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Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak is an adventure game for the Game Boy Advance, developed by Pax Softnica and published by Nintendo based on the Hamtaro franchise, and the official sequel to Hamtaro: Ham-Hams Unite!. Unlike its predecessor, which was just about rounding up all of your fellow Ham-Hams, Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak had a more in-depth plot.

After Hamtaro wakes up from a nightmare about a devil-costumed hamster named Spat going around ruining hamsters' relationships, Boss sends him to go find Bijou, whom he later learns he must save. Along the way Hamtaro learns about an influx of broken relationships and soon learns that his nightmare about Spat was true. And thus Hamtaro and Bijou, after he rescues her, together travel around different areas trying to fix the relationships broken by Spat, aided by an angel-costumed hamster named Harmony, and defeat Spat once and for all.

The game was followed up by Hamtaro: Rainbow Rescue, but it was only released in Europe and Japan; and Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Games, an Olympic Games-themed collection of minigames featuring the Ham-Hams competing in Olympic-styled events.


Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak contains examples of the following tropes:

  • 100% Completion: Learning all 86 Ham-Chat words. This requires you to beat all of the dancing contests in Sandy Bay, too.
  • Alliterative Title: Ham Ham Heartbreak.
  • Ambiguously Gay: The sunflower seed duo in Sunny Peak. They do appear to have something romantic going on by the end of their story line, but it's not clear whether the blue hamster is meant to be male or female. The pink hamster is confirmed to be male.
  • Amusement Park: Fun Land (known as Candy Land in the Japanese version) is a hamster-sized place full of rides and minigames, though Spat tries his best to turn it into an Amusement Park of Doom where only misery and despair happens.
  • And I Must Scream: Dexter gets locked in a coffin in Boo Manor. An optional cutscene shows why; he climbs in it because he thinks he can use the rope inside to pull Howdy up through a trap door. The lid shuts on him before he can get out.
  • Animals Not to Scale: We get a monkey barely bigger than a hamster and frogs even smaller than a hamster.
  • Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Howdy and Dexter begin their segment at each other's throats. Dexter shows concern after Howdy falls through a trap door. Howdy gets into a total panic when he discovers that Dexter's been locked in a coffin.
  • Bag of Spilling: Hamtaro's Ham-Ham vocabulary. This is justified, however, in story: At the start of the game Hamtaro trips and falls into a bucket of water, which soaks and ruins his dictionary.
  • Balloon Belly: The two hamsters in Sunny Peak after they eat their fill of seeds. Hamtaro and Bijou also demonstrate the Bloat-T Ham-Chat this way.
  • Big Bad: Spat, who plans on destroying all of the hamsters' friendships and romance.
  • Big Boo's Haunt: Boo Manor is a Haunted House where various spooky things happen thanks to both ghosts and Spat.
  • Big Good: Harmony serves as this, who helps you on thwarting Spat's mischievous plans.
  • Brats with Slingshots: One Ham-Chat allows Hamtaro to summon a slingshot from nothing.
  • Card-Carrying Villain: Spat, who dresses in a black devil outfit and whose goal is to break up as many relationships as he can simply because he hates love.
  • Commonplace Rare: A few important items in the game are actually ordinary human objects. A Legendary Sword is a metal spoon, and three legendary orbs are marbles.
  • Cannot Spit It Out: Spat actually has nothing to do with the majority of damaged relationships in the game. Many of them involve this trope.
  • Catchphrase: "Pfpth" is Spat's catchphrase.
  • Copy Protection: In some emulators this game will freeze midway through the fade-out between areas.
  • Creepy Doll: In the final area of Boo Manor. Spat hides amongst them.
  • Dirty Old Man: Two elderly ghosts in Boo Manor ask Bijou to massage their backs in a creepy manner.
  • Dream Intro: The game begins with Hamtaro having a nightmare about a mysterious hamster named Spat.
  • Everyone Has Standards: Some hamsters will worry about Spat when he's in danger.
    • Bijou fears the Spat may have drowned when he's trapped in the muddy swamp in Wildwoods.
    • If you Tack-Q Pashmina, she'll warn you about falling off the tower just like Spat.
  • Exact Words: Class A of the dance competition enforces a rule where couples who take part must sing. No singing, no winner. The contest can be won by copying the other team's sequence and inserting the Ham-Chat "Lalala" at the end.
  • Evil Counterpart: Spat is this to Harmony. While Harmony promotes love to all hamsters, Spat goes out his way to destroy love.
  • Exposition Fairy: Bijou serves as this for the majority of the game.
  • Ferris Wheel Date Moment:
    • To repair one couple's love, Hamtaro and Bijou must follow a couple onto a Ferris wheel and give the nervous man hints on what he should tell his female friend.
    • The protagonists can ride on one after the completion of Fun Land, with Bijou commenting about how high they are, etc.
