YMMV / Super Solvers

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Morty Maxwell can be read as just a mischief-maker who enjoys deliberately challenging the Super Solver, as opposed to an evil or villainous antagonist. There are a few lines in Midnight Rescue from Morty himself that suggest he is not too keen on succeeding with his plans. He always congratulates you when you get a question right, and when you collect a clue that you already have, he will congratulate you normally but then suddenly change his tone to mocking, as if he briefly forgot that he is supposed to be a villain. Additionally, Brutalmoose has pointed out that Morty is not particularly intimidating in Mission: T.H.I.N.K.
  • This forum post analyzes Morty's Psychopathic Manchild-like behavior.
    "In one article, he even hints at a childish desire to never grow up, and I don't think he ever did. Almost 40 years old (as of Midnight Rescue), Morty's still pulling pranks and schemes on Shady Glen, and he doesn't even care that his antics are detrimental and possibly even dangerous to the public. Childish, antisocial, and egostistical (sic), truly this is the sign of a disturbed mind."
• Awesome Music: Midnight Rescue has a pretty awesome mini-rendition of The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Yes, that one.
  • The same game also has the classic progression from In The Hall of the Mountain King.
  • Mission: T.H.I.N.K. has some background tracks that are pure earworm, mainly the ones from the last two levels.
• Fridge Horror:
  • This largely depends on how exactly the disappearing paint works, but in Midnight Rescue, when you get a game over, the school disappears. While in the original version, we are just told that the school disappeared, in the Windows version, we actually see it melting away, with nothing, and no one left behind. Was Morty's plan really Taking You with Me?
    • In fact, the outside view of the school clearly shows several cars and bicycles in the parking lot, giving the impression that other people might have been inside.
  • The readings in Midnight Rescue! shed a lot of light on Morty's relationships with his parents, classmates, and teachers. We don't know what happened to any of them, but they seem to be out of his life. Do any of them know what he's become?
• Game-Breaker: The coin and net exchange rates in Treasure Mountain! are rather lopsided. It takes only four coins to get a refill of ten nets, yet catching elves still grants one coin apiece. This can result in grinding that yields a prepper's worth of coins and nets in one's inventory. Later games would Nerf the rates to be more straightforward, making it impossible to have a surplus of the equivalent resources.
• Goddamned Bats: Cyberchimps in Gizmos and Gadgets, specifically the fast unicycle ones. They steal your parts when they bump into you, forcing you to throw them a banana to get them back (and make them sleep for a while). They can also pick up parts lying around, which means that the best parts could end up in their hands and you'll have to find the chimp who stole it. Thankfully, there's an option to play the game without Chimps.
  • Also, the Metal Minions in Mission: T.H.I.N.K.
  • Livewire in Outnumbered. He causes you to lose time if he hits you, and unlike Telly, using your valuable energy to take him out has no reward.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Outnumbered and Midnight Rescue are about being by yourself inside an abandoned building at night with robots out to get you. At least you're not a security guard, right?
  • Morty Maxwell, who debuted in Midnight Rescue in 1989, is a brown-haired Mad Scientist. Rick and Morty, released in 2013, is about a brown-haired boy named Morty who goes on adventures with a Mad Scientist. Now comparisons between this series' Morty and Rick and Morty's Morty are pretty common nowadays, with people making jokes like "Looks like Morty grew up to be just like Rick."
  • As seen here, it is possible for the AI in Spellbound to misspell "bench" as "binch". Little did the creators realize that a decade or two later, "binch" would become a slang word, usually defined as a sillier form of "bitch".
  • The Running Gag of Morty telling his robots about the projectiles they can throw at the Super Solver, only for the robots to throw them at Morty, brings to mind a line from "We Are Number One", a LazyTown song that debuted in 2014 and became a meme two years later:
    "Throw it at him, not me!"
• Just Here for Godzilla: Plenty of kids only played Gizmos and Gadgets for the races, if they were even aware of other games in the series.
• Moment of Awesome: Finally beating Morty after hours of game time. You will feel awesome!
• Moral Event Horizon: None of Morty's plans are all that harmful: just extreme mischief. Except for his actions in Treasure Galaxy, which has him imprisoning the young queen of a space colony, sending harmful "Disasteroids" all over the galaxy, and breaking the crystal shards, which he knows full well might cost an entire race of beings to go extinct! And that is totally crossing the line!
• Narm: Morty usually has a Creepy High-Pitched Voice that fits his manchildish personality. However, for some reason, Spellbound gives him a deep voice that sounds surprisingly intimidating... or at least, it would, if this game didn't have the villains participating in a spelling bee.
• Nightmare Fuel: Both Midnight Rescue and Outnumbered have you in an abandoned building at night-time with robots out to get you and a countdown until a deranged villain accomplishes some sinister goal, all accompanied by creepy music. Scary situation, no?
  • In particular, the sounds the robots made (especially in the original MS-DOS versions of the games, where the background music stops whenever the robots appear and make their sounds). There's definitely more than a few players who ended up terrified of robots, as a result.
  • Especially since they can appear literally from nowhere, and in Midnight Rescue's higher difficulties, they're incredibly fast.
  • Let's not forget Livewire from Outnumbered, a moving, screeching electric cord that electrocutes you.
  • The Snow Bullies in Treasure Mathstorm can appear very suddenly, and in the CD-ROM version they’re accompanied by a loud Evil Laugh that can make their appearance a Jump Scare.
  • In the CD-ROM version of Operation Neptune, answering a question wrong will produce a startling sound effect that sounds almost like gunfire, accompanied by the single word “ERROR” on a black background. It can be quite scary.
• Paranoia Fuel: Many of the writings in Midnight Rescue! were by Morty's former classmates and teachers. It makes you wonder just how Morty got access to them.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The red jumping things in Gizmos & Gadgets! Unlike the vents or green springboards, the red things cannot be jumped over, and will send you up two floors. This means that if you need to get to the floor directly above you or on your current floor just past the red things, you'll have to find a different path to get there. And if there's no other way to get there...
  • In Midnight Rescue pressing up is both the jump and action key (going through a door/up the stairs, checking a poster or getting more film). If you try to use something just before a robot appears, which can happen with very little warning, you'll likely jump up in the air instead, leaving you vulnerable long enough for the robot to crash into you.
  • At higher ranks in Midnight Rescue, you may see one robot much more often than the other four, with said robot often appearing multiple times in a row. Since the Master of Mischief is usually not disguised as that robot, that forces you to wander around the school to narrow down the other robots for the culprit, avoiding the ones you don't need lest you end up wasting film.