Journey of the Prairie King
Journey of the Prairie King is a SmashTV-style minigame that can be played on one of the arcade machines in The Stardrop Saloon. Beating the game will award you with a Prairie King Arcade System of your own, delivered by mail the next day. Abigail also possesses a console version of the game that she will play with you during her 2-Heart Event. Random elements of the game are not affected by Luck.[1]
Please note that none of the power-ups or enemies are referenced by any name in-game, so they have been named by members of the community.
Gameplay Mechanics
Journey of the Prairie King is a top-down shooter, resembling "twin-stick" shooters such as "Smash TV". WASD moves the character and ↑←↓→ shoots. The player can move and shoot diagonally by combining two keys (e.g. W and A together move up and left diagonally). While using a controller, the left joystick moves, and the right joystick shoots. The D-Pad can also be used for movement and the button pad can also be used for shooting.
In the mobile version of the game, there are two transparent red circles. The one on the left moves the character and the one on the right aims.
You start off with four lives (shown as "x3" in the upper left), and your character is instantly killed if he is touched by an enemy or projectile. Losing your last life (when the counter changes from "x0" to "x-1") results in a Game Over. In each level, a timer bar counts down at the top of the screen while waves of enemies appear from the edges of the screen and move towards you. Enemies stop spawning when the timer bar has counted down all the way, and the level is completed when all enemies are defeated, allowing you to move to the next area.
Enemies will sometimes drop power-ups, coins and extra lives upon being killed. You can hold one power-up at a time, stored in a slot in the top-left, and you can activate this power-up at any time by pressing Space. If you pick up another power-up while holding onto one, the new power-up is consumed immediately. Power-ups last only for a short time.
Each stage ends in a boss fight, where the boss has a large amount of health and shoots bullets at you.
Items Dropped by Enemies
Upgrades
A Vendor appears after you complete certain levels and will present you with three upgrades that you can purchase with coins dropped by enemies (see above). You can only purchase one item per visit, and the items in each slot are always presented in the same order, requiring you to purchase the first item in that slot before the next one is shown in a later level, etc. (For example, you must first purchase both boots upgrades before you can purchase an extra life from the first slot.)
The Vendor appears at the end of every second level: 1-2, 1-4, 2-1, 2-3, 3-1 and 3-3.
Vendor Slot | Image | Name | Purchase Price | Description |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Boots | 8 | Upgrades movement speed. | |
20 | ||||
Extra Life | 10 | Get an Extra Life. Can be purchased again at the next vendor. | ||
2 | Gun | 10 | Increases shooting speed. | |
20 | ||||
30 | ||||
Super-Gun | 99 | You will get the Shotgun spread permanently without the fire-rate debuff. Will also be shown as a 4th icon on the left, on top of the other 3. This upgrade is only available in hard mode. Picking up the shotgun power-up will not increase the bullet spread, but it will decrease the fire-rate while the shotgun power-up is active. Requires purchase of all other gun and ammo upgrades before it will appear. | ||
Sheriff Badge | 10 | Get a Sheriff Badge. Can be purchased again at the next vendor. | ||
3 | Ammo | 15 | Increases bullet damage to 2 / 3 / 4. Bullets gain penetration, such that if a bullet destroys an enemy with damage left over, it will keep going until its damage is depleted, allowing you to kill at least two weak enemies with one bullet. | |
30 | ||||
45 | ||||
Sheriff Badge | 10 | Get a Sheriff Badge. Can be purchased again at the next vendor. |
Enemies
Friendlies
Bosses
Levels
Screenshots of each level | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Hard Mode
As of version 1.1, once you have beaten Journey of the Prairie King, you have the option to start over in a harder mode. You keep all of your upgrades and coins from before, but lives reset to the default "x3", and held power-ups are removed. Enemies spawn in greater numbers, some of them move faster, and they each have at least one extra hit point. Additionally, Imps now attack you in every level except boss stages, and extra lives drop far less often.
Each time a harder mode is beaten, the option to start once again is offered, with the game getting harder each time as described above.
Trivia
- There is a lost books titled Journey of the Prairie King -- The Smash Hit Video Game! that talks about this game.
- There is a bug in the game that prevents player progression under certain circumstances: If the nuke power-up is used during the first boss fight, the enemy will vanish from the screen but the stage will not end. Also occurs with the Tombstone power up and the last boss. This situation can be escaped from by hitting esc, which will close the game and return you to The Saloon, or your house if you are playing on the home cabinet.
- Having both the wheel and shotgun power-up at the same time will result in you shooting a wheel of shotgun rounds (24 directions), which usually shreds everything in sight very quickly.
- Zoom level also influences the portion of screen the arcade game takes up. Be sure to check this setting before playing.
- The title of the game is most likely a reference to the "River King" games (a series of fishing RPGs made by Natsume, who also made the Harvest Moon series), specifically the Game Boy title released in the US as Legend of the River King.