Video Game / TAGAP

Everything's better with penguins. Moreso if they're packing heat.

TAGAP (The Apocalyptic Game About Penguins) is a series of side-scrolling freeware Action Games in the style of Abuse made by Penguin DT, an indie game dev studio. As the name suggests, the series is about penguins and apocalyptic scenarios involving More Dakka, Stuff Blowing Up, and Fantastic Drugs.

So far, four games have been released:

• TAGAP (2007): The evil Doctor Glowenko plans to conquer the world with his army of cybernetic penguins. However Pablo - one of his creations - rebels, escapes containment, and goes into a one-penguin rampage across Glowenko's base, fighting his army of penguin clones, robots, and The Dragon Pedro.
• TAGAP 2 (2011): After Glowenko's defeat, Pablo and Pedro decide to investigate the company he worked for, Random Evil Pharmaceuticals. Unfortunately, they accidentally awaken R.E.P.'s own attempt at a cyber-penguin - General Primo, who promptly unleashes an army of fellow penguins. The duo must stop the evil rockhopper from taking over the entire world.
• TAGAP 3 (2017): In 2006, Pluto was declassified from "planet" to "dwarf planet". The Plutonian Penguins took massive offense to that, and decide to wage war on the entire planet. Moreover, because of a prophecy, they kidnap and imprison Pablo in order to prevent him from interfering. Luckily, Paola, second-in-command to one of Pluto's highest officers, manages to free Pablo and convince him into joining the rebellion...
• TAGAP 4 (2022): This game explains a certain incident that happened during 3. Due to a dimensional anomaly, Pablo ends up in an alternate timeline - one where Doctor Glowenko successfully conquered Earth with his army of cybernetically enhanced penguins. Pablo now needs to stop the evil scientist (again) and find a way home.

The Penguin DT website (and the download links for the series) is here.

Examples

• Aliens in Cardiff: The first secret base is in... New Zealand?
• Alliterative Family: Every named Penguins has a name beginning with P: Pablo, Pedro, Primo, and Paola.
  • This also happens to the Nemesis in 4, since he's an alternate, older Pablo.
• Alternate Timeline: The main setting of 4, where Dr. Glowenko was successful in taking over the world.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • When you die and continue, you restart at the beginning of the section. If you have low health and ammo, the game can give you some.
  • Collectible penguins are listed in the order they appear throughout the game.
  • In 3, if you replay a Department, you can skip certain sections and all the end-level boss battles. Additionally, you can get the "complete a Department without dying" achievements even if you do skip said sections.
    • The Department of Defence is considered "completed" as soon as you pass the Warlord's seat, even though the area past it is technically still part of the Department.
• Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: The final boss of 3 uses a contained singularity (a gigantic white-and-purple swirling sphere) as its background.
• Armor Is Useless: Subverted - enemies with armor tend to be more resistant than enemies who don't. Additionally, Pablo himself can acquire some decent armor through 3 and 4: each piece increases his health by at least 20%.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Apparently the weather controlling satellites were designed to "Fight global warming, ecological terrorism, and getting the weather predictions right for once".
• Artificial Gravity: The last level of the first game takes place on a space station with this.
• Ascended Extra: Remember the Funky Penguins that appear when you overdose on green pills? They got a much larger role in the third episode.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Mechapenguinators and a few other bosses abide by this trope. The former have their own weak points protected by shields, generated by other glowing weak points.
• Bag of Spilling: Justified in all games:
  • The second game begins with Pablo infiltrating a R.E.P. facility. Since it was supposed to be a simple infiltration mission, Pablo has minimal equipment, although he has Pedro and his assault helicopter as backup.
  • At the beginning of the third game, Pablo gets kidnapped after a night party, therefore he's completely unarmed.
  • The fourth game involves Pablo being sent to another dimension, which justifies the loss of equipment.
• BFG: The OMG-20k from 1 and 2.
