Kou has just moved to Safaritown, and on a starry night, he observes a meteor shower. It turns out that these aren't meteors, but toy-sized alien robots from another planet, called Gotcha Borgs. One in particular, G Red, finds Kou and explains that an evil force of these toy robots called the Death Force, led by the Galactic Emperor, is out to destroy Earth as they destroyed the Gotcha Borgs' home planet of Mega Borg, and the only hope for Earth is for kids to team up with the heroic robots and form the Gotcha Force.Based loosely upon toy fights that children have and gatchapon (capsule toys, usually from coin-operated machines) with gameplay derived heavily from Virtual On, Gotcha Force is a Gamecube game from Capcom that only achieved modest success (partially due to its sole appearance on the GameCube, partially because of a nonexistant ad campaign), but due to its popularity amongst its fans is still a rare find (and has depreciated much less than many games for the system on the used market).A big draw for the game is that you bring in a small squad into every battle - when one robot goes down, the next in the squad takes its place. Moreover, more frequently-used robots gain levels, increasing their durability. Finally, a huge draw is that there are over 200 of the Borgs, each with their own fighting style, allowing for a great deal of customization and strategy for teams (and if you have the resources, nothing prevents anyone from using multiple copies of the same robot). The game is heavily Troperiffic, taking inspiration from a variety of sources and distilling all the delicious clichés into individual Borgs—Ninja, cowboys, samurai, knights, tanks, mecha infantry, transforming mecha, jet planes, dark monsters, tokusatsu heroes, and so many more...While the sales weren't great and professional reviews were mixed, the sheer enthusiasm for the game (both amongst its fans and its developers) combined with its unique gameplay made it quite a sleeper hit. As it turns out, Japan wants a sequel, too...And news of a limited reprint leaves fans at their most hopeful in years.This game has examples of:
Action Bomb: The Walking Bomb borg. There are two Death Borgs (which drop large bombs, the die) which are effectively the same deal.
Action Girl: Usagi tends to prefer Borgs of this style, possibly making her an example by extension.
Adults Are Useless: Specifically cited at one point - only kids who have bonded with Gotcha Borgs can save the world.
Arm Cannon: The arm-as-cannon variety is used by Death Borgs in lieu of actual guns. The arm-mounted cannon variety is also present on several other Borgs.
Beam Spam: The Death Arc and the Sirius are capable of unleashing their entire arsenal at once on a single Borg. Is not as useful as would be expected, given that they're usually knocked back and given invulnerability after one or two shots hit—and now you're out of ammo.
Almost any borg with a projectile is capable of this during Power Burst.
Big Ol' Eyebrows: Kou is an... interesting example - they're each composed of what appears to be three very slim eyebrows.
BFG: Beam Gunner especially, whose second gun is so large he keeps it in Hammer Space.
BFS: Special mention goes to the Demon Samurai and Akuma Samurai, whose beam swords will extend as they defeat enemies, eventually growing to ridiculous lengths. Presuming they live long enough and enough enemies are available, they can have swords that easily extend beyond the length of the field.
Also, the Samurai Shogun, which has a charged slash that can literally hit everything in front of it.
Forget not the Metal Hero, the character who's charge, when activated in the air, will slash from the sky all the way into the ground, often OHKOing anything it hits. However, due to its activation time, it is not as accurate as the Samurai Shogun, but it does more damage.
The Bully: Nekobe. While he never quite pulls a full Heel Face Turn or becomes a total Jerk with a Heart of Gold, he still proves to be one of Kou's most loyal allies. Especially when going head to head with a planet-sized mech, where he enters after his other ally's borgs have been annihilated.
Chainsaw Good: The aptly-named Chainsaw Knight, though the Yoyo Girl and the Barrier Girl appear to carry mini-chainsaw yo-yos.
Captain Obvious: Tsutomu. "This will hit!" Yeah, thanks for notifying me. Justified in that he has confidence issues - he's not talking to his partner, he's pep-talking himself.
Character Level: Up to level 10. Leveling-up increases HP and, in most cases, the maximum ammo of projectile attacks.
Cloudcuckoolander: Yuji. "This was expected to happen from the point of cultural athropology!"
Color Character: G Red, G Black, Machine Red, Machine Blue, etc.
Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Most projectile attacks will be either blue or red depending on which side you're on. Averted with some attacks that have a constant color (flames are always red).
Claw Robots as well, Though Kitsune's Isaac has two eyes instead of one.
Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Even if you lose a level, you get experience and the chance to try again (except for certain missions which unlock features later on).
Death Ray: The Ultimate Cannon is a Wave Motion Gun that sprays a massive one-hit kill beam that, well, kills things.
Defeat Means Friendship: All Kou needs to do to get people on his side is to beat them in battle. Some people take multiple beatings.
