Hello Kitty Roller Rescue (known as Hello Kitty Picopico Rescue in Japan and Hello Kitty Mission Rescue in Southeast Asia) is an Action-Adventure Video Game based off of the popular Hello Kitty franchise. It was released for the Nintendo GameCube in North America, the PlayStation 2 in Japan and Europe, the Xbox in Southeast Asia, and the PC in Europe.
Following his last, disastrous attempt at conquering a planet, the evil Emperor Block-O stumbles upon Earth and decides that this time, he will succeed. To that end, he quickly launches a massive, block-shaped army to invade Earth and kidnap Kitty's friends and family. Block-O's ultimate goal is to turn everyone on the planet into a cube-shaped being like himself.
Hello Kitty is not pleased. Armed with a magic wand and roller skates, she must rescue those who were captured and turn back the alien invasion. Once she rescues enough friends, they can help too, with each partner offering different combat abilities.
The game has a fair amount of unlockables, with character profiles, mission rankings, upgrading partners, a Sound Test, and rescuing everyone who was captured.
This game contains examples of:
- Alien Invasion: The plot revolves around Block-O's invasion of Earth and Kitty's attempts to stop it.
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: Doing well on missions can get Kitty new outfits.
- Artificial Brilliance: My Melody's smart enough to eat her own cooking to heal herself if she's hurt.
- Big Bad: Block-O is the leader of the alien invasion.
- The Cavalry: In the final mission, all the villagers work to power up Keroppi's gun.
- Continuity Porn: A lot of Sanrio characters appear, and the character bios are fairly detailed.
- Crutch Character: Badtz-Maru helps out for the first stage only.
- Distressed Damsel/Distressed Dude: Block-O and his minions have captured all of Kitty's friends and family. Kitty herself becomes one in the New Game Plus.
- Double Unlock: You unlock items for free, but aside from outfits you have to buy them once they're made available.
- The Dragon: Block-O's field commander, who is fought in the penultimate mission.
- Early-Bird Boss: While the tank boss doesn't take much to go down, you have little health at that point in the game.
- Early Game Hell: Playing as Badtz-Maru is difficult at first because he has lower health. However, by the end of the game he has more health than Kitty would have.
- Elite Mook: The riot shield enemies, gigantic tin cans with shields and bottles as weapons.
- Forced Transformation: In the final levels, a laser can turn Kitty into a helpless block for a few seconds.
- Fragile Speedster: My Melody's pretty fast, and can heal you, but she has the lowest health even after being fully upgraded.
- Frying Pan of Doom: Badtz-Maru's favorite weapon.
- Gatling Good: Watermelon guns act like machine guns, and the final boss has a twin set of guns to shoot you with.
- General Failure: Block-O hasn't conquered anything before setting his sights on Earth.
- Glass Cannon: The crocodile helper, Pochi has the best attack, but is very fragile.
- Grievous Harm with a Body: Tabo and Runabouts crash into enemies to attack. Justified with the latter since he's a car.
- Heroic Mime: Aside from a couple meows when getting hit, Kitty doesn't talk.
- Holiday Mode: There are special Loading Screen pictures for holidays, as well as Hello Kitty's birthday.
- Implacable Man: Block-O's final weapon is this. It's impossible to defeat it; you have to stall it until Keroppi can finish it off with a Wave-Motion Gun.
- It's a Wonderful Failure: Failing to stop the giant robot in the final mission results in a Downer Ending where Block-O succeeds and the Earth and all of its inhabitants are turned into a cube.
- Jump Scare: Mission 5's merry-go-round suddenly activates and plays jarring music.
- Make My Monster Grow: In Badtz-Maru's ending, he grows 50 feet tall to deal with the final boss.
- The Medic: My Melody can heal you with cake.
- Mr. Exposition: Keroppi, via Kitty's computer.
- Never Recycle Your Schemes: Averted in the New Game Plus, with Block-O doing everything exactly the same as before with two additions to the plan: His robot, and the other bosses are even stronger, and Kitty is kidnapped.
- New Game Plus: Playing as Badtz-Maru. Interestingly, this takes place after the main game, with Block-O having copied himself and done everything again, except this time capturing Kitty as well. The bosses also take more hits to defeat.
- Non-Lethal Warfare: Purin's pudding stuns enemies.
- Offscreen Teleportation: Your companions teleport if you leave them behind.
- Oh, Crap!: Block-O after seeing Badtz-Maru grow to the size of his machine in Badtz-Maru's ending. It does NOT end well for him.
- One-Man Army: Kitty, and in the New Game Plus Badtz-Maru.
- The Professor: Keroppi takes this role.
- Rank Inflation
- Secret Character: Badtz-Maru, who wields a frying pan and has lower health at the beginning of the game.
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The supermarket's freezer level.
- Sound Test: Kitty's grandpa lets you listen to all the music encountered in the game, and her grandma lets you view all the cutscenes.
- Sugar Apocalypse: Evil aliens invade Earth with the intention of turning everyone on the planet into a cube, complete with a Downer Ending if you fail to defeat the final boss.
- Sugar Bowl
- Wake-Up Call Boss: Although the game's difficulty generally doesn't stray too far into truly difficult territory, compared to the Warm-Up Boss that was Brick-Eater, the Choo-Choo Bomber is a bit more hectic and may hand you a game over the first few times you fight it.
- You Shall Not Pass!: The final mission is this, with Kitty stalling an invincible robot until the others can finish it off.