• Big Bad: The first game has Doctor Glowenko, the Mad Scientist responsible for the whole penguin nonsense. He however ends up dying midway through the game, leading his dragon Pedro to step up to the role as central villain.
  • The second game has General Primo, a megalomaniacal penguin created by R.E.P. as their answer to Glowenko's projects.
  • 3 has the Funky Warlord. Except that's not really the case; he's a brainwashed pawn to the real Big Bad, a returning Primo.
  • 4 has Glowenko^note or rather, an Alternate Timeline version of him reprise his role of main villain of the game.
• Big Damn Heroes: Twice in 3. Pablo rescuing the Funky Prophet before his execution, and Pedro saving Pablo when his helicopter has been critically damaged by a Load-Bearing Boss.
• Book Ends: The first boss of the first game is Pedro on foot, while the final boss is, after destroying his mecha, Pedro again on foot. Except this time he has access to nearly all his weapons. And has infinite lives.
• Boss Rush: One level halfway through the first game is this.^note It was supposed to be the second-to-last level, but the developers felt that the game would've been too short and without enough environment variety. Therefore, what were originally going to be TAGAP 1 and TAGAP 2 became the two halves of the published TAGAP 1.
  • Another one occurs in 4, where you have to fight mecha-clones of Nemesis in recreations of his previous fights, vehicles included.
• Bullet Time: The main purpose of TAGAP, outside of healing, is to induce this effect, allowing you to manoeuvre yourself around enemies and pick them off one by one until it wears off. It also noticeably increases your speed.
• The Bus Came Back: In the first game, Doctor Glowenko didn't appear much, and died halfway through the game. In 4, we meet his alternate counterpart, who is the game's Big Bad and conquered the entire world.
• Church of Happyology: The Plutoid Faith is part this (complete with self-help books and merchandise); and part hippy culture, what with taking hallucinogen drugs and integrating marijuana leaves in its symbol. It also speaks of "Vibes", "Flow" and "Waves", both as their hippy meaning and as their scientific one.
• Collection Sidequest: You can collect penguin dolls in 2, "fairies" in 3 and golden penguin statuettes in 4. The fairies in particular are translucent and hard to see unless you're overdosing, and can be collected only in that state.
  • There's also the YLOD's components in 3, which require destroying all the cameras in a given level to access a hidden room that contains one of them.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Anytime lava is present, our hero has to touch it to sustain any damage. Even then, the damage is quite minor.
• Critical Existence Failure: Justified in-universe. Pretty much any attack is enough to kill a normal penguin; however, all modified penguins possess a certain amount of TAGAP in their body, which gets automatically consumed to instantly regenerate from any injury as if it never happened in the first place. If all the TAGAP is depleted, though, any attack is invariably lethal.
• Cute 'em Up: Albeit more Bloodier and Gorier than your typical cute-em-up.
• Damage Typing: This trope changed considerably throughout the trilogy.
  • 1 averts it - all weapons cause the same damage against all enemies;
  • 2 downplays it - the EMP Rifle is the only weapon with different damage and stun depending on the enemy it is used against;
  • 3 plays it straight - many weapons have vastly different damages and effects depending on the enemy it is used on.
• Dance Party Ending: Each game ends in one. The exception is 4, due to its own ending leading into 3's.
• Death from Above: In 2, a special remote allows the player to summon Pedro in a helicopter, who then proceeds to carpet-bomb everything on the screen. However, it has a cooldown, and is only available in open areas during single-player mode.
  • Gameplay and Story Integration: This is because Pedro follows Pablo on foot in the co-op campaign.
• Defeat Means Friendship: After Pablo defeats him and saves his life, Pedro decides to join him against R.E.P.
• Down the Drain: One level in 2 is literally called "Obligatory Sewer".
• Disc-One Final Boss: The three Mechapenguinators Mark 1 and the single Mark 2 in the first game are the very last obstacles in Glowenko's base. It helps that the latter was supposed to be the first episode's Final Boss.
