Warning: The article you are about to read is canon.
The Great B-Ball Purge of 2041, a day so painful to some that it is referred to only as the "B-Ballnacht". Thousands upon thousands of the world's greatest ballers were massacred in a swath of violence and sports bigotry as the game was outlawed worldwide. The reason: the Chaos Dunk, a jam so powerful its mere existence threatens the balance of chaos and order. Among the few ballers and fans that survived the basketball genocide was Charles Barkley, the man capable of performing the "Verboten Jam"...
A freeware RPG by Tales of Game's (sic).It's Twenty Minutes into the Futurein a world where basketball is Serious Business. The sport has been outlawed and the world's ballers have been hunted down and killed after a forbidden technique known as a Chaos Dunk killed millions.Really, the whole game is one big moment of hilarity from start to finish, from the underground colony of furries to the ruins of Proto-Neo-New York and beyond. It has to be seen to be believed. Oh, and did we mention that the events of Space Jam are canonical to the game's timeline? The full title is Tales of Game's Presents Chef Boyardee's Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa.And remember: If you can't slam with the best, then jam with the rest.
This game uses some of these tropes:
After the End: Specifically, After The End of The Revolutionary War.
Affectionate Parody: This game is an incredible parody of 16-bit JRPGs. There's also a much less affectionate parody of the RPG Maker community and certain Internet subcultures in general. A few of the rants that you read before saving are taken verbatim from real Internet discussion forums.
Action Commands: The attacks in the game are made stronger by well-timed button presses of various sorts, similar to Paper Mario.
All Myths Are True: Subverted. You can hear about a key in Cuchulainn's Tomb, and you see the door the key is supposed to open afterward, but there's no key in the tomb at all.
Actually you can apply that to virtually anything presented as a "secret" in this game. Anything that you really have Lost Forever you weren't told about if you missed it, and everything that you are told you "missed" didn't exist.
Antidote Effect: Averted; healing items work by percents instead of fixed numbers. You'll still want to buy the all-purpose Standard Status Effect cure instead of the individual status medicine, though.
Anticlimax Boss: Most of the opponents in the B-Ball Dimension Arena Tournament, except for the final battle with Kevin Garnett. Special mention goes to the Flame Delmon, who blows himself up early into the fight. Barkley comments afterwards that it was tough.
Also the Ball Spider that guards Shimmerglobe, which is just a normal enemy from an early dungeon, yet is treated as a boss with the boss music playing.
Bigger on the Inside: Dikembe Mutombo's entire tomb is inside Cyberdwarf's house in Cesspool X.
"Blind Idiot" Translation: There are a lot of fake "bad translation" elements; "Gun" is always pluralized as "gun's", and people who use "gun's" are "gun'sbrasters", because they can "brast" things out of their "gun's".
Boring, but Practical: Charles' Double Team is one of the first moves you have access to, isn't too flashy, but is easily one of the most damaging moves he has in his arsenal as well as one of the least expensive to use, especially after acquiring the Infinity Plus One B-Ball. The same applies to Hoopz as well, as his Gun's Slay inflicts way more damage than Trickgun Assault, and costs three times as less.
But Thou Must: Lampshaded at least once, when an NPC tells you he could tell you were a friend and if you'd answered "foe" he wouldn't have believed you.
Another exchange: "Will you promise to kill raffleson?" "Nah" "Saying no is simply not an option!" (Despite that you hardly know who Raffleson or the guy telling you to kill him are).
Camp: How else can you describe a game featuring Charles Barkley, his gunslinger son, a cyborg dwarf with basketball leather for skin, and a sword-wielding descendant of LeBron James with Elemental Powers fighting a monster consisting of Bill Cosby's head on a ghost body?*
Other then extremely awesome?
Celibate Hero: After the death of his wife, Barkley would never allow himself to fall for another woman.
Depending on the Artist: Within the same game, many characters are depicted as looking radically different in their different sprites. Between Balthios's portrait, overworld, and battle sprites, his hair goes from long and white to short and black to short and white, respectively. Also, Hoopz's overworld sprites look nothing like how he does in-battle and in his portrait. Put simply, Cyberdwarf is the only character who has any degree of correlation between sprites and picture. Invoked from the start, where Hoopz turns into the "generic basketball player" sprite and back when showing Barkley his skills.
