January 14, 2014

From “The Lost FAQ” by Carl Woosterson

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Secret of the Dragon Fantasy FAQ v. 3.141592653589793238462643383
for the Nonysoft PlayBox
by zzXXsaiyankillaXXzz
dbzsux@takeiteasy.ntz
© 2004 by Notta Realman

***WARNING***
This FAQ is ª, ©, and ¨ by me, zzXXsaiyankillaXXzz. Any attempt at stealing it will be met with long, whiny protest emails and the submission of offending email accounts to multiple spam retailers. It may only be displayed at:

antisocialart dot com (because all my work is art!)
gamesparkcheatsharkspot dot net (because all the cool FAQs hang out there)

Contact me if you plan on distributing, publishing, spell checking, or otherwise molesting my precious words. Don’t think that I won’t sic the lawyers on your sorry asses for stealing my work that manipulates someone else’s intellectual property for the purposes of cheating!

***Table of Contents***
1. FAQ Title
2. WARNING
3. Table of Contents
4. Revision History
5. Characters
6. Walkthrough
7. Side Quests

***Revision History***
v. 3.141592653589793238462643383
Leetgames hired me to do their official strategy manual, so I reverted to an earlier version and spell-checked it.

v. 3
Lots of little fixes, mostly emoticon-related. o_O

v. 2
Added a Table of Contents, since people were whining that they had no idea what was where. No my fault if you’re too damn lazy to read the whole thing.

v. 1
Added Characters and contact information. I was getting a ton of snail mail from disgruntled FAQ readers wondering where everything other than my snazzy intro is, and the fact that my postal address is so widely known fills me with fear and unease. I am therefore moving and providing an email contact. I have left no forwarding address; those of you who threatened to send bombs and live anthrax will have to make do with sending a virus or ads for gonad enlargers.

Removed the chili con carne recipe.

v. 0
Behold, the almighty act of creation! Yea, tremble as zzXXsaiyankillaXXzz forms order out of the chaos and brings light to the blind! Witness, as he brings forth his greatest creation since that 27-part epic Evanglion fanfic back in 2000! Fear me, mortals, for you shall soon be enthralled to the Dread Lord of the Secret Dragon Fantasy FAQ!

Added the intro, disclaimer, warning, and chili con carne recipe.

***Intro***
So, you want to prepare for your epic journey into the land of Clichea, do you? Well, hold on! Stand back, unsheathe that sword, ready a superpotion, and prepare to dive in headfirst!

Avast ye, ye scurvy sea dogs! There be golden spoilers the likes o’ which ye never seen on your scurvy course.

[Yes, I know that the Intro isn’t in the Table of Contents. It doesn’t need to be, dammit! It’s just an unexpected bonus chance to relish my verbal wit.]

***Walkthrough***
COMING SOON! [I do have a life outside this FAQ, you know. I occasionally play other games, once in a while on other systems!]

***Side Quests***
COMING SOON! [Stop bugging me about this! There is no way to unfreeze the Zarg on level thirteen of the Endless Dungeon! And Carmina stays dead!

***Item List***
COMING SOON! [I do have a full-time fast-food job in addition to hundreds of hours spent zombie-eyed in front of the tube! Hold your horses! And no, you can only find three PrestoDrinks in the whole game. There aren’t any more. I don’t care how many Chitterers you kill.]

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January 13, 2014

From “The Other Superpowers” by Therese Prows-Roup

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#374285

Description: Subject can control streetlights, turning them on or off at will or when suitably distracted or startled. The effects do not extend to any other form of illumination–just streetlamps. Oddly, gaslight lamps are affected where they can be found. In fact, any light installed in a streetlight mounting will be affected provided subject does not witness its installation.

Tactical Uses: Negligible. Subject can, with great concentration, cause the lights to burst or burn out, which may have minor usefulness during certain kinds of night operations.

#125570

Description: Subject can cause localized light rain after ingesting raindrops that they caught themselves. No other form of water, distilled, undistilled, or rain capture, will work: subject must catch drops themselves, though they appear to be able to use a receptacle and store said drops once caught. Depending on the quality and quantity of ingested rainwater, effect will cover anywhere from one square meter to five square kilometers, will begin anywhere from one minute to one hour after ingestion, and will last fifteen minutes to just under two hours.

Tactical Uses: Limited. Rain can sometimes serve as camouflage, distraction, or emergency potable water supply.

#283992

Description: If so inclined, and if allowed to speak at length, subject is capable of inducing temporary depression in listeners. The content of said speech is unimportant, but subjects must be actively listening. Resulting depression lasts anywhere from one hour to one week and is not severe enough to produce bodily harm, only deep discomfort and unease.

