Part 1: Outta Of The Bijou, Into The Fire

I don't have much to say here, folks, so let's just boogie on out.



Squaresoft did a lot of really good RPGs back in the SNES era.



I'm...I'm not sure what I'm looking at here.



And this doesn't clear anything up.







What do we name our main character? We've got lots of spaces to work with, but keep it to actual letters; I don't want to type out any ?, &, ', or anything like that when I'm typing out this guy's name. We'll do a couple of days for voting, and the name with the most votes is what we'll roll with.



The kid's a bit of a goon, including having a huge love for schlocky B-movies, and this seems like a goony name to start with.



We begin our story in some small town, in some state, in some small county, in America.



And nearly fifty-one years ago. Yeesh.





The Adventures of Loxley, eh?



In case you somehow missed that this is a way long time ago, here's a view of an American Main street way back when. Or if you're not familiar with this view of American culture. My town still kind of has a main street like this, but a lot of the older shops are closed up and not many things survived Wal-Mart and Meijer.







I've gotta say, I don't quite understand the old-school architecture of some places. Why were statues of people so prominent in their design? Is this considered Victorian? I honestly don't know.



I can picture this all too easily being said in a Resident Evil title. The mansion doesn't help things.





Do things in mansions ever end well? Seriously, there's Resident Evil, Clock Tower, Maniac Mansion, Sweet Home, Final Fantasy VII--Mansions seem like pretty terrible places to be in video games, especially if you're not the main character.







I don't have a good link for this one. There's this, but that looks like it sucked.



This Marty McFly lookin'-motherfucker is our protagonist. He's currently named Gregory, but we can change that, can't we?



And that's his dog. He currently has no name, but let's get a new name for the dog, too.



Yeah, he's into B-movies.



I'm willing to bet he's probably done some extensive write-ups on them. Or would, if he lived in today's world with unlimited access to the Internet.



Just imagine his VHS collection. Or his Laserdisc collection. He probably rebought all those titles on DVD, then Bluray, too.



But never mind that, the dog is running off!



Looking at that shop, is anyone else thinking of the bike shop from Diff'rent Strokes?





I don't think you're catching that cat, doggy.



You, uh, you missed completely where it was going.





I know my dog wouldn't go into that mansion, unless there were people there. Or maybe he would have; Tanner's a sweet dog, but he's only about as sharp as a celery stick.



Does it still count as breaking and entering if the door is open? Or is that merely trespassing?









We don't see any of this inside; we're just stuck outside while he and his dog run around this mansion.



I guess it's not a very big--



That's probably not good.



I'm sure Googling that only brings up this game, but I'm not going to risk it. That's someone's fetish, and I don't care to find out how they apply it.



Stop! Don't open that door!







Ah, nobody ever listens to that. Look, he even let the dog in.



Oh, shaddup. I know that's a poor joke; just enjoy the Resident Evil reference.



Don't expect him to stop with the movie references. He's seen waaaay too many.







C'mon, haven't you seen enough movies to know not to say that? Sheesh.



I sometimes don't understand dog's thought process in chewing on things. I've seen my dog take a Chapstick just to gnaw on it, and he didn't even get the cap off or anything. Just chewing on plastic.





No!!



...Well, that's not--



I don't even get--



Well, that's cute.





And he's gone. On the upside, he didn't explode, so maybe he's still okay.





We might not be.





Must the future; everything looks to be chrome.





Good Lord, he has a chin you could hammer armor on.



Please don't kill us and store things in our body.



Uh, bub, look to--



Ah, now he's noticed him.





I don't even know where we are, man!



: He just told the last guy to pull up his pants and get out of his office. Come along.





: It's no one...No one at all! Continue with your work, Professor.



That was...Odd, but whatever. Maybe the Prof is just absent-minded.





Thank you, Carltron.



Man, butlers have weird names.



Well, this is interesting.



Hey, we've got a health bar.



Not much health, but here's a chest to loot.



Well, heloooooo!





Cool! It's not typical that we get such cool toys in the beginning of an RPG.



Alright, first battle of the game, let's dance.





These enemies can't really hurt us, so we're in no real danger.



You might notice that under our health bar, a percentage is ticking up. That's a major part of the combat system; while not at 100%, we'll do much, much weaker attacks, hitting for a fraction of our usual damage. We can't go swinging around all willy-nilly; we'll have to dodge around enemies while waiting to recharge, otherwise we'll do so little damage, we'll be killed before we can hurt any enemies. There's another caveat to this, but I'll get to that later. Sometimes attacks change, such as shown here; we can only fire the bazooka when at 100%, otherwise we're just using it as a glorified club.





And the bazooka is pretty powerful when it hits an enemy.



Yeah, when I said we do fractions of our usual damage at less than 100%, I wasn't joking. We only did about fifty times more damage here than by just hitting them.



Before long, the other robot is dispatched, and we've won our first battle!



But with the fight won, where do we go from here?





And where the hell is our dog?



How convenient!



As long as it's not trying to eat your face, I think whatever's in here is okay.



Hey, cool! Let's--









How much worse could this day get?





...Oh, that much worse.





But, hey, we made it out unscathed!

Though, our bazooka is toast.





If nothing else, I want the dog to be okay.





Sweet merciful crap!





I suppose this is our dog...I mean, we saw him shift into this form earlier.





But we'll throw dirt into his eyes to make sure. I guess.



My dog is just awful at fetch. Unless it's with one of his monkey dolls. He'll play with those all day, long after you've gotten tired.







Good Lord, he's in kill mode!



...Is that a bone?



I don't even want to know where he got that from.



But it's our first melee weapon of the game. I'll take it. We might need it.



Let's worry about that next time. For now, I'm taking a break.

And while we're on break, BOLD a vote for the boy's new name and what to name our dog! Take a few days to get it done; we're in no hurry here.