Bethany Plays: PM Post-Chapter 5 Part 2: Lady Bow's Fury

For the next step, I'm going to need some Cake Mix. I feel like putting Cake Mix somewhere more easily accessible was a huge step in making cooking in TTYD and SPM feel more fun.

The Kooky Cookie can also be made with a Koopa Leaf, not sure why I used a Maple on it. Probably because there wasn't much reason to go in and out of Koopa Village this time.

Koopa Koot's first favour is to find his glasses somewhere in the village. Once again, something you'd expect an old man to ask as something short and easy to do.

Although perhaps not to the exclusion of everything else. Then again, since the task is so small, there's no real point to trying to multitask something else in.

Not to worry. This time (and only this time), him not being home is not his fault.

...OK, he could've used the Toad Town Tunnels, but I'll take the game at its word that only Mario able to get through that OK.

Some things never change.

...I'm asking you.

This Koopa proves a little more informative. Kent C. Koopa has a weakness to Sleep- although it's somehow only 80% (with +1 timer).

Glasses are in this bush right at the entrance of town.

Another weak point! This sounds obvious, but it is actually not so.

There's a third weakness that doesn't seem to be mentioned by any of the Koopas in Koopa Village, and it's one of those things that's so obscure I had never been told it was a weakness until after I did the fight.

Or at least still young enough that I can see unassisted. Mario diverges from the Standard RPG Protagonist in that he is clearly old enough to have a voluminous mustache, although how old he is is unclear. Partners in Time (and the general Mario/Peach shipping material across the franchise) suggests that he is a year or two older than Peach at most, and you'd expect a game all about travelling to a time when Mario and Luigi were babies would have something concrete about how long ago that was, but still. I'd say the safe bet is late 20s, early 30s- which is still much older than most RPG protagonists.

...A line that cannot be written today. Koopa Koot, I'm afraid the book has been replaced by technology far less friendly to the eyeball in the modern age.

Hey, I picked up his glasses. Granted, those are probably expensive and easily destroyed, but still. At least he didn't order me to buy new ones.

This would be a relatively easy task, but the way Paper Mario works, we can only get these right from the source- in the desert. I guess real life supermarkets have to have someone do the hard work at some point, and this time, that will be on our head.

...Is that the feeling you get from eating a Lime?

Funny we haven't met Spiny yet, that's a pretty basic Mario enemy! You'd expect they'd use Spiny to teach Spiky enemy mechanics, but I guess they are tied to the hip to Lakitu...

I just do what he asks.

No idea why that was worth 3 Star Pieces, but I will take them.

Well, this is going to be a quick visit.

Koot teaches you the Koopa Leaf recipe. The other ingredient, the Cake Mix, is relatively easy to intuit, especially if you found one of the many recipes where Cake Mix is used to bake cookies.

I certainly don't really want to use this myself. 33% odds of putting myself to sleep?

Oh, that's a remote enemy. Not entirely unique to Paper Mario, but close to.

Don't let it go stale!

I came to visit Goompapa, since the girls were out and I figured something interesting might happen. Not really that interesting.

Chuck Quizmo starts this round of queries by having an identity crisis. I like the name "Sir Quizzby", although the choice in answer "In the jail" is... a fun choice.

The flora of Lavalava Island having names seems to be entirely to make this question work. You may confuse it for "Bellbell Plant"- those are the small purple flowers that ding-a-ling when you click on them, although Trumpet Plants may be bell-shaped.

I don't think there are any Pink Yoshis in Yoshi Village. I think they're around nowadays, at least.

Merluvlee is a big near miss. Merlon and Merluvlee appear in later games, and while Merluvlee is always a fortune teller, Merlon has other gameplay functions. As a result, it's probably pretty easy to guess Merluvlee is the fortune teller. Wrong, she tells them in Shooting Star Summit, which is a different location to Toad Town.

Green, Red, Yellow, two shades of Blue and Brown. I think. There are new shades in other games- such as White and Black, but just the ones in Yoshi's Village count for this question.

I don't think either of these distractors apply to Sushie as she actually is. While Sushie is not particularly bossy to Mario, she is still a character who encourages action.

This one's a tricky one, especially after the last quiz we did used the post office to reference Minh T.'s Garden. This is the only building in the map with the post office in it, though.

To Boo's Mansion, then.

Good question, considering we found this letter on an island a long way away from here. Parakarry, you are the worst mailman ever. I'm sure this Boo feels really bad about Igor's services now.

I'll take it, but goddammit Parakarry.

...I'll pass.

The brown Boos appear to be somewhat unaware of how they don't look like the standard Boo colour. These guys really are weird. At least Bow's green colour can be justified by the weird colours they look like they glow in some ghost houses in the New games.

Not yet. I think that NPC is the next one over.

...Why wouldn't they? You have societies of your own, you should be recognised as such.

