Video Game / Jet Force Gemini

A third-person shooter released by Rare in 1999 for the Nintendo 64.

The game stars twin siblings Juno and Vela, and their dog Lupus, who together make up the Gemini unit of the Space Police organization "Jet Force." Upon responding to a distress signal, they witness an attack on the not-Endor planet Goldwood against the not-Ewok Tribals by the bug forces of the evil Emperor Mizar. The trio move to do their hero thing, but their ship is suddenly attacked and boarded by Mizar's forces, the three of them forced to flee at random to start their quest at different locations.

From there, each member of Jet Force Gemini must embark on their own routes towards Mizar's Palace, saving Tribals and blasting his evil bug henchmen along the way. Once the trio are reunited they manage to defeat Mizar, but to their dismay he escapes. At this point they receive upgrades (Juno and Vela get jetpacks, Lupus becomes a tank) and are allowed to explore each other's levels freely, opening up new routes with their individual powers and gathering resources for the second and final showdown with Mizar on an asteroid he's hijacked and set on a collision course with Earth.

Originally designed as a cutesy shooter, it got a Darker and Edgier makeover halfway through development and ended up better for it. This being a Rare game, it also contains a good amount of their characteristic humour, such as furry dice in the cockpit of the Jet Force Gemini ship and a major character with the distinctly un-Sci-Fi-ish name "Jeff".

In December 2023, the game was added to the catalogue of Nintendo 64 games available for the expanded subscription plan of the Nintendo Switch.

---

This game provides examples of:

• 100% Completion: The player is required to rescue all 282 Tribals in the game to reach the final boss. They're distributed through the numerous planets, spacestations and ships visited in the game, and the reason why they're required is because the reward is one of the 12 missing parts of a ship that takes the player characters to the final level. Within the optional collectibles, there are numerous Bonus Totems (which unlock characters and stages for multiplayer), capacity upgrades for the weapons' ammunition, and the Floyd minigames (completing all of them with an Expert rank will unlock yet another character for multiplayer).
• 20 Bear Asses: The game requires you to collect Drone Heads to activate "cheats", which are just gimmicks really. 100 Drone Heads give you Rainbow Blood, 200 give you Jet Force Kids (younger-looking versions of the main characters), and 300 give you... wait for it... Ants As Pants! Yes, Rareware's mascot Mr Pants replaces all the regular Blue Ant Drones. However, you have to kill the drones in the correct way, or you can't collect their heads. You must either shoot their heads clean off with a weapon such as the Pistol, Machine Gun or even the Shurikens, or blow them to bits with explosives (which has the added bonus of making blood and body parts fly EVERYWHERE, making it somewhat hard to see where the head has gone if it bounces off the top of the screen while many other limbs and splashes of blood are flying around). For extra difficulty, to unlock the cheats, you must reach the thresholds with the same character, which means the Mr Pants cheat requires you to gather 300 heads with one character; the accumulated amounts between the three characters do not count.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Inverted, as Floyd defects from Mizar for this reason.
• Alien Blood: Green, with an option for Rainbow. Averted with the tribals, whose blood is bright red.
• All There in the Manual: It is revealed in the instruction manual that the titular trio are the only survivors of their fleet.
• All the Worlds Are a Stage: Mizar's Palace consists of three standard stages (plus a special area out of the classic format where you can participate in a race). Each area is tailored for one of the three main characters (Juno, Vela and Lupus), and not only features multiple enemies to defeat (except for Vela's area) as usual, but also requires the current character to employ a special ability exclusive to them: Juno's immunity to extreme heat to cross a lava room, Vela's ability to swim underwater to tackle an aquatic maze, and Lupus's ability to hover in the air to cross an extensive chasm. Those setpieces are based on hazards seen in the preceding worlds (lava in Eschebone and the foundry areas of Sekhmet and Spawnship, bodies of water in Tawfret, and chasms in Rith Essa and a part of Goldwood's second level). In the central area where all routes converge, the characters' sidekick (Floyd) has to complete a minigame that looks like those present in previous areas, but whose completion leads to the arrival of Big Bad Mizar. The twist is that this world is only a Disc-One Final Dungeon, as when Mizar is defeated he'll flee and the game's second half begins. The actual final world (Asteroid) averts this trope.
• Animesque: During its development, the game was inspired by several science fiction works, including the anime series Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, hence the character designs for Juno, Vela and to a lesser extent Lupus, specifically their anime-style eyes and the humans' space suits. In particular, Juno's helmet is modeled similarly to that of Ken the Eagle, while Vela's skimpy wear mimics that of Jun the Swan. At one point in the game, their suits are upgraded with Jet Pads to fly in certain places, similar to the Science Ninja Team when gliding with the Bird Style. And each time the player resumes their playthrough, the character selection has the heroes preparing to eject from their mothership into the site of action, similar to when the Gatchaman characters prepare to head into the current episode's place of conflict.
• Anti-Climax: The game ends with yet another Floyd flight segment. Granted, it's his Heroic Sacrifice for all the people in the Earth, but still.
• Anuscape Plan: During his visit to the volcanic planet Eschebone to dispatch the local Drone army, Lupus reaches the whereabouts of a gigantic worm. He throws a grenade at its mouth to incapacitate it so he can go inside. The rest of the playable world has him go through the worm's anatomy and dispatch more Drones as he does so. The way back outside requires traversing the anus, but Lupus will need to gather a color-coded key to open the way. As shown in the cutscene preceding a Dual Boss fight, the worm does explicitly excrete Lupus, alongside other fluids.
• Artificial Stupidity: An unfortunate case; Drones are programmed to run behind cover when cover is available. This includes barrels and other objects that violently explode when shot.
• Attack Drone: Not the so-called Drones (they're actually anthropomorphic insects), but the Airborne Squadrons, which often attack in groups of numerous units. Floyd becomes a friendly specimen after his redemption, though you need a second player for him to do any attacking outside of minigame areas.
