A look back at: Pokemon Dark Rising: Order Destroyed

I think this will be the only time ever in which I have actually managed to finish two ROM hacks in a single week's worth of time. I know I finished Mega Power 4 days ago, and started Dark Rising: Order Destroyed, but honestly I didn't expect to finish with this ROM hack in literally only three days. That's a first when it comes to overall Pokemon ROM hack length.

But the gameplay of Order Destroyed is so much different that it encourages speedy play. I've heard of the Nuzlocke challenge, which I never bothered with because I'm a casual. The gameplay of Order Destroyed is somewhat like it, but not quite. The "faint = dead" rule is in play, but that seems to be the only real Nuzlocke rule. The other rules are that you must find Pokemon in certain places, and the worst thing is that there's only seven total (one of which is traded for another anyways), and also there's next to no place to do a full heal of the entire team. The only places this is possible are at "the machine" and by using Zinnia's Aster before the final battle (the latter is actually unimportant given the final battle is up ahead anyways and it is a hopeless battle). The idea of scrounging for items to keep your mons HP and PP up is very important, and you're always in more danger of encountering the rare high-level 2% encounters than anything else. One of the BIGGEST troll moments ever happens at the midpoint, where you find the machine, it works like a PC, but the guy you allied with earlier says to leave some mons in the PC because he detects something worse may pop up soon. Then you leave the area, find out you cannot come back, and that you've been tricked as he works with Hoopa. Yikes.

Well, the story of Dark Rising 2 continues in this mini-prelude to Dark Rising 3 (the RPGmaker game), which is why it's so short, and you actually play as whatever you named that blond-haired, blue-wearing dude that was your main rival in this game. To play with his team was pretty neat, although I never found the guy's Yveltal at all. And Hoopa, of all possible evil Pokemon, screwing up the ENTIRE world, putting places according to everything the way he wants, good lord, that's an evil wet dream that someone clearly had to come up with. But to have two twin kids be half-human, half-Pokemon (part of Zygarde apparently)? Even weirder. Causing your character to be someone who has to kill zombie-like trainers to keep these kids alive makes this plot much colder than Snakewood's could ever hope for. Powerful stuff, short ROM hack. Still kinda mixed on these final battles in the DR series, especially considering that the final battle is one you're supposed to lose.

Oh and here's a walkthrough, because I am generous and always have these things at hand.

A look back at: Pokemon Mega Power

Woohoo! Another ROM hack is done. And it's another Wind1158 hack and frankly I gotta say I really am enjoying the way the storyline is in these things. So Pokemon Mega Power has Mewtwo as its mascot and seems to be about those mega evolutions. Heck, EVERY known mega evolution is here, and the author of this hack has retained the system he used for the select few mega evolutions used in Victory Fire and Resolute. It's an okay system that keeps your mons mega evolved, and is different than what I would probably have seen from the one that Pokemon Gaia used (which is basically how its done in the Gen-6+ games I hear). And honestly, I am genuinely surprised that the storyline can have a few branching points. Originally I had extra saves for these moments where the bad guys tell you that you can join them, but I found out through some videos that it doesn't seem to change the outcome nearly as much. It's the Normal Storyline/Special Storyline split where things get slightly more interesting. A bit of a detriment since you can't catch every legendary because of this split though, but to ensure you see the ones you know you're missing several opposing trainers will have these mons when you get to them.

Mega Power, much like Victory Fire and Resolute, has a Dark Rising-style level curve, which is perhaps its main detriment. Levels shoot up quite fast, and even out in the high-80s/low-90s for opposing trainers when you're all up in the Lande region. The author did put some new music though, which I can appreciate, and what's even better is it is possible to fly to the towns and locations in the Lande region and the Sevii Islands via a separated map. This was something I was annoyed with in Resolute, having very few places to fly in Tyron and nowhere to fly in Johto, while Western Tyron in Victory Fire had a couple endgame towns that were not flyable.

I've seen more than my fair share of time travel plots from Avengers: Endgame to Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross and all sorts of movies, and I gotta say, the plot twists involving Mewtwo were kinda neat. Oh wait, Mewtwo is what you're experimenting on! Oh no, it turns hostile and wrecks the lab! Oh, this shady person can use it! Don't forget, it can talk too, and somehow acts as a trainer itself! But wait, there's now a future version of Mewtwo which is trying to save the player from its present self killing the player! It can be convoluted but I found it entertaining. I also am a fan of the subterfuge that continuously happens between the enemy teams of Team Delta and the Dark Workers, and some more plot twists every which way. Oh yeah, and the surprising reveal of the protagonist of Resolute and thier dilemma. Some battles are repetitive though, but even I can roll with these.

