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Shiro's Video Game Theatre is proud to present...
GREAT GREED for Gameboy
Join our hero, an everyday guy who gets dragged into another world where just about everybody is named after food or food-related items. Follow him on his quest to do something vaguely important, like saving the world of Greene from the evil menace of Bio-Haz(ard), all the while becoming the personal bitch of any one of five princesses and numerous others.
(all screencaps have had a color filter overlayed on them due to really poor character sprite/background contrast)
[PART ONE]
The game starts off with a very basic title screen that makes it look like the title is "Grent Greed." Nice font choice, Namco. After I've had enough of the somewhat grating 'opening theme' to the game that accompanies the title screen, I opt to start a new game. It asks for a name for what will undoubtedly be the main character, so I decide to call him ZOMG. This is fitting, seeing as how all the text in the game is written IN CAPS. Too bad it only allows four letters for the guy's name, or I'd stick a couple of exclamation marks at the end.
Once that's done, I'm on my way! First, I learn that some place called "Greene Kingdom," which will hopefully prove to be important, is very pretty. Or, as the game states it, "rich in natural beauty." However!!11one apparently they have problems with bulky guys in armor picking on little old ladies named after household appliances.
After these two do some good old fashioned swordplay that involves running past each other from opposite sides of the screen a few times, Microwave decides she's had enough and teleports out of there.
And now the game shifts to The Human World, even though the first two guys you see look more like Nikita from Seiken Densetsu 3 (that is to say, giant cats carrying knapsacks). Guy #1 goes off to check the levels of acid rain in the nearby forest, which might be some sort of code for dealing drugs to elves. Anyway, he runs off and leaves his buddy walking in place outside the forest. Apparently Guy #2 isn't in on the drug business.
All of a sudden, the world flashes!!11 and a little old lady appears lying on the ground. Face-down. With her ponytail sticking straight up in the air. Guy #2 continues to march in place while staring at her, until I realize I've been given control of a character at last. Guy #2 is, in fact, ZOMG. I send him over to loot the dead granny corpse, but she's apparently not dead yet and jumps up, revealing that her hair is not only in pigtails, but always stands straight up on both sides. Impressive. Unfortunately, they don't get much of a chance to talk, since granny's tormentor from before appears mere seconds later and proceeds to continue beating the crap out of her. Microwave teleports away, dragging poor ZOMG with her.
They land in some sort of "royal refuge," where Microwave proceeds to play dead yet again. When ZOMG goes over to see if he can loot her corpse now, she mumbles about needing to get to the forest. Nevermind that they were just IN a forest. Apparently this one must be special. Anyway. Microwave asks ZOMG to carry her on his back, and he agrees, figuring that if she croaks on the way to the forest, it'll be easier to loot her corpse if he's carrying her. Microwave informs him that the forest in question is between the mountains. Seeing as how that's really the only place to go in the area, she must think ZOMG is a complete and utter idiot. Or maybe she suspects he was plotting ways to get her to croak so he could get to looting already.
When they get to the forest, I learn there's actually a whole castle smack dab in the middle. Standing outside the front door is one of the princesses of the kingdom: Princess Candy. They all head inside, and Microwave goes off to talk to the king. There's talk about some sort of power source and something called Bio-Haz (haha, get it?). Oh, and Microwave conveniently lost her power from fighting her bulky-armored stalker. But wait! She can get them back by heading on over to Burger King Castle and grabbing up a magic book they've apparently got lying around for just such occasions. Too bad Bio-Haz has the whole place under wraps.
While granny's off talking to the king, Princess Candy has dragged ZOMG into a bedroom and is in the process of telling him her life story in under a minute. The only bits of importance are this: Bio-Haz is a big ol' nasty monster, everybody's hiding out from it on the island, and the source of its power is somewhere in the Human World. After this lovely bit of exposition, Candy decides they should go visit her dad. But first, they have a run-in with her dog Calorie, who won't let them out of the room until they get it on tell its live story too. Too bad Candy only takes this opportunity to talk about her four younger sisters, who are off being useful elsewhere.
With Candy in tow, ZOMG goes off to check out the rest of the castle before visiting the king. The most notable people he meets are Lunch Box, the chief of bodyguards and Time Out, an administrator.
