this game scared the absolute crap out of me when I was little, even though I've played far worse and more terrifying games, this still gives me chills
I didn't know that the game I had WAS a sequel .. plus I think mine was glitched. After I would kill the 4 headed dragon and he turned grey, the game froze. I walways though it just had a shitty end. turns out after decades, I finally see that my particular copy was hosed.
@@AllenKll I had the same problem with the giant fly boss at the end. As soon as I killed it, rather than the celebration animation, the game rebooted back to the blue basic screen. I never saw the ending until the youtube days.
Yeah, those death scenes were giving me trauma - especially with that loud music. The game made me unstable in certain ways but I wouldn't change my experiences. Today's games cannot even touch the ideas of C64.
This game is so far ahead of it's time. Parallax scrolling, multiple layers of depth, huge creatures. Why couldn't they pull any of that off on the NES?
Games like this did something to my imagination back then as a kid, something all the fancy graphics in the world can't do now. Games have lost something, something indefinable, but we are all the worse off for it. Video games so desperately need a new direction. It's no surprise that retro gaming is so huge now, and even modern hardware is full of games in '16-bit' style or the like. I got a high end galaxy phone, but most of the games i play on it are Emulated snes or 80's/90's coin-ops. Dear God I'd love to have that feeling of wonder and TRUE emotional reaction to gaming like I got as a kid when playing stuff like this on the main telly in the living room, with family and guests all watching, advising, laughing, taking the piss and having a go in turns. I don't know the way forward, but I do know that ever more realistic violence is not only not the answer, but has GOTTA be doing harm to some already troubled minds somewhere...
Paul Norman is a pretty damn awesome composer as well as programmer. I absolutely LOVE the music from the first and second Forbidden Forest games! Thanks for posting this up letting us stroll down memory lane!! :D
This game is the most AWESOME game ever maded !!! When I was a child I love the HORROR. I let myself die due these monsters; to let the blood flow !!! I love the horror and the thriller of this game !!! PAUL NORMAN creator = I STILL LOVE YOU !!I wish they ever make a SF/horror movie out of this game.
This was one of my favorites as a kid. I remember randomly mashing keys on the keyboard to find out that one of the F keys would get you to the next part of the game after you got the four golden arrows. I also remember that I couldn't kill the final boss until I found a glitch where you could stand at one place on it's side where it would shoot at you, but couldn't hit you.
Holy shit, you're right. I just found it myself after 35 years! LOL Damn that was easy! I only beat this game ONE time when I was a teenager, nobody saw me do it and didn't believe me. LOL
Glorious, absolutely glorious. Nothing else like this (and Part 1) on the C64. Such a distinctive look and feel. Atmospheric to the hilt. I wish I had known about it as a kid.
Awesome game and so atmospheric like all of Paul Norman's games. I noticed the tree sprites in the background scrolled slower than the hill behind them! ;)
Nothing was scarier than the saw wave music from the C64 games like this one. God damn. I couldn't play either Forbidden Forest almost at all they just creeped me too much.
@35november Plot-wise, it's because you're supposed to be using the arrows gained by the "Celestial Orb" when fighting the Bats/Hydra/Demogorgon - I guess they're a lot stronger than your standard arrows in the overworld. Manual even made it sound like you would LOSE an arrow every time you fired in the cave (and two when you died), but fortunately you only seemed to lose the arrows for dying. Running out of gold arrows in the cave turned you to stone and ended the game in failure.
Back before Ebay was a thing, I had gotten a C64 from a yard sell, and in the stack of games, this was one. Loved this game, never could beat the monster after the Dragon though. Now I'm all grown up, I really should try to finish it once more, or many more times depending on how many times I die. I still like the first one better, I loved the victory dance!
Galloe I have to say this, and I think I'm the only FF fan who thinks this - I always thought the "victory dance" was actually him walking around and picking up his arrows to prepare for the next fight. Again, I think I'm the only one who thinks this.
I beat this several times as a younger version of myself, the movement of your character and aiming of the bow took a bit to get used to but there was no other game that had the freedom of movement or the odd way they incorporated the aim.(other than the first game in the series). Ultimately it is very short, and after you master the controls a quite easy game, but still one of the most artistically horrifying games ever on the C64. The death animations look cheesy now, but the effect they had on me as a kid where overwhelming. Modern devs should take note. Its old, and crude, but a beautiful flawed gem, like so many games on the C64. Very atmospheric for the day and age it came out. When I grew up I wanted to be a demogorgon shooting pasma out my eyes but alas...it was not to be.