• Awesome, but Impractical: A few weapons, the Flamethrower and Shocker perhaps most of all.
• Bad Guy Bar: Which inexplicably plays earth-like Disco non-stop. Even Juno can't resist the urge.
• Battle Theme Music: All bosses in the game, including Mizar who is the Final Boss, share a common battle theme. The track does fit for all of them, since they're fought in a similar fashion.
• Beating A Dead Player: Anything that's not a boss will continue to shoot at you after you've died. In the case of the final boss, he settles back down on his floating rock and laughs in your face or does a victory fist pump.
• Big Bad: Mizar, the main leader of the Drone army and the main responsible for the Bug War and the resulting invasion to the Tribals' solar system. Its true identity is Barry, Jeff's long-lost brother.
• Big Boo's Haunt: The third level of the Tawfret planet takes place within a dark, decrepit castle plagued by Drones; it's guarded by a huge insectoid monster (Fet Bubb) at the end.
• Blackout Basement:
  • The second level of the Tawfret level has a very dark basement that requires Juno to use Flares or a restrained charge of the Plasma Shotgun to have some visibility. It is there where the missing parts of Floyd can be found for him to be repaired.
  • The Spacestation, being a wrecked Ghost Ship stranded in outer space (but not too far from Goldwood), is dark in many areas, only having a few corridors illuminated with residual electrical energy.
• Boss Room: Each boss has one, and is preceded by a room that invokes a Suspicious Videogame Generosity.
• Bowdlerise: In the Japanese release, some violent elements of the game were changed. The tribals bleed blue instead of red, and you can't behead tribals and Drones at all (which also makes the unlockable cheats requiring the heads inaccessible).
• Brother–Sister Team: Juno and Vela, along with their well-trained pet Lupus, fight the evil forces of Mizar in the game.
• Bubblegloop Swamp: Tawfret, due to the lifeless state it got into after King Jeff had his magic spell misfired while he was attacking the incoming Drones. It's a gloomy, rainy marshland overrun by zombified enemies and abandoned rural houses. It ends with a Big Boo's Haunt castle.
• Bug War: The whole game is based around blowing up various bugs into green goo.
• Cap Raiser: Scattered around the planets and space vessels are Capacity Crates, which raise the ammunition cap of specific weapons. Unusually, they do not refill the weapons' ammunition proper, so it's up to you to find ammo crates for that (or, if it's a rare weapon like the Shocker or the Flamethrower, buy s refill to Diamond Geezer).
• Character Select Forcing: As the game progresses, each of the three main playable characters (Juno, Vela and Lupus) goes through a specific route of three worlds (namely two planets and one enemy mothership) to reach Mizar's Palace. But in those paths, they will find obstacles or Locked Doors that can only be overcome with a character other than them (for example, Juno goes through Goldwood and finds a chasm that can only be traversed by Lupus with his Jet Pack flight, Vela goes through Sekhmet and finds a tunnel in a lava foundry that can only be traversed by the fireproof Juno, Lupus goes through Eschebone and finds a submerged entrance that can only be accessed by Vela, and so on), so the player will need to back track to those areas with the correct respective characters during the second half of the game.
• Checkpoint Starvation: Usually, losing a life in the game puts the character's back into the start of the area where he or she was defeated (they all have only three lives each per level, however, so the player has to keep an eye on not dying too often). However, the Interior level of the eighth world (Rith Essa) only consists of one long, marathon-sized area filled with enemies of many kinds, so every time Lupus (the character designated for that specific level) dies he'll have to go all the way until the part of the area where the Drones who killed him are. Luckily, this is also one of the few levels that don't need to be revisited in the future (as long as all Tribals are rescued the first time), as it has no Ship Parts or even optional goodies for Juno or Vela.
• Co-Op Multiplayer: After rescuing Floyd, a second player can take control of him and use his blasters.
• Collision Damage: A bit odd for a third-person shooter, but it's there.
• Conspicuous Electric Obstacle:
  • A hidden passageway in Spawnship has some electric beams that connect the walls at the sides, and crossing it is necessary to find and rescue some Tribals at the other end. This passageway can only be accessed by opening a door with the Green Key.
  • Justified with the electric beams that appear periodically in the Cortex level of Eschebone. This area takes place inside the central nervous system of the enormous worm that lives in the planet, and the appearing electric beams are synaptic signals sent between the flesh walls. The first part goes through the spinal cord, while the second and last is a gigantic hollow that holds the worm's brain. Visiting this level is required to collect one of the ship parts for The Great Repair.
• Container Maze: One of the levels in SS Anubis, the aptly-named Depository, consists of a large, intrincate labyrinth made of large metallic containers. The abundance of enemies requires the player's character to keep an eye on the corners to avoid being ambushed by them.
• Controllable Helplessness: You can twitch after dying.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Present in all lava-filled areas, including Eschebone which is a volcanic planet. Lava only hurts if Vela or Lupus touches it directly (Juno's special ability is being able to walk on them).
• Creative Closing Credits: Juno drops some questionable steps on the dance-floor at Ichor.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: Lupus gets a lot of this on Eschebone. In the pre-boss cutscene, he uses his hovering ability about 8 times longer than he can in gameplay. There's also a cutscene directly after beating the bosses where he always finishes them off with the machine gun, regardless of whether you have ammo or not. In several other cutscenes, he hovers a good deal higher than he can jump, and can gain altitude while doing so.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: When you rest your reticle over an enemy, they flash green (the color usually associated with allies, meaning do not shoot them), while Tribals flash red (meaning enemy, so blast away).
• Death Mountain: Rith Essa, a beautiful planet with grassy mountains visited during sunset, and where the main characters (Lupus at first, then Juno and Vela eventually) fight a horde of Drones who overrun the rocky crags. One of the later levels, Ascent, has a part where the currently-chosen character has to fly (with the help of Jet Pads) between very tall rocky pillars standing above the cloudy chasm. The last level is set inside an Underground Level instead, as it's a mineral cavern where Vela has to look for an important item (and do so with a Tribal disguise).
