I was listening to Retronauts 768 a couple of days ago, about the 20th anniversary of the release of Mother 3. It was interesting and you might enjoy it too, but the reason for this post is that they mentioned that Nintendo art legend Benimaru Itoh still maintains an old-school website.
That is a thing about Japan; it’s on average behind the times concerning technology and internet trends, for example Geocities Japan outlived the original by a decade, but it looks more and more like that’s actually a really good thing as the Western internet dives enthusiastically down the cyber-commode. Old-school websites are in again, at least among the right people, and one of those people is Benimaru Itoh.
The focus is mostly on his art, all of which I find very nice. Like this one:
So nice!
Or this heartfelt image in memory of Nintendo’s beloved late president Satoru Iwata, who programmed many games for HAL Laboratory:
There’s plenty of other examples on the site, many of them promotional music posters. More in line with our focus here at Set Side B, Itoh was the artist of some of the old Nintendo Power comics, like the Metroid and Star Fox series. He’s also a musician, and has “a doubleneck acoustic/electric mandolin/ukelele!”
Maybe Benimaru Itoh didn’t write this dialogue, but he could have.
Used to be there were many thousands of different arcade games that you could find nearly, in arcades, convenience stores, grocery stores, gas stations and sometimes even just on a street corner. In the US (the country that originated arcade games somehow), those days have been gone for a long time, unless you count video poker machines as arcade games, and I don’t, as doing so would send me into a profound depression.
More than that, arcade games in the days of their ascendance had a breadth and variety that no other style of video game has ever had. Even home microcomputers, to my eyes, didn’t see games as ludicrously peculiar as arcade games could be, especially in their early days.
Somebody on Youtube with the user name GaryRetroGamer has made a three videos showing off obscure but interesting arcade games from the 80s, ranging in length from 20 to 25 minutes, 127 games from 1983-1984 (25 minutes):
To help you track down individual games, the ones in each video are presented here, in order. Please excuse errors, these lists were compiled with the aid of text processing tools. (For any bashheads out there, of particular use: cut, tr, wl-paste, wl-copy)
1983-4
Dr. Micro, Exerion, Guzzler, Harem, High Way Race, Hoccer, Hopper Robo, I Robot, Intrepid, Joinem, Joyful Road, Jump Coaster, Kick Boy, Lover Boy, Markham, Marvin’s Maze, Money Money, Mouser, Mr. TNT, New Sinbad, Nova 2001, Phozon, Popper, Raiders, Regulus, Roc’n’Rope, Saturn, Scrambled Egg, Senjyo, SF, Sinbad Mystery, Sky Lancer, Star Jacker, Stinger, Super Doubles Tennis, Super Glob, Tin Star, The, Traverse USA, Tropical Angel, Uncle Poo, Van, Vastar, Yamato, Acrobatic Dog Fight, Appoooh, BanBam, Bank Panic, Battle, Ben Bero Beh, Bull Fighter, Bullfight, B-Wings, Champion Boxing, Cheyenne, Chicken Shift, Chinese Hero, Circus Charlie, Complex X, Country Girl, Crater Raider, Crowns Golf, Cycle Mabou, D-Day, Demolition Derby, Do Run Run, Dragon Buster, Drakton, Driving Force, Eeekk!, Eight Ball Action, Equites, Field Day, Fighting Basketball, Fire Battle, Freeze, Future Spy, Gladiator 1984, Goalie Ghost, Great Swordsman, Grobda, Gyrodine, Hero, Hole Land, Hunchback Olympics, Imago, Itazura Tenshi, Jack Rabbit, Jumping Cross, Jumping Jack, Kamikaze Cabbie, Kick Rider, Kick Start, Liberation, Lode Runner, Mad Crasher, Mister Viking, Mr. Kougar, Mysterious Stones, Ninjakun Majou No Bouken, Off The Wall, Pandora’s Palace, Peter Pack Rat, Pinbo, Pirate Ship Higemaru, Progress, Revenger ’84, Roller Jammer, Rumba Lumber, Sea Fighter Poseidon, Seicross, Snacks’n’Jaxson, Snake Pit, Son Son, Spatter, Star Force, Super Bag Man, Super Basketball, SWAT, Three Stooges in Brides Is Brides, Timber, Tube Panic, Two Tigers, Wai Wai Jockey Gate, Wanted, Wily Tower, Zaviga, Zwackery