This is a masterpiece of a computer game. A complete package with horror and suspense, masterfully directed, designed and programmed by Paul Norman (our lord and saviour).
Oh wow, this was awesome! Incredible playthrough and thank you for including the death scenes at the end! I'm amazed that such carnage was allowed on a home computer back then. I thin this had to be one of the first games I remember playing with such blood and guts, lol!
Epic game...anytime I died the sound effects would send chills down my spine. I just Googled Paul Norman, seems he's not doing game programming anymore, nor has been for a long time. Says the IBM PC greatly discouraged him, heh. C64 ftw.
C64 had the scariest music of all-time. Fist II and Forbidden Forest sounded very creepy but Beyond Forbidden Forest is number one. I've never found horror film music like this... even scarier than the game itself. I love all of those three games I mentioned. Today there is much better graphics but the games have no new ideas.
WLDFLD Lucky you. I DID play this as a 5 year old and it scared the living shit out of me. Even when I played it later as a teenager it creeped me the fuck out and to this day if I play it on an emulator my pulse races and I try really damn hard not to die (I'll even use trainers, hacked-in cheats common with games back then, to insta-kill the giant worm so I don't get eaten). The scorpion and tiger always scared the hell out of me.
Joshua Bailey Gotta agree mate:) This game used to scare me shitless as a kid, even to this day I run screaming like a girl from the scorpion. One of the best for sure!
WLDFLD I played the first one when I was about 7 and it DID give me nightmares and was the reason for some weird reoccuring nightmares I had when I was ill. Only realised where the nightmare came from when I rewatched the game on youtube
The freakiest part wasn't the gore. It was that you had that little bit of time in between monsters in the forest section. It'd play the nice music until you heard the monster theme start, and the creature would come in from a random side of the screen. The freakiest for me was the frog (though we called it "the bear"). If I recall, it would occasionally start off with one of those long slides instead of the shorter hops. If you were running either direction and didn't react to the song change in time, it'd get you straight away.
This game scared the crap out of me when I was little. I couldn't even be in the same room when the title screen was flashing. I actually had nightmares about those worms that would come up from the ground and eat me.
WOWWWW this brings me back. I played this and the first one because they came in a "50 greatest commodore games" type thing back then. Other gems in that collection (I probably got it in 1989?) Potty Pigeon, Time Tunneler, Chernobyl... and a lot of crap too!
You should check out Ghouls Forest 3. It's a horror doom WAD made by CutmanMike, the creator of Mega Man 8bit Death Match. It's very clear he was influenced by this game when he created it. The final boss battle is almost just like the Demogorgon from the first game. He even refers to the woods as a forbidden forest in the description. It's much more horror focused however, and quite unsettling.
God, my sister and I where HORRIFIED of this game when we were kids. 1983? I was 3. My dad was playing this when I was maybe 6-7 or so? My sister only 3? We would SCREAM in horror at this game. Cry. My dad thought that was HILARIOUS. (he was an asshole and abusive. We'll leave it at that.) The four-headed hydra was the worst. It didn't help that my dad died all the time to him too... Ugh.
@Tamanozke This whole GAME scared the crap outta me back in the day - I could never play with the music on in my younger years. :) I think the fourth enemy was called the Tarrasque. The game knew that guy was hard - the manual even used it as a lead-in to explain the resurrection scene. "... it leaped over yards of ground and landed right on top of me. The next few seconds were a blur of flailing limbs, its and mine, and blood and encroaching darkness." Freaky stuff!
Every death except turning into stone! I had this game for years with no instructions, so I had no idea about the underworld until 97, 98...thanks internet.
Had this in a Cosmi mega pack they sold in a white box with gold lettering. Between this, Delta Man, and Time Tunnel I poured many an hour into that pack.
@Tamanozke I still remember the description in the manual (which was written to describe the enemies like a "journal" of the archer's exploits). For the bats: "I was hit several times and finally overcome and collapsed." In the actual gameplay, I remember if you took enough hits your character would just fall to the ground (in awkward animation), it'd play the "death song," and a few seconds later you'd get up to try again - minus two Golden Arrows. Only "G-Rated" death scene in the game.
The only glitch I ever learned on my on own in any C64 game was in this game. If you shoot just one of the Hydra's heads enough times, it stops breathing fire altogether, making it easy to shoot the rest of the heads.