  • Recurring Boss: They assume this role in the second half of the first two games. They're no less lethal than before, but the player is much better equipped.
• Double Entendre: In the second game, there is a club featuring titmice.^*  Pedro's reaction over the radio is what really sells it.
• Dragon Ascendant: Pedro continues Glowenko's world domination plans after the latter is killed. Subverted because he later explains that he isn't doing it out of loyalty to his now-dead boss, but simply because he wants power.
• Dynamic Difficulty: Playing 2 in co-op mode not only increases the amount of enemies, but changes the placement of powerful enemies to attack players from both front and rear at the same time. However, it also reduces the amount of enemies spawned from above/below - see Split Screen below.
• Dual Wielding: The Uzis.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Going back to the first game after playing the sequels can be... quite the experience.
  • For starters, Pablo can't do a belly slide to avoid attacks. It would take until 2 to add this feature in.
  • There are also the blue and purple pills which make Pablo temporarily invincible and allow him to jump higher respectively. While the blue pill would be replaced by the blue vials in the sequel, the same can't be said for the purple one which doesn't make a return.
  • Both this and 2 are the only games to have a score system that rewards extra lives and power-ups depending on how many enemies have been killed. 3 would do away with the score system, though power-ups are still rewarded for killing hordes of enemies in quick succession.
• Elite Mooks: Armed Penguinators.
  • Rockhopper elites are added in the second game, trading resistance with intelligence.
  • In 3, Funky Penguins with bow-ties are mooks, while those with regular ties are full-on Elite Mooks. The latter have armor (vastly more health) and the ability to use gadgets (grenades, shields, or shock bots).
• Elemental Weapon: The AMM01 in TAGAP 4. It starts out with the "Heat Core", which doesn't actually give any elemental property to your weapons (besides the ChemThrower). However, you can later acquire the "Frost Core" and "Electro Core", which allows you to freeze and stun opponents respectively; the former is more effective against organic enemies but ineffective against robotic ones, while the latter works the opposite way.
  • The ChemThrower function takes it up a notch, since it changes into entirely different weapons depending on the core that you are using. The Heat, Frost and Electro core turn it into a flamethrower, a liquid nitrogen sprayer, and a Lightning Gun respectively.
• Emergency Transformation: Doctor Glowenko himself, after getting lethally wounded from Pablo, performs this during his boss battle in 4.
• Evil Counterpart: The Nemesis in 4 is this to Pablo. While Pablo escaped before his modifications and conditioning were complete, the Nemesis is completely modified, fully armored, and totally loyal to Glowenko's cause. Not to mention being technically the same person.
• Evil, Inc.: Random Evil Pharmaceuticals in the second game.
• Fantastic Drug: The titular TAGAP (Tissue Augmenting Green Addictive Pill). Heals you instantly, augments your reflexes, may cause mind control and/or hallucinations. You pass an entire level of 2 completely stoned on the stuff.
  • There is also a red pill that regenerates somebody on the brink of death, a purple one that gives acrobatic skills, and a blue one that makes you invulnerable but slow... which is rendered by speeding up everything but you, music included.
• Finishing Move: 4 gives Pablo a meat cleaver that allows him to do this to stunned and/or frozen enemies, in a manner similar to Doom Eternal's Glory Kill mechanic. Doing so will reward you with health pickups, which can come in handy if you're running low.
• Fun with Acronyms: "TAGAP" is both the title of the game (see Initialism Title) and the name of an in-game drug (see Fantastic Drug).
• Gone Horribly Right: Pablo, in a sense. Glowenko attempted to create an empowered, intelligent cyber-penguin fit to be a general for his army. He succeeded, but it turned out that Pablo was intelligent enough to have a rightful morality and enough power and skill to single-handedly destroy Glowenko's plans.