Tactical Uses: Nil

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January 12, 2014

From “Costanzo Bros. Bakery, 3:57 PM” by Scoleri “Scud” Callahan

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Detective Montgomery, Vice, met Detective Hanson, Homicide, at the latter’s request. Monty appeared at the Costanzo Bros. Bakery, which was at least as well known for being a front to the local Cosa Nostra mobsters as for making the best jelly donuts in the city.

Hanson was leaned against the counter, which was empty; Monty slapped down a five and took a few choice selections off the fresh donut tray.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said Hanson drily.

“They can keep the change,” said Monty. “So what did you call me here for? You know the chief doesn’t like us buying donuts at Costanzo Bros., even if they are the best.”

“You remember a kid called Remo Aiolfi?” Hanson said. “Twenties, dropout, mellow to the point he probably took Ambien to wake up? Kid was baked, and baked hard.”

“Yeah, I remember him,” said Monty. “Kid was busted multiple times for pot, always was able to slip the charge or get it knocked down to community service. Don Colombera’s boys used him as a bagman, didn’t they?”

“My snitches have it on good authority that the kid was playing both sides, letting Don Anselmetti have a taste occasionally or selling him information,” Hanson said.

“Boy must have been toked to try something like that.” Monty took a meaty bite of a jelly donut, splattering filling all over the place. “God, this isn’t the Costanzos’ best batch, is it?”

Hanson shrugged. “That’s probably why Remo Aiolfi turned up dead,” he said. “Maybe the Colomberas did it, maybe the Anselmettis, maybe they both decided it would be better for business if he went away.”

“I’ll say,” Monty agreed through a faceful of donut. “How’d they off him?”

“Best as we can tell, they put him through a wood chipper and used him as a filler in the Costanzos’ latest batch.”

Monty stopped chewing, held out his donut at an arm’s length, and paled visibly.

“I told you the kid was baked, and baked hard,” Hanson said. “What did you think I meant?”

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January 11, 2014

From “Apocalypse of an Alien God” by Chester Sjusti

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“Commander!”

Soderquist sighed and reached for the headset on his ansible. “Is that you, Karlsson?” he said.

“Yes, it’s me. Something…something’s happened on Xyvatba!”

Xyvatba. Pronouncing the name was enough to generate a headache measurable on the Richter scale, and the thought of dealing with its indigenous Xusargt inhabitants was enough for another. Of all the species in the universe whose biochemistry was similar enough to humans’ to make communication possible, they had to be the most irritating.

“Let me guess,” said Soderquist. “You lost another translator unit to religious fanatics who think that communicating with artificial spores violates some deeply-held tenet of their religion.” The Xursargt, who had evolved from a long series of vaguely fungoid creatures in symbiosis with ambulatory herbivores, communicated entirely with modified spores that were released into the ambient environment.

“Sir, I think-” Karlsson sounded more panicked than normal, but he tended to call for support from Soderquist at the sector level every time the Xusargt secreted spore-impregnated psuedo-mucus on him (even though he had been assured that it was sterile and a form of endearment).

“Or did they start preaching at you again? Trying to secrete the sacred spores of Ebzhyna in your direction and not taking no for an answer?” Soderquist snorted derisively. Ridiculous superstitions like that had been proscribed on Earth for centuries now, a fact the commender thanked his lucky stars for (just as a figure of speech, since actually appealing to any stars, lucky or not, would be illegal).

But that fact made species like the Xursargt all the more anxious to proselytize. Their spores largely fell on deaf mechanical receptors, though an anthropology team–which Karlsson served as a liaison and security chief–had cataloged the Xusargt belief system in nauseating detail. Soderquist had reviewed their reports in the course of his duties, about Ebzhyna the Merciful and Loving, the Great Spore who Reigns on High with Barigt the Sporefather, he of the Redeeming Spores who would one day return to assume His true believers heavenward as clouds of pure and holy spores.

If he never had to read about it again, it would be too soon.

“Commander-!”

“Spit it out then, Karlsson,” said Soderquist.

“They’re gone, sir,” Karlsson said. “All gone! Our Xursargt escort turned to spores and vanished, and now dark bloodspores are raining from the heavens! There are earthquakes, and the men have been reporting a glowing Xursargt approaching our position! What should we do?”

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January 10, 2014

From “Behind the 8-Bit” by Deni Tonn

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This post is part of the January 2014 Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s prompt is “Retro Gaming Icons”

NARRATOR: It all began with an idea.

