After I waltzed through the next hatch I found myself at an elevater room. This room had a brown rock tiles, and red text on the wall that said "cave". I had no idea where I would be going. "I'm not even sure if this is still Kraid's lair," I thought.
I took the chance and went down, After going down, it was exactly what the text described. A cave of the sort. The first thing I noticed was the background particles, like I said earlier, this game only got more detailed... There were two ways to travel around the new strange area, I decided to go left. I also noticed the fact that this new area was void of hatches, which I admit made it a little easier to get around.
There were many stalactites, and bushes, but the only enemies in this level were these strange jumping crab-like creatures. Their only attack was to extend a long tongue out at you. The music for the "cave" was a strange echoing sound, followed by light breathing, and occasional clacking sounds made from logs being hit together. Almost like norfair... But more ambient, and quiet.
These enemies were everywhere, and there didn't seem to be any other forms of life, until I entered the next room. As soon as I entered I could see a large red creature moving on to the next screen, the entrance to the area with the creature was cut off by 3 strange blocks.
They seemed to have a boot pattern on them, and they couldn't be destroyed.
"Maybe I needed to unlock something?" I thought.
This game is beginning to make me feel a sense of "you're not suppose to be here". I'd also like to note the "soldier-crab's" behavior. The orange bugs didn't seem to be hostile, they only attacked if provoked. I guess the one I killed in the previous room probably pissed them off. After all when I entered this room I got a big yellow tongue in my face. Either way, I plowed through the other crabs and ran to the next room. This room also had something new to offer, lava. I know acid and lava are in the original game, but this lava was made with more pixels, and actually animated! "This must be a hack, made by some creative, and crazy people..."
Just taking to the time to noticed all of the detail just made me want to explore. Before I actually began to have positive feelings about this weird game, I heard a loud rumbling sound. Small particles fell from the ceiling. "What the hell is going on?!" I cautiously walked through the next room to find... The high jump boots! Maybe that's what I needed to obtain to get past those blocks?
I subtly walked over to the item to hear the rumbling again, more of those gray blocks appeared behind me, and a rush of a familiar fast-pace music picked up. A huge red creature burst from the acid below, It was the worm I encountered earlier... And I admit what a way to get the player on his toes. The red worm swiped the boots and burrowed into the ceiling.
"I guess it's time for another fight!"
The red worm I faced earlier was back again for a little rematch. Its fighting style was vastly different from before. It would burrow into the ground/ceiling, and randomly burst out from the opposite angle of its previous burrow. Because of the fact it came out at a random time, there was no telling when, or where it was going appear. Not to mention its increased speed.
The worm's only weakness was whenever it hit the ground, it would be stuck for a minute before it could break the surface. I briskly used this time to fire at the worm's previous weakness: its eyes!
This battle was much more difficult then then the first fight with the worm. But gladly it didn't use its fire balls within the battle. After it was down by half its health, its tactics switched. If the worm had made two holes within the same surface, it would come out from one side then dive into the opening closest, but when the worm performed this move, it left just enough space to switch into morph ball form. It may have been a risky move, but as the worm covered me over, I lay down a track of bombs, and lucky for me, one hit it in the eye.
This was a very difficult task to do in order to kill this thing, I only had to do this a few more times until one of its eyes actually tore open, and the worm went insane like its red beetle brother. It would now burst from the ceiling at an angle, and crash into the floor, and bounce into another hole.
But at this point of the fight, I didn't need to attack it any longer. It spiraled out of control and hit a wall. As I nearly avoided a head-on collision, the worm crashed through the wall, and the music stopped. I had to turn into the morph ball to get into the small hole the worm left. As I thought, I saw the red worm defeated, and the high jump-boots. I triumphantly collected the boots and left the scene to see if the
blocks went away. Sure enough, the blocks were gone when I reached the room again, but this time, there were no enemies within the rooms. After I jumped up on the platform and entered the room, I saw that red creature again.
I thought I had to fight it, but then I realized that some of those orange-crabs were... guarding it? They looked as if they were about to attack, but the larger red monster remained motionless, some text appeared on the screen.
"What? who said that???"
Did the game just acknowledge my appearance? "I'm not surprised... But it's a NES game... is this even possible? And like the larger monster said, the little guys stopped in their 8-bit tracks. The larger monster claimed that it was the ruler of all of the creatures in this level. It also said it was using the boots as a key so, "something" couldn't find them... (some help I was).
I really didn't know what to do. All of a sudden, an action shooter game was giving me instructions... Maybe I could just ignore this and proceed through the game? The only question was, who was this tyrant?
The creature looked as if it was going to speak again until out of nowhere, the red worm struck the pleading creature from the ground! The worm zoomed back up into the ceiling out of sight. The little guys were horrified. They hopped around and made little screeches as they ran out the room.
I felt really bad for the monster. Out of pity, it actually motivated me to try to complete the game.
"I've come too far to quit now, but who knows what lies ahead of me..."
I left the room and went back to the elevator station to go right and see if there was anything else. There was a room with another elevator, but this room was familiar, it was the elevator room for Kraid!
I guess this was where the fight will be? "I already fought fake Kraid... So maybe the real one is down here!" After going down there was another room with a single hatch off to the right. After entering, I noticed a familiar room, and surely enough I saw the little Kraid sprite waddle over to me. But I wasn't fooled by his feeble disguise.
I spammed all of my missiles at Kraid until his true colors showed.
The door locked behind me, as Kraid's head burst from his shoulders.
"That's a good sign, this fight is going to be like fake kraid, but the room is so large! What could go wrong?" Or so I thought.
Kraid was going under a metamorphosis like his clone, but his new transformation really wasn't as gruesome as I thought. A long neck extended from Kraid's base as he grew a mane around his head, and his back spikes grew.
The first thing I noticed that he really wasn't that fast, but due to his size, jumping over him could be a real pain. The high-jump boots really helped me in the fight. But they did not compare to the surprises Kraid had in stock. Kraid's strategy was to knock me out of the arena, and into the acid below. He would also extend his neck to try to bite Samus. This was one of his most annoying attacks.
I also forgot to mention the fact that he didn't fire any of his projectiles from the original game. But the fight was hard enough. At one point of the battle, Kraid actually got ahold of Samus.
He tried to swallow her whole, but with a few aimed beam shots to the throat, he stopped using this attack.
Kraid's health was almost down, I was winning, but things took an unusual turn.
The skin on Kraid's face had melted off, revealing his skull, and grew long spikes from his chest. But that's not all... The walls began to close in on us, making the arena smaller! The ceiling above us grew spikes and every few seconds, the ceiling would lower making jumps risky.
The music picked up as well with the situation, it made me feel nervous, and insecure, almost claustrophobic to be honest. Rather then knocking me into the lava, Kraid wanted to smash me against the wall with his spiked chest.
The ceiling was getting closer... and closer...
At the last stretch of the fight I couldn't even jump without hitting the ceiling (hitting the spikes would cause damage). I had to spam everything I had if Samus was going to make it out alive.
When the final blow was struck, Kraid's head - er, skull - fell right off its place on his neck as blood leaked out soaking the floor. I won the fight, but I couldn't move.
What was going on? Kraid's decapitated body withered away into the background, but the skull stayed behind, until...
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