ThornTail Store

ThornTail Store
Entry
Statistics
Location	ThornTail Hollow, (Dinosaur Planet)
Inhabitant(s)	ShopKeeper
Establishment(s)	Blue Room Yellow Room Purple Room Scarab Room
Object(s)	See below
Behind the scenes
Appearance(s)

“Welcome to my store. Feel free to look at the many wonderful items within these walls. I have food, special goods, and many maps. And if you like to play games, then enter the Scarab Room! Yesss... Oh! And that's the exit...Now, if you find something that you like, then choose that item, and we'll discuss a price. Is that clear?...Good! Now hurry up and choose something. Or get out!”

—

The ThornTail Store is the only shop on Dinosaur Planet, and consequently, the only shop in "Star Fox Adventures". Hence the name, the shop is located in ThornTail Hollow, and is run by the mysterious ShopKeeper, who only accepts Scarabs as payment.

Shop Layout

This shop is divided into the Main Room, the Scarab Room, and 3 shopping rooms, all of which have a different color representing the nature of the goods sold in the particular room. The Main Room's doors form an inequilateral hexagon, which connects all the other rooms to the Main Room. If the player takes the first door from either left or right of the entrance, he or she will end up in the Scarab Room. The second door on left leads to the Blue Room and the second door on the right leads to the Purple Room. The Red Room is located opposite the entrance. There is also a well in the middle of the Main Room, from which Fox may buy a Cheat Token. The cheat token may be taken to the Game Well Maze under the Warp Stone.

To buy an item, Fox must approach the Item to select it, and it will attract the ShopKeeper to arrange a price, but he will be chased away after a third attempt if Fox's offer does not match the ShopKeeper's minimum price for each item.

The Blue Room

Here the ShopKeeper has all his perishables:

Image	Item	Price	Bargain Price
	Dumbledang Pod	3 Scarabs	2 Scarabs
	4 Dumbledang Pods	10 Scarabs	8 Scarabs
	PukPuk Egg	6 Scarabs	4 Scarabs
	3 PukPuk Eggs	15 Scarabs	10 Scarabs
	FireFly	10 Scarabs	7 Scarabs
	Fuel Cell	10 Scarabs	8 Scarabs
	Bomb Spore	5 Scarabs	3 Scarabs
	Blue GrubTub Fungus	12 Scarabs	12 Scarabs

• The blue room is completely unneeded as mostly everything in it can be easily found in other places, unless a specific amount of items is needed, such as Fuel Cells.
• There are two canisters in the hallway between the Main Room and the Purple Room. They contain two Dumbledang Pods, which can also be bought in the Blue Room at a high price. This makes buying Dumbledang Pods a fool's errand.
• Strangely, even if Fox does not have the FireFly Lantern, he can actually buy FireFlies but is unable to store them, thus buying nothing for the price of ten Scarabs.
  • It is also not mandatory to require FireFlies to complete the game, several places where they are required, it is possible to advance without using any.

The Yellow Room

The steep, default price of the SnowHorn Artefact.

In this room he has all kinds of special goods and four maps:

Image	Item	Price	Bargain Price
	Bafomdad Holder	20 Scarabs	15 Scarabs
	FireFly Lantern	20 Scarabs	17 Scarabs
	SnowHorn Artifact	130 Scarabs	110 Scarabs
	Tricky's Ball	15 Scarabs	11 Scarabs
	Rock Candy	10 Scarabs	8 Scarabs
	Hi-Def Display Device	20 Scarabs	17 Scarabs
	Krazoa Palace Map	5 Scarabs	3 Scarabs
	Dragon Rock Map	5 Scarabs	4 Scarabs
	Cape Claw Map	5 Scarabs	4 Scarabs
	Ocean Force Point Temple Map	10 Scarabs	7 Scarabs

• Four of the items are required purchases but can only be bought after Fox has been given each size of necessary Scarab Bag after specific game points.
• The required objects are Rock Candy, FireFly Lantern, Hi-Def Display Device, and SnowHorn Artifact
• Three of the items were apparently stolen by the ShopKeeper, only to be bought back by Fox.