• Didn't Need Those Anyway!: This is how the first three bosses (Fet Bubb, Lug, and Mechantids) are fought in the game. All of their parts are loaded with weaponry, so the main characters have to mutilate them part by part to advance through the battle.
• Disc-One Final Dungeon: Mizar's Palace. It is there where the three main characters (plus Floyd after his Heel–Face Turn) reunite once their respective errands in the Tribals' solar system are completed, and where Big Bad Mizar arrives. The grand confrontation occurs, and Lupus (the team's dog) succesfully defeats Mizar... who then runs away and plans to reroute an asteroid to impact planet Earth out of revenge. Now the characters have to start The Great Repair to find the missing pieces of an ancient spaceship, reassemble it and catch up to Mizar to defeat him for good and find a way to prevent the Earth's doomsday. Bottom line, defeating Mizar for the first time only means 50% of the mission is complete!
• Do Not Run with a Gun: Almost completely averted. The player is only held in place when aiming a small handful of weapons (and even then you can still strafe), and only a few enemies have to stand in place to fire at you.
• Down the Drain: The second level of Mizar's Palace is Flume, which serves as a highly-advanced network to store water and also doubles as an extended aquarium for fish. Vela is the only character who can swim underwater, so this level is exclusive to her.
• Dressing as the Enemy: The Transformation Pads can turn Juno and Vela into Drones, and during that state they're able to prevent other Drones from attacking them unless they open fire.
• Dual Boss: The gigantic cyborg mantises, known as the Mechantids, serve together as the bosses of Eschebone, and the third boss overall in the game. They swap positions constantly, and while one of them attacks you directly the other sends projectiles from the distance. It is Lupus who confronts them (and wins).
• Easy Levels, Hard Bosses: While some of the levels can become very difficult due to the concentrated armies of enemies, it's the bosses that give players a run for their money. During the second half of the game, no more bosses are found until the last one, so the game's difficulty focuses on finding the hidden ship parts and tribals.
• Embedded Precursor: One of the racetracks from Diddy Kong Racing (Greenwood Village) can be unlocked for multiplayer mode in this game after completing both tracks (broken time records included) from Jeff and Barry Racing (itself, funnily enough, a Game Within a Game).
• Epic Launch Sequence: The launch of the Tribals' primeval spaceship near the end of the game, which takes place right after The Great Repair is complete, is shown with a bombastic buildup cutscene. This is justified both because it's the first time in a lifetime that the ship has been put into use after being in disrepair, and because this is the ship that allows them to intercept Mizar's Asteroid before its impact onto Earth, making up for The Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
• Eternal Engine: The game has the three cargo ships that are stormed respectively by the three main characters: S.S. Anubis (Juno, though Vela tried to take control over it until she was kidnapped), Sekhmet (Vela, this time succesfully) and Spawnship (Lupus). These serve as the dungeon levels of the game, and feature mechanical designs and features like hovering platforms, high-tech corridors, lots of Drones and airborne squadrons to deal with and, depending on the case, specific obstacles like conveyor belts, electrical obstacles and pools of lava. There's also the Spacestation, a wrecked vessel that has been stranded in outer space for a long time, but it's only accessible during the latter half of the game and plays more like a Mini-Dungeon.
• Everyone Is Armed: The Big Bug Fun Club, located in Ichor's second level, has a large group of Drones enjoying the music (which you can also select by talking to Fishface, who serves as the MC). Just make sure not to shoot at any times or interrupt their dances by moving too close to them, or else they'll throw grenades at you (the bigger bug will also shoot you if you take the Tribals, though doing this will be necessary to proceed in the game). And all of this assumes that you enter the building while transformed into a Drone, because getting there in human form is a fatal mistake from the get-go. The trope is justified, because the nightclub is located inside a widespread military base.
• Evil Laugh: Mizar before he fights you, and also after he kicks your ass.
• Evolving Title Screen: Depending on how far you were into the game, the title screen would change in order - Juno running solo, Juno & Vela running, the whole team running, the whole team running in their upgrades, the whole team walking on Earth in celebration.
• Fake Longevity: The game forces you, right before the final level, to rescue every Tribal on the game. You must rescue them all in one go for each level you attempt; if you miss one or let even one of them die, you must restart that level. They have an annoying habit of running around in the middle of crossfire and some Drone soldiers are specifically programmed to held them hostage and kill them the moment they spot you. You must also rescue those on out-of-the-way hidden worlds.
• The Federation: The military organization the main characters work for, simply called the Federation, although it's only briefly mentioned in-game and in the manual.
• Fetch Quest: Some of the ship parts can only be collected after tackling difficult fetch quests. One of them, for example, requires the main characters to find a pair of earplugs in a level that is otherwise unrelated to the one where they're requested. Another piece is earned after all Tribals in the galaxy are rescued.
• Free-Sample Plot Coupon: Subverted. When Mizar escapes from his palace after Lupus easily defeats him, he threatens the characters to redirect an asteroid to blow up planet Earth. Aware of this, King Jeff tells the protagonists that there is a huge mothership that will help them intercept the asteroid and find a way to stop it, but it's missing twelve pieces. Eleven of these pieces are scattered through the galaxy, so the three characters have to do a Fetch Quest to retrieve them. The 12th piece, technically the first, is in Jeff's hands, but he won't give it away until all 282 missing tribals in the game are rescued, despite the urgency to reunite all pieces.
