Biomotor Unitron is a Role-Playing Game developed by Aicom. Originally published by SNK and released in Japan and North America for the Neo Geo Pocket Color in 1999, a port for the Nintendo Switch was released on May 26, 2022.
t was then included in the Compilation Re-release "Neo Geo Pocket Color Selection Vol. 2
", which released through Steam on November 9, 2022.
Tropes:
- Dungeon Crawling: In order to gain the materials and money to upgrade your Unitron, you send it into a semi-random dungeon themed after four of the five main elements in order to gain treasure and fight the monsters within. Clearing all dungeons, including a hidden fifth, is required to reach the Final Boss.
- Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: There are five main elements that are strong and weak to another in a cycle (Water beats Fire beats Wood beats Stone beats Wind beats Water), as well as a Dark element that's strong to the main five, and a Light element that's only strong against Dark but has no weakness.
- The Magic Goes Away: The final boss is revealed to be the origin of the material used to construct the cores of all of the eponymous Unitron mecha. Defeating it causes all of the Unitron mecha's power cores to be reduced to dust, rendering them useless. Zig-Zagged in that a cutscene afterward explains that, during a Time Skip, people were able to build their own artificial cores to continue powering their mecha (which also explains why you can keep playing the game after defeating the Final Boss).
- Non-Combat EXP: While the protagonist gains experience and levels up through operating their Unitron, their partner gains experience as more mecha parts are developed, and higher levels for them make it easier to develop more powerful parts.
- Non-Standard Game Over: Losing a battle usually has few repercussions: you leave the Arena or Dungeon and return to the main screen. However, losing to the first Dark Unitron causes the game to cut to a Game Over screen, which the game never normally displays.
- Post-End Game Content: Even after defeating the Final Boss, the player can continue to upgrade their mecha and participate in competitions.
- Purely Aesthetic Gender: The only difference between playing as a male or a female is that you'll be seeing your counterpart more frequently due to them acting as your engineer.
- Randomly Generated Levels: Each of the five elemental dungeons have multiple preprogrammed layouts, adding some variety to Dungeon Crawling.
- Schrödinger's Player Character: At the start of the game, you can choose your protagonist and their opposite-gender partner from one of five races, including human, merperson, and Lizard Folk. Your choice will affect what elemental parts you start with, but none of the other characters will appear in the game, nor will your race change the story; for example, an incompetent merperson Fortune Teller you can talk with will claim they saw you drowning in a vision, even if the player is also a merperson.
- Static Role, Exchangeable Character: When choosing a protagonist at the start of the run, whoever their opposite-gender counterpart is becomes the protagonist's engineering partner.
- To Be a Master: The protagonist's initial motivation is to become a "Master of Masters" by being victorious at Unitron fighting tournaments.
- Virtual Paper Doll: Every part you can develop and equip to your mecha has its own graphic, which will be seen whenever it goes into battle.
- We Can Rule Together: Late in the game, the Unitice asks you to turn all your UNITRON power over to it. If you accept, the Unitice thanks you and proceeds to engulf the entire planet in a metal shell, presumably killing all other life forms (including the protagonist). It's not explained why it's so significant that the player surrender for the Unitice to do this; perhaps it just wanted to give the player a chance. If you refuse, you battle and the Unitice is defeated. Though the destruction of the Unitice means that all the robots that you've been training and battling with throughout the entire game are reduced to dust, crippling a lot of the modern economy. Heigh ho.