1985-6 4-D Warriors, Alien Sector, Arm Wrestling, Bogey Manor, Boulder Dash, Canvas Croquis, Cerberus, Chanbara, City Connection, Combat, Cop 01, Crazy Rally, Crowns Golf in Hawaii, Doki Doki Penguin Land, Field Combat, Finalizer, Flashgal, Galactic Warriors, Go Go Mr. Yamaguchi, HAL21, Heavy Metal, High Voltage, I’m Sorry, Ikki, Knuckle Joe, Lady Master of Kung Fu, Lizard Wizard, Lode Runner III, Lot Lot, Mat Mania, Mayhem 2002, Metal Clash, Mirax, Motos, N.Y. Captor, Penguin, Performan, Pinball Action, Pitfall 2, Porky, Powerplay, Raiders 5, Repulse, Samurai Nihon, Sarge, Scooter Shooter, Sega Ninja, Shanghai Kid, Shoot Out, Shot Rider, Sky Destroyer, Sky Kid, Special Forces, Spelunker, Splendor Blast, Street Heat, Submarine, Super Speed Race Junior, Tank Busters, Team Hat Trick, Teddy Boy Blues, The FairyLand Story, Typhoon Gal, Wink, Wiz, Wyvern F, Argus, Baluba, Battle Lane! Vol 5, Big Event Golf, Body Slam, Brain, Calorie Kun vs Moguranian, Chiller, Clash Road, Clay Pigeon, Competition Golf Final Round, Danger Zone, Darwin 4078, Empire City 1931, Fire Trap, Flower, Gardia, Genpei ToumaDen, Gigas, Gladiator, Guardian, Halley’s Comet, Hopping Mappy, Joust 2, Kiki KaiKai, Land Sea Air Squad, Legend, Lock, Lost Castle In Darkmist, The, Mania Challenge, Max RPM, Merlin’s Money Maze, Mighty Guy, Mission 660, Mr. Goemon, Night Stocker, Ninja Emaki, Noboranka, Omega, Power Drive, Prebillian, Rack + Roll, Rafflesia, Red Robin, Return of Ishar, The, Riddle of Pythagoras, Robo Wres 2001, Rock ‘n Rage, S.R.D Mission, Shackled, Sky Kids Deluxe, Slap Shooter, Soldier Girl Amazon, Space Position, Spiker, Stompin, Super Stingary, Thunder Ceptor, Tokio, Top Gunner, Top Secret, Toypop, Transformer, Ufo Robo Dangar, Up Scope, XX Mission, Youjyuden
Late 80s Aaargh, Act Fancer, Bakutotsu Kijuutei, Battle Shark, Black Panther, Block Hole, Bonze Adventure, Buccaneers, Burning Force, Champion Wrestler, China Gate, Chopper, Chuka Taisen, Crazy Climber 2, Crime City, Crime Fighters, Cue Brick, Dead Angle, The Deep, Demon’s World Horror Story, Devastators, Devil World, Diamond Run, Don Doko Don, Dr. Topper’s Adventures, Dragon Punch, Dragon Unit Castle of Dragon, Dynamite Duke, Enforce, Extermination, Exterminator, Exzisus, Fast Lane, Final Round, The, Finest Hour, Gang Wars, Garyo Retsudent, Ginga NinkyouDen, Gold Medalist, Gondomania, Gorodki, Hachoo, Hard Head, Hippodrome, Hot Chase, Hyper Crash, InsectorX, Kabuk, Kageki, Kitten Kaboodle, Konek, Kozure Ookami, Kuri Kunton, Kyros, Legend of Hero Tonma, Legend of Makai, Legion, Mad Gear, The Main Event, Marchen Maze, Maze of Flott, Metal Freezer, Metal Hawk, Mirai Ninja, Mustache Boy, Mutant Night, Night Striker, Ninja Kazan, Ninja Kid II, Ninja Mission, Pig and Bombers, Plump Pop, Poker Ladies, Psychic 5, Psycho, Python, Rabbit Punch, Racing Hero, Raimais, Reikai Doushi, Rompers, Shingen Samurai, Skull & Crossbones, Sky Robo, Snezhnaja Koroleva, SOS, Spark Man, Special Project Y, Star Guards, Street Smart, Super Ranger, Shadowland, Tough Turf, Trick Trap, Tricky Doc, Trio The Punch, Ufo Senshi Yohko Chan, Viper, Wild Fang, Wit’s, Wonder Momo
NOTE: WordPress has malfunctioned and isn’t allowing me to use the Visual Editor right now, so I’m writing this with the code editor. I don’t have much experience with this, and I don’t know how to add images using it other than a featured image (which might not even show on the web). It’s a good thing I can write HTML code.
