For YMMV tropes that apply to the comic book, go here.
For YMMV tropes that apply to the movie, go here.
For YMMV tropes that apply to the movie, go here.
- Anti-Climax Boss: The Katanayagi Twins have a distressing tendency to run straight into your attacks. Together. And if you brought a weapon with you, the fight will end even faster. If you enter the cheat code to use the Power Of Love sword, you can even annihilate them before their intro screen.
- Awesome Music: As mentioned before. Anamanaguchi did the music. See how awesome it is yourself.
And if that wowed you, you can always buy the original soundtrack! - Best Boss Ever: Despite being pretty easy, Super Robot Fighter is awesome.
- Breather Boss: Aside of his special attack with missiles, Super Robot Fighter is really weak.
- Demonic Spiders:
- The enemies Ryan and David will knock a good portion of your health way if they score hits on you, and unlike other enemies, they are super aggressive and will not leave much of an opening to attack them back.
- The fourth level introduces the enemy Denzel, a Shout-Out to Denzel Washington by virtue of being a Man on Fire. These guys are among the worst enemies in the game due to their extremely erratic movements and the fact that if they touch you in any way, they'll catch you on fire too, making attacking them very tricky.
- Difficulty Spike: Lucas Lee, the second Evil Ex. God help you if he gets his hands on one of the two skateboards.
- Ending Fatigue: Level 7. You ride an elevator down into the Chaos Theater and fight Gideon, then endure a very short but extremely annoying subspace stage, then fight Gideon again in his huge One-Winged Angel form, then run through a robot-themed stage, then fight Gideon again, then it turns out that Gideon was a robot and you have to punch the real one once to beat him, and then you're finished.
- Fan Nickname: Some of the moves you can pull off with the weapons and other special moves; e.g. beating someone down with a cardboard box is known as a "Hobo Special".
- Game-Breaker: Several to potentially Nerf the game's Nintendo Hard difficulty. You can start breaking the game over your knee within the first stage, if you know where to look.
- Wallace's Mystery Shop; buying the Bionic Arm (which really, should just take 2-3 runs through the first stage) drastically reduces the difficulty of the game, let alone the other items sold there. The strength book available at the bookstore actually provides slightly better value, and each book is about 1/5 the price of the Bionic Arm, so you can increase your strength more gradually.
- If you pay off the late fee at the video store in the first level, you can buy extra lives for only $4.95.
- Along with raising all your stats by 10 for only $4.95 a pop. You cap at 100.
- After maxing-out your stats, why not blow $4.95 for 1,500 XP to sky-rocket your characters to Lv. 16?
- There's also the code that lets you use the Power of Love sword outside of the final stage, which helps because of the range it gives.
- The "Commit suicide for $50" code can be exploited with any snack (Chewing Gum in the first level is very cheap) to gain instant cash. It's even funnier as the suicide code is also a shout out to the Konami Code.
- A more strenuous alternative involving the use of an external memory storage device, a "dummy" Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 profile, and Save Scumming can allow those to double their cash.
- Knives' second tech attack, after being unlocked, is possibly the most broken character move in the game (excluding weapon attacks). While in the air, she throws down three exploding kunai in a mid-range area in front of her. Here are the reasons it's so broken:
- Each kunai, when the player's strength stat is maxed, deals about 30 damage. If you position yourself just right, all three of them can hit one enemy, totaling at 90 damage.
- The explosion deals fire damage to human enemies, causing a guaranteed knockdown and extended stun time, allowing you to follow up with an okizeme. How about another exploding kunai throw to trap them in an endless loop? And yes, this can be abused for easy boss takedowns.
- It can be spammed. The attack can be pulled off multiple times simultaneously in one jump if you hold the down direction and mash the attack button.
- There's also no fear of being attacked by most enemies when spamming it, as you'll be hanging in the air.
- Even crazier, if you enter the hyper state (kill 5 enemies without getting hit to boost your speed), the repeated propulsion from spamming the attack can send Knives flying off screen.
- It completely ignores guarding. That's right, enemies who are guard happy are not immune to this attack. Even Gideon can be completely cheesed with this one attack!
- Genius Bonus: In regards to the changing of the price of Scott's late fees so that it rounds to the nearest five cents, this is due to Canada phasing out the penny.
- Goddamned Bats:
- The bats, starting in the second level, they're placed at areas where they are likely to knock you into more damage.
- The paparazzi from the same stage. They attack in packs and their cameras stun you, leaving you open to other attacks, but they don't do much damage.
- The domino-masked "thief" foes in Roxy's stage, who like to bodycheck you and steal your coins. And they're fast, so can do it multiple times.
- The swooping birds in Level 6.
- And the Medusa Heads in "Subspace Highway?" (right before Gigadeon).
- Good Bad Bugs: It is possible to get infinite money in the very first level. Once you get to the Shopping District, buy a snack, any snack. Put in the "Commit Suicide for $50" code. You will not lose a life, because the snack will revive you. Buy another snack, repeat as much as you want.
- It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: The Wallace DLC pack. Besides the online multi-player fans of the game were begging for, Wallace is nothing more than a re-skinned Stephen with rainbow effects. It's disappointing considering Ubisoft could've made Wallace a unique fighter, but they cheaped out in the end. It doesn't help that the DLC is also $5 considering what you're paying for.