[DR. JOHN CARLTRON, Distinguished Emeritus Chair of Interactive Media History at Southern Michigan University, appears in an excerpt from an interview]

DR. CARLTRON: The name of the Musjido Co., Ltd. has long been the subject of speculation; the official company line is that it is a contraction of the Romanji phrase “Musekinin-Jigoku-do,” roughly “let the irresponsible ones be banished to hell.” Reportedly coined in response to the firing of Musjido’s first batch of employees for laziness, the name stuck. The company was a small regional developer of pachinko machines before the war, and it entered the lucrative home arcade market in January 1984 with its “Home Electronic Pachinko Computing Engine.” Retooled as a cartridge-based game system for a worldwide release, the redubbed Musjido Multimedia System (MMS) was an astonishing success.

NARRATOR: For the 30th anniversary of the Musjido MMS, Kyoto Processed Ricepaper Concerns Films (in association with Liberty Pictures) presents Behind the 8 Bits: a documentary event reuniting Musjido employees, fans, stars, and more.

[ROBERTO, star of Musjido’s breakout hit Roberto’s Adventure, appears in an excerpt from an interview]

ROBERTO: But-a moreso than the-a fame, it’s-a really the-a memories that-a I cherish. For-a my first title on-a the-a MMS, I had-a to punch salamanders on-a my way to-a fighting Yukke the-a Salamander King. I still-a remember screaming when I got-a their slime all-a over my gloves the-a first time!

[The scene shifts to footage from Roberto’s Adventure while ROBERTO continues to speak. Highlights include Zone 1-1, fighting Yukke in Zone 8-8, and dying in multiple ways to 8-bit salamander attacks]

ROBERTO: You would-a think that-a my fondest memory would-a be punching Yukke into-a the lava for the first-a time. But-a no, it-a is still the-a first salamander I punched. It’s-a been 30 years, and-a I’ve punched millions more-a, but you never-a forget your first.

[MONDO MAN, cyborg star of the multi-platinum Mondo Man series from Rockcom, appears in an excerpt from an interview]

MONDO MAN: Before the release of the MMS, Rockcom only made arcade games. End of line. But the success of the platform led to them starting the series with me. End of line. The original game was programmed by three college kids, but it’s still the template for all games of the same sort ever since! End of line.

[The scene shifts to a montage of Mondo Man gameplay, mostly from Mondo Man 2. Clips include the legendary spike drop in Spike Man’s stage, the notoriously difficult block-jumping segment of Lava Man’s stage, and a montage of 10 different ways to die in the first Doctor Vile stage]

MONDO MAN: How do you choose a moment that stands out from the MMS era, with ten games in ten years? End of line. I could mention the fight against Mushroom Man in Mondo Man 6 or the introduction of the dash mechanic in Mondo Man 4, or even the Mondo Jet I was able to ride in Mondo Man 5 through Mondo Man 10. End of line. I can only say that each time I defeated ten evil cyborgs, unmasked the villain to be Doctor Vile in disguise, and demolished his Vile Fortress, it felt like the very first time. End of line. I’ll always be grateful to Musjido and the MMS for giving me the chance to shine before my developer all but abandoned me. End of line.

[More clips of interviews and gameplay continue to scroll silently in the background, including F’SCOT from Fitzgerald’s Quest, AREOLUS from Subterranoid, and FIGHTER/MAGE from Dragon Fantasy I]

NARRATOR: Behind the 8 Bits, coming this fall from Kyoto Processed Ricepaper Concerns Films in association with Liberty Pictures.

Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own responses:

Ralph Pines
meowzbark
pyrosama
Anarchic Q
AndreF
MsLaylaCakes

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January 9, 2014

From “Lead by Red LED” by J. Salvatore Falkner

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“Russ! Hey Russ!” Jordan poked his friend and classmate across their table. “Check out the girl waiting for her latte.”

Russell put down his book and looked up. Sure enough, there was a brunette there waiting for an expensive coffee-based drink. “Yeah, so what? She’s kind of cute, but so is half of the line. That’s just how Stubb’s Coffee is.”

“No, no,” whispered Jordan. “Her coat, look at her coat!”

Russel didn’t see anything strange about the girl’s coat, a standard designer affair that looked trendy but couldn’t have held off the bitter cold very well. “It’s a coat,” he said drily. “Definitely a coat.”

“The light, the light!”

There was, Russell could see, an LED-sized red light shining at the bottom of the young lady’s coat, near where the zipper started. It didn’t correspond with any pockets–the jacket didn’t have pockets, it was too trendy for that–and the material was too thick to let light bleed through.

“I’ll be damned, there is a light on her jacket,” he said.

“What do you think it is?” hissed Jordan excitedly.