• Final Boss Preview: When all three playable characters arive Mizar's Palace and enter the pyramidal spaceship of the eponymous Big Bad, one of them (Juno) watches Mizar approach and tries to confront him with his standard pistol. Mizar laughs at him and then throws him an energy ball that incapacitates him, and then leaves. The other two characters (Vela and Lupus) comfort him as he stands up again, and all three go forward to face the villain together. Surprisingly, Lupus manages to defeat Mizar alone, since the latter only intended to toy with him for the sake of intimidation; realizing this mistake, Mizar does a Rage Quit and begins a plan to destroy Earth, kickstarting the second half of the game.
• Final-Exam Boss: During the final battle, Mizar borrows several attacks and patterns from previous bosses in the game, requiring you to remember how to tackle them. He launches meteoric rocks and places himself from a distance like the Mechantids, uses electric attacks and red-colored Shockwave Stomps like Fet Bubb, hovers from one side to another to attack Juno more closely like Lurg did against Vela in its second phase and, during the final phase, resumes the stationary sequence of attacks like he did in the Final Boss Preview in his fight against Lupus.
• Futuristic Pyramid: The ship Mizar uses to arrive his home palace has the shape of a big pyramid.
• Game Within a Game: The game features an instance of this in one of the later levels, involving an arcade machine where you play a top-down racer against the AI. Tokens are even necessary to play it.
• Ghibli Hills: There's a planet-wide example with Rith Essa. The game's instruction manual explains in detail how lush and beautiful the scenery in this planet is.
• Ghost Ship: At one point, Vela reaches the Spacestation, a wrecked vessel that has been stranded in outer space for a long time. Aside from the Tribals that need to be rescued and some optional pickups and goodies, it has a low level of importance (no Ship Part is found here, as the one Vela can find on her way here is in Goldwood, the preceding world).
• Gimmick Level: Gem Quarry eschews the usual gameplay of shooting at enemies (there aren't any), as well as the focus on rescuing Tribals (there are only five, and they're all found near the landing site), in favor of a unique task based on empowering a special vehicle with green-colored Gems (not present anywhere else in the game) dropped by a friendly Tribal. And as the player does this, the transition between day and night accelerates unusually (no other level does this, in fact the time of day doesn't even change at all in them). The purpose of empowering the vehicle is to make it send a signal to a planetary satellite with the command to detect and destroy incoming meteors (sent by Mizar to destroy the planet). After the mission is completed, the player can talk to a nearby NPC to receive a valuable Plot Coupon.
• Global Currency: Tokens (grey-colored coins with the Jet Force logo engraved in them) are used in all spacecrafts and planets where a Floyd minigame, merchant shop or even arcade stand is present. The game is set in a solar system with a recognized interplanetary federation, so it makes sense.
• Gotta Catch Them All: The ship pieces and the Tribals. As in, you need to collect all the ship parts to get to the Final Boss, and one of those ship parts is only gotten after you rescue all 282 Tribals in the game. Then there's the equally difficult collection of all optional items, like the five Expert Medals via the Floyd Minigames (one of them is obtained easily as you progress in the game, but it's also required to get at least one Gold Medal from another minigame for the process of getting one of the ship parts), all Bonus Totems to unlock characters and stages in multiplayer, the Gemini Holders to raise the characters' Life Meter, and the numerous ammo capacity upgrades scattered in the worlds and vessels. Lastly, the game's hidden cheats require collection of the obliterated Drones' heads to be unlocked: 100 for the first, 200 for the second and 300 for the third.
• The Great Repair: The second half of the game is all about finding the 12 missing pieces of a spaceship that can help the characters intercept a meteor Mizar plans to aim at Earth to impact upon it.
• Gratuitous Disco Sequence: One of the levels has a bad guy bar, a disco-themed bad guy bar. On top of that, Juno happily disco dances during the end credits.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • The second level. To progress, at the bare minimum, the player needs to shoot a panel in an easily missed segment of a room, located in a different room than the objective is, with no clue as to the location (and no indication is given that these panels are not decoration!). And rescuing all Tribals requires finding more of these panels throughout the level, all hidden in even more out-of-the-way places.
  • The sheer obscurity of what you need to do to get one of the ship parts needed to take on the final boss. First, find a hidden passage in the second level so you can do one of the Floyd racing/shooting minigames. Then get a Gold rank on said minigame, which requires memorizing the path and the things you need to shoot. This will give you a set of earplugs. Now, take these earplugs to a bear on one of the hidden planets. The game, to its credit, tells you the bear is having trouble sleeping because of the scared Tribals screaming, and that the Anubis (the second level) is a cargo ship, where you might find something helpful for her.
• Hailfire Peaks:
  • Tawfret combines elements of Bubblegloop Swamp and Big Boo's Haunt, being a rainy marshland overrun by zombified Drones while also having a haunted lake, a graveyard, and finally a large decrepit castle where a boss monster (Fet Bubb) lurks.
  • Eschebone is a Lethal Lava Land planet, and in its first level Lupus has to venture through many areas filled with lava while dealing with powerful enemies. Halfway in the level, however, he will find a giant worm he can enter through by knocking it out by throwing a bomb at its mouth. From there, the level transitions into Womb Level and the second level follows suit (though the boss battle against the Mechantids takes place in a wide volcanic area accessed by exiting through the worm's anus). Much later in the game, it's possible to access to the third level, which takes place inside the worm's spinal cord plus the central nervous system, complete with several electrical hazards.
• Heart Container: There are two of these (Gemini Holders) in each main major world in the game. Each character (Juno, Vela, Lupus) visits three destinations (two planets and a vessel) before Mizar's Palace, so each can get 6 extra units (worth 5 HP each). All of them can be gathered prior to meeting Mizar for the first time, which means that the characters will have to survive with what they get during the second half of the game (as no Holders are found in any of the additional areas and worlds).
• Heroic Sacrifice: Floyd, to stop drones from executing tribals. Then again at the end of the game to destroy Mizar's asteroid.
• Homing Projectile: The Homing Missiles are heat-seeking projectiles that aim at whichever Drone or Airborne Squadron they first approach after being shot. They're so accurate that they'll even take full laps around the largest enemies in case they miss, which makes them useful during the Final Boss battle against Mizar.
