102 Dalmatians: Puppies to the Rescue are two video games based off of the 2000 sequel to Disney's 1996 live-action remake of 101 Dalmatians, but styled after the 1961 animated classic. There was one developed for the first PlayStation, Sega Dreamcast, and Windows by Toys For Bob (under Crystal Dynamics), and another for the Game Boy Color developed by Digital Eclipse.
While sitting through TV commercials, Oddball and Domino decide to go outside to dig up treasure. When they come back, all their brothers and sisters have gone missing. As it turns out, Cruella de Vil's toys are selling poorly because children prefer pets to them. Cruella has the dogs abducted with the plan to dip them into her Super-Gloop and sell them as toys.
The Dalmatian puppies' parents, Dipstick and Dottie, set off to Cruella's toy factory with the intention of getting their other puppies back. They urge Domino and Oddball to stay at home and be good, but as soon as they leave, the two pups agree to go and help rescue their family.
The PS1, Dreamcast and PC game provides examples of:
- 100% Completion:
- Collecting every bone in a level provides an optional flyby sequence for that level, and gives you one of the stickers.
- There's a stickerbook with cartoon pictures based on each level and the boss fights. There are 102 stickers in total, six per level, complete with a triumphant tune should you collect them all.
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Partially downplayed in the Underground level, which features plenty of pipes that are large enough for a Dalmatian puppy to travel through, but also have massive open areas in them. The water is also clean despite its appearance, if Chester the Rat is to be believed.
- Action Bomb: There are yellow car toys with explosives attached to them that will charge at you when they spot you and explode a few seconds afterwards. The PC version throws in a warning by making the noise of their engines rise in pitch as they get closer to detonation.
- Adaptation Amalgamation: The game uses an art direction similar to that of the original animated movie, but its protagonists, Oddball and Domino, are from the live action 102 Dalmatians, and LePelt is one of Cruella's henchmen alongside Horace and Jasper (who were both absent from that film).
- Adaptation Dye-Job: Oddball is made an albino in this game, to justify her being spotless, as seen with her pink nose in comparison to the other 101 who all have black noses.
- Adapted Out: Domino and Oddball have another brother, Little Dipper, who is not seen or mentioned during the game.
- Alternate Continuity: To the 102 Dalmatians film itself, as it doesn't take place after the events of the film (Oddball doesn't have her spots from the end of the movie). Horace and Jasper are still Cruella's henchmen (they don't appear in the movie), Cruella has different motives, Oddball and Domino have 98 siblings as opposed to their only other sibling being Little Dipper (the other Dalmatian puppies in the film were stolen from other families), Dipstick mentions their humans, plural (Chloe is their only owner in the movie), the puppies meet Waddlesworth for the first time at Regent's Park as opposed to at the puppet show with Kevin and his dogs, and the game overall follows a different plot from the film. This is the result of the game originally being meant as a tie-in to the first movie before being changed in development.
- Amusement Park: A traveling carnival, to be precise, is one of the levels in the game.
- And I Must Scream: What would likely be the fate of all the pets Cruella captured had she managed to complete her plan. By dipping said pets in Super-Gloop, allowing Cruella to sell "perfectly realistic animal toys" for a quick buck.
- Beatnik: Manny the Mole, complete with sunglasses and a pair of tin can bongos. His first scene shows fluency in Jive Turkey, much to your puppy's confusion.
- Bloodless Carnage: No one in the game, animal or human, ever shows signs of physical damage when attacked. Your puppy only rolls over when hit, and Horace getting nearly crushed by a falling rock column only results in him being jammed into the dirt below.
- Bond One-Liner: After Horace, Jasper, or LePelt are taken out in a level, the player character punctuates it with a Pun, related to whatever they used to incapacitate that person.*Horace falls down a manhole*"I think Horace is feeling a bit down today."*Jasper falls into a frozen lake and turns into an ice cube*"That Jasper, he's the coolest guy I know!"*LePelt gets trapped in a sarcophagus*"At least his mummy loves him."
- Boss-Arena Idiocy: Cruella already seems to have Failed a Spot Check when it comes to places she chooses to fight the puppies in like a watermelon field and a castle with a catapult right below it, but the final battle deserves special mention: the puppies would not have a fighting chance were it not for the fact that the arena regularly spawns laser cannons. Keep in mind, this is in her factory, so she is actively choosing to sabotage her own efforts by doing this.