Subverted when Nekobe challenges Kou to a one-on-one fight, but soon calls in Kitsune for back-up.
Sho still plays this straight on occasion. Only a couple times does he bring a buddy.
You can also choose to go into most levels (except certain plot levels, usually "Training with..." levels) without a partner once you've cleared the game once.
Dual Wielding: A lot of borgs, but Imperial Knight and Dark Knight gladly take this one Up to Eleven by doubleDual Wielding - they each have a pair of swords and a pair of shields.
Pretty much every borg with wings - their dash attacks are a corkscrew spin that does massive damage and effectively turns them into a drill.
Pop Honey inverts this trope to make everything worse - any Borgs hit by its "Mr. Reverse Bolt" will spin uncontrollably, minimally affecting movement, but make it effectively impossible to properly aim attacks.
This can, however, have hilarious side effects when combined with destructive attacks that cover a wide area.
Hammer Space: Several Borgs switch between two weapons, sending whichever one they're not using to Hammer Space.
Battle Girl and Claw Robot explicitly avert this trope - their missiles are stored in miniaturized form, and expand upon contact with air.
Heel Face Turn: Kitsune, Nekobe, Yuji, Tama, and Met Eventually, it's possible to recruit Sho and Orochi as well, but the conditions to do so are nigh-impossible on the first run through the game.
Arguably, Tetsuya as well - he shows interest early on in joining with Kou, but doesn't because Met doesn't want to at first.
I Have the High Ground: Several missions have the first set of enemies spawn upon tall, thin objects for dramatic effect. The player's Borgs experience the same thing on occasion.
Humans Are White: Tetsuya stands out because of the existence of this trope here.
Incredible Shrinking Man - Two Witch Borgs can do this to you (with a resultant loss of power). Inverted by two other Witch Borgs that can make their allies grow (and resultant increases in power).
It Is Pronounced Tro PAY: G Red's pronunciation of "Gotcha Borg Corps of Justice" does not render the 'P' in Corps silent.
Knight in Shining Armor: Almost all of the Knight Borgs, but their description especially emphasizes their honorable nature.
Laser Blade: Very common with the Machine Borgs, or the higher-tech Ninja/Musha/Knight borgs.
Law of Chromatic Superiority: Gold-palette borgs have more extra health than Silver-palette ones, which in turn have more extra health than Shadow-palette ones.
Char Custom Rule: The human characters' unique borgs, which are palette-swapped versions of other Borgs (mostly Com Mons), have several more levels worth of stat-growth right out of the gate. It's usually three levels stronger, but Sasuke is notable for having six extra levels.
Level Five Onix: Fortress Borgs other than the Galactic Emperor.
Level Grinding: Obviously, you can play more missions than necessary to gain experience for your Borgs (thought the benefits of doing so are only moderate), but you'll also gain more GF energy with each victory, allowing you to bring more and/or more expensive Borgs into battle (of which the benefits are significant).
Lightning Bruiser: Plenty of borgs qualify, notably Star and Planet Hero, as well as Anubis and Blade Wing.
The Load: Any level where you bring Kotaro along. Fortunately, as long as you survive, you pass the level. And he's only necessary on a couple of levels. Tsutomu arguably is as well, but since his Vehicle Borgs have tons of hit points, he's at least useful as an alternate target.
Tsutomu can be pretty useful in some battles- his AI knows to stay far back, and his constant shelling of borgs that are sneaking up on you is always helpful. Of course, in the wrong level he might just shoot a wall or get beaten into a corner.
Luckily My Shield Will Protect Me: Most of the Knight Borgs carry a shield that can completely negate the damage from frontal attacks, though it's a bit of a crapshoot how often they'll actually intercept them.
Macrossing: The Anti-Air Lasers found on most Fortress Borgs.
Mad Bomber: The Remote Bomber and the Time Bomber. As they only take one hit point of damage from their own explosions, a viable strategy is to have them close with the enemy and deliberately drop bombs to hit everyone. Another involves using a bomb as a shield (which triggers the bomb, thus taking much less damage from the attack).
Magnet Hands: Nobody will ever lose their grip on a weapon unless they mean to, despite getting hit by bullets, swords bigger than they are, lasers, or NUKES.
The Musketeer: A large number of borgs have both a gun and a melee weapon, the use of which one depends on the distance between the borg and its target.
Mutual Kill: Almost guaranteed with the Walking Bomb or Death ICBM, and extremely common with the ICBM Tank.
My Little Panzer: The planet is going to be taken over - or saved - by toy-sized robots.
Named Weapons: Several of human partners' unique borgs:
Sasuke's katana, Tsunujimaru.
Vlad's sword, Shadow Bringer (it's two identical weapons referred to singularly).
Musashi's katana's, Furinmaru and Kazinmaru.
Billy's guns, Rhythm and Blues.
