Elite Beat Agents (an Americanized sequel to the Japanese game Osu Tatakae Ouendan) is a Rhythm Game for the Nintendo DS that makes extensive and exclusive use of the stylus. It stars the EBA, Men In Black who solve the world's problems through music and dance, as opposed to the uniquely-Japanese male cheerleaders from its Japanese progenitor.Known primarily for its weird Japanese charm and unique control scheme, Ouendan became a hit among import gamers, prompting Nintendo and its developer to bring the game to North America under its alternate name, retaining most of the visual charm of the original, but (understandably) replacing the J-Pop music with various popular American songs to create a uniquely "American" atmosphere. Elite Beat Agents was also treated as a genuine sequel to Ouendan and featured many gameplay upgrades over its Japanese predecessor and even a few cameos from Ouendan characters as an Easter Egg for the import fanbase.The game sold reasonably well, though despite Ouendan receiving a Japanese sequel, a sequel to Elite Beat Agents hasn't been forthcoming. Many of the mechanics upgrades from Elite Beat Agents found their way into Ouendan 2 anyway, and a special promotion in Japan allowed players to download a special "EBA Mode" that replaced the Japanese Ouendan with the Elite Beat Agents.
These games provide examples of:
Abusive Parent: The mother from ABC. She entrusts her 1-year-old baby with $10,000 china, then leaves it alone with a cat. So, she's either a total idiot, or is aware the cat is smarter than it looks. Either way, though...
Acme Products: The ABCD company makes many sports goods, ranging from footballs to track outfits.
Air Guitar: The agents in "Art and Beauty! Love and Happiness!?"
All Men Are Perverts: Cap White aims to defeat Mr. Virus. Mr. Virus intends to rip off her clothes.
Amusement Park: The agents have their own amusement park, for some reason. That, or they got away with painting stars on a roller coaster car and teacup. Could go either way, really.
Anime Hair: J. His hairstyle was proved possible by singer Eleanor Jackson of La Roux.
Big Rock Ending: "Highway Star" has one originally, while "Jumpin' Jack Flash" is given one.
Wallkie-Talkie Man also has one of these.
Blank White Eyes: Everyone, in every level. At least four times per level, even. Sometimes more. (The "HEEEAAALLLP!" before each stage, as well as during each segment of each song if you're doing well.) Except for You're the Inspiration, where such cartoonishness would have utterly destroyed the mood. Still happens if you bomb the first stage, but the mood will have been pretty well wrecked by then anyway.
Bowdlerise: Parodied in the "Survivor" level, where it takes zombie lore and makes it fit into an E-10 rated game. The zombies don't bite, they kiss, and the protagonist uses peanuts as ammo! Considering the tone of the game, it fits.
Butt Monkey: Almost everyone can qualify if you fail at their songs, but Colonel Bob gets this treatment no matter what you do. (Arguably, though, he brings it on himself.)
Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The last level, where everybody claps and shouts out the names of the agents to free them from the aliens' petrifying beam.
Climactic Elevator Ride: In the "Just A Peanut Matter" (song: "Survivor") stage, the main character takes the freight elevator to the top of the peanut warehouse where the evil alien queen is.
Cool Car: The agents have one. They also have a cool dune buggy. And a sub.And a chopper.And a blimp.And a merry-go-round teacup.
Cool Shades: Comes standard with the uniform. Commander Khan has a pair of shades as well.
Couch Gag: The way Kahn sends the agents out, and how the agents enter the situations.
Cover Version: All the songs are covers, likely to save development costs and help prolong the licenses to use them. It also allowed for changes to the songs for gameplay purposes. For one example, if they had used the original version of Jumpin' Jack Flash for the final story mission, it would have been easier to complete as its tempo is slower than the cover used in the game.
Cross Counter: Happens in the Space Battle multiplayer scenario if the match ends in a draw.
The version of "Rock This Town" used in the game is a cover of the swing version by Brian Setzer, not the rock version done when he was with the Stray Cats. The changed tempo can wreck your pattern if you're more familiar with the rock version.
Similarly, the version of "I Was Born to Love You" used is not a cover of Freddie Mercury's original version, but the remade version by Queen, which is structurally very different in some parts.
More commonly, (nearly every stage, in fact) during the chorus of most songs the pattern repeats. If you aren't careful (or fail the same stage often enough to get the first pattern ingrained) when you reach the finale of the song and the pattern changes, this will cause you to miss notes.
Near the end of "Material Girl", hearing the bridge that leads to the ending fadeout may cause players to relax. Not a good idea, as it is shortened to two measures and the chorus is promptly repeated again.
In a strange story example, you can see a small cameo by what looks like Tsuyoshi Hanada from the first Ouendan game in the New-York themed "Sk8er Boi" level. The dev team then decided to make an entire scenario in the sequel that explained how he could have gotten there. It would be The Producer Thinks of Everything if 1. it wasn't a game, and 2. the developers were even expecting a sequel to Ouendan at all.