- Box-and-Stick Trap: LePelt tries a variation of it with an Egyptian sarcophagus in the Museum level. However, he failed to consider he would need string and bait to use it to capture a dalmatian puppy, didn't notice there's a puppy-sized hole in the side of the sarcophagus, and to top it all off, he gets duped into falling into it himself by the player.
- Button Mashing: On the roller coaster in the carnival level, you have to do this to speed up the car in order to hit every target that passes on the rails in front of you, before returning to the start.
- Buzzing the Deck: Toy Red Baron Tri-planes attack this way by ramming your puppy with the propeller - complete with a buzzsaw noise when in range.
- Cave Behind the Falls: There's one in the first wilderness level, which Manny prompts you to look at.
- Chekhov's Skill: During the second level, Sergeant Tibbs will teach you how to use a cannon, which will prompt a challenge to hit all the bubbles to rescue one of the puppies. This comes up three more times, with one being the Shooting Gallery at the Carnival to get bones and a ticket, another with a snowball cannon in the Ice Festival to shoot down a pair of toy airplanes, and at the very end of the game where you use a laser cannon to destroy Cruella’s computers during the Final Boss.
- Circling Birdies: The star variety whenever your puppy gets injured enough to lose a life.
- Clock Tower: One of the levels is the Big Ben clock tower.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The counterweights in the Big Ben level are different colors. They also have a varying speed and can only lift up a certain amount.
- Continuity Snarl: It's hard to tell what canon this game would fit into, if any. Many characters are from the Live-Action Adaptation, but the art style is more reminiscent of the animated films. In turn, the game could be set in Alternate Continuity.
- Conveyor Belt of Doom: Plenty of them in Cruella's Toy Factory, which in itself is a classic videogame example of a complete lack of safety standards.
- Cool Train: You can ride a scale-model steam train around the Toy Store level, which also leads to a Secret Room.
- Cymbal-Banging Monkey: One of the enemy toys. It tries to deliberately run away until it ends up cornered, then attacks you with its cymbals.
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!: If you're used to flight simulators where the down key pitches your aircraft up while the up key pitches it down (due to mimicking flight stick controls), you might be briefly confused by the water gun minigame in the Toy Store level, where up pitches up and down pitches down.
- Danger — Thin Ice: In the Ice Festival level, Jasper falls victim to this when standing on a frozen lake. Subverted in that he only turns into a human-sized ice cube when falling in. Humorously, on a sign nearby, the PS1 and Dreamcast ports show the classic "THIN ICE!" warning, while the PC port has a picture of a stick figure falling through the ice.
- Digital Tabletop Game Adaptation: It has a checkers Mini-Game and a mini-game that simulates a real-life Mad Marble Maze game.
- Disc-One Final Boss: Cruella has no less than four different boss events, though each one is unique.
- Down on the Farm: One of the levels is a country barnyard, owned by a farmer who hasn't been taking good care of it lately.
- Down the Drain: One level starts in a London Tube station, and quickly connects to an old subterranean waterway system. Lampshaded by the main character in one of the cutscenes.
- E = MC Hammer: In one cutscene where Farsboom shows Cruella a chalkboard with the Super-Gloop's chemical model on it, with nonsensical elements in it - to the point that it actually spells "GLOOP".
- Event Flag: Should the player reload a saved game in the middle of a level, freed puppies are replaced with pizza slices.
- Evil Genius: Professor Farsboom, the creator of the toys you fight in the game, as well as the Super-Gloop.
- Evil Lawyer Joke: When you first meet Chester the rat and he mentions that he's "studying", your puppy assumes he's studying to be a lawyer. note Chester, annoyed, asks why everyone always assumes that.
- Evil Overlooker: As shown in the cover art above, Cruella can be seen looming in the background behind Domino and Oddball.
- Falling Chandelier of Doom: Invoked as a booby trap set up by Sergeant Tibbs in DeVil Manor, to incapacitate Horace for the last time.Oddball/Domino: I guess it's lights out for Horace!
- "Far Side" Island: This is where Le Pelt, Jasper and Horace eventually end up.Horace: I sure hope one of you brought sunscreen.
- Fetch Quest: Generally one for every level's NPC. The largest one involves bringing the Royal Museum's artifacts to Fluffy the Chihuahua, to help relocate them before the place opens. Then it ends with recovering a "missing" jelly donut, which Fluffy just eats.