When they get to what I can only assume is the throne room, King Greene apologizes for ZOMG getting dragged into the whole mess, and Microwave explains the same thing she'd already said before, about getting a magic book from Burger King Castle. Princess Candy declares that she plans to go too, and while she argues it over with daddy - if something happens to him, she must be there to take over the throne! - the enemy attacks!!!1 The king tells Candy to take ZOMG somewhere safe, though once they're outside the throne room, this apparently translates to "follow him and make sure he doesn't impale himself on somebody's sword." Apparently everybody thinks ZOMG is an idiot.
They get as far as the bottom of the stairs before Microwave's stalker turns up. ZOMG beats him easily, stalkerguy runs away, and Candy says they should head back upstairs to check on her dad. It must have been a really small invasion force - but seeing as how there were a grand total of five soldiers in the entire castle, I'd say they were pretty lucky. So ZOMG and Candy head back upstairs, where ZOMG tries to loot the corpse of a dead soldier. Candy doesn't approve, since she thinks dead guys are lame. Lying outside the throne room is what Candy claims to be the dead!Calorie's collar, which looks remarkably like Calorie itself and is also large enough to block the door. Huh.
Inside the throne room, King Greene is ecstatic that his daughter's alive and doesn't seem fazed by the fact that she's supposed to be hiding. I guess this sort of thing must happen a lot. Maybe that's why there are so few soldiers in the castle. Candy tells him that ZOMG scared all the enemies away, just for her!!1 Time Out mentions something about the people from the human world being stronger than everybody in What The Hell Were Your Parents Thinking land. I'll go out on a limb here and say they're smarter, too. Coincidentally, out of the blue King Greene declares that since the enemy now knows where the castle is, Candy should get her ass out of there (wasn't he JUST telling her she shouldn't leave a mere few seconds ago...?) and tells ZOMG to go with her, to the Land of Sushi. Before leaving the throne room, I have ZOMG go talk to the queen, just to see what sort of name she'd been given. Either it was really, really bad, or it was too normal, because all the box said was "queen." Lucky her.
After grabbing some new equipment from the local weapon room, ZOMG and Candy are off! They head to a cave in the mountains that I know wasn't there when ZOMG was carrying Microwave earlier. But who needs continuity anyway? Maybe the Sushi Empire is full of ninjas who know how to hide the entrance to caves by making them look like harmless rock facings. In the cave, ZOMG is often attacked by mutant roaches that look like biscuits with arms and legs, or that waffle thing in the Eggos commercials. Occasionally, Candy will tell ZOMG to be careful but otherwise she just hangs around and is generally useless.
When they reach the stairway leading out of the cave, Candy tells ZOMG she's going to head off to Burger King, and that her sister Cup Cake should be hanging out in the Sushi Empire somewhere. Before leaving, she gives him Calorie's collar, which he dons as a bracelet. Candy pats him on the head tells him to be careful and runs off. She must have superhuman speed, because she leaves the cave seconds before ZOMG, and yet she's nowhere to be seen when he gets out. The entrance to the cave closes behind him, lending credence to my sushi ninja theory. ZOMG heads over to the first town he sees. There's absolutely nothing of interest there, so onto the next town of Shiskaburg, which is conveniently holding an election right at the time ZOMG shows up.
ZOMG wastes no time in invading people's homes and not finding one bit of loot for his efforts. Oh well. At least Shiskaburg has an All-Purpose House of Geography, where ZOMG learns that there's a place somewhere off to the east called Teapot Village, which is bordered by a forest to the south and an abandoned record factory to the north. ...Abandoned record factory, riiiiight. Continuing his exploration of the town, ZOMG learns that the two people running for mayor are named Crabby and Cabbage Head. I really wonder what these game designers were on when they came up with this stuff. Maybe it was that acid ZOMG's friend was selling back at the beginning of the game. Talking to more random people wandering the town reveals that Crabby is from the (brace yourself) Crab Family. I'm hoping this is some fishy equivalent of the mob. Here's hoping.