  • The Gods Must Be Lazy: Harmony is tried of chasing Spat, so she leaves everything up to Hamtaro and Bijou. Her only real contribution to the plot is to give them the Love Shots needed to beat Spat. Averted in the end credits, where she's shown to fly faster and have stronger magic than Spat, turning him into an angel.
  • Gotta Catch Them All: Like its prequel, this game has you collect words, songs, and clothes, as well as jewelry.
  • Green Hill Zone: Sunny Peak as a grassy forest that acts as a low-scale starting area for the game.
  • Guide Dang It!:
    • In order to win the Class A dancing contest, the player must use specific Ham-Chat words. This is important in order to complete your Ham-Ham Dictionary.
    • One section of the game requires finding a hidden door on an inconspicuous wall.
  • Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress: There are quite a few times where Spat either walks off or is pushed off a ledge, and each time he spends a moment gloating or griping before noticing the drop below, after which gravity comes into play.
  • Hammerspace: Presumably where the hamsters get the props used in some Ham-Chat words. And the game inventory for that matter. It might also be where Hamtaro and Bijou keep the Ham-Ham Dictionary.
  • Heel–Face Door-Slam: After having to get turned by an angel by Harmony, it is unknown if Spat reformed or not in the end of Ham-Ham Heartbreak since he just disappeared. If the latter is true, then it's probable that he didn't.
  • Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Like its predecessor, this one lets you name Hamtaro, as well as Bijou, which is odd since unlike most examples of this trope these are actually canonical characters.
  • Hero Stage Show: This game has the Ham Rangers. In order to see a show as it's announced, Hamtaro and Bijou have to go around Fun Land and talk to five brightly-colored hamsters. However, one major part focuses on the actor playing Ham-Red having stage fright, forcing Hamtaro and Bijou to find a replacement in a depressed ghost who wants her son back. After that one show, the mother and son ghosts reunite while the son is in awe about his mother being Ham-Red.
  • Heroic Mime: Downplayed. Hamtaro can't speak beyond what the player tells him to, making his dialogue consist solely of single-world sentences and ambiguous grunts.
  • Hint System: Hints on request: Talk to Snoozer in the Clubhouse for hints.
  • Hub Level: The Clubhouse is the place where you can relax, enjoy some dancing, take pictures wearing bought clothes, talk to Snoozer and Harmony on where to go next, and make use of the collectable rocks.
  • Hulk Speak: Bog talk in simple sentences.
  • Item Crafting: Once you learn how to rubrub, you can polish rocks into gems, which can be taken to the Accessory Shop to be turned into jewelry for dress-up.
  • Item Get!: Hamtaro and Bijou replicate the "triumphantly hold hands above their heads when finding an item" pose from the previous game, but this is taken further when pulling the "sword" from the pedestal in Sunny Peak Mine, having a special animation that specifically references The Legend of Zelda.
  • Jerkass: Many of the ghosts in Boo Manor, but especially the one who forces you to play "What's Inside the Dresser?" He kidnaps a hamster's girlfriend and locks her in a cabinet. The only way you can save her is by picking the right one.
  • Jungle Japes: Wild Woods is a tree-covered jungle full of monkeys and tribal-style hamsters.
  • Leitmotif: Harmony and Spat from Ham Ham Heartbreak had songs that played when one of them were in a room.
  • Made of Good: Whatever goes into the "Love Meter."
  • Match Maker Quest: The main point of the game.
  • The Maze: The caves in Sunny Peak operate as a series of homogenous looking passages, which isn't actually that unnavigable by the burrowing rodents that you play as, but the location of a certain character's home can only be found by taking a certain cardinal path.
  • Morton's Fork: Using Tinglie on the soccer players when you're tasked with giving one of them a love note. No matter how many times you try, the one you pick will never have the blue tail. Averted after learning the ham chat Thump-P, in which case you'll see the hamster with the blue tail after you use it.
  • No OSHA Compliance: Boo Manor has a contest where couples who make it to the end win a prize. However, the place has a trap door leading to a cage below, a funeral parlor that can allow anyone to get locked inside a coffin, elevators whose buttons are out of reach unless another hamster is present and ghosts who kidnap and torture guests. Fun.
  • Not-So-Harmless Villain: Spat doesn't try too hard to ruin relationships and saving them is just as easy. However, he proves to be quite a challenge when you face him in Spat Tower.
  • Palette Swap: Called to attention in one section in Sandy Bay, which revolves around picking one of three unrelated but identical from the front hamsters from a volleyball team to give a love letter to.
  • Palmtree Panic: Sandy Bay is a level containing two beaches full of surfers, volley-ballers, sunbathers, and hula-dancers.
  • Platonic Declaration of Love: Not all relationships Hamtaro and Bijou save are of the romantic kind. An early quest involves repairing the relationships between two brothers, and there are several more between friends and family members. One love to solve is the love between a roboticist and his malfunctioning creation.