Development Hell: Years have passed since this game came out, and Episode 2 still doesn't exist. Given all the other jokes at video gaming's expense, this is probably deliberate.
Dual Wielding: Eventually Charles learns to dual-wield basketballs by double-dribbling, allowing him to perform normal attacks twice in a row and doubling his power.
Fallen Hero: Michael Jordan plays this role, especially given that Space Jam is considered canon.
Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Features dwarves, the undead, elemental Magic Knights, aliens, genies, and superpowered basketball players, among other things. In near-future America without explanation, no less.
Fan Sequel: To Space Jam, and (naturally) to the obscure Genesis game Barkley, Shut Up and Jam!.
Fight Woosh: About 20+ different wooshes, chosen at random.
Flat "What.": Barkley delivers one upon seeing the "reward" for turning in the F.I.N.A.L.G.U.N. to Mark.
Fun with Acronyms B.L.O.O.D.M.O.S.E.S., the Statue of L.I.B.E.R.T.Y., ~F.A.T.E~, and the legendary F.I.N.A.L.G.U.N. Mind, if any of these actually stand for anything, it's never elaborated upon.
Furry Fandom: They live in the sewers of Neo New York. Surprisingly, they're actually treated pretty fairly - they're decent people (some hostility towards the "norms" aside, and that's required for the standard post-apocalypse sewer-dweller template), rather intelligent and insightful. Barkley's a dick to them, but he's a dick to everyone in this game. All in all, they come off far better here than in, say, Kingdom of Loathing.
Gratuitous German: Zaubers ("charm"s), Das Fructose Unhuer, and Verboten Jam.
Gratuitous Japanese: During one exchange, Charles Barkley repeatedly calls Jordan a "baka".
Also, Clispaeth's full name was Clispaeth Ryuji Atucks.
Hacking Minigame: Hinted to in the vending machine, but you never get any "science points" to attempt it.
Healing Hands: Wilford Brimley can absorb the diabetes of others, at the price of aggravating his own. By the time you meet him, he has to stay attached to a giant insulin machine to survive, and it's about to fail.
Heroic Sacrifice: It's heavily implied that Charles doesn't survive the Chaos Dunk he performs at the end of the game.
Hollywood Cyborg: Vinceborg is a conventional example, but there's also the Cyberdwarf, whose skin was replaced with basketballs after being injured.
Also, after obtaining both the Hell B-Ball and Shimmerglobe, Barkley will Dual Wield them.
Inn Security: If you rest in the nearby inn after defeating Ghost Dad, he will come to you and thank you for helping him rest in peace.
Informed Ability - Barkley can supposedly perform the Verboten Jam and the Chaos Dunk, but never actually does it during gameplay. (Given what the Chaos Dunk does, he might simply refuse to use it in combat despite being capable of it.) Shadow Barkley does use the Verboten Jam against you when you fight him, having no moral qualms with it, unlike Barkley. It is a One-Hit Kill on anyone it hits regardless of equipment or stats, making it actually as powerful as you are told.
Actually, reading the descriptions of some of Barkley's abilities during combat would imply that all of Barkley's special moves are Verboten Jams, which would make it more of a fighting style than a single special move.
The term seems to be used inconsistently in homage to badly translated JRPGs.
Jump Scare - Parodied. At one point in the Sugar Caves, an image of a sugar shaker will flash on the screen, horror-movie style.
Lampshade Hanging - "Both of these keys broke when I put them in the door! And the sugar counter's gone!" "Thankfully we won't need those items anymore."
At one point you need to insert crystals into pedestals to open a door in a tomb. Barkley says there's no way that's right, there must be a key somewhere. Balthios comments that weird things like this are designed to drive intruders insane.
No Fair Cheating: If you quit and restart the game after losing money gambling, the gambler will come up to you, take all your money, and auto-save the game.
