Part 22: 21. "Her Majesty is Waiting!"

21. "Her Majesty is Waiting!"

When we last left off, Gilian had discovered the Snatcher's maintenance facility, Queen Hospital.









edit: This unedited part was re-added by request:

Meet the first member of their underground security detail, Umbrello. This is about the point when I realized the C. Killer trick to breaking this game. The C. Killer item will, almost without fail

- I would just like to point out at the Barnes and Noble that I am writing this there is a man sitting on a bench near my table reading a fucking Penthouse. You, uh, can't do that at home?! -

Anyway, the C. Killer item is-

- Is this a fucking joke, the guy's fucking reading porno in a public bookstore? There's a guy flipping through magazines right in front you, man! Also, I'm RIGHT BEHIND YOU AT AN ANGLE. I just cleared my throat to see if he noticed and apparently, he didn't. -

Sorry.

So at this point, I learned about the trick where the C. Killer item will - without fail -

- Holy shit he's trying to hide it with Soldier of Fortune magazine now. I'm sorry, but this shit is distracting. Okay he's gone.-

Meet the first member of their underground security detail, Umbrello. This is about the point when I realized the C. Killer trick to breaking this game. The C. Killer item will, almost without fail paralyze a robot making you get (on average) the first four turns of a random encounter. Fill up on this item to make the game really boring (more so), but really easy.

Because of this, my notes for Umbrello were only "Meh." Actually, though, I remember this guy being a pain in the ass to hit because you have to destroy the blue disc that makes up his head and that one space to the right of the Gatling gun. He's got high speed which makes hitting that last spot pretty fucking hard (if the C. Killer wore off, that is).

This is why it's always good to have a 2x3 gun like the M. Maxim handy, even though it's a lot weaker than the N. Point.



Bye bye, Umbrello!



That's not the last we've seen of him, sadly. As you can see in the screencap, there's a ton of these things.



The C. Killer makes short work of all of them, though. See this blue operating table thing that Gilian's near? OASIS translates this as a bed. Beds are important. We'll see why later.









That part was like a boring photo album section of Queen Hospital. Umbrello is the only enemy you face in most of the floor, until you find SD Snatcher's interpretation of Room 3.

But before that, a new enemy...



H. Hungry Humvee. You are gonna motherfuckin' hate this guy if you're - like me - stupid enough to play this game this far. He has an attack we've seen before...



The unblockable Propanon Gas! If you've forgotten, this horrible attack makes Gilian dizzy and...



splits the enemy into one real and one fake sprite. After each turn they recombine, so you have a 50-50 shot of actually hitting this thing each turn in an alraedy long and boring fight.

Of course, if you have C. Killer, this is not a problem.





K. Sprint bullets?! What a rip!



A what?



Wow - did a Dutch fan translator who consistently mispells "of course" and "threat" actually just increase my vocabulary? Wonders never cease.



Gilian: Metal, I know.



Gilian: Metal, I know!
Metal: Sorry!



Wha?! SD Snatcher mixes up the "Snatcher!" surprise of Queen Hospital Room 1 with the morgue of Room 3. It's not really so surprising here.



It's a Naked Snatcher!... Whose legs are pudding or something. What the-?!

C. Killer is actually iffy against Snatchers, so we're gonna have to use the tried and true method of smashing it in the face with bullets to lower its ACC (eyes) and STR (mouth blaster). You okay with that, Snatcher?



(Shrug.)









Naked Snatchers give a lot of XP, fortunately.



Also, neither Gilian nor Metal bat an eye at this turn of events. Alright.





Well, that was largely pointless. (Or was it?) Let's move on.





I changed my mind, let's not! Anyway, for no reason at all, Queen Hospital has you swap disks which is more than a little annoying.







If you're sick of this dungeon, I'd advise you to take note of any other "beds" you've been passing by, as it will become important later. If you don't you'll have to do more backtracking than necessary.



Also of note, these small tunnels will make some battles mandatory.



Since Propanon gas makes the robot's sprite split into two and move left and right, I decided to drop an air mine to see what would happen. The answer?



Turns out the game just can't deal with a mine in the way and "erases" it. The damage you see here if from my gun. Thanks, jerks.







