Part 20: Snowcap Mountain and Saturn Valley
When you try to leave the Murasaki Forest, you bump into The Squeekz, who says “Squeak squeak (Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold it right there! Just where do you think YOU’RE goin’?!)” and initiates a battle with you.
When you effortlessly defeat him, The Squeekz says, “Squeak squeak squeak squeak. (I humbly apologize for my rude, egotistical attitude, despite being so weak. Back on the highway, I was known as the hippest cat around, but now I’m just a pathetic excuse of a mouse. All the girls dug me, but I’m definitely no fighter. But you helped me remember who I really am. I wonder if my wife and seven kids I left on the highway are doing okay… Whoa, I’m suddenly feelin’ homesick now! I’m goin’ back… Yeah, I’m goin’ back. Anyway, dude! I’m headin’ back home now, but watch out for them mole crickets if you keep goin’ east. Again, so sorry!)” This had no purpose other than to make you laugh. If you go back to the highway, you will find The Squeekz and his wife reunited.
You then bump into a mole cricket who says, “Whoa whoa whoa! So you kept true to your promise and finally came to the Mole Cricket Hole, huh?! It’s me! It’s me! Don’t you recognize me?! I’m the mole cricket you fought at Alec’s place when you were play-fighting with the Dragos as a little kid! I’ve been training for this day all these years! Okay, let’s go! The time to battle has come! Follow me!” Do you remember the Mole Cricket from Part 1? I guess he’s okay after getting stepped on.
When you follow him to the hole, he says,
“Heh heh heh. Here it is. This is where you and me are gonna fight it out. This is where my hand’ll be raised into the air when I’m declared the winner. And this is also where you’re gonna hit the ground with a thud. This is the place! Mole Cricket Hole!”
Watch the difficult and arduous fight between Lucas, Kumatora, and Boney against the Mole Cricket:
After a hard-fought victory against the Mole Cricket, he offers an alliance with Lucas and friends. Kumatora asks where the next Needle might be, but he says mole crickets don’t know anything about it, completely amazed that there’s still so much more to learn about the world. The only advice he can give is that the hole leads to a mountain where they can search for it. Another mole cricket hands you an “unbelievably accurate yet completely useless map” of the Mole Cricket Hole:
There are multiple levels of this hole, but this map shows each level at once, rendering it useless.
After finding your way out of the annoying maze, Lucas comes out of the hole to Snowcap Mountain, where you have to defend against Chilly Dogs and Ten-Yedis. There are also sentient snowmen around, who say Lydia made them, and that they all love him.
The Mole Cricket you just defeated catches up to you and offers to sell some equipment for your journey. Since fighting apparently isn’t their strength, they are now starting a business chain all over the Nowhere Islands.
At the top of the mountain, you come across Lydia and his house. Inside, there’s a Pigmask sleeping in his bed; Lydia says that the Pigmask was found unconscious, separated from his troop. As you might be noticing, the Magypsies are proving to be quite sympathetic individuals, as Alec had promised. Doria saved Kumatora’s life, and Lydia is saving this Pigmask’s life. Despite their quirks, they are kindhearted people.
Lydia says that he never expected “the time” to come, but informs Lucas that his Needle is right behind the house. But right as Lucas exits…
Someone is already pulling the Needle! The earth quakes, the sky changes color, and smoke bursts from the ground. When Lucas approaches whoever pulled the Needle, they both take deep stares into each other’s eyes, feeling a psychic sensation. The Masked Man, without saying a word, flies away and leaves you to fight a boss Chimera: the Steel Mechorilla.
I quite like the song that plays when you fight this boss. It’s reused from the Forlorn Junk Heap and Almost-Mecha-Lion fights, but it has its own little twists throughout. I believed the original song, Wasteful Anthem, was a pretty generic “big strong boss” song, but this song has short interruptions that make it more memorable. While you are fighting against a giant gorilla with wrecking ball hands, it is still a gorilla – a silly monkey. You could say this song itself is a Chimera between artificial toughness and natural character. It’s not cohesive with itself – part of the song is telling you you’re fighting a metal monster, but the other part tells you you’re fighting an innocent animal. As stated in Part 0, battle music is remixed to make it harder to play along the beat, and I believe this song was remixed in a very creative way to make it more challenging.
After you defeat the Steel Mechorilla, Lydia runs out to inspect what happened, telling Lucas he needs to be the one who pulls the remaining Needles. The Masked Man has pulled two so far and Lucas has only pulled one; whoever pulls more Needles will have his heart passed on to the Dark Dragon. To leave Snowcap Mountain, Lydia tells you to ride a white box down the mountain, and he fades away. When you ride inside the white box, you slide down a ramp and are flung up into the sky, where you land back in Tazmily’s graveyard.
