Next on the menu, a level based on Atari's classic arcade game, Centipede.
Well, that's the first thing that came to my mind on the map screen, anyway. The start of this round introduces you to the slow, easy-to-kill Slime enemies, and the rather cool Centipede enemy, which snakes around the level at a slow, gentle pace, picking you off if it can. However, there's something that bothers me here. It seems to me that this round is terrribly familiar somehow. Have we seen it before? Hold on a second...
That's right!
Round 7 is actually a palette-swap of Round 2!
In fairness, to call it just a simple palette-swap is a little mean, so we need to clear things up. Round 7 takes Round 2's background and level layout, but aside from the palette change, the enemy placements are completely different. Most obviously, the Penguins and Chess Pieces have been replaced with insects... Particularly grotesque, completely out-of-place insects like the wind-up Cockroaches, and the gigantic Molluscs that seem to have been ripped directly from Splatterhouse (which, fact fans, was released on the same hardware as Märchen Maze, Namco's System 1 board) rather than anything like, oh, I don't know, the original bloody books.
The other change is that Alice once more plunges into the depths of Bullet Hell with Skull Bombs scattered all of the place, gun turrets, hordes of enemies... It's not a pretty sight. In particular, in the screenshot on the left, the amount of bullets launched by those clustered Skull Bombs doesn't bear thinking about. Aside from this hike in difficulty, the level is laid out in exactly the same way as Round 2, and this includes the very useful item section halfway through- this time, you get a Blue Orb, a Purple Orb and a Balloon item. Use them wisely. The rest have been replaced, sadly, with Red Orbs.
Here we go again. We've only got to do this three more times.
Another relatively uninteresting boss fight here, folks, as you fight two of these... Well, maniacally smiling, flying... Things. They move across the platform like Space Invaders, moving down every time they hit the edge, in tandem. Ocassionally, one of them will break free and move around the platform randomly, but outside that, the usual rule of "Shoot and avoid the bullet onslaught" applies here. They're not nearly as jumpy as any of the other bosses we've met so far, for some reason.
As an interesting point, though, this boss was the only place in the game where I ran out of time. When that happens, you'll be assaulted by a clone of this particular boss (what a coincidence, eh?) who will, if he manages to touch Alice, kill her instantly... And by that, I mean Alice will fall to the floor and start crying. For some reason, this requires you to sacrifice a life. I don't get it either...
Another level completed. Weird that it was a copy-pasta. Ho-hum.
Wait a minute, is that...?
OH HELL YES!
FINALLY, SOMETHING FROM THE ACTUAL BOOKS!
... Sorry about that. Yes, it appears we're in the domain of the Queen of Hearts, and her playing card minions have come to do battle with us! And you'd better believe there's a lot of them. If you try to bulldoze your way through and avoid the enemies without shooting them, you'll be thrown for a loop here, as there's a small army of these guys baying for your blood! Fortunately, they're really not that hard to kill, although if they swarm you, they'll try to push you off, much like the Shades Snakes. However, I'm getting that nagging feeling again...
Yup. Round 8 is a swap of Round 4. Oh dear.
Much like the Round 2/Round 7 switcheroo, only the general layout of the level is repeated, and the enemies are much different. Obviously, the Card Soldiers (in small Club and big Diamond varieties) replace the Robots from Round 4, but the Skull Turrets come back. Quite a lot of Skull Turrets, actually. Lots and lots of them, joined by their friends, the Skull Bombs. The major enemy force on this level, though, is the card army, because seriously, they're everywhere, to the point where they'll actually slow the game right down. Keep charging those shots, and you'll prevail.
However, when we get to the strange segment with lots of holes in the floor, and edges that lead to nowhere...
Welcome to Alice's Hell.
Once a place for Robots to hang out, this area becomes a dangerous, impossibly crowded battlefield, with Skull Turrets stationed at every single conceivable angle, gun turrets placed where you don't want them, Card Soldiers swarming in from all sides, and a whole lot of ground for Alice to cover before she can say she's home free. A slow and steady approach is probably best, but with so many of them, this isn't easy... Even if you take out all the Skull Turrets you can see on-screen, going further into this area reveals only more of them, and the cycle continues until the end of the round. Defeat seems... Inevitable.
There is hope, though!
To give yourself a fighting chance, take out the first couple of Skull Turrets you find, and make your way to the right. If you survive long enough to get to the area pictured above (it's not the very first right corner, but the one just after), you'll notice this chequered platform, seemingly leading nowhere. What could it possibly mean? Hop onto it, and it'll take you to an isolated little area... In the original Round 4, this platform only gave you Red Orbs and a Pocket Watch. But here...it's a secret items cachet!
A moment of reverent awe, please. It is here, friends, we find the equipment necessary to defeat the evil forces.
You get a Purple Orb, a Green Orb, a pair of Boots, and a Pocket Watch with which to tear your enemies asunder.
It's time for revenge.
Alice has re-joined the brawl!
With your new items, this area becomes a lot easier. You can either do it old-school, get stuck in the thick of battle and use the Spread Shot to take out all the Skull Turrets and Card Soldiers, or you can just jump over everything- the Boots make it so you can practically sail across the entire area, to the safety of the top, where you'll find the chequered flag. Of course, the best option is to take all of 'em out, just in case they get in your way... It's also the fun option.
By this time, the Purple and Green Orbs will probably have worn out... Perfect conditions for fighting the boss, of course.
Naturally, the boss is not the Queen of Hearts, because let's face it, that would've made far too much sense. Instead, you fight this giant scary head. On the plus side, it doesn't follow the 'scamper around erratically and flood the area with bullets' pattern of most bosses... It keeps the bullets flowing, but doesn't move at all. The Head attacks in two different ways: throughout the fight, it'll fire a slow but steady stream of bullets which are aimed directly at you, and every now and then, it'll grimace and fire a spread of bullets, then continue the homing stream. Just keep moving to avoid them, and shoot it a lot.
Once you damage it enough, it splits into three, and all of them attack you at the same time. The placement of the heads is random, and so is the head you have to attack- one of them takes damage, the other two don't. Hit the real head enough, and it'll revert to one head. Hit that one enough, and it splits into three again. Again, the placement and 'real' head is random. Repeat until it's on its own again, then beat it one more time to finish the job. How needlessly repetitive.
Jumping into the 8th mirror, Alice enters the final round.
Will the Queen of Hearts actually show up on the final page?