Man, my dad used to play this when I was a kid, and me and my sister were so scared it wasn't even funny. To this day, she still refuses to play it, however, I had, at one time, DLed a C64 emulator and a ROM of this and gave it a go. The four-headed hydra was the only thing I was still kinda scared of, the music and being turned into a skeleton... eruyerehhhhh... even now it still gives me the creeps.
It's interesting that the final boss was a reptile of some kind and that this entire game takes place on Earth. I would love to know when it took place.
@damageYT Can't tell you how many of my C64 games randomly broke like that. 5 1/4 inch floppies were certainly not known for their resiliency. One little dent in the cover or bend when trying to insert it; game gone. Though I accidentally saved over the entire game of Autoduel. Guys who programmed it never put in a catch in case you tried to use the game disk as a data disk to save your current game. I was 4, I didn't know what I was doing.
@OBSysteme I remember you needed to actually press a function key to get the game out of "practice mode" and start the monsters coming out (beginning with the Scorpion). I want to say it was F7, but don't quote me on that. It was one of the odd numbered function keys, though.
The music is seriously epic. the rest of the game, not so much, honestly. totally unfair. The worm can, and will just arise directly beneath you. Additionally you lose half arrows rounded up when you die. Since the monkey and the worm are two apart from each other, and both are difficult for their own reasons, it's very difficult to get to four, and even harder to get more if you want to get extra insurance for the second stage of the game. Typically you just end up dying to the worm and monkey, and beating the scorpion and flier making no progress whatsoever. and once you luck out and get the worm killed once, you still have to kill it a second time without dying to anything else but the monkey, or you will NEVER get to four golden arrows. When you get there and go on, your arrows are doubled.. but you lose two when you die? wtf? The final boss requires ungodly reflexes too. Anyone who has tried to beat this game unassisted without an infinite lives trainer knows what i'm talking about.
this game scared the absolute crap out of me when I was little, even though I've played far worse and more terrifying games, this still gives me chills
Scared the crap out of me too.
Ha! this is nothing... want the crap scared out of you? Play "Project Firestart" that game fucked my shit up. I refused to play it at night.
Me too! The worm and the music were so scary
Most brutal outtakes here: 6:46 😄
Same. I remembered that scorpion stabbing my character to death my whole life. I was 4 when I played this XD.
Four people never had a decent childhood
The music in this game is frigging EPIC.
I never knew there was a sequel to Forbidden Forest! The death sequences at the end are quite hilarious and for it's time pretty "gruesome" haha.
Yeah, me too. First time I'm seeing it. Cool
I didn't know that the game I had WAS a sequel .. plus I think mine was glitched. After I would kill the 4 headed dragon and he turned grey, the game froze. I walways though it just had a shitty end. turns out after decades, I finally see that my particular copy was hosed.
@@AllenKll I had the same problem with the giant fly boss at the end. As soon as I killed it, rather than the celebration animation, the game rebooted back to the blue basic screen. I never saw the ending until the youtube days.
This game was so metal in the 80's. The character death scenes were epic!
I loved this game as a kid, but the thought of dying in it terrified me. Those death scenes were gruesome!
Yeah, those death scenes were giving me trauma - especially with that loud music. The game made me unstable in certain ways but I wouldn't change my experiences. Today's games cannot even touch the ideas of C64.
Jump scare gold.
This game is so far ahead of it's time. Parallax scrolling, multiple layers of depth, huge creatures. Why couldn't they pull any of that off on the NES?
Lack of imagination
I like the music in this game
yes but this music is not comparable to the first episode. that was great
Thank you for including the death sequences at the end. Only the resurrection sequence was missed.
This is why we love the C64.
Godlike soundtrack. Thank you for Representing omnidimension 4D in 2016!
The resurrection music after a death is so memorable to me. Nice touch showing all the death animations at the end!
Can't believe in 41 years old now. Played this game when I was a child in the 80s. Thank you for this.
Games like this did something to my imagination back then as a kid, something all the fancy graphics in the world can't do now. Games have lost something, something indefinable, but we are all the worse off for it. Video games so desperately need a new direction. It's no surprise that retro gaming is so huge now, and even modern hardware is full of games in '16-bit' style or the like. I got a high end galaxy phone, but most of the games i play on it are Emulated snes or 80's/90's coin-ops. Dear God I'd love to have that feeling of wonder and TRUE emotional reaction to gaming like I got as a kid when playing stuff like this on the main telly in the living room, with family and guests all watching, advising, laughing, taking the piss and having a go in turns. I don't know the way forward, but I do know that ever more realistic violence is not only not the answer, but has GOTTA be doing harm to some already troubled minds somewhere...