Wizardry was the first popular (actually, mega-popular) CRPG, though as with many CRPGs from the time it’s much forgotten about now, even if its legacy is truly gigantic. It is indeed fortunate that Digital Eclipse has released that modern remake of Wizardry I, Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, which is a lot more than you can say about Ultima, Phantasy, Might & Magic or a bunch of other games.
Nerdly Pleasures has posted a detailed history of the original games and their microcomputer ports, breaking down versions, features and bugs. It reminds of a number of interesting things, like that the original Apple II Wizardry would write to the Scenario Disk if you defeated a certain encounter, and thus make it permanently impossible to encounter it again on later playthroughs. Or that character growth was badly broken in the original PC version, with stats going down when they should have gone up. Or that the Commodore 64 version came out so late that it not only includes support for the C128’s extra memory, but even Commodore’s bankswitching RAM expansion modules.
I have come to realize that I much prefer the gameplay in these early CRPGs to those of more recent takes like Skyrim. The simulationist depth of those founding games has largely been replaced with gamish fluff, and in place of the imagination that the first CRPGs asked players to bring to the experience, everything has been made literal, explicitly rendered on your screen just as you’re supposed to perceive it. I know this comes across as nostalgia talking, but I don’t think it necessarily is. There’s a whole approach to making RPGs that has been lost, and I think we’re all poorer for it.
Mackie’s Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games often covers Nintendo-related topics, and this one is much more so than usual: a barrel-full of trivia related to Mario, his games, and his friends, enemies, rivals and hangers-on, spread out across seven long pages, all glorious text with some images and other media scattered through.
From the pages: a flyer for the original US arcade release of Donkey Kong. SNORT! HELP! FIGHT!
Most of it is new information, including a fair bit of arguing against perceived elements of Mario lore, like his getting his name from a Nintendo warehouse landlord. I’m personally glad that one of the many sources cited is Matthew Green, deceased game journalist and the maintainer of the (also deceased) blog Press The Buttons. Wherever you are Matt, I hope there’s lots of great games to play.
Also from the article: the cover of “Popeye Magazine for City Boys,” an odd Japanese publication. Mackie suggests the photo may be one inspiration for the appearance of Mario.
There’s a bunch of stuff there. It’ll take you quite a bit of time to work through it all, but honestly? It’ll still be much faster than if it were all presented in a two-hour Youtube video, so count your blessings! Wait, they’re already counted: 101, a hundred-and-one blessings. How holy!
One more image borrowed from the post: a phone card with Mario and Peach sharing the scene with their vaguely-Arabian counterparts from Doki Doki Panic.
COBOL stands for Common Business-Oriented Language, and is an extremely verbose language designed purposely to be understandable to managers. Everything in COBOL reads like it does, which makes it hard to work with. A fair portion of the financial world still runs on COBOL, in some cases using programs nearing their 60th year of existence. And someone wrote a way to use it write code for Vulkan.
Here’s the Github repository. The About blurb says it’s the shader language you didn’t know you needed. With due respect, that’s because no one ever needed it, but it’s still a fun thing that exists.
I admit, it’s weak to use a screenshot of a Github page in a post about a shader language.
There appear to be no examples of output online. I had a look at building it myself, but my distro doesn’t seem to have the necessary programs to do that. Would any of you care to give it a try?
It’s an oft-forgotten fact that the workings of the modern computer don’t require electronics. All of the basic logic gates can be implemented, although much more slowly and prone to malfunction, with physical Newtonian parts.
Shadowman39 has been working hard to implement an 8-bit computer entirely out of parts of the building set K’NEX. He’s just released his fourth progress video (18 minutes):
This isn’t the only K’NEX-based computing device out there, but it seems to be the most complex and capable of doing actual work. I do hope that none of the little plastic parts on the inside of that multicolor computational Borg cube doesn’t break a tooth, because replacing it seems like it would be nearly as hard as fixing a cylinder in an engine block.
