Alright! We got our cash back!

But unfortunately this doesn't solve our little performance problem.

Since we don’t have any VHT for our tyres, there’s no point trying the Group A races again. We just don't have the pace.

It doesn't seem like we can actually buy any of this VHT either. It's not sold in any of the stores we can access. You’d think Taro would try to get some whilst he was impersonating Derek.

So, we're going to need to try another tactic…

We’re going to need another car…

And to do that, we’re going to need more cash to afford it. So it’s Kowloon Walled City again for us.

I also suspect we’re near the end of the game, so I’m keen to complete all the floors and see what happens.

First, let’s visit the hag and stock up on supplies…





Let's buy a whole assortment of weapons and armour. I had kind of forgotten this option existed, because it's painful and time consuming to translate so many lists of items and explanations of their effects. It has been quicker just to brute force it.

I was hoping she sells a potion to replenish magic points - if she did, we could have crazy long grind sessions. As it stands, once the characters use up all their magic points the battles get a whole lot harder, and often I need to abandon the floor, which will ‘reset’ its progress if you don’t visit every room.

Unfortunately, it only seems she sells weapons and health potions, neither which I need since our characters have such strong magic powers.

As such - things are going very slowly at the moment in the RPG mode. We're up to floor 15 of 18, and the game has become very difficult. There's a lot of new enemy types, though for the most part they're just higher powered variants of ones we've seen before, like The Rich here…





the Golden Knight, and the Poison Jelly.





And perhaps the most scary of all creatures - The Chichihooly.





Despite our solid progress in leveling up the characters, and my continual abuse of save states, this continues to take an agonisingly long and incredibly boring amount of time.

Unintentionally however - I have discovered a way for us to boost our characters in leveling up, thanks to our good friends at the zero4champ.com fansite:

One enemy type I haven't mentioned yet is the Gold Dust Woman. She's basically the standard dominatrix enemy, but this time covered head to toe in gold.





She started appearing around level 13, and it seems my regular attacks do hardly anything to her. The only way for her to take damage is to use magic.

Originally, I assumed she was invulnerable. On a few occasions I kept constantly wailing on her to no avail, before giving up and making my party run away.

So frequently would I run across this Golden Women, that got into the habit of immediately abandoning any battle where I saw her.

But, when searching the fan site trying to find hints that might improve my racing technique - I inadvertently came across a post entitled Gold Lover





The tldr of it all, is that the gold powder woman is not actually indestructible, as I first thought. She just has a crazy amount of HP. Her attacks are weak, but the amount of XP she drops is absurdly high.

So, like our Japanese fan site friend, I started to purposefully seek out the Gold Lover and ‘kill her in a frenzy of joy’ (his words).

With this approach, and a healthy number of save state saving and loading each random encounter to ensure every enemy just so happened to be her - the team started to level up much, much faster.

And with our now powerful compatriots, we once again start to climb the levels of the Walled City, and get more and more rewards as we go.





This chest, for example, contains 3 million yen in cash. That's most of the way to a new car right there!



… Wait …



One, two three, five, seven…

...that's not 3 million… it's 30 million...

Holy hell!

This should be enough for us to fully spec out one of the top cars and then some!

Better start your wishlist's for a new car guys. But we're not done here yet. There's more floors to explore.





And with ample amounts of additional grinding too boring to cover here - we eventually make our way to level 16 - the highest floor in the city.





We've got a huge amount of cash on hand now, more than we'd ever need. But we wouldn't be capitalists if we didn't have an insatiable greed for more money.

Level 16 is… understandably, super tough. It's mostly full of Chichihoolies, Gold Dust Women and those red ‘Rich’ grim reaper guys I mentioned earlier.

But we also run into the occasional ‘Woman on the Stage’..





…It seems fitting that Taro would be threatened by a woman with a platform.

Still, with diligence, grace, and a whole lot of save-state scumming, Taro and the crew make their way to the final room, where a chest awaits...





Guarding the chest, is what seems to be an innocuous lamp.





Of course we know there's nothing innocuous about this place..

Kill it!





Gah! It's a Djinn!

This must be the entity responsible for everything evil in the Walled City.

The Djinn is really strong. He’s likely to one hit us.





Like the Gold Dust Women, battling him is a real test of patience.

But, with enough carefully placed hits, a good bit of luck and some atrocious save state scumming, we’re finally able to take him out.





Each of the troop gain a significant amount of XP and cash… not to mention, the Djinn drops some loot…





It appears he had… a cell phone…

Now remember kids, a cell phone was a pretty big deal in 1994… Only the top company executives and mad genies who haunted the top floors Kowloon Walled City could afford them.

And if all of your party remain alive, you get this little exchange:





: We did it!


: This guy was the boss of this building.


: I even got a cell phone.


: Let me give you all our phone numbers.


: Call me if anything happens.


: What if something happens?


: Actually, it's bigger than the Kowloon Building.


: They say there's a terrifying dungeon.



Another dungeon? But this one was crazy hard, and ludicrously time intensive!

Without my emulator tools I would have noped right out of it after the fourth floor.


: That's so stupid.



I agree 100% Taro. We didn't need another dungeon.


: If there is, you can't do it alone.


: If that happens, just call us on your cell phone.


: Ah, I'll be in touch then.



Aww. It seems our co-workers want to stay our friends. It's nice to have that sort of working relationship.

Now, what did our that Djinn have in the box he was guarding?





One million yen. Well, not too bad, but let's be honest. It's kind of a let down for an end of game boss... and we also just made 30 million from a chest earlier.





So we leave Kowloon… not only 40 million dollars richer, but with a cell phone and the personal numbers of our co-workers.

I'm curious how to use the cell phone. I can equip it in the inventory, but this doesn't seem to do anything yet.

Similarly, going back to the job just seems to enter the Kowloon building again. Despite us defeating the head boss, it seems the usual ne’er-do-wells are still up to their normal thing, and can still remain good fodder for farming extra cash.

Perhaps we'll unlock something to do with the cell phone later... I can't imagine many people actually unlocked this.