November Eve

Despite everything, we're still not actually done. November Eve has its DXGame mode, which means playing the entire game a second time and re-watching all the cutscenes again in order to access the third file and see the game's true ending.

Needless to say: Not a chance.

Even as a kid who played this game multiple times, I never did DXGame legit. I'd never remember it when I'd decide to play the game again, and after beating the game and being reminded I sure didn't want to play it immediately after a second time.

Not a whole lot changes. Using ?+DXGAME on the first file's menu sets the flag and activates the mode. The sole other change made in the entire first file with this flag set is that during the police station attack, that one chest behind a locked door can now be accessed. Inside is "Hanson Ammo" which can then be used on the mutant doberman to instantly win the fight.

This second file doesn't do much with it either. This one random dead body that blocks a chest disappears which again gives Kim Hanson ammo, though at least here the somewhat non-linear nature means it can be used on a few possible boss fights, er, in theory at least.

It will instantly kill Lemmer or Skullie (though you can't legitimately have Hanson ammo for them).

The fight with Dexter in the warehouse has a bug preventing it from being used.

It works properly on either of the two demons (though there is a typo and both of them are referred to as "Demon 1" on the menu).

The same bug with Dexter happens when trying to use it on Steve.

And the same bug also happens on Masamune!

So in reality you can instantly win half of a fight with it. This doesn't appear to be fixed in the Anthology updated release either.

It's not all bad though. The museum has its own locked door which reveals a room full of even more ZZTer cameos!

Newt begs for submissions for his Zem! 2 Level Pack which does in fact contain a tree level submitted by Tseng.

Jujubee reminds us to perhaps not treat women like oddities for enjoying ZZT.

Draco reminds us that perhaps there's a reason there were so few women in the ZZT community.

WeP plugs his ZZT clone, ZZT++ which I know had at least preview release at some point, but I don't think it ever did much of anything. I'm not even sure if it was just meant to be "I'm remaking ZZT in C++ for Windows" or "This is ZZT but better".

HM is a cheater.

Oh hey, Viovis makes a reference to "Da Sto" that was in his ZZTV 3 channel I covered!

Needless to say, there are a lot of ZZTers with very little to say. If you want to see them all, just use this handy Zeta link that will start the game on the cameo board.

By far the funniest moment in the entire game is the reminder that this is a room in the museum where Steve currently is, and as soon as Kim leaves they all burst into flames.

I'm also just now realizing the implication here is that every member of Interactive Fantasies as well as everyone in the cameo room is not a human since they have Hoodian xamboxumbadria for Steve to control.

Buggy gem quests aside, the dx game means that you can skip everything and head straight to the third file as soon as the hospital is finished, as the entrance to "The Building" is immediately unlocked.

The downside of this is that it's mutually exclusive with the museum cameo room since entering the museum locks the world map, and entering here ends the game.

The third file is thankfully extremely short and full of gameplay. I suspect Tseng wanted it to be included entirely in this file, but the file-sizes of the second and third files run just a little bit too high to have combined the two, especially in an era where everyone had to rely on the default ZZT editor.

I refuse to believe this is anything other than a mountain.

The last file is where Tseng keeps all the gameplay. You don't actually have to play any of the minigames, but you gain items and experience for November Energy when you win at them.

In reality, you automatically have the Quad C Launcher regardless of these minigames and nothing you get from them is all that useful, but the games are short and it would be silly to play this much of the game and then turn down something new to do.

Each passage leads to a new minigame, and the hallway to the north leads to the last fights.

The first minigame is a Parappa The Rapper knockoff, but that's being pretty generous to Tseng. The actual game consists of hitting a single button per line of text, so it's more like a shoddy Simon instead.

Hey, the art's pretty good here. You don't usually see a front-on view of somebody sitting in a chair. The other of the duo seems to be missing an arm however.

This rap is saved by having a line about "IRC wars". Completing the rap results in Kim receiving fifty experience. Failing has no penalty other than Dr. Erd admonishing the player before Cubed starts again.

The rap was an okay start. These are just minigames and Tseng isn't trying to create anything too amazing here. "Hot Spot" isn't nearly as interesting.

You just press one of six squares and hope it's not the one square randomly selected by the AI. The odds are naturally in the player's favor. This game should just be repeatedly rolling a standard six-sided die. You'll win by just mashing random colors, get your 100 experience plus some Continuous Ammo, and then never think of it again.