Everyone that counts loves Pannenkoek, whose two Youtube channels pannenkoek2012 and UncommentatedPannen are probably the best, certainly the best-known, videogame internal explainers on the internet. They somehow made people care about an obscure Super Mario 64 challenge to get through the game in as few A button presses as possible. How can that even be?
Not only do they explain, I won’t say effortlessly, but effectively how tiny implementation consequences in the foundational 3D platformer, but along the way they explain a bunch of useful computer science concepts. They are a wonder, and if Nintendo ever paid attention to their fan communities for purposes other than suing them or making them pay licenses to use Their Content, they would hire them like a shot. But they don’t, and they won’t*.
Whenever Pannenkoek publishes a notable new video I usually try to draw a little extra attention to it here, but it’s been a little while since the last one. So here’s three shorter ones, all permutations of the topic of 1-up Mushrooms.
From 12 years ago: 1-up Checkpoint Locations, all the places you can go to increase your already swollen extra life count from 72 to 73 (7 minutes):
There are a few 1-ups in the Bowser levels that aren’t always there. It turns out the game can be set to make them appear only if you’ve already gotten the key from a particular Bowser fight, and that’s what’s going on there. It’s explained here: (1 minute)
And the longest one at 12 minutes, why do some 1-ups flicker before disappearing? Along the way it painlessly explains object activation, visibility and spawning, and the six types of 1-ups:
* A few more contractions, all nonsense: bron’t, fron’t, plon’t, hron’t, vnon’t.
Nethack (I am more used to writing it without the capital H) is a venerable roguelike computer game, and by some measures the greatest roguelike of them all. Long before Caves of Qud or Dwarf Fortress it was, and still is, a game of surprising depth, and for many years no other games were anything close to it. Even today, few games do.
Level 1 of the Dungeons of Doom
The history of the game is recounted on the excellent Nethack Wiki. It got its start as a remake of Jay Fenalson’s Hack (1981), itself a recreation of Rogue (1980), and which was remade by Andries Brouwer (1984). The first version of Nethack, sometimes stylized ad”NetHack” was 1.3d, posted to Usenet by DevTeam leader Mike Stephenson in June 1987.
Nethack 3.0 (July 1989) saw major changes to the gameplay. Nethack 3.1 (January 1993) greatly changed the dungeon, and in large part all following versions are modifications and elaborations upon it. In the time since sometimes there have been great pauses in its history. Nethack 3.2 arrived April 1996; Nethack 3.3 in 1999; Nethack 3.4 in 2002; Nethack 3.5 in 2002; Nethack 3.6 in December 2015; and now, Nethack 5.0 on May 2, 2026.
Level 5 of the Dungeons of Doom
Here is a list of major changes, though it contains significant spoilers, and a note tells us that this is a renamed changelist from 3.7. With 3.4 the Devteam switched to a Linux-style numbering system: even minor numbers (like 3.6 and 5.0) are releases for wide play, and odd minor numbers (like 3.5 and 3.7) are development versions mostly intended for work and bug testing. Even so, as with all major versions of Nethack, bugs almost certainly exist in this version. Nethack jumped past version 4.0 probably because a notable fork called itself Nethack 4.
Three major architectural changes made in this version: the code now supports C99, bringing its source to the cusp of the 21 century. Much better support for cross-compiling exists now, building it on a system it’s not intended to run on. And the old yacc/lex special level construction system has been replaced with Lua. This make Lua a build requirement.
Exploring the Gnomish Mines
So, how do you play it?
For three systems binaries are provided: Windows, MS-DOS and Amiga. Yes, Nethack still supports MS-DOS, and yes, it still supports classic Amiga: it explicitly supports AmigaDOS 3.0, meaning it can still run on 68000 machines. While Atari ST support isn’t explicitly claimed, plenty of references to it are left in the code. (Does Lua exist for ST?)
That these are the only systems they provide binaries for shouldn’t be seen as an indication that these are the “most important” platforms for Nethack, it’s more that, since it’s entirely open source, building it yourself is entirely possible, and more expected than with most software. Nethack can be built for Linux, Windows 8-11, AmigaDOS, MacOS (I’m not sure if this includes classic Mac too but it might), Windows CE (wow), OS/2 (additional wow), BeOS, VMS and multiple Unixes.