Digging To China: During the last pass/fail cutscene in "Let's Dance." If you fail, you get arrested by Dan and Joe.
The Ditz: Missy fits this criteria, though she's a class A genius compared to the Carrington sisters.
Inverted, if you fail "La La", the viruses (males) stomp, punch, prick with a fork and, in general, beat the crap out of the (female) white blood cell. Itīs totally hilarious to watch.
Played straight with Angelina in a classic Tsundere manner.
Do Well, But Not Perfect: Once a bonus mission has been unlocked it becomes mandatory for all future playthroughs. Do you really want to face Survivor on Hard Rock mode? Additionally, if you unlock Hard Rock mode, but not the highest rank (Lovin' Machine), you can play as Mr. X instead of Commander Kahn. Who wouldn't want want to play as a seemingly drunken old man in a cat mask?
Downer Ending: If you mess up on any level, your character will either die, be badly injured or flat out give up on everything. Even completing the level, but getting an X on all the cutscenes isn't likely going to end well.
Drives Like Crazy: Jack, but only when he starts his taxi meter. Once he's at his destination, he reverts back to his meek self.
Eagleland: A mixed flavor, complete with crazy stereotypes. While Colonel Bob, his wife and the Carringtons aren't exactly the greatest people around, everyone else seems to be reasonably nice and hard-working. And even they aren't that bad.
Early-Bird Cameo: Happens all through the game: Amanda and Tex from Believe make a cameo in Sk8er Boi; Max the cat from ABC appears in Rock This Town (as well as the opening cutscene for Without a Fight); baby Alden and his mom, also from ABC, appear in the second part of Highway Star, and the Carrington sisters give Sam a ride in the first part; and finally, Colonel Bob from Let's Dance shows up in the intro for the Carrington's song, Material Girl. Phew! Also, unless you've been purposely replaying levels to rack your score up just for this purpose, the first time you see any of the characters from the bonus levels will likely be in the group shots at the end.
Eiffel Tower Effect: During the last level, people from around the world dance around various famous landmarks.
Expo Label: The signs that Sam follows home, which may not be literal. There are also humorous signs in "Ahoy Mates! Sunken Delights and Adventure!!" labeled "Mysterous rock", "Enchanted rays", "Beautiful cave", and "Treasure ship".
Fake Difficulty: Unlike other difficulty levels, which, among other differences, scale the difficulty by varying how complicated and intricate the note layouts are, Hard Rock difficulty simply takes the note layout of Sweatin' and flips them over into a "mirrored" version of the Sweatin' layouts, on top of smaller notes (requiring more precision to hit) and a much smaller window of time to hit them.
Favors for the Sexy: When the Carrington Sisters are stranded on a deserted island, they charm the fauna to provide their needs, from fire, to food, to shelter. For the entire song, both of them don't do a damn thing for themselves.
Getting Crap Past the Radar: See the previous entry. Also some of the songs used, if you pay attention to the lyrics. Also if you fail the first part of "La La", Cap White gets the top part of her dress ripped off!
Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: In episode 14, you have to save a bunch of kids in an amusement park from a fire-breathing golem.
Giving Someone the Pointer Finger: Commander Khan before each stage, with the exception of "You're The Inspiration", "Without a Fight", and "Jumpin' Jack Flash". The agents and divas give the viewer the pointer finger when they ask, "Are you ready?" Cap White first challenges Mr. Virus this way.
Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: The first part of the final stage. Die? Entire world turns to stone. Finish the song? The Agents get turned to stone anyway.
Hemisphere Bias: The results screen of the final level is a globe centered on North America. In the Japanese games, it's on Asia and Japan.
Henohenomoheji: Can briefly be seen at the beginning of "I Was Born To Love You."
Historical Domain Character: Leonardo Da Vinci is some Bishōnen lady killer, but when he finds Lisa del Giocondo, the woman of his dreams, the agents help him woo her, and when she smiles, he models her for the Mona Lisa. Not historically accurate (Lisa was married already), but that's clearly not the point.
Hit Flash: Sure, they could have shown the Agents' horse-drawn carriage flying through the air dramatically... but why do that when they can enter with speed lines and the written sound effect "Clappity-SWOOSH!"?
Hot Pursuit: Jack the cab driver partakes in a few while driving a woman in labor to the hospital.
Intertwined Fingers: The ending picture of the first stage, and a (one would hope) non-romantic use by the Carringtons in their intro.
Informed Ability: The profiles you see before you enter a level have a small tidbit of information about the target. These have no impact on the plot, though some are related to the mission.