A woman ZOMG talks to makes mention of a "Happy Factory" nearing completion, which makes me wonder if ZOMG's friend will turn out to be the final boss of the game. But alas, the Happy Factory, I learn, is the brainchild of Crabby. He claims it generates energy, which could very possibly be slang for "makes drugs." And since Crabby's the only character yet I've seen wearing a business suit, I'm going to say my Crab mafia theory is looking pretty good right about now. I think my thoughts thus far can be summed up rather nicely by what a random girl at Crabby's house says, as shown in the third screencap below.
And lo, when ZOMG leaves the Crab Mafia's house, ?! girl follows him out. She recognizes Calorie's collar around our hero's wrist, which means she must be Princess Cup Cake, and ZOMG must be her sister's bitch, and tells him they need to go someplace private. ...these princesses really don't waste any time, do they? She takes him to an abandoned house, where I discover that there's a secret underground Princess Network of Information. Cup Cake, or CC as I'll call her, already knows about ZOMG, because apparently Candy already told her. Probably while I was busy having ZOMG invade houses and talk to random people.
CC goes on to talk about how she's keeping an eye on Crabby, since it looks like he's one of Bio-Haz's minions. Man, that Bio-Haz. He's even got the Crab Mafia on his side. Once that bit of info's out of the way, CC wastes no time in making ZOMG her personal bitch as well - she demands he cooperate with her in exposing Crabby for who he really is! ...and tacks a "won't you?" on at the end, because she IS a princess and is technically supposed to be polite. I'm loving CC already. Since I want to see what happens, I have ZOMG tell her no, he won't. She then proceeds to guilt trip him into it, and I keep selecting 'no' to see how far this will go.
CC was clearly faking it the whole time, since after ZOMG finally says he'll help, she's suddenly all businesslike and in control of the situation again. Have I mentioned yet how much I love CC? Anyway, she tells ZOMG to head on over to Cabbage Head's house, which is somewhere off to the west. And by west, she means "on the left hand side of this house." Good thing CC didn't assume ZOMG was an idiot, or he might have gone wandering outside the town, thinking west meant "on the other side of the mountains." *coughcough* Oh, and Cabbage Head is apparently a friend of Candy's. I'm starting to think maybe Candy has a lot of "guys who are willing to scare off enemies for her."
At Cabbage Head's house, CC announces that their campaign is losing badly, and then declares that her and ZOMG will take care of everything. She then shoves ZOMG back out to the town square, and followed by Cabbage Head, attempts to convince the townsfolk that Cabbage Head is the better choice for mayor. How does she go about doing this? Well. First she tells them that their campaign party wants peace for Shiskaburg. ...then she says they'll prove it by going out and beating up five monsters. Which of course means ZOMG gets to do it, unless Cabbage Head plans on whacking monsters over the head with his pimp cane. The four villagers who were listening reveal themselves to be the Village People, and between them, they're skeptical yet hopeful that ZOMG and CC can pull it off.
Back at Campaign Headquarters, Cabbage Head asks if it was such a great idea to offer to beat up a bunch of critters, and CC says sure! Then she turns to ZOMG to tell him the two of them should get a move on if they want to beat the whack-a-monster crowd. During this session of whack-a-monster, CC proves herself yet again to be the best character thus far in the game: she cheers ZOMG on in battle, raising his attack power in the process.
Five monsters later, CC and ZOMG head back into town to check the fruits of ZOMG's their labor: Cabbage Head is now leading the polls! ...for a grand total of five seconds, anyway. Almost as soon as CC says it, the poll results change, and Crabby's back in the lead. Sorry, CC, you just can't win against the Crab Mafia. As CC and ZOMG turn around to come up with a new gameplan, three little girls come dancing into the town square announcing that anyone who supports Crabby will get something nice, so everybody over to Crabby's office right away! I think it's implied that anyone who doesn't support Crabby is getting a nice pair of concrete boots instead.
As the girls prance away to harass the rest of the town, CC decides that the solution to this little setback is... to defeat seven monsters this time! Hey, it's not her fault ZOMG's an idiot that'll do anything anybody asks him to if they pester him enough.
