Get ready for some monster Muppet fun!
A Playstation game released in 2000 and created by Magenta Software and Jim Henson Interactive, adapted from a cancelled Halloween Special.
Muppet Monster Adventure tells a tale where Kermit and friends are invited to go to Dr. Honeydew's uncle's estate. Kermit's nephew, Robin is less than enthusiastic, proclaiming that the place creeps him out. As the main door opens a shadowy figure steps out, and Robin faints with fright. When he awakes he finds that all of the muppets except for Pepe, Dr. Honeydew, Beaker, and himself, have been turned into monsters of different sorts.
To get them back to normal Robin must use a special glove and backpack invented by Bunsen to gain evil energy from the variety of enemies roaming about, and use it to transform his friends back to normal.
This game provides examples of:
- Abnormal Ammo: The Ballistic Chicken Launcher.
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The level "Feeling Flushed" looks to be a sewage treatment plant of some kind, with lots of purple goo pools, plenty of giant pipes to climb on, and several flooded tunnels and electric traps patrolled by cleaning robots and pigs in diver's suits.
- Adaptational Villainy: Rizzo will appear in some levels to play keep away with a Muppet Token.
- All Just a Dream: After you beat the game, it's revealed that the entire plot of the game was this. The shadowy figure who made Robin faint was a butler who worked for Dr. Honeydew's uncle.
- Anti-Frustration Features: Before each boss fight, Pepe will quickly give you the strategy of how to beat the boss in a text box, including what methods you need to use to damage them, just so younger players don't get stuck.
- Big Fancy Castle: Castle Von Honeydew itself, especially in the level "Hallways of Doom", where you end up inside the castle's interior and it looks gorgeous with its stained glass Dr. Honeydew windows and indoor gardens.
- Block Puzzle: The main purpose of Robin's Ker-Monster power is shoving blocks about.
- Boss Arena Recovery: Some of the boxes that drop down during the fight with Ker-Monster contain hearts.
- The Cameo: The Sweedish Chef appears at the end of "Hut, Hut, Hike" to give Robin a Muppet token challenge.
- Checkpoint: Tokens of Robin's face, which helpfully flash "CHECKPOINT" across the entire screen, just to make sure you know.
- Collect-a-Thon Platformer: Each world contains two major collectables - Evil Energy (which takes the form of colorful stars) and Muppet Tokens. The earlier levels also contain four pieces of different amulets, which give Robin his morphing abilities.
- Continuing is Painful: One of the pick-ups you can collect are empty heart containers that give an extra heart to Robin's life meter, increasing the number of hits he can take to as high as five. If you lose a life, your life meter goes back to three hits...and the empty heart containers you picked up in previous levels don't respawn. There's only a finite amount of empty heart containers in the game and once you pick them up, they're gone for good on that save file.
- Dark Reprise: The penultimate level has similar aesthetics to Peacock Purgatory (and shares its theme), but sends stronger enemies at you and just feels bleaker.
- A Day in the Limelight: One of the rare Muppet games where you play as a secondary character, Robin in this case.
- Dem Bones: Skeletons appear as enemies.
- Exposition Fairy: Pepe. If Robin comes close enough to one of his flags, he will appear to give advice. Sometimes, he will give missions and reward you with tokens.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Literally everything, even bits of scenery. Some of the enemies are as follows: tombstones, cacti, scarecrows, pumpkins, sewage managing robots, etc...
- Final Boss: The final boss fight is against Dr. Honeydew's Uncle Petri dressed as a Phantom of the Opera pastiche called the Master of Ceremonies.
- Flunky Boss: Nose-Feratu spends two-thirds of his fight sending his charging skeletons at you.
- Free Rotating Camera: Left and right, anyway.
- Friendly Ghost: A ghost appears in a few levels to play hide and seek with you for a Muppet token.
- Frigid Water Is Harmless: Robin can swim in the water in "The Monstery Monastery" without any ill effects, even though that level takes place on top of a snowy mountain. Later averted in "Ice to Meetcha!" and "For Peton's Sake", the two levels that come after, where instead the icy water behaves like goo and damages you every time you land in it.
- Game-Over Man: If you run out of lives, Robin faces you in front of the transitional time and space void along with the option to continue or quit.
- "Get Back Here!" Boss: The Ghoulfriend spends her entire boss fight running away from Robin by sliding down an icy slide. You have to stay on the track until the end while avoiding pitfalls and ice blocks that will instantly kill you if you crash into them. Once you reach her, she doesn't even try to defend herself as Robin runs up to her and zaps her with his power glove.
- Green Hill Zone: Peacock Purgatory.
- Grimy Water: The entire shore of "Shivering Timber Shoals" is surrounded by a slimy, toxic black ocean that Pepe helpfully calls "goo", creating a beach-themed level without a single body of water that's safe for Robin to swim in.
