Captain Waffle note , ready to kick some ass.
- A Hildroid is a living organism developed by humans.
As submissive as robots, they are used to carry out dangerous tasks instead of humans.
Several years later, a nuclear war breaks out for unknown causes. As a result of this war, several shifts in the Earth's Axis occur and the Hildroids, affected by the radiation, undergoes major alterations.
They begin to be able to think and move with their own will and soon they start to kill their human hosts.
It's now several decades later and everything is as normal at the space station for artificial hibernation testing.
On board is Captain Waffle, who has just woken from his frozen sleep.
Meanwhile back on earth's Axis, animals and people appear from the past and become hosts to the Hildroid robots. The Hildroids begin to interfere with the histories of their hosts.
Captain Waffle, judging that the next shift in the earth's Axis will cause major alterations in history, descends to earth in a one-man escape ship.
Spinal Breakers is a 1990 shooting action arcade game developed by Video System (the same company behind Aero Fighters) and published by American Sammy.
Set in the future as noted in the backstory's Info Dump, a nuclear war has resulted in the futuristic Hildroids - robots created to serve humans - to develop their own intelligence and turn against their creators. Hijacking a time machine made by humans, entire groups of Hildroids have escaped into the past, masquerading as humans into infiltrating human society in different time periods, with the intentions of rewriting history and wipe out the ancestors of mankind.
Captain Waffle, a soldier from the past waking up from cryogenic sleep, learns of the truth. Boarding a Time Machine, it's up to the Captain to fight rogue Hildroids through time, before returning to the Hildroids' lab in America for a final battle.
Spinal Breakers contain examples of:
- Action Dad: The cutscene at the end of the best ending reveals that Captain Waffle is a father, reuniting with his wife Camille and unnamed daughter after thwarting the Hildroids' takeover. Which makes Waffle's determination to battle the Hildroid army in the past few levels more realistic, since Hildroids rewriting the course of history might erase his family from existence.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The Hildroids, created by mankind in the future as servants, developed their own intelligence in the aftermath of a nuclear war and Turned Against Their Masters, and it's up to Captain Waffle, the Player Character, to hunt them down through time.
- Amazon Brigade: The Ming Dynasty stage has female acrobatic mooks in blue who attacks by summersaulting all over the place, taking potshots by slashing Captain Waffle from up close.
- Bilingual Bonus:
- Halfway through the first stage (Europe in the second World War) there's a sign in the background that says “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work makes you free) . Presumably the setting is in a Nazi base around Auschwitz.
- The stage in Ming Dynasty China is set near the Shaolin Temple, the name showing up on a signboard in Mandarin near the end.
- Booby Trap: Ancient Egypt is set inside a pyramid full of traps, including arrow-launchers and rocks dropping from above.
- Body of Bodies: The Final Boss consists of multiple bodies - some humanoid, some animals - all fused into a blob of flesh in the center of the screen, and Captain Waffle can only defeat it by destroying its parts individually.
- Boom, Headshot!: After defeating the Final Boss, Captain Waffle then faces the Hildroid leader near a control panel, which Waffle eliminates instantly by shooting his head off.
- Dem Bones: The boss of the Cretaceous Era is a T-Rex skeleton animated by the Hildroids, who comes to life to attack.
- Gorn: Loads and loads of it. Expect each death to result in mooks getting graphically vaporized or blown to pieces. This game is as violent and bloody as it's entertaining.
- Impossible Item Drop: With the exception of the first and final stage (Europe in the 1940s and America in the present day), Captain Waffle can collect ammo, grenades and rockets from stages set in ancient times, from Ming Dynasty soldiers, Samurai, dinosaurs...
- Invincibility Power-Up: One of the power-ups allows Waffle a few seconds of invincibility and shrugs off enemy attacks for a short while.
- Javelin Thrower: Mooks in ancient India (either on foot or war chariots) attack by flinging javelins from a distance.
- Mole Monster: The pyramid level is filled with monsters that pops in and out from underground, appearing to fire projectiles before disappearing underground as quickly as they appeared. Although like most enemies, they can be easily killed as soon as they surfaced.
- Mood Whiplash: Oh God, yes. You play as a character named Captain Waffle, whose name apparently is not some wacky mistranslation (his powerups are literal waffles, suggesting the devs knew exactly what they were doing when they named him that). In spite of this gratuitous silliness, the first stage has you fighting zombie Wermacht soldiers in an actual Nazi death camp (complete with "Arbeit Macht Frei" spelled out in wrought iron on the gates, just so there's no doubt whatsoever as to where you are).
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: The stage in ancient India culminates with a boss fight against a six-armed Hindu deity, repeatedly throwing his limitless supply of swords from each arm. He loses his limbs as the battle goes on however.
- Multiple Endings: Three of them:
- The Golden Ending (finishing the game without using any continues or running out of time) concludes with earth restored to normal, and Captain Waffle reuniting with his family.
- The Bittersweet Ending (using a continue at least once without running out of time) has Captain Waffle thwarting the invasion, but getting himself converted into a Hildroid in the process, leading to a Pyrrhic Victory.
- The Downer Ending (running out of time in any stage) ends with Captain Waffle returning to his family... and realizing they are now Hildroids, forcing Captain Waffle to pull a Mercy Kill his wife and daughter. It's implied that he then kills himself offscreen over his failure.
- Ninja: Another recurring enemy in the Sengoku-Era Japan stage, who teleports into the screen and attacks by throwing shurikens.
- One Riot, One Ranger: Captain Waffle is the sole human defender against the Hildroid's takeoever.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Hildroid-disguised humans have red eyes. In the game's opening cinematic, a supposedly-dead German soldier lying face-down suddenly gets up with his eyes glowing red until Captain Waffle guns him down. In two of the alternate endings, Waffle himself or his family ends up being possessed by the Hildroids, and develops similar red eyes.
- Ridiculously Human Robots: The Hildroids are human-like androids who had infiltrated human society across time with the intentions of changing the course of history, and Captain Waffle is tasked to hunt them down.
- Samurai: Hildroid samurai are the most basic mooks in the Sengoku-Era Japan level.
- Scenery Gorn: Each and every single stage is filled with dead bodies and occasionally piles of bones everywhere, the buildings and environment in ruins as the result of Hildroid invasion throughout history. And of course, scores and scores of dead Hildroids killed throughout each level.
- Shows Damage: Most of the bosses as Captain Waffle whittle their health away, with visible signs of them falling apart. The T-Rex skeleton starts cracking and dropping bones, the Hindu deity's arms breaks off one-by-one, while the Final Boss starts losing entire chunks from his mass of bodies.
- Tanks for Nothing: The only area that tanks show up as enemies is in the first stage, Europe during the World War, and they blow up after a scant number of shots. They're only slightly more durable than the Hildroid foot soldiers and since it's the first level, they're not really a threat to beat. The largest tank in said stage is a Warmup Boss that is nowhere harder than later boss enemies either.
- Time Travel: The game's level are set across different periods, including World War II, Ming Dynasty China, the Cretaceous Era Russia, Sengoku-Era Japan and the like before the final stage sends Captain Waffle back to present-day America.
- Timed Mission: Despite having access to a Time Machine, each level is timed (somehow?) where Captain Waffle must clear each stage within 3 minutes or lose a life. Running out of time at any point in the game will lead to the worst ending.
- Tom the Dark Lord: Captain Waffle, the badass One-Man Army murder machine who slaughter Hildroids and monsters by the dozens.
- Undead Fossils: Captain Waffle fights an animated T-Rex skeleton boss in the prehistoric stage.