A bunch of monsters later (since I'm a sucker for easy XP), back to town goes the princess and her loyal hero-bitch to check the poll standings. Huzzah, Cabbage Head is back in the lead! For another whole five seconds, anyway. CC decides to stop sending ZOMG off on random monster hunts, saying the only way to win this is to expose Crabby as the head of the Crab Mafia as the evil minion he is. And it just so happens there's a professor out in the nearest forest who specializes in family trees (trees, forest, get it?) who'll be able to give them the scoop. I guess this means Crabby must be adopted or something.
So off to the forest it is! And this time, CC does mean "on the other side of the mountains" when she says southeast. Good to know. As ZOMG and CC wander the forest, they encounter some new monsters that put the previous ones to shame. That Eyecake ZOMG beat up a few minutes ago just can't compare to the giant pudding with arms that he's beating up now. No sir.
The professor turns out to live at the top of a very tall tree, which has something that is either a staircase or a ladder built up the trunk. The guy's house is littered with what I can only assume are books. ZOMG and CC find the professor amidst a pile of these book-like objects, and CC asks him to teach her about the Crab Family. The professor tells her to bug off, and I sense a fetch & bring quest coming up. CC shouts at him that the Sushi Nation (wasn't it just an Empire recently?) depends on him giving her this information!!1 and the professor caves.
Under one condition. See, there's a singer named Lola Leftovers, and he's a huge fan. In fact, he's collecting all her records. Unfortunately, he just can't seem to get ahold of her debut album. If ZOMG and CC can find it and bring it back to him, he'll tell them as much about the Crabs as they'd like. He also not-so-subtly mentions that they're very likely to find said record at the local abandoned record factory, wink wink nudge nudge, but it will be really hard to find. I'm hoping he means the record, and not the factory. But you never know. After CC agrees to the professor's terms, he remembers that ZOMG's standing there, and is very likely to be the one doing all the intensive labor on this fetch & bring mission. So the professor tells ZOMG that the factory's entrance is probably rusted shut, so ZOMG should kick the bottom of the door to get it to open.
And with that, CC and ZOMG leave the professor's treehouse and head north, hopefully toward the factory.
Will they be successful in their quest? Will the Crab Mafia come after them and try to off CC for daring to oppose them? Are Microwave and Candy still hanging out at Burger King Castle? All this and more on the next installment of Great Greed!
GREAT GREED for Gameboy
Join our hero, an everyday guy who gets dragged into another world where just about everybody is named after food or food-related items. Follow him on his quest to do something vaguely important, like saving the world of Greene from the evil menace of Bio-Haz(ard), all the while becoming the personal bitch of any one of five princesses and numerous others.
(all screencaps have had a color filter overlayed on them due to really poor character sprite/background contrast)
[PART ONE]
The game starts off with a very basic title screen that makes it look like the title is "Grent Greed." Nice font choice, Namco. After I've had enough of the somewhat grating 'opening theme' to the game that accompanies the title screen, I opt to start a new game. It asks for a name for what will undoubtedly be the main character, so I decide to call him ZOMG. This is fitting, seeing as how all the text in the game is written IN CAPS. Too bad it only allows four letters for the guy's name, or I'd stick a couple of exclamation marks at the end.
Once that's done, I'm on my way! First, I learn that some place called "Greene Kingdom," which will hopefully prove to be important, is very pretty. Or, as the game states it, "rich in natural beauty." However!!11one apparently they have problems with bulky guys in armor picking on little old ladies named after household appliances.
After these two do some good old fashioned swordplay that involves running past each other from opposite sides of the screen a few times, Microwave decides she's had enough and teleports out of there.
And now the game shifts to The Human World, even though the first two guys you see look more like Nikita from Seiken Densetsu 3 (that is to say, giant cats carrying knapsacks). Guy #1 goes off to check the levels of acid rain in the nearby forest, which might be some sort of code for dealing drugs to elves. Anyway, he runs off and leaves his buddy walking in place outside the forest. Apparently Guy #2 isn't in on the drug business.
All of a sudden, the world flashes!!11 and a little old lady appears lying on the ground. Face-down. With her ponytail sticking straight up in the air. Guy #2 continues to march in place while staring at her, until I realize I've been given control of a character at last. Guy #2 is, in fact, ZOMG. I send him over to loot the dead granny corpse, but she's apparently not dead yet and jumps up, revealing that her hair is not only in pigtails, but always stands straight up on both sides. Impressive. Unfortunately, they don't get much of a chance to talk, since granny's tormentor from before appears mere seconds later and proceeds to continue beating the crap out of her. Microwave teleports away, dragging poor ZOMG with her.