I'm running really low on healing items, which sucks. Even worse, I have a boss fight coming and something really bad coming up which you'll see. At any rate.









Douchebags!

Chin Shu Oh is surprised to see us.





Ugh. I mean Chin Shuho, sorry.





He's right - this is actually a really hard boss fight and it took me more than a couple tries because I was too annoyed and stubborn to fight my way all the way out of Queen Hospital to resupply.





Gilian: Hey, where'd Randam go? I could really use his help!







Gilian: (Metal, why is he telling me all of this?)

Well, to be fair, Chin was big on revealing all the plans to Gillian and Random in the original as well.







And in a bold and - frankly, I think dumb - move, SD Snatcher reveals the "Gilian is a professor" card early.



This fight sucks. You take on the Snatchers 2 at a time, and you can't completely make one impotent or it self-destructs. The best is to blind one and take on the other as it comes.

If you see some inconsistency with the amount of Junkers, it's because I had to use an earlier save to avoid item-draining fights to beat these guys.







Self destructing sucks because you miss out on the Boss XP and you have to face two working Snatchers at once.



I threw my last mines because fuck it - I wasn't gonna use them. Also, C. Killer doesn't really work on bosses. I should say it only works for the turn you used the item on - they're healed immediately after.

In other words:

Turn 1 - Gillian uses C. Killer, Snatchers are paralyzed and can't counter.
[ Snatchers are cured.]
Turn 2.

It's a little confusing, but long story short: It's a waste.



Speaking of waste, that's exactly what I did to these fucks. Haha! Take that... oh, why am I bothering.



Breathe a sigh of relief here. Take out Chin's mouth and he won't self-destruct. He won't attack either, so you've basically won the fight if you can do that.



Like so.





Chin's highest stat is speed, meaning he dodges a LOT. That's okay, just coner him at the side of the screen and plink away at his high HP until he drops. Without a mouth blaster, he can't do a damn thing about it.















We're, sadly, nowhere near the end of the dungeon.







Chin was guarding a safe with the world's most ingenious combination lock. May I present...



The Beds/Skeletons lock!

You have to input how many beds were in the dungeon and skeletons were in the... uh... Charnel Room. The bad news is, of ocurse, if you forgot how many beds there were, I hope you liked this dungeon cause you gotta go back and count!







Take note the preceding dialogue removes any semblance of puzzle that this thing was and makes it into - literally - busy work.









The answer is that there were 6 beds and 4 skeletons.









Now, even worse, this really cool scene from the original is rendered crappy because of the bullshit puzzle I had to go through. We're about to learn what major characters in the game have been snatched.











Gasp!





For some reason, it is taken without question that Benson Cunningham - and not Harry Benson - is the Snatcher. ...Well, okay.





Gilian: Okay, just once more. Jamie!





Argh! I'm gonna spare you. You have to BACKTRACK THROUGH THE ENTIRETY OF QUEEN HOSPITAL. And all enemies have respawned. Even worse, I was low on health and out of healing items, so I had to run from every fight.









Gilian: Why can't there be a shortcut out of here?
Metal: No time to complain! We must hurry!
Gilian: I'm hurrying!







This got me. You get up the stairs and are immediately in a fight you can't run from. "Fuck," I thought. "Not another boss fight. I've got zero health and-"

One flair later.



Thank God for cute jokes.

Gilian: Randam, the chief is a Snatcher! We've got to hurry to Junker HQ!
Randam: I'd better stay behind.
Gilian: Yeah, you- what?! Forget it. I should be used to this by now.







And now, onto Junker HQ...

Version Differences

- Gilian doesn't learn that's he a professor until Snatcher Cunningham tells him in the upcoming scene.

- Randam is... uh... presumably fine now! (In the original, he blows himself up to save Gillian from Chin and the 4 Snatcehrs.)

- In Snatcher, we find out who the Snatchers are because Metal analyzes the corpses in the morgue. Here, it's on a fucking list.

- Also, there's some contention when Gillian learns the name Benson whether Harry Benson or Benson Cunningham is the Snatcher. Here, it's just presumed to be the Chief.

- Queen Hospital blows compared to the original.

Relevant Snatcher Media

That's not a skeleton!

Chin Shu Oh and the end of Queens Hospital

Coming up...

Let's learn what's up with the Chief's picture already.