Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime is a Zelda-like action-adventure spinoff of the popular Dragon Quest series, released on the Nintendo DS in 2006. It's the sequel to Slime Morimori: Dragon Quest for the Game Boy Advance, which was never released outside Japan, though a Fan Translation is in progress.
In the quaint, faraway kingdom of Slimenia exists a Monster Town called Boingburg, which is populated completely by slime-like creatures. One day, almost completely out of nowhere, a mob of not-slimy monsters with tails called "the Plob" swoops in with a titanic tank, destroys the entire town, and kidnaps everybody. Everybody, that is...except for you, a slime nicknamed Rocket. Using your ability to stretch and bounce, along with the ability to summon your own enormous tank, your job is to infiltrate the Plob's various hideouts and rescue your family and friends - all 100 of them.
A third game was released for the 3DS in 2011. It hasn't been released in the US.
Rocket Slime uses the following tropes:
- Abnormal Ammo: Any item you can get your ectoplasmic non-hands on can be used as ammo for your tank, including yourself if you can somehow make it through your enemy's barrage, since it lets you slow down your enemies' ammo production by landing in their tank and attacking their crew. Nothing stopping you from stealing their weird ammunition while you're in enemy tanks, to boot.
- Accidental Misnaming: Gluttonella won't stop calling the Plobfather "John Claud Lonely" no matter how many times he tells her that's not his name.
- Adipose Rex: The various king slimes, and especially the king of ALL slimes His Royal Wobbliness.
- Anvil on Head: The 1000 Ton Weight makes the ground shake when it lands, good for flipping over Wyrtles onto their underside. Alternatively, you can use it to squish enemies into thickness of a manhole cover.
- Artificial Stupidity: The game makes a point of giving you AI options for every possible team member to allow you to adapt to situations... until the final boss, where you get a single, unique partner without the ability to give him instructions, which can become a downright nuisance under certain circumstances.
- Attack Reflector: Mirror shields break in one hit but cause the enemy's ammo to fly back at their tank.
- Awesome, but Impractical:
- The Chili Pepper will destroy any enemy shots travelling through the field instantly...but will destroy your own as well
- Zigzagged with Mama Mia’s missile attack. It is extremely powerful, but if she hits even one projectile she gets knocked away. It is really hard to hit the enemy with it, but it does so much damage it never hurts to try it.
- Badass Family: Rocket, his sister, his mom, and his dad can all man the tank if you call upon them.
- Big Eater: The princess, whom you don't really save. Heck, she's so fat that her father states that a giant airship is bigger than her, before he backtracks and says a tank.
- Blood Knight: Slival. It's his main motivation for joining the Plob in the first place, and also why he teams up with Rocket to save the world. The world gets blown up, he loses his fighting rival.
- Breakout Mook Character: For, obviously, the slimes. They're one of the iconic monsters of the Dragon Quest franchise, and the whole game is about rescuing them, the main characters are all slimes, etc.
- Continuity Nod: The Great Krak Pot, and Mount Krakatroda (which has a massive relief of ol' King Trode forging the alchemy pot in the main hall), are both such clear references to Dragon Quest VIII that it seems that D.Q.8 seems to be the ancient history of the world of the slimes, and that's not even pointing out Morimori the Slime. (Krak Pot is the alchemy pot of D.Q.8 given life, and also shows up in Dragon Quest IX).
- Denser and Wackier: While the main series has plenty of silly moments, these games are loaded with silliness.
- Death of a Thousand Cuts: The Vulcan Cannons, which when mounted in your cockpit and fed the right bullets do a barrage of 20, 40 or 60 unblockable AND instant damage total to the enemy tank, making them extremely efficient since you don't have to worry about your slow shots being intercepted.
- Defeat Means Friendship: If you defeat and carry 30 enemies of one type back to town, you'll get them as a selectable partner during tank battles (and a commemorative statue in the museum). The statues get upgraded from bronze to silver to gold as you capture more of them. Even if you bring less than 30, they'll be hanging around Boingburg as if they were one of your pals.
