into tears. “We’re all going to die. . .I know it. . .”.

Mustang looks about the others warily. “Which one of you did that?!?”.

Dingodile rolls his eyes. “It wasn’t any of us. Probably that idiot Richard. He’s the only one stupid enough to try and kill anybody despite the Twilight King’s warnings.”.

Raven’s already running out, turning back her head at the others. “While you’re busy talking about who did it, I’m going to get out of here.”. This causes the others to stop their yapping and go to sprint out of the Snowpeak Ruins. . .

***

Level 32
Play as: Roy Mustang, Super Macho Man, Dingodile, Raven, Negative Man, Hades

This level reuses parts from all of the various Snowpeak Ruins levels with several new parts of it’s own. You’re unable to use the regular routes you normally transverse the level with due to the fire having caused stuff to fall down and block the ways off, though several holes burned into the walls make for the new content and transitions to the various parts of the Snowpeak Ruins. There’s a time limit on the level, and all of the stuff constantly falling from the ceiling is obviously also a big issue.

***

Ryuk ghosts through the wall and into the mansion, cackling madly as he watches the others flee through the collapsing Snowpeak Ruins. Upon their finally getting out, Mustang hastily turns to glare at him. “Did you do this?!?”.

“What do you think? Yes, I caused it, and you know what? There’s not a damn thing you can do about it. If any of you have any intention of getting out of here alive, you need me to kill the Twilight King.”.

Mustang clenches his fists. “Fine then! We’ll attack him when he brings us to his palace tonight, godammit. I’m not gonna put up with your shit any longer. This ends NOW.”.

Raven stares blankly at Mustang, completely unphased. “You do realize you just told him your plan, right?”.

“I really don’t care anymore. We’ll die soon enough anyway if we have to keep hanging around this guy, so we may as well do it sooner rather then later.”.

Suddenly, a twilight portal appears and sucks up the group. Richard comes from around the corner curiously to be sucked up in addition to the others.

***

IMMUNITY CHALLENGE

Both groups get dumped out at the immunity challenge for an awkward silence to occur. Zant interrupts the silence by laughing. It’s but a subtle chuckle at first, but it slowly grows into thunderous laughter. “What’s the matter, Mustang? Come at me!”. There’s just a longer period of silence as Mustang just shakes in place, too conflicted as to what to do. “Oh come now, Mustang! I thought you said you’d end it all right now! Give it all you’ve got. With Ganon’s power, nothing can kill me. Nothing. Especially not some fool like you.”. After a bit longer of a pause, Mustang snaps his fingers, causing a fiery blast to appear over Zant. Zant teleports to avoid the blast, then cackles madly.

***

BOSS: ZANT

Play as: Roy Mustang

Attacks:

Twilight Portals: Zant levitates up into the center of the arena and claps, causing two portals the size of Bowser to appear in random locations. This is lagless and Zant uses it right at the start of the fight and uses it again for every 10% of his health you knock off. Stepping into one of these portals causes you to be shot out of in the direction of the other portal that was summoned at the same time as the first with 10% and decent knockback. At high damage levels, this can very easily infinite you.

Blood Darts: A horribly generic projectile the size of a uncharged Aura Sphere that deals 5% and flinching, though also incredibly fast moving. Nothing special here, but the move is lagless and Zant tends to use it completely at random, though he uses it very often. If it goes into a portal, it’ll be shot in the direction of another other portal that was summoned at the same time as the first, meaning the projectiles will never go off a blast zone/hit the ground to expire due to constantly being shot into other portals. Considering there’s so little warning to the attack, you’ll more likely then not be at an angle for Zant to throw it into a portal.

Portal Suction: All of the portals get a suction effect with thrice the range of Dedede’s inhale, though no more powerful. A nice way to avoid this is to stand in the middle of two portals so that they cancel each out, though your positioning has to be pretty precise and standing in-between two portals is just begging for you to get hit by some a Shadow Ball being shot between the portals.

Portal Swap: Zant claps twice, causing four portals to vanish and reappear. The four portals are always two sets (As in, ones that shoot stuff that goes into them at each other). As they reappear, two of the portals reappear more quickly then two of the others. The first two that reappear are one of the sets while the second two that reappear are another set. This is another very very fast attack and serves solely to confuse you, as the projectiles will now be shot between two different points.

Portal Feed: Zant shoots a projectile with triple the size and power of a Blood Dart into a random portal. He’ll shoot 4-6 of these before going back to performing other attacks. While this attack has some actual lag, Zant will sometimes perform Portal Swap after he shoots one of these projectiles into one of his portals. The projectile will wait to be shot out of the portal until Zant swaps the portals. While this might not sound like much of an issue, you have to keep in mind how fast Portal Swap is – you’ll have trouble figuring out where the projectile’s going to come at you from.

Shadow Beasts: Zant summons three Shadow Beasts, of which you’ve fought plenty by now. When two of them fall, the third revives the other two with a howl. While in previous levels you could interrupt the third’s howl, here the beast becomes invulnerable as he howls. How do you kill them. . .? If you hit/lure them into portals, they won’t be able to use any attacks as they’re shot out of the portals at other portals like Blood Darts, though they’re a lot larger and deal 18% and hefty knockback on contact. Your attacks will outprioritze their hitbox as they fly through the portals so this is a reliable way to kill them, but this forces you to add all the more to Zant’s portal bullet hell. . .

Shadow Ball: This attack has some actual notable lag on it and Zant won’t perform it until he has 25% health. He’ll keep charging this move until you deal 50 damage to him, making the projectile become bigger and bigger. By default it’s as powerful as Mewtwo’s fully charged Shadow Ball, and it becomes 10% bigger and more powerful every second he charges it. Once you deal the damage to him, Zant’s helmet gets knocked off, causing him to go insane with mad laughter. This also causes him to launch the shadow ball at a random portal, and rather then it being launched with it’s sister portal it can be launched towards any other portal at random. Furthermore, the shadow ball will devour any other projectiles it comes in tact with, adding their size and power to it’s own. The Shadow Ball won’t disappear after hitting you like other projectiles, either, so don’t think this will just eat all the other projectiles away and you can finish off Zant on your next stock.

Portal Hopper: Zant only uses this attack when he has 10% stamina left, running into a random portal. He sticks his upper half out of the portal and cackles madly as he spams Blood Darts, firing them towards the shadow ball, you, or his portals at random. He fires them so insanely quickly that things can quickly become a bullet hell of sorts, 5 a second or so. Should you approach Zant, he’ll just duck into the portal and appear in another one. To actually damage him, you need to wait a good 6-8 seconds before Zant ducks into his portal and shows up in the sister portal of the one he’s in. Zant can and will use Portal Swap from this stance, so he’ll be sure to confuse you with where he’s going to appear.

If you’re waiting by this portal there’ll be enough of a window for you to attack him, which will cause him to be shot out of the portal as a living projectile, dealing 12% and above average knockback on contact. Zant will be shot in the direction of a portal and will then proceed to be shot at other random portals, much like his shadow ball. This makes attacking him difficult due to him out-prioritizing your attacks and him constantly being a hitbox, the only way you can hit him being disjointed attacks (Which thankfully Mustang has no shortage of).

***

Mustang knocks Zant’s helmet off with a fiery blast. The camera instantly cuts to Ryuk as his eyes go wide, then shows things from his point of view as he finds out Zant’s name with his Shinigami eyes. Zants becomes outraged at Mustang and goes berserk, taking out his dual swords and flailing about wildly, moving at incredible speeds. He pins Mustang against a wall with his twin swords and laughs maniacally before smacking him across the face and throwing him to the ground. Mustang turns back to the others. “Thanks for all the goddamn help!”.

Vaati folds his arms and shakes his head. “It’s called a survival instinct, you fool. You’re lucky that you’re still alive after that.”.

Zant nods in agreement with Vaati and laughs. “Indeed you are. . .”. He turns to Mustang’s group. “Now then, I suppose that will count for an immunity challenge, yes? If it wasn’t obvious enough, you lost.”. Zant turns back to Bowser’s group. “The rest of you, begone!”. Zant summons a portal to suck the other group up, then turns back to Mustang’s group. “Alright, let’s hear your votes. . .Who’s going to be the first to die?”.

Mustang turns to Ryuk. “His helmet is off, isn’t it? End this! Kill him already!”.

Ryuk just cackles. “Why would I want to end this fascinating game? I’ve already told you that I’m happy to be here.”.

“What about our deal?!?”

“You should know better then to make a deal with the devil.”.

“Damn you. . .Then you’ll be the first to die. I’m voting for this bastard right here.”.
”And I’m voting for the gullible fool who voted for me.”.

Dingodile crosses his arms and glares at Richard. “I’ve had my vote ready since the first day. I want Richard dead.”.

Richard points to himself questioningly. “Me? What have I ever done to you?!? Fine then, I’m voting for the male of indeterminable race.”.

Ryuk and Hades glare at Richard for him to shrug questioningly. “What?”.

Hades just rolls his eyes at Richard. “I’m voting for that Mustang guy or whatever his name is too.”.

Ryuk glares at Zant. “This voting system is idiotic. If the votes aren’t confidential, we’ll just get stupid responsive votes from idiots like Richard.”.

Zant chuckles. “That’s your problem, not mine.”.

Richard puts his hands on his hips. “Idiot?!? That’s it, I’m changing my vote to Ryuk!”.

Zant shakes his head. “All votes are final, you fool.”.

Seeing his chance to go with the majority, Macho Man speaks up. “I’m also gonna have to vote for Mustang. He’s just a gigantic show off and is really bossy.”.

Mustang rolls his eyes. “You just described yourself.”. He turns to Raven and Negative Man. “Just vote for Richard or that death god to tie it up.”.

Raven sighs. “Fine, whatever. I guess I’ll vote for Ryuk. . .”.

“So you’re going to vote for me over the guy who incinerated all your food? Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.”.

“Considering you burned down the mansion and tried to kill us, yeah, I’d say it is.”

“You do know that Richard also played a part in that, right?”.

Richard glares at Ryuk. “I thought you said you’d take the blame!”.

Ryuk cackles. “You just revealed that you played a part in it, fool.”.

Zant turns to Negative Man. “You’re the only one that has yet to vote, and you’ve been awfully quiet. Are you going to comply with Mustang’s request and tie the vote, or are you going to sentence him to eternal damnation? Their fates rest in your hands. . .”.

Negative Man nods. “I understand what I have to do. . .I’ve thought over my vote well. . .And I’ve decided to vote for myself. I don’t want any of the rest of you to die. . .And I’m so useless anyway. . .There’s just no way I can-“

Mustang hastily interrupts Negative Man. “What are you saying?!? You’re sentencing me to death!”.

Ryuk cackles while Zant joins him in his laughter. “Too late, Mustang. Negative Man has spoken. You’re the first one voted off. Congratulations!”. Before Mustang can even respond, Zant runs up to him with his dual blades. Mustang fires blasts at Zant wildly, but Zant just deflects them with his blades and teleports around them at incredibly fast speeds before pinning him to the ground with one sword and stomping down on his throat. He plunges his other blade through Mustang’s forehead as the camera pans away and cackles madly before turning back to the others and summoning another portal to suck them all in.

Zant goes to pick up his helmet and puts it back on on, then wipes the blood off his blades. He claps to summon some Shadow Beasts. “Take care of the mess, would you?”. Zant points off in the direction of Mustang’s corpse nonchalantly for them to start feeding on it, much to Zant’s delight. Zant laughs. . .and laughs. . .and laughs. . .Until suddenly, he holds his heart in pain. He starts gasping for air as he falls over in pain, holding his heart. “No! Impossible!”.

”Hardly.”. Zant turns to see Ryuk coming out of a portal of his own.

“Why? Why?!? You made it more then clear enough you didn’t want to kill me!”.

“It was all an act, you fool. Get over it.”.

“I thought you wanted to watch this all take place. . .?”.

“Oh, I do, but, see, you’re the front row seat. MY seat.”.

“How did you make a portal to get back here?!?”.

“Please. You were never strong enough to stop me from doing something so simple, even with your master’s power. It was just an act before. Everything was an act. I knew you were constantly watching me, so that’s why I buddied up with Hades and Richard. When I told them, my “friends”, that I wasn’t interested in killing you, I knew for sure that you’d buy it.”.

Zant laughs. “Quite the show you’ve managed to put on, but it all doesn’t matter. You can’t kill me. So long as Ganon lives, so shall I.”.

“Which is precisely why I’m here. . .”. Ryuk picks up Zant by the neck and holds him off the ground. “Tell me where he is. I’m going to kill him, then I’m coming back to finish you off for good.”.

Zant cackles insanely. “And what makes you think I’d do that, hmm? What can you do to me?”.

“I can do worse then just kill you, fool. I can give you endless heart attacks – one after the other. Would you care for another demonstration?”. Ryuk throws Zant’s helmet off his head and tightens his grip on his neck. “Tell me where he is.”.

“Hyrule………Castle……..”.

Ryuk drops Zant from his grasp as he gasps for air, then Ryuk cackles and leaves the Palace of Twilight through another portal. He reappears outside Hyrule Castle and chuckles to himself. “Ganon, huh? Let’s see just how powerful this master of yours is, Zant. . .”.

***

Level 33
Play as: Ryuk

This level takes place outside the castle in the castle grounds surrounding it. It’s heavily based on the Twilight Princess version and you’ll go through the graveyard portion of the castle grounds and even a mini-boss fight with King Bulbin. There’s also a parody of the section of the courtyard from OOT with you having to play stealthy to avoid detection from the guards, who are now undeads due to Ganon ruling over the castle. While you don’t have to play stealthy, if you do you can manage to snag a key off one of the guards (It’s displayed clearly on his belt, nice and shiny) by killing him with the Death Note. If you kill the guard with him detecting you, you won’t get the key.

If you don’t get the key from the guard, you’ll have to dig through the many graves to try and find another. Most of the graves contain undeads which you’ll just be freeing by digging them up and the location of the key is random, so fun times can be had. You need a key to get past a door at the end of the level and enter the castle. You can –try- to just walk through it, but you’ll get zapped by a magic barrier and be pushed back.

***

Level 34
Play as: Ryuk

Another lengthy level to follow up the last lengthy level. This level takes place inside of the castle and is exclusively based off Twilight Princess. Due to Ryuk’s ability to fly most of the level takes place in the later parts of the castle. Most notably there’s a section with a bunch of pitfall style floor panels which are randomly placed, and stepping on one will leave you with next to no time to jump off to safety. The tiles are placed completely randomly, but you do have one way of figuring out which ones are safe and which are faulty. Using your fsmash causes spirits to become visible as you see them with your Shinigani eyes, and said spirits point at the safe tiles.

After this section, you’ll find that the stairs have been destroyed and you’ll have to use your glide to get to clear the pits. Several floating obstacles that spike you to your death are across these gaps and gliding to the end requires a large amount of precision due to how much you have to go down to go up due to the awkward mechanics of gliding. If you manage to survive all that, at the end there’s a trio of Darknuts waiting to challenge you.

***

Ryuk reaches the throne room for things to resemble OOT rather then TP as Ganondorf sits at his pipe organ, playing it. He finishes a solo on it and turns around as Ryuk enters the room. “I wasn’t expecting guests so soon. . .Just who might you be?”.

Ryuk cackles. “I’m the consequence you get for giving a fool like Zant all that power, Ganon. What made you think he would make a good follower?”.

“I intentionally picked a fool to give the power to. He’s easy to manipulate and control. . .I didn’t think it’d be necessary to take full control of him yet. Not until the twilight princess and the hero of courage arrived. . .Now then, I’ve answered your question, you answer mine. Who are you?”.

“My name is Ryuk, god of death. It’s the last one you’ll ever hear. With you out of the way, I’ll be able to do whatever I want and make all the puppets dance.”.

“You think you can kill me? Fool! It is written that only the hero of courage can defeat me, and with the Master Sword no less.”.

Ryuk claps in a mocking fashion. “Congratulations on revealing your weakness. That’s how most tyrants of your kind fall. I’ve seen it many a time.”.

Ganondorf scowls. “I’m not just an ordinary tyrant, you know. I’m already on the level of a god myself.”.

Ryuk bursts out into laughter. “On the LEVEL of a god? Didn’t I just tell you? I AM a god. A death god at that.”.

Ganondorf levitates up into the air and generates two energy balls in his hands, then hurls them both at Ryuk. “Silence! I’m not a god, nor do I have any intention to be. I’m above the gods, I’m above death itself!”.

***

BOSS: GANONDORF

Play as: Ryuk

Ganondorf has a set amount of stamina, but depleting it (Which isn’t that hard) won’t finish him off. The final blow has to be with the Death Note, and if you just leave him alone he’ll dodge the attack like a playable character. There are only a few specific ways you can manage to occupy him to get hit by the heart attack. . .

Attacks:

Energy Ball: A rather run of the mill projectile the size of Wario that deals 8% and decent knockback, but travels very very slowly and is highly predictable. You can reflect it back at Ganon with any attack (Yes,, this is his signature tennis style projectile), but he’ll always reflect it right back at you, and at double the speed and power no less. There’s no limit to the amount of times Ganon can reflect the ball back at you making this rather pointless, but this is a way to occupy Ganon so he can’t dodge your Death Note. Granted, it’s pretty difficult to keep this up for that long and you can’t pick and choose when he uses it. If you juggle the projectile around for a long time waiting for the death note to get off and mess up the energy ball will probably be an insta KO due to how many times its’ power has doubled.

Sword Clash: Ganondorf performs a generic slash with his sword forward for 25% and hefty knockback. Any of your attacks can clank against the slash, though, and if you do so you’ll get in a clash with him, having to button mash against each other. If he overpowers you the game will act as if he hit you, but all hitting Ganon out of this does is free you from the attack, doing no damage to him. Granted, it’s pretty easy to win the button mashing contest as in Twilight Princess, but it’s a good bit easier to dodge anyway. . .

But if Ganon’s trying to overpower you with this attack, he can’t dodge the Death Note. This means you’ll want to keep button mashing enough to not lose the contest but not win either to keep him trapped here. Unfortunately you can’t just infinite Ganon in this as he gets stronger and stronger as time passes to the point of it being impossible to resist him.

Summon: Ganondorf opens a portal and starts bringing minions out of it for a good 5-7 seconds if you leave him to his own devices. The minions flood out at an alarming pace, though any attack interrupts him out of it. This is quite possibly the easiest way to get him hit by the Death Note seeing you don’t have to do anything, but dealing with the swarm of minions afterwards if you fail is far from pleasant.

Shockwaves: Ganon smacks his fist into the ground, causing several shockwaves bigger and bigger to come up from the ground. He’ll keep doing this forever if left alone, but Ganon actually CAN dodge the Death Note from this stance. You should be interested in leaving him alone because the shockwaves also hit all those monsters he summoned, and after a failed attempt to kill Ganon as he was summoning monsters. . .You’re gonna be praying he kills them off for you. Of course, it’s not like this is a walk in the park to leave Ganon alone either as the shockwaves eventually follow each other up very quickly and get quite powerful.