“Jordan, it’s 2014. It’s the future. Marty McFly gets here from 1985 last year. Everything has a light on it. Could be a USB heating jacket that’s almost out of charge.”

“Oh,” said Jordan, a little crestfallen. “Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

Unseen by either of them, the lady collected her latte and left, slipping around a corner. “What is it?” she cried into her communicator, concealed in what appeared to be a normal jacket. “Couldn’t whatever message you have wait until I wasn’t in public?”

“You’ve been found out,” was the only reply. “It’s time to cut you loose.

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January 8, 2014

From “The Irksome Conspiracy” by Sipriano McCroskey

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“Okay, our target is leaving the house,” said Central Control. “What have you got for me?”

A pause on the frequency. “We can have a furniture truck that takes up half the road and putters through intersections to make him miss the light on Stephens Drive in two minutes,” said the operative from Traffic.

“Excellent. Do it. Okay, that gets us to Van Buren Avenue,” Central Control said. “We need something on Van Buren before he turns onto Grizzly Drive.”

“Car accident?” said an operative from Disasters.

“Negative. We don’t have any agents there in civilian cars,” said the Traffic operative. “All we have is a groundskeeping crew.”

“Excellent!” cried Central Control, loudly enough that the transmission broke up into static for a moment. “Have them close off a lane.”

“Central?” said Traffic. “A lane? Groundskeepers?”

“If anyone asks, they’re mowing the lawn.”

“But you don’t have to close a lane to mow the grass.”

“Lanes have been closed for less,” said Central. “And the point of the exercise is to annoy the target and make them late for work, not to make sense. You do it, and you do it now.”

“Done.”

“What next. Disasters?”

“We have a few cyclists and pedestrians that can jump out in front of their car on Grizzly Drive, and some motorists standing by who can back out really, really slowly. Not much more than that, not with this short notice.”

“Do it. All to gain time for our big finisher, you see.” Central chuckled slightly. “Construction? What have you got?”

“Oh, it’s a beauty, Central,” said the Construction operative in a heavy–but well-pleased–smoker’s voice. “We got a road closed to ‘replace pipes’ on Grizzly just before the turn the target needs to make.”

“Replace the pipes?”

“Wouldn’t you know it, they’re digging in the wrong place,” laughed Construction. “Oh, and there’s no side street that gets around the blockage. The target will have to go back to Van Buren and take the long way around.”

“Excellent. Great work!” crowed Central.

“Oh, that’s not the best of it. The target’s usual parking lot is closed for construction as well–we’ll think of some excuse–and the other lots are all full. The only one with any spaces is a 10-minute drive away, and Traffic has cunningly lain in several motorcycles in full size spots and people parked across the lines to make notionally free spots unusable.”

“Brilliant,” said Central, voice crackling with approval. “There might even be a promotion in it for you.”

“Just doing my job.”

It was hard work, cutting together a conspiracy to infest a target’s life with tiny annoyances. Death by a thousand cuts…a fitting punishment for someone who had dared to tailgate and then cut off the leader of the Illuminati in his blood-red Firebird near Indianapolis.

There was still more work to be done, however. “Hello, Flights of Birds?” Central said into the radio. “How many incontinent seagulls can you have on station, and how soon?”

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January 7, 2014

From “Watching and Remembering” by Kira Palka

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I was ready to march up to the offending car to give it a piece of my mind.

My guide pulled me back. “Let it go.”

“But you saw what they did! I just-”

“Let it go,” he repeated. “Do you know whose car that was?”

I shook my head.

“President Mbudye Dawacadu. Leader of the Republic of Luba for the last thirteen years.”

I gasped and took a fresh look at the car as it rolled through the stoplight. “That? It’s not even a limousine.”

“No, it’s not,” my guide replied. “It’s bulletproof and bombproof, but you’d never know that to look at it. President Dawacadu enjoys driving throughout his country incognito, sometimes behind the wheel himself.”

“Why? Why would anyone, much less a dictator, go out with no security?”

“Do you know how Dawacadu came to power?” my guide asked.

“No clue,” I replied.

“Before him, the country was ruled by President Waran Kunyakua, who took over during the Cold War by executing the democratically elected Communist in office. Kunyakua was a big, boisterous man, and he put statues of himself up everywhere and renamed streets after his family members.”

“And Dawacadu was one of his soldiers?”

“No. He was a professor of economics at the University of Luba. He was also a writer of some note, and he wrote an essay praising the new regime which was carried in the newspapers. President Kunyakua liked it so much that he made him a minister in his new government.”

“And then he overthrew him?”