- Degraded Boss: Golem, who was the first boss in the previous game, has been reduced to mook status in this game.
- Duct Tape for Everything: How Ducktor Cid fixes the Warrior Flute.
- Duel Boss: Downplayed for the final battle; while none of the "regular" tank crew members are present, Slival will partner up with you to take down Flucifer. Played straight with the optional Hooly fight, however; which is a pure one-versus-one battle.
- 11th-Hour Ranger: As stated above, Slival is your partner for the final battle against Flucifer - and only that battle; he can't be used as a regular crewmate thereafter.
- Embarrassing First Name: Boo Hooly.
- Enemy Mine: Slival joins up with you at the end of the game to confront Don Clawleone who's possessed by Flucifier, knowing that it's better to put a rivalry on hold to save the world.
- Evil Counterpart: Slival's Schwarzman Tank is a dark version of your own Schleiman Tank with lots of spikes.
- Fang Thpeak: The impth, of courth. Dark thlimeth, too.
- The Family for the Whole Family: The Plob are a kid-friendly stand-in for the Mob, right down to their leader, Don Clawleone, a multi-tailed Platypunk who wears an eyepatch and uses crude gangster-speak. All of them, who are basically all the enemies in the game, are distinguished by their tails, hence their name in the original untranslated version, the Tails Gang.
- Fastball Special: You can fire your allies or even yourself out of a cannon. Oftentimes, this is the only way to win. Special mention goes to Hooly, the Wyrtle, and other slimes/mooks who can be ordered to fire themselves out of the lower cannon, oftentimes for them to intercept the heavier hitting projectiles from the enemy.
- Fat Bastard:
- Nobody, we repeat, NOBODY likes Gluttonella. Even her own father doesn't seem to think too highly of her.
- Averted with the king slimes. They note their own weight a lot, but are generally likeable.
- Five-Man Band: A very subtle one.
- The Hero - Rocket
- The Lancer - Hooly
- The Smart Guy - Swotsy
- The Big Guy - Stony
- The Chick - Bo
- Funetik Aksent: Ducktor Cid, who speaks with a very heavy German accent.
- Fusion Dance: For the final battle, the Schleiman Tank and Schwarzman Tank fuse into the Gott Schleiman tank.
- Applies to the P-O-W Tablets. Stacking them in that order turns them into an incredibly powerful drill weapon that acts similarly to the Carrot Top's horn, but does a whopping 200 damage if it hits, and it can be used more than once, as well.
- The Goomba: Platypunks. Meanwhile the series' normal Goomba has A Day In The Slimelight.
- Heel–Face Turn: Collecting monsters and enemies results in them integrating rather peacefully into Boingburg. Collecting thirty of a specific monster will result in a statue built for them in the museum, upon which said monster will join as a tank crewmate.
- Heart Container: The Seeds of Life indeed extend your life.
- Hulk Speak: The Fangslimes you rescue speak this way, with their speech punctuated with random "ungas".
- Humans Are Cthulhu: The developers kept humans out of the game for the highly justified reason that they'd probably just go around killing off the slimes.
- Humongous Mecha: Rocket and Platypunks can pilot Golems, stomping around and unleashing their Power Fist.
- Hurricane of Puns: Well, this is a Dragon Quest game. Special mention goes to the tree tank, named Chrono Twigger (a double pun, as Toriyama did the art for Chrono Trigger, and of course the Square Enix merger.)
- Infinity +1 Sword: The Hero Sword. Deals 120 damage, can withstand two pieces of ammo hitting it, and it moves at normal speed, unlike the Destructiball.
- Item Crafting: Used to create newer and more powerful tank ammo.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Hooly. He is a greedy and proud kid, but loyal and a diligent crew mate.
- Knight of Cerebus: Flucifer is the only character in the game without any sort of humorous quirks and the threat he presents is played 100% seriously.
- Love Makes You Evil: Don Clawleone wanted the Warrior Flute to win the heart of one Chickadee Boo.
