Let’s make a pact, right now. I’ll give you candy, Tim Burton film characters, and a heaping helping of snarky love, and we’ll never, ever mention Atlantica again. Good? Good.
With that out of the way, we come back in on the Gummi Ship of Love, making its wobbly-winged way to the next stop on the Wankapalooza Worlds Tour. Blah, blah, blah, flying, flying, flying, Starfox, Starfox, Starfox. Are we there yet? I have to go potty! Also, I’m probably way late on this, but have you ever noticed how the Gummi Ship of Love on-screen indicator looks like a penis?
PENIS!!!!
After what feels like forever, the Gummi Ship of Love finally slows down on approach to our next exciting world of fun. Oh, this one actually looks like it’s going to be be fun, it’s a world shaped like a jack-o-lantern! Squee! And look at the theatrical intro with the cute little ghosties and swerving camera effects! Yes, in case you were wondering, that was your rare and beautiful moment of happiness for this recap, and you’d better bask in it because it gets all bitter and curse-ridden from here. Bask, damn you!
YAY!
The camera finally stops swerving and looping around to show us that Junior, Goofy and @#%$!!! have once again adapted to their host world and are wearing Halloween-y costumes. Goofy wears a red clown nose, @#%$!!! sports mummy bandages and Junior’s in a somber black and grey nipped-at-the-waist ensemble with little bat wings on the back and a jack-o-lantern hat. And because of that, Yevon help me and Auron forgive me, Junior actually looks…cute. There, I said it. Please don’t make me say it again.
This, however, does beg the question of what Junior’s Halloween Town costume really should have been to better reflect the whining and wankery beneath. I’ll leave it to you fine people to answer that as I go off to start my requisite recap binge-drinking. Honestly, sometimes this job should come with hazard pay.
Loading ...According to the game menu, we’re standing at Guillotine Gate. There are some jack-o-lantern street lights here with stone pillars beneath them, a save point, and not much else. I amuse myself for a moment by having Junior beat the hell out of the stone pillars to turn on the lights before going though the gate to Halloween Town proper. Of course, no sooner does our terrible trio get through the gate than there’s this almighty explosion with tons of reddish-black smoke and the town square reveals itself to be full of Spermy-Ghosts. Spermy-Ghosts that don’t move, don’t attack and which Junior cannot hit for all his spaghetti-armed Keyblade flailing and grunting. God, I think I just squicked myself out with a bad mental image that will require therapy to dislodge. Ah, alcohol, the soother of troubled souls, you come to my rescue yet again.
Before we go any further, we need to get one thing perfectly clear. This entire world is based from The Nightmare Before Christmas by Tim Burton. If you’ve never seen the film before, then you’re a taste-devoid stupidhead you might want to read up on it at The Internet Movie Database. Just mind the tar-pits of wank, they’re right on par with the pools of rancid fanboy splooge you’ll find at GameFAQs. You were warned.
Back in town, our lads run around, hoping that something, somewhere will set off a cut scene, a fight, or anything that makes some goddamned sense so we can move this game forward. Oh, look, there it is. I missed the Invisible Cut Scene Generator on my way in. How silly of me. It seems that the Mayor of Halloween Town has a very special introduction to make, so let’s get to it.
In his best announcer-voice and a chorus line of Spermy-Ghosts, the Mayor introduces the “master of terror, the king of nightmares”, Mr. Rogers. No, no, of course I’m just kidding. It’s an elaborate send-up for our favorite calcium poster boy, Jack Skellington.
Jack would like to thank the Academy
Mister Mayor damned near piddles himself with the Jack love, working himself up into a frenzy of excitement over the strangely docile Spermy-Ghosts that Jack’s been working on for the big Halloween shindig. However, Jack’s a perfectionist and the Spermy-Ghosts just aren’t scary enough for him. He wants bone-chilling terror, dammit, and nothing else will do. I think someone might have some naked James Arnold Taylor pictures lying around somewhere, Jack. I know it would strike bone-chilling terror into this girl’s shriveled, black heart. Jack tells Mister Mayor that he’s off to consult with “the Doctor” on ramping up the scary while Mister Mayor heads off to work on the decorations. Dude. You live in Halloween Town. The whole damned place is an orgy of spooky candy-colored bliss. The orange and black crepe paper streamers you’ve got lodged in your hat would be just so much overkill, you dig?