“No. Dawacadu became Kunyakua’s most loyal man. He did as he was asked without question and with great efficiency, from having political opponents jailed and murdered to emptying the slums in the way of government railway projects. But he learned, always watching and remembering.”

“So?”

“Eventually, Kunyakua’s megalomania got the better of him and he began to lose supporters at home and abroad. When the end came for him, Dawacedu was in the presidential palace within a week. Why? He watched, and he remembered. There was blackmail for some, bribery for others, but before the year was out all the dangerous men were dead and all the trustworthy dogs had bones in their mouths.”

The car’s taillights had faded to points of light in the distance. “That doesn’t sound all that different from the other guy.”

“Does it? There are no posters, no statues. Most people would be hard-pressed to pick the president out of a police lineup. He watched, and he remembered: statues and grandiosity bring unwanted attention. What Luba needs is someone to dirty their hands to drag the country kicking and screaming into the present.”

I chose my next words carefully. “It almost sounds like you admire him,” I said.

“My cousin is dead because the president saw him spraypainting graffiti on one of his drives. And our national parks are patrolled by men with machine guns who keep the poachers at bay and the animals safe. I admire him and loathe him in the same breath.”

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January 6, 2014

From “The Run on the Organic Aisle” by Lila-Jenny Swanson II

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HOPEWELL, MI – The Hopewell Democrat-Tribune has been receiving reports since yesterday of shortages at supermarkets and groceries in and around the city of Hopewell and the Southern Michigan University campus. With Winter Storm Hoth approaching and promising 10-16 inches of snowfall on top of the existing six inches, the Democrat-Tribune set out to confirm these reports.

“It’s a madhouse,” says Peace Waterlily, owner and proprietor of Peace Market on east Adams St. “We have been out of non-homogenized, organic, local milk since yesterday–people were coming in and buying 3-4 gallons at a time! When we ran out, they even bought the homogenized, organic, local milk until we ran out of that as well.”

Speaking on condition of anonymity, produce managers from many other stores agree that they have seen a run on organic milk in the run-up to Winter Storm Hoth.

“Not just organic milk, either,” said one such source. “We are completely out of locally-sourced free-range rBGH- and rBST-free beef. People are absolutely panicked that the storm will cut them off from their supplies of organic foods, and they’ve been voting with their feet and their wallets.”

Another source adds: “We’re out of soy, we’re down to the dregs of our tofu, and our hemp oil pills have a waiting list. Fair trade coffee? Forget about it–we’ve been out of that for two days.”

In fact, after a visit to several stores in Hopewell and near the SMU campus, Democrat-Tribune reporters found perilously-low stocks of all organic, fair-trade, local, and ethically-sourced foods. A concerted search of the largest such store in town, the Hole Foods Market on Estate St., turned up bare shelves and empty racks in the ethical aisles and freezers. A few cans of free-range local creamed eels, a few of vegan soy substitute wadded beef, and a lone carton of organic fair-trade corn nog are all that remain. The only pita bread is expired and has been trampled on.

An angry mob of shoppers formed outside the One World Market once news broke of the shortages inside. “I need kelp and gluten-free unleavened bread for my paleo-diet! Where am I supposed to get them if everyone is out?” cried one shopper who declined to be identified. Some shoppers were reportedly so desperate that they purchased products that were only partially organic, or which were not local, though the Democrat-Tribune was unable to confirm these reports at press time.

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January 5, 2014

From “Home of the MAC Champions (Kind Of, Sort Of, Not Really)” by Darell M. S. Sellers

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“I’d like the billboard to read ‘Southern Michigan University: Home of MAC Champions’ with a picture of one of the SMU Fighting Grizzlies from each of the most popular teams. You know, football, baseball, basketball. Have one of them be a woman, but don’t put one of those girly sports like field hockey up there unless you want to get ready to clean out your desk.”

“But sir, the Fighting Grizzlies haven’t won a national championship since 1977, and even that was just the track and field team which was disbanded in 2003. Other than that, the only thing we have that’s close to a Mid-American Conference champion is the 1966 team. And they lost to the champion, with only that big cash-for-amateur-athletes scandal at the champion’s school leading to their championship being voided 10 years later.”

“A championship is a championship.”

“Fine, but how can we justify such a misleading billboard?”

“How many members of the Southern Michigan University Championship Team from 1966 still live in Hopewell?”

“I’m pretty sure most of them are dead, but I think Bill McAllister is at one of our nursing homes with senile dementia, and I know that even though they lived their entire lives elsewhere, two more players are buried at Hopewell Cemetery.”

“Perfect! That’s good enough. Have a galley of that advertisement for the billboard on my desk by Friday.”

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