Murder Choke: Ripped straight from Brawl, pretty much, though Ganon goes across the whole stage at triple speed to try to catch you. Should he catch you in his clutches the actual damage isn’t buffed at all from Brawl, but Ganon always perfectly tech chases this. If you roll, he’ll just do another murder choke on you, while if you sit in place he’ll use his brawl Dtilt (Which is buffed to 15% and KOing off the top at 75%.). If you’re foolish enough to go for a rising attack, he uses his Brawl dair which now does 25% and KOs off the top at 50%. If you get hit by Ganon’s initial sweeping of the stage you can either take a dtilt to get out of this or just keep rolling until you get to the end of the stage if said dtilt would KO you. Ganon can’t dodge the Death Note while he’s tech chasing you, but if you try to “infinite” him with this he’ll just use his dair on you after 5-8 Murder Chokes. Dare you try to gamble with him?

 Triforce Prison: Ganondorf strikes a charging pose for massive lag as he massively telegraphs the move, but he’s invulnerable as he charges. After he releases the attack, a triforce appears over where you were when Ganon starts charging, meaning this is laughably easy to dodge. If you don’t get caught in the prison the attack instantly ends, but if you do Ganon will come over to you and essentially perform Link’s Final Smash on you. Ganon slashes at you for 4X as long as Link does before bursting you out of the prison for the instant KO. . .And during this time he’s vulnerable to the Death Note. This is incredibly risky, but you have to keep in mind you can’t exactly pick and choose what attacks you’re going to occupy Ganon with in the vital moment when he’s about to have a heart attack unless you want to wait another painstaking 40 seconds.

Sword Hurl: Ganondorf spins around rapidly, dealing multiple hits of up to 50% over two seconds, then hurls his sword at you which does 30% and kills at 60%. From here, Ganondorf fights you with his Melee moveset for 12 seconds, acting like a normal playable character. If you try to knock him out of the arena he’ll just bounce against invisible walls, meaning you can’t kill him like this, and he’s always treated as if he has 40% damage, meaning he never takes that much knockback but isn’t easy combo fodder either. Ganon’s AI is still easily smart enough to perform dodges to avoid the Death Note, though you can use your regular playstyle on him to disable him and prevent him from doing so, and if he’s grabbed or in hitstun he won’t be able to go back to his boss form until he gets out of it. Once the time’s up, he resummons his sword back in his hand and the battle continues.

Flight of the Damned: Upon reaching 50% health (Which is actually pretty early on in the fight), Ganondorf levitates out the window, shattering it, and the boss fight scrolls to follow after him. You gain infinite use of your glide, though no extra jumps, meaning you’ll have to glide after him as he hurls his Energy Balls at you. Halfway through two decent sized flying lizards with swords and shields will start attacking you. Eventually Ganon lands on the Twilight Princess arena and the fight continues as normal, though the two lizard warriors will still stick around to give you hell. They shield all of your attacks save the Death Note, meaning you’ll probably only be able to kill one of them before getting Ganon down to no health at which point you’ll want to use the Death Note on him. Get used to that other lizard guy, he’s around to stay. Even if you try to get Ganon to kill him with his shockwaves, he’ll just fly over them.

SURVIVOR

DAWN OF THE SECOND DAY – GROUP 1

Bowser’s group gets spat out of a portal in the morning hours, still asleep. The fire’s still going nearby and the fall from the portal is non existent, though, so it doesn’t force them up immediately. . .Except for the fact that Morton lands on top of Lemmy, forcing him up. Lemmy squeezes his way out, wiggling to and fro, trying to break free. All this awkward rumbling under Morton manages to wake him up and he hastily goes to fish Lemmy out, chuckling slightly. Lemmy glares at Morton for him to just shrug. “Not like I had control over it” he whispers.

Lemmy sighs and goes off into the distance for Morton to follow after him. “Sooooo. . .Where are we going?”. “I dunno. Does it matter, little bro? If we can get away before dad gets up, we won’t have to do any work. We can just play all we want!”. “. . .Won’t dad get mad at us. . .?”. “C’mon. . .We’ll be back before they get up!”. “Uhhh. . .Okay. . .And do you have to call me little bro? No offense, but. . .I’m the biggest of all of us. . .”. “So? I’m the second oldest. How old are you anyway?”. “I. . .Don’t remember. . .Nobody ever remembers my birthday. . .”. “Really. . .? Wonder why that is. . .”. Morton lets out a deep sigh and pauses for a good few seconds. “…Kamek told me I’m adopted. . .It’s why I look so different from the rest of you. Nobody knows how old I actually am. I could be older then Ludwig for all you know, with how big I am. . .”. Lemmy sighs. “To tell ya the truth I’m surprised you didn’t figure it out sooner. . .”. “Wha?!? How long have you known?”. “Well, it’s kinda obvious. . .”. Morton looks rather depressed. “I don’t really belong with you and the other Koopas, do I?”. “C’mon, bro! Don’t say that. Dad adopting you means he handpicked ya for the Koopa Troop! Odds are he probably wouldn’t of picked all of us the same way. . .What with. . .My. . .Growth problems. . .”. Morton smiles slightly. “Heh. Nice way to think of it. . .”. Morton notices Lemmy looking slightly depressed. “C’mon, relax. What matters is you’re here now, right? Sides, seeing you’re the second oldest your growth spurt’s gotta come soon. . .”. “That’s the thing though. What if it doesn’t and I’m stuck like this forever?”. “I dunno. . .Maybe Iggy or Ludwig can make you some sort of growth serum if it gets really bad?”.

Lemmy nods weakly, then looks back in the direction of the camp to notice they’re a pretty large distance away. “Enough of this. Let’s get to the reason we came out all this way, shall we?”. Lemmy starts making a snowball as Morton curiously looks to see what he’s doing, then hurls it at him. Morton wipes it off in annoyance as Lemmy chuckles. “What was that for?!?”. Lemmy just chuckles and throws another. . .And another and another and another. Morton ducks down in cover and uses his shell against the snowballs cowardly. Lemmy eventually stops and chuckles, saying “We don’t have to if you don’t wan-“, but gets interrupted as Morton throws a snowball smack dab in his mouth. Morton laughs back at him and Lemmy continues to rapid fire snowballs. . .

***

Brawl
Morton vs. Lemmy

The brawl is a standard stamina match. You can pick either character here. Your dtilts are replaced with picking up snowballs from the ground which function as a weak throwing items that do 5%, but can be spammed excessively. If you keep using dtilt when you already have a snowball, you’ll start building up a wall of snow. These build up pretty fast, and while they only have 40 stamina they’re totally immune to snowballs. Morton can pretty easily build up a wall by hiding in his Doom Pillars, though you’re just giving Lemmy time to do the same. Once the walls are up though, Morton’s groundshaking moves reign supreme, but there are some icy platforms Lemmy can stay on to get out of its reach and even manipulate to use to approach Morton if he so wishes. If Morton wants to approach, he’ll have a tough time getting through Lemmy’s various traps. Morton’s fireballs shred through snow walls pretty quickly thanks to double damage, but if you get a snowball thrown at you during the lag you’ll get one stuck in your mouth and have to do a laggy fsmash to get it out.

***

Back at the camp Silver’s the next one to get up as he rolls over onto some rocks in his sleep. He looks around and notices the others are still asleep, then looks over the cliffside into the gorge to see the White Wolfos corpses he and the others hunted yesterday. He looks back to others still asleep. . .”Maybe I can get the wolves back before the other notice. . .? I’ve gotta make up for what I did or else they’ll get rid of me for sure. . .So. . .There’s not enough time to go all the way down the cliffside before they get up, though, so. . .Guh. They just better forgive me after this. . .”. Silver goes to slide down a very steep part of the cliff to get down faster, though inevitably trips and makes a fool of himself. He manages to levitate himself so that he lands on his feet at the end and chuckles to himself. “Heh heh, that’s why I’m the best, eh?”. An icicle falls from above and falls on Silver’s head and abruptly ends his chuckling. He rubs his head in annoyance, then levitates up the corpses as he goes over to the less steep area where the group came down into the gorge the previous day.

***

Level 13
Play as: Silver

Yeah, the same level is reused for the third time. While there’s a time limit, it’s not particularly hard getting to the end in time considering you should be pretty familiar with the level by now. The problem is that you have to haul along the big wad of White Wolfos corpses along with you. You can levitate them like a projectile or grab them to perform your throws on them, but levitating them proves to be slower then normal and throwing them will be treated as if you threw something 1.5X Bowser’s weight. It’s also quite difficult to get the corpses over gaps and long slopes of icy terrain – you’ll primairily be relying on your platform manipulation to carry the corpses along. Put the corpses on a platform, then just move said platform. This unfortunately isn’t a permanent solution, though, considering the platforms aren’t sturdy and will break from all the weight on them after a few seconds. . .

***

Back at the camp, Jafar and Bowser are next to awaken. Jafar mumbles as he gets up. “Finally up from that horrid dream. . .”. He then looks around and sees he’s still in Snowpeak. “Curses.”. Bowser looks around, somewhat worried. “Where are my kids?!? They’re missin’. You seen em, long beard?”. “For your information, the name’s Jafar. And no, I haven’t. That hedgehog also seems to be missing.”. “Who cares about him?!? Glad to be rid of that little gremlin.”. “Agreed.”.

As if summoned, Silver comes up from the gorge with all of the wolf corpses, he drops them next to the fire, awakening the others as he chuckles. “What was that about my plan failing?”. Seeing the others get up and hatching a quick idea on the spot, Bowser laughs as he stands up and flexes. “Heh heh, glad you’re all up. Jafar and I here just brought back all the wolves. Dig in!”. Vaati and Popinski hastily go to start gutting wolves with little thought, quite hungry, while Jafar chuckles subtly. Silver is obviously infuriated by this. “No, dammit! I was the one who brought them back! Not these two assholes. . .”. Bowser folds his arms and chuckles. “Sorry to break it to you, but you don’t exactly have a great track record with these sort of things.”. Anne rolls her eyes. “You aren’t exactly the most trustworthy person yourself either, you know. . .”. “But I won the challenge! I’m also the one who made us the fire. I’ve done the most of us so far. You’re not one to talk. . .What’ve you done?”. “Nothing much. Just saved half the group from being eaten alive by the monsters.”. Vaati angrily turns back to Anne as he starts cooking some meat. “I would’ve survived. . .”. “Do you want me to show them the picture?”.

Vaati just grumbles subtly and Anne turns back to Bowser and Silver. “I’m not saying I believe or don’t believe either of you, though quite honestly I couldn’t care less. Just eat.”. Silver still doesn’t want to let it go. “But look at him! He’s not tired at all! I’m dyin’ over here!”. Bowser chuckles. “Pretty poor excuse. Don’t you remember that I got to have that feast last night? That’s why I’m fine. You’re probably dying from hunger, so stop whining and eat already, will ya?”. Bowser chuckles as he hands Silver a hunk of meat for the hedgehog to reluctantly take it and forces himself to start eating. “As much as it pains me to admit, I’m probably gonna have to buddy up to this asshole. . .He’s got too many allies and has done too much for me to take him out. But even then, who do I convince him to finish off instead of me?”. Silver lets out a deep sigh. Bowser notices Silver’s barely touched his food and comes up next to him. “You gonna finish that?”. “Knock yourself out.”.

***

The group finishes eating for Bowser to remember his two children. “So, uhhh. . .We should probably go find Morton and Lemmy…”. Popinski rolls his eyes. “Good father figure you are, hmmm? You didn’t even save any food for them!”. Bowser growls. “So who’s gonna go find ‘em then?”. He looks about warily, though before anyone can volunteer Popinski laughs. “Why don’t you do it, hmmm, turtle man? They’re your children. Your responsibility. Besides, it’s not like you’ve been doing any work. You just sat at the camp the whole time and got to go into a buffet.”. Vaati raises an eyebrow. “Weren’t you the one who got the wood, Bowser. . .?”. “Uhh. . .Yeah! I was! What’re you talkin’ about, muscle man?”. “You know well that it was I and your bulkier son who gathered the wood. Stop playing games.”. Bowser loves over at the others for Silver to chuckle. “What was that about all the evidence being in your favor? It looks like I’m not the only one you’ve been stealing credit from.”. Popinski nods. “The little hedgehog man has a good point. I’m more inclined to go with his story now. . .”. Bowser turns to Anne. “You still believe me, right, hot stuff?”. “I never believed you in the first place, and now the truth is pretty painfully obvious. . .”. Jafar hastily comes over and speaks in Bowser’s favor. “Well I still believe him, thank you very much. I’ll trust him any day over a mindless mass of muscle or a cute little mammal.”. Silver hastily retorts Jafar. “So what? You two are in it together! Of course you two aren’t gonna betray each other!”.

Bowser turns to Vaati. “What about you, huh? Who’s side are you on? You’ve been pretty quiet. . .”. Vaati watches as Bowser’s web of lies gets destroyed. . .”It’s pretty obvious that the hedgehog was right all along. . .But there’s no need for me to go along with the truth. Bowser has the old warlock and his two children on his side. If I play along with them, I’ll be a member of the majority. . .”. Bowser taps his foot impatiently. “Well?”. Vaati comes out of his thoughts, rather startled. “Oh, right, right. Relax, Bowser. I believe you.”. Bowser laughs heartily. “Good, good!”. He proceeds to turn to the other three. . .”As for the lot of you, get the hell out of my camp. If you don’t believe me, let’s see how you do without all my help and my nice warm fire!”. Silver smirks and goes to leave. “Don’t have to tell me twice, pal.” he says as he goes to leave, Popinski and Anne following after him.

Anne sighs. “You didn’t think this through very well, did you? Without him or his kids, we don’t have any fire. We won’t last long out here without them. . .”. Popinski strokes his beard briefly. “Eh, we can always just give the turtle man a taste of his own medicine, can we not? We’ll go get his children before he does, not hard seeing how lazy he is. We can say we decided to move our camp and that we’re waiting on their father and the others.”. Silver chuckles. “Sounds like a plan. So what’s your name, anyway?”. “I am the great Soda Popinski! What is your name, anyway”. “Err. . .Silver. Just Silver.”. “Ah. Good to have you on the side of Soda.”. Popinski turns to Anne. “And the same to you, Madame! Might I get your name?”. Anne just gives Popinski a blank stare and continues on for Soda to frown. Silver chuckles slighty. “Good luck with her, man.”.

***

Level 14
Play as: Soda Popinski, Silver, Anne

Just looking at the level design here, things might seem pretty simple at a glance. . .Just perfectly level snow all the way through. What makes it hell is the fact that the snow is very deep and not packed in particularly well. . .Some snow just has you go under while you have to button mash your way out, taking damage, but other snow causes a good portion of it to fall out from under you, essentially vanishing into thin air. Your feet are also constantly lodged in the snow as you walk along, limiting your first jump and movement speed. The thing is that there are a lot of hidden goodies in the snow pitfalls and towards the end of the level you’ll have to fall into one to progress to the next screen.

***

Vaati, Bowser, and Jafar are still at the original base camp, discussing who to vote off. Vaati is the first to speak his mind. “We should probably get rid of the woman. . .She’s a real bitch to keep around, and she seems to be a lot stronger then she looks. She could be a threat.”. Bowser hesitantly shakes his head. “No way. I’m not taking her out yet. I wanna keep lookin’ at that cleavage as long as I can, heh heh. . .Anyway, I say we take out the speedo guy. He’s way stronger then the rest. Without him the other two probably won’t be able to survive. And more importantly, then there’ll be nobody standing between me and the hot chick.”. Jafar shakes his head. “You’re both wrong. The hedgehog should be the first to go. We’ve given him far too many reasons to hate us. It’s doubtful we’ll ever be able to turn him.”.

Bowser twitches as he looks at Jafar. “What are you talking about, Jafar? We haven’t done anything to him! He’s the liar, not us!”. Vaati rolls his eyes. “You can stop acting, Bowser. . .I know that you were the one lying, but I don’t give a damn. I’m here because we’re the majority.”. Jafar chuckles. “Welcome to the winning side.”. Bowser folds his arms and looks as if thinking. “We should probably go fetch the other two members of our alliance, less we be left at an even stand off.”. He gets up and goes to leave the camp as the two mages follow him, the shorter one questioning him. “So where do you think they are? Why would they of gone off on their own?”. “They’re good kids, raised em up to be just like me. No way they’re just playing or goofing off, they’re probably getting some more food but got lost or something.”.

***

Level 15
Play as: Bowser, Jafar, Vaati

The snow mechanic from the previous level returns, though it’s less of a focus due to the snow pitfalls being much rarer. What’s more of a problem are twilight enemies hiding underground, waiting to spring out and drag you under. You can’t hit these things at all unless you intentionally open up a snow pitfall to expose them, and if you don’t go out of your way to kill them they’ll prove to be an exceptionally large nuisance.

***

Morton and Lemmy are seen just playing and goofing off in the snow together. Their snowball fight seems to of ended, as they’re currently making a snowman together. Lemmy puts some twigs into his side for arms, though it’s still faceless. Morton puts his hand to his chin in thought as he looks it over. “Still something missing. What say you?”. “Well duh. We needa make his face. A carrot for the nose and all.”. Morton rubs his belly. “Mmmm. . .Carrots. . .”. “What’re you talkin’ about? Those things are nasty!”. “Well, yeah, but. . .I’m so hungry right now I don’t care. I’d take a carrot no problem.”. “Whatever. Help me look around for something we can use to make him a face, okay?”. “Okay.”.

Morton and Lemmy go off a ways from the snowman, though the camera sticks with the snowman rather then following the Koopalings. . .After a few moments, the Poe that fought Hades up on the Zora Domain/Snowpeak border the previous day comes down and possess the snowman. The snowman’s form starts to become more solid and humanoid rather then so disproportionate. He summons up some snow to cover his twig arms, turning them into stury snowy limbs, and some stumps come out of his bottom that grow up into legs. Some nasty eyes and a mouth appear on the snowman as a rotten carrot sprouts from the middle of his head. He snaps his fingers to cause a top hat and scarf to blow by through the wind, which he promptly puts on.

The snowman laughs in his now completed form, though goes back to being lifeless as Lemmy comes back as if nothing happened. Lemmy looks at the much more professional look of the snowman in awe, turning back to call out to his brother. “Woah! How’d you make the snowman look so much better, Morton?”. As he does this the snowman springs to life again and creeps up on Lemmy, but instantly freezes in the same pose as Morton comes up. “Errr. . .What’re you talkin’ about? I didn’t do anything. That one’s not ours, is it. . .?”. “Eh, guess you’re right. . .Let’s go back and find him.”.