I'll give Allen Chingonzoh some credit for a detailed walkthrough of this as well. Heck, he made it two years ago, so that's a recent walkthrough. It does have a few shortcomings, such as a lack of gender differentiation (because The Shady just so happens to be the opposite gender counterpart, and has different mons depending on who your character is) as well as not getting every trainer in the Lande gyms as well as the potential randomness of both the Lande Skyscraper and the Tournament Castle. Not much to really say there. What also sucks is that I can't open the rom with Advance Trainer Editor or Hopeless Trainer Editor, so I can't get trainer information for my guide. In any case, I did compile the Pokedex, the Pokemon locations by area, and even hidden items. This is the doc. There's still some more things that need to be taken care of, but I am glad for what I managed to do after ensuring that I got just about everything.

Doom Musings: The legacy of Doom II MAP02: Underhalls

Hmm, this will be interesting. MAP02 of Doom II is definitely a memorable level in lots of ways. It's got neat little waterway systems, introduces the barrel, super shotgun, shotgun guy, and demon, and is quite cramped in layout. It tends to get some flak for that last reason, particularly for players on Nightmare. It's also got strange music that seems odd for the game and the level, and is almost always seen after beating a single level PWAD, but that's besides the point.

So Underhalls in layout is much smaller than Entryway before it (we're talking like overall space here, Entryway should be much faster to go through due to what you can do to just hit the exit, but the optional areas give it more size). It's an interesting challenge to go from the somewhat small hallway in Entryway to the much smaller waterway hallways in Underhalls, especially when you factor the hitscanner usage. But these halls are small in length too, connecting the hub area which you start out in with three other areas, the super shotgun room, the red key area, and the area with barrels. It's quite interesting how the barrel and red key areas only connect once you finally use that red key to enter the canal on the left side, as well as the blue doors that connect back to the canal from the barrel area. Small as they are, these things basically change up the dynamic well for the second level in the game.

The way you're introduced to the new stuff, well, it's done rather casually. The shotgun guy first appears in the second room*, as a slightly more challenging zombie, but not so challenging as to ease you in to what to expect later. The next shotgun guy encounter, not counting the one behind the red bars, is behind a little alcove in the first canal, which could surprise unwary players. The red key area is rife with these guys inside the main building, a good chunk are in the secret megaarmor room that even includes a teleporter to the starting point. It's interesting how these particular shotgun guys can just sort of casually enter the teleporter and alarm players who use the teleporter as a shortcut back once they finish with the red key area.

The super shotgun room is interesting as despite being small, it's quite interestingly guarded. One shotgun guy sees you but the four zombiemen are busy looking at the walls. For fun, you'd get them to infight there. Then you have two more shotgun guys and more zombiemen before the big prize. The incredibly fun SSG finds its uses in this level, although the single shotgun may be more useful for when you're dealing with single enemies. Players on ITYTD/HNTR won't experience it, but there will be two demons in the level, one in a monster closet after the red key and another in the barrel area. These things have more health, more speed, but only a melee attack, but hey, that new SSG should be taking them out in a single blow at close range. Good practice and will remain good practice for levels to come.

Then there's the barrel area. The way the barrel gets introduced is a hallmark to the ferocity of barrels in general, which is better than the barrels just sort of littered around episode 1 in the original Doom. While they're shown in more-or-less spontaneous locations in the original Doom, Underhalls introduces it in a way players can more easily understand, assuming of course they don't know about it already. So there's this shotgun guy just sort of stuck to a wall without moving. You can kill him but there's the barrel nearby. What if you shoot the barrel? Yeah, he explodes into giblets. And this is what you see in the areas where the blue key is. You actually want to shoot all these barrels to maximize the damage done to the enemies down there. Of course, due to the cramped spaces it requires you to step back and snipe them, but doing this is nice and easy and makes this part of the level somewhat fun in terms of how to use them. Remarkable.

A short, quaint level. However, it is deceptive in difficulty. Underhalls is often considered a nasty level on Nightmare, as fast-shooting hitscanners who respawn are aplenty and this time the compact space of the map works against you as you try to speed through it all. There's not a whole lot of records of this being done on Nightmare for that matter. It's even more egregious as I remember a famous video on how this was one of the last maps done in the UV-Pacifist style (the other being MAP30 which I'm sure is impossible without TAS). Again, the compact spacing, not to mention the barrels and hitscanners, work against you for the challenge of simply not shooting, but surprisingly this STILL can be done. Never gonna try it myself, but man, for self-imposed challenges, no one expects the SECOND LEVEL of Doom II to be one of the more challenging levels out there! That's a true testament to this level's legacy. And that's not even getting into all the levels inspired by Underhalls compact layout. Temple of the Lizardmen 3, Plutonia 1024, and several other wads which pay lots of homage to Underhalls definitely mean it's got its legacy going for it well.

*Interestingly, this very first shotgun guy encounter is somehow also famous for the "sleeping sergaent" issue. Enter the second room but instead of killing the zombiemen to the sides (which will wake up the shotgun guy), go straight to him and he won't actively attack.