- Foreshadowing: Waddlesworth explains that the toys (AKA Farsboom's creations) are made with ludicrously cheap electronics so weak that sound cripples them. The first boss takes place on top of Big Ben, where a large bell is hung in the center and Cruella is using a chopper built by the professor himself. Guess how you cripple the copter to be able to hit it.
- Fortune Teller: One of the attractions in the Carnival level plays this for laughs, with its fortunes spoken in Mad Libs Dialogue.
- Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Cruella and Farsboom engage in Snark-to-Snark Combat after having been pushed into the huge vat of Super-Gloop at the end of the game.Cruella: You imbecile, you nincompoop, you...GROTESQUE GANGLING GEEK!!Farsboom: F...Fu...Fudge.
- Green Hill Zone: The first level is a park.
- Glass Cannon: Many of the toys can be easily destroyed by a single close-range bark or by rolling into them. At the start, Waddlesworth explains that this is due to the toys being made with ludicrously cheap electronics.
- Go-Karting with Bowser: Some of the minigames' tutorials are narrated by the villains. Cruella even brags that she designed the minigolf game herself. You also compete against two robot toys during the Ice Race minigame.
- Harmless Freezing: Happens to Jasper in the snow level.
- He Knows About Timed Hits: Whenever a tool needs to be explained to the player, the resident character openly tells you to use your action button to operate it.
- Hoist By Her Own Petard: Winning the final boss loosens the grating Cruella was sitting on, dumping her into the huge vat of Super-Gloop that she was firing out of a gun during the battle. For good measure, in the ending cutscene, Oddball and Domino make Professor Farsboom fall into the vat as well from an overhead catwalk.
- Horny Vikings: For whatever reason, Cruella wears a horned viking hat during her third boss fight.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: Food items turn up as steaks, burgers, or hot dogs, all of which restore your paw-shaped health bar by one slot each.
- Justified Tutorial: The parrot, Waddlesworth basically serves as the game's tutorial in the first level, delivered as a few conversations between him and your puppy.
- Karmic Butt-Monkey: The villains in this game suffer all forms of torment courtesy of the puppies. Given that they took their family away from them and planned far worse, they deserve every piece of what they suffer.
- Little Red Devil: One of the toy enemies.
- Living Toys: They are enemies in this game. Previously, Cruella had tried to sell them on the market, but no one bought them.
- The Maze: The hedge maze surrounding Cruella's mansion, designed to keep strangers out. It also has giant balls of thorns rolling around inside. Fortunately, Manny put up maps in certain areas to help you get around.
- Memory Match Mini-Game: The mini-game "Dig Dog". Despite the name's similarity to Dig Dug, it's a memory game where you have your puppy dig up two spots at a time and try to find matching objects. The goal is to find every pair as fast as possible.
- Monumental Damage: In the first wilderness level, Horace accidentally does this to Stonehenge when knocking over one of the stones with his net. The remaining pillars then fall like Disaster Dominoes until Horace ends up crushed into the ground by the largest pillar.
- Motor Mouth: Inverted with Shelby the tortoise, who speaks so slowly that your puppy gets drawn into talking like him at one point.
- Mr. Exposition: Waddlesworth, who explains pretty much every game mechanic to your puppy in the opening cutscene of the first level. Also applies to your first meetings with other friendly animals as well, who tend to explain some parts of the level.
- Mythology Gag: Dottie claims that Cruella's scent smells like pepper. This is based on how, in the Dodie Smith novel, Cruella's food would always taste of pepper, and when Lucky bites her, he learns she also tastes like pepper.
- Nightmarish Factory: Cruella De Vil's toy factory, which is right next door to her mansion, appropriately.
- No OSHA Compliance: The toy factory plays this trope well, from pounding pistons placed right over sets of conveyor belts, no handrails, and giant crushers meant to prepare metal for the assembly line, to name a few.
- The Nose Knows: Sniffing the ground often reveals a trail of arrows that end in an X at a certain spot where your puppy can dig, often revealing a hidden bone.
- Overturned Outhouse: The last task in the Barnyard level involves your puppy ramming the Farmer's tractor into his outhouse, on the excuse that the farmer recently installed indoor plumbing.
