The poor Spermy-Ghost on the slab lights up like a Christmas tree as a gajillion volts of sparkly blue-white electricity fills the air and causes him to sit up like a cast member of the Happy Valley Mortuary Annual Corpse Puppet Show and Costume Ball. Jack’s jubilation doesn’t last long, though, as the Spermy-Ghost falls back to the slab with a resounding thud.
Woogy woogy!
Dr. Finkelstein determines that the reason Jack’s Heart-Shaped Box heart failed miserably was because we are missing memory. And wouldn’t you know it, but his patchwork sex toy girl creation Sally has just the thing they need. Could we be so lucky that Sally’s actually in the room and willing to hand over whatever the Halloween Town equivalent to a 512MB memory stick happens to be? We are not. Sally’s nowhere to be found. Dr. Finkelstein tells us to go track her down. Track her down? Aw, fuck! You mean I was right about that fetch quest thing? I don’t know whether to go into a sulk or whore myself out on a gaming message board and boast of my mad gamer precognition. While I’m deciding, I think I’ll have another drink and head off to the Graveyard to mope like the Ramones-listening punk I once was. Ah, memories. Before I go, though, I’ll just have Junior snag this torn page from the dear doctor’s bookshelf. Despite all evidence to the contrary, we will remain faithful that one day, Hooked on Crack Phonics will work for him, too.
Outside the lab, the goodly Mister Mayor has dire news for our team, now consisting of Goofy, Jack, and Junior. The Heartless are out of control and can’t be stopped! Oh, noes! Jack reassures Mister Mayor that all will be well, while @#%$!!! gives him the best “bitch, please” look I have seen outside of the countless Livejournal user icons sporting that exact same text. Back in the town square, Jack makes good on his word, unleashing Thundaga wrath with an elegant wave of his lanky arm and frying a multitude of no longer docile Heartless baddies in one go. Oh, Jack. And as luck would have it, I once again find myself outside that humble little house where the humble little puppies once were, ringing a scary spider doorbell three times to snag myself a free Elixir. And yes, for once I can admit that the Brady guide, and Dan Birlew’s advice in said guide were helpful to me. That slight lurch you felt was the Earth stopping on its axis, and you might want to get a sweater. I understand that Lucifer and his Nimble Demonettes’ Diabolic Ice Show will be making a stop in your town soon.
Next up on our tour is the Graveyard to find Sally. And have I mentioned how annoying it is that just about every doorway leading away from the town square has huge fucking steps that Junior must traverse by jumping up them? Have I also mentioned how badly the game camera sucks ass in this paragraph? No? Well, there you go, then. The game camera sucks more ass than the Gay Dread Ass Pirate Roberts and the search for the Black Buttcrack.
The Heartless have ruthlessly invaded the Graveyard, too, so it’s up to Junior, Jack, and Goofy to clear the area. Once they’ve wailed, flailed, and spelled their way to victory, things calm down and an old friend of Jack’s comes out of hiding from his cozy little resting place by the gate. Why, it’s Zero, Jack’s faithful little ghost-doggie! Oh, lookit the adorable little ghost-doggie! Isn’t he just the sweetest little ghost-doggie in the world? Yeah, in case you’re wondering I’m one of your typical militant childfree people. I don’t care for human kids in any way, shape, or form, but show me a cat or a puppy dog and I melt like butter. Deal with it; it’s one of my few redeeming qualities.
Doggie!
Jack asks his doggie pal if he’s seen Sally, and Zero obliges by floating off to show us where Sally’s hidden herself. Sally comes out, seemingly unbothered by all the Heartless shenanigans that just went on, content with a calm inquiry to Jack on that state of things. Jack, the eternal optimist, assures her that everything’s just peachy, and oh, since she mentioned it, could they have her memory? Now, I love my husband very much, and would give him whatever it was he asked for within reason. However, “Hi, honey, it’s good to see you, can I take all of your memory with me so I can make the Heartless dance with me?” would get him not the memory he so desperately craved but a ten minute lecture on the dangers of asking your loving if somewhat psychotic wife questions like that out of the blue. Sally, on the other hand, takes the whole thing in stride and wants to know if the memory we’re seeking was a little something she’s carrying around called the Forget-Me-Not. Whatever would give you that idea, Sally?
Once Jack’s got the Forget-Me-Not in hand, he doesn’t bother to listen to a word Sally says. And it just so happens that Sally’s had the Foreshadowing Mallet hidden up her skirt and is now proceeding to bludgeon the crap out of me with her “don’t like the sounds of this” and “got a bad feeling about this” blows of damage +10. Ow. She watches silently as Jack, Junior and Goofy head back to the doctor’s lab, and after a pregnant pause, she and Zero follow after them.