They land in some sort of "royal refuge," where Microwave proceeds to play dead yet again. When ZOMG goes over to see if he can loot her corpse now, she mumbles about needing to get to the forest. Nevermind that they were just IN a forest. Apparently this one must be special. Anyway. Microwave asks ZOMG to carry her on his back, and he agrees, figuring that if she croaks on the way to the forest, it'll be easier to loot her corpse if he's carrying her. Microwave informs him that the forest in question is between the mountains. Seeing as how that's really the only place to go in the area, she must think ZOMG is a complete and utter idiot. Or maybe she suspects he was plotting ways to get her to croak so he could get to looting already.
When they get to the forest, I learn there's actually a whole castle smack dab in the middle. Standing outside the front door is one of the princesses of the kingdom: Princess Candy. They all head inside, and Microwave goes off to talk to the king. There's talk about some sort of power source and something called Bio-Haz (haha, get it?). Oh, and Microwave conveniently lost her power from fighting her bulky-armored stalker. But wait! She can get them back by heading on over to Burger King Castle and grabbing up a magic book they've apparently got lying around for just such occasions. Too bad Bio-Haz has the whole place under wraps.
While granny's off talking to the king, Princess Candy has dragged ZOMG into a bedroom and is in the process of telling him her life story in under a minute. The only bits of importance are this: Bio-Haz is a big ol' nasty monster, everybody's hiding out from it on the island, and the source of its power is somewhere in the Human World. After this lovely bit of exposition, Candy decides they should go visit her dad. But first, they have a run-in with her dog Calorie, who won't let them out of the room until they get it on tell its live story too. Too bad Candy only takes this opportunity to talk about her four younger sisters, who are off being useful elsewhere.
With Candy in tow, ZOMG goes off to check out the rest of the castle before visiting the king. The most notable people he meets are Lunch Box, the chief of bodyguards and Time Out, an administrator.
When they get to what I can only assume is the throne room, King Greene apologizes for ZOMG getting dragged into the whole mess, and Microwave explains the same thing she'd already said before, about getting a magic book from Burger King Castle. Princess Candy declares that she plans to go too, and while she argues it over with daddy - if something happens to him, she must be there to take over the throne! - the enemy attacks!!!1 The king tells Candy to take ZOMG somewhere safe, though once they're outside the throne room, this apparently translates to "follow him and make sure he doesn't impale himself on somebody's sword." Apparently everybody thinks ZOMG is an idiot.
They get as far as the bottom of the stairs before Microwave's stalker turns up. ZOMG beats him easily, stalkerguy runs away, and Candy says they should head back upstairs to check on her dad. It must have been a really small invasion force - but seeing as how there were a grand total of five soldiers in the entire castle, I'd say they were pretty lucky. So ZOMG and Candy head back upstairs, where ZOMG tries to loot the corpse of a dead soldier. Candy doesn't approve, since she thinks dead guys are lame. Lying outside the throne room is what Candy claims to be the dead!Calorie's collar, which looks remarkably like Calorie itself and is also large enough to block the door. Huh.
Inside the throne room, King Greene is ecstatic that his daughter's alive and doesn't seem fazed by the fact that she's supposed to be hiding. I guess this sort of thing must happen a lot. Maybe that's why there are so few soldiers in the castle. Candy tells him that ZOMG scared all the enemies away, just for her!!1 Time Out mentions something about the people from the human world being stronger than everybody in What The Hell Were Your Parents Thinking land. I'll go out on a limb here and say they're smarter, too. Coincidentally, out of the blue King Greene declares that since the enemy now knows where the castle is, Candy should get her ass out of there (wasn't he JUST telling her she shouldn't leave a mere few seconds ago...?) and tells ZOMG to go with her, to the Land of Sushi. Before leaving the throne room, I have ZOMG go talk to the queen, just to see what sort of name she'd been given. Either it was really, really bad, or it was too normal, because all the box said was "queen." Lucky her.