Non Standard Gameover: Hell. Also, the normal game over screen does not make any sense at all.
Kurt Cobain
No Time to Explain: The cyberdwarf says this about taking Hoops to the church. However, before doing that you do have time to complete an unrelated dungeon.
One-Winged Angel: The final boss's second form. The less said about it, the better. Also, the first form is a literal example... which is a reskin of the final form of Kefka.
Only Sane Man: Barkley frequently comes off as this, and when he's doing something insane, Balthios takes the role.
Planet Heck: If you refuse to give money to all of the beggars, then you get sent to Hell after your next Total Party Kill.)
Press X to Not Die: To be fair, you get one mistake. Not so fair: this is almost the first interactivity the game has. Expect to play through the chase sequence a few times.
Product Placement: Parodied; the game's most potent healing item is a Burger King Chicken Fry. Not an entire carton, just one. It cures death, maxes out health and magic, and cures all status effects, for the whole party. The second-strongest healing item is the greasy "dew" left behind by a Chicken Fry.
Red Herring: Barkley touches the Incan gold in Cuchulainn's Tomb... and it is never mentioned again. Perhaps we'll see the results in Chapter 2, if it ever comes out.
Depending on your choices, two NPCs will swear revenge on you in the latter half of the game, only to never be heard from again. In fact, generally the game makes up and doesn't follow through on plot threads and gameplay elements so often it's easier to count the number of sidequests or arcs that don't leave hanging threads.
Running Gag: Diabetes is used not only as a Standard Status Effect corresponding to poison, it's also mentioned off-hand several times and becomes a major plot point later on.
Balthios's terrible taste in poetry.
Reginald using a different name in every conversation that talks about him.
RPGs Equal Combat: There's a "basketball game" that consists of Barkley throwing basketballs at an enemy that shoots back at him with a gun.
Stealth Pun: That would make it more of a shootout.
There's an island that has a cult of those who abhor sugar and diabetes in all of its forms.
Shout Out: All over the damn place. One non-video game related example: the metadata title for one of the songs is "In Memory of Kawaoru"
A lot of these are ironic shout-outs, though.
Silliness Switch: In addition to the "Al Bhed" language option and the game's general silliness, upon beating the game you unlock Victorian Steampunk mode (seemingly inspired by Barkley's old nickname of "Sir Charles"), which replaces all character names and portraits with ones appropriate to the wrong setting.
Smurfing: This game takes the amount of words or phrases that can have "b-ball" appended to them Up to Eleven.
Take Your Time: There's no urgency to find the diabetes cure for Hoopz.
Theme Music Power-Up: The first phase of the final boss fight is a Title Theme Drop, which is a remix of the theme from Space Jam. A riff can also be heard during Charles's flashback to the first Chaos Dunk.
Too Awesome to Use: The Golden Potato, acquired from the optional Ghastly Darklord boss, which does enormous damage to enemies but can only be used once.
Trademark Favourite Food: Duergars rely entirely on Dunkaroos and chemical potions for sustenance.
Unexpected Genre Change: Most of the game plays as an RPG with some action elements. Liberty Island is an Adventure Game, although it still uses the same engine.
In true Adventure Game style, Barkley will describe all items you find. Which the other characters remark upon.
Useless Item: Alcohol. Sure it does cure Asperger's Syndrome, but the only thing that the status does in the first place is make your character move awkwardly.
Violation of Common Sense: How do you get the best reward from the poetry-composing sidequest? Choose the stilted, clinical and overall horrible suggestions that Vinceborg gives you.
Wake Up Call Boss: While the first few bosses off the game are fairly easy, the Ghost Dad is a major kick in the nuts considering how early in the game you face him. He has a ridiculous amount of VP, he can power himself up with Ghost Muscle, he can reduce your attack power, and he can inflict multiple random status ailments on the entire party with Ghostly Curse. That last attack is particularly brutal because there isn't a whole lot you can do about the multiple status ailments that early in the game. And he is very liberal with it. If you allow the fight to go on too long, your characters will become weakened so much that they will do very little damage to him.
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