Hello there. Nice to see you again.

It'd be nice if he had another trick, but the classics always work.

Hilarious.

I'm sorry, I don't do terrified. Maybe if I could bring Luigi with me, he could pull it off!

The talk of the town right now is a Boo named Victoria. I don't think we ever meet her, at least knowingly.

...This sort of talk is making me wonder what happens if two people make wishes that mutually cancel out the other's. Let's say someone wishes to cross this forest without getting lost, and the Boos make this one. Which wish gets granted? There doesn't seem to be a way for neither wish to be granted, either.

This guy over here is Victoria's beloved.

...Ha ha ha.

...OK, I called this Boo her beloved, but this line implies they're not quite at that stage yet. I think they are supposed to be going steady, since this is the buildup to a wedding and not a date.

This bit is also an entire skit I wasn't entirely familiar with when I stumbled into it here.

There's a whole decision to make here. This decision impacts nothing about the game, not even narratively, as far as I can tell. It does, however, explain an odd line of dialogue in the ending. I mostly call that line weird because it exists even if you never found this interaction, although without the explanation, the conclusion you'd draw is... very wrong.

I believe I picked the Fire Flower. Fire Flowers are cute, especially the Super Mario World design Paper Mario uses.

This Boo's ancestors owned Tubba Blubba's Castle at some point. I doubt Tubba was the guy to evict them, though. Wonder why.

That's the one Super Block that's been taunting us finally used. Goombario picked it up. As a reminder, this is west of the pipe to Boo's Mansion.

West of the pipes to Goomba/Koopa/Dry Dry, we can find a Super Block hiding behind Metal Blocks. We're really getting our partners upgraded in bulk. We're not going to be back to the situation we had where everyone is upgraded to Ultra, but we're not going to be starved for choice.

Bombette picked up this one. Mega Bomb is... a choice. I'd say go for Parakarry or Sushie first.

Out here, near the start of town, is a Sushie pond.

We can finally get this Star Piece that has been taunting us since we first got to Toad Town!

And also a Super Block down in the pipe. Sushie got this one. We now have Parakarry and Kooper left.

32 Star Pieces, another profitable visit. We're starting to run out of big purchases, though- just as well, we're running low on Star Pieces, too.

Money Money could come in handy, especially considering we've got some big purchases to make coming up and I don't really want to cheat out another round of Jump Attack. Pay-Off is for the same purpose- although I don't think I'll ever wind up bothering. Happy Flower and Chill Out are just to purchase Badges- we're out of Badges I want for practical reasons.

Back in the sewers, and it's time for a boss fight. And huh, I went for Happy Flower. My FP is pretty low, those extra points could make a difference. Mainly, though, I'm showing how it works in practice.

East of the Boo's Mansion pipe is this pier, and crossing it starts the third and final Blooper battle. You do not get the chance to switch off Sushie before the fight starts.

And that is one big Blooper. It is mandatory to fight a Blooper that spawns in this position, although if you don't care about exploring, you can save it so this is one of the smaller varieties. You either lose out on Shrink Stomp and/or [the warp pipes to Goomba/Koopa/Dry Dry, two Super Blocks, one of which comes early in the game, a Star Piece and Power Smash].

...So at least you can reduce it to just the 50 HP Electro Blooper.

This is a Super Blooper. Whoa! It's huge! Easily the biggest Blooper ever! Max HP: 70, Attack Power: 5, Defense Power: 0. Trust me, its size doesn't lie. It's pretty powerful. When it gets mad, it turns red and its power goes way up. And sometimes it spawns Blooper Babies. Buckle down, Mario! We're in for a fight!

Super Blooper (Lv. 65), not to be confused with the kart found in Mario Kart Wii, is an absolutely massive squid and a fight to keep on your toes for. It has both a physical attack and squid ink for 5 damage, although Goombario isn't telling us how powerful the charge attack is. It is powerful this time around.

Eight damage a bounce, that's a nine turn fight without the partner's involvement.

...Yay? It wasn't even a Dizzy Stomp.

That is a big hitbox display.

It's time to show off our lovely ojou attack. Super Blooper is one of a legion of bosses that gets much easier if you have the FP to launch a few Fan Smacks on. We only have enough for three, assuming Mario doesn't want to try Dizzy Stomp, but that's 30 damage. That cuts Mario's demand down to 40 damage- five Jumps.

Imagine how much faster the fight goes if Bow has access to more Fan Smacks.

There are two things that happen when the game zooms in on Super Blooper. It is possible to distinguish which action he is about to do, but it's hard to describe how. Not like either action requires a Guard input.

This is a Blooper Baby. Super Blooper spits 'em out and they come to drain you. Max HP: 6, Attack Power: 2, Defense Power: 0. We need to beat 'em quickly so they can't drain us dry. They're so cute, though!