Morton and Lemmy turn their backs on the snowman for him to suddenly lurch out and grab Lemmy, then proceed to force a boatload of snow down his gullet. The snowman cackles as Morton turns around and runs to free his brother, but the snowman just throws Lemmy into him to knock him down and laughs.

***

BOSS: BLEAK

Play as: Morton, Lemmy

Attacks:

Cold Shelter: Bleak starts at either side of the screen at random at the beginning of the battle and will always open with this move, building up a snow fort. It only takes a couple seconds, and the wall is completely invulnerable to boot. This is where he’ll stay for essentially the entirety of the fight. While Morton can use his earthshaking moves to damage Bleak without getting up in his face, using one in the same place more then twice will create a snow pitfall like the one in the last couple levels (Though you can’t make a pitfall in the corners where Bleak/his snow wall are to destroy them). Abuse it too much and you won’t have much room to fight on, much less enough ground that’s connected to Bleak’s for the earthshaking moves to work.

Snowball Hurl: Bleak bends over his snow fort and throws a cute little snowball that does 5% with no knockback, but a decent bit of hitstun. Considering he can fire four of the things in a second, that they travel at Captain Falcon’s run speed, and that he can use them during a lot of his other attacks, these can be hellish to deal with. Should you be hit by one snowball you’ll probably be hit by all of the ones that come after it.

Top Hat Turret: Bleak bends over his snow fort and points his top hat forward, then shoots a snowball 3X the size of the others out of it. He can only fire these a rate of two per second and there’s two thirds a second of lag for him to go into the stance, but they’re actually capable of KOing and deal 17%. If you’re right next to him, it won’t KO till 150%, but the farther away you are the earlier it finishes you off.

Wind Chill: Bleak bends over and inhales for a split second before exhaling a blast of freezing wind. This causes a massive gust of wind to start pushing you away from bleak at the rate of Ganondorf’s dash, making it significantly harder to approach him. This also means you’ll be blown back a bit should you get caught in the hitstun of the snowballs, making all the more distance between you and the snowman. This lasts for 10 seconds and he always re-activates it roughly 12 seconds after it expires.

While Morton can always hide in his doom pillars as he waits for some of the duration to expire, not be blown back, and be safe from Bleak’s projectiles, it’ll only cover 5/10 seconds and he in general has a hellish time approaching thanks to his horrible movement. While Lemmy has a lot easier time approaching, the point of his entire moveset is rendered largely pointless due to Bleak not ever moving from his spot to activate traps. Once he gets to Bleak, though, he can just set up a warp pipe next to him then once he’s booted out of Bleak’s domain he can make another to get right back to him.

On Thin Ice: Bleak claps his hands together, causing the snow (Except for the corners of the stage) to turn to slippery ice. This functions like the ice in The Summit stage, but if you attempt to dash on it you’ll just trip, making it all the harder to approach. Bleak always alternate this attack with Wind Chill, constantly keeping them one of them active. Thankfully he won’t use them both at once. . .Until he gets to 25% health. Good luck getting to him then. . .

Scarf Whip: Bleak takes off his purple scarf and whips it directly towards you, attempting to tie you up with his scarf. Bleak will never use this attack unless you get up close and personal to him, being his only real melee attack. Should he grab you he’ll toss you into the snow for 8%, then start rolling you up into a snowball the size of Bowser, you having to button mash out with grab difficulty. He’ll throw you over his snow wall after he gets you in the snowball and will only use Top-Hat Turret against you rather then the smaller snowballs, and while they’ll deal 0 damage to you in this state they’ll still do their knockback.

Wintry Imprisonment: Bleak holds out his hat as it expands an awkwardly large amount, becoming a grab hitbox. If you fall into his hat it goes back to regular size as he puts it onto his head, then he performs Top-Hat Turret, you flying on the same swift long trajectory as one of his larger snowballs and taking 17%. This is an alternative to Scarf Whip in case you manage to make your way to Bleak.

Reform: The Poe known as Bleak come up out of his snowman body, causing him to crumble to the ground. It moves at Sonic’s run speed to the opposite corner of the arena and dives into the snow there, reforming into his snowman form and hastily making another cold shelter. If Bleak fails to catch you with Scarf Whip or Wintry Imprisonment, this is what he’ll do to escape after a few failed attempts, though he occasionally does it at random (Not if you’re closer to the opposite corner then his current one, though). You can attack Bleak in Poe form to deal triple damage to him as he flees, so it’s not all bad.

***

Bleak flails about as he melts into a puddle. He turns to Poe form and tries to struggle to get out of the body, but is ultimately dragged down along with it to his doom. All that’s left of him are his carrot nose, top hat, cuffs, and shoes. Lemmy looks rather traumatized by the event. . .”Remind me to never make another snowman. EVER.”. Morton looks over where Bleak once stood before picking up his carrot nose and chomping it down for Lemmy to look grossed out. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, man. . .Besides, it looks rotten.”. “Do I look like I care?!? I’m Starving. STARVING!”. “Don’t blame me if you get sick from that thing. . .”. Both Koopalings shiver as a brisk wind starts to pick up, Lemmy especially. The bulkier Koopaling starts going against the wind to head back. “We’ve stayed out here way too long anyway. . .We should really go back before dad starts getting worried about us.”.

Before they can make much progress, Popinski, Anne, and Silver come to them from one direction while Bowser, Vaati, and Jafar come from another. Bowser hastily turns to the other group. “What’re you idiots doing here? I thought I told you lot to get out of my sight!”. Anne folds her arms. “You said we had to “get out of your camp”. Does the entire world fall into that category?”. “As a matter of fact, yeah, it does.”. Bowser chuckles. “You’ll come to realize that soon enough.”. Come on, guys, let’s get back to camp. Lemmy and Morton head off with their father and the mages for them to start going back together. Morton looks off curiously at the other three characters being left behind. “What about the others, dad? We just leaving em?”. “Duh.”. Lemmy hops up out of some deep snow. “What happened between you guys, huh?”.

Bowser seems rather lost as to how to tell his children the situation, not wanting to tell them of all his various lies – especially considering he took credit for some of Morton’s work. Vaati notices Bowser looks rather lost how to tell them and speaks up. “Well, let’s see. . .The hedgehog got rid of all our food, the bitch didn’t do anything but cause us to nearly get killed over her, and the muscle man is friends with both of them. There’s only three of them while there’s five of us. We can pick them all off pretty easily.”. Lemmy folds his arms. “I’d rather have that chick around then somebody like this bearded old geezer. She saved us from the beasts yesterday.”. Jafar glares at Lemmy, then turns his gaze to Bowser. “Will you control your offspring?”. Bowser looks rather uneasy. “Relax, Lemmy. That chick’s the last one of ‘em we’ll kill off anyway. Besides, once the muscle head’s gone she’ll probably come running back to us and we won’t even need to kill her, heh heh. . .”. Vaati shakes his head in disbelief. ”I can’t believe this –fool- is in charge. . .”.

***

Bowser’s group is seen back at the original base camp together, but the fierce winds from earlier have become exceptionally worse. It’s a full out blizzard. Bowser can be seen trying to make a fire, but it gets rather weak and goes out pretty quickly. Jafar keeps going up to the flame as Bowser makes it, freezing cold. Bowser lets out an aggravated cry. “Get over here and help me, Morton.”. Morton nods and comes over, then the two Koopas start breathing fire together. It lasts for a decent while longer, enough for Vaati and Lemmy to also get up to the fire and them to get an actual decent amount of warmth, but quickly goes out again. “Godammit. . .”. Vaati rolls his eyes. ”Can already tell it’s gonna be a hell of a long night. . .”.

***

Level 16
Play as: Bowser, Morton, Lemmy, Jafar, Vaati

This level just consists of one screen – the camp. There’s a constant blizzard going on that deals 15% per second, but there’s a base of logs at the center with a decent fire going. Considering you have stamina rather then damage, you’ll die off pretty quickly. If you stay close to the fire you won’t take damage from the freezing blizzard, but the fire dies down pretty quickly and you have to keep feeding the fire logs to keep it alive, and the fire doesn’t prevent all of the blizzard damage when it’s small. If you’re not playing Bowser or Morton, it’s pretty much an instant lost stock if the fire goes out as you can’t relight it. As Bowser and Morton, you can relight the fire but it’ll be very weak. Granted, you can spam your fire moves on the fire to make it bigger, so it’s not an entire loss. Of course, the thing making this an actual challenge are the enemies interfering with you as you attempt to do it. There’s no cap to how many of them can spawn, so if you just ignore them entirely you’ll die to them. On the other hand, you obviously can’t ignore the fire. . .Finding the perfect balance proves difficult.

***

Anne, Popinski, and Silver are seen working their way through the blizzard. Silver seems to be rather grouchy. . .”Perfect timing for a blizzard. Freaking PERFECT. As if it wouldn’t be hard enough to survive out here without a fire without the turtle guys. . .You got a back-up plan, Soda?”. “Soda Popinski always has a back-up plan, my friend! We’ll just find a cave to get out of the blizzard.”. Soda turns back to Anne to notice her shivering and struggling to keep up for him to hastily go back to her. “Are you sure you can make it, Madame? I could carry you if things are getting too harsh.”. Anne just glares at Soda and shrugs away from him, speeding up a bit and forcing herself to resist the cold. Soda sighs and goes back over to Silver, who chuckles subtly but stops as Popinski comes alongside him. “Give it up already. She’s a lost cause.”. Anne looks over at Soda. . .”Just how the hell –does- that guy keep going in this weather in his underwear?”. Silver shivers slightly for Soda to chuckle. “Come now, this is nothing compared to the snow in Moscow. Nothing! I’m wearing just as much as you are and you even have all that nice fur to keep you warm. March on! March on for Mother Russia!”. Popinski gets a decent lead on the others as he does the stereotypical Russian kicking dance. “Op op op op op op. . .”.

***

Level 17
Play as: Soda Popinski, Silver, Anne

This level has the snow pitfalls from a couple of the earlier levels, but the truly annoying part is how your feet get stuck in the snow to prevent jumping and slows your movement. Why? Because there’s a constant blizzard that’s pushing against you and trying to move you off screen at the rate of Ganon’s dash, meaning progress is annoyingly slow. Considering that the twilight enemies are not out and about, things are only all the more difficult as there’s an enemy type who make gusts to try to push you off screen, which when stacked with the blizzard and the deep snow. . .Yeah. Fun times.

***

The trio make it into a cave, Silver nearly collapsing as he finally gets into it, levitating himself back up to a standing position to avoid falling over. He weakly goes over and leans against the wall, letting out an exhausted sigh. Popinski chuckles and flexes, still in peak condition. “See? I told you I’d find us some shelter.”. Anne folds her arms. “That’s all well and good. . .But now that we’re trapped in here, how do we get food? And even if we do find something, how do we cook it without fire?”. Popinski chuckles. “We do it like back in my homeland! We’ll eat it raw – it’s the freshest kind of meat, is it not?”. Silver looks ready to vomit at this while Anne just shakes her head in disbelief. “Probably should’ve just gone by myself or stuck with the turtle. . .”.

***

DAWN OF THE SECOND DAY – GROUP 2

The second group is seen sleeping around the snow, incredibly exhausted and with a decent few wounds. Of course, the sleepless undead lords are all awake, gathered around the fire. Hades is propped against a tree, hands behind his head in a relaxation pose while Richard is eagerly looking around the five sleeping characters. He eagerly goes over to Ryuk. “Soooo. . .Can I kill them? It’s been a while since I’ve had something to kill. Please?”. Hades rolls his eyes and says “For the hundredth time, Richard-“, but is interrupted by a cackling Ryuk, who puts his hand on Richard’s shoulder. “Look, Richard. While I appreciate your enthusiasm for the cause, do you really want everything to all be over so quickly? Watching them struggle against their fate is much more interesting, and if you kill them you’ll just bring down the twilight king.”. “Oh! Then can I kill him too?”. Hades sighs. “We’ve already been over this, Richard. . .”. Ryuk cackles as he eyes Richard sinisterely. “Eventually, Richard, eventually. . .”. Hades raises an eyebrow and says “When did we go over-“ for Ryuk to give him an unnerving glare. “Gotcha.”.

Hades puts his hand to his chin in thought. “So which of them should we vote off?”. Ryuk shrugs. “Does it matter? They’ll probably kill the half-breed based off of Richard’s act from earlier.”. Hades chuckles. “Well played on that, by the way, Richard.”. Richard puts his hands together and strikes a happy pose. “Oh stop it!”. Ryuk continues. “If we all vote for him, there’s no doubt he’ll be the first one down. Granted, if they decide to lynch somebody else, it’s easy enough for us to just switch to the popular opinion. It doesn’t really matter the order we kill them in so long as we eventually become the majority. In any case, though, I’d suggest taking out the hopeless one who keeps crying all the time last. He seems the easiest of them to manipulate and doesn’t pose much of a threat.”. Richard sighs. “But I wanted to vote him off first! I hate people with suicidal tendencies like him – they kill themselves before I can!”.

The other characters finally start awakening from their sleep, Mustang wasting no time. “We should probably go off for the mansion sooner then later. I doubt we’ll all make it down the slippery slope alive in the dark.”. Negative Man whines. “We’ll all fall off it no matter what happens. . .”. Raven ignores Negative Man entirely. “I’m still going off to do some hunting, if you’ll recall.”. Richard hastily goes over to the main group, abandoning the other two undead lords. “Killing? Oh how I love killing! Might I accompany you in this act of slaughter?”. Raven stares blankly at Richard. “Go crazy.”. Dingodile rolls his eyes at Richard. “Have fun wasting your time with that lunatic, mate. . .”. Mustang looks as if thinking briefly before shaking his head. “You won’t be able to find us at the mansion after you do the hunting. You’d probably be better off coming with us.”. Macho Man, seeing an opportunity, intervenes. “Hey, I know the way to the mansion too, y’know!” he says as he glares over at Mustang. “I’ll go with her, then once she’s done I’ll show her the way to the mansion, alright?”. Mustang shrugs uncaringly, then turns to Negative Man and Dingodile. “You two come with me.”. He proceeds to turn to Hades and Ryuk. “You two gonna just sit there, or what?”. Hades shakes a fist in annoyance. “Hey! If it wasn’t for us, your sorry carcasses would’ve been eaten alive last night!”. Ryuk whispers to Hades. “Relax, relax. You don’t wanna be voted off, do you? Just help him kill his little yeti and he’ll see how useful you are.”. Hades sighs and nods to Ryuk, then goes off over to the others alongside, Ryuk following behind him. “Yeah, we’ll go.”. The camera follows Macho Man, Raven, and Richard as they head off into the woods. . .

***

Level 18
Play as: Raven, Richard, Super Macho Man

This level requires you to kill a set number of White Wolfos as per the usual, though the trees in the woods prove to be rather bothersome. Raven can use her moves to ghost through the trees like her own created walls and even use her Neutral Special to send a duplicate of herself to fight them through it. Richard can use his portal recovery to move around the trees without having to constantly switch from one side to the others with doors, re-randomizing the enemy locations. Macho Man has the easiest time, able to simply knock down the trees. Use him first.

***

Raven does a move similar to a Darth Vader style force choke on a wolf to kill it, then hurls it via telekinesis onto a pile of corpses. Macho Man lifts up the pile with one hand casually and motions to the others to go back with his other arm, but Richard incinerates the corpses Macho Man’s holding, leaving nothing but bones and shredding through Macho Man’s glove, making his hand catch on fire. Rather then putting it out in the snow, he uses his flaming hand to deliver a massive flaming uppercut to Richard, knocking him back into a tree. “Dude, release the bogus! What was that for?!?”. “It was an accident! It’s not like YOU know how to use warlock magic. This sort of thing happens all the time.”. Richard gives her blank stare to Richard. “Right. Just like yesterday was an accident, am I right? I had my doubts, but I thought you were more intelligent then this. I guess I overestimated you.”. Macho Man picks up Richard by the cloak. “Should I knock his lights out?”. “No, no. . .It’ll be easy enough to vote him off now that we know the truth.” “What about innocent before proven guilty? I want a lawyer! Give me liberty or give me death! . . .Death preferably, in large quantities.”. Ryuk holds his hands together and strikes a happy pose.

***

Mustang, Hades, Ryuk, Dingodile, and Negative Man reach the slope down to the Snowpeak Ruins for Yeto to still be in his same old spot. Hades chuckles. “You were scared of that? Look at him. He’s not all that tough. We can just burn his fur right off him.”. Dingodile chuckles and nudges Hades forward. “Why don’t you go take a crack at him first then, eh mate?”. Hades looks about warily, but then points off to Negative Man approaching Yeto. Ryuk cackles. “This should be good.”.

Yeto doesn’t even notice Negative Man’s presence as he fumbles about in the snow. Negative Man inches ever closer to Yeto before finally getting close enough to poke him to get his attention. “Uhh. . .Excuse me. . .”. Yeto looks around stupidly. “Unh, who said that, unh?”. “I did. . .”. Yeto looks down and notices Negative Man. “Ah! There you are, unh! So small that I can’t see you, unh.”. “My friends and I want to go down to that mansion. . .We’re not nearly strong enough to ever be able to beat you. . .Would you grant us safe passage. . .? There’s no doubt we’ll die out here in the wilderness. . .”. Negative Man sheds a couple tears. “Unh! Yeto is strong. You are right that you could never beat Yeto. . .But, unh, that’s Yeto’s house. What makes you think Yeto would just let you barge into Yeto’s house, cheese man? Unh!”. Negative Man bursts into tears. “You’re right. . .We never should’ve come here. . .We’ll go back now. . .”. Yeto laughs. “Unh! You are funny, little cheese man, unh. Yeto will let you come to come to Yeto’s house if, unh, you can beat Yeto down the slope to, unh, Yeto’s house. Unh.”. Yeto smacks a frozen over tree with his fist to cause several large frozen leaves to fall from it. He motions over to the other characters to come along. “Unh! Come! Race Yeto!”. Dingodile eyes the frozen leaves awkwardly as Yeto jumps up on one. “What’re ya doin’, mate?”. “Snowboards, unh! Hop on!”. Yeto pushes himself on with one foot before going to sled down the mountain. Negative Man lets out a deep sigh. “We’ll never beat him. . .”. All the others hastily go jump on the frozen leaf sleds. Hades laughs as he passes by Negative Man, kicking him onto one of the leaves causing him to flail his arms in panic.

***

Level 19
Play as: Negative Man, Roy Mustang, Dingodile, Ryuk, Hades

You have far more stock then necessary to survive the level to use all your characters, but if you lose the race to Yeto you get a game over. It’s the same level design and mechanics as when you went down the track as Macho Man, only now you can perform attacks as you’re jumping in the air on your leaf snowboard. Granted, this means you can’t use your aerials. . .But Negative Man’s aerials aren’t a part of his playstyle anyway seeing he can’t get into the air normally, making him surprisingly good for the level. Dingodile is generally the worst due to his crystals just slowing him down and his shots being near impossible to aim properly at the high speeds you’re moving. While it’s not that difficult to pass Yeto, once you pass him he’ll speed up more, and if he passes you you’ll take 20% and large backwards knockback. Considering he kills all the enemies in your way anyway, it’s best to just try to pass him at the last second.

