Grand Dad Reboot is a fangame by RED-FIRE based off of the infamous 7 Grand Dad Chinese bootleg.
When the game starts, the player is introduced to the plot: Bootleg aliens are trying to take over the world, but one of them, Grand Dad, took issue with his fellow bootlegs' motives and seceded from the team. Now, he must fight against the very bootlegs he once served and stop their invasion before the world falls to their copyright-infringing terror!
The game was released on July 28, 2017, and can be downloaded on GameJolt. Unlike Grand Dad Mania, this game focuses more on bootleg games, especially ones that Joel played, than the lore and memes of SiIvaGunner that popularized the character.
See also Skullman In: Scooby Doc 4: The Destroyer (Featuring Atsushi Onita), by the same creator.
This game provides examples of:
- Adaptation Dye-Job: Kung-Fu Mari wore mostly white in his original game, but here it's changed to blue.
- Adaptational Villainy: The bootleg creatures were all the protagonists of the pirated games they originally appeared in, but in this game, all but Grand Dad and Rocman X are villains.
- Aerith and Bob: There's bosses named Felix and Lou, and then there's ones named Kibby and Fortran.
- The Alcatraz: The Space Gulag, where Fortran locks up his minions if they fail him in any way. By the time Grand Dad reaches the Alien Base, everyone working for him who has been fought by that point (save for Domkey Kong, the Discmaster, and Felix) has been locked up in there, with Simba and Kung Fu Mari having just been freed once Grand Dad is forced to traverse it himself.
- Always Night: The Jungle stage, until the sun rises just as the game transitions to the Mountain stage.
- Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: The fight against the final boss takes place in one of these.
- Bad Boss: Fortran. His minions follow him out of fear rather than true loyalty, as evidenced by Simba's attempted Heel–Face Turn.
- Battle Boomerang:
- The first boss throws these every so often. Oddly, even though they're shaped like boomerangs, they fly straight off the screen without returning to the boss.
- Grand Dad can use one as a special weapon. Unlike the previous example, this one is functional.
- Big Bad: Fortran.
- Bilingual Bonus: The Discmaster (actually Chen Shimei from the bootleg game Bao Qing Tian) has the Chinese word for "butthole" written on the back of his boss arena. After his defeat, he is sentenced to decapitation by Justice Bao for attempted murder of his wife and children.
- Bait-and-Switch Boss:
- At the end of the Green Hill Zone stage, a bootleg Sonic walks onto the screen accompanied by ominous music... only to be immediately killed by the Panda Prince, some sort of glitchy, deformed panda with freakishly long legs.
- In the midway point of the graveyard stage, you come across Tryclyde, but he gets immediately punched out by Felix, who sics Squirtle? at you.
- Boss Corridor: Before every boss fight, there is a mostly-empty section of the stage that sometimes has weapon or health pickups and 1-ups scattered throughout.
- Boss Warning Siren: The appearance of each mini-boss is accompanied by a loud klaxon sound.
- Cluster F-Bomb: In an obscure Easter Egg (which requires both patience and infinite lives to be turned on), Simba devolves into this if you die 100 times in a row to him.
- Dark Reprise: As the game's Recurring Riff, just about every use of the Flintstone theme song past the first cutscene counts to some degree, but most of all during the final battle against Fortran.
- Death Mountain: The Mountain stage.
- Defeat Equals Explosion: Normal enemies explode when defeated.
- Defeat Means Friendship:
- Simba, after Grand Dad spares his life. He hatches a plan to tell his boss that Grand Dad never showed up, and tries to let Grand Dad pass by him unharmed. Unfortunately, Fortran overhears him through a spy-hologram and banishes Simba to the space gulag.
- Kung-Fu Mari, as well. He even meets the same fate.
- Easter Egg:
- After defeating the stage 2 miniboss, his body remains on the ground. Grand Dad can still strike the body with his club attack. Doing this 15 times rewards you with a 1-up.
- Hang out in the room where you meet Somari for too long, and a zombified Pikachu will appear and force you to leave.
- Eldritch Abomination:
- The Panda Prince, a bizarre glitchy figure in Stage 3's simulation.
- The Experiments combine to form one of these as the boss of the Alien Base. Fittingly, the fusion is titled the "Mariobomination".
- Enemy Roll Call: The ending names off all the main characters and bosses, as well as crediting the bootlegs they came from. It then lists off the names of the regular enemies.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Frogs, robots, pandas, monkeys, octopi, torches, flashing squares...
- Fake Ultimate Mook: At the end of the hallway in the second stage, Grand Dad is confronted by Lou, an enormous, sumo-style Mario creature. He can be sent flying off the screen in one hit from the weakest weapon in the game. He shows up again as the boss of the fifth stage, who states that he won't be holding back this time and giving it his all.
- Foreshadowing: The RED-FIRE vanity plate you see upon starting up the game is based off of
Dian Shi Ma Li Mario Lottery, but replaces Fortran with Grand Dad. If you pay attention to Grand Dad's non-jumping stance during this scene, it becomes incredibly obvious that the silhouette of the main antagonist seen in the opening cutscene is that of Fortran. - Game-Breaking Bug: In-universe: After Grand Dad defeats the stage 3 miniboss, the game appears to glitch out and crash before cutting to dialogue between Fortran and Somari explaining that the virtual-reality machine that Grand Dad is trapped in has malfunctioned. This begins the second half of the stage.
- Greater-Scope Villain: The Mysterious Entity, who not only has been watching Grand Dad's every move, but is also responsible for corrupting everyone (save for possibly the Alien Base Experiments) into their bootleg selves.
