The first of the Lizalfos leaps toward Twink, brandishing a dagger and shrieking like Shion at her annual performance review meeting. As usual, Twink fails at swordplay and pays for it in several stab wounds in his butt. And a few more from the second Lizalfos. Man, I should just go back to playing Lunar or Xenosaga or some other game I can’t possibly fuck up.
The next room is a large, bluish cavern with lots of twisty pathways. Behind a bombed-out wall and door lies a Dicku Scrub with overpriced Dicku Sticks to sell to Twink, who already has the max of twenty. Fuck you, Dicku Scrub. As for the rest of the room, it is populated with full-size Dodongos. Alas, the Big Dongs are not as simple to kill as their baby brothers. Like their triceratops-like ancestors (or descendants, depending on how committed you are to wanking Zelda timelines) from the original NES game, they are impregnable from the outside, and can only be destroyed if they are stupid enough to swallow an exploding bomb. Which, of course, they are. God only knows what would happen to Twink if he came upon a creature that didn’t have some kind of easily exploitable flaw. Why, it’s almost like this dungeon is designed for Twink to succeed!
After killing every dumbass Big Dong in the room, Twink uses one of his precious Dicku Sticks to light all the torches in the cave and open up the door to the next area. And in here is nothing but a floor switch and an opening back into the main chamber of the dungeon, except that Twink is now a few feet above the ledge. The switch opens a door across the way, on the other side of the giant Dodongo skull. So everything Twink has done in this dungeon so far was to open one door. I am trying to come up with the right words to express how fucking asinine I think this is, but I should tell you I just hit the twenty-seventh page of this recap and I am fresh out of witticisms. So I am going to get up for a moment, mix myself a martini, and yell at the wall.
Ah. Better.
Okay. Twink drops back down to the main level and makes his way across the room, hoping the Dodongo skull won’t come to life and eat him as he passes. On the other side, Twink finds both the dungeon map and a Dicku Scrub willing to sell him a new Dicku Shield for fifty Rupees. What do I look like, some two-shield needing sucker? Pass. Twink laughs at the Scrub and takes off for the newly-opened door.
The next room has a buttload of Bomb Flowers, lined up neatly around a rectangular block of stone and dirt. Twink is intrigued, but there’s first a bomb wall to be, uh, bombed. Defeating the Armhos in the adjoining room nets Twink the Comp Ass, and then it’s back to the Bomb Flower room.
Twink now notices, with his new perspective on the room, that there is a small, perfectly bomb-sized gap in the row of Bomb Flowers, right at the center of the structure opposite the door. Plucking the Bomb Flower next to the door (the same one he used to blow up the wall), he places the bomb in the gap and watches the ensuing explosions with giddy ADD delight. The domino effect of the bombs sends the block structure crashing down, creating a perfect staircase. I’m sitting here wondering how many times this little puzzle got accidentally set off by some careless Goron, and how it possibly could have been reset afterward. But don’t mind me; I’m just still crabby about that door switch thing.
Up the stairs and some wooden catwalks, Twink finds some spiderwebs and gleefully dispatches two spiders, of the Gold-Assed and Skullfaced variety. Then it’s through another door to a room with some Arhmos and flaming bats. Hey, remember how that Dicku Scrub a few rooms ago offered to sell Twink a new shield? And Twink laughed in his face? Well, guess who just got his shield torched! And guess who isn’t bothering to go back and get a new one! Hint: his favorite color is green and he doesn’t like girls. Time to equip the Hylian Turtle Shell.
Now, to deal with the room itself. The gist is that of the Armhos is standing in front of a ladder leading up a pillar with a switch on top of it. All Twink has to do is get that Armhos out of the way. The funny thing is, while every other Armhos in the room is a live, attacking one, the one in front of the ladder is just a statue, so Twink could move it without fighting anything. This does not, however, stop me from having a serious DURR!!! moment and killing them all before even examining the one in front of the ladder. This game is rotting my brain.