Blooper Babies (Lv. 1) are annoying flunkies. Well, in theory. In practice, their only attack is contact-based, so they're helpless against Zap Tap. Although they will be hit by all statuses except Shrink, the only one without a timer penalty is Dizzy. Don't even bother Stopping them, they have -2.

They are actually considered the same as the tiny Bloopers that follow Blooper Nannies around in Super Mario Bros. 3 and the New series. Although these ones are a lot bigger.

I did not realise they were helpless, and brought a plan for them.

I'm sure I don't need to use that elsewhere, item management is so tight I probably don't have room for it.

Here's Super Blooper's other camera zoom in, his charge up. While he's in this red state, he is immune to all status ailments (whereas before, his best resist was Sleep with a 40% chance of working), and his next attack does two hits of 10 damage.

Yeah, uh, let's not and say we did. That would have hit us for 10 damage... twice.

...Dizzy Stomp connected! Glad I packed it.

Got two of these in a row. Not sure what my FP's up to that I haven't used any on that second turn, but hey, I've got Super Blooper on the ropes, maybe I just didn't want to Fan Smack.

...Wow, that's more Happy Flowers than I normally see. Although we can see at this juncture, Happy Flower just isn't going to cut it for Partner attacks. Maybe Mario attacks, those tend to stick to 2/3 FP and can be cut down with Flower Saver.

I'll be taking those.

Already we can go right to Lavalava Island with no whale. This is why they make us fight Jr. Troopa after getting Sushie.

I switch my Badge setup to this one for the next enemies, mostly to try and make Pay-Off earn its keep.

...Did it? I dunno. The formula is you get one coin per 2 damage taken, which is... not the best.

More FP for the glory of Fan Smack!

Huh. Not hitting that block.

But I am hitting this one. This is a trick I learned from the randomiser.

It works a lot better in the rando, since they have a setting that makes these blocks tangible without futzing around with Watt or anything. There's a bridge of hidden blocks here that allows us to jump across to an otherwise inaccessible platform, but in the vanilla game, the only way to cross is to either get lucky with this trick (which I'm fairly sure, if it was possible, this jump would've landed on the next block? Maybe I'm too far left) or to come back with the ability that lets us hit these blocks from the ground.

If we use the Warp Pipe on the ground level of that room, we find a dead end. With a suspicious gap in the curb.

I believe there's a crack on the wall on the other side, but in vanilla play, you won't be arriving in this room unless you blow it up from the west side. There are all manner of glitches and randomiser-only behaviour to get in from the east side, though.

Rip Cheato here is one of the game's... more annoying NPCs.

As you might tell by the name, this guy is conducting some questionable trades, and is willing to let Mario in on the grift.

He's a merchant by the name of Rip Cheato. Who knows why he set up here... I guess it doesn't matter. People can sell stuff wherever they want. It's their choice. I actually kind of like it here. It's like a secret fort!

Goombario doesn't seem to be too suspicious, but also, it's Goombario.

He sells items for 64 coins. That is the only price he names.

And sometimes, the rewards are that worth it.

He sells the next item with all sorts of marketing buzzwords you might expect out of a shifty salesman like him. Rest assured, these deals are neither limited time or randomly sourced.

Rip Cheato will always sell the same items in the same order. And while the Life Shroom isn't strictly speaking worth it (it sells for cheaper in Boo's Mansion), Bump Attack and the Repel Gel are. He sells another Star Piece 5th and 10th, and finding the money to afford Rip Cheato is the main purpose for cash now we've bought Rowf out of stock.

He does have a good line for attempting to purchase an item without the required coins on hand.

Enter the pipe behind him, and you come out in here. This music sounds a mite familiar...

Welcome back to Toad Town! The Odd House, or as it's known in the speedrunning community, the "blue house", is kind of the holy grail of the speedrun. As you might expect, if you found a way to glitch in to the house, you could skip right to Chapter 5 with Bombette and a fight against the first Blooper.

There are multiple ways to get into this house early- jumping on the Toad weirdly, hammering into the back seam and picking up the key, and even some weird jumps on the door work. In addition to skipping Chapters 2-4, getting access to Chapter 5 early means they can get to the extra sequence with Misstar in Chapter 5. If you enter the new rooms she uses, you'll find they're set to always trigger the escape sequence, and there are ways to glitch into redoing it and duping her Star Spirit Card to skip right to Chapter 8. Meanwhile, we're basically going to use it as a slight shortcut to the later areas of the sewers- I think it's strictly faster, and it definitely means we don't need to switch out to Sushie to cross that lake.

Badge setup for Kent C. Koopa this time. He's weak to Sleep, and Sleep Stomp is an effective way to administer that sleep.

This is Kent C. Koopa. He's... pretty large and greedy. He seems to be in our way... We can't slip past him because he's too big, but he'll let us go by if we give him some coins. He's huge, but remember, he's just a Koopa Troopa.