After grabbing some new equipment from the local weapon room, ZOMG and Candy are off! They head to a cave in the mountains that I know wasn't there when ZOMG was carrying Microwave earlier. But who needs continuity anyway? Maybe the Sushi Empire is full of ninjas who know how to hide the entrance to caves by making them look like harmless rock facings. In the cave, ZOMG is often attacked by mutant roaches that look like biscuits with arms and legs, or that waffle thing in the Eggos commercials. Occasionally, Candy will tell ZOMG to be careful but otherwise she just hangs around and is generally useless.
When they reach the stairway leading out of the cave, Candy tells ZOMG she's going to head off to Burger King, and that her sister Cup Cake should be hanging out in the Sushi Empire somewhere. Before leaving, she gives him Calorie's collar, which he dons as a bracelet. Candy pats him on the head tells him to be careful and runs off. She must have superhuman speed, because she leaves the cave seconds before ZOMG, and yet she's nowhere to be seen when he gets out. The entrance to the cave closes behind him, lending credence to my sushi ninja theory. ZOMG heads over to the first town he sees. There's absolutely nothing of interest there, so onto the next town of Shiskaburg, which is conveniently holding an election right at the time ZOMG shows up.
ZOMG wastes no time in invading people's homes and not finding one bit of loot for his efforts. Oh well. At least Shiskaburg has an All-Purpose House of Geography, where ZOMG learns that there's a place somewhere off to the east called Teapot Village, which is bordered by a forest to the south and an abandoned record factory to the north. ...Abandoned record factory, riiiiight. Continuing his exploration of the town, ZOMG learns that the two people running for mayor are named Crabby and Cabbage Head. I really wonder what these game designers were on when they came up with this stuff. Maybe it was that acid ZOMG's friend was selling back at the beginning of the game. Talking to more random people wandering the town reveals that Crabby is from the (brace yourself) Crab Family. I'm hoping this is some fishy equivalent of the mob. Here's hoping.
A woman ZOMG talks to makes mention of a "Happy Factory" nearing completion, which makes me wonder if ZOMG's friend will turn out to be the final boss of the game. But alas, the Happy Factory, I learn, is the brainchild of Crabby. He claims it generates energy, which could very possibly be slang for "makes drugs." And since Crabby's the only character yet I've seen wearing a business suit, I'm going to say my Crab mafia theory is looking pretty good right about now. I think my thoughts thus far can be summed up rather nicely by what a random girl at Crabby's house says, as shown in the third screencap below.
And lo, when ZOMG leaves the Crab Mafia's house, ?! girl follows him out. She recognizes Calorie's collar around our hero's wrist, which means she must be Princess Cup Cake, and ZOMG must be her sister's bitch, and tells him they need to go someplace private. ...these princesses really don't waste any time, do they? She takes him to an abandoned house, where I discover that there's a secret underground Princess Network of Information. Cup Cake, or CC as I'll call her, already knows about ZOMG, because apparently Candy already told her. Probably while I was busy having ZOMG invade houses and talk to random people.
CC goes on to talk about how she's keeping an eye on Crabby, since it looks like he's one of Bio-Haz's minions. Man, that Bio-Haz. He's even got the Crab Mafia on his side. Once that bit of info's out of the way, CC wastes no time in making ZOMG her personal bitch as well - she demands he cooperate with her in exposing Crabby for who he really is! ...and tacks a "won't you?" on at the end, because she IS a princess and is technically supposed to be polite. I'm loving CC already. Since I want to see what happens, I have ZOMG tell her no, he won't. She then proceeds to guilt trip him into it, and I keep selecting 'no' to see how far this will go.
CC was clearly faking it the whole time, since after ZOMG finally says he'll help, she's suddenly all businesslike and in control of the situation again. Have I mentioned yet how much I love CC? Anyway, she tells ZOMG to head on over to Cabbage Head's house, which is somewhere off to the west. And by west, she means "on the left hand side of this house." Good thing CC didn't assume ZOMG was an idiot, or he might have gone wandering outside the town, thinking west meant "on the other side of the mountains." *coughcough* Oh, and Cabbage Head is apparently a friend of Candy's. I'm starting to think maybe Candy has a lot of "guys who are willing to scare off enemies for her."