The Purple Room

This room holds most of the ShopKeeper's maps:

Image	Item	Price	Bargain Price
	ThornTail Hollow Map	5 Scarabs	4 Scarabs
	SnowHorn Wastes Map	5 Scarabs	4 Scarabs
	Moon Mountain Pass Map	5 Scarabs	4 Scarabs
	DarkIce Mines Map	5 Scarabs	4 Scarabs
	CloudRunner Fortress Map	5 Scarabs	3 Scarabs
	LightFoot Village Map	5 Scarabs	3 Scarabs
	Walled City Map	5 Scarabs	4 Scarabs
	Volcano Force Point Temple Map	10 Scarabs	9 Scarabs

• In the second part of the Purple Room there is a Rocket Boost Pad which can be used to reach the upper floor of the Store. There are four containers having a total of eight Scarabs inside.

The Scarab Room

In this room, Scarabs can be gambled with the ShopKeeper. First he asks the amount of Scarabs to be gambled, with the maximum of ten. He then throws the desired number of Green Scarabs into the play area, from where they have to be collected within 30 seconds. The catch is, that he also frees the same amount of Purple Scarabs in the play area, which when collected, result in losing the bet. The amount of Scarabs lost is reduced by the amount of Green ones collected before stumbling into a Purple one. For example, with a 10 Scarab bet, and only four collected Scarabs before getting a Purple one, will result in six Scarab loss. The bet is won if all Green ones are collected. The prize is rather unsurprisingly the amount of Scarabs gambled. Playing the game actually costs nothing unless a bet is lost.

• It is possible to cheat the ShopKeeper out of a small fortune. If Fox continually buys items and then gambles in the scarab room for the price of that item, he can win back all the money he spends, effectively taking all the items in the shop and paying nothing - assuming he wins.

• When exiting the Scarab Room, Fox normally has to pick either left or right. But if he goes straight through the wall instead, he enters a room containing a large rock. Under this rock there are three Orange Scarabs, which are worth 10 Scarabs each. This isn't hard to exploit, since they will be back every time Fox leaves ThornTail Hollow.

Notes

The ShopKeeper accepts the margin price for the SnowHorn Artifact.

• The ShopKeeper will let Fox bargain for a lower price by tapping the Control Stick down when he shows him the price, but the ShopKeeper doesn't always sell things for a bargain price. Curiously, he also lets Fox pay more than the default price by tapping the Control Stick upwards. Nothing is known to be gained by doing this.
• If Fox talks to the ThornTail in front of the Warp Stone area's entrance before going to the DarkIce Mines, the ThornTail asks Fox if he has visited the Warp Stone Shop yet. This may imply that the ThornTail Store had it's name changed in later parts of the game's development, since the only shop in the whole game is the ThornTail Store.
• Buying the maps is not required to complete the game, but their purchase is the only way to get the P.D.A's map scanner working on a specific area, and a report from Peppy Hare about the area will be provided when contacting him.
• When staying within the store for a long time, the ShopKeeper mutters to himself about his drafty old cave, being in business for over 200 years, the Warp Stone giving him a headache, and apparently moving to Cape Claw.

Trivia

• The entrance to the shop requires customers to climb down a rock wall and then up over a high ledge, which is easy enough for someone of Fox's shape, but it would be very difficult if not impossible for a ThornTail or even any other quadrupedal dinosaur to actually enter.

Early Development

• Originally, in earlier versions of the game, there was a ladder to climb down, and there was no ledge to climb up, it was all leveled.
• In the earlier version of the game, the hidden room directly across from the Scarab Room contained three red Staff Energy Gems that could be collected, but was later replaced by the big rock containing scarabs.
• In the Kiosk version of the game, rather than images of the kinds of items for each room, there were just plain-text describing what to find in each room, like 'Maps'.
• Originally, haggling wasn't available in the earlier versions of the game, therefore it would have forced having to pay full price.
• In the Kiosk version, gambling began with a forced-minimum of 5 scarabs (even if with one Scarab) in the Scarab Room. The Purple Scarabs were originally red and only reduced the amount of green Scarabs collected. They didn't end the minigame abruptly as they do in the final game.