Except actually rolling a six sided die in ZZT that's not biased is a pretty big challenge.

Tseng manages to do it in such a bad way that I have to share just how awful it is here. The checker object is blocked in two directions making these checks all 50/50 splits, but as soon as a split returns true, it just uses that number. So really it's just flipping a coin until it gets heads, meaning there's a 50% chance of picking blue, 25% chance of green, 12.5% chance of cyan... all the way down to a ~1.5% chance of picking yellow.

"Hide And Seek" is at least harder to screw up.

There's very little to say though. You get a room with around twenty objects and hope you touch the correct one which is actually robovine in disguise. Robovine's location is randomized upon entering the board... using the same randomization code as "Hot Spot".

This means a 50% chance they're the oven and a ~1.5% chance of being the chair.

They were in the oven for me unsurprisingly. One hundred points of experience for this wonderful experience.

Finally, something with a little bit more meat on it, despite what Tseng may say.

Sri Lanka offers things to actually do for a change. This could almost be a backdoor pilot for a game actually starring Voice Stupidass.

Not that it's exactly offering a whole lot. Voice can talk to passengers and sometimes get in random encounters.

Frequently, even if you talk to the passengers instead of opting to kill them immediately, Voice will still decide to kill them on his own.

So yeah. The first two boards seem to just be talking and/or killing random people.

Eventually the game finally rolls a random encounter. The time between random checks is long enough that it's not impossible to get through this entire minigame without a single random encounter.

This is the sort of RPG battle contained in a single object that you see in several ZZT games, including Tseng's earlier game Da Hood.

Like most ZZT RPG combat systems, they do little but add a lot of tedium. These kinds don't even have the benefit of having special effects using invisible walls that you see in most RPGs that use an entire board for a single fight.

The miss message made me laugh at least.

It goes on like this for way too long. I genuinely get a kick out of the insulting narration at least.

It's made worse by not having the usual technique of storing enemy HP in an unused counter. Tseng tracks health by #zapping labels (and properly providing extras to ensure that HP doesn't drop below 0 and make the enemy invincible. I had no idea if I was making any progress.

Tseng knows how to make a memorable moment.

It's not obvious, but it looks like that passage was some stairs upwards as you can see the previous board below in gray. I manage to make it to the exit without getting into another fight.

Three whole boards!

The message fades in a few letters at a time. It's good. Kim received another 100 experience and some Ice Ammo. The true reward though is that each board gives the player 200 health to deal with the random encounters which is more than enough to get through the rest of the game without needing to heal.

With every minigame finished, November Eve can resume with gimmicky fights.

I wonder if Tseng lost faith in his Parasite Eve style battles. Crankgod doesn't actually attack Kim. He just pushes her back. He does a good job of it too, as it's very annoying to make any progress forward, though when you finally do, you can just hold up and run all the way to the top. It's far easier to let Crankgod knock you back and shoot the targets on the way down rather than stopping on the way up.

Once they've all been shot, Crankgod gets crushed.

I hope you didn't think the third file would be devoid of corner cutscenes.

Steve actually has some motivation! Turns out he didn't want to be some assassin for Masamune and that's why he decided to just kind of kill everyone.

Steve changes forms again just for the true final showdown.

By this point I was both very burnt out on this game and also curious how broken this fight would be after the awful regular Steve and Masamune fights from the previous file.

So I decided to just not move.

In theory, Steve can be pretty dangerous. He moves fast, randomly, and fires long strings of bullets. This is entirely luck dependent though, so although Kim wasn't actually "safe" by not moving, it would be easy to generally stay still and just dodge when needed rather than actively run around the room.

This is the only fight you can use special ammo in, which means for the first time I was able to actually use every type of ammo successfully.

Kim enters this fight with the Quad C launcher no matter what though, and all the special ammo (and the "electro bullet" attack) did either one or three damage. The Quad C launcher also does three damage, but without consuming a limited resource. I hate this game's balance.

I did in fact not get hit a single time, but it was just luck. I tried the fight a second time without playing any of the minigames to check if the items were being handed out by minigames (since it never says as much) or if Kim just gets to enter the fight with them. In that second try Steve's aim was a lot better and "do nothing" wasn't going to cut it.

And finally the nightmare is over. Steve is confirmed dead, Kim is okay, and it's time to get off this planet.

And with that one final cutscene, November Eve is done.

Well, there is a sequel, Cherry Pie which wasn't as well-received (just like Parasite Eve 2), but that's a story for another time.