***

It’s a close race with Mustang and Yeto neck and neck. Ryuk messes up and his sled goes skeetering off into the abyss, but he wasn’t trying to win anyway. He’s a spectator, not a contestant, yes? He just flies off and continues to watch. Hades is in the back with Negative Man, infuriating him. “How the hell am I all the way back here? You aren’t even trying!”. “Why would I try. . .? There’s just no way I can win. . .”. Hades chuckles and does a headbutt on Negative Man’s sled, causing his flaming hair to incinerate it. Negative Man cries at having lost his sled as Hades laughs and passes him. . .But Negative Man’s tears cause him to get a significant speed boost and pass most of the others. Hades and Ryuk watch in absolute shock as Negative Man passes even Yeto himself and finishes first.

Yeto angrily comes over and picks Negative Man up out of the snow. “Who you think you are, unh?!? You cheated! You no used a sled, unh!”. Yeto goes into the Snowpeak Ruins with Negative Man. Mustang goes to open the door after him, but he seems to of locked it behind him. Not being remotely concerned, he attempts to make a fiery blast to burn down the door, but the fire is somehow reflected by the door, causing him to raise an eyebrow. Ryuk comes up and inspects the door. “It seems to be enchanted with some sort of dark magic. It’s probably the Twilight King keeping us from going inside.”.

The camera cuts to Negative Man being dragged along by Yeto into his house. Yeto happily takes Negative Man off to the kitchen and throws him into a pot of soup, eagerly beginning to stir him around in it with a spatula. He takes a whiff of the soup, then puts his hand to his chin in thought. “Unnnnnnh. . .Soup is missing something. Pepper? Now where, unh, did Yeto put the pepper. . .”. Yeto scratches his head stupidly as he leaves the room, looking around for pepper.

Negative Man sighs as he sits in the pot of soup in his hunched over position, not making any attempt to get out. “It’s fine that I’m going to die. . .I was going to be the first one to die anyway. . .It doesn’t matter. . .”. Negative Man lets out a deep sigh as he continues to sink into the soup. ”But if I die, that means the others will all die 3 days sooner because they can’t sacrifice me. . .”. Negative Man forces himself to slowly rise up out of the soup. “I can’t die. . .Yet, anyway. . .My time will come soon enough, but for now I’m still needed. . .”. Negative Man sighs as he comes up out of the soup and crawls up out of the bowl weakly, crashing onto the floor. Yeto’s voice can be heard in the distance. . .”Unh? What was that?”. Negative Man goes as fast as he can with his snail’s pace to try to get out of view. Due to his slowness, he ultimately just settles for going under the table the soup’s on. Yeto looks into the soup and scratches his head. “Unh? Where the cheese man go? Cheese man probably just melted into the soup. Unh. . .Now back to find that pepper. . .”.

***

Level 20
Play as: Negative Man

This level is one of those obligatory stealth levels that swarmed the MGS2 port referred to as a SM, but this one is made notably more difficult due to Negative Man’s absolutely horrendous movement speed and inability to jump. You have to keep waiting at various spots to hide as Yeto makes his rounds to look for the pepper. While the enemies are in low enough quantity to not be a remote threat, it’s quite possible that they can beat you out of your hiding spot and into Yeto’s line of sight or to keep knocking you around while you’;re out in the open to keep you from getting to a hiding spot. Should Yeto catch you it’s not an instant KO, but he’ll drop you in the pot of soup for 35%, and this obviously means you have to restart the level. Worse then him killing you, really, seeing you take damage rather then getting it reset and you only have one stock.

***

The camera shows the group outside the Snowpeak ruins, Dingodile with his arms folded. “How are we supposed ta get in? You brought us all this way here just so we have to climb our way back up the slope? Good luck with that mate. . .”. Mustang glares at Dingodile. “You shouldn’t be talking, you know. Remember all that food you ate?”. “I told you already – that was Richard, not me, dammit!”. Hades can be seen snorting in laughter slightly while Ryuk is subtly holding back a bit of his own. “Oi, those two are probably allied with him. . .Am I really their target? Heh. Guess I’m more or a threat then I thought. . .But I’ve gotta prove it wasn’t me somehow. . .That. . .Or I gotta make somebody else do something even worse then my so called “crime”.”. Dingodile chuckles as he folds his arms behind his back. “Least I didn’t cause the death of one of our members. That block’o’cheese is as good as churned. If it wasn’t for you insistin’ on comin’  here bein’ such a good idea, he’d still be with us right now.”.

Mustang rolls his eyes. “I’d love to hear your plan. . .In any case, we can still get in.”. Mustang points up to the chimney of the mansion, then turns to Ryuk. “You can fly up there and go through the chimney, then find the key and let us in, right?”. Ryuk cackles then ghosts his arm through the wall. “No need. . .But why would I spoil the fun? I’m not a player here. Consider me an extension of the Twilight King’s authority. I’m just here to watch. You’re on your own.”. Hades looks rather uneasy about the situation, but Ryuk seems perfectly casual. Mustang just squints in annoyance. “Hope you enjoy being the first one voted off then.”. Ryuk cackles. “Don’t you realize, idiot? You need me. I’m the only one who can kill the Twilight King.”. “Yeah, but you’re an asshole who refuses to do it. What’s your point?”. “If you really insist, I’ll help you kill him. . .You knock off his helmet, he’s dead. Simple as that.”. Mustang smirks. “Consider it done.”.

Dingodile folds his arms. “Not that that’s settled, you mind letting us in?”. Ryuk chuckles. “I didn’t say anything about that, now did I? I’ll come along and watch. Nothing more.”. Mustang sighs as he goes to look for a way to scale the Snowpeak Ruins while Dingodile goes off in another direction and starts doing the same. Left alone, Hades looks rather wary, raising an eyebrow. “So. . .You’re not gonna actually do it, are you?”. Ryuk cackles. “Of course not. It was all a mere ploy. . .”. “Ah, gotcha. . .But was it really such a good idea to show him what you’re capable of? With that sticking your arm through the wall and stuff. . .”. “Just trust me, Hades. . .It doesn’t matter.”. Ryuk lets out a more lengthy cackle, causing Hades to wear an eyebrow. “Don’t mind me, Hades. . .I’m just here to observe. . .”. Hades’ weirded out expression only escalates, but he just sighs and goes off in the direction of Mustang and Dingodile, who have joined up together behind the Snowpeak Ruins to start scaling the wall. Ryuk just laughs as he flies up to the top of where the others are attempting to climb. “What’s keeping you?”. Mustang scowls while Dingodile just grunts as they continue on their way up. . .

***

Level 21
Play as: Roy Mustang, Dingodile, Hades, Ryuk (Eventually)

The start of the level has a series of walls you have to wall kick up with lots of spiked traps/iciles falling from above and annoying Ice Keese getting in the way. For this part of the level Ryuk is unplayable. Dingodile and Hades can get up without much hassle, but they’ll take a lot of self damage in the process of doing so. Mustang is the only one who can clear the level in the traditional sense you’re supposed to, though it’s significantly harder. Once you get towards the top of the roof you can see Ryuk cackling and performing his taunts, though once you reach him he’ll join your party for the level and you’ll get an extra stock. The rest of the level is more traditional side scrolling across the roof to get to the chimney, but the roof is extremely slippery and it’s easy to fall into a pit.

***

We cut back to the outside of the Snowpeak Ruins for Macho Man to be seen sliding down the slope to them. As he goes over the jump he makes a triumphant pose. . .Though he remembers how that went last time and comes out of the pose before crashing into the wall for the second time. Raven just flies over the gorge casually, though Richard isn’t quite so lucky as he goes over the jump at massive speeds, shattering into a pile of bones as he splats against the wall. . .Raven just shakes her head at him, then goes to attempt to open up the door. “Locked.”.

Macho Man smirks and pushes her away from the door. “Outta my way, it’s showtime!” he says as give a massive smack to the door. . .and hurts his hand as one of Zant’s barriers flashes over the door as he does so. He shakes off the pain on his hand before Raven just shakes her head and motions off to Richard. “Put him back together.”. Macho Man puts his hands on his hips in annoyance. “And just who are you to tell –me- what to do?”. Raven squints at Macho Man slightly. “The one who’s going to get us inside.”. Macho Man scoffs at Raven. “And just how do you intend to do that when my macho punch couldn’t even budge the door?”. “Just watch. . .”. Raven goes into a meditation pose as she channels her essence out of her body much like her Neutral Special, then uses it to ghost through the door. Macho Man’s jaw drops at this and he shakes his head in disbelief, then he goes over to Richard’s bone mass and starts attempting to put him together.

***

Level 22
Play as: Raven

You start outside the Snowpeak Ruins and there isn’t much of anything Raven can do. . .Besides use her Neutral Special to ghost through the wall, obviously. You’ll be playing the entirety of the level as her Neutral Special duplicate. This is all well and good, buy ANY attack sends it flying all the way back to Raven meaning you have to start over. . .This level retreads a lot of the same ground Negative Man did and Yeto is still out and about. You have to catch him with his back turned and snatch his keys, then go back to the middle of the level without him attacking you and getting them back to open up the door.

***

Level 23
Play as: Ryuk, Hades, Dingodile, Roy Mustang

Yes, god forbid, another level without 10 years of cutscenes in-between. This level has you working your way from the back of the ruins to the front. You’ll find the main door you need to bypass sooner then later, but to open it up you have to do that torturous ice block puzzle. You’ll have to keep going and make more ice blocks fall through the ceiling to give you more to play around with in the puzzle. The last of them isn’t necessary and you can solve the puzzle without them, but if it proves too much frustration the final one just falls right on the switch.

***

Macho Man is seen trying to put Richard back together. . .Richard comes out after Macho Man’s done with him to be for the most part complete, but his limbs are switched around, giving him unusable stumps for his legs and hands. “Do I look finished to you? Fix me!”. “I dunno. I think this look fits you.”. Macho Man chuckles while Richard attempts to “smack” him with one of his legs, which causes him to topple over. Raven’s duplicate comes over and opens the door. “Forget about that idiot for now. Let’s find the others.”. Macho Man shrugs and drags Richard in by his legs. . .or rather, his newfound lengthy arms.

Mustang’s group comes out from another door in the back and sees Raven’s group, but then Yeto passes through the room, holding Negative Man in his massive hand. “How you unh get in here?!? Yeto took cheese man as payment for you unh cheating, but now that you broke into unh Yeto’s house. . .UNH! All of you will be Yeto’s soup!”. Hades rolls his eyes and shakes his head, looking at Mustang and Dingodile. “So why didn’t we just fight this guy in the first place again rather then going through all this trouble?”.

***

BOSS: YETO

Play as: Negative Man, Ryuk, Hades, Roy Mustang, Dingodile, Raven, Super Macho Man, Richard

Attacks:

Soup: Yeto attempts to grab you, then throws you into his pot of soup for 10%. Instant KO. Yes, really. Sound fun? It is, but his is very telegraphed (Though the actual grab is fairly quick) so it’s not –terrible-.

Horse Saddle: This attack, on the other hand, is quite fast and hard to see coming. Yeto takes off the horse saddle that he for some reason wears as a hat and smacks it over top of your character for 15%. You have to button mash it off with double grab difficulty, and until you get it off all attacks with upward hitboxes will be blocked by the saddle, you won’t be able to jump, and your movement speed is halved. This makes getting grabbed a much larger possibility. . .

Soup Drink: Yeto goes to drink his soup. This is actually what KOs you when you get thrown into the soup into the soup meaning it’s possible to get out before you get KOd. This heals Yeto of a massive 100 stamina, 50 more if he manages to drink you in addition to the soup. Considering he goes to do this a lot, you’re capable of interrupting it, or else the boss fight would last forever. However; if you do interrupt it Yeto will spit out the soup on you from the force of your attack. This is very fast and difficult to dodge unless the attack you were using has next to no end lag, doing a meaty 22% (Though not much knockback).

Stomp: Yeto jumps in the air and stomps down hard, dealing 30% and pitfalling you if you fall under his feet. If you’re on the ground when he comes down, you’ll take high hitstun. The force of Yeto’s stomp also causes some icicles to fall from the ceiling which spike you down onto the ground for 18%, making you vulnerable to the earthquake effect.

Headbutt: Yeto headbutts forward onto the ground. His head deals 40% and massive knockback, though it’s pretty easy to avoid. What’s more of a concern is that Yeto’s horse saddle hat will go flying off his head (Assuming it’s still there) and ricochet off the edges of the screen. Contact with it causes it get stuck on you like the traditional attack as well as making you take 20%.

Shake: Yeto picks up his soup and turns to face the camera, then starts waddling sideways in your direction, shaking the massive bowl of soup to make it’s contents fly all the way to the ceiling before coming back down into the bowl. The soup does 22% and upward knockback as it goes up, but the knockback changes to spike you into the bowl as it comes back down. If you ever get caught in the soup, Yeto will of course perform soup Drink before putting the soup back in it’s initial position.

Pepper: Once Yeto goes down to 25% for the first time, he looks as if thinking briefly. “Unh, where Yeto put the pepper, unh?”. He scratches his head as he walks out of the arena, then comes back with a pepper shaker, finally having found the blasted thing. He’ll shake it in your face to create a cloud of pepper that deals 30 hits of 1% and flinching over a single second before going over to put some into the soup. He’ll keep doing it forever if you leave him alone, and every second he puts pepper into it increases the amount of stamina the soup will heal him by 30. You obviously have to interrupt it, but when you do the pepper shaker will fly into one of his nostrils, causing him to sneeze, doing ridiculously large pushback near instantly that’ll blow you off screen if you don’t get behind him. On rare occasions he’ll take out the pepper again and repeat the attack, but you should hopefully finish him before then.

SURVIVOR

Zant is seen sitting in his palace, bored as can be. He’s watching a pair of Shadow Beasts fight each other ferally. One Shadow Beast does a lunge at the other, but it dodges and does a headbutt on it in retaliation. However; the Shadow Beast that lunged manages to get out of the way in time and tackle the other Shadow Beast, feeding on it’s vitals. This catches Zant’s attention as he looks up from his bored position, but it’s all over quickly as the beast finishes the other off. Zant sighs and summons another Shadow Beast, having it roar to bring the defeated Shadow Beast back to life. Zant watches with renewed interest as the Shadow Beasts have at it again. . .The screen fades through time to show the beasts fighting each other for a considerable time and Zant reviving them over and over again, but he eventually looks more and more bored, eventually taking off his helmet as his eye twitches from watching the Shadow Beasts kill each other again and again. Eventually, he can’t take it anymore.

“Every time it’s the same. . .The things never learn from their mistakes. While they’re mindless, intelligence wouldn’t help them anyway. History always repeats itself. . .Mankind shall always destroy itself each generation. It’s all so. . .Predictable.”. Zant drums his fingers. “Still, intelligent beings are certainly more fun to watch. . .”. He chuckles. “Yes. . .I’ll force them to work together, but what are the odds they’ll actually do something like that? They’ll all kill each other.”. Zant gets up from his throne and paces back and forth, chuckling madly. “But who shall I watch fight before me? Who?”. Zant frowns and stops chuckling. . .Ever so briefly before he’s back at it again. “Does it matter? I’ll just pick them at random! Wouldn’t want things to be even more predictable then they already are, now do we?”. Zant puts his helmet back on and takes a more serious tone. “Now then, let’s begin. . .”. He summons 16 portals all at once for them to swirl around and pulsate before 16 characters pop out of them. . .

1: Ryuk (MasterWarlord, MYM 5)
2: Super Macho Man (Hyper_Ridley, MYM 7)
3: Raven (Half Silver, MYM 6)
4: Silver (MarthTrinity, MYM 7)
5: Roy Mustang (Chris Lionheart, MYM 5)
6: Negative Man (MarthTrinity, MYM 6)
7: Jafar (KingK.Rool, MYM 4)
8: Soda Popinski (TheSundanceKid, MYM 9001)
9: Hades (BKupa666, MYM 6)
10: Vaati (SkylerOcon, MYM 6)
11: Bowser Remix (Darth Meanie/BKupa666, MYM 7)
12: Anne (Junahu, MYM 6)
13: Lemmy (Hyper_Ridley, MYM 5)
14: Dingodile (MasterWarlord, MYM 6)
15: Richard (SirKibble, MYM 5)
16: Morton (MasterWarlord, MYM 7)

Zant spreads his arms wide for his newfound visitors. “Greetings! You have all been gathered here to participate in a game. . .Survival of the fittest, a classic if there ever was one. You will all be forced to survive together in a desolate twilight realm for 3 day-”. Bowser interrupts Zant. “I dunno what the hell is going on or who you are, but I’m not gonna waste my time with you. C’mon, Morton, Lemmy. Let’s get outta-“ Zant interrupts Bowser back by zapping him with a dark bolt of lightning, bringing him close to unconsciousness. “Any other objections?”. Bowser still struggles to get over to Zant, flailing towards him, but Morton and Lemmy hold him back. “Lemme at that guy! I can take him, dammit!”. Lemmy tries to talk his dad out of it. “Didn’t you see what he just did, dad? He nearly took you out without even trying!” Morton supports his brother. “At least listen to what the guy has to say, dad. . .”.

Bowser scowls and growls lowly, folding his arms as he gets up. Zant looks over at the other characters and takes particular notice of Vaati. “You there. You can tell them of their power. You once served Ganon, did you not? He has long abandoned you to rot in your little desolate realm in favor of me. I have all of his power backing me. Nothing can kill me, and there is little else I can’t do.”. Vaati glares back at Zant. “Hardly an accomplishment. He’ll just throw you away like he did me all that time ago.”.

Hades vanishes in a poof of smoke and reappears in Zant’s throne. “Poor taste you got here. Yeah, it’s dark, but it’s too dull. Not threatening enough.”. Zant turns back to him angrily. “And just who are you to critique my palace design, hmm?”. Hades gets up from the throne and throws an arm around Zant. “Name is Hades, lord of the dead. Here’s my card.”. Hades summons a business card in a puff of smoke and hands it to Zant for Zant to angrily shrug off his arm. Zant attempts to speak, but he’s lit on fire by Mustang, who takes his chance seeing Zant’s back is turned. Richard claps and gets as giddy as a school girl. “Oh! How I do love mindless violence!”. Richard sends a fireball at Zant and this encourages most of the cast to join in attacking him, seeing the others broke the silence. Various projectiles are thrown at Zant, but he just reflects them all. Popinski and Macho Man come up to smack at him from both sides, but Zant just teleports out of the middle so they hit each other. Enraged, Zant takes out his dual swords and starts slashing wildly like the maniac he is. “I’ll show you the King of Evil’s power!”.