The town in the Gnomish Mines
Linux poses a special challenge for releasing binaries since there are so many distributions, so until 5.0 becomes the main Nethack in their repositories you’ll probably have to built it yourself. I have done this on two systems and can vouch that it’s doable, make sure to read the directions carefully though. After reading the README in the top level of the gzip tarball, the file you want to follow is in sys/unix/NewInstall.unx, which will tell you the manner in which to invoke sys/unix/hints/linux.500, and then ultimately, again from the top level of the source, make fetch-lua, make all, then make install. I ended up with a directory in my home called nh/install/games/, which contains a script that starts the system-installed nethack. Note that nethack supports multiple play styles: ordinary tty, curses, Windows UI, X11, Qt, Gnome and more, and configuring any of those besides the standard game will mean you’ll have to find an option to enable in include/config.h.
Another option is to play through public Nethack servers. The most popular of these are probably alt.org and Hardfought. alt.org doesn’t seem to make 5.0 itself available yet, and I’ve been able to get through to Hardfought today via ssh (possibly due to a misconfiguration on my end). If you can set them up for play then not only do you not have to build or install the game yourself, but you can even play with public bones, the remnants of other players’ games, adding an additional layer of high-stakes randomness to the dungeon.
A shop on level 2
For New Players
I wish I could point you to my old @Play column on learning Nethack, but its home blog GameSetWatch has been gone from the living internet for four or five years now. My book Exploring Roguelike Games from CRC Press has it, but it’s quite expensive unfortunately. It’s still buried somewhere in the Internet Archive. I must hunt it down some day.
If you haven’t played Nethack before you are in for a bit of a learning curve. Nethack 5.0 now has an optional tutorial in the early phases of the game that might help you. You can always press ? during the game to find its help system. If your keyboard has a numpad you’ll really want to enable it, or else you’ll have to learn vi keys, hjkl, for movement, as well as yubn for diagonals. This will also push several important commands into the “extended” input system, where you either hold Alt (aka Meta) and press a letter, of if you don’t even have that, you press “octothorpe” (#) and then type a command name. This is especially annoying for the #kick (Alt-K) and #loot (Alt-L I think) commands, needed for opening locked doors and chests, and getting items out of chests. You can set options during the game with #option (Alt-O), or in .nethackrc, defaults.nh, or NetHack.cnf, depending on your platform.
A statue garden on Level 2
I can’t impress enough how much fun Nethack still is, even after all this time. There is a ton to learn before you can play well (read the wiki if you don’t mind spoilers), but it’s mostly entertaining knowledge. What other computer game freely quotes from sources ranging from Edmund Spenser to Terry Pratchett? It plays much faster than roguelikes of more recent vintage. Every level is only one screen in size, characters advance through the early levels rapidly, and its monsters and item systems are still top class. It’s true that I do miss the days when they’d introduce huge new features (3.0 and 3.1 each made it into almost an entirely new game), but there’s still a lot of things to discover. Gehennom, the deeper areas of the dungeon, has been changed greatly, and I look forward to reaching those hellish climes once again.
I betcha don’t remember that he does that, but there is one point where, if you think back, I’m sure you’ll remember it. It’s when you light all the torches in the bottom floor of Goron City, which makes the giant clay pot spin around, for some reason. And then, also for some reason, Link spins too. Why?
Skawo, one of the best Youtubers I’ve found for getting to the bottom of mysteries like this, did a sixteen-minute video explaining it.
Here is a brief text explanation. Some cutscenes are programmed so that Link turns to face the subject of the scene, a given actor in it, presumably to make it look more realistic. This is a little clumsily done though. The “location” of the actor, its location in 3D space, is usually near its feet (it being the most relevant location for collision checks), so actors have a second location, for cutscene-Link to stare at.
There’s even a special process for this, to make Link’s turning seem more natural: his head turns first, then the rest of his body. But, who knows why, during the clay pot cutscene, Link’s focus point is himself. The focus point is connected to his body, and the angle is a little off-center, he turns his head to look at it, his body rotates beneath it, causing the focus point to move, and so continue the rotation.
This, by itself, is pretty minor. But more than that, the focus point is also a bit above Link’s head, so he looks up at the same time. Eventually, the focus point rotates so far around that it’s technically behind Link, and that makes the horizontal rotation angle nearly 180 degrees, increasing the rate of spin considerably.