Still, we’re not done in the Graveyard, oh no. It’s time to introduce our first nemesis in Halloween Town, a trio of annoying costumed snots by the names of Lock, Shock, and Barrel. Now, as you may recall from the film, Lock, Shock, and Barrel are three perfidious little brats who hang around doing favors for Oogie Boogie even though they’re just as afraid of him as everyone else in Halloween Town. They do this because: A. They’re annoying little kids and B. Apparently there’s nothing else better to do in Halloween Town. In other words, it’s the “I dunno” excuse, only twice as irritating.
Lock, Shock, and Barrel now conspire to let Oogie Boogie in on the secret that Dr. Finkelstein and Jack are in the process of building a working heart as a sort of “please don’t eat us!” present. Don’t you buy into it, Oogie, baby. You chomp those little shits like there’s no tomorrow!
Meanwhile, back in the lab, Jack hands the Forget-Me-Not to Dr. Finkelstein to add to the Heart-Shaped Box heart project. Now we’re done with the fetch quest, right? Right? Not at all. Now the good doctor tells us we’re lacking but one more element to make the heart work, the element of surprise. Can I state for the record that I for one am not surprised at this turn of events? Oh, it must be that mad GAMER POWA at work again, go me! With a heavy sigh, Junior and the others head out to find the element of surprise Dr. Finkelstein so desires. According to the doctor, Mister Mayor will know right where it is, so let’s get moving, people.
But while our lads are trudging around the town square pouting that they’re being sent on yet another time-wasting quest, let’s check in with Lock, Shock, and Barrel and their burlap-bag buddy, Oogie Boogie. Oogie Boogie chortles in that down home way as the kids spill the beans on what they’ve seen. He must have that heart! Then all the Heartless will be under his frayed-at-the-edges and slightly mildewed control! Lock, Shock, and Barrel cower in the corner – a wise thing to do when a huge burlap bag full of creepy-crawly bugs gets up and walks around threatening to eat you. And with that, the scene ends. You know, I almost feel sorry for the little tykes just now. Almost.
To find Mister Mayor, Junior and the others fight their back to the Graveyard, in search of our two-faced civil servant and his element of surprise. Instead, we find more Heartless baddies to wallop and the huge stone coffin that once held Lock, Shock, and Barrel. Examining the coffin earns us little trip to another part of the Graveyard, where behind the biggest damned pumpkin I’ve ever seen Mister Mayor has us partake in a happy little mini-game involving short-term memory recall and ghosties. What you have to do is remember which order the ghosties fly out from their tombstones, then target the correct tombstones with the cursor afterwards. Junior manages to get it right on the second go, and I would like to stress that it had nothing at all to do with my state of inebriation at the time of play-through or my crappy short-term memory, no, it was all Junior’s fault. Oh, okay, fine. We’ll blame it on the game camera. Happy now?
Mister Mayor delights in our completion of the Ghostie Memory Challenge, and tells us to go check the huge pumpkin, which has exploded all over the place. Inside the pumpkin is a special treasure box. I know it’s special because it has a special glowy aura surrounding it, and you just don’t get much more special than that without some dude in a hot pink shirt shouting “Fabulous!” in your ear at top volume. Inside the treasure box is the Jack-in-the-Box, which embodies our element of surprise. That’s got to be the cheesiest damned embodiment of surprise I’ve ever seen in my life. Why couldn’t it be something cool, like oh, I don’t know, like a note of apology for including Tightass and Junior in the same game? Oh, never mind. Let’s just go back to Dr. Finkelstein’s lab and get this over with already.
Back in the lab, Dr. Finkelstein incorporates the Jack-in-the-Box into the Heart-Shaped Box, stating that now the heart is indeed complete. Rather than ask Jack to carry it over to the Spermy-Ghost Heartless Control Device, Dr. Finkelstein wheels his way across the room to do it himself. Unfortunately, he never quite makes it, since Barrel, hiding with his bratty buddies, lies in wait so he can throw himself down upon the floor of the lab like a large, blobby speed bump. His ruse works, and the Heart-Shaped Box goes flying into the air from Dr. Finkelstein’s unsteady hands straight into the greedy mitts of Lock and Shock, who hightail it out of the lab to Oogie Boogie’s place with Barrel lumbering behind them. Junior and the others lose sight of Lock, Shock, and Barrel out in Guillotine Square, but Jack sends Zero on their trail.
So now we’re on the hunt for the Heart-Shaped Box and the whereabouts of Oogie Boogie’s Old Time Bar-b-Cue Manor, where the baby-back ribs are the house specialty. Once we’re back inside the Graveyard, Zero points the way to the Curly Hill, and we get to see a little FVM of Lock, Shock, and Barrel heading up the hill in a walking bathtub. For some reason the walking bathtub reminds me of my dog Bouchi, so you get a nice little screen-cap that really doesn’t have much more comic value than the fact that I thought it was cute.