  • Primo has been revealed to be this in side-materials. He was engineered by R.E.P. to crave military conquest and domination, and to be loyal to R.E.P. After he was put in stasis by his creators, he came to the conclusion that his creators "fired" him... which he interpreted as the order to "stop being bound to R.E.P.". And since he still craved for world domination, he decided that he would've sought it solely for himself.
• Grotesque Cute: And how. You get to see cute, waddling penguins get blown into chunky bits by the dozens.
• Harmless Freezing: Averted in 3 and 4 - organic enemies who are frozen by the Cryogun and ChemThrower with Frost Core are considered dead, and fall into pieces when they thaw.
• Healing Factor: All cyber-penguins (main characters included) possess the ability to instantly regenerate any wound as long as they have some TAGAP in their bodies.
• Helpful Mook: Some Mecha-Mooks will carry boxes with health pickups that you can shoot out of their hands.
• High-Pressure Blood: Pretty much every big organic enemy will spew various litres of blood as they die.
  • Particularly the Super Zombies, which stand and gush blood for several seconds when you kill them.
  • Taken to Evangelion levels in the second game's ending, where a heavily-mutated Primo, after having all his weak points destroyed, outright explodes, covering the entire city he was fought in in a shower of gore.
• Hijacked by Ganon: A spoilery plot point for 3. The Plutoid Warlord was actually contrary to the war with Earth, and instead led a mission to study it and determine whether it was hostile to Pluto. One of the "artifacts" recovered contained a resurrected Primo, who brainwashed the Warlord and orchestrated the conflict.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Pablo can carry about a dozen weapons (some of which are literally as big as he is) on him plus a thousand ammo for each, as well as a hundred grenades. And he's a naked penguin.
  • This is partially justified in 4, since Pablo only has the AMM01 rifle, a meat cleaver, and some grenades.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: The first game has "Easy" (which was added with a later patch), "Normal", "Hardcore!", "INSANE!" and "Necrophilissimo!" (named after one of the developers). The second game gets rid of the "INSANE!" difficulty and rebalances the other four.
  • The third game has instead "Hard", "Harder", "Hardcore!" and "Necrophilissimo!".
    • A later update adds a new Harder Than Hard difficulty: "Challenge Overdose". Enemies are faster and more damaging, most mooks now wear armor, and you cannot carry extra lives (red pills now just give you a full health bar).
  • The fourth game keeps "Necrophilissimo!" and "Challenge Overdose" while changing "Harder" and "Hardcore!" back to "Normal" and "Hard" respectively. As for easy mode? It's now called "Game Journalist".
• Improvised Weapon: The Scrap Gun in 3 is basically a vacuum cleaner that sucks in metallic scrap and grinds it into small fragments, so that it can then be shot into the appropriate chutes without clogging them. Pablo reworks it into a functional, scrap-powered shotgun.
• Infinity +1 Gun: The YROD (Yellow Ray Of Death) in 3. It requires the player to find all the pieces first (which requires some backtracking in previous levels), but it disintegrates any mook on screen and provides a few instants of invulnerability, and has infinite ammo. The drawback is that it takes 30 seconds to recharge.
• Initialism Title: The Apocalyptic Game About Penguins.
• Invincibility Power-Up: Blue pills in the first game make you temporarily invincible, but make everything except you speed up. The sequel replaces them with blue vials, which are found in rare spots (instead of being rewards for killing enough enemies), but can be carried with you and activated at any time.
• Jump Physics: Starting with 2, Pablo has access to a short double jump and a "stomp" that inflicts no damage, but is extremely useful for quickly dodging enemy shots while airborne. 3 gives him a pair of rocket shoes that allow him to do a triple jump.
• Junkie Prophet: The Funky Prophet, of course.
• Justified Extra Lives: "One Ups" are red pill made of super-concentrated TAGAP, and are strong enough to completely regenerate a penguin that has been literally reduced to paste.
• Klatchian Coffee: The titular drug.
• Lethal Lava Land: the penultimate level of 1.
• Load-Bearing Boss: Killing the final boss in 4 triggers the meltdown of the base's energy core and almost makes it explode, which would've taken out not only Glowenko's mansion, but the entire continent as well.