This isn’t the whole story, just a tl;dw. In fact, it’s just half of it, which then moves over to a different cutscene, one from the 3DS version of the game. For more, please refer to Skwaro’s video above.
There’s a good chance, even if you’ve been nursing as heavy a Balatro addiction as I have, that you not even know that there’s a cutthroat competitive Balatro tournament that’s been running for three seasons, or even competitive Balatro at all.
Balatro Multiplayer (homepage, GitHub), a.k.a. “Balaatro,” is a mod for base Balatro that adds a robust versus-play component to the base game. While the stake and deck may (or may not, it’s heavily configurable) be selectable between the participants, each player plays with the same random seed, and will find the same shops, the same tags, the same deals (presuming their decks have yet to be modded) and so on.
The mod has a few extra Jokers that add additional nuances to the game when played against a human opponent, but in Major League Balatro they try to keep the settings as close to standard Balatro as possible. The basic idea is that all but the first of the boss blinds are replaced by Balatro deathmatches against an opponent. Each plays their own round simultaneously, receiving updates on the score progress of the other player’s round. At its end, the player with the least chips in the Blind loses one of four lives. You also lose lives if you fail to make the normal escalating score challenges of the Small and Large Blinds each Ante.
Even if you lose, you still get the money and other rewards from playing the Blind as if you won. One potential strategy is to not make a strong effort on early Boss Blinds, saving consumable resources (especially Glass Cards) for later bosses, but Balatro being Balatro and focused as it is on super powerful exponentially-growing strategies, it’s easy once you start losing to keep losing.
The third season of Major League Balatro has just wrapped up in a battle between Dr. Spectred of Balatro University, possibly the strongest Balatro player in the world who’s pulled off tricks like earning the rarest achievement, Completionist++, from scratch without losing a game, and Bean, a very strong player themself.
If you’d like to follow Major League Balatro, either in the future or to watch prior seasons, you can do it on their Youtube channel. Or you could just watch the finals with commentary, although beware: it’s 5 hours and 50 minutes long! Maybe you might turn up the playback speed, or skip around, or to the end.
Everyone in the Balatro community is waiting for news of a major update to the game, teased by its creator Localthunk, that is promised to add lots of new Jokers, but in the meantime there’s certainly lots of other things going on there, from competitive play to lots of insane mods.
We love it when we find weird and unique indie games to tell you all about! Our alien friends to the left herald these occasions.
NANDgame is one of those puzzle games that’s really an educational game in disguise. By hooking up wires and relays, then logic gates, then larger pieces of basic computing hardware, you construct a basic processor from first principles, step by excruciating step.
This is actually a puzzle solution, which I don’t usually include as screenshots, but it’s small enough that it probably won’t be useful to you unless you stare and memorize it. So if you want to do it entirely on you own, don’t look hard at it!
Of course, the difference between a puzzle game and an educational game is only if the skill the puzzle requests you to learn has some objective use in our physical world. Tetris masters are robbed by the rest of the human race that their unique skill can’t be used to write software or design cars or something, for the kind of effort involved in getting good at all these things is exactly the same. This puzzle, at least, can get you on the road to designing low-level computing hardware, or at least started on that road.
Now that’s out of the way, I’m not completely happy with this introduction to computing architecture. It is true that you can start with NAND gates and, from them, derive all the other logic gates, and from there the rest of computing in its entirety, and this game has you do essentially that.
But NANDs are not the simplest gate to understand. Even their name comes from combining two other gates that you’re not introduced to first. And forcing the player to invent one out of relays, which you are actually required to do here, is a difficult first step. If you aren’t already well-versed in the kind of thinking this involves I’d suggest making use of the hints for each level, because the game gives you no other aid. It is a real trial by fire, and without prior exposure you’ll be staring at the relays for a while wondering not just what you’re supposed to do with them, but why.
But if you can power through them all, again using hints, it is really rewarding to know that, if you had the parts, you could construct a simple processor from first principles. It is difficult, but this is a good introduction. I’d treat it as kind of a test, and that the actual game is learning what you’re supposed to do to win by looking it up from other sources, including the help system. That’s to say, it’s all bosses, with the skills learned to defeat them coming from what amounts to GameFAQs.