- Green Hill Zone: The first half of the third stage is based off a bootleg version of the Trope Namer.
- Heroic Mime: Grand Dad doesn't utter a word the entire game.
- Humanoid Abomination: Felix the Cat is portrayed as this, acting more openly malicious than the other bosses, and transporting Grand Dad to a warped dark space for his boss fight, where he appears as a large, pupil-less floating head. This characterization is based on his Genesis bootleg game, specifically the infamous Game Over screen
, which even appears in the boss fight's background as a distorted silhouette. - Intentional Engrish for Funny: The opening cutscene text is written this way to evoke the feel of the poorly-translated Chinese bootleg games this game pays homage to.
- Jungle Japes: The Jungle stage, although the second half more closely resembles a Bubblegloop Swamp.
- Kamehame Hadoken: Kung-Fu Mari and Janifer each have an attack involving these.
- Kick Chick: Janifer, the one female alien, relies almost entirely on rapid-fire kicking, with the occasional Kamehame Hadoken barrage thrown in.
- Killed Off for Real: Implied with Felix, who explodes after the fight against Jafar and is one of the only bosses absent from the Alien Base.
- Level in Boss Clothing: The Somari battle. You can't fight him directly; to win, you must beat him to the escape rocket at the end of the stage in order to escape before it collapses on you.
- Mix-and-Match Man:
- Grand Dad, who has Mario's head on Fred Flintstone's body, just like in his original appearance.
- Kung-Fu Mari has Mario's head on Jackie Chan's body.
- Somari looks like Mario, but moves like Sonic.
- The Fake Ultimate Mook near the end of the Mountain stage looks like a cross between Mario and M. Bison.
- Experiments Eleven and Fourteen have Mario's head, with the bodies of Master Higgins and Kid Niki, respectively.
- Monster Munch: The bootleg Sonic that shows up at the end of the Somari level immediately gets killed by The Panda Prince.
- Mythology Gag:
- The game features several in regards to Vinesauce Joel, who more or less instigated Grand Dad's meme status way back in 2014.
- The Experiments are all from bootleg games claiming to be Mario sequels; their numbers match the number of the game installment (Experiment 11 is from Mario 11, 14 from Mario 14, etc.), and are codenamed after the characters they replace. This includes Grand Dad.
- The final stage is Bedrock, straight from the Flintstones game 7 Grand Dad was based on. The music that plays in the background is a darker remix of the game's opening cutscene.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: Grand Dad himself when the game is set to OHKO mode.
- Perpetual Storm: The Jungle stage.
- Pop Quiz: One of these shows up at the end of the first stage of Gadem City, fittingly having all of the questions be about bootleg games. It's also possible to entirely skip the quiz, however.
- Pummeling the Corpse: This can be done to Discmaster.
- Rise to the Challenge: For most of the Ominous Cavern stage, a bed of lethal spikes will slowly rise up from below. Uniquely, they will sometimes teleport closer to Grand Dad, guaranteeing that they will be close enough to force quick reflexes.
- Recurring Riff: Fittingly, the Flintstones theme song, which serves as the title theme, and is incorporated into both cutscene themes, Stages 3 and 8, and the final two boss themes, as well as the extra life and stage clear jingles.
- Shout-Out: Mostly to Chinese bootleg games, along with some other works.
- When you press Start on the title screen, Fred Flintstone's cry of "YABBA DABBA DOO!" plays.
- This being a Grand Dad game, there are numerous musical nods to the Flintstones theme song (see Recurring Riff above).
- One enemy is a water-shooting a e s t h e t i c statue.
- Other enemies include Ninji, Rexes, and Mettaurs.
- The Tutorial level heavily resembles the first level of Super Boy.
- The main menu screen is based off of Street Dancer, complete with dancing Jar Jar Binks.
- "Chaos skyrocketed! Earth is ruined!"
- Skippable Boss: Nothing prevents you from simply walking past the deadly quiz in Gadem City.
- Spikes of Doom: The spikes in the third stage are 100% lethal, a la Mega Man.
- Super Drowning Skills: Grand Dad apparently never learned to swim, seeing as how water is treated as a bottomless pit.
- Tomato in the Mirror: The end of the Alien Base stage reveals Grand Dad isn't actually an alien of the same origin as the others; he's merely an experiment created from Fred Flintstone. Downplayed in that this turns out to apply to everyone, albeit in a more supernatural sense.
- Turns Red: After he takes enough damage, Simba literally turns red and moves much faster. The music even speeds up with him!
- Urine Trouble: One of the enemies is a naked statue that attacks by shooting high-pressure water blasts out of its dick.
- Wake-Up Call Boss: If you go into the first-stage boss fight against Simba expecting him to be as easy as Domkey Kong, you're in for a nasty shock.
- Warmup Boss: The first stage miniboss, Domkey Kong, is laughably easy. All Grand Dad has to do to defeat him is stand in the lower part of the floor on the right-hand side of the room and wail on him while he jumps over Grand Dad repeatedly, unable to hit him.
- Wham Shot:
- The final experiment sign in the Alien Base: Experiment Seven, "Fred".
- The sight of Mario's body after Fortran's defeat.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The fate of the cast aside from Simba, the Discmaster, Kung Fu Mari, Rocman X, Felix, and Grand Dad himself is never fully explained; they simply vanished after the Mysterious Entity reverted Earth back to its previous state.
- Wutai: Some parts of the Mountain stage, especially the hallway section.
- Your Head A-Splode: Happens to Kung-Fu Mari at the end of his boss fight...only for it to immediately grow back in the following cutscene.