- Magikarp Power: The P-O-W Tablets. Individually, they're weak pieces of ammo, but stack them together in the right order and...
- Mascot Mook: In this game, the Mascot Mook is the star of the show!
- McNinja: Tokyo Tom, the Totally Radical American Goonin.
- Metal Slime: No, the actual Metal Slimes don't count, as you're saving them, not fighting them. But there is a Metal Slime in this game - the Goodybag. It appears very rarely in certain spots in every level, and drops tons of money when you hit it. Alternately, if you manage to bring 30 of them back to town, like any other monster, you get to recruit it. It's a Disc-One Nuke.
- Monster Town: Boingburg, which is a small town in the slime kingdom of Slimenia. It functions as your home base, and is exclusively populated by slime monsters at the start of the game. Grabbing 30 enemy monsters means that particular species will start living in Boingburg too.
- No Ending: Downplayed. The game does have an ending showing everything at peace again, but then post-game disregards this and acts as if nothing has changed. Everyone from the Plob who battled you is still there raring to battle again.
- No Indoor Voice: BIG DADDY SPEAKS IN ALL CAPS.
- Old Save Bonus: In the Japanese version, the final Slival fight requires you to have the original GBA game in the proper slot on the DS. Thanks to the first game
never being released outside of Japan, this requirement was removed, and Slival can be fought no matter what, making it a nice Regional Bonus. - One-Winged Angel: Don Clawleone has a staff that turns him into a dragon which he uses when he's at half health. He calls himself "Don Dragone."
- Optional Boss:
- Every Tank Masters fight is optional, and all you get is more ammo for your tank (or, in the case for Rank S, a recipe.) Rescuing all 100 Slimes is required to get to Rank S.
- Defeating Flucifer again after beating him once earns you a recipe for Kafrizzles and Meteorites.
- Twenty Cent replaces Slival's battleground on the Flying Clawtress after beating the game. Victory over him earns you the singular BS-3 Slimahawk in the game.
- Rescuing all 100 Slimes also allows Rocket to enter the Hero's Well in Boingburg, where The Goddess will offer him a challenge of fighting a Flucifer-possessed Don Clawleone while protecting his friends. Success will earn Rocket a Hero Sword.
- Beating S Rank opens up the Ultimate Rank in Tank Masters, which is a one-on-one fight with Hooly, with a unique tank called the Shogun and 3000 HP. Victory earns Rocket another Hero Sword (which is a Bragging Rights Reward at this point), as well as the ability to use the Shogun in multiplayer battles.
- One can find Slival back at his original battleground in Mt. Krakatroda. Boasting 3000 HP, it's a tough fight, but thankfully Slival still fights alone. Defeating him allows use of the Schwarzman Tank in Tank Masters. This one is unique as it was changed between versions of the game.
- Orichalcum: Both in rock and orichalslime form.
- Playable Epilogue: After fighting the final boss, you can wander the game world and fight any tank crew you want, or tie up loose ends at your leisure.
- Playing Tennis with the Boss: The boss fight with Harvest Loon.
- Punny Name: Everyone and everything. Even Rocket's name is a pun as well as he rockets around the game.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: His Royal Wobbliness is a bit pompous, but is fairly wise and very encouraging to Rocket.
- Reference Overdosed: The game is filled to the brim with references to both other Dragon Quest games and other Square-Enix properties like Final Fantasy and even Chrono Trigger.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: All the Slimes. Even Gluttonella.
- The Rival: Slival, of course. He pilots the Schwarzman tank, which is another slime-tank... but decked out in darkened Metal King gear.
- Saintly Church: The Boingburg church is where you save your game, so you'll be popping in for a sermon pretty often.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: There's an evil-looking navy flute that looks like the Warrior Flute, and if you play it, it will also summon a tank... except this tank is an incredibly evil and powerful tank bent on taking over the world that possesses Don Clawleone.
- Sealed Evil in a Duel: Every time you go back to the Plobfather's room and beat him again, Gluttonella will come back and threaten to play said flute again if Don doesn't give him the food that she smells. She doesn't care that it could destroy the world, because she knows that you'll beat it again. Oh, and there is no food.