At Cabbage Head's house, CC announces that their campaign is losing badly, and then declares that her and ZOMG will take care of everything. She then shoves ZOMG back out to the town square, and followed by Cabbage Head, attempts to convince the townsfolk that Cabbage Head is the better choice for mayor. How does she go about doing this? Well. First she tells them that their campaign party wants peace for Shiskaburg. ...then she says they'll prove it by going out and beating up five monsters. Which of course means ZOMG gets to do it, unless Cabbage Head plans on whacking monsters over the head with his pimp cane. The four villagers who were listening reveal themselves to be the Village People, and between them, they're skeptical yet hopeful that ZOMG and CC can pull it off.
Back at Campaign Headquarters, Cabbage Head asks if it was such a great idea to offer to beat up a bunch of critters, and CC says sure! Then she turns to ZOMG to tell him the two of them should get a move on if they want to beat the whack-a-monster crowd. During this session of whack-a-monster, CC proves herself yet again to be the best character thus far in the game: she cheers ZOMG on in battle, raising his attack power in the process.
Five monsters later, CC and ZOMG head back into town to check the fruits of ZOMG's their labor: Cabbage Head is now leading the polls! ...for a grand total of five seconds, anyway. Almost as soon as CC says it, the poll results change, and Crabby's back in the lead. Sorry, CC, you just can't win against the Crab Mafia. As CC and ZOMG turn around to come up with a new gameplan, three little girls come dancing into the town square announcing that anyone who supports Crabby will get something nice, so everybody over to Crabby's office right away! I think it's implied that anyone who doesn't support Crabby is getting a nice pair of concrete boots instead.
As the girls prance away to harass the rest of the town, CC decides that the solution to this little setback is... to defeat seven monsters this time! Hey, it's not her fault ZOMG's an idiot that'll do anything anybody asks him to if they pester him enough.
A bunch of monsters later (since I'm a sucker for easy XP), back to town goes the princess and her loyal hero-bitch to check the poll standings. Huzzah, Cabbage Head is back in the lead! For another whole five seconds, anyway. CC decides to stop sending ZOMG off on random monster hunts, saying the only way to win this is to expose Crabby as the head of the Crab Mafia as the evil minion he is. And it just so happens there's a professor out in the nearest forest who specializes in family trees (trees, forest, get it?) who'll be able to give them the scoop. I guess this means Crabby must be adopted or something.
So off to the forest it is! And this time, CC does mean "on the other side of the mountains" when she says southeast. Good to know. As ZOMG and CC wander the forest, they encounter some new monsters that put the previous ones to shame. That Eyecake ZOMG beat up a few minutes ago just can't compare to the giant pudding with arms that he's beating up now. No sir.
The professor turns out to live at the top of a very tall tree, which has something that is either a staircase or a ladder built up the trunk. The guy's house is littered with what I can only assume are books. ZOMG and CC find the professor amidst a pile of these book-like objects, and CC asks him to teach her about the Crab Family. The professor tells her to bug off, and I sense a fetch & bring quest coming up. CC shouts at him that the Sushi Nation (wasn't it just an Empire recently?) depends on him giving her this information!!1 and the professor caves.
Under one condition. See, there's a singer named Lola Leftovers, and he's a huge fan. In fact, he's collecting all her records. Unfortunately, he just can't seem to get ahold of her debut album. If ZOMG and CC can find it and bring it back to him, he'll tell them as much about the Crabs as they'd like. He also not-so-subtly mentions that they're very likely to find said record at the local abandoned record factory, wink wink nudge nudge, but it will be really hard to find. I'm hoping he means the record, and not the factory. But you never know. After CC agrees to the professor's terms, he remembers that ZOMG's standing there, and is very likely to be the one doing all the intensive labor on this fetch & bring mission. So the professor tells ZOMG that the factory's entrance is probably rusted shut, so ZOMG should kick the bottom of the door to get it to open.
And with that, CC and ZOMG leave the professor's treehouse and head north, hopefully toward the factory.
Will they be successful in their quest? Will the Crab Mafia come after them and try to off CC for daring to oppose them? Are Microwave and Candy still hanging out at Burger King Castle? All this and more on the next installment of Great Greed!