It's a Wonderful Failure: You ran out of life? Now you get to watch the person you're helping be reduced to a sobbing wreck if they aren't dead. Failed to keep the minimum life for the good cutscenes? You get to watch failure and keep playing and if you fail them all you get to see just how much you screwed up. Fail completely on either part of the two parter end mission and you get to watch the destruction of the entire human race.
A retired baseball player saves an amusement park from a giant golem and earns the adoration of one of his biggest fans, leading to a successful comeback. Set to an upbeat cover of "The Anthem", a song about how the singer doesn't want success or role models.
"Material Girl", if you take it as a satire of what the Carrington sisters play straight.
Jet Pack: The Agents enter the "Makes No Difference" stage wearing them.
Karma Houdini: The Colonel's wife, who is Easily Forgiven by the Colonel after losing his vast fortune and then breaking up with him because he's poor. Though Colonel Bob did offer one of the Carringtons a diamond. Guess a Rich Bitch wife gets a Rich Bitch husband.
Lazy Artist: In the last stage, when everybody is doing the arm waving thing, sure they bothered to update Colonel Bob and Bill's sprites (so that they are in their formal wear and tracksuit, respectively), but for some reason, not Captain Brooke and Ken. Also, in several cutscenes, the people in the background are mirrored. The car show scene in "Canned Heat" and the beginning of the last section in "Sk8er Boi", for example.
Lighter and Softer: The Elite Beat Agents are a shadowy organization with worldwide surveillance that dispatches teams of well-equipped, trained operatives on missions around the globe. Their principal weapon? The power of dance. Their goal? Inspire people into overcoming their own problems.
Mars Needs Women: The Carrington sisters. List of things they've won over via Gainaxing: raccoons, a gorilla, a lion, a bear, an elephant, a parrot, a crab, and an airplane (although it may have been more attracted to their credit card), in Material Girl, Sam the pug in "Highway Star", and a team of Rhombulan alien soldiers sent specifically to destroy anyone singing, dancing, or enjoying the music in Jumpin' Jack Flash.
The virus that athlete Bill Mitchell receives is named... Mr. Virus.
The equally subtle name of the aliens. They're called the Rhombulans... and their leader happens to be a giant eye inside a rhombus. Also, a rhombus is a skewed square, and "square" is/was a slang word for uncool. Probably why they dislike - and die from exposure to - good music.
Chris Silverscreen, Hollywood director.
The archaeologist who buys the rights for Atlantis is called Dr. Archie Logist.
Mickey Mousing: The dogs' barking in the "Canned Heat" level and the "HEEALLLLPS" in the second to last level.
Misplaced Wildlife: Foxes, gorillas, bears and cows apparently live in the wild together, and there are parrots, monkeys, lions and elephants on a nearby deserted island.
Mondegreen: What the heck is that high-pitched voice saying in Highway Star? (In the original version, the lyrics were quite obvious, but in the game, it sounds more like, "I drive it! Argh, need it! Ah bleed it the same!" The correct lyrics are actually, "I LOVE IT! I NEED IT! I BLEED IT!")
Mood Whiplash: After eleven levels of rescuing cartoon caricatures from wacky, off-the-wall scenarios, "You're the Inspiration" gives us a little girl still waiting for her beloved, recently deceased father to come home for Christmas.
Played for Laughs in Hulk Bryman's stage. After seeing a depressing montage of his career declining to the point where he's working as a custodian, a fire-breathing golem suddenly appears!
Multiple Endings: Every level has a "Good End" (cleared all stages), "Normal End" (cleared level, but failed two or more stages), and "Bad End" (total failure).
The Divas also have sweet hats, as seen at the end of Jumpin' Jack Flash.
Ninja: Ken Ozu. Initially subverted in that he's a Lovable Coward son of an auto dealer, but if you play the level the right way, he becomes very formidable.
Nintendo Hard: One almost can't beat "Jumping Jack Flash" without a perfect score.
Seemingly ironically, the easiest mode of EBA seems at times to be the hardest, due to the lower density of beats, making it harder to keep one's rhythm.
Part of the problem is that on higher levels you react to the mere appearance of buttons, whereas on lower levels the buttons appear long before you need to tap them and you need to hit them when the closing circle hits the button's outer rim.
No Flow in CGI: Chieftain's and the divas' hair never move while they dance.
Non-Standard Character Design: Tex's horse (In the bonus level with "Believe") has cartoonier eyes than the horses in the rest of the levels.
Oh Crap: The Faceless Eye leader of the Rhombulans upon seeing the massive Combined Energy Attack about to blow it up, and getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger...
Our Monsters Are Different: One bonus level has giggling zombies, controlled by some kind of mushroom spider thing, that can only be defeated by bad tasting peanuts (and dance). You heard me.
Paper-Thin Disguise: Nearly everyone knows that Mr. X is really Commander Kahn. And according to Fanon, he's a drunken Kahn at that.