• Macross Missile Massacre: The MIRV weapon in 3 is a rocket launcher that, normally, shoots three homing missiles per shot. If you are under the effects of a Quad Damage, it shoots 12 missiles per shot. If they all hit at the same time, the resulting explosion will be bright enough to make the screen completely white for an instant.
• Mecha-Mooks: Abundant in the Tokyo levels in 1.
• Mercy Invincibility: Notably averted through all 4 games, contributing to the overall difficulty. Even the invincibility after losing a life is shorter than most games' standard invincibility frames.
• Mini-Mecha: Many of the bosses in 3 are this. Notably, they all possess a failsafe system that prevents any damage from reaching the pilot, including in the case where the mecha blows up; this also means that all said bosses have a second phase where the pilot now fights you on foot.
• Mirror Boss: Various bosses throughout the series are penguins who use one or more of the same weapons as you. However, two fights particularly stand out:
  • Pedro in 1, when fought on foot, uses one of the same weapons as you. In the final fight, he can use almost all the weapons in the game, and he'll (almost) always use the same weapon as your current one. Also, he uses One-Ups. Infinite One-Ups.. You have to break the rules and use the Disintegrator, which is one of the only weapons he doesn't have, and which completely ignores his One-Ups.
  • The final battle against Primo in 3 also qualifies, but with a twist: he'll use slightly-improved versions of the second episode's weapons, which makes sense since he was the villain of that game.
  • Nemesis in 4 also counts, except he moves much faster than you, requiring the use of TAGAP to break even. Same with Pedro in the TAGAP+ campaign.
• Mook Maker: Some minibosses and bosses. In particular, the Clone Machine in 1 spawns zombie penguins so fast, that killing the boss before you drown in penguins is a Timed Mission.
• Mushroom Samba: Overdose on TAGAP and this will happen, complete with green penguins bouncing around the level and replacing regular penguins. One level in 2 even has you go through the entire stage while stoned.
• More Dakka: The quad damage powerup doesn't multiply your damage - it multiplies the amount of bullets you fire. Which is cooler.
  • In the sequels, the Freeloader power-up enhances your ratio of fire and gives you infinite ammo. And yes, it is entirely possible to combine the two.
• Nintendo Hard: Let's just say that these games pull no punches in their difficulty. Even on easy, you're bound to lose several lives in the process.
• One-Winged Angel: Every penguin boss in the sequel, due to a special device that feeds them with concentrated TAGAP. Even Primo, although in his case, it's by accident.
• Our Zombies Are Different: The base mooks in the first two games are cloned penguins who are almost completely devoid of intelligence, can only do basic tasks, and hunger for the flesh of enemy penguins.
• Phlebotinum Overdose: Subverted. You can overdose on TAGAP, and you gain bullet time. And funky green penguins.
  • Played straight in 2 with the Rockhopper Mutants, and with Pablo after being exposed to TAGAP-infused rainfall. And with Primo himself after falling into an entire pile of mutators.
• Planet Spaceship: It is quickly revealed in 3 that the entire planet of Pluto is being warped towards Earth.
• Pluto Is Expendable: The entire reason for the third game's plot. NASA downgraded Pluto from "planet" to "dwarf planet", prompting the Plutoids to launch a planetary war in retaliation. Except that wasn't the whole reason.
• Power-Up: Killing a certain amount of enemies in each level rewards you with various power-ups.
• Prophecy Twist: Part of the plot of 3 is that a Plutoid prophecy shows Pluto invading Earth, only for both planets to be destroyed by a black-and-white penguin. It's initially thought that the "monochrome menace" in question is an Earth penguin, which leads to Pablo's kidnapping and inprisonment; later, it's re-interpreted as the war itself, threatening to destroy both worlds. Turns out that the prophecy really did refer to an Earthling penguin... but the Big Bad, not Pablo.
