YMMV / Holdover

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Thanks to the game's custom text feature, anyone can invoke this trope upon Marie, herself, in any way they desire. Hilarity often ensues from this by making Gag Dub and Abridged Series levels of altercations to Marie's personality, changing her from the sick, handicapped, but overall pleasant and sympathetic Iron Woobie that she normally is to a snarky, foulmouthed Tsundere with an aggressive Berserk Button towards several of her situations, such as complaining how tight her swimsuit is on her chest, among other hilarity-inducing quirks to her dialogue and double line-crossing changes to the rest of the game's script (such as making a disembodied voice flirt and have a crush on her).
• Awesome Music:
  • The repurposed theme song of the game is titled "Message", composed by "hitoshi" of the free music circle Senses Circuit. It's an ideal theme that plays when Marie reaches the grassier part of the facility, signifying a Hope Spot that she's getting closer to the surface and her escape from the facility. It also plays during the Unexpected Shmup Level near the end of the game to represent the jet fighters' attempt to respond to Marie's SOS message and rescue her. The same composer has even given the theme 8-Bit and Guitar remixes, the latter of which can be heard on this game's website. The name itself is quite fitting due to Marie's usage of several holographic messages from her father, as well as her aforementioned SOS message to the jet fighters.
  • Almost a decade after the game's 2009 release, another remix of "Message" was made, which is awesome in and of itself. This remix features Japanese lyrics that describes wanting to continuously live in a bright future and having the desire to share it with others. Although this remix was not utilized in any Holdover material, it coincidentally still fits very well with Marie's desire to escape from the destroyed facility and her line of "wanting to see the sun again". There's also the implication in the game's ending that she actually goes on to help with the Earth's recovery from the nuclear war it suffered from during her 10-year sleep.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The game is considered a Cult Classic to Doujin Soft enthusiasts, but quite a good amount of these enthusiasts come from outside of Japan, as there is a high chance that Holdover was the first Fox Eye game that a non-Japanese fan has played and enjoyed from the circle. This could be attributed to its high difficulty and intentional similarities to Metroid, which is in and of its own example of this trope.
• Iron Woobie:
  • Marie is possibly the most tragic protagonist in Fox Eye’s entire roster, which is quite an impression to show in what is the circle's first Darker and Edgier game. Being left alone in a destroyed, flooded facility for reasons outside of her control, and she was put in there to begin with by her father in order to save her from a life-threatening illness that she caught in an accident 10 years prior. With no direct help, and a multitude of traps, she has to escape all on her own with the constant worry of death following her. This game will make you feel pretty bad for her, but then some of the holographic messages from her father keep motivating her to not give up, and the upgrades that improve her arms and legs motivate her further. The "Iron" part finally falls off at the very end when she passes out from hunger and exhaustion after finally escaping the facility and getting rescued by those who responded to her SOS, but it comes back on after she's come to terms with what has happened to the world during her sleep and what she can do to revitalize it, including the previously-known revelation that her father likely died from the nuclear outbreak to help her live. With all of this to bear in mind, Marie is so far the only heroine in Fox Eye to have nothing more than a Bittersweet Ending for her game.
  • The artwork rewarded for beating the game describes this about Marie the best. In the background, Marie is crouched underwater, showing an uncomfortable look on her face as she attempts to hold her breath. This figures well into the stress and tension of the game itself; she looks to be regardlessly forcing herself to crawl through while submerged, either because she has to make her way through a low passage with no way to surface, or she's putting in an effort to avoid being seen and shot to death by the security robots, even if it means being on a painful verge of drowning, anyway. However, in the foreground, Marie is instead standing up, posing, and smiling confidently at the player, looking eager and ready to brave through the many threats and dangers that lie ahead of her, or she has already done so and feels delightfully accomplished about it.
• Signature Scene: A memorable moment early on into the game is the very high possibility of first-time players accidentally stumbling into a hidden, narrow Drowning Pit. It not only highlights Marie's heavy computer anklets forcing her to sink to the bottom of the pit, but that the pit's also too deep for her to even jump out of, either (with it showing how deep it is only after Marie falls in), meaning that she hopelessly drowns. It sets the game's tone and difficulty of making you realize that you're playing as a Fox Eye heroine that really can't swim. This left such an impression on fans that in January 2022, it triggered a Pixiv art commission towards Fox to recapture the moment.
• That One Level: The Unexpected Shmup Level. After hours of precision platforming (or abusing the crap out of the Quick-Save system), the player takes control of a fighter jet that is tasked with taking down seventy blimps. The cannonballs they shoot are easily dodgeable when there's a few of them...but there can be as many as ten blimps on screen at once, and when they're all launching cannon balls, it requires a lot of quick reflexes and bullet-hell-type weaving to survive. And you can only take one hit...and the quick-save is disabled, meaning that if you die, you have to shoot down all seventy blimps again. To say that this is frustrating would be a gross understatement, and ends up being one of the most rage-inducing parts of the game (yes, even more than those Spikes of Doom). At least the music's pretty good.

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