- Mis-blamed: No, Anamanaguchi and music licensing issues are not the reason the game got delisted. Bryan Lee O'Malley is not the reason either. The game was labeled under Universal when it was first came out (who helped co-produce it in tandem with the movie) so it was technically under their license at the time. When the rights expired they didn't renew and it got de-listed as a result. Basically a result of a licensed property under non-physical digital distribution (as least if it was physical the license only extended to production, as you can still look for physical copies).
- Narm: Go fight some paparazzi in the second stage with the blood code activated. You'll see...
- Nintendo Hard: For first-time players, the levels will take some time (especially on Supreme Master difficulty).
- No Problem with Licensed Games: This game is very much loved, save for no online play or drop in and out co-op (unless you have an extra $7 buy the DLCs for the original release or the bought the Complete Edition re-release). The game's reception was generally positive, and it also helps that it's only $10.
- Obvious Beta: When the Wallace Wells DLC was finally released, people soon noticed said Ensemble Dark Horse is just Stephen Stills save for a different head and two new special moves. Granted, a great deal of focus was on releasing online play, but Wallace doesn't even get his own ending — winning as him earns you a picture of Wallace sitting in a chair. The winning picture is even the exact picture they used in the DLC trailers.
- Overshadowed by Controversy: After originally being pulled from digital storefronts, the game was and still is mostly known for its unavailability as opposed to its gameplay, often being seen as the poster child for the dangers of digital-only games when the issue comes up. The Complete Edition, however, did get a limited edition physical release by Limited Run Games for PlayStation 4 and Switch. Even then, however, Ubisoft requires you to enter your Ubisoft Connect account in order to unlock Knives Chau, which plays into the danger of digital-only content.
- Porting Disaster: The PC port of the Complete Edition is the epitome of Ubisoft just not caring; Poor netcode, broken multiplayer, audio issues out the wazoo, no controller support on a game for the Xbox 360, and Four, count 'em, FOUR DRM schemes on top of the game: Steamworks / Epic Online Services (if you bought it via Steam or Epic respectively), Denuvo Anti Tamper, VMProtect, and Ubisoft Connect, with the latter having a habit of causing a lot of issues for Steam Deck users (the connect launcher really does not like Proton it seems). This game was very much mishandled.
- Spiritual Adaptation: There are some that call this game another name, River City Ransom 2. Ironically, a spinoff of that game, River City Girls, was in turn called a Spiritual Adaptation of Scott Pilgrim due to its Americasia setting, cartoony though still Animesque style, as well as being Denser and Wackier akin to Scott Pilgrim's adventures.
- Song Association: Due to the game's lack of availability after it was pulled from digital storefronts for four years, the song "Maki Ya" became known by many as the music from "Unlockable Weapons", an episode of a Team Fortress 2 Machinima series; Team Service Announcement, by Krunkidile.
- Scrappy Mechanic: The requirement for a Ubisoft Connect account to play the online multiplayer in the Complete Edition would be bad enough on its own, but said requirement is the only way you can unlock Knives Chau as a playable character as well, despite both these things being two of the big selling points to the Complete Edition's existence.
- That One Boss:
- While a lot of them have the potential to be that one boss, Nega-Scott is generally regarded to be the most difficult of them all. Unless you really know what you're doing, tackling him alone is begging for an ass kicking.
- Mr. Chau can be spotted walking the world map for an optional boss fight. He is very agile and powerful. Although, unlike Nega-Scott, he can be defeated by abusing tackles, if you can time them right.
- Todd can be this for first-time players who haven't leveled up much. Unlike the previous two bosses, he takes a lot of abuse from lower-level characters and can hit hard as well. Doesn't help that it's difficult to get away from him if you manage to break through his shield and get hits off, as he can counter with a psychic shock to knock you back.
- Gideon's One-Winged Angel form. It requires that you use the provided weapon to have a chance to beat this boss and if you lose it off the edge of the arena (which you have a good chance to with the characters' lousy pick-up response) you have to fight with your fists. The boss has a sucker punch that launches you off the stage when it hits you and will keep doing it every time you respawn, right into the path of the punch. What makes this worse is this is a part of Level 7, the longest level of the game!
- That One Level:
- Level 3 is when the game takes the gloves off and starts killing you hard. While the level itself is rather short and free of gimmicks, it forces you to go through a massive gauntlet of enemies, some of which can and will stunlock you to near death. Even worse, the level has a miniboss before you're thrown into an autoscrolling section. Finally, the stage ends in Todd who is an example of That One Boss for the early game. It's almost guaranteed for first-timers to get several game overs in this section until they level up enough to take care of the enemy gauntlets without losing too many lives.
- Level 4 due to introducing ninjas who will instantly rush you and swipe mercilessly at you. Not to mention block a lot of your hits unless you find a weapon, which, luckily, the stage has no short supply of.
- Level 5. The Halloween Party is easy enough to get through, but the hideout part is where the difficulty ramps up. Enemies now have higher stats, are hard-hitters and can likewise block a lot of your hits. Not to mention some slight platforming sections that, with multi-players can be tricky to get through. And while the bosses may be easy, on multiplayer it throws those same mooks at you as you're trying to fight the twins and can quickly crowd the screen.
- What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Though the game is great family fun, the game warrants a Teen / 12+ rating for a reason or so.
- The way (almost) every girls' chest wobbles with every movement they make (including zombie-girl Lucy) may raise some eyebrows.
- There's also Todd Ingram giving Scott (and the other characters) the finger, some people may object to Kim and Knives kissing, and Todd's Tetsuo-esque attack and Gigadeon may scare some younger players.
- Zombies are all around the later half of Level 6 and the unlockable Survival Horror mode.
