The Legend of the Mystical Ninja (SNES) playthrough log part 2/2

The 6th level, Tengu Mountain, is a huge pain in the ass.. First of all, this is the one level in the game where you need to buy a pass for 980 ryo just to exit the town. I haven't been saving money at all since I was barely able to survive the previous level... but fortunately there's a good grinding spot with easy enemies on a bridge at the south-most part of town. Then you get to the sidescrolling section, with a bunch of monkeys and birds attacking you. The birds are almost always out of my reach so I can't attack them until they swoop down at me. I lost all my armor and pizza pretty quickly here. Then after a miniboss is this waterfall platforming area, where you have to go behind the waterfall via platforms that move in and out of the background/foreground.. I had a ton of trouble here too.

Almost thought I would need to grind money in town to learn one of those judo attacks in order to beat this level... I like the challenge though. The boss wasn't anything special, just took a few tries to learn his patterns, but I kept getting to him on my last

7th level, now we actually get to Izumo which is where the wiseman tried to send us in the first place, to look for this white mirror... This level has birds that drop bombs from overhead. The town area is so small and cramped with enemies it's almost impossible to earn money here to restock my armor/pizza.. but fortunately the sidescrolling section here is pretty easy. It's a water-based level, the water acts like quicksand so it's easy enough to jump out if you fall, and the bomb-dropping birds are much easier to avoid here. The boss here is a dragon, very easy pattern, not a problem at all.. after beating him Goemon finds the water mirror, which talks and says that Princess Yuki has been taken to Ryukyu Island.

The Legend of the Mystical Ninja (SNES) playthrough log part 1/2

I first played this on an emulator after I already became a fan of the N64 Mystical Ninja games, and I absolutely hated how the localization named the characters as "Kid Ying" and "Dr. Yang".. They've always been Goemon and Ebisumaru to me. Those localized names just feel so wrong... anyway, I only got a few levels in before giving up due to the difficulty and then never touched this game again for a long time.

This game is a major upgrade from the NES and GB ones, with fully developed 2D sections and towns with a lot more life/variety to them. A major thing this game added is... you have special "Judo attacks" that you can use with the X button while in a 2D section. They cost scrolls to use (which I've been getting a lot of along with money drops). But to gain these abilities, you have to go to a dojo and spend a lot of money to temporarily learn a single ability JUST for this one stage. I've never bothered with these because I never have any money left after stocking up on equipment.