Kent C. Koopa is a Big Koopa Troopa (or Giant Koopa, Mega Koopa Troopa, etc), an enemy that first appeared in Super Mario Bros. 3's fan-favourite Giant Land. His facial structure and shell pattern, meanwhile, bring to mind Hookbill the Koopa, a boss in Yoshi's Island that was a giant Koopa Troopa.

The game makes no bones about the fact you can and probably will want to fight him instead of lying down and paying his unapproved toll road.

Kent uses his size as a basis for why it is unwise to fight him. Judge me by my size, do you?

This is Kent C. Koopa. He seems pretty greedy for such a large Koopa. Max HP: 70, Attack Power: 10, Defense Power: 6. He sometimes does a stamp attack with his shell. That attack has a power of 3. His shell attack also damages party members (like me!), so be sure to defend! As with all Koopas, your chances will greatly improve if you can flip him over. His defense power will drop. Watch it, though! He'll attack as soon as he's back on his feet. And by the way, is he not THE HUGEST KOOPA EVER!?! Somebody told me that he used to live in Koopa Village...

Kent C. Koopa (Lv. 55) sounds like a pain to fight legitimately, and that's why the game takes pains to encourage you to learn his weaknesses ahead of time. Goombario is also slightly misinformed about his attacks- his butt-stomp is the one that does 10 damage to Mario, while his attack that does 3 damage to both Mario and the partner is a Shell Toss (or perhaps a Power Shell). Attacking as soon as he rights himself, though? Yeah, you've got to get this guy sleeping.

80% odds. With Sleep Stomp, you can not only knock him down, but Sleep him too. Lullaby and Sleepy Sheep only sleep him, and you need to knock him down anyway.

Now then, let's discuss his tail. While flipped over, your default target is the soft belly, like all Koopa Troopas. However, unlike other Koopa Troopas, Kent has three Defence to go through, even on his back.

The tail, meanwhile, has 0 defence, and thus is open for Bow and everyone to unleash their fury. Knowing about his weakness to Sleep and the tail turns Kent from an obnoxious powerhouse to a chump.

With that said, jumping on the tail doesn't keep Kent on his back, so you may find yourself jumping on the belly from time to time.

On the other hand, Kent won't attack on the turn he stops being asleep, so Lullaby is just fine to keep him on his back instead.

Anyway, I mentioned a third weakness? Kent will drop some of his ill-gotten gains if you Spin Smash his tail. I... guess it's handy? Depends on how many coins it drops. There's a reason this weakness kinda drops off from what most people remember.

It's Star Points and an excuse for Kolorado to go home.

I... think Bowser usually winds up bigger?

Yeah, I can't defend you. Extortion is a crime, and Mario sez that's no good!

Kolorado zips right home as soon as you beat Kent, without even showing up to say something on the subject on the way.

...You sure you like him around the house? At least having him around means he's not getting himself killed.

Kolorado, for his part, seems to enjoy being at home too.

Although as his wife is quick to point out, actions do not match words and Kolorado barely spends any time of that study of his.

...Kolorado?

...Almighty Star Spirits, you have learned nothing.

Comedy relief, you made a decent attempt at being. But at this point, we have passed being funny and landed right in being deeply, deeply concerning. And I'm not sure if that's to you, your wife, or Kooper. Or some combination of the three.

Kooper has a new hero now.

Anyway, now that we're done being annoyed with everyone's favourite village idiot, time for us to visit the Dojo for round 4.

As mentioned, the Master will continue to be our opponent, although that doesn't mean we're fighting the same guy we fought last time.

The Master has some tricks up his sleeve he is now prepared to unleash upon us.

This is The Master. He owns the Dojo- and he's the strongest member. Max HP: 75, Attack Power: 8, Defense Power: 0. He knows both normal and advanced methods of attack. You'd better concentrate, Mario! This guy doesn't mess around at all!

The Master (Lv. 1) has gained 25 HP and two different attacks- one attack that does 8 damage, and the other attack that does something special that Goombario doesn't mention. He has one major weakness, however.

Well, OK, two. No Defence means Bow'll shred him.

Just like last time, he praises Mario as the fight goes. He's a lot less warm this time, though.

Both of his attacks are contact-based, so Zap Tap comes in handy.

Commence the shredding of the Mushrooms!

I'll believe it when I see it.

Although I did need to use a Smooch to keep Mario in the game. 8 damage is a lot when I have 25 max HP.

...Do I never show off his special trick? For this fight, the Master's second attack is a combo attack, dealing 5 + 6 damage... assuming you're not electrified. Zap Tap forces him to end the attack after the first blow, reducing a dangerous boss to a far more toothless one. An onslaught of attacks doing 5 and 8 damage is hardly "toothless", but it's far better than 8 and 11.