Otto Matic is a third-person shooter and platformer developed by Pangea Software for the Apple Macintosh released in 2001. It is an Affectionate Parody of the science fiction B-movies of the 1950's.
In the year 1957, an alien race known as Brain Aliens have come to Earth from their home world Planet X to abduct humans and use them as slaves for their master, the Giant Brain. Luckily for the humans, there exists a galactic police force known as the Otto Matics who send one of their own to put a stop to the Brain Aliens' plot.
As Otto Matic, your task is to explore strange worlds to rescue human slaves and alienating any Brain Aliens and their allies that stand in your way. In the spirit of Pangea's previous success, Bugdom, you traverse through ten levels while battling enemies, collecting weopons and powerups, and rescuing innocent characters. But unlike Bugdom, you must hurry when rescuing humans, because alien saucers will try to abduct them. Points are awarded based on how many humans you rescue and how much inventory you have when you complete the level.
Otto Matic contains examples of:
- Affectionate Parody: of 1950s science-fiction. Everything is cartoonishly retro, with humans being caricatures of characters from those movies (the pipe-smoking scientist, the clueless farmer, the lady with an improbable Sauerkraut hairdo…). Even the common pickups are shaped like cartoon atoms.
- Blob Monster: The nose-shaped blobs on Planet Snoth.
- Bloodless Carnage: Lots of dead aliens, but no entrails are seen. Some will simply vanish in a green gassy explosion after you kill them.
- B-Movie: The game is a parody of these, with numerous shout-out to various works of the genre – level 1 has killer tomatoes, for instance.
- Checkpoint: Most levels will have radar dishes that you touch to activate as checkpoints.
- Crop Circles: At the end of the Earth level.
- Green Hill Zone: The first level, the Bently Farm on Earth, is essentially this.
- Elite Mook: The Elite Brain Aliens on Planet X that wear red suits rather than green ones. They are larger and more powerful than the regular brain aliens and never stop chasing you.
- Energy Weapon : The Ray Gun.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Humans are the only non-hostile entities you'll encounter. Some enemies are either Brain aliens or their minions, but others are more ambiguous – they could simply be local fauna, that still tries to kill you.
- Flying Saucer:
- The Brain aliens pilot these. Each level begins with a formation of saucers approaching the planet, and you encounter a few in each level – they either attempt to abduct humans or spawn enemies.
- You get to pilot one on Planet Shebenek.
- Forced Transformation: The Game Over screen shows humans being turned into Brain Aliens.
- Freeze Ray: Level 2 features a freezing gun.
- Hailfire Peaks: Planet Deniz is half Lethal Lava Land and half Slippy-Slidey Ice World.
- Harmless Freezing: Enemies hit by the Freeze Gun's projectiles do not take damage, but are immobilized for a moment and shatter instantly if you hit them.
- Hope Spot: A minor one on Planet Snoth at the very end, where instead of getting into your rocket to end the level, you sink down into the planet's core for a boss fight.
- Insectoid Aliens: The giant praying mantises on Planet Sulak.
- Level in Boss Clothing: Level 3 is completed by destroying the Slime Machine in Planet Snoth's core.
- Mechanical Lifeforms: Otto Matic could be one of these, though whether or not he is sentient is never established since he's silent throughout the entire game. Same thing goes for the mutant robots on Planet Knarr.
- Mind over Matter: The Brain Aliens have a psychic energy attack.
- My Brain Is Big: The Brain Aliens' brains are their entire heads.
- Person of Holding / Stomach of Holding: Otto Matics store their inventory inside their torso, and just drop or pick up objects through their neck hole.
- Plant Aliens:
- The giant venus fly traps and pitcher plant boss on Planet Sulak.
- The mutant vegetables on the Bently Farm on Earth.
- Plot Coupons: Red atoms regenerate your health and green atoms fill your boosted jump. Blue atoms serve no purpose, but you can't enter your rocket at the end of the level if you haven't picked up enough of them.
- Ray Gun: Your main weapon in most levels is a retro-styles ray gun.
- Retro Rocket: Otto Matic's ship is this.
- Single-Biome Planet: With the exception of Earth and Planet Deniz, all the planets play this very straight.
- Space Police: The Otto Matics are this.
- Theremin: Most of the soundtrack makes heavy use of Theremin, in true 1950s Sci-Fi fashion.
- Tractor Beam: One sucks you back down to Planet Sulak on Level 7. You need to destroy the Pitcher Plant boss to deactivate it.