- 100% Completion: One hundred percenting all the levels nets you an alternate ending where the main characters all take a bow, like the end of a Broadway production.
- Invincible Minor Minion: The giant living snowmen enemies in the later ice levels cannot be killed by any of your attacks and shrink into little piles of snow when you get too close. They're usually placed in groups in the last two levels in order to make platforming a little more treacherous.
- Last Lousy Point: The number of Muppet Tokens and Evil Energy required to unlock new levels and bosses is a lot steeper than similar games of this genre like Super Mario 64. In order to unlock the final level and the final boss, you need to collect 106 out of 108 Muppet Tokens and 7250 out of 8100 Evil Energy, meaning you need to reach 94% completion in order to finish the game. This can lead to players having to replay levels multiple times just to scour for every last little glowing star or Muppet Token in order to progress.
- Loading Screen: There are two types; one is a generic "Loading" with a Kermit head logo. The other type, used when Robin is teleporting to another level (or back to the hub), shows Robin bounding through a glowing, neon-colored time and space void.
- Monster Mash: There's a vampire (Nose-feratu), a werebeast (Wocka-Wocka-Werebear), a Frankenstein's Monster (Ker-Monster), a Bride of Frankenstein (Goulfriend of Ker-Monster) and a swamp creature (Muck Monster). Most of these are available in the first few levels as transformations for Robin.
- Morphic Resonance: All of Robin's monster transformations still retain his small green froggy characteristics.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Baron Petri von Honeydew accidentally caused the events of the game and turned everyone into monsters by inventing a machine that was supposed to make things good...and accidentally turning the dial in the wrong direction, unleashing evil energy into the castle and the surrounding area.
- No Fourth Wall: Pepe is very aware that you're playing a video game and will often allude to it in his dialogue. The most notable fourth wall break happens at the very end of the game, after Robin wakes up from his dream and describes what happened.Kermit: What an imaginative dream!
Pepe: Sounds like a good idea for a video game, okay.
* All the Muppets turn and look directly at the camera* - Or Was It a Dream?: The end cutscene has Robin's power glove reappear as a painting of Honeydew's uncle seems to come alive and shush him.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: Robin's Wocka-Wocka Werebear transformation, Wocka-Wocka Werebear himself, and several Killer Rabbit enemies that become muscular when they notice you.
- Pass Through the Rings: A few of the mini-games to unlock tokens consist of this.
- Pintsized Powerhouse: Robin himself. All these giant monsters and frightening creatures are taken down by a very determined little frog muppet armed with only a power glove, a couple magical amulets, and a backpack.
- Piranha Problem: Piranhas are enemies underwater, along with pufferfish.
- Recurring Riff: Many music tracks in the game are variations of The Muppet Show theme song. Appropriately, many of them are also played in a minor key. Also, the tracks for Temple of Pork and The Monstery Monastery use samples from Bentley's Outpost and Cloud Temples respectively.
- Shifting Sand Land: "Molten Mayhem".
- Shout-Out: Pepe often references pop culture when you approach him for advice.
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: You fight the Ghoulfriend of Ker-Monster in one.
- The final level has many of the classic ice level tropes (ice-slides and rocket-powered suicide penguins), despite otherwise being themed after a haunted castle.
- Spin Attack: One of Robin's attacks is a spin move.
- Super Not-Drowning Skills: Robin does not need to resurface for air and can stay underwater as long as desired. While he is a frog, they still need to come up for air and cannot stay submerged forever.
- Technicolor Toxin: Several levels contain goo, which Pepe helpfully tells you to watch out for at the start of the levels that contain them. The goo all behaves the same way across all the levels but can be black (in "Shivering Timber Shoals"), bright purple (in "Feeling Flushed"), bright green (during the Muck Monster Boss), or a bright turquoise color (in "Ice to Meetcha!").
- Temple of Doom: "Temple of Pork".
- Threatening Shark: Averted. "Hut, Hut, Hike" has a friendly shark wearing a red and yellow propeller hat that is kept in a pin. If you beat it in an underwater race, you will get a Muppet token.
- Towering Flower: In "Peacock Purgatory", massive several-story tall sunflowers with googly eyes dot the landscape. You later have to destroy them with your Wocka-Wocka Werebear transformation to get a Muppet Token.
- Underwater Ruins: The underwater sections of "Temple of Pork".
- Wicked Witch: One of the enemies that starts showing up in "Escape Claws" is a green-skinned witch in a pointy purple hat and purple witch's robes that casts fireballs at you. It reappears in "For Peton's Sake" dressed in white and casting icicles.
- You Have Researched Breathing: Robin needs all four pieces of the Muck Monster amulet in order to dive under the surface and swim underwater in large bodies of water, something that should come naturally to a frog.