• Hover Bot: Floyd, whose propeller and eyes take up the majority of his small body.
• Hub Level: Mizar's Palace inverts the trope. Instead of giving access to the other worlds, it must be accessed from them, namely from a different world for each playable character; it's also required to defeat a boss right before unlocking in each case. Juno reaches it after completing Goldwood, S.S. Anubis and Tawfret; Vela reaches it after completing Sekhmet, Cerulean and Ichor; and Lupus reaches it after completing Spawnship, Rith Essa and Eschebone. When all three characters reach here and enter the pyramidal spaceship where Mizar awaits, Lupus challenges the villain in a boss battle and wins (though it's only a Final Boss Preview). This kickstarts the second half of the game, and enables access to all available planets for each character (once The Great Repair is complete, returning to Mizar's Palace one more time will be necessary to unlock the final world).
• Immune to Fire: Juno's armor makes him immune to fire as well as lava, which allows him to go through very hot places harmlessly.
• Impossibly Cool Weapon: The game gives each of your characters their own tri-rocket launcher relatively early in the game.
• Inconveniently-Placed Conveyor Belt: There are two rooms in S.S. Anubis having each a large slope where a wide conveyor belt operates. In the first room, they're moderately fast but can be overcome with some jumps and perseverance, though it's ideal to instead climb through the boxes placed sideways and kill the enemies allocated in them. In the second room, the conveyor belt moves so fast that it's impossible to overcome them, as the forthcoming area is meant to be explored by Floyd (a flying drone) during a minigame dedicated to him.
• Insect Gender-Bender: Most of the Ant-like soldier drones, including the default blue variant, are identified as female in the multiplayer mode as well as Vela's disguise. The larger termite looking drones are identified as male.
• Invincibility Power-Up: There's an item that can be spotted in places that are infested with enemies. It lasts for a limited time, but gives the player a chance to kill several enemies without being hurt.
• I Surrender, Suckers: Sometimes the Drones throw their guns away and raise their hands up in surrender. Often if you turn your back on them they'll pull out a grenade, and... Bye-bye, large portion of your health!
• Jet Pack: Lupus has jet engines equipped in his four paws, allowing him to hover in the air for a surprisingly extended period of time (making him the only character capable of crossing large chasms that lead to unique areas). Later in the game, Juno and Vela are given jetpacks to fly vertically, though they can only use them when standing on a Jet Pad to collect fuel (during that same period, Lupus has his own jet engines upgraded to use the Pads as well).
• Jiggle Physics: Whenever Vela runs or walks, boob mechanics ensue.
• Kid Amid the Chaos: Can be seen in King Jeff's vision of the invasion, and any time you decide to shoot a baby tribal's parents.
• Kill Enemies to Open: As the name suggests, Life Force Doors can only be opened by killing enemies.
• Lethal Joke Item: Fish Food can feed some enemy types, most enemies will dodge it as though it was a grenade and it can be useful for clearing mines.
• Lethal Lava Land: The planet Eschebone is entirely volcanic in its geography, though the game also provides two Womb Level stages as, at one point, the current playable character (Lupus in the first visit) has to enter the body of a gigantic worm. Lava is a non-issue for Juno, thanks to his heatproof armor, while Lupus can use his hovering skill to avoid touching lava whenever possible; however, Vela lacks those respective benefits and has to be more careful (especially since there's a part of this world the player has to reach with her to finish the game, and for that she has to deal with this deadly hazard). Lava is present in a limited fashion in other levels, and hide areas meant for Juno.
• Level Goal: There are two types of goal: The current character's spaceship in a landing site (which will take them out of the current planet or space vessel), and a door leading to a new area placed within the current planet of space vessel. The latter type, in turn, tells subtly the player what to expect next: If there's just a starry green hologram, it means the character is about to access a standard area; if there's a starry red hologram instead, it means a free, resting zone lies ahead; and if both holograms are present, it means the current area will be directly followed up by another of the same type.
• Live Item: The game features the Ewok-like Tribals, who fall victim to Video Game Cruelty Potential just as often as they are rescued.
• Locked Door: Doors are usually locked in one of the following three ways: By the life force of all the Drones and Airborne Squadrons that have to be dispatched beforehand, by requiring a key (in this case, a colored electronic card that matches the color of the seal that acts like the door's lock), or by requiring a specific item that is exclusive in access and use to one of the playable characters (a crowbar so Juno can enter the trap doors, a traditional key so Vela can open the door that leads to a mine in Rith Essa, a pair of googles so Lupus can open a door that leads to a very dark room, or simply the presence of Floyd so he can allow the current character to open a door leading to a minigame dedicated to Floyd himself).
• The Lost Woods: Goldwood, the first world available in the game, is a lush planet full of waterfalls and green flora that used to be peaceful until Mizar's army overran it; the off-level rest areas lean towards Green Hill Zone, as they're much wider in size and have almost no enemies.
• Ludicrous Gibs: Go ahead, shoot that lone foot soldier ant with that shiny new Tri-Rocket Launcher. If that's not gory enough, turn on the Rainbow Blood mode, which doubles the amount of blood exploded enemies splatter, and paint the entire room fabulous.
• The Man Behind the Man: Behind Mizar is, of all things, King Jeff's missing brother.
• Marathon Level: Goldwood and Rith Essa are the largest worlds in the game, as each has four individual levels, and among them Rim (in the former) and Interior (in the latter) stand out for their longevity. Meanwhile, the largest individual level is Military Base in Ichor, which also happens to be very difficult due to the high concentration of enemies and Elite Mooks, and is also one of the levels that culminate with a boss battle.
• Medals for Everyone: In a Shout-Out to the ending of A New Hope, Magnus (who looks and acts similarly to Yoda), rewards Juno, Vela and their pet dog Lupus with gold medals for having defeated Mizar's army and saved Earth from an apocalyptic asteroid impact. Lupus also receiving the medal is justified, because he was also trained for military combat and, like each of his two human owners, he did 1/3 of the lenghty job in the mission.
