Q:

Is the Thief Race event in Tomba! undoable if done too late?

In the classic Playstation game Tomba!, there is a series of events involving a thief who's imprisoned in the Dwarf Village.  First you go into his dungeon and the light goes out, so you restore the light using a torch, then he digs a tunnel to escape, then you find a broken vase in the dungeon, then you cover up the tunnel he's digging, so he's forced back into the dungeon, then he goes to sleep, then you come back and he's awake, then he breaks out again, then he challenges you to a footrace in the Watch Tower, and then after you win you get a Silver Powder that's essential to make candy with Mizuno the witch.
Now I completed all the events in this sequence up to and including "The Great Escape", where you find the broken vase and cover up the thief's tunnel, so the thief has gone back to the dungeon and fallen asleep.  But for some reason,  he seems to stay asleep indefinitely, rather than just waking up after you leave the dungeon and re-enter it, so I'm unable to initiate the footrace of the "Ready Set Go!" event.
So what's causing the problem, and how can I get him to wake up?  I suspect the cause may be that I've progressed too far in the game, while I was supposed to do the thief events earlier on.  I've already beaten 6 of the 7 Evil Pigs, including the one responsible for the Dwarf Forest curse.  Could it be that the Thief events, specifically the footrace, can only be done when the Dwarf Forest is still under the curse?

A:

The explanation turned out to be trivial.  The walkthroughs don't mention it, but it turns out that the thief won't wake up until you do another event - the telescope event.  You have to take the telescope from the roof of the wooden observatory on the top of the watch tower (after climbing onto the roof by grapple), climb down and put the telescope on the platform at the top of the observatory ladder, and then take a look through the telescope.  Only when you do that event will the thief be awake.
The game doesn't really make this point clear; right before going to sleep,  the thief does tell you that the view from the watch tower telescope is really good, but it's hard to tell from that that you're required to look through the telescope before proceeding further with the thief.