Paul Norman is a pretty damn awesome composer as well as programmer. I absolutely LOVE the music from the first and second Forbidden Forest games! Thanks for posting this up letting us stroll down memory lane!! :D
Playing Forbidden Forest and Beyond Forbidden Forest late at night with the lights out... was really scary. The music is so awesome.
paul norman is a genius
The changes in distance from "front" to "back" was pretty novel at the time.
This game is the most AWESOME game ever maded !!! When I was a child I love the HORROR. I let myself die due these monsters; to let the blood flow !!! I love the horror and the thriller of this game !!! PAUL NORMAN creator = I STILL LOVE YOU !!I wish they ever make a SF/horror movie out of this game.
This was one of my favorites as a kid. I remember randomly mashing keys on the keyboard to find out that one of the F keys would get you to the next part of the game after you got the four golden arrows. I also remember that I couldn't kill the final boss until I found a glitch where you could stand at one place on it's side where it would shoot at you, but couldn't hit you.
Holy shit, you're right. I just found it myself after 35 years! LOL Damn that was easy! I only beat this game ONE time when I was a teenager, nobody saw me do it and didn't believe me. LOL
A worthy sequel to one of the best games ever. I forked out for this.
Glorious, absolutely glorious. Nothing else like this (and Part 1) on the C64. Such a distinctive look and feel. Atmospheric to the hilt. I wish I had known about it as a kid.
The music that plays at 1:14 when that thing gives you an arrow...
I'd like to hear that remixed.
Giving someone an arrow has never been so epic.
Awesome game and so atmospheric like all of Paul Norman's games. I noticed the tree sprites in the background scrolled slower than the hill behind them! ;)
I understand smooth scrolling, especially with paralax, was supposed to be really challenging to pull off for home computers of this era.
It's so cool how the fire breaths from the hydra reflects on your body.
The tune that plays when you first enter the cave has been emblazoned on my brain for 20 years.
Nothing was scarier than the saw wave music from the C64 games like this one. God damn. I couldn't play either Forbidden Forest almost at all they just creeped me too much.
Death Montage. Just wow...
@35november Plot-wise, it's because you're supposed to be using the arrows gained by the "Celestial Orb" when fighting the Bats/Hydra/Demogorgon - I guess they're a lot stronger than your standard arrows in the overworld.
Manual even made it sound like you would LOSE an arrow every time you fired in the cave (and two when you died), but fortunately you only seemed to lose the arrows for dying.
Running out of gold arrows in the cave turned you to stone and ended the game in failure.
The song played when you face the final big snake headed boss is also the theme song for Delta Man.
Back before Ebay was a thing, I had gotten a C64 from a yard sell, and in the stack of games, this was one. Loved this game, never could beat the monster after the Dragon though. Now I'm all grown up, I really should try to finish it once more, or many more times depending on how many times I die. I still like the first one better, I loved the victory dance!
Galloe I have to say this, and I think I'm the only FF fan who thinks this - I always thought the "victory dance" was actually him walking around and picking up his arrows to prepare for the next fight. Again, I think I'm the only one who thinks this.
lol so much fanfare for defeating one enemy. I love it!
I beat this several times as a younger version of myself, the movement of your character and aiming of the bow took a bit to get used to but there was no other game that had the freedom of movement or the odd way they incorporated the aim.(other than the first game in the series). Ultimately it is very short, and after you master the controls a quite easy game, but still one of the most artistically horrifying games ever on the C64. The death animations look cheesy now, but the effect they had on me as a kid where overwhelming. Modern devs should take note. Its old, and crude, but a beautiful flawed gem, like so many games on the C64. Very atmospheric for the day and age it came out. When I grew up I wanted to be a demogorgon shooting pasma out my eyes but alas...it was not to be.
This is a masterpiece of a computer game. A complete package with horror and suspense, masterfully directed, designed and programmed by Paul Norman (our lord and saviour).
It might not look like much now, but this was probably my favorite horror game as a child
I think not many modern gamers realise what a tour the force the huge moving characters in these games were at the time.
Oh wow, this was awesome! Incredible playthrough and thank you for including the death scenes at the end! I'm amazed that such carnage was allowed on a home computer back then. I thin this had to be one of the first games I remember playing with such blood and guts, lol!