The switch opens the next door, which leads to a wooden suspension bridge going back to the other side of the cavern again. I’m going to ignore the obvious “wooden bridge in fire dungeon” issue, because duh, I just let a fucking bat turn Twink’s shield into cinders and I’m in no position to point fingers on this one.
Do you want my honest opinion?
Next room. Twink climbs down a ladder into a maze-like area with blade traps zinging through the passages. Naggy provides her usual brand of “help” here, but at least she has the decency to bug Twink with this before he’s trying to run past a blade trap, as I would have been very unsurprised if she let him get hit with one just so she could yap at him about how not to get hit.
Eventually Twink gets past the traps and makes it to a ladder leading up to a bombable wall. But the Bomb Flower to be used is on a platform several feet away, which means Twink must time his bomb throw. This leads to at least five minutes’ worth of bad bomb throws, accidental falls off the platform with the bomb (and subsequent collisions with blade traps), and general shoddy gameplay by yours truly. And this one I can’t blame on being “rusty,” because I know fully well that I sucked at getting this right before. Eventually, though, Twink’s throw is true, and he can proceed past the rubble and down the hallway. From there he must Schlongshot an eyeball emblem on the wall to put out a flaming platform, kill a couple Mini-Dongs, and then it’s on to the next titillating challenge. Or it’s on to another Lizalfos fight. This is about as fun as loading my dishwasher.
Another corridor requires Twink to put out two more fires with the Schlongshot before he can get to the room with the Big Treasure. Like that’s much of an obstacle, given that Twink already had to do it once. Using the Sclongshot is pretty much automatic, as long as the target isn’t moving, there are no time limits, there is no money involved and nobody is watching me. I mean–pfft! This is kid stuff!
The Big Treasure here in Dodongo’s Cavern turns out to be, in a shocking twist, the Bomb Bag. “This bomb-holding bag,” duhs the Disembodied Item Describer, “is made from a Dodongo’s stomach!” It also already contains twenty bombs, which is nice. I kind of wonder why the Gorons would need this item, given that there are sufficient Bomb Flowers around here that they wouldn’t need to carry extra bombs on their persons. But Twink needs it, and as this place clearly only exists so Twink can have a convenient dungeon to crawl through, plot cohesiveness be damned, I can’t really get worked up about it.
And now Twink works his way back to the highest level of the main chamber. After hitting another floor switch, one of the moving platforms down at the bottom begins to rise all the way to Twink’s level. A tablet next to the switch reads: “Giant dead Dodongo…when it sees red, a new way to go will be open.” So to get into the rooms behind the Dodongo skull, in their own mine, the Gorons had to go through this whole process? They’re even dumber than I thought–or, at least, their engineers are.
Twink runs over to another wooden suspension bridge that hangs directly over the Dodongo skull. There are two holes in the bridge, right over the skull’s eye sockets. Handy. Twink dutifully drops a bomb into each socket; each socket emits a red glow following the explosion. I don’t know how they’re staying lit. Wizard magic, I can only assume. The same Wizard magic drops the jaw of the skull, allowing Twink passage to the rest of the cavern. Though he is not loving the thought of walking down that Dodongo’s throat.
Between Twink and the boss lies a highly irritating and time-consuming block puzzle, but it is not in any way unique or interesting in its tedium, so let’s just say Twink did it, yay, and move on.
Ha! Good one, game!
Finally, Twink is in the last room of the dungeon, a mostly empty room with only an obviously bombable rock patch in the floor and a small treasure chest containing some bombs. Once our boy’s got his bombs, bottled fairy, and sword at the ready, he bombs the floor and drops through the hole into the boss chamber. The fall would probably kill him normally, but since we can’t have that right before a boss fight, he is completely unharmed. I know I shouldn’t really expect any sort of realism from this game, but this dungeon has just been beyond ridiculous.