• Quad Damage: A Power-Up that appeared in all games throughout the series. Unlike most shooter games, it doesn't quadruple the damage of your projectiles; it quadruples the amount of projectiles you shoot, without increasing ammo consumption.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: The Funky Prophet is revealed to be this. He initially feared that "the black penguin" he saw in his vision would've destroyed Pluto, and voted in favor of the war; but he ends up changing his mind when he saw what Pluto's militarization has brought, correctly guessing that the war itself was the threat.
  • The Warlord himself was this. He was anti-war, but decided to personally lead a recon mission anyway. If Earth was hostile, he would've gotten useful intel for the upcoming war; if it wasn't, he could've personally testified the fact in order to prevent the war. Too bad for him that one artifact the recon squadron brought back contained a megalomaniacal penguin with mind-control powers who was all too happy to use the hapless Warlord as a pawn in his own schemes...
• Recurring Riff: The main theme from 1 (particularly the first dozen notes) has been reused in various tracks across all games. The developers consider it to be both Pablo's and the series's Leitmotif.
  • Pedro's own Leitmotif is a guitar riff, taken from the first game's boss theme. It's also present in various battle themes.
  • "Penguinator", the theme of the first game's Disc-One Final Boss, is later reused in each game's last level, often as a boss theme.
• Recursive Ammo: The MIRV weapon in 3 shoots clusters of three missiles. They can either separate immediately after firing (slight homing capacity, bigger damage overall), or stay together (bigger explosion).
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Primo and the other rockhopper penguins. Truth in Television, since that's what real rockhopper penguins have.
• Regenerating Health: If your health is under a certain limit and you haven't been hit for a few seconds, it'll be gradually restored up to said limit. Unfortunately, the limit gets lower at the higher difficulties.
• Respawning Enemies: The main reason of the game's difficulty.
  • Later levels, such as Megamania, will become knee-deep in penguins unless you use a big gun to keep their numbers down.
  • This was toned down in the sequel - however, there are more difficult non-respawning foes (including those with ranged weapons), and later levels can still overflow with penguins if you don't keep up the pressure. This was also likely to prevent the player from being able to earn health and powerups too easily.
• Rewarding Vandalism: Blasting some cabinets might reward you with a green (health) pill.
  • In 3 and 4, destroying something generates one or two pieces of scrap, which are used as ammo for the Scrap Gun. More importantly, destroying all security cameras in a map opens up a secret room full of supplies.
• Rule of Cool
• Secondary Fire: Pretty much every single weapon has one, as well as many vehicles.
• Secret Dance Club: there is one hidden in 1, but there are no enemies to fight in them. You gain lots of supplies, though.
  • 2 plays with this, in the sense that the Disco Club is a regular part of the level, but the exclusive VIP section is a secret area.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: The Shotgun in 1 Has decent power at short range, but its secondary fire is a reliable grenade launcher.
• Shout-Out: Many, especially to Doom.
  • Robotic penguins are called Penguinators.
  • One of the most blatant ones in 2 is an entire church dedicated to "Saint Tux", aka UNIX's mascot.
    • The final level in 2 has an enormous circle made of four lights arranged around a central symbol. Each light turns red if you destroy the corresponding generator; you can get an achievement if you replicate the Xbox's Red Ring Of Death.
  • The Funky Doctor in 3 wears a bowtie and a fez.
    • One of the enemies in the same level, the Bio-Funk, wears a mask-and-gas-canister system very reminiscent of Bane.
    • The description of the Exterminator mentions that it doesn't include a plunger.
  • One of the levels in 4 is called "Maniac's Mansion".
• Situational Sword: the EMP rifle in 2. Completely useless on organic enemies and Mecha-bosses, and the secondary fire is basically useless in combat. It's also required to grab some hidden items, stops most mechanical enemies, destroys shields, and if you are a really good shot (or just are in Overdose), you can wreck Mechapenguinators.