Now, all I’ve got to do at this point is find out which one of the doors leading off from the town square belongs to the mysterious “Doctor” and we can get this thing started right and proper. However, the camera angle works against me every step of the way and I manage to get lost within a few short seconds. I do manage to find a humble little house behind a humble little gate and release some humble little puppies back home to Pongo and Perdita, getting me one step closer to TWOO G4M3R dominance and lovely Riku drooling. Yay, me! My ever-so-handy firelighter Brady Guide tells me to enter the door next to the jack-o-lanterns street lights. First of all, there are jack-o-lantern streetlights everywhere in the town square. Second of all, the town square really isn’t square, it’s round. Third of all, why not just tell me to look for the door marked “Lab Entryway” and be done with it? See? How fucking hard was that, I ask you? Instead of “fight the camera and look for the one set of jack-o-lantern lights that I actually mean”, why couldn’t it have been “look for the wooden door marked ‘Lab Entryway’.” God dammit, just when I think I’ve gotten over my stupidity for paying good money for the strat guide, it paper cuts my ass again. Thanks for nothing, Brady Guide.
Inside the lab, Jack and the doctor discuss the prone Spermy-Ghost laid out on the operating table. Apparently, Jack thinks that by installing a heart into the Spermy-Ghost Heartless Control Device, they’ll do his bone-chilling bidding. No good can come of this my children, no good at all. In fact, I have the horrible premonition we’re not only going to be sent on a fetch quest to assemble the heart, but that something will go terribly, terribly wrong. The doctor remains immune to my warnings, telling Jack that building a heart isn’t all that difficult. Oh, boy.
Reading from his Heartless Control Recipes for Dummies book, Jack states that the first thing they need is a container with a lock. The little doctor, who we will now call by his proper name of Dr. Finkelstein, just so happens to have a heart-shaped container with a lock. Now before you go thinking that this is just the leftovers from some goth girl’s “Love Sucks” Valentine’s Day mope kit, the Heart-Shaped Box is literally shaped like a human heart. It’s kind of icky, to tell you the truth. Unfortunately for Dr. Finkelstein and Jack, the Heart-Shaped Box with a lock is also, well, locked. What are they going to do now? What am I going to do, now, with a late-career Nirvana song stuck in my head and cycling like a Mobius strip? Oh, I know. I can tell you I was in college when that song came out, making me the official VGR Old Fart Recapper. Huzzah!
Enter Junior and pals, stage right. Junior simply cannot resist the urge to stick his Keyblade into every lock available to him and this one is no different. I swear, the boy’s going to be the V.D. poster child one day.
Loading ...To his credit, @#%$!!! has reservations about this little enterprise, remaining skeptical that installing a heart into the Spermy-Ghost Heartless Control Device will have the effect Jack, Junior and the Dr. Finkelstein seem to think it will. Still, the Heart-Shaped Box’s lock is all primed and ready for some Keyblade lovin’ and far be it from Junior to say no. What a little man-whore.
Oh, gross! Junior’s got crabs!
Jack, perplexed but grateful at the surrender of the Heart-Shaped Box’s virtue, compliments Junior on his technique and requests an introduction. He’s so grateful, in fact, that he insists Junior and his pals stick around to be part of this year’s Halloween festival. He explains that the Heartless are a recent addition to the denizens of Halloween Town, and he was so hoping they would be willing to dance with him as the big finale to the show. Methinks that ol’ bony boy here has taken one too many hits to his overlarge, freakishly round cranium.
Still, the show must go on, so Jack and Dr. Finkelstein trudge onward with the heart assembly. Now, to make a functioning heart, one needs to add the following: a pulse, and emotions such as terror, fear, hope and despair. Some of these are represented by items like a frog, a spider, and two snakes biting their tails, and boy am I ever thankful that I haven’t had to collect a damned one of them. Maybe I was wrong about that fetch quest after all. After mixing well, the Heart-Shaped Box, now connected to the Spermy-Ghost Heartless Control Device, is a-pump-pump-pumping away as Dr. Finkelstein throws the switch. Oh, come on. This is a mad scientist’s lab here. You knew there was going to be some big zappity switch-throwing sooner or later.