Non-partner example: Imperial Knight has his shield-swords Alpha and Omega, while Dark Knight has Sol and Star.
New Game Plus: You keep all your Borgs, your experience, and rare Borgs appear more frequently. You actually get a new save file each time, denoting further levels of "plus-ness," up to a maximum of eight. Defeating additional playthroughs also nets you rarer and rarer Palette Swaps of G Red.
Never Say "Die": Played straight when talking about what happened to Sho's father, but also averted, what with the antagonists being called the Death Force and all.
Palette Swap: There are five palettes in addition to the base for each borg - with four of them granting different stats compared to the base model (the fifth is just a standard recolor).
Every human character's partner borg is generally this as well.
Player Mooks: Just about all the Borgs. Several of them have personalities and backstories, but those are pretty much relegated to the Gallery' description boxes.
Poisoned Weapon: Done only with the Poison Worm. All his melee attacks and shots cause the target to steadily lose health.
The Power of Friendship: Pretty much the point of the entire games. Borgs need to be buddy-buddy with their Commanders, and the kids buddy-buddy with each other, in order to fight the friendless, hateful evil emperor.
Randomly Drops: Good luck getting the right piece of a multi-part borg. You'll need the luck of the gods if you ever hope to get an alternate-colored variant of a Borg that comes in three or even four parts.
Fortunately, the more times you play through the game, the more common drops become. At plays 5 and above you'll be getting two or three borgs or data crystals per fight.
Ranged Emergency Weapon: A good number of Knight, Samurai, Knuckle and other borgs are very powerful in close range, but have a slightly lackluster shot attack for use in a pinch. These attacks tend to have limited ammo, be easy to dodge, or recharge slowly.
Razor Wind: Acceleration Ninja and Tornado Valkyrie.
Reverse Grip: Normal Ninjas, Double Ninjas, and Sasuke.
Although arguably only minor pests as opposed to full-on villains, this is also how Kou gets Nekobe and Kitsune to join/assist in an Enemy Mine scenario.
Victory Tank, Victory Jet, Panther Robot, Jet Eagle, and several other borgs share the same blocky design as the Transformers—along with the more obvious similarities.
Its direct relative is the Gundam Vs Series, also being made by Capcom. Any GF veteran will find many similarities in this footage, down to the position of the health bar, ammo meters, and the same camera effects when killing the final enemy.
Super Mode: Named "Power Burst", by utilizing The Power of Friendship, Commanders can give their Borgs instantly-reloading ammo, massive speed, and the capacity to deal much more damage.
Seven alone on the Drill Robot. Beam Tank has one as well, making it the only Tank Borg that can perform melee attacks.
Many Borgs will spin a melee weapon like a drill when dashing towards a foe. This results in satisfyingly large combos.
Throwing Your Shield Always Works: Normal Knights and Sword Knights can throw their shields to smack at foes staying out of their melee range. Just because it works, though, doesn't mean it works well - the damage is negligable, cannot be done rapidly, and removes the shield from being able to protect the knight.
Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Since the animating forces of the Ghost Knight and the Elemental Knight are in their swords, and only their armor can be targeted, throwing the sword works well towards getting them out of trouble from anything without a wide area of effect.
Time Bomb: The Time Bomber's specialty, of course.
Transforming Mecha: Several of the high-end Machine Borgs can change between a vehicle (or multiple vehicles) and an anthropomorphic robot. It's also possible to obtain non-transforming versions of each form, which cost less to use.
Spamming G Red's charge attack is very tempting as, despite its only moderate damage output for a charge attack, it has a short charge time, can juggle some opponents mercilessly, and fires through stage obstacles.
The dash moves for Angel and Wing borgs are also extremely prone to this, as they can even keep firing (if their target is at a distance) while whoring out their absurd amount of speed.
Finally, given the extremely rapid recharge power granted under Burst Mode, it's possible for several users of a Wave Motion Gun to whore those out. A Beam Gunner activating Burst Mode is practically an instant-win scenario.
You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Largely averted, all the characters have normal(ish) hair colors until the ending - when the Galactic Emperor's hold over Orochi is finally broken, her previously green hair turns purple.
You Killed My Father: Implied to be Sho's reason for considering all Gotcha Borgs his enemies.
You Kill It, You Bought It: What you can recruit is directly dependent on what you destroy - which means that if the opponent is using something you desperately want, you have to swoop in to make sure a partner doesn't bogart the kill.
You Will Not Evade Me: The Arrow Ninja, which has the ability to anchor an opponent so that they can't move more than a very small distance from the anchor spot. One level combines them with Ultimate Cannons to make massive amounts of pain.
Made even worse by the fact that said borgs can shoot you with multiple arrows, limiting your movement range even further.
Several other borgs (Chainsaw Knight notable among them) can launch a claw at an opponent to bring them in close.
And news of a limited reprint
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