***

Brawl
Zant Vs. Super Macho Man, Soda Popinski, Raven, Silver, Roy Mustang, Jafar, Hades, Anne, Richard, Dingodile

Joy of joys, a 10 vs. 1 Brawl! Thankfully you have infinite stock due to this being the first fight in the game and they only come one at a time. Ryuk, Bowser, Morton, Lemmy, Vaati, and Negative Man are seen in the background, simply spectating the battle rather then fighting.

***

The 10 characters who fought against Zant are seen all as weakened as Bowser, if not significantly worse. Negative Man shakes his head and cries from his hunched over position. “It’s useless..You’ll never win…”. Vaati nods in agreement. “He has Ganon’s power. No matter how pathetic he is, only the Master Sword can be his undoing.”. Zant chuckles as he takes a seat back on his throne. “Glad you see things my way. Now then. . .Where was I before you so rudely interrupted?”. Zant glares at Bowser before continuing. “You’ll be split up into two equal groups and be required to survive for 3 days in areas engulfed in twilight. At the end of the 3 days, both of your teams shall be pit in a challenge against each other. The losing team will have to vote off one of their members, and the process will repeat endlessly until there’s only one man left standing, who will be allowed to go back to their miserable little lives. Should you try to kill each other to speed things up all the more, I’ll just kill you early. Any questions, class?”.

A long silence goes on before Ryuk breaks it with his laughter, annoying Zant. “What’s so funny?”. Ryuk slowly stops his chuckling. “Nothing, nothing. Just that I like your taste. . .Humans are so very interesting. Definitely a welcome change from the boredom of the Shinigami Realm.”. Zant looks at Ryuk in disgust. “I’ll be sure to wipe that smile off your face by the time I’m done with you. Now then, begone!”. Zant summons two portals that each suck eight of the characters into them at random. After the portals vanish, Zant puts his hands behind his head and gets into a reclining position as he summons two portals to view the two groups. . .

DAWN OF THE FIRST DAY – GROUP 1

Group 1:
Bowser
Lemmy
Morton
Soda Popinski
Vaati
Silver
Anne
Jafar

The characters are thrown out of the portal into a dark snowy domain, they come out in a sort of awkward dogpile, and of course the lightest characters end up on the bottom while Bowser and Popinski end up on top. Morton rolls out from the middle to cause a sort of avalanche of their bodies, ending up in Popinski landing on Anne in a sexual position. Popinski gets up hastily and looks about warily for Anne to glare at him and stab him in the crotch with the stand of her camera. Popinski holds his crotch in pain as he bawls over, letting out a horrified cry. Anne turns to the others glaring at her. “You got a problem?”. Bowser chuckles subtly. “My kinda woman. . .”. Anne turns her head instantly towards Bowser. “What was that?”. “Uhhh. . .Nothing.”. “Are you quite certain?”. “I just told you. . .”. “I could’ve sworn you said something about how I’ll beat you to a pulp if you say something like that again”. Bowser just chuckles nervously at this, but continues to look after her lustfully once her back is turned. . .

Jafar has no intention of sticking around in this area, trying to cast some sort of spell. He seems rather perplexed as he does it again and again for no effect. . .Vaati notices this and comes over. “What are you trying to do, exactly?”. “I’m trying to open up a portal to get out of this snowy wasteland, but it doesn’t seem to be working. . .”. “Perhaps your powers aren’t great enough. . .Allow me.”. “A mere child like you greater then I? Surely you jest.”. Vaati glares at Jafar briefly before doing a similar motion to Jafar’s spell for no effect. “Zant must’ve predicted we’d try something like this. He wouldn’t want us to get out of this too easily, now would he?”. Silver comes over to the two mages curiously. “You seemed to know something about the Ganon guy he was talking about. . .So. . .Do you know where we are?”. Vaati looks around the area briefly before nodding. “I believe we’re somewhere in Snowpeak, but it’s obviously been corrupted by Zant’s twilight. . .”.

Jafar strokes his beard in thought. “Seeing we can’t leave this place, I suppose we’ll just have to kill that king of Twilight when he reveals himself again.”. Vaati hastily retorts to the warlock. “Didn’t you see how things end up last time or listen to anything I said? You can’t beat him.”. Anne glares at Vaati in contempt. “What other choice do we have?”. Vaati sighs. “As much as it pains me, we’ve little alternative but to play his little game.”. Bowser gets up and shrugs. “While I could totally beat that guy if he didn’t take a cheap shot at me from the start, it’s not like it matters. I’ll be the final one standing, thanks.”. Silver laughs in a cocky fashion. “As if! A big lug like you? You’ll be the first one to croak off!”. Bowser interrupts Silver’s laughter with a swift smack to the face. Silver levitates up some rocks and gets ready to hurl them at Bowser, but Vaati intervenes. “Don’t you remember what Zant said? He’ll just kill us if we try to kill each other.”. Lemmy pops up out of the snow, barely sticking out from it due to how short he is, trying to get his father’s attention. “Besides, what about us? You just planning on letting us die?”. Bowser looks rather dumbfounded. “Well. . .Uhhh. . .I sorta was, but. . .”. Morton just folds his arms and glares at Bowser. “Okay, okay. Whatever. We’ll try to kill that Zant guy when he shows up again. No reason to wait that long to play this stupid game anyway. . .”. Vaati just shakes his head and mumbles a casual “idiots” under his breath.

Lemmy hops up out of the snow again. “So whadda we do until then, dad? Whadda we do?!?”. Bowser shrugs. “Gather materials to build some sort of shelter. You and Morton can gather wood.”. Bowser turns to Jafar, Vaati, and Silver. “You three go find some food.”. Bowser turns to Anne, who gives him a menacing glare. “You. . .do whatever you damn please.”. Jafar facepalms. “Why are we taking orders from this oversized brute again?”. Bowser chuckles. “This is why.”. Bowser breathes some fire on some twigs to make a decent sized fire. “Without me, you lot will all freeze to death out here.”. Morton timidly speaks up with “Well. . .Lemmy and I can breathe fire-“, but Bowser hastily interrupts him. “So? You two are loyal to me anyway.”. Silver sighs. “The guy’s got a point.”. Bowser chuckles heartily. “Glad you see things my way. . .So. . .Speaking of freezing to death. . .Where’s that muscle man in the speedo?”.

The group looks about to see Popinski fighting a White Wolfos with his bare hands in the distance. He has a good grip around the wolf’s neck to prevent it from biting him, holding it up in the air while he beats the thing to death. He tosses the wolf away carelessly after killing it, putting his hands on his hips and laughing heartily. Unfortunately, he carelessly tossed it off a cliff. . .Silver’s in a state of shock upon seeing this. “You idiot! We could’ve eaten that!”. Popinski scoffs as he puffs out his chest proudly. “Only one of many, little hedgehog man. I’m simply getting warmed up.”. Jafar eyes the practically naked Popinski and cringes slightly. “. . .Don’t you think your attire is a bit impractical for the climate?”. Popinski rolls his eyes. “Since we all know we were going to be brought here beforehand, yes?”. Jafar shrugs. “True, true, but I’m amazed by the fact that you haven’t already frozen to death.”. Popinski laughs even more heartily. “In Soviet Russia, death freezes to you!”. “. . .Whatever that means.”.

Bowser looks over the cliff and notices a decent few White Wolfos. “Why don’t you lot go down there for the food? There seems to be plenty more of the things down there.”. Jafar rolls his eyes. “Will you at least lend us one of your acolytes to warm us along the way?”. Bowser shrugs. “Whatever, Lemmy, you go with ‘em. Muscle Man, you go with Morton to get more firewood and something to build up a shelter.”. Popinski folds his arms. “Why am I taking orders from a puny turtle man like you?”. Vaati sighs. “The turtles are the only ones capable of keeping us alive in this climate with their flames. We don’t have a choice…And more importantly, going along with him so easily will probably make his little group not vote for me.”. Popinski reluctantly nods, then goes off with Morton towards some woods. Lemmy, Jafar, Vaati, and Silver head to go down into the gorge. Before they go on too far, though, Silver turns back and asks “What about you?!? What do you do?”. Bowser looks about warily. “I’ll, uhhh, go off and find some wood on my own or something. Don’t need anybody bogging me down.”. Silver shakes his head and continues on. “As if. . .” You get to choose between the two groups to play one of two levels, though you’ll play the other after you finish the first.

***

Level A
Play as: Lemmy, Jafar, Vaati, Silver

The first half of the level is a constant icy descent down icy terrain that’s trying to push you forwards too quickly and off cliffs. Fun platforming indeed. Silver is the easiest to clear the level with due to there being lots of icy platforms randomly scattered about he can use to make bridges, though Lemmy’s simplified platform manipulation can also work.

The second half of the level has you down in the gorge hunting the white wolfos, you having to kill 15/20 of them scattered about the level. Jafar and Lemmy are generally good for killing random enemies with their traps thanks to the predictable nature of the enemies, though 5 of them are only accessible to Silver/Vaati by using platforms to get high enough to an area/blowing the Wolfos down out of an inaccessible area.

***

Level B
Play as: Soda Popinski, Morton

The goal here is to cut down trees. While Morton can shred through them with fireballs, this will cause a giant snowball to fall out of the tree as it disingrates and to clog up his mouth, preventing you from doing so on further trees. The only way to remove the snowball is to have an enemy attack it. Popinski can speedrun through the level much faster as his only requirement to be able to cut down trees is to drink all his soda to get strong enough, but if you fail you’ll have to deal with the Russian Drink’s terrible hangover and have to wait a considerable time before you’re ready to try again, which won’t be easy with the respawning enemies. . .

***

Bowser is left alone with Anne. . .He gets a massive grimace on his face. “Hey, baby. . .I don’t need any fire to warm me. You’re way over hot enough to warm my heart.”. Anne just stares blankly in disbelief at Bowser, amazed that he’d try something so blatant. “What did I tell you. . .”. She takes her camera and goes to stab the stand into Bowser’s crotch area, but it does little but make him flinch due to his shell armoring his crotch. Bowser grins. “You ain’t the one callin’ the shots here, babe.”. He attempts to grab her for the inevitable classic dthrow, but Anne slips through his fingers and grabs him. She proceeds to bash his head in with her camera stand to cleanly knock him out and spits on him, then goes on her way. “Men. . .”. She takes her trusty camera with her and goes off into the distance. ”The others are all getting the food and wood anyway, and I doubt this’ll last long. . .Probably be back to the city before I know it. May as well take the chance while it’s open.”. Anne takes a snapshot of an Ice Keese and the camera shows the picture as the level starts.

***

Level 3
Play as: Anne

Your goal in this level is to take pictures of the various enemies. It’s not just a single snap of each enemy type, though, considering there aren’t that many of them, as you have to capture the enemies doing all of their various attacks on film, as well as a unique idle animation by sneaking up on them. The level is fairly straightforward, but considering the enemies don’t respawn you’ll have to take a lot of hits from them as you snap pictures.

***

Silver, Jafar, and Vaati are seen in the gorge together with a few White Wolfos corpses gathered. Jafar uncaringly asks “What happened to the brat?” for another corpse to seemingly be trudging through the snow. Jafar raises an eyebrow, but Silver rolls his eyes and levitates the corpse up to reveal Lemmy, then throws the corpse onto the pile with the others for Lemmy to hastily come over. “See? I got one! Told you I would. All by myself, too.”. Vaati decides to humor Lemmy. “How did you kill it?”. “With my bare claws, of course!”. Jafar walks over in the direction Lemmy came from to see a large wolf shaped hole, then looks up to see the cliffside where Popinski threw the wolf down into the gorge. “Quite an impressive feat.”, he chuckles in a mocking tone. “Though I can’t say I expected much more of you, what with your equally impressive stature.”. This infuriates Lemmy as he jumps up out of the snow at Jafar’s heels rapidly. “I’M NOT SHORT! Sorry not everybody in the world is freakishly tall, old geezer.”. Jafar just laughs at this for Lemmy to clench his fists and turn his back. Vaati is seen holding back some laughter of his own, not wanting to make enemies with the Koopas. . .

Silver glares at Jafar’s laughing in a no nonsense sort of way. “Are you quite finished?”. Jafar straightens his cloak and slowly stops. “Good. . .So then. We have all the food, right?”. Lemmy turns back to Silver. “Yeah.”. “And it’s gonna be hell to climb back up to where the others are, right?”. Jafar turns to look at the steep slippery cliffside and cringe slightly. “Indeed.”. “So let’s just set up camp and stay here and have all the food to ourselves. You can make fire, right, little guy?”. Lemmy gets hyperactive at the chance to prove himself. “Yeah! Wanna see?”. Jafar rolls his eyes. “Would he of asked otherwise?”. Lemmy glares at Jafar before breathing a single cute little ember out of his mouth that’s quickly dissolved into nothing by the icy weather. He tries again and again, but nothing seems to come out and eventually give a nervous chuckle to the others. Jafar facepalms. “So much for that brilliant plan.”. Silver hastily retorts to Jafar. “It sounded like a good idea at the time. You got a better idea?”. Jafar starts contemplating what to do for Vaati to sigh. “While you two are busy contemplating how to betray the others and freezing to death, I’m going to start heading back up before nightfall and we’re climbing back up steep icy terrain we can’t see. Like it or not, we need that monstrous turtle to survive out here.”. Vaati heads off towards the cliffside for Lemmy to hastily follow after him, eager to be supportive of his father. Jafar sighs and follows while Silver is left as the last one standing, left with all the wolf corpses. He grumbles something incomprehensible as he levitates them all up in a giant wad and heads after the others. The screen stays in the area a couple seconds until we can see a massive winged twilight beast flying through the air, whizzing right past the camera with a thunderous cry. . .

***

Level 4
Play as: Lemmy, Jafar, Vaati, Silver

You now play only the first half of the last level you played on with this group, but the fact that it’s upwards makes it significantly more difficult. Twilight enemies are introduced here and are far more deadly then the casual standard Zelda ice fare you’ve been dealing with so far, and there are some of them hurling snowballs down at you as you try to climb up the cliffside. Far from a walk in the park.

***

Popinski and Morton can be seen carrying some wood together. Morton’s managing to carry just as much as Popinski himself, which somewhat impresses the Russian drunkard. “You’re quite strong for just a little turtle man.”. Morton lacks much of an expression. “I dunno whether that’s a compliment or an insult. . .”. Popinski chuckles. “Take it as whatever you want, but you’re a big step above that puny brother of yours and you actually work unlike your lazy father.”. Morton shrugs slightly. “You’re pretty buff yourself, and I’m still trying to figure out how you manage to take the cold. . .”. Popinski beats his chest slightly. “This is nothing compared to the cold of Mother Russia. Ah Mother Russia. . .”. Popinski bursts out in song. “Great Russia has welded forever to stand, created in struggle in will of the people, united and mighty our Sovieeet Laaaaand!”. Morton twitches considerably at listening to Popinski sing the Soviet National anthem. “That song’s terrible. . .”. Popinski stops his singing and glares at Morton. “In Soviet Russia, YOU are terrible!”. Popinski turns around and snuffs his nose high into the air as he continues on and keeps singing the anthem for Morton to look ready to puke.

They arrive back where Bowser is where they were dropped into Snowpeak for Morton to drop his wood and look exhausted while Popinski looks as if it didn’t take him any effort at all. “Tired already, little turtle man?”. Morton stops panting and fakes it as if he were still ready to go on, not wanting to appear weak in front of his father. “No, no, I’m fine. . .”. Bowser gets up and rubs his head in pain. “Guh. . .Freaking bitch. . .”. He looks around to see his son and Popinski, then gives a nod of satisfaction. “Good to see you guys got the wood.”. Popinski glares at Bowser. “What did you do to the woman?”. “I didn’t do anything! She just freaking knocked me out!”. Popinski gets a flashback of Anne kicking him in the crotch, then chuckles. “You hitting on her too?”. “No. . .”. Morton glares at his father. “Dad. . .”. “Okay, okay, fine. I was. I vaguely recall her going off by herself after she knocked me out. . .”. Bowser points off in the direction Anne went. “You guys should probably go fetch her before some monsters eat her or something.”. Popinski flexes his muscles and says “Soda Popinski is glad to help any woman in need!”, then runs off in her direction. Morton looks at Bowser pleadingly, but Bowser just gives him a menacing glare and sends him off on his way.

A period of silence arrives as Bowser takes a log or two and makes a nice beefy fire, kicking back in a classic relaxation pose as he waits. He doesn’t go undisturbed for long, though, before Lemmy, Silver, Vaati, and Jafar arrive. Silver drops the White Wolfos corpses next to the fire as they all come up and warm themselves next to it hastily. Bowser sees how much they appreciate the warmth and chuckles to himself. “So how are you guys liking the nice fire from the wood –I- collected?”. Silver rolls his eyes. “As if. What about those other guys you sent to gather the wood?”. “Haven’t come back yet.”. Lemmy looks rather worried at this. “Morton was one of the guys you sent out to do that, wasn’t he? Wasn’t he?!? We have to go find them!”. Bowser smirks and nods in agreement. “Yeah. I was gonna go myself, but I have to keep the fire going, so. . .Yeah.”. Jafar rolls his eyes as he inches ever closer to the fire. “I’m not going anywhere, thank you very much.”. Vaati sighs. “I’ll go with the little one. You better remember this, you lazy bastard. . .”. Bowser nods eagerly. “Then it’s settled! Go on now. . .”. Vaati sighs again and goes off into the distance, then motions Lemmy to come along with him.

Bowser looks off after them, then chuckles once they’re out of sight. “All the food for the three of us, heh heh. . .”. Jafar gets a wicked smile. “I like your thinking, turtle.”. Silver looks very hesitant. “What about the others. . .? They’ll all just try and kill us after we do it. . .And I sure as hell don’t wanna be associated with these two after this. . .”. Jafar strokes his beard. “The hedgehog makes a decent enough point. . .Though I doubt we’ll get another chance like this. Do you have any plans to cover it up, turtle?”. Bowser growls lowly. “Stop calling me turtle, will ya? The name’s Bowser. Bowser Koopa. Anyway. . .Uhhh. . .I say we blame it all on the hedgehog guy when they come back!”. “A fine idea if I do say so myself.”. Silver glares at them. “What makes you think they’ll believe two assholes like you?”. Jafar grins. “Well, that’s the thing. There’s two of us, but only one of you. We’re twice as credible, are we not?”. Bowser chuckles and takes a bite out of a roasted Wolfos. “Try some, it’s good! After all, you’re gonna suffer all the consequences, may as well get the benefits.”. Bowser extends out his hand to give a hunk of meat to Silver, but Silver just smacks it away and glares at him. “I’m not gonna let you get away with this.”. Jafar chuckles. “Oh? And just how do you intend to do that?”. Silver picks up the corpses with his levitation, causing Bowser to bite into thin air and topple over, then flings them over the edge of the cliffside. Bowser’s jaw drops and both of Jafar’s eyes twitch violentely. Bowser hastily comes up and grabs Silver by the neck. “WHY THE HELL DID YOU DO THAT?!?”. Silver just chuckles as he levitates out of Bowser’s grasp “We can go down and get the meat back tomorrow. The wolf that boxer threw down there earlier was still there when we got down there, remember, old geezer? This way everybody gets something to eat.”. Jafar chuckles. “Well, there’s only one flaw in your plan. . .In your quest to rid yourself of the blame, you’ve now made yourself the actual cause of it. We don’t need to pin it on you anymore – it’s actually your fault!”. Jafar bursts out into laughter for Bowser to hastily join him. Silver looks rather lost as to what to do. . .

