Part 12: Dancing Magically, with your host, Jareth the Goblin King

Chapter 8 - Dancing Magically, with your host, Jareth the Goblin King




Welp, dudes, here we are. It's the final countdown! This is the penultimate area. The Secret Corridor is fairly uninteresting except for the fact that you can 'hit wall' in different places and different notes will play, because the walls are actually piano keys! You can waste some time hitting the walls and making some rockin' tunes, but not a whole lot of time because we've got business to attend to!



Going through the nearest hallway and heading right for a bit, we come across this spot in the wall that's a little different than the rest. Something seems missing, but what? Well, we have this smooth, black plank we've been carrying around, and since it looks about the right size, we'll insert it here and...




A door appears! But it's locked! Good thing we grabbed that key back at the Door Knockers!



Click here to watch the ending! (Vimeo)

In the section where we're throwing crystal balls at Jareth (you can throw anything at him, but only a crystal ball will defeat him), they act like boomerangs, so even if you only picked up one crystal ball, you're good. This is one of the few nice things the game does for you.

We could've said pretty much anything to defeat Jareth (I forgot that and tried to do the saying from the movie, but it ended before I could). There are some fun combinations, if anyone wants I can go over them, but you pretty much get the gist of them from the video.

So what have we missed?

Well, not a whole lot. If we had tried to confront Jareth with our helmet on, we would've gotten this:



However, The Bog of Eternal Stench is the only place where you can drop the helmet, as I mentioned before. It doesn't even show up as an option here! I'd like to give the programmers the benefit of the doubt and assume it's a glitch, but I think we all know it probably isn't. Jerks.

The C64 version of the game has an interesting little section that the apple ][ version doesn't. I have no idea why, but let's cover it here so you don't feel gypped!

After chosing the right door at Alph and Ralph, instead of going straight to the Stone Corridor, we wind up here:










The hands carry you upwards and then it's business as usual after that. Why didn't they include it in both versions? I can only assume because of space, because it's a cute, yet ultimately useless, section. The animation of Pete looking down and trying to wriggle her way out of her predicament is pretty adorable.

Conclusion!



So, that's Lucasfilm's Labyrinth in a nutshell. It's a game I genuinely love, in spite of it's pretty apparent evilness. It's incredibly clever, cute, and fun in a lot of spots, and the art is downright charming if you ignore the poor coloring of the apple ][.

If you want to play this game, I recommend it as long as you have a guide to help you along at the worst spots. We nowadays have the advantage of things like save states, so try everything I didn't. There are so many little jokes and things that I surely missed by playing it straight. Oh, and play the C64 version, for your own sanity. It moves smoother, the music is great, and the art is much easier on the eyes.

That's about it, unless anyone can think of anything that they'd like to see that I didn't do. Otherwise, thanks everyone for reading! I had a total blast doing it, even though my appendix decided it didn't want to have anything more to do with me mid-way through it all. I hope you all enjoyed it!



Bye for now!