Even the cover art looks old-school...
Tanzer is a 2019 platformer / action game released by indie game developer Mega Cat Studios released for the Sega Genesis, and a retraux paying homage to games like Strider, Cannon Dancer and Hagane.
Much like the various games that inspired it, Tanzer has a post-apocalyptic setting, specifically one where a virus from the far side of the galaxy wiped out most of humanity, and most of Earth's surface reduced to a desert-like wasteland in it's aftermath. And now, the dead starts coming back to life as monsters...
You're a former ballerina and dancer with a bright future, until losing most of your body in the war. Resurrected by Project Tanzer, which converts you into a Cyborg warrior, you start fighting against assorted virus-spawned abominations in multiple stages set across various countries taking down the boss in each.
This game contains examples of:
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: One of the reasons why you're facing robotic enemies constantly; after the virus destroyed most of mankind, the machines suffered a malfunction and starts developing sentience of their own..
- After the End: The game takes place after humans were wiped out by a space virus, and you're among the survivors after being converted to a bio-weapon.
- Animate Inanimate Object: Many of the bosses are andromorphic weapons brought to life by the virus into attacking you on sight. Including hovering swords, sentient cannonballs and hammers.
- Battle in the Rain: The stage in Scandanavia is set in the rain, and on multiple pirate ships where you must navigate across while fighting mooks.
- Cyber Cyclops: The last stage have you fighting humanoid, one-eyed robots.
- Cyborg: You used to be a regular human before undergoing cybernetic experiments. Your body appears more mechanical than organic for most of the game, until the Unrobotic Reveal at the end.
- Falling Chandelier of Doom: The boss of the castle stage is a giant, sentient chandelier who swings horizontally while dropping projectile attacks - fireballs from the candles burning on it - at you. Subverted when you defeat it - the chandelier expectedly falls, but it can't hurt you.
- Flying Face:
- Many mook-grade enemies are flying mechanical heads.
- One of the earlier bosses is a freakish-looking levitating stone head with a red jewel functioning as a Third Eye. Which it uses to spam projectile attacks while floating everywhere to attack. Despite being made of stone it can somehow bleed after taking enough damage.
- There's also a stone Viking head who floats around, another mid-boss.
- Horny Vikings: The mid-boss and main boss of Scandanavia are giant mechanical Viking heads, complete with horned helmets to complete that Viking look.
- In a Single Bound: Thanks the the cybernetic modifications granted on you, each leap can send you bounding to the top of the screen to dodge projectiles and slice up bosses.
- Master of the Levitating Blades: The boss of the Japan stage sics two gigantic, floating katana taller than you as an attack. Which puruses you relentlessly throughout the stage, you need to avoid getting sliced up while hitting the boss.
- Mirror Match: The game's True Final Boss - after defeating the machine's core, the game continues for one more stage where you fight another prototype experiment, a humanoid cyborg just like you with similar attacks and practically a clone of yourself. Defeat him and you complete the game.
- No Name Given: The title isn't your name; rather, you're a volunteer who's part of the Tanzer project, which converts humans into half-machines to fight the robots who took over humanity.
- One-Word Title
- Purple Is Powerful: You're one of the most successful and deadly results of the Tanzer project, capable of mowing down hordes and hordes of enemies with ease. And your armour (as well as most of your projectile attacks) is violet.
- Robotic Reveal: Many of the Mini-Boss opponents (the man being burnt at the stake, the guillotine victim, etc.) appears to be humans. But when you approach, they suddenly she dtheir fleshy exterior and start spamming projectile attacks like other robot enemies.
- Stationary Boss: Most major bosses confronted at the end of each stage are machines tethered to the ground and couldn't move about, with their sole attacks being sending projectiles or mook at you.
- Seppuku: Japan have a mid-boss with you coming across someone who had killed himself with this method, only for the machines to take over his corpse and have him attacking you with the katana still in him.
- Threatening Shark: Sharks are minor enemies in Scandanavia, leaping out of the seas trying to chomp on you. They can be ignored by dodging and letting them fall back to the water, though for some reason the sharks can fire projectile attacks.
- Un-Robotic Reveal: Due to the game's abscence of dialogue and Excuse Plot, you pretty much spend the entire game as a robotic soldier, until the final cutscene where you remove your helmet. In a homage to the Samus Is a Girl revelation from Metroid.