***

Vaati and Lemmy manage to catch up to Popinski and Morton. Lemmy hastily goes up and gives his bigger younger (That makes sense. . .) brother a hug for Vaati to look away in disgust, ready to vomit. Morton reluctantly hugs him back, somewhat embarrassed. Lemmy notices this and backs off. “Sorry, sorry. . .Was just afraid something might’ve happened to you.”. Vaati rolls his eyes. “Alright, we found them. Can we go back now? I really want some of that meat. . .”. Popinski turns back to the others and shakes his head, still marching on. “No can do. We came out here in the first place to find the missing woman.”. Vaati looks as if thinking for a moment before he finally realizes who Popinski’s talking about. “The woman? Oh, yes, the woman. . .What was she supposed to be doing?”. “The puny turtle man didn’t give her any orders, so I dunno. She apparantely went out though and hasn’t come back, so. . .”. Lemmy hastily retorts to Popinski. “King dad’s not some puny turtle man!”. Popinski laughs at Lemmy. “You’re one to talk! You’re the puniest of the puny turtle men!”. Lemmy lets out a pathetic growl and latches onto Popinski’s leg and slashes at him for Popinski to casually shake him off and laugh some more. “Stop tickling me, will you? Just give it some time. You’ll grow.”.

Vaati sighs. “Anyway. . .Where was I? Oh yes. So. . .She hasn’t done any work and has managed to get lost and make us come out to find her. . .Why are helping out a useless wench like her? Leave her.”. Popinski glares at Vaati. “She’s a woman, and it’s a manly man’s duty to protect the women! I suppose none of you would understand seeing you’re just puny children. . .”. Popinski laughs to anger all three of the others for him to nervously stop laughing. “I’ve lived far longer then you ever will trapped in that damned little realm by Link.”. Morton smirks. “If that’s the case, then why don’t you wanna help out the chick? Chicken or something?”. Vaati roll his eyes. “Let’s just go. . .”.

***

Level 5 (Part 1)
Play as: Soda Popinski, Morton, Vaati, Lemmy
This level is fairly straightforward, but it’s starting to get close to night during this level. After a couple minutes the screen will start fading out for there to just be a single circle of light around your character that grows smaller and smaller until it doesn’t let you see much of anything but your character itself. Popinski’s ability to speed run through the level can prove useful in that you can get through a good portion of the level while it’s still light out, meaning he’s a good first choice. Morton is best saved for last when things get particularly dark, as his fireballs generate a small bit of light much like NSMB Wii. At the end of the level there’s a large battle against a considerable amount of enemies and Morton also proves rather useful here due to being able to block a lot of enemies from getting to him with his Doom Pillars, bottlenecking the enemy and taking them out at his own pace rather then letting them mob him.

***

The group is seen continuing the battle from the end of the level as more and more twilight enemies arrive. Lemmy keeps getting hit by accident a lot in the darkness. “Will you idiots look where you’re attacking?!? You’re hitting me!”. Vaati retorts with “We’d look where we’re attacking if we could freaking see anything, dammit!” as he blows a White Wolfos into a Shadow Beast with his winds. Popinski laughs, not that frantic despite having a tough time due to the sheer numbers of enemies. “It’s not like we can see you normally anyway. You’re too short for me to see unless I squint real hard.”. Lemmy goes over and latches onto Popinski’s leg again, causing him to trip and the twilight enemies to swarm him. Morton hastily calls out to Lemmy. “Get over it! We don’t have time to deal with-“, but gets interrupted as a Shadow Beast tackles him from behind. Seeing the others are all down, Vaati simply goes to run, abandoning the others with little thought. Suddenly a few flashes occur and the camera pans over to show Anne’s camera making flashes of light. . .

***

Level 5 (Part 2)
Play as: Anne

This counts as a segment of the previous level, only now you have Anne against an exceptionally large number of enemies. The darkness is pretty severe here, though whenever you flash Anne’s camera the whole screen lights up entirely, taking a good three seconds to fade back to what it was before. So long as you keep the area properly lit, it shouldn’t be that challenging.

***

Vaati hastily runs back upon hearing that they’re putting up more of a resistance, not wanting to look like a coward. Anne just folds her arms and waits for Popinski and the Koopas to get up. “What are you idiots doing here. . .”. Popinski flexes his muscles. “Why, we came here to rescue you, of course!”. Anne rolls her eyes and shows a picture of a Shadow Beast feeding on Popinski for his smile to be whipped off his face rather promptly. Morton glares over at Vaati. “Where were you, huh? We were gonna die back there!”. Vaati looks rather hesistant. “Well. . .Uhhh. . .I was still fighting. . .You just couldn’t tell because you were being attacked by those beasts.”. Anne casually shows a picture of Vaati running like a pansy for the Koopas to laugh at it. Vaati fumes and grumbles something to himself. “Why did we come out here for her again?!?”. Popinski hastily turns to Vaati. “She’s a woman! We can’t simply leave her alone out here in the wilderness!”. Lemmy jumps up from the snow to make himself visible. “She saved us back there if you didn’t notice, muscle man. . .”. Anne glares at Popinski for him to smile nervously. Vaati taps his foot and folds his arms. “In any case, can we go back to the fire and food yet? For the love of god. . .”. Anne’s attention is grabbed by this and she hastily starts heading back to the camp. “Good to see you lot are good for –something-“. “Pssh. What were you doing all that time?”. “That’s none of your business, thanks.”. “Such a bitch. . .”.

***

Lemmy, Morton, Anne, Popinski, and Vaati arrive back at the camp. Vaati and the Koopas hastily go up to warm themselves by the fire while Anne and Popinski take their time. . .After a few moments of appreciating the fire, Vaati looks around every which way. “. . .What happened to the food?”. Silver gets a look of dread on his face. “Well, uh, you see, it’s a long story. . .You see-“. Jafar hastily interrupts Silver. “The idiot threw all the food over the cliff with his imperfect telekinesis powers.”. Anne rolls her eyes. “Why would he do something like that?”. Jafar chuckles. “Don’t believe me? Take a look for yourselves.”. Jafar points down into the gorge with his staff where the heap of wolf corpses can be vaguely made out. Silver chuckles nervously. “These guys were gonna eat ‘em all! We can go down and get them tomorrow. . .”. This causes groans from Anne and Vaati while Morton and Lemmy go over to their father. Morton asks “Were you really not gonna leave anything for us, dad?” for him to reply “Of course not! There’s no way I wouldn’t leave somethin’ for my favorite Koopalings!”. Morton and Lemmy smile at this while their father puts his arms around them and laughs happily.

Vaati looks at this happy family scene with disgust. “That seems real enough, I suppose. . .I guess that hedgehog is just that big of an idiot. After all, he did plan on betraying the rest of the group earlier down in the gorge. . .Nothing but trouble. We’ll have to get rid of him.”. Vaati turns to Anne. “She’s a real bitch to deal with too, but taking her down will prove much more troublesome while I imagine it’ll be easy to eliminate the hedgehog, what with that old man and the turtles on my side. Already a majority right there. The girl will fall soon enough once her feminine charm wears off on the elder turtle and the mindless mass of muscle. . .”. As Vaati continues to scheme what to do, a twilight portal suddenly appears and sucks up everybody in the group. . .

***

DAWN OF THE FIRST DAY – GROUP 2

Group 2:
Super Macho Man
Raven
Hades
Ryuk
Richard
Dingodile
Roy Mustang
Negative Man

The other group of characters gets spat out of the portal, thankfully more scattered then the first group so they don’t fall on top of each other. Hades gets up first and takes a decent look around as he straightens his cloak and smoothes his hair from the fall, then attempts to open a portal much like Jafar. Ryuk gets up and cackles. “Do you really think he’d make escaping this place so easy, “lord of the dead”? Of course you’re not going to get out with a casual portal.”. Hades sighs and folds his arms in annoyance. “And you know this, how?”. “Oh, trust me. I’ve done similar things to our wonderful host before. Watching puppets dance is most interesting. I’m only a death god, after all.”. Mustang lights a fire in the middle of the snow casually, not needing any form of wood. “A death god, huh? If you’re a so called “death god”, why didn’t you fight the Twilight King? Surely a “god” could take him out.”. Ryuk rolls his eyes. “My superiors don’t allow me to kill without this book, and there’s nothing they don’t see.”. Ryuk holds up and waves his death note around for all to see. “And I can only use this to kill him if I can see his face. If he weren’t wearing that helmet I would’ve just killed him on the spot.”. Dingodile chuckles and readies his bazooka. “Then when he brings us back to play his little game, I’ll just blow his helmet off and you use your cute lil’ book to fry him. Sound good, mate?”.

Ryuk laughs. “Oh come on. Now why would I do that? If I kill him, you lot will go back to your usual happy lives and I’ll go back to my boring one in the Shinigami Realm. I’d much rather let him live so I can watch you all die slowly and painfully.”. He cackles. Negative Man is in his hunched over position, listening intently to the conversation. “Of course. . .The only person who can stop him isn’t willing to. . .It’s hopeless. . .A cruel act of fate. . .”. Macho Man comes up and grabs Ryuk by his shirt, hefting him up off the ground. “Do I look like I care if you want to, punk? You’re gonna kill him when he shows up, or we’re gonna kill –you-.” Mustang nods. “I already have enough on my plate already. I’m not gonna waste my time here.”. Ryuk laughs. “Didn’t you hear what the king of twilight said? If we kill each other, he’ll just kill the survivors. He wants a nice long drawn out game.”. Macho Man grins. “Then beating on you is just what we need to bring him out early!”. Richard laughs eagerly. “Will you allow me to do the honors? I brought along my fork of truth!” he says as he takes out the blatantly obvious prop. Ryuk just continues to laugh. “So. . .You’re going to lure out the guy you want to kill by killing the only guy who can kill him. You guys really are idiots.”.

This causes Macho Man to hesitate and put Ryuk down, sighing. Richard is the only one still supportive of the idea. “So who do we kill then? Who do we kill to lure out the Twilight King?!?” he says as he waves about his fork of truth. Negative Man comes forth, crawling over weakly. “Kill me. . .I’m useless. . .I don’t have anything to go back to. . .”. “Gladly!”. Richard stabs his fork of truth into Negative Man for the fork to split in two. Richard looks at the fork in annoyance. “Damn counterfeits.”. Raven sighs as she decides to intervene and make her presence known. “If he really is pathetic enough to just do this for his entertainment to watch, you do realize you’ve all just told him your plan? There’s no way he’ll let that guy see his face, and it’s doubtful we’ll be able to make that bastard kill him anyway.”. Ryuk smiles smugly. “Girl knows what she’s talking about. She’s probably the best hope for survival you idiots have got.”. Dingodile glares at Ryuk. “You do realize that you’ve gotta survive in this barren wilderness too, right?”. “Psssh. As if mindless beasts could threaten a death god. I don’t need to eat and I can make my own fire, so I don’t need the help of you lot, thank you very much. I’ll check back on you in a couple hours and see how many of you are still alive”. Ryuk laughs yet again as he flies off into the distance. . .

After a period of awkward silence, Dingodile decides to break it. “So. . .What? We just play his stupid little game? Are you serious?”. Raven nods. “You have a better idea? We’re all going to die one way or another. May as well one person gets out of this alive.”. “I can see you’re a optimistic one, missy. . .You can’t give in to the pressure. We have to at least try to get out that bastard.”. “You do that. I’ll watch while you get beaten up again.”. Negative Man nods. “She’s right, you know. . .”. Dingodile sighs and looks around. “So. . .Whadda we do then while we wait for that guy to show up? Besides be all doom and gloom.”.

Macho Man grins slightly and comes out in front of the others. “I’ll tell you what to do, seeing I’m the strongest.”. Macho Man turns to Richard and Dingodile. “You’ll kill the animals to gather our food.”. Richard gets his usual giddy expression. “Killing? Oh how I love killing! Where do I sign up?”. Richard runs off into the distance while Dingodile sighs and goes after him. Macho Man turns to Raven and Mustang. “You two come with me and explore the area.”. Mustang and Raven both give Macho Man cold stares, and Raven doesn’t even bother to respond. “I’ll go with you, but don’t expect me to take any orders, thanks. You’re not in charge here, so don’t pretend to be.”. Macho Man folds his arms in annoyance. “So. . .Where’d that other guy go? Lord of the dead or whatever?”. Negative Man points off into the distance. “I think I saw him going off in that direction. . .He was mumbling something about how he was gonna find a way out of this frozen wasteland. . .He’ll just get himself lost. . .He’s as good as dead.”. Raven rolls her eyes. “If he’s really a lord of the dead, I doubt he’ll have many problems. He can make fire, he doesn’t need to eat, he can defend himself. . .Let him go.”. Mustang nods. “She has a point. Well, shall we go have a look around, muscle man?”. Macho Man is tapping his foot impatiently. “I was ready to go a good couple minutes ago, thanks.”.

Mustang gives Macho Man another cold stare and goes off with him into the distance, leaving only Raven and Negative Man. “Everything will happen just as the Death God said it would. . .We’ll all die from the cold in a couple hours. . .Or else beasts will kill us. . .Or that king of twilight will come back and do us in. . .”. “. . .I don’t really care either way, honestly.”. “So you see the true hopelessness in life as well. . .?”. “. . .I’ve known I’m going to die for a considerable while now. It’s something I don’t have any control over, so something like this honestly doesn’t change things up much for me.”. “Yes. . .You’re right. Death is inevitable. . .”. Raven just sighs and starts meditating as the camera zooms out considerably. Here you can pick from Ryuk flying up in the air, Macho Man and Mustang heading off together, as well as Richard and Dingodile for three separate levels in any order.

***

Level C
Play as: Ryuk

This level has Ryuk’s wings are constantly out and there’s not a single spot of ground to land on, meaning you’re always in the air. Thankfully you have infinite jumps the death gods don’t care if you kill mindless beasts with something other then the Death Note, so don’t feel as if you have any forced limitations. Ryuk is watching the others from up here and you can vaguely make out the characters from the other group in the background in some parts of the level.

***

Level D
Play as: Richard, Dingodile

The first half of the level has a considerable amount of minature avalanche traps just waiting to happen. To avoid them you’ll either have to damage yourself and abuse Dingodile’s recovery or use Richard’s run of the mill portal recovery to teleport back to where you were once you trigger the avalanches. The second half of the level is a lengthy fight against a pack of White Wolfos. If you’re Dingodile you only have to kill 20 of them before you win the level, and the wolves won’t be able to jump to your crystals to get to you and you can just camp them to death. Ice Keese will still attack you from overhead, though, so don’t think it’s too easy. Richard has things much harder as you’ll have to kill them more quickly then they spawn as you won’t win until there aren’t any of them on screen (And you still have to kill 20 minimum) due to Richard’s psychotic nature. If you aren’t fast enough, you can just weaken them all and kill them at once.

***

Level E
Play as: Super Macho Man, Roy Mustang

This level has you playing over a frozen lake. Macho Man’s dashing attack causes him to skid a very impressive distance here and his priority is buffed due to it. There are a lot of cracks in the ice here, and if too much weight goes on them they’ll crack and open up the icy water which functions as a standard pit. All of Mustang’s fire attacks (Read: nearly all of them) cause the ice to open up regardless of whether or not it’s cracked, but this can actually be useful in making traps for enemies to fall into with their predictable AI. Just be careful you don’t leave yourself with no land to stand on or use any attacks which make fire right under you. . .

***

Hades is seen reaching the edge of the Snowpeak plain and sees a crevice in a cliffside. He looks through it to see that it’s actually lush and green on the other side, Zora’s Domain. He rubs his hands together eagerly. “Finally found the way out of this god forsaken place. . .”. He goes to run up to it but smacks against an invisible twilight wall that reveals itself, falling over back into the snow. This infuriates Hades as his flame hair gets larger and he launches several attacks at the wall for no effect. Hades looks up the cliffside and sighs. “If I can’t go through it, I’ll just go over it.” he thinks to himself with a chuckle, then grabs into the cliffside and goes to make his way up it.

***

Level 9
Play as: Hades

This level is an upward climb. A lot of one time rock slides occur from above as you make your way up to new heights, though their locations are always random. They do pretty hefty damage and knockback, though, so you’ll best want to summon Pain/Panic and use them as meat shields, sacrificing them to clear the way. Sadism is always the best solution, yes? In any case, though, you’ll have to take a lot of damage on the way up even with your minions by using your self damaging Up Special to get up a significant ways and use of Pain/Panic will most probably increase Hades’ boredom in the battle. There’s a rather tough Poe at the top, so you’ll have your work cut out for you once you finally get there.

***

Hades grabs the Poe from the end of the level around the neck area and attempts to throw him down the cliffside, but the Poe just ghosts through his grasp. Hades tries to summon a portal to suck the Poe into, but he forgets that he’s unable to use portals in the twilight realm and just takes a hit, getting dangerously close to the cliffside. The Poe goes on to go in for the finishing blow, but is zapped out of existence by Ryuk, who comes flying by. “Some lord of the dead you are” he chuckles. Hades scowls. “I was doing fine, thank you. I easily could’ve finished him off.”. “Whatever you say, pal.”. Hades, now at the top of the cliffside, attempts to go over to cross into Zora’s domain but just hits the same invisible Twilight wall.

Ryuk chuckles. “You came all this way trying to escape, I imagine?”. “What do you think? I’m not gonna be a pawn in somebody else’s game. I’m supposed to be the one moving the pieces!”. “He’s more powerful then he looks. Smarter too. He anticipated that at least –somebody- would try to get out. You’d be better off thinking about your survival then resisting him. Get some food or something.”. Hades roll his eyes. “Lord of the dead, remember? I don’t have to eat.”. “Neither do I. That’s not the point. The point is that if you wanna survive you’re gonna have to make the others like you, or at least make them think you’re useful.”. Hades chuckles. “You’re one to talk. We haven’t even been here a day yet and everybody wants you dead.”. Ryuk cackles. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t have to waste my time with such trivialities. I’m the only one that can kill Zant, remember?”. “Well, yeah, but you refuse. . .”. “That’s true, but I can play along with their little game if things start looking bad. They’ll never get his helmet off anyway, so I won’t ever have to act.”. Hades smirks. “Looks like you’ve got things figured out pretty well.”. “Indeed. Now all I’ve got to do is watch as the others all slowly die off.”. Hades looks as if thinking briefly. “Sooooo. . .Why’d you tell me all this? Seems pretty stupid giving your plan away to one of the people you intend to fool.”. “What fun would it be spectating this all alone? Considering you’re apparantely a lord of the dead, I thought you’d make the most welcome company. Besides, an alliance is always good in case things get ugly.”. Hades chuckles. “Oh stop it. You’re flattering me!”. Ryuk laughs along with Hades a bit, then motions off into the distance. “Let’s go see how the others are doing, shall we?”.