- Player Character Calculus: The two-character variety. You have the option to control either Oddball or Domino in-game and to switch between them at will. Cutscenes show them both traveling together, however.
- Produce Pelting: Each boss fight involves the use of flinging Edible Ammunition at Cruella whilst dodging her own projectiles, most of the time by the use of catapults. In the first two, Cruella's custom-made vehicles fire tomatoes at you, while you have to launch pineapples and watermelons back at her, and the third pits her water balloons against pumpkins. Averted in the last level, where she instead utilizes the infamous Super-Gloop, with your defense being "toy" laser cannons.
- Projectile Toast: Launched from a toaster that turns into a hostile robot, for good measure.
- Public Domain Soundtrack: The carnival level uses music from Camille Saint-Saëns. The PC version has a major key variation of Dance of the Macabre, while the Dreamcast port goes for Carnival of the Animals.
- Puzzle Boss: How you defeat the Baduns and LePelt. Usually, the NPC within the level you're playing on will give you a hint on how to go about it.
- Personal Mook: Professor Farsboom, the inventor of the toys. He is happily willing to do whatever Cruella asks of him, but has no real motives of his own. Though, dialogue suggests that he is married (or, at least, dating) Cruella, through online dating.
- Recurring Riff: The Ice Festival's music is a remix of the first level's theme.
- Recycled In Space: The puppies were watching "Thunderbolt In SPACE!" on TV, before a commercial break kicked off the plot.
- Respawning Enemies: Normally averted, but confusingly there are three such cases: the first alligator you see in the sewers, and the two penguins that slide down the steps in the ice level.
- Scary Stinging Swarm: Jasper ends up cracking a beehive with his net in the first level, and runs off while being chased by a swarm of bees.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Jasper, Horace and Le Pelt decide that it’s 'time to make themselves scarce' in the ending, trying to avoid the police by hiding in crates. This method of doing so backfires when they end up stranded on an island.
- Sewer Gator: One of Cruella's robot toys is this.
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: An ice festival, in the wilderness segment of the game.
- Sticky Situation: The epilogue scene shows Cruella and Farsboom glued together from the neck down by the Super-Gloop they were dunked in. And this exchange ensures that they're not going anywhere anytime soon.Cruella: Tell me again, you moron: How long will the Gloop keep us like this?Farsboom: Uh... approximately 20 years, my sweet. Not quite as long as our prison sentences.Cruella: Noooo!!! (sobs)(cell door slams)
- Stock Femur Bone: You can collect them. Collecting all 100 bones will give you a reward: a ride around the level from Waddlesworth. A fossilized dinosaur bone is used in a fetch quest, during the museum level.
- Tank Goodness: Inverted with tiny toy tanks that shoot rocks.
- The Lost Woods: The Spooky Forest. Crystal the Snow Bunny explains why it looks so dark.Crystal: We're getting closer to Cruella's mansion, and it seems she affects everything around her in a bad way.
- Villain Ball: The villains in this game are extremely short sighted and suffer loads of 1-Dimensional Thinking. For instance, in The Spooky Forest, LaPelt catches a puppy at the other end of a hollow log, and rather than just walking around to the other side, he attempts to crawl through it, getting himself stuck in the process.
- Wait Here: After all the other puppies had been stolen, Dottie and Dipstick set off to find them and tell Oddball and Domino to "stay here and be good," until they come back. Naturally, they don't listen. And for good reason, given what happens to them later in the game.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Ringing Big Ben in the first boss fight can temporarily cripple Cruella's helicopter. Something of The Artifact from the movie, where Big Ben's chimes break Cruella out of her hypnotized state.
- Wham Shot: The cutscenes after the third boss battle show LePelt having captured Dottie and Dipstick, the puppies' parents.
- You Dirty Rat!: Averted with Chester, who studies to become a stock broker and refers to himself as "a rat of fine standing".
The Game Boy Color game provides example of:
- Memory Match Mini-Game: The unlockable minigame "Picture Matching", where the player has to match a series of picture pairs within a time limit.
- Password Save: The game uses this type of save, using a four-picture code made up of various symbols associated with the game.
- Platform Game: The gameplay.
- Roaring Rampage of Rescue: You play as Domino or Oddball as they fight through Cruella's facility to free all the dalmatians.
- Shout-Out: One of the toys, in Cruella's Factory, looks like K-9 from Doctor Who.