Epic game...anytime I died the sound effects would send chills down my spine. I just Googled Paul Norman, seems he's not doing game programming anymore, nor has been for a long time. Says the IBM PC greatly discouraged him, heh. C64 ftw.
C64 had the scariest music of all-time. Fist II and Forbidden Forest sounded very creepy but Beyond Forbidden Forest is number one. I've never found horror film music like this... even scarier than the game itself.
I love all of those three games I mentioned. Today there is much better graphics but the games have no new ideas.
This was the first game I ever played that had an ending.
Ending was real nice touch. I honestly thought he was gonna skip all those best bits out!!!
That victory jingle after the final boss is magical.
Derschmu is an absolute legend for me ❤
*Anyone notice the level 2 music sounds like 'Say you'll be there' by the Spice Girls 🤣
It really does! Like in Sonic the hedgehog, one of the tunes sounds like that song "the boys watch the girls go by"
C64 chunky but funky.... did have a great gothic sound track....
So glad I did not play this series when my family had a C64 (ie when I was around 5-8 y/o). These DEFINITELY would have given me nightmares omg.
WLDFLD Lucky you. I DID play this as a 5 year old and it scared the living shit out of me. Even when I played it later as a teenager it creeped me the fuck out and to this day if I play it on an emulator my pulse races and I try really damn hard not to die (I'll even use trainers, hacked-in cheats common with games back then, to insta-kill the giant worm so I don't get eaten). The scorpion and tiger always scared the hell out of me.
Joshua Bailey Gotta agree mate:) This game used to scare me shitless as a kid, even to this day I run screaming like a girl from the scorpion. One of the best for sure!
WLDFLD I played the first one when I was about 7 and it DID give me nightmares and was the reason for some weird reoccuring nightmares I had when I was ill. Only realised where the nightmare came from when I rewatched the game on youtube
I played this at about that age, haha, yeah I remember it being a little freaky.
The freakiest part wasn't the gore. It was that you had that little bit of time in between monsters in the forest section. It'd play the nice music until you heard the monster theme start, and the creature would come in from a random side of the screen. The freakiest for me was the frog (though we called it "the bear"). If I recall, it would occasionally start off with one of those long slides instead of the shorter hops. If you were running either direction and didn't react to the song change in time, it'd get you straight away.
My brother and I got this game on Cosmi's "20 Solid Gold" collection. It was the coolest game I had ever seen.
This game is saturated with early childhood memories. The death scenes terrified me
I still like the music in this game to this day :). To think that I've found it scary back then... :D
Finally after all these years I know how the game ends. Thanks!
I think this was the first computer game that scared me.
I like how after the snake boss kills your character, he kills YOU! (7:08)
I played this a lot as a child I’m 41 now. Would love to play it stoned on good weed. Liked this and skate or die
Evis + Man in Black Cash killing scorpion things in a haunted forest lol. Epic! 😎
I had this on my Atari Computer! I miss playing this!
thanks for the death montage
So many happy memories of dancing to the spinning orb and then rushing to sit down before the music finished in time to prepare for the next monster!
It always amazes me how Paul Norman went from a masterwork of atmosphere like this to shovelware.
The worm level and its music terrified me back then. :)
I Remember even a nice sound after the death with someting like the soul ascending.
This game scared the crap out of me when I was little. I couldn't even be in the same room when the title screen was flashing. I actually had nightmares about those worms that would come up from the ground and eat me.
i like how the worm retches up your bow. it's the little things that count.
WOWWWW this brings me back. I played this and the first one because they came in a "50 greatest commodore games" type thing back then. Other gems in that collection (I probably got it in 1989?) Potty Pigeon, Time Tunneler, Chernobyl... and a lot of crap too!
You should check out Ghouls Forest 3. It's a horror doom WAD made by CutmanMike, the creator of Mega Man 8bit Death Match. It's very clear he was influenced by this game when he created it. The final boss battle is almost just like the Demogorgon from the first game. He even refers to the woods as a forbidden forest in the description. It's much more horror focused however, and quite unsettling.
God, my sister and I where HORRIFIED of this game when we were kids. 1983? I was 3. My dad was playing this when I was maybe 6-7 or so? My sister only 3? We would SCREAM in horror at this game. Cry. My dad thought that was HILARIOUS. (he was an asshole and abusive. We'll leave it at that.) The four-headed hydra was the worst. It didn't help that my dad died all the time to him too... Ugh.