• Mercy Kill: Sometimes Drones won't die instantly. They might fall to the ground and twitch in agony instead. The player can finish them off or let them expire after a few seconds.
• Mini-Dungeon: The Spacestation. It's like the cargo ships visited by Juno, Vela and Lupus through their individual routes, but it's severely wrecked and the only relevant thing to do is to rescue Tribals.
• Missile Lock-On:
  • The aptly-named Homing Missile weapon can target an enemy and (as long as the targeting button is held) keep it locked-on so the missile shot invariably aims at it to kill it.
  • The Mechantids can shoot homing missiles during their boss battle against Lupus.
• Missing Secret:
  • The game houses a secret level called the Spacestation (whose only playable area is Abandoned Wreck), which tasks players with descending through its charred husk to the floors below. At the final deck, you'll find a mysterious door that slides open to reveal a thin alcove and nothing more. Keep in mind, an entire floor is dedicated to this grand reveal, which seems rather underwhelming when the door offers up little more than a bit of closet space. The developers later stated that "[The Abandoned Space Station] was one of the first levels we prototyped. We abandoned it, then put it back in late on as a hidden level."
  • All three playable characters can separately collect all five types of key (red, yellow, green, blue and magenta), except for the blue key for Lupus. At least he won't require it at all during his errands.
• Mook Chivalry: The boss fight against the Mechantids starts off like this with the second one just hopping around on the background scenery, but that gets completely thrown out the window halfway through the fight.
• More Dakka:
  • Chain guns and rocket launchers are your best friends. The game notes this with locks that require being shot a lot in a short time frame to unlock a door - the standard pistol, with its limited ammo before recharging can't do it, but a machine gun you can acquire relatively nearby does the trick.
  • There's also one type of flying drone that shows up in groups of at least 12, each of which will shoot around 10 shots at a time.
• Ms. Fanservice: Being the only female cast member, Vela was likely designed with a certain audience in mind. She wears no helmet so we can see her blue hair, has a neckline along with the usual assets and of course a tiny skirt that gives panty shots (until she's upgraded; then she's wearing shorts).
• Multiple Life Bars: Each of the green-colored corners of the X-shaped shield in the center of a character's Life Meter has its own HP, in turn represented by the fragments of the surrounding ring (which, at the start of the game, is halved, but collectiong a Heart Container will add a new fragment to encourage the player to find enough to complete the ring.
• My God, What Have I Done?: King Jeff has one of these moments after he, in a fit of rage, uses his rather incredible magic powers to zombify the entire planet of Tawfret. Granted, that was a mistake: he was aiming at the bug soldiers, but one of them shot him and the zombie-beam hit a tree instead...
• Night of the Living Mooks: The first half of Tawfret is populated by zombified Drones vulnerable only to explosives and^note for whoever is familiar with zombie flicks the Plasma Shotgun.
• Night-Vision Goggles: Lupus finds a pair of Night Vision Goggles during his travel within Mizar's Palace. Upon getting them, he can stand onto a green pad that opens the gate to a very dark underground maze, at which point the effect of the googles activates (making the game's screen turn green). From there, Lupus can explore the maze and defeat the Drones along the way until reaching the bright exit, no longer needing the googles.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Lupus, the third member of the heroic trio, is a robotic amphibious tank/dog.
• Non-Human Sidekick: Lupus and Floyd.
• Nostalgia Level: A variation—in the multiplayer mode of the Racing Minigame, it's possible to race on the Greenwood Village track from Diddy Kong Racing.
• One-Man Army: The titular trio and Floyd defeat Mizar all on their own, with no support from any of the others except for Floyd.
• Opening the Sandbox: Initially, each of the three main playable characters has a predefined route to reach Mizar's Palace, and each planet or space vessel will only be accessible for a specific character. However, after they reach the central destination and Mizar is defeated for the first time, they will be able to explore any planet available up to that point as they initiate The Great Repair, which grants access to locations that were unavailable for their original visitors.
• Parental Bonus: One NPC is missing his pants. Find them, give them back to him, and talk to him again, and he'll comment that his "yin and yang" are "warming up nicely".
• Pickup Hierarchy:
  • Primary: Ship parts
  • Secondary: Tribals (all of them being necessary to get one of the ship parts), color-coded keys, character-specific tools (Crowbar for Juno, Mine Key for Vela, Night-Vision Goggles for Lupus)
  • Tertiary: Floyd Medals, Tokens
  • Extra: Bonus Totems, Gemini Holders, ammo capacity upgrades
• Platform-Activated Ability: In many worlds, there are octogonal pads that allow the playable characters to perform special actions or abilities, though all of them can only be used when meeting the right conditions; all of them are black and have a white-colored drawing hinting at their function, though the borders have color-coded square marks to make them stand out. These pads are:
  • Floyd Pads. Only usable after Floyd himself is found and repaired in Tawfret, they put the current character into an energy barrier and initiates a minigame where the player controls Floyd. The pad's border marks are yellow.
  • Jet Pads: Only usable after Juno and Vela have their armors equipped with Jet Packs and Lupus' jet engines in his feet are enhanced, these pads provide fuel to the pads/engines to fly upward; if they run out of fuel, the pads can be stood on for a recharge. The pads' border marks are orange.
  • Night-Vision Pads: There is only one in the game, and Lupus is the only one who can use it after scooping the nearby Night-Vision Goggles. It allows Lupus to wear the goggles in order to go through a very dark cave and reach a chasm that takes him to the rendezvous point where Juno and Vela are heading as well to confront Mizar. Its border marks are colored green.