- Ship Tease:
- If you talk to the townslimes, quite a few of them display affection for Rocket.
- Gluttonella also lets you marry her after the game's credits.
- It doesn't just stop at the townslimes; some of the members of the Plob hit on Rocket, too! Especially Bugsy.
- Shout-Out:
- Lots, mostly to Final Fantasy games. There's the obvious Cid tradition going on with Ducktor Cid. Squashed Cactiballs look a lot like Cactuars. And, there's a giant tree tank named the Chrono Twigger, including a similar font. There's also a boss named Harvest Loon.
- Holy flogging hell. There's a The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Shout-Out with the Argonaut. "Mostly Charmless" indeed.
- There's even an Early-Bird Cameo reference to Dragon Quest Swords: "The Revolution is coming! Wee!"
- And one of the opponents in storyline battles, a rabbit, will keep calling you "Doc"
- There's also a slime called the Crystal Chronicler.
- Splatrick. The pink-splotted, dim-witted purple Slime may just seem like just a coincidence at first, but you know it means something when you blast into him and he says:
"Ouch! Oh, no. I think I've broken something. Yes, that definitely feels spongy there..."- Tokyo Tom has more than a passing similarity to Michaelangelo. He even has this to say after you beat the game:
"Heroes in a half-gel! Slime power!" - Skewed Priorities: As mentioned, Princess Gluttonella is the main reason you can refight the final boss over and over again. This is because she keeps summoning Flucifer since she's hungry, and thinks Don Clawleone is holding out on her... even though there's no food in the ship.
- SNK Boss: Zigzagged with the Final Boss. Flucifer's tank has an unrelenting stream of top-level ammo, including Level 3 fireballs that rain flames down on your cockpit making it impossible to navigate and unique drilling missiles that will hit you for an huge quantity of Scratch Damage while taking up enough cockpit space that you can't use your cannons. Unless the player is a lucky expert, it's almost inevitable that Flucifer will get to the point where he can Storm the Castle. However, the possessed Don Clawleone is much easier to handle on a one-on-one basis, but even that can get frustrating because Slival suffers from Artificial Stupidity and will drop whatever he's doing to fight Clawleone if they encounter one another, and you can't adjust his AI at all.
- Squashed Flat: Enemies that wander onto the tracks or channels of the Translimenian end up like this (and Rocket if he gets trapped between a cart and the exit tunnel) but it thankfully doesn't deal any damage. the frequency of the carts results in most enemies getting trapped in a Cycle of Hurting where they get flattened again as soon as they get back up. This also happens if you drop a 1000 Ton Weight onto an enemy.
- Tactical Suicide Boss: The Pot Belly wouldn't be in danger from you if he didn't keep throwing out random items from the Krak Pot that you kept throwing back. One of said random items are a few banana peels. Which he can step on and trip, damaging his health in the process. That's right, with enough patience, you can win this boss battle without lifting a finger.
- Tank Goodness: About one-third of the game's major battles are done using a giant tank that you find.
- Too Dumb to Live:
- As mentioned above, you can easily beat Pot Belly without ever actually attacking him.
- If you replay the final boss, you'll see that Princess Gluttonella is willing to resurrect a demon to get food Don Clawleone continuously denies he has.
- Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth:
- The aforementioned Princess.
- One boss is fought by throwing the Cactiballs onto its tongue. (Lickety Spit the Ggripevine.)
- Worthy Opponent: Rocket, to Slival.
The first game uses the following tropes:
- Balloon Belly: Dragon Jr. does this during his boss battle.
- Big Damn Heroes: The entire town during the penultimate battle.
- Big Eater: While not to the extent of Gluttonella, Bo swallows three cooked chickens in a single bite during the end credits.
- Involuntary Shapeshifting: The game starts off with Hooly turning you into a Platypunk. He also transforms you for the Optional Boss battle against him once you've collected all 100 slimes.
