YMMV / Space Channel 5

• Awesome Music:
  • Both of Ulala's leitmotives are unbelievably catchy.
  • "Asteroid Belt Go!", "Space Ship Strut" and "Coco Tapioca" were popular enough to be included as Ulala's themes in crossover games.
  • Evila's theme is a favourite due to Memetic Mutation.
  • The sequel's boss battle songs are beloved for their ability to turn what should be goofy dance-offs into epic confrontations. Examples include "Dueling Guitars", "Invasion!" and "Battle of the Bands".
  • "Rescue Space Michael", a fittingly funky tune to rescue the King of Pop to, and even features the man himself beatboxing on the track.
• Best Boss Ever: The boss from the fourth mission of the second game is a giant, apish, speaker-handed robot piloted by a mad scientist, and you have to use the power of Space Michael Jackson (voiced by Michael Jackson) to defeat him.
• Complete Monster: Purge, leader of the Rhythm Rogues in Part 2, is a dark antagonist from a lighthearted game. A mechanical genius from a young age, Purge believes that the only way for people to be happy is to dance, so he intends to have everyone dance for all time till death. He plans to use a powerful satellite to input waves to force people to dance, and accomplish this through acts of terrorism, kidnapping, brainwashing and gleefully using human shields. After being stopped by Ulala, Purge, unable to comprehend that he might be wrong, decides to kill Ulala and then use the satellite to kill everyone, even if it means dying himself.
• Die for Our Ship: If there's a discussion about Ulala x Purge and Ulala x Jaguar, things aren't going to be pretty, needless to say...
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Pudding is popular enough to be playable alongside Ulala in Sega Superstars Tennis and Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Ulala and Purge seems to be a more popular pairing than the canon Ulala and Jaguar.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Blank's appearance in Extra Report 4 NEVER HAPPENED.
• Heartwarming Moments: At the end of the first game, Blank cuts out the sound system so Ulala can't time her counterattacks to the beat. So what happens next? Every single person she saved in the game starts singing the main theme of the game acapella so she has music to fight with. Doubles as an awesome moment and an awesome song.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Ulala has sometimes been remixed into challenging other characters to dance battles.
  • The Evila battle is a common one, wherein people have remade it so she's challenging Dr. Robotnik, Link, and even had the entire fight Recreated in the Gmod.
  • Replacing Ulala's voice clips with other voice clips YouTube Poop style has been done.
• Polished Port: The Steam version of Part 2. Originally falling under Porting Disaster, Sega went out of their way in mid-2014 to fix various dire issues with the game. The launcher no longer has issues saving settings, the entire game can be navigated with a controller, the game shows the correct prompts based on what you choose in the launcher, stability has gotten better, and syncing issues are practically non-existent. It did however remove the Japanese dub, but it was later reinstated along with Japanese FMV's, which the original port lacked. Combine all that together with gorgeous 1080p visuals, and it's by far the definitive version of the game.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Part 1 features the debut of Sumalee Montano as Pudding.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: If there's a discussion about Ulala x Purge and Ulala x Jaguar, things aren't going to be pretty, needless to say...
• Special Effects Failure: Part 1 had pre-rendered backgrounds with the character models over them — something you'll find in the PS1 "Resident Evil" games. It looks pretty obvious and like the characters are dancing on a green screen. Part 2 averts it as as the models and settings are rendered in real time and look more natural.
• Surprise Difficulty: Space Channel for all it's colorful visuals, and goofy premise has a surprising amount of challenge. Timing is very precise and needs to be perfect, multiple times there will be sudden curve-balls in the rhythm, some bosses can have long runs that might return you to the beginning of the fight again if you die, and the quick and successive beats in certain sections can easily overwhelm and cause heavy damage to you if you trip up once. It's not impossible, but definitely something that's not going to be a cakewalk.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: The first game was decently received overall, but was criticized for its short length, the polygonal characters often being poorly composited against the FMV backdrops, and the overall repetitive Simon Says gameplay. Part 2 makes the story substantially longer, discards the FMVs so that the visuals are more consistent, often mixes up the gameplay with some charge notes and fun instrument-playing portions. It also uses much more varied music with specifically choreographed dance numbers and lyrics besides directions and "chu/shoot", along with the ability to customize Ulala and her microphone.
• That One Level:
  • The first part of the second level in Part One. You have to rescue the space captain and the other staff members; which gets pretty hard when they send some fast commands at you. (Players recommend that, unless your thumb goes fast enough across the D-Pad, you use your two fingers)
  • For that matter, any level where you have to either get delayed commands ("Up.....up hey!") or where they send a ton of commands at you. (There is one part in Stage 4 in Part 2 where you have twenty two commands to repeat!)
• Values Dissonance: Part 2 has this a bit. In the Japanese version, Purge is actually mentally disabled/insane to the point where he can't function in society properly and has delusions that he's a messiah that has to save everyone by dancing. Despite this, the game portrays him as a Complete Monster instead of someone who needs help. Also, whilst Ulala and the rest of the galaxy sending him to space can be justified as self-defence (he did try to blast them with a Satellite after all), it would normally be treated as a Shoot the Dog moment, rather then a Karmic Death. The US version waters down Purge a bit, and makes him bratty so it feels like he got what he deserved. This is because the Japanese tend to view delusions of grandeur as something insanely bad and very dangerous with pretty terrible immediate consequences, regardless of the reasons behind it.
• Woolseyism: Ulala's name is a localization of Urara, which is a common Japanese name. However, the pronounciation turns it into a pun, since they pronounce it as "Ooh-la-la"...which is a phrase that is often uttered by people when they see beautiful women. Conveniently this is part of the game.

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