  • Transformation Pads: Only usable by Juno and Vela (likely because they only work with humans or humanoid beings), these pads transform their user into a specific creature. The ones in Ichor and Mizar's Palace turn the user into a Drone to fool the enemies, and their border marks are colored blue. The one in Rith Essa turns the user into a Tribal, and its border marks are colored green.
• Plot Coupon: The game has the missing twelve pieces of the ancient Tribal spaceship. It has to be rebuilt to intercept Mizar before his asteroid impacts Earth.
• Pocket Rocket Launcher: The Homing Missiles and the Tri-Rocket Launcher, while bulkier than your other weapons, are both compact enough to be held like handguns due to engine limitations.
• Powerful, but Inaccurate: The Machine Gun is described by the game as being rapid and powerful, but inaccurate. This is because the stream of bullets gradually diverges from the intended aim, so it's recommended to use it only when the enemies are close enough or the enemies themselves are big (since all bosses are very large and their weak points are telegraphed, the shortcomings of the weapon are a non-issue for them).
• Press X to Die: You can run into fireplaces and other heating elements to damage yourself.
• Racing Minigame: There are two racing minigames: The first is in Mizar's Palace, and to participate in it Juno or Vela has to transform into a Drone insect; reaching first place nets one of the 12 ship parts necessary to reach the final level. The second minigame is a Game Within a Game available in Ichor, playable through an arcade found in the game room of a discoteque (once again, the character has to transform into a Drone insect), and it's optional; if the Floyd mission in Ichor is beaten with a Gold or Expert medal, a chip will be earned and installed within the arcade to play a harder version of the racing minigame; completing both versions will make them available for multiplayer, while breaking their respective records unlocks the multiplayer-exclusive Greenwood Village racetrack (from Diddy Kong Racing).
• Recurring Boss: Mizar is fought twice: In a short, simple confrontation with Lupus at the middle of the game's story; and in a much longer, more difficult rematch with Juno in the finale.
• Remilitarized Zone: Ichor is the planet where Mizar's insect drones are trained and, from there, carried by the large vessels to the planets they aim to invade. Vela is the first character to storm the facility, and much later in the game Juno and Lupus follow suit.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The protagonists during the whole game, when you consider their backstory.
• Rule of Three: You don't get a rocket launcher. You get a Tri-Rocket Launcher. And there are three main characters, each of which visits three destinations (two planets and one space vessel) before reaching Mizar's Palace), and Cluster bombs explode into three smaller bombs.
• Shield-Bearing Mook: Some of the insectile Drones wear metallic rectangular shields that cover their whole bodies, so they're only vulnerable when they shoot (as they have to look at you with their heads and shoot with the pistols in their limbs).
• Shifting Sand Land: Cerulean, notably having blue-colored sand and cerulean-colored mountains (which is why it looks like an snow-themed planet when it isn't). Since its lone level is played during nighttime, there aren't any heat-related hazards.
• Shooting Gallery: One of the multiplayer modes pits two players in a firing range duel where they're hovering across a specific area from the game's main campaign. Cardboard targets shaped like Drones will appear, and whoever shoots them first will earn points. Cardboard targets shaped like Tribals will also appear, but they must be left intact to avoid losing points. The player who scored higher by the time the tour ends wins. The game has two stages available from the start, while other two can be unlocked by ranking gold in two Floyd minigames in the main campaign (namely and respectively, the ones in Goldwood and Eschebone).
• Shout-Out: Collecting upwards of 300 decapitated Drone heads allows you to replace the standard Mooks with Rare's mascot, Mr. Pants. There's also an unlockable racing minigame/multiplayer mode, which shares a track with Diddy Kong Racing.
• Silliness Switch: Rainbow blood, the characters' original super deformed designs, and enemies appearing as Rare's mascot, Mr. Pants, are all unlockable. And you unlock them by decapitating the bugs and collecting their heads.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The final level in the game (Asteroid) features cold areas in its interior. In them, several parts of the floor are frozen (you can even see Juno's reflection through them), thougn luckily they're not slippery; there' s even a section where enemies are covering up with walls of ice.
• Single-Biome Planet: Several planets have each a specific ecosystem that is common in their global geography. They are, in order of appearance: Goldwood, Tawfret, Cerulean, Rith Essa, Eschebone, Gem Quarry, Walkway, and Water Ruin. It's unclear if this also applies to Ichor, whose playable parts take place inside the Drones' military facility (thus being Remilitarized Zone levels), so we don't see how the rest of the planet is like (one of the last areas prior to the boss room suggests it's a blue desert like Cerulean, whose orbit happens to be close to Ichor's). The remaining levels are Eternal Engine vessels (S.S. Anubis, Sekhmet, Spawnship and Spacestation; the last one doubles as Ghost Ship), Mizar's Palace (a Temple of Doom), and Asteroid (Space Zone with some Slippy-Slidey Ice World parts; also the final level).
• Sniper Pistol: A textbook example. You can force a target to center on the crosshairs by manipulating the view on precision mode. Made even easier by aiming with the Sniper Rifle prior to switching.
• Some Dexterity Required: It's not overly complicated; what makes it hard to get used to is how you have to learn and switch accordingly between 2 control schemes: the normal roaming control scheme and the hold-R precision control scheme.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: A few examples:
  • During Walkway, a level with no music otherwise, the Rith Essa theme plays during the elevator ride back up to the surface, barely getting started before the 5 second ride is over.
  • The underground cave in Water Ruin is a short run down a corridor to a hidden ship part, with no combat taking place or mechanical elements on show, yet here the S.S. Anubis theme plays with its dramatic melody and soundscape evocative of the mechanical level it's usually heard in.
  • During Asteroid, the unique and climactically urgent sounding theme is replaced by the theme of Eschebone for a single room - while Eschebone's theme becomes plenty dramatic as it goes on, you're unlikely to spend long enough in the room to reach that point, making it ill-fitting. This and the above two strange cases would double as Long Song, Short Scene if it weren't for the fact that the songs used are all heard in full (and more sensible contexts) earlier in the game.