• Sliding Scale of Linearity vs. Openness: the first two games were a "2" on the scale. However, TAGAP 3 squarely places itself at a "3", since you can replay old chapters with all the weapons and upgrades you've collected so far - some of which can be used to reach previously closed areas.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Antarctica in the first game. Downplayed because it isn't much slippery (probably because the characters are penguins).
• Smart Bomb: Both 2 and 3 have their own take on this, though both require cooldowns to use:
  • 2 has a remote that, when used, will call in Pedro in his helicopter who will then proceed to carpet bomb the area. This weapon isn't available in co-op due to Pedro already being present as player 2. It also can't be used in indoor levels.
  • 3 has the Yellow Light of Death, or YLOD for short, which functions as the same thing. Actually getting it however requires obtaining its components first.
• Split Screen: 2 allows two players to play in co-op as Pablo and Pedro. Besides increasing the amount of enemies, co-op takes in account the fact that the players lose a lot of vertical visibility due to the split screen, and thus redistributes the enemies so that they mostly spawn from the left/right sides of the screen. This way, the game tries to avoid the Fake Difficulty of having an enemy appear from above/below and attack the players with no time to react.
• Standard FPS Guns: Many of the weapons fall into this trope, although each weapon's Secondary Fire adds more variety.
  • Automatic Weapons:
    • The Minigun (1, 2) has a bonus Sentry Gun function.
    • The Nail Gun (2) can also deploy explosive drones that shoot multiple nails.
    • The Plasma Gun (1, 2) acts as an Assault Rifle, with the ability to generate shields.
    • The Smartgun (3, 4) is a Assault Rifle with the ability to steer the shots by clicking on the screen.
  • BFG:
    • As explained below, secondary fire of the the OMG-20k (1, 2) acts as a room-clearing attack.
    • The Yellow Ray Of Death (3) has a similar function, but doesn't use ammo nor health. Instead, it has a 30-seconds cooldown.
  • Energy Gun:
    • The Disintegrator (1) has short range but very high damage and can be recharged at will, effectively having infinite ammo.
    • The Thereminiser (3) barely stuns organic enemies, but wrecks mechanical ones. It can also emit a shockwave to keep enemies away.
  • Flamethrower: Present in 1, 2 and 4. By consuming more fuel, it can set the ground on fire to create flaming barriers.
  • Pistol: Both the Pulsegun (3, 4) and the Uzi (1, 2) are weak weapons with limited clip size, but infinite ammo, effectively acting as the Emergency Weapon.
  • Rail Gun: Each game has a weapon which primary fire is a high-damage beam that can penetrate enemies. It's usually one of the last weapons obtained by the player, and has limited ammo.
    • The OMG-20k (1, 2) has an "overload" ability that hits everything in the room for high damage - including you.
    • The OMG-10k (4) replaces the explosion with a slower, but stronger shot.
    • The primary fire of the Exterminator (3) is ineffective against mechanical enemies, and cannot penetrate them. On the other hand, its secondary fire drains energy from mechanical enemies, heavily slowing them and giving you ammo.
  • Rocket Launcher:
    • The MIRV (3) can shoot either three homing missiles, or one single cluster-rocket, which isn't as damaging as the three separate missiles but has a bigger explosion.
    • The Nanogrinder (3) lacks any homing function and has the worst splash damage, but it's faster and is massively effective against nanoshields. It can also rebuild nano-bridges for some puzzles.
    • The Rocket Launcher (1, 2, 4) shoots rockets, which travel either in a straight line or follow the mouse cursor.
  • Shotgun: The one weapon present in all four games. The secondary fire changes between games: grenades (1, 3), mines (2), or a double-barrel shot (4).
    • The Scrapgun in the third and fourth games have a gimmick where they use metallic scrap (obtaining by destroying enemies, their weapons, and the environment) as ammo.
  • Utility Weapon:
    • The EMP Rifle (2) shoots beams that disable shields and robotic enemies. The secondary fire (a gravity field) is pretty much used solely to attract nearby bonuses.