Next to where you landed, there is a bottle with a letter inside it. The letter reads in a funny-looking font, “THIS WAY.” One of the graves reveal the secret entrance that Fassad used. Further in, you find a funny-looking coffee table with a letter that says in a funny-looking font, “ATTACKED. VERY BAD. COME TO THUNDER AREA. THANKS THANKS.” If you get on the coffee table, it neighs like a horse and starts running at the speed of a Pork Bean. You can ride it on the highway all the way over to the lightning area. If you stop by the Dur-T Café again, everyone has used the bathroom, and the man who thought he was in line for a ramen shop is now disappointed.
When you ride down to where Thunder Tower used to be, a new road has opened up! It leads to the wonderfully wacky Saturn Valley. When you go through the cave to get there, there is a funny-looking creature named Mr. Saturn lying down on the ground. He says “WATCHING CEILING.” Mr. Saturn is not just one creature, but an entire species! Mr. Saturns were present in EarthBound as well; they kinda just did their own thing. They have a special way of speaking, which requires its own font to be portrayed accurately. They talk in nonsensical phrases, saying random catchphrases like “BOING!” or “DING!” This is Mother 3 at its silliest. However odd they were, they assisted Dr. Andonuts in the creation of the time machine that saved the world from Giygas in EarthBound. Much like the Magypsies, they are quite strange, but have some undeniably good qualities about them.
The song that plays in Saturn Valley is really goofy. The drums sound bombastic, and the melody sounds silly. This reflects the in-your-face nature of these creatures – Itoi goes all-in with their character. The grand instrumentation can also be seen as how the Mr. Saturns view themselves. They don’t think anything of their speech; to them, they are creatures of a sophisticated caliber.
Pigmasks are currently occupying Saturn Valley, and inside each Mr. Saturn house, the Pigmasks are interrogating them to find where the next Needle is. Their method of interrogation is done by using a robot that automatically generates scary stories to make them cry. The Frightbot is about to begin, “Okay! Here comes the next story! This is going to be scary! So listen good…!” When you interrupt the story, sparing the Mr. Saturns, it fights you along with the Pigmasks who are using it. The Frightbot does nothing to aid them in battle but tell scary stories. The game has a multitude of funny ways to describe their stories:
- “The Frightbot started telling a spine-tingling story.”
- “The Frightbot told a bone-chillingly scary story.”
- “The Frightbot told a story so scary you will want to cover your ears.”
- “The Frightbot told a story so scary you couldn’t help but laugh.”
- “The Frightbot told a bloodcurdling story.”
- “The Frightbot told a story so scary you’ll never go to the bathroom at night again.”
- “The Frightbot told a story so incredibly scary that your teeth won’t stop chattering.”
- “The Frightbot accidentally told a cute, funny story.”
- “The Frightbot told a pants-wettingly scary story.”
- “The Frightbot told a scary story with some deeply touching moments mixed in.”
I love the song that plays inside the houses as the Frightbots terrorize the Mr. Saturns. I don’t like it because it’s audibly pleasing, but because of what it portrays. The song starts with a “spooky” melody, but it gets drowned out by a “horrifying” noise. The thing is, this song isn’t scary in the slightest. In order to be scary, the instruments need to sound disturbing, and the notes they play need to be arranged in an order that evokes fright. This song only meets one of the requirements. This song just plays random notes and expects you to be afraid of it – it’s the equivalent of someone waving their arms around and saying, “boo!” This song is not exactly scary to the listener, but to the Mr. Saturns, it is haunting. What’s scary to them isn’t scary to us, and I bet what’s scary to us isn’t scary to them. These guys have their own very unique perception of things, and I believe this song does a great job at adding to that feeling.
When you defeat the terrifying Frightbots, the Mr. Saturns will thank you for saving them.
“AM RELIEFED.”
“WAS SCARY, BUT NOW UNSCARY.”
“AM HAPPY. AM IN TROUBLE. NO, WAIT. AM HAPPY.”
“SAVED IS GOOD. DING DING.”
In one of the houses, the Mr. Saturns are being hung on clothespins by the singular hair of their head. Somehow, Duster is also mixed in with the crowd!
When you silence the Frightbot and free Duster, he says that the Mr. Saturns rescued him from his fall and that the Egg of Light is safe. Lucas and Kumatora explain the Needles and the Dark Dragon to him, and he rejoins your party. If you talk to the Rope Snake that dropped everyone at the end of Chapter 5, he is now very insecure about himself.
One of the Mr. Saturns tell you that the next Needle is north of the valley inside a volcano. However, the mountain is too solid for Duster’s wall staples to work. Thankfully, the Mr. Saturns form a ladder that you can step over.
This concludes part 20 of the analysis.