  • Poor Communication Kills: Dexter only warns Bijou about a trap door in Boo Manor after Hamtaro falls through it. He lampshades this by telling Bijou he should have spoken up sooner.
  • Portrait Painting Peephole: Boo Manor has a painting with eyehole-openings through which somebody (whether it's Spat or a ghost never getting revealed) creepily follows you.
  • The Power of Love:
    • Your main weapon against Spat. Fixing/building relationships between hamsters fills up your "love meter," which helps you progress.
    • In Sunny Peak, you defeat Spat by asking to be friends with him, which repulses him so much that he accidentally falls off a bridge.
  • Practical Currency: Sunflower seeds, which can be used as food alongside being hamster money.
  • Public Domain Soundtrack: You can unlock "Moonlight Sonata" and "Waltz of the Flowers" (there named "Flower Waltz") as Ham-Jam songs.
  • Remembered I Could Fly:
    • Spat falls off a bridge even though he has wings, then remembers that he can fly and leaves unharmed.
    • Later subverted when Penelope knocks him off the tower on Sandy Bay Island. He falls into the water and hitches a ride on a fish, never even using his wings.
  • Road Apples: The Blushie hamster is embarrassed because if you Stickie the bush again, the stick will have his poop stuck to it. Yuck.
  • Robot Buddy: Ham-O-Matic. It is mostly in charge of cleaning up Fun Land.
  • The Runaway: In Boo Manor, you'll happen upon a painting of a crying hamster. Listen close enough, and you'll hear her crying... and then she'll step out of the painting and tell you she's crying because her son's run away from home.
  • Running Gag: Remember the merchant from the previous game? Now he's back in Sunny Peak and Boo Manor and is as greedy as ever.
  • Ship Tease: This game is full of it. Protagonists Hamtaro and Bijou are probably the main example. It's even used to fill up the last of the love meter!
  • Shout-Out:
    • Hamtaro imitates Link's "You got an item" pose when pulling out the sword in the mine shaft above Sunny Peak. But it peters out when Hamtaro learns that the "sword" is really a giant spoon.
    • There's the Ham Rangers, composed of Ham Red, Ham Blue, Ham Yellow, Ham Green and Ham Pink.
    • Boo Manor has you playing the piano to open a giant casket. Of course the song in question is Moonlight Sonata.
    • The Bull's-eye Kid from the Wildwoods, with his distinctive face and sniping abilities, is an homage to Golgo 13.
  • Solo Sequence: Bijou is forced to operate on her own when Hamtaro falls down a trap door in Boo Manor. This is made more disconcerting given that the elevators in the area demand at least two people to reach the buttons, trapping her.
  • Spot the Impostor: At one point, Spat first masquerades as Pashmina and coldly rips Penelope's blanket, then masquerades as Penelope and jumps all over Pashmina's scarf, causing Penelope and Pashmina to each think the other one is angry with them. Eventually, Spat settles on masquerading as Pashmina. How does this predicament get solved? The same way Solomon solved the riddle of the two mothers: Hamtaro and Bijou propose that both Pashminas tug really hard on Penelope... which hurts Penelope, so the real Pashmina is the one who lets go first to stop hurting her.
  • Stupidity Is the Only Option: In Boo Manor, Hamtaro must be directed into walking over a trap door and Bijou has to save him on her own.
  • Surfer Dude: Broski is a chill surfer guy who engages in plenty of the classic lingo.
  • Suspiciously Specific Denial: At one point, Spat gives one of these. "And I definitely wasn't thinking about stealing Seedric's acorn cap to sell it! No, I wasn’t. It never crossed my mind."
  • Take a Third Option: If you don't get the right combination in Class A of the dancing competition, the judges will declare no winner. This dooms Hamtaro and Bijou's two opponents from the start.
  • That One Rule: In-universe. You meet a hamster in Fun Land who complains about not being allowed to play DigDig It because it's a two-player game that could work just as fine with one player.
  • Toilet Humor: Go-P returns from Ham-Hams Unite, though not used as often.
  • Unexpected Gameplay Change: The Final Boss relies on fighting with Slingshots.
  • Verbal Tic: The aptly named Spat likes to say "pfpth" throughout his dialogue.
  • The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Spat Tower is the last area of the game, and it is where Hamtaro and Bijou finally confront Spat and defeat him once and for all.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: As in Ham Hams Unite, you can Tack-Q (roll) into most hamsters. You can also bite, scratch, and poke some hamsters with a stick. This is actually required at one point, where you must scratch Pashmina who later turns out to be Spat in disguise.
  • Virtual Paper Doll: Very similar to the one in Hamtaro: Ham-Hams Unite!, you can dress up Hamtaro in a variety of different clothes, with Bijou now joining in. And just like the previous game, the saved outfits carry over to the title screen the next time you boot up the game.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: Dexter and Howdy, whom you see fighting over getting a gift for Pashmina in Boo Manor, but you later help make up.

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