    • The Cryogun (3) has a surprising amount of uses. It shoots freezing liquid in an arc, allowing it to bypass cover. It freezes enemies, turning them into cover - and inflicts surprisingly good damage against organic enemies. Finally, it can freeze liquids and floors, which causes enemies to slip and messes up their aiming.
    • The ChemThrower changes functions depending on which core is equipped, essentially combining the Flamethrower, the Cryogun, the EMP Rifle, and a lightning gun in a single package.
• Super-Speed: The Nemesis in 4 (and later the Penguards) can use TAGAP just as you do, which means that they're much faster than most enemies and can perform a Flash Step. This forces to use your own TAGAP reserves to even the odds.
• Stylistic Suck: The Virtual Reality Environment level in 3.
  Paola: "I bet you've never seen graphics like these before."
  Pablo: "I'll give you that, I haven't."
• Swiss-Army Gun: The AMM01 (Adaptive Multi-Munition Weapon System 01), Pablo's weapon in 4. It has the ability to analyze any kind of ammo and use it, replicating the effects of the weapon that uses said ammo.
• Take That!: The easiest difficulty setting for 4 is called... "Game Journalist".
• Take Your Time: The escape sequence after you set off the Self-Destruct Mechanism is extremely lengthy, but Always Close.
• Token Human: Dr. Glowenko is pretty much the only human character seen in the series. Averted in 4 however, which features human mooks as enemies, and one cutscene has Glowenko arguing with the U.S. president on a video call.
• Took a Level in Badass: Mecha-Penguinators receive a significant upgrade in 4. In the previous games, they were left completely defenseless if you destroyed their weapons; now they gain a powerful plasma breath attack if they have no other weapon left, or if their shields are disabled. Speaking of their shields, now the shield generators can only be destroyed if you overload them both at roughly the same time.
• Trick Bomb: Grenades normally explode when their fuse runs out, but they also have a sensor that detonates them immediately when they hit an enemy (but not an ally).
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: A few levels allow you to freely swim/fly in all four directions.
  • One of the last levels in 2 is a platformer on a scooter, with heavy emphasis on timing your sprints to avoid obstacles.
  • Another level in 2 places you on a boat with a turret. Unlike most turret sections in video games, you can dodge enemy shots (by either speeding up the boat or slowing it down) while you're still locked at the turret.
• Unperson: The Funky Warden recently implemented capital punishment for high crimes such as treason, which not only means the accused will be physically disintegrated, but all citizenship history and records of their existence will be removed as well.
• Variable Mix: The games make use of a few "progressive" tracks, which slowly change as you progress through the level.
  • Later games feature variable tracks that change depending on the situation - for example when being underwater, or when a powerful enemy shows up.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon:
  • A rocket acting as Pedro's Space Base in the first game.
  • The Mega-Ultra-Penguinator Mk-II in the second.
  • A secret weapon research facility in the third.
  • Dr. Glowenko's lair in the fourth.
• Video Game Remake: Completing TAGAP 4's main story unlocks "TAGAP +" mode, which is a remake of the first half of the original TAGAP, but using the mechanics of the new game.
• Villain World: The main setting of 4, where Dr. Glowenko, thanks to ensuring his timeline's Pablo's full obedience, was able to do a hostile takeover on R.E.P. and from there, conquer the planet.
• We Can Rule Together: The very first thing Primo does on-screen is to appear on a jet and declare his intentions to conquer the world. The second: asking Pablo (and Pedro, if present) to ally with him so that they can conquer the world together. Not surprisingly, Pablo turns him down.
• Weather-Control Machine: Used by Primo in the sequel. He mixed TAGAP with the rain in order to disable humans, which he would then calmly brainwash.
• Womb Level: In 3, Pablo ends up being miniaturized and injected into Paola's body.
• Zerg Rush: All the time.
• Zombie Apocalypse: The TAGAP-addicted enemy penguins.

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