***

Dingodile is seen inside a crystal formation firing away at the White Wolfos while Richard is seen slicing and dicing, full of happiness and glee. Eventually the last wolf dies off and Dingodile comes out from his crystal formation. He goes to pick up a wolf corpse, but Ryuk incinerates all the wolf corpses one by one, leaving them as nothing but bone. He chuckles like a school girl giddily for Dingodile to twitch. “You do realize you just killed the point of why we came out here, right mate?”. “The point was to kill as many of the beasts as possible! I haven’t the faintest idea of what you’re talking about. . .”. “They were supposed to be our food. . .”. “Food? What food? I don’t eat food.”. “Ever think about the rest of us?”. “What about you?”. Dingodile just sighs and rolls his eyes. “Let’s go back. . .”.

Dingodile starts heading back for Richard to run up alongside him eagerly. “Sooooo. . .I’ve been wondering. What exactly –are- you?”. Dingodile doesn’t turn to look at Richard at all, thoroughly frustrated with him. “I’m a cross between a dingo and a croc. Name’s Dingodile.”. “My my, what a creative name you posses. . .”. Dingodile’s eye twitches and he angrily turns to look back at Richard. “What’s your name then, huh mate? Yours so much better?”. Richard cackles and brings up his arms into the air, striking a dramatic pose. “I am Richard, Chief Warlock of the Brothers of Darkness, Lord of the Thirteen Hells, Master of the bones, Emperor of the Black, lord of the Undea-“. Dingodile chuckles and interrupts him. “And last but not least, possessor of too many titles and an ego the size of Australia.”. Richard’s arms flop down as his serious look turns into a rather pathetic one. “You just HAD to ruin my moment, didn’t you?”. “Whatever. You’re nothing special here, mate. Lord of the undead? We’ve already got one of those. Hell, we’ve got a goddamn GOD of death, for pete’s sake.”. Richard chuckles. “We’ll see, my male of indeterminable race, we’ll see. . .”. Dingodile attempts to correct Richard with “I told you I’m a-“, but is just interrupted by him. “Male of indeterminable race.”. Dingodile stares blankly at Richard before rolling his eyes and treading on. . .

***

Super Macho Man is seen casually “skating” (more like land surfing) across the frozen lake, making it across to the other side in a snap. He turns back and chuckles as he sees Mustang taking a considerably long time as he’s very cautious, primairily due to being unable to use his alchemy without sinking into the ice. Macho Man flexes and yells out over to Mustang, laughing. “What was that about me not being the best? You’re a freakin’ coward! SUPER! MACHO! MAN!”. Macho does a series of poses as he says the last three words, but this causes an avalanche to occur nearby from the sheer volume of Macho Man’s voice. Macho Man doesn’t realize what’s happening until it’s too late to move and simply displays an “Oh crap” expression as he gets devoured by the snow. Mustang just facepalms at this, being out of the range of the avalanche. “Goddamn show-off. . .Got what he deserved, but I should probably help him out of that mess. . .”. Mustang sighs, then starts burning away the snow to make his way to Macho Man. . .

***

Level 10
Play as: Roy Mustang

You have a massive amount of snow to clear in this level to try to find Macho Man buried underneath it. It’s a rather enclosed level and your attacks clear the snow pretty fast, but enemies that randomly spawn can cause noise to cause more avalanches to increase the amount of snow you have to incinerate. Furthermore, you can get caught in the snow and have to button mash out, taking damage as you do. Some enemies only screech once attacked while others screech within a few seconds, so it’s rather confusing. Assuming you keep burning away at the snow, though, you can burn it faster then it comes down, assuming you don’t entirely ignore the enemies.

***

Mustang burns the snow off of Macho Man, but goes a bit too deep and hits Macho Man himself, causing him to be lit aflame. “Dude!”. Macho Man panics and runs around like a maniac briefly before diving into the snow to douse the flame, which instead causes him to shiver from the cold. Mustang chuckles at Macho Man’s display of “manliness”. “I think you’ve learned your lesson. You gonna show off like that again?”. Macho Man hastily stops shivering and poses. “I guess not. Not like I have to anyway, since everybody already knows how great I am!”. Mustang rolls his eyes as Macho Man starts shivering again. “What made you think the speedo was such a great idea?”. “Look. This is meant for the beaches, the ring, the ladies, and to showcase the macho. Not freezing cold wastelands.”. Mustang chuckles. “Showcasing the “macho”, eh? It’s just making your crotch a gigantic target, and in this weather it looks like your balls are about to drop off. There goes your source of power.”. Macho Man twitches slightly but shakes his head and grumbles, unable to think of a come-back. “C’mon. Let’s keep going.”.

Mustang nods and the duo proceed on to see a small hill with a massive Yeti (Yeto) on top of it. On top of the hill is a slope that leads down to a massive mansion, the Snowpeak Ruins. Macho Man looks at the mansion and rubs his hands together eagerly. “Heh heh, looks like we found where we’ll be staying to survive this.”. Mustang ever so casually points to Yeto. “Have fun getting past that –thing- to get there.“. Macho Man smirks. “C’mon, you’re not telling me you’re scared of that guy, are ya? When he gets a taste of my fists he’ll be kissing the snow.”. “You keep thinking that. . .It’d be best if we played it safe and went back to get the others. Besides, even if we do beat it, we’ll still have to go back to get them.”. “What’s your point? We’ll be in that nice cozy mansion and have any food there all to ourselves.”. Mustang sighs and just goes to head back. “Have fun getting that “macho” ass of yours handed to you.”. Macho Man puts his hands on his hips and looks at Mustang as he goes off. “Coward. . .”. He turns back to Yeto and smacks his fists together, then goes to run up after him. He goes to do a diving punch at Yeto, but Yeto just casually catches him and hurls him down the slope. Macho Man thankfully lands on his feet and goes into the surfing pose from his dashing attack. . .

***

Level 11
Play as: Super Macho Man

This level has you constantly in the stance from your dashing attack, consistently picking up speed as you go down the slope. You can use your ground attacks as you’re sliding down, continuing to slide, though you can’t control your momentum while moving or jump, which makes you easy fodder to fall into pits. In particular, enemies are placed as such to encourage you to attack them so that you won’t be able to avoid falling into a pit. It’s rather nasty and you only have one stock, but it’s a fast level despite the actual content not being that small simply due to how fast you move.

***

Macho Man comes up to a big jump for him to look rather intimidated, but he clears it and does a triumphant pose as he continues to slide on. . .And smack right into the Snowpeak Ruins. “Bogus. . .”. Some snow is knocked down off the roof of the mansion from him smacking into it and covers him, then a twilight portal appears and sucks him up.

***

Raven is seen still meditating where Zant dropped them off in Snowpeak while Negative Man is busy. . .Well. . .Being Negative Man, crying for no apparent reason. Raven gets somewhat annoyed at his constant crying as it starts to break her concentration. . .“. . .Stop crying. Now.”. “Why? It’s hopeless. . .We’re all going to die. . .”. “Does that warrant crying?”. “Well. . .No. . .”. “Then stop. It’s keeping me from meditating.”. “Why are you meditating so much anyway?”. Raven sighs. “. . .It. . .Puts my mind at ease and helps me to not think about. . .What’s going to happen to me. . .”. “Does it have to do with your inevitable demise?”. “. . .You could say that. . .”. “Ah. . .I understand completely. . .”. With a bit of sniffling, Negative Man forces himself to stop crying while Raven continues to meditate. . .

Ryuk and Hades are the first to arrive back at the camp, though they don’t make their presence known, watching the girl and the depressed block of cheese from the distance. Ryuk watches patiently while Hades looks rather bored. “. . .This is what you’re so eager to see? They’re doing. . .Absolutely nothing. I want my money back!”. Ryuk sighs. “These things take time, Hades. You can’t expect something to happen in a few minutes.”. “Well yeah, but can’t we go watch some of the others? Maybe they’re doing something more interesting.”. “No need. Some of them are coming back now.”.

Hades turns back to the camp to see Mustang, Dingodile, and Richard coming back. Raven stops her meditation and looks over at Dingodile and Richard, annoyed. “Weren’t you two supposed to get the food?”. Dingodile attempts to tell them what happened, but is near instantly interrupted by Richard. “Well, you see, we got a pack of wolves, but this gluttonous male of indeterminable race ate all of it.”. “What are you talkin’ about, mate? You incinerated all the corpses after we killed ‘em!”. The camera cuts to Hades and Ryuk briefly, the former uttering “Ooohhh, conflict. I like it.”. Back to the others, Richard retorts Dingodile. “Why would I do that? It’s no fun killing things that are already dead. . .And it’s not like I could eat them. I’m dead myself. It’s physically impossible for me to perform such a selfless act of gluttony.”. Dingodile twitches as he turns to the others. “You really gonna believe this bag o’ bones over me?”. His reception is dead silent and pretty bleak, Mustang breaking it. “He has a considerably better case then you, to say the least, and you definitely look like you belong in some sort of hot dog eating contest. . .”. Negative Man agrees. “Stop denying it. . .All the evidence is stacked against you. . .Your fate is doomed. . .”. Dingodile glares at Richard angrily. “Don’t think I’ll forget this. . .”. Richard just laughs.

Raven grumbles slightly before just sighing. “Whichever one of you did it, I’ll be going hunting tomorrow, considering your outstanding success.”. Mustang informs the others of his efforts. “That won’t be necessary. I found a large mansion a little ways from here across a frozen lake. Granted, there’s a giant yeti blocking the way, but I doubt we won’t be able to take him out all together. We can make our way there tomorrow. The chimney was brewing smoke – there’s probably food there.”. Raven shrugs. “Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t. In any case, I don’t wanna risk going hungry again, so I’ll go get some food before I join up with you.”. “Fair enough, I suppose.”. Negative Man seems to be the only one to care about Macho Man. “What happened to that really muscly guy? Die he die. . .? We’ll all be soon to follow after him. . .”. “He went off to fight the yeti single handedly. I told him not to and to wait to go after him, but he was convinced he could take it out himself. We can free him when we go over to the yeti. . .If he’s lucky enough to survive”. Mustang chuckles while Richard frowns. “It’d be a horrible shame if that man died. . .I knew him well. . .He was a dear friend. . .And most importantly, I wouldn’t be able to kill him!”. The others stare at Richard blankly for him to just turn his back and fold his arms. “Party poopers.”. Suddenly, a twilight portal appears and sucks up the characters at the camp, and the range is far enough to reach Ryuk and Hades in the distance. Hades tries to resist while Ryuk casually lets the portal take him. “What did I say, Hades? Stop resisting.”. Hades grumbles something as he lets go of the tree he’s holding onto and lets himself get sucked into the portal. . .

***

REWARD CHALLENGE

Both groups get spit out of their portals back at Zant’s palace of Twilight. Vaati angrily gets up first. “What was that for, hmmm? You said you’d just bring us here every 3 days to kill one of us off, but it’s only been one day.”. “Calm down, young wind mage, calm down. I’m not going to kill any of you. . .Yet.”. He chuckles. “In fact, you should be happy to be here. The winner of this challenge will be allowed to sleep indoors tonight, safe from my beasts of twilight. More importantly, I’m sure many of you will be eager to join the actual challenge. . .”. Zant summons a massive buffet table before the two groups. Bowser goes to run at it right away, but Zant levitates him up and rotates him about so that he lands upside down, struggling to get up until his children help him. “Waits until I tell you the rules of our game, shall we? Only two of you will get to eat the food. . .One from each team. Whichever one of you eats more will win the challenge. I’ll leave it up to you to decide who the lucky gluttons get to be. . .”.

Bowser turns back to his group and flexes. “Didn’t you see how quickly I went at that food?!? I doubt any of you could even finish all of that.”. Silver retorts Bowser in annoyance. “Do I look like I give a crap about how much you can eat?!? I’m eating that, dammit!”. Jafar rolls his eyes and shakes his head at Silver. “We all want the food, you buffoon, but the Koopa King is the best qualified to actually win the challenge and get us the beds.”. Silver sighs and folds his arms. “Whatever. . .”. Bowser smirks and steps forward before Zant once more. “I’ll be the one to do the eating on my team, heh heh!”.

Dingodile chuckles as he beats his belly and turns to his team. “Remember about what a glutton I am? I can so eat that faster then any of you chumps.”. Raven twitches her eye slightly. “The rest of us are all still starving. You don’t get to do this.”. Dingodile glares at Richard, obviously still as hungry as anyone else. Richard just laughs. Richard looks over the other members of his team briefly before stopping his gaze on Macho Man. “You look like the biggest fat ass after the male of undeterminable race. You do it.”. “No way, dude! That’ll ruin my perfect diet! And it’s not fat. It’s macho.”. Mustang rolls his eyes. “You’re not gonna go back to your diet for a good while, so you may as well give it up.”. “Fine, whatever.”. Macho Man goes before Zant and poses before Zant nods. “Yes. Very good. Let the contest of gluttony begin!”.

***

Brawl
Bowser vs. Super Macho Man

While this may be a Brawl, KOing your enemy causes him to just vanish for 10 seconds before he respawns. The goal is to eat more of the food that spawns then the enemy, which functions the same as Brawl food. Bowser’s suction breath proves incredibly useful here as it causes all the food in range of it to be sucked into Bowser’s gullet, but it makes you horrifically open to Macho Man’s shield breaking techniques. Even with all you’re eating to keep your percentage low, if he breaks your shield he’ll just fully charge a smash to KO you, which will probably give him enough time to win the match.

***

Bowser beats his chest and roars as his children come over to him and give him high fives, easily able to down all the food while Macho Man looks ready to puke. Zant gives mocking applause to Bowser. “Good, good. You won your first challenge. . .Go on. Have your reward.”. Zant opens a portal and gives a dismissive motion to Bowser’s group, motioning them to go through it. They do so, though Jafar is a bit hesitant as he considers attacking Zant again. Ultimately his good judgment gets the better of him, though. Zant chuckles and turns to look at the other group. “As for the rest of you. . .” Zant laughs. “I doubt you’ll survive the night. Get out of my sight.”. He summons another portal that sucks up the other characters. . .Seemingly. Zant looks around warily. “Did I miss one of them. . .?”. Suddenly Richard stabs at Zant’s head from behind his throne with a new fork of truth, but it just shatters as it clanks against Zant’s helmet. Zant glares at Richard who shrugs innocently. “Don’t mind me. It’s nothing personal. I just have a fascination with killing, is all, really.”. Zant casually zaps Richard with a twilight blast, then opens another portal and tosses him in carelessly. “Idiot.”.

***

Bowser’s group is dropped out in a nice expensive bedroom with 8 beds. Vaati, Morton, and Lemmy go off to sleep without a care while Jafar tries the door to see if it’s get out to find it locked. He attempts to bust down the door with a flame spell, but one of Zant’s twilight walls just flashes. “Go figure.” he mutters as he goes to slumber. Anne goes over to sleep, then glares over at Bowser and Popinski. “Don’t get any bright ideas. . .”.

The others also go into their beds and the camera fades in and out for most of them to be asleep, save Bowser, who’s waited for Anne to fall asleep. . .He goes over to her for Popinski to spring out of bed nearly instantly, towering over him and blocking Bowser’s path. “You plan on doing something to the woman, little turtle man?”. Bowser growls lowly. “Dammit. Made me waste all that time I could’ve been sleeping for nothing. . .”. Bowser goes back to his bed for Silver to whisper over from his. “Heh heh, y’know I saw that. Y’know I’m gonna tell on you, dontcha?”. Bowser chuckles subtly. “Just like they believed your story over mine last time, right?”. Silver looks rather disheartened at this. . .Bowser chuckles. “That stupid plan of yours failed to boot. I still had my fill, and there’s no way the others will vote me off after I won the challenge. Sweet dreams, pal. See you in hell.”. Silver looks exceptionally worried as Bowser goes back to sleep. . .

***

The second group gets booted out of the portal back at where they started in the middle of the night. Shadow Beasts near instantly lurch out at them in pretty large quantities. They make quick work of them, though Raven still looks rather frustrated, glaring at Macho Man. “So you go off and nearly get yourself killed, get to eat all you want, then you lose the challenge and force us to rot out here all night. Are you proud of yourself?”. Macho Man hastily puts up his gloves. “Calm down, will ya? You were the one who wanted me to eat anyway. . .”. Raven shakes off Hades’ arm in annoyance. “Whatever. . .But we probably aren’t gonna get any sleep tonight thanks to your tremendous success.”. Hades come over to Raven and throws an arm around her. “Relax, babe. We undead don’t need any sleep. We’ll protect you while you snooze.”. Richard nods eagerly in agreement. “Yes, yes! We’ll kill the beasts of twilight all night long!”. Negative Man inches over towards the fire to make himself more visible. “It doesn’t matter. . .They’ll kill us all anyway. . .”.

***

Level 12
Play as: Ryuk, Hades, Richard, Raven, Dingodile, Roy Mustang, Super Macho Man, Negative Man

An exceptionally difficult level, as one would expect from you being given all eight of your stocks. You have to survive a good 10 minutes, and the darkness mechanic from the final level of the first group returns, there just being a small circle of light around your character. Thankfully there’s a large fire in the center of the stage that gives 10X Kirby’s size worth of light and it also deals 10% and average knockback to anyone that touches it. The fire moves of Dingodile, Ryuk, Richard and Mustang also help light things up like Morton’s fireballs, and with 90% of Mustang’s moveset being fired based the darkness is hardly a problem for him. What’s more of an issue is that every 8-12 seconds you’ll randomly fall asleep as if hit by sing if you’re not playing an undead character. Stay away from the boundaries, you never know when you’ll become vulnerable to a hit. This also keeps you nice and close to the fire where it’s easy to see.

Due to recent events and because one of my friends wanted it badly, I decided to skip the reviews of Overlord 1+2, FFVIII and Dead Space for now and do something different.

I reviewed Brütal Legend instead. I will review the other games as well, but I don’t know yet when.

I hope you have fun,

keep playing

El sr. Lemmy Kilmister, fundador dels Motörhead i un dels paios més lletjos del panorama musical, i potser per això un dels més carismàtics… Un retrat doncs, tot i que pot semblar acabat, no ho està, li manquen un parell de voltes al forn encara i tot i que té una capa de color,  es possible que l’acabi fent en blanc i negre o tons sépies, que en penseu? Com sempre, wacom powa! i salut a toi!

