Walk-through

Prologue: A Rogue’s Welcome

Rogueport

In the beginning, there was Mario, and, for once, a game featuring him doesn’t immediately start off with the Princess getting kidnapped. (Don’t worry, that occurance is imminent, although it occurs offscreen.) As the game begins, the opening cutscenes will see Mario travel to Rogueport, where he’s supposed to meet up with Princess Peach. Unfortunately, Rogueport is something of a rough town, as the name would imply, and Princess Peach is nowhere to be found.

After taking your first steps off the boat, use the save point near the dock. Save points are easy enough to use; just jump when you’re underneath them and it’ll save your progress. You can’t make multiple saves from a save point, as you can in a game like Final Fantasy X, but you shouldn’t need to; you can always come back to areas where you suspect you missed an item or special event. (If you do want to make multiple saves for redundancy’s sake, you can choose to copy a save to another slot from the game’s main menu.)

Crump sets the tone for the entire game with this little bon mot.

As you proceed into town, you’ll come across the vaguely-named Lord Crump, who’s accosting a cute little Goomba. You can’t avoid a fight with this guy, but it’s extremely unlikely that you’ll lose.

Boss Fight: Lord Crump

HP: 6
Attack: 1
Defense: 0

All you need to do here is Jump or Hammer on Crump until he keels over. Afterwards, he’ll announce that it’s "Go Time," which of course means that it’s Time for you to Go. Leave him and his gang of goons behind and proceed up to the town square.

In the town square, Goombella and yourself will exchange a more proper introduction, and she’ll ask to join your party. Let her in, and she’ll ask you to take her to Professor Frankly, but unfortunately, she doesn’t know where he is! Take this opportunity to explore the town; there are only two screens that really have anything of interest to you at the moment. The rest of Rogueport will be inaccessible to you for the nonce.

Welcome to the first of many Star Pieces.

To begin with, start looking around the town square. Before you enter any buildings, though, check around the crates on the right side of the square to find your first Star Piece. Star Pieces are used to buy new badges for Mario, so you’ll want to make sure that you find as many of them as possible! There’s another one through the alleyway in the north-center section of this part of town; if you walk up that way, then check out the delapidated building to your left, you’ll grab another Star Piece behind a mattress that’s leaning against the wall. There’s yet another one found atop the cook’s house; you’ll have to go into the inn, jump up to the second story, walk out the door there, then jump up onto the roof from the walkway to find it.

Now that you’ve obtained those, you can start exploring the town more thoroughly. If you attempt to move off to the left side of town, you’ll come across an old Mushroom who’s lost a contact lense. You can’t "win" this encounter; all you can do is crush the contact lense and ask for a replacement at the item shop. Regardless, the left side of town will be blocked off for a while, as the crone will refuse to let you pass until you replace her lense. Instead, head right. Note that you’re going to lose half your coins as soon as you exit this screen, so you might want to take the opportunity to buy some stuff at the item shop before that occurs; losing half of 10 gold is much less painful than losing half of 100.

As mentioned, though, you’ll be hit by a pickpocket as soon as you move off the screen. There’s nothing you can really do about this at the moment; you’ll just have to suck it up and deal with the financial ruin. Cheap! At any rate, Professor Frankly’s house is on the right side of this screen, so head in to say hi.

After a long talk, Professor Frankly will show you to a pipe leading into a dungeon beneath the city, which coincidentally is where the Thousand-Year Door is located.