The guy from the aforementioned "giggling zombie" level has a permanent angry scowl on his face, except in the Good Ending where he sort-of smiles in an advertisement for peanuts, or when you lose and he gets turned into a zombie.
Agent Derek. The reason why his afro is funny. He does smile if you do well in Jumpin' Jack Flash, though.
Agent Chieftain doesn't smile that often, either, but he can still be spotted smiling in one of the splash arts (between unlocking new songs).
Phrase Catcher: Sam seems to get called a dumb mutt fairly often in his cameos or in some of his failure scenes.
Rebus Bubble: Star high school wide receiver Don Tanner views all problems as (diaper/hot dog/skateboard) = Football. (Except Jane in the Good ending, who = a goal post.)
Refuge in Audacity: The game couldn't get away with half its stuff otherwise.
Required Spinoff Crossover: Inverted; the Elite Beat Agents are playable in Ouendan 2, rather than the other way around.
Colonel Bob (the oil tycoon from the "Let's Dance" level) is married to one.
The Carringtons may come across as this, but they're more vapid than shrill, in any case.
Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: The Carrington sisters, who did at least have their bouncy breasts to get them through trouble.
Rule Of Cool: The powers of dance and pop music are able to inspire a washed-up Major League Baseball player to great feats of Baseball capable of protecting a whole amusement park from a rampaging lava golem. At one point he knocks a large, flaming boulder that had just been shot at him away using a wooden bat.
Rule of Funny and Rule Of Cool: It's hard to determine where one stops and the other starts, really.
Both rules stop dead in their tracks for Episode 12. Unless you fail a few select times in it, where Rule of Funny sneaks back in.
Secret Level: There are bonus levels unlocked as you go up in high score rank.
Serial Escalation: The scenarios start off ridiculous and ramp it up from there.
Shout Out: The top screen during "Survivor" is quite reminiscent of survival-horror Light Gun Games such as The House of the Dead. (Or, Resident Evil: Survivor. ) And if you fail the second section, the cutscene has the protagonist out of ammo, with "RELOAD!" flashing on the screen as zombies creep towards him.
The "ABC" level is an obvious homage to Tom and Jerry (minus the mouse). Specifically the episode where the two have to protect a baby that crawls onto a construction site. It's worth noting that Tom and Jerry is quite popular in both America and Japan.
The hardest difficulty level is played with the Divas, the only female playable characters, and the difference between it and the second-hardest difficulty is that the note maps are identical but reversed and the life meter drains faster. Recall the old quote: "Ginger Rogers did everything [Fred Astaire] did...backwards and in high heels!"
Show Within a Show: "Romancing Meowzilla." From what we see of it, it involves a wedding, an Indy Escape, and the titular beast rampaging throughout the city.
Single Stroke Battle: The ending to the YMCA level. Also, Cap White vs Mr. Virus.
The humanity's last stand against the Rhombulans, to the beat of "(We're not going down) Without a fight!"
Taken for Granite: The Agents (or Divas) at the beginning of Jumpin' Jack Flash.
Tetris Effect: Take care around polka-dots after playing this game.
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo: The "Canned Heat" level, which is about the son of a Japanese auto dealer having to retrieve stolen car plans... by becoming a ninja.
Those Two Guys: Part of the Power Trio in each difficulty play, following up from Ouendan. Their names are Morris and Derek, by the way.
The Divas have Those Two Girls, Missy and Foxx.
Too Dumb to Live: The Carrington Sisters. If it weren't for their sex appeal they'd be long dead by now (literally).
Carringtons: (holding an apple, pear and banana bunch) How do you, like, eat this?
Tropey Come Home: The Highway Star level, where Sam the pug falls asleep in a truck bed and wakes up 400 miles from home.
Truth in Television: For the most part, the game is ridiculously stupid; how does having a group of people cheer you on improve your Ninjutsu or allow you to discover Atlantis? Even the heartwarming "You're The Inspiration" episode doesn't make a great deal of sense. However, in the case of "Believe," the primary problems that dancer Amanda faces are ones of perseverance (working a menial job to pay the bills, learning to sing) and self-confidence (performing in front of others, facing rejection at auditions), the first and biggest problems that a young Starving Artist has to face, while also being the same problems cheerleaders are supposed to fight. Notice that during this level, the Agents don't dance. They don't want to outshine her. They're just there to be an inspiration.
Agent J is only playable on one difficulty (Cruisin'), but he's on all of the game's advertising, the box, the title screen, and a trophy in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, most of which have him front and center as if to imply he's the leader.
Also, "Cruisin'" is the game's "normal" difficulty, so it was probably expected people would recognize the character they play as the most.
You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Arguably what the Elite Beat Agents do: Agents show up to convince people that they possess the strength to surpass their present obstacles without help from others.
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