One of the rooms in The Castle Excellent was unsound!!

Resident (34)

10-06-2006, 21:28

Hello,
Remember Castle Excellent? It was one of the greatest puzzle games on the MSX.
I just found that one of the rooms was unsound! You can destroy some of the needed blocks, and still solve the room in a much easier way than the designers anticipated.

It was this room...

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/3622/13hr2.jpg

As you may remember, the solution was to build a brick on top of a candle on both sides of the blue jar to be able to push it to the blue conveyor belt.

Here is an alternate solution!

1. Destroy the 2 candles! (YAY).
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/8885/22fw.jpg

2. Build the two blocks to the left of the blue jar
http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/444/39tx.jpg

3. Push the blue jar
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/1496/44wl.jpg

4. Give it a small push to the left
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/913/50hd1.jpg

5. Drop the two blocks to the bottom! We are done!
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/898/68ea1.jpg

And as you can see, you can easily deliver the blue jar to the correct location without all the hassle!! :)

What do you think? I know some people are probably thinking "DUH!" :P, but honestly, to me, this was a big deal. It was great to find something like this in specially in this game. Any comments are welcome. I love talking about the castle :) :D

EDIT: Umm... the images are not showing for some reason... I have replaced them with URLs :)

By norakomi

Paragon (1150)

11-06-2006, 00:11

this room comes somewhere in the beginning of the game.
Its also the first time you see these candles.
The rooms in the beginning of the game are all quite easy.
I also destroyed the candles and solved the room the way you described.
Before that I did it the other way (piling the rock on the candle).
I think the designers of the game just gave you 2 alternatives and didnt explicitely wanted you to do it the 'hard' way.
But, no one knows, exept those japanese dudes.
Hey now that we talk about castle exellent.
Is there also a version in which you can save on disk ?

By mars2000you

Enlighted (6555)

11-06-2006, 00:19

Only the adapted version for the MSX-PLAYer allows to save on another way than on tape. Actually, as it is an emulator, it allows to save on your PC harddisk what correspond to CAS files.

Of course, you can also use blueMSX, paraMSX and RuMSX as these emulators have built-in save CPU feature.

By iAmer

Supporter (3)

27-01-2013, 00:07

Hey, I know it's like 7 years after your post, but I', using "openMSX" emulator on Mac. Do you know how can I save the CAS file to the computer? because the game thinks that it's saving it on an actual MSX tape, so I can't retrieve the saved game. I've been googling it for quite sometime with no such luck. Can you help?

By Manuel

Ascended (19676)

27-01-2013, 00:23

openMSX cannot save CAS files, but it can save to WAV files. Use the 'cassetteplayer' command to handle MSX cassette things, see http://openmsx.sourceforge.net/manual/user.html#tapewav

However, as you're using an emulator, it's probably a better idea to simply use savestates. You can easily access and manage them via the built in menu, activate it with Cmd+O (see http://openmsx.sourceforge.net/manual/user.html#keymapping )

By iAmer

Supporter (3)

27-01-2013, 00:25

wow, that was a fast reply! thank man! I'll try it

By Manuel

Ascended (19676)

27-01-2013, 00:27

OK, let me know the results, please.

By iAmer

Supporter (3)

27-01-2013, 00:42

I I didn't know that there is a command menu. I was wondering about that (since the fact that I've recently discovered MSX emulators by chance a couple of days ago when I was remembering my childhood MSX, LOL). Thank you bro! I saw that there is a "Save/Load State" option which is more than enough for me to play those awesome long MSX games. haha, when I was young, I was spending hours and hours playing, but now I can't afford to spend that much time (welcome adulthood!).
Thank you again Manuel! You're an awesome dude!