Update

Motorhead last night was absolutely epic. We were standing throughout the whole thing, and everyone else in the sitting area was sitting, so he said “Stand up you lazy cunts, it’s not fucking Shakespeare is it?, you two, yes, you two, you’ve been standing up for the whole thing, thank you!” So Lemmy spoke to us
The Damned opened for them, and ‘Captain Sensible’ (guitarist) was testing out the spotlight, and shone it on us, we waved and he stuck his two fingers up at us, haha.

When Motorhead played Overkill at the end, it was unbelievably good. They played it extended for about 8 minutes, strobe lights flashing, crazy lights. And the drum solo, WOW, Mikkey Dee is amazing. He soloed for about 5 minutes straight without stopping, he was AMAZING. His drum kit was huge too. I saw loads of guitars and basses behind the amps, but Lemmy only used his 1 bass, and Phil Campbell (guitarist) only used 3 guitars, a white Les Paul, a green Les Paul and a X shaped, I think it may have been a Kramer but I’m not entirely sure. Captain Sensible from the Damned seemed to be using an LTD (lower grade of ESP).

The Damned: “Having a good night?”
Audience: “YEAH”
The Damned: “Better than fucking Simon Cowell and xfactor isn’t it?”
Audience: “YEAH”
The Damned: “This song’s called ’smash it up’, and I hope Simon Cowel does take this advice”

Epic

Back in the early Spring of 1991, my girlfriend, (now my wife), and I ventured down to the New Haven Coliseum in New Haven, Connecticut… to frolic through a record convention. Record conventions are the best. I am guilty of not going to enough of these glorious events in my lifetime. Regardless, this record convention was chock full of vinyl, CD’s and all things Rock memorabilia that I could ever wish for. Oh yeah, there was Heavy Metal aplenty at this record convention back then… tons of it. The only parameter I needed to follow at this show was to narrow down my search, (I was not loaded with cash back then and I’m still not). Motorhead was at the top of my search list, going to this record convention. There was quite the choice of Motorhead vinyl, cassettes and CD’s to buy there… I settled on the 7″ vinyl, (45 rpm), The One To Sing The Blues. Even though I can’t remember what I actually paid for this Motorhead record, compared to purchasing a 12″ album import at the time, it was a good deal. Seven dollars keeps coming back to me, as to the purchase price though.

We left that record convention that day with just a couple of purchases. The other purchase I will save for a future post, (it was a cool piece of vinyl as well). I still own this Motorhead 45 rpm, rediscovering it recently as it was hidden away in my collection. Am I psyched that I still have it after 19 years? You betcha. I would safely guess this Motorhead record is kinda rare. The backside cover to this record sleeve has the header – Motorhead On Tour, it lists the U.K. concert dates for February 1991. There are 14 concert dates listed. Also on this backside record sleeve cover, are the complete lyrics to The One To Sing The Blues. Sure, I look back and wish I gobbled up every Motorhead vinyl treasure there was at that record convention, nonetheless, I am content with what I do have. This little record has it’s rightful place in my record collection, it being a Motorhead collectible and finding it with my wife, (then girlfriend), makes for a great memento.

Here is additional info on this Motorhead 45 rpm, The One To Sing The Blues:

Side A: The One To Sing The Blues

Side B: Dead Man’s Hand

* This record being bought in the U.S., is an import… with a Made In The U.K. sticker on the front sleeve of my copy I own.

* The One To Sing The Blues later appears on the Motorhead 1991 album – 1916. The backside record sleeve states this song as: Taken from the forthcoming LP/MC/CD “1916″

* The record label(s) as designated on the backside of the record sleeve and record: WTG Records and Epic

Motorhead, as they appeared on The One To Sing The Blues and Dead Man’s Hand:

Lemmy Kilmister - bass and lead vocals

Wurzel – guitar

Phil Campbell – guitar

Philthy Animal Taylor – drums

Cambridge Corn Exchange – 23/11/09

I spent last night shooting rock legends Motorhead at Cambridge Corn Exchange. I very nearly didn’t make it: I received the press pass confirmation email in the afternoon and was due to work in Hunstanton until 7.15 that evening. Fortunately I managed to get home grab my camera bag and leave for Cambridge by 7.50 pm (and I only forgot my wallet!) and made it to the venue just as The Damned were belting out ‘Smash It Up’, a favourite of mine.

After getting my pass (with no problems or need of an email printout for a change) I tried to manoeuvre through the crowds. It was unbelievably busy (and sold out), and people were packed in like hairy, leather-jacketed sardines.  After about ten minutes I finally managed to force my way to the photo-pit and sat down with a few minutes to spare.

The pit was quite luxurious compared to others I’ve seen (I’ve been in photo-pits so tight that I once got my foot stuck!) so, when Motorhead arrived on stage, the other photographers and I could get around pretty easily without getting in each other’s way.

I’ll be honest, even though I’ve been a rock fan for more than 20 years, I’m not that familiar with Motörhead’s stuff, (though obviously I know all their big hits like ‘Ace Of Spades’ and, er…Ace Of Spades ) but I had heard that, due to the dry ice, it might be a challenge to get any decent shots. It was certainly tricky to get any contrast, as the fog made everything look washed out and soft, but I’m pretty happy with what I got in the allotted ‘3 songs, no flash’. What do you think?

I would have liked to get some shots of Matt Sorum (at least I assume it was him) on drums, but the only part of him visible was his hair. Never mind.

All images are available to purchase as archival prints. Please contact me for further information.

Welcome once again to a recap of our weekly finds from around the internet.

As always, we begin our journey by fortifying ourselves with a piece of cheesecake.  This week, at Chris’ request, that cheesecake is Padma Lakshmi, the host of Top Chef on The Food Network.  I have to be honest and say I’m curious to see what kind of traffic the combination of cheesecake and Padma Lakshmi drives.

Padma’s geek credentials are strong.  Besides her work on The Food Network, she has been a runway model, the love interest in an EELS music video, Sean Bean’s nemesis in Sharpe’s Challenge and, perhaps most importantly, an alien princess on Star Trek:  Enterprise.

It’s good to be Scott Bakula.

Oh, and she was married to Salman Rushdie.

On with the links.

1. Chicago Tribune columnist literally eats his words re:  Bulls C Joakim Noah.
2. Between Two Ferns with Zack Galifanakis, the best talk show EVER schools Conan.
3. The 100 Greatest Quotes from The Wire.
4. Newsweek presents the decade in 7 seconds.
5. Smart guys fight over football; Malcom Gladwell puts the hurt on a reviewer over QBs and draft status.
6. A trailer for a movie where Manny Pacquiauo fights a giant crab.
7. College football play of the year from Bethel College in Kansas.
8. Commonsense?  Conservatism?  Verbal tic?
9. Microsoft blows a software rollout?  No way!
10. Stephe’s a Trekkie…ummm…Trekker.
11. E*Trade baby outtakes.  Funnier than you think.
12. Calibrate.
13. Bacon Envelopes.  Thank you science.
14. Humorous bailout rant.
15. Existentialism.
16. Interview with Lemmy.  \m/
17. Robot band.
18. Rescuing the horns for metal.  See above.
19. That’s both gross and wrong.  More wrong, but still gross.
20. More cryptozoology.
21. Our obligatory Twilight link of the week.
22. And I’ve read two.
23. And I drafted two.
24. I’m pretty sure the word you’re looking for is treason.
25. Disturbing XBox 360 story #1.
26. Disturbing XBox 360 story #2.
27. NO!  REALLY!
28. And, finally, Jon Stewart once again delivers the truth.  This time about Nancy Grace.

Top 10 hottest men in rock. Ok, here we go…

10. John Popper of Blues Traveler
John is like a rotisserie chicken, extra skin means extra flavor.

9.  Tom Petty
Part mustahceless Larry Bird part Lurch.

8.  Dimebag Darrell
One might assume that the burly beard on Darrell made him appear to be ugly and that deep down he was handsome.  Then you got one shot of his black toothed grin and you knew…

7.  Every member of Phoenix
This is not an attractive collection of men.

6.   Joey Ramone
You know the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when all the Nazi’s faces melt.  If that happened to Howard Stern you would have Joey.

5.  Lady Gaga
A wide nose that’s equaled by its length and teeth that Brits laugh at.  Yummy.

4. Kevin Dubrow of Quiet Riot
This poor bastard was balding in his 20’s.

3. Willie Nelson
A true genius.  He loves weed and farmland.  This means he most likely hates soap.

2. Roy Orbison
You could have told me Roy was 20 or 70 at any point in his life and I would believe either.

1. Lemmy!!!!  Nuf said.

When I was still in high school there was this dude that everyone called Big Bill.  He was the other metalhead in the Catholic school that I was stuck in for 4 years.  That dude and I were the best of friends, inseparable for the 2 years he went there and for the few years after we graduated.  We traded a lot of music over those years and he really turned me on to quite a bit of metal that I probably wouldn’t have heard.  I’m thankful for those years.  As mentioned previously, Bill turned me on to Odin.  I in turn “discovered” Warrior.  Both Odin’s debut and Warrior’s debut stayed in heavy rotation throughout the late 80s.  Both of them still get played quite often around here.

Earlier this year during the South By Southwest Festival in Austin, TX I had the pure pleasure of playing tour guide, roadie, chauffeur etc for LA’s DC4.  This band is comprised of Jeff Duncan (Odin, Armored Saint), Shawn Duncan (Odin), Matt Duncan (Odin) and Rowan Robertson (DIO).  They were the coolest dudes and we had a blast for the few days they were here.  Shawn and I have been in contact on and off for a few years and I was glad to offer them assistance while they were in my wonderful city.

I saw a few months ago where DC4 was playing with Warrior at the famous Whisky in Hollywood.  It was a weekend show and I decided that I might as well go.  Why not?  I totally dig DC4’s music and of course I love Warrior.  Shawn was gracious enough to open his home to me for the quick weekend trip.

I hadn’t been to LA since 1997 and had a blast.  I was looking to move there and even had 2 job offers from the 2 biggest metal labels in the area.  Unfortunately with 2 days left on my trip, I received a call from my Mom saying that my Dad had cancer again and that I needed to get back home.  Unfortunately Pops died a few months later and my thought of moving to LA went away as I figured I needed to stick around town.  I ended up sticking around until 2006!

I took Friday off from work to get ready for my 2PM flight.  I got to LA (Burbank) around 5PM Cali time and grabbed my rental car and headed north to Monrovia.  The sun had already gone down and I didn’t get to see any of the scenery on the drive.  With traffic I got to Shawn’s around 6:30.  After hanging out for a bit and waiting for his significant other to get home from work, we ll went to downtown Monrovia for sushi.  I swear it was some of the best I have ever had.  We went back to the house, jibber jabbered for a while then I hit the sack.  I was beat from the trip.

The next morning I went up the street to get some Diet Mt Dew.  When I walked out of the 7-11 all I saw was a mountain…literally…a mountain.  It was gorgeous with the sun shining on it.   Shawn and I ran some errands and I got to see and remember how beautiful California can be.  We went by the Santa Anita Raceway.  It was busy there for the Breeder’s Cup.  I only saw the outside of the place but it was gorgeous.

After returning back to the house, we got the drums packed up and loaded into his truck.  He had a wedding to attend that afternoon and I offered my services to get his gear to the Whisky.  It was a gorgeous drive into Hollywood and I saw many familiar sites from my last trip there.  Rolling up on the Whisky I got parking right out front and got the gear loaded in.  It was a bit brutal as I had to lug it upstairs.  Damn!  No worries, got it done.

After load-in, I mulled around Sunset for a while.  I met up with an old pal of mine who had just moved back to LA.  It was awesome seeing him.  We went to the Rainbow for some pizza and I got to hang out with some of his LA crowd.  Good times.  I was in there earlier that evening for a few beers and played on Lemmy’s video game machine.  That dude has the high score on every game.  It was funny.  It was getting closer to showtime so I walked back down to the Whisky.  My dogs were tired so I just found a spot upstairs and rested for a bit until DC4 showed up to the club.  It was great seeing the dudes in the band before they went on.  I sat with Rowan and friends for a while.  He’s such a cool dude.  Great guitar player as well.  Jeff was pretty happy to see me as well.  We talked outside for quite a while.  New Armored Saint album is finished!

The opening bands for the show were all pretty awful.  Seriously.  Awful.  It was DC4’s turn to hit the stage so we got the drums down the stairs and on the riser ASAP.  shortly thereafter they started up.  Because of some rockstar BS their set got cut by about 4 songs.  Didn’t matter.  They kicked ass and the crowd was really into it.  It was a pleasure to see.

By the time that Warrior was about to hit the stage we had just finished packing the drums back up and loading th em in the truck.  I was getting really tired but wanted to catch some of Warrior’s set.  Fortunately I got to hear 3 songs, the last being my favorite from their debut, Mind Over Matter.  McCarty’s voice sound GREAT and Joe Floyd was playing very well.  I was fading fast though.  It was already 12:30 Cali time, 2:30 my time and I had been running around all day.  Shawn’s fiance was going to leave so I left with her.  Said goodbye to some of my pals there and headed back to Monrovia.  I had to be up early for my flight out as well.

All in all it was a great trip albeit brief.  After the first of the year I think I’ll make another venture out there and have a few more days to screw around.

On my flights there and back, I got to see some parts of the country that I really hadn’t seen from the air.  The Grand Canyon, Monument Valley and the beautiful deserts between Texas and California really took my breath away.  We really take for granted how pretty this place is.  I will also say that California has some of the most beautiful scenery on earth.  I will also add that LA has some of the most fake people I have ever come across.  I noticed it in 97 as well.  I also met some really great people as well.  I guess both types are everywhere.

Looking back I really am glad I didn’t end up out there although I know I would have made my way just fine.  Austin is incredible and I think we have much better looking Latinas here!

Already I am looking forward to my next trip out there.

Following the sucess of our Bonfire Night safety message, we aim to bring you a few more childrens safety articles/stories over the coming weeks.

Next week, we bring you Fire Safety which includes the importance of checking your smoke alarms at home.

Coming very soon will also be, The Green Cross Code.

If there is anything you’d like to see on our blog, please get in touch at mail@serendipitysams.co.uk

Notícia do site Whiplash:

Lemmy Kilmister, líder do MOTÖRHEAD, recentemente concedeu uma entrevista ao The Belfast Telegraph e abaixo podem ser conferidos alguns trechos da conversa.

Sobre viver a vida em ritmo acelerado e uma possível aposentadoria:

Kilmister: “Não consigo pensar em nada melhor para fazer. Você consegue? Eu não consigo ver a aposentadoria sendo melhor do que correr ao redor do mundo.”

Sobre ficar na estrada por longos períodos de tempo:

Kilmister: “Turnês realmente cansam depois de um tempo. Mas toda turnê é boa, contanto que você não esteja aleijado!”

Sobre a pausa de cinco ou mais anos que algumas bandas levam entre um álbum e outro:

Kilmister: “Acho que a banda meio que morre quando completa três anos sem lançar nenhum álbum. Se eu vendesse tantos discos como o AC/DC, eu faria um álbum a cada seis meses!”

Sobre a influência do MOTÖRHEAD ser mencionada por todos, desde o Metallica ao Dave Grohl [FOO FIGHTERS]:

Kilmister: “É bom ser elogiado. Se fizemos alguém pegar um violão e fazer música, então não podemos ser tão ruins.”

Sobre ter resistido aos pedidos para se reunir com o guitarrista “Fast” Eddie Clarke e o baterista Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor – a formação que gravou obras seminais do metal como “Overkill”, “Bomber” e “Ace of Spades”:

Kilmister: “Não seria justo com os dois [atual baterista Mikkey Dee e o guitarrista Phil Campbell]. Esses caras tocaram ‘Ace of Spades’ muito mais vezes do que Phil [Taylor] ou Eddie tocaram. Nós temos trabalhado muito nesta banda para colocá-la em espera enquanto eu vou brincar com os outros dois. Eu sou leal. Eu também fui leal ao Phil e ao Eddie, até eles terem deixado de ser leais comigo.”

O que eu acho: é impressionante de ver como Lemy é sempre muito sensato nas entrevistas. Que ele possa manter esse senso de justiça com os fãs e seus companheiros de banda, é assim que se reconhece um grande artista.
 
Lemmy fazendo pose de galã e dando uma piscadinha fatal…

Forgotten Disc Friday Report:

Click here to go to FDF to check Motorhead “Overkill”, “No Class”, and “The Hammer”

One sunny morning Jeremy the giraffe was walking through the house doing his monthly check of the smoke alarms, when all of a sudden…

“Somebody has taken the battery out of this smoke alarm!” shouted Jeremy.

He ran through to the kitchen where Bella was washing up breakfast.

“Have you seen the battery from the smoke alarm, Bella? asked Jeremy.”

“No, I haven’t Jeremy” replied Bella.

So Jeremy went through into the lounge where Kitty was watching television.

“Have you seen the battery from the smoke alarm, Kitty?” asked Jeremy.

“No Jeremy, I haven’t” said Kitty

With that Jeremy ran out into the garden where Sam was playing football. “Have you seen the battery from the smoke alarm, Sam?” asked Jeremy.

“No I haven’t Jeremy” said Sam.

With that Jeremy ran out into the garden where Sam was playing football. “Have you seen the battery from the smoke alarm, Sam?” asked Jeremy.

“No I haven’t Jeremy” said Sam.

No sooner had Sam said that, when they both heard a loud noise coming from the play room. They both ran in to find Lemmy the Lemur playing with his new radio controlled car.

“Lemmy, have you taken the battery out of the smoke alarm?” asked Sam

“I’m sorry guys, I didn’t think that it would matter if I just borrowed it for a little while” said Lemmy.

“Oh Lemmy” said Jeremy “You must never take the battery out of the smoke alarm or it won’t work! If we had a fire we could all get hurt” explained Jeremy.

Pre-4 a.m. Coming down with the Black Plague. I thought they only gave that to orphans. Do they still make orphans? Do they still have orphan factories? I sure do miss 19th century England.

Hot chocolate way too hot for my face. My tongue screams! This is an interesting way to start the day.

I’ll probably watch a movie now, or finish watching the BBC documentary on Motorhead, “Live Fast, Die Old”, that I turned up the other day.  Ahhh Lemmy… I started to watch Braveheart on Blu-ray last night. I had forgotten how unutterably cool that movie is.  Ahhh Mel… I’ll pick it up from the beginning  tonight after the girlfriend gets home, if I don’t die of this Black Plague. I can almost hear Vincent Price laughing.

Maybe just maybe I landed a gig as a film reporter for an online publisher. Don’t know how much it pays but rest assured that I need more money. Gobs more. I wish to stuff my wallet full of large bills to the point where it will no longer close. I had that feeling once. They weren’t all large bills but there were some in there, yes indeed. Gotta get the defibrillator panels to the old bank account.