The boss chamber is a large, open area with a lava lake in the middle of the floor and some convenient heart pots all along the walls. The boss stomps up to Twink, all business, and we see him from its point of view, goggling at it in terror, and I half-expect to find out it’s a forty-foot naked Saria. But it’s about as scary: it is “Infernal Dinosaur KING DODONGO.” If you want to know what an Infernal Dinosaur looks like, to me it most resembles Godzilla in the truly terrible Matthew Broderick Godzilla movie. It roars at Twink for even thinking of associating it with that piece of crap vehicle.
King Dong starts out the encounter by lumbering slowly around the lava after Twink. After a moment of pursuit, it stops dead in its tracks and opens its mouth, blowjob-style. Great idea, King Dong–instead of just eating this little runt, you should passively open your mouth and hope he won’t throw something flammable down your throat. Maybe I’m not giving the poor Gorons enough credit. The longer I’m here, the more I think that smoke ring around Death Mountain is some kind of airborne Idiot Plague.
Hi, Shion!
It takes about ninety seconds to kill this depressingly stupid creature. Bomb, throw, explode, stab, hide under Hylian Turtle Shell, repeat, done. Even I couldn’t screw this up (though I did my best). King Dong summons the last of his energy to roll up into a ball and slink into the lava, which may be its version of running into its bedroom, turning off all the lights and crying as “Had a Bad Day” plays on repeat on the stereo. Of course, doing the latter generally isn’t going to kill you, even if it maybe should. The lava around King Dong’s corpse hardens and cools in about three seconds flat. Again, handy. Twink has had quite enough of this place, so he wastes no time in grabbing the Ass Container and teleporting the hell out.
Waiting for Twink at the front of the cavern–or, more accurately, dropping down from above the cavern and nearly crushing Twink–is Darunia. He beats his chest in a very manly fashion, before beating Twink senseless with a few congratulatory pats on the head. Sigh. Darunia is really Twink’s best prospect so far, but he needs to be a little more…gentle.
Exactly what you deserve.
Darunia thanks Twink for hooking up the mad rock culinary connection again, adding, “What a wild adventure! It will make an incredible story…” No, Darunia, I can assure you that it won’t. Darunia takes a moment here to repeat the whole “Ganondorf made the Dodongos appear and blocked our cave entrance, even though doing one of those things would have sufficed” plot point, making me desperately want to plow my head through a wall. He goes on, “[Ganondorf] said, ‘Give me the Spiritual Stone! Only then will I open the cave for you!‘” But Twink is different because he went out of his way to help the Gorons with their stupid problems, and for no personal gain! Well, except for the Spiritual Stone. So hand it over, jerkass.
‘It’s HUGE!’
“Kid, I like you! How’s about you and I become Sworn Brothers?!” Darunia exclaims. We get no shot of Twink’s reaction, but I’m sure he’s blushing bashfully and thinking weird, deviant thoughts. These thoughts only tangentially involve the sparkling Goron’s Ruby, but that’s what Darunia gives Twink in honor of their new relationship. Okay, he says “friendship,” but I’m saying “relationship.” Twink/Darunia OTP! (It’s better than Twink/Zelda, so there!)
I know what he means.
After Darunia lovingly hands Twink the Spiritual Stone, he says that Twink should go visit the Great Fairy living at the top of the mountain. He mentions that the Great Fairy is a girl, but apparently she’ll give Twink rockin’ new powers, so he can tolerate it. And then Twink finds out that his new man apparently wants to pass him around like the Whore of Death Mountain, because several more Gorons drop down to the cavern entrance, threatening Twink with big naked Goron hugs. Twink definitely does not have the constitution to withstand a Goron orgy, and bolts, screaming, before they can start pawing him.
And here I will stop, because I think you’ll all agree that I’ve written enough for now. Jeanne will take you through part three and Twink’s encounters with a Great Fairy, a naked blue girlfriend and a bloated fish god. Sounds like a blast!