You lost an arm
in the Disco Wars of 1515.
You lost an eye
in the War of Rock ‘n Roll.
You lost both legs
defeating DJ Deadly Skillz.
And you lost your ENTIRE butt
to an Evil Wizard.
This is the story of your Quest… to get revenge for your butt!
Yeah, this is the ridiculous yet awesome premise of Electronic Super Joy, a 2D platformer created by Michael Todd.
Playing as a monochromatic wanderer, you traverse levels full of homing rockets, killer animals and lasers to get revenge for your butt! Much like Super Meat Boy, from which this game is probably inspired, you don't have that many special abilities and die in a single hit. Unlike Meat Boy, however, there are checkpoints, so the overall difficulty is a bit lower. That doesn't really say much though.
It's also notable for its catchy soundtrack, fabulous flashing technicolor backgrounds and abundance of bad puns.
It was released on PC on 23rd August 2015, and you can buy it from the official site
or on Steam. It's also been released on Wii U on November 5th, 2015, and then on Xbox One on January 30th, 2016 and on PlayStation 4 on June 21st, 2016.
This game provides examples of:
- A Winner Is You: The ending consists of just a few more lines of nonsensical story.
- Auto-Scrolling Level: Quite a lot of them.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Glorg, the boss of the second world. It's Godzilla with an added laser-shooting power.
- Babies Ever After: The ending reveals this is the case for Glorg and his newfound love.
- Big Bad: The Groove Wizard. He stole your ENTIRE butt!
- Blackout Basement: Stage 1-3. It's entirely in black and white, and illumination periodically goes on and off, hiding you and part of the platforms.
- Bottomless Pit: Almost omnipresent.
- Bullet Hell: The boss against the pope is this.
- Cat-and-Mouse Boss: Glorg again. You have to ourun him until... he finds his soulmate.
- Collision Damage
- Corrupt Church: Courtesy of Pope Theo.
- Death by Irony: You kill your nemesis by butt-stomping him.
- Death Is A Slap On The Butt: You have infinite lives and dying just make you return to the last checkpoint. The bosses have to be defeated without getting hit though.
- Deliberately Dichrome: The wanderer, enemies and platforms are black. The background change colour between levels.
- Double Jump: Only in some levels, and mastering it is almost imperative.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Not really everything, as the random dancing guys don't attack you and sometimes they even give helpful hints. But other than them, there are missiles, shuriken-throwing frogs, ghosts, lasers, little charging unicorns, tiny robots, spikes, spikey balls and obviously the screen itself.
- Game-Breaking Bug: Prior to v1.05, it was possible to spawn in a completely empty room in Infinite Love Mode, dying almost immediately and ruining a perfectly good run. Luckily, it has been corrected. However...
- Ground Pound: Ironically enough, it's your main method of attack.
- Heroic Mime: The wanderer, obviously.
- Hold the Line: The last two fights against the big bad are essentially this, as they involve surviving his barrage until he decides to retreat.
- Homing Projectile: The rockets follow you. Their speed and precision change depending on the level, but you can (usually) destroy them as any other enemy.
- 100% Completion: To get the Electronic Super King achievement you have to beat every single level in a set amount of time and without dying, although you don't have to do both at the same time. You also have to collect every star and go through 25 levels in Infinite Love Mode.
Yeah, good luck with that. - The Immodest Orgasm: This trope is the checkpoint sound.
- Incredibly Lame Pun: Just look at the name of the achievements if you want a taste of it.
- Pungeon Master: Spike, the bonus boss, is the king of this trope.
- Interface Screw: Some stages rotate the screen before forcing a difficult platforming segment on you. "The Rabbit Hole" runs entirely on this.
- Invincible Minor Minion: World 4-1 has a bigger-than-normal indestructible homing missile that stalks you ''from the start to the end of the stage''.
- Invulnerable Attack: You're invincible while executing the butt-stomp, but you return vulnerable the very instant you touch ground. Exploiting this is essential to get past some obstacles.
- Joke of the Butt: The evil wizard has stolen your rump, and you're on an epic quest to get it back.
- Large Ham: Every time you get to a checkpoint you're treated to an ecstatic "Oh, yeah!" sound from either a male or female voice. Both are equally as hammy as they are hilarious.
- Luck-Based Mission: Infinite Love Mode. It randomly chooses levels from a pool of about 20 different screens or so, and makes you go through them one after another until you die. Some of these stages are way easier than other ones, and some get more difficult (adding new obstacles or making the screen scroll much faster) depending on when you get to them. Therefore, even if you fully know the layout of every single one, you may still lose if you spawn in a particularly hard or fast level after about 20 portals.
- Nintendo Hard: The normal game isn't exactly a piece of cake, but trying to complete it will prove an impossible challenge for most players, mainly because of world 4.
- No Plot? No Problem!
- One-Hit-Point Wonder
- Retraux
- Shout-Out: A lot of them, especially with the names of levels and achievements.
- Can't touch this
- Get to the Chopper!
- Ice Ice Baby
- They Bleed Rip-offs
- The version of the game shown on Steam Train is full of references to the aforementioned show, and Pope Theo is turned into Pope Ross.
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The second Christmas level is probably the best example, but slippery floors are a recurring obstacle troughout the whole game.
- Tactical Suicide Boss: The first fight against the Groove Wizard has him exposing his heart for you to stomp on. The fight with Spike has two rocket launchers on the side of the arena.
- Temporary Platform: Those Space Invaders-looking things. They disappears after a couple of seconds; another variant releases a missile the moment it explodes.
- Video Game Flight: The Wings grant you the power to fly for a limited amount of time. The last two fights against the Groove Wizard also give you this for the entire duration of the battle.
- Wall Jump: Only against white sticky walls.
- Who Needs Their Whole Body?: Sure, the wanderer lost an arm, an eye and both legs, but that's definitely not gonna stop him from getting his rearvenge.
- The trading card shows the Wanderer with both arms, legs, and eyes, so he probably got them back after he lost them.