  • While every single boss fight sharing the same music fits just fine, the same can't be said of the upbeat Robot Mission theme, which plays as usual on the sixth one of the game, which is not only the final playable part of the game overall, but features Floyd flying towards his death.
• Space Pirates: According to the manual, Juno and Vela's parents ran afoul of space pirates and were killed, which led to the twins yearning to become members of a Jet Force team.
• Space Station: All three main characters visit a Drone vessel during their initial routes: S.S. Anubis for Juno, Sekhmet for Vela and the Spawnship for Lupus. Later in the game, all three characters can pay a visit to the wrecked Spacestation (though the first to come is Vela, as she unlocks it by completing a stage in Goldwood that is exclusive to her).
• Space Zone: Despite its intergalactic setting, the game takes place primarily on different planets and the interior of large space vessels. As such, the only two levels that properly display this setting are the Spacestation (a wrecked, derelict vessel stranded in outer space) and the Asteroid (the one Mizar is taking to planet Earth, and also The Very Definitely Final Dungeon).
• Spam Attack: After you destroy Mizar's wings in the second fight, he goes absolutely nuts and proceeds to attack three times as much as he did in his earlier phases.
• Squashed Flat: Standing under an elevator will squash the player. Curiously, this does no damage and they bounce back as soon as the elevator is off of them.
• Stellar Name: The main characters' names are Juno (name of an Asteroid), Vela, and Lupus.
• Story Arc: The game's first half has the three main playable characters (Juno, Vela and Lupus) head towards Mizar's Palace to defeat the leader of the insectile Drones responsible for the Bug War in the galaxy; in turn, each character goes to the intended destination by completing their own roadmap, dealing with different events as situations as they face the Drone army along the way. The second half, which starts with Mizar's first defeat, is a quest to repair an ancient ship to intercept the villain's asteroid to prevent its impact against planet Earth.
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: Vela is capable of swimming underwater indefinitely, which grants her access to areas that are out of reach for Juno and Lupus.
• Suspicious Videogame Generosity: Right before a boss battle, you enter a room or corridor full of ammunition supplies and life energy.
• Take Your Time: After defeating Mizar the first time, he flees and commandeers a passing asteroid, putting it on a collision course with Earth. The characters' own ships aren't fast enough to catch up in time, but fret not! All the player must do is embark on a planet-hopping quest to collect parts of a ship that is fast enough. All this time, Mizar's asteroid will remain effectively in limbo en route to Earth.
• Theme Naming: The star sign Gemini is the twins, and the names Vela, Lupus and Mizar come from Real Life constellations. Juno is named after an asteroid.
• Title In: Upon entering a planet or vessel, the game's screen will identify its name, the name of the specific major area, and the number of continues (extra lives) available. The resulting font is displayed again when the player loses a life or reaches a different area (with the changing variable in question updated). The trope is averted when landing to Goldwood, SS Anubis or Mizar's Palace, due to their landing sites taking place within unnamed rest areas (but once the player reaches a named area, the font is used to play the trope straight).
• Too Dumb to Live: Some Tribals will rush out to be rescued by you... Even if you're in an intense fight with drones.
• Took a Shortcut: Lampshaded by Magnus. "I move pretty fast. I know."
• Underground Level: The Mine level of Rith Essa, available after Vela earns the Mine Key, take place within a complex underground cavern where valuable gems are being extracted by the enslaved Tribals. It's entirely devoid of enemies, as the main challenge consists of rescuing the aforementioned Tribals as well as figuring out how to trick Farmer into giving Vela the part of the ancient spaceship he found (since he's actually evil and doesn't plan to hand it over).
• Under the Sea: Water Ruin is a planet that consists of a very large body of water, and has its ground parts destroyed due to the Bug War. The only area that is tall enough to remain dry is the ruins of a castle, where a friendly bear can be talked to for a plot-critical Fetch Quest. There's also a flooded cave beneath the castle's ground that houses one of the Ship Parts.
• Unique Enemy: There's an unusually large Airborne Squadron that attacks the player in a wide-open chasm located halfway through the Ascent level of Rith Essa. It's also very fast and shoots relentlessly upon approaching the player's chosen character. This enemy doesn't appear anywhere else in the game.
• Ursine Aliens: The appearance of the Tribals is inspired by that of the Ewoks, and they also inhabit multiple planets in the solar system that has been ravaged by Mizar's army. There's also Ivana Bear, a more realistic-looking female bear who lives in the planet Water Ruin, and will give the main characters a Ship Part in exchange for a pair of earplugs she needs to sleep.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: While Mizar's Palace is hyped as this, it's revealed to be only a Disc-One Final Dungeon, since Mizar pulls a Rage Quit upon being defeated easily by Lupus (a dog). The true last level is the Asteroid Mizar is travelling with to reach Earth in a desperate attempt to cause a doomsday there, and it can only be intercepted by performing The Great Repair to a sacred apaceship, which makes up for the whole second half of the game.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • The Tribals can be shot and killed in the same way as the enemies. This includes women and children and baby tribals.
  • Depending on where (and with what) you shoot a Drone (or Tribal), they can be decapitated, explode in an audible shower of blood, or collapse on the ground, twitching. And if you want to, finish the job with the Tri-Rocket.
  • Other options include setting them on fire or watching them jerk in agony as you slowly fry them with the Shocker.
  • You can collect the heads of your enemies. Or the Tribals.
  • You can disguise yourself as an enemy, and stand outside the mook's nightclub, with the queue of 20-30 Mooks trying to get into the place, and decapitate all of them with a single shuriken.
  • Collecting the ant heads even gets you a reward; get enough and you can use the Silliness Switch.
• What the Hell, Player?: NPCs will chew you out for shooting them.
• Womb Level: Eschebone is a lava world and one of its denizens is a giant worm. The player enters through its mouth and exits through...the other end.

---