History VideoGame / Startropics

* MirrorsReflectEverything: Mirror Shields -- another item pilfered from ''Zelda'', and predating Zelda's "Mirror Shield" by [[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaALinkToThePast about a year]]. Useful for taking out wraiths and pirate ghosts.

** Zoda is one letter away from Soda... and as an added bonus, one of the NPCs in the PlayableEpilogue talks about how Mike "creamed Zoda".

** When speaking to an NPC, the generic response Mike gets is, "You're from Americola?", or, "Spacecola....?"
** Zoda is one letter away from Soda.

* PublicDomainSoundtrack: "God Save the Queen,'' the national anthem of the UsefulNotes/UnitedKingdom, plays when Captain Bell's ship sinks after solving the piano puzzle. American players may be confused as to why "America the Beautiful" is playing, as the tunes are identical.

* BossArenaIdiocy: The first boss of Chapter 3 in the first game, a creature made of fire that can't be harmed by conventional attacks. While the rest of that section of the cave was filled with lava, this guy decides to fill his room with ''water'', with him on a small platform that dunks him in after finding and pressing two switches.
* BossRush: second half of the last level in the sequel. Mercifully, there's a maze right before where you can get as much as 6 jars of medicine with some heavy jumping, although the correct path is TrialAndErrorGameplay for that much ([[spoiler:take the bottom path]]), and if you got past the [[spoiler:C-Serpent]] without too much trouble (not terribly difficult if you know what to expect), you should still have the medicine from the first half of the level. Be sure to get all of this, especially in case the rematch with ThatOneBoss gets really irksome.

%% * GettingCrapPastThe Radar: Due to overwhelming and persistent misuse, GCPTR is on-page examples only until 01 June 2021. If you are reading this in the future, please check the trope page to make sure your example fits the current definition.

* OneHitKill: Physical contact with any of the bosses in the first game is instant death.

* PublicDomainSoundtrack: "God Save the Queen,'' the national anthem of the UsefulNotes/UnitedKingdom, plays when Captain Bell's ship sinks after solving the piano puzzle.
* PuzzleBoss: Magma the Fierce, first boss in Chapter 3. He's completely invulnerable to weapons, and has to be fought by finding and then hitting two buttons to break the platform he sits on.

* TheAllAmericanBoy: Mike's All-American-ness -- contrasted with and found strange by the natives of the islands he's visiting -- is a large part of the game's humor and tone.

* VideogameSettings:
** BigBoosHaunt: Ghost Tunnel in the first game, Chapter 7 in the second.
** BuildLikeAnEgyptian / ShiftingSandLand: Egypt.
** DeathMountain: Hermit's Mountain.
** GangplankGalleon: Captain Bell's Cave.
** LethalLavaLand: Magma's Molten Tunnel.
** LevelsTakeFlight: The spaceship.
** LighthousePoint: Chapter 2's island.
** TheMaze: Space Maze.
** NoobCave: C-Cave.
** PortTown: In Ancient Egypt, Cleopatra's barge is the only way across the Nile.
** RecurringLocation / WhereItAllBegan: C-Island.
** SlippySlideyIceWorld: The Ice Age.
** WombLevel: Inside the whale.

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar:
** Speaking to the boar in Coralcola prompts him to moon the player. Weird.
** In one time period, Mike is instructed to deliver pizza to Cleopatra from "[[ParodyNames Caesar's Hut]]" (a joke which works on at least three levels).

* SequelDifficultySpike: Mostly due to the control scheme and combined with DamnYouMuscleMemory if you've played the first game. The raft-jumping sections are notable for their cruelty for the fact that you can walk right off the raft into the water / pit if you're not extremely careful when jumping.

* DifficultySpike: The biggest one is between levels 2 and 3. Level 3 is where fast moving monsters with unpredictable patterns become the norm - especially the skull-headed ostriches which actively chase you down, do a heart and a half worth of damage, and will jump over water to get at you. There are smaller difficulty spikes in level 6 (where the underground ruins begin) and level 7 (the alien spaceship), but those are both tougher versions of crap you've already dealt with.

* HauntedHouse: Chapter 7 of the second game.

** BigBoosHaunt: Ghost Tunnel.

** To get around this roadblock in the Virtual Console release, the letter is simulated inside of the game's operations guide on the Wii, and actual scans of the letter before and after water are included on the Wii U. Unfortunately, the version included in the Nintendo Switch Online NES application doesn't mention the code at all.

** Before the Internet made walkthroughs widely available, you were screwed if you didn't have the physical letter from Dr. J that came with the game. And if you couldn't decipher the clue, you were screwed even if you ''did'' have it.

Both games are available for the UsefulNotes/VirtualConsole on the UsefulNotes/{{Wii}} and UsefulNotes/WiiU, and the first game was included on the NES Classic mini-console.

[[quoteright:204:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/star_tropics_3630.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:204:Some vacation.]]

After a short while, Mike discovers that his uncle was abducted by aliens. After a series of sidequests involving talking dolphins, witch doctors, a giant octopus, an obstinate parrot, and zombie pirates, Mike reunites with his uncle - who has been trying to save a bunch of good aliens from an [[EvilOverlord evil alien overlord]] named Zoda. Mike climbs aboard the alien craft and defeats Zoda, rescuing an [[EverythingsBetterWithPrincesses alien princess]] and a bunch of alien kids in the process.

* TalkToEveryone: Most notably in the first game's first village, where the guard in front of the game's first dungeon will not let you pass until you have spoken to ''every single person in the village,'' even though almost none of them have anything useful to tell you.

* InsaneTrollLogic: Sherlock Holmes deducing in the second game that, just going off Zoda-X's name, there must two other Zodas named Zoda-Y and Zoda-Z. [[TheCloudCuckoolanderWasRight He's right]], but it's still a huge reach regardless.