@Tamanozke This whole GAME scared the crap outta me back in the day - I could never play with the music on in my younger years. :)
I think the fourth enemy was called the Tarrasque. The game knew that guy was hard - the manual even used it as a lead-in to explain the resurrection scene. "... it leaped over yards of ground and landed right on top of me. The next few seconds were a blur of flailing limbs, its and mine, and blood and encroaching darkness." Freaky stuff!
Absolute treasure of low bit aesthetics.
Paul Norman is a god. Perfect game.
Still have nightmares to this day.
Every death except turning into stone! I had this game for years with no instructions, so I had no idea about the underworld until 97, 98...thanks internet.
Had this in a Cosmi mega pack they sold in a white box with gold lettering. Between this, Delta Man, and Time Tunnel I poured many an hour into that pack.
I had that same pack. Lol.
I could not for the life of me figure out what to do on that 4 headed dragon when I was 10, thanks for the vid!
@Tamanozke I still remember the description in the manual (which was written to describe the enemies like a "journal" of the archer's exploits). For the bats: "I was hit several times and finally overcome and collapsed." In the actual gameplay, I remember if you took enough hits your character would just fall to the ground (in awkward animation), it'd play the "death song," and a few seconds later you'd get up to try again - minus two Golden Arrows. Only "G-Rated" death scene in the game.
The only glitch I ever learned on my on own in any C64 game was in this game. If you shoot just one of the Hydra's heads enough times, it stops breathing fire altogether, making it easy to shoot the rest of the heads.
Man, my dad used to play this when I was a kid, and me and my sister were so scared it wasn't even funny. To this day, she still refuses to play it, however, I had, at one time, DLed a C64 emulator and a ROM of this and gave it a go. The four-headed hydra was the only thing I was still kinda scared of, the music and being turned into a skeleton... eruyerehhhhh... even now it still gives me the creeps.
that damn worm thing still freaks me out
6:47 is the sound that will play in my head is I ever die violently.
Thank you so much for the death sequences! :D Awesome
The ending was spine chilling
Dat music.
Yes!
ah the memories !
Always liked how he used raster bars to show where the arrow would go
I liked this game as a child
It's interesting that the final boss was a reptile of some kind and that this entire game takes place on Earth. I would love to know when it took place.
I could never beat this game. Thanks for showing it.
@damageYT
Can't tell you how many of my C64 games randomly broke like that. 5 1/4 inch floppies were certainly not known for their resiliency. One little dent in the cover or bend when trying to insert it; game gone. Though I accidentally saved over the entire game of Autoduel. Guys who programmed it never put in a catch in case you tried to use the game disk as a data disk to save your current game. I was 4, I didn't know what I was doing.
awesome game! really good playthrough
cool, best BFF capture ever, thnx!
@OBSysteme I remember you needed to actually press a function key to get the game out of "practice mode" and start the monsters coming out (beginning with the Scorpion). I want to say it was F7, but don't quote me on that. It was one of the odd numbered function keys, though.
ok here it is, shudder....I only remember the darn worms...
Dude, you're so good that the music for the golden arrows starts to be annoying.
This jingle got played here and there in demos: 2:24
well, i guess im impressed there is parallax in this game
Nice hab ich auch gezockt erstes 3D Feeling bischen und musik ist geil ,end ist Best^^
The end boss is a one-hit wonder. You have to work hard to get to him though, so that makes sense.
it is NOT as easy to shoot that spot as it looks. :)
Take that SNES!!!
Could never beat the hydra. I kept shooting the same head waiting for something to happen, had no idea you just needed to shoot each one once..
I played this like crazy
The music is seriously epic. the rest of the game, not so much, honestly. totally unfair.
The worm can, and will just arise directly beneath you. Additionally you lose half arrows rounded up when you die. Since the monkey and the worm are two apart from each other, and both are difficult for their own reasons, it's very difficult to get to four, and even harder to get more if you want to get extra insurance for the second stage of the game. Typically you just end up dying to the worm and monkey, and beating the scorpion and flier making no progress whatsoever. and once you luck out and get the worm killed once, you still have to kill it a second time without dying to anything else but the monkey, or you will NEVER get to four golden arrows.
When you get there and go on, your arrows are doubled.. but you lose two when you die? wtf? The final boss requires ungodly reflexes too. Anyone who has tried to beat this game unassisted without an infinite lives trainer knows what i'm talking about.
I think this was the first ever game that scared me.
Loved the first FF. I could never even aim so I never even shot one damn thing in this one. Ever.