Yeah, it's kinda like that.
A Platform Game released by Ubisoft in 1999. It has a visual style similar to Rayman (Most noticably, all characters have Floating Limbs) and in fact plays more like a 3D version of the original Rayman than Rayman 2: The Great Escape ever did. UbiSoft used the game to get a handle on the 3D engine being used for Rayman 2, since they had never done anything of that scope before, but the game is a fun little jaunt regardless.The story involves an alien named Ed accidentally dropping a can of tonic on Earth, where it is found by a drunkard viking named Grögh. He takes a sip of the tonic and transforms into a tyrant who proceeds to Take Over the World (or in his words: "This time, drinks are on me! And Everyone's gonna get a taste! Hahahaaa!"). A tiny droplet falls into a river and the whole world goes mad: the rivers turn into sangria, mountains rise up and vegetables turn into dangerous monsters. Now it's up to Ed to defeat Grögh the Hellish and retrieve the tonic.
Tonic Trouble provides examples of:
- A Winner Is You: Grögh dies like every other enemy in the game, Ed celebrates for a bit, and Suzy comes in to give
a completely out of nowhere speech on environmentalism. Cue ending screen of them looking at the restored earth. - Advancing Boss of Doom: The first phase of the Final Boss. The second is a variation: you have to kick and slap boulders at him to push him back towards a pit before he makes his way towards you.
- All There in the Manual: The rainbow-colored water on the South Plain? They never tell you this in-game, but that's supposed to be sangria.
- Almighty Janitor: Ed, though he's not so almighty at first. The only reason he's made the hero is that the whole mess is his fault. He gets more almighty later on. He is also literally a janitor.
- And I Must Scream: In Glacier Cocktail, Ed freezes a Helling Guard in a block of ice, which is used to activate a switch. When he activates the next switch, the rock that the frozen Helling Guard is trapped inside lowers into the ground, ensuring that he stay frozen there forever.
- Anguished Declaration of Love: Ed is trying one of these in the beginning cutscene. It doesn't pan out like he hopes.
- Animate Inanimate Object: The titular tonic is able to turn ordinary objects into these, and is responsible for the game’s Attack of the Killer Whatever enemies. In fact, the very first thing the audience sees it do is bring some screws to life during the game’s intro.
- Attack Its Weak Point:
- Some Helling Guards wear a steel armour, but their back is wide open for an attack. Also the Final Boss.
- Hitting the carrots with seemingly anything just mildly annoys them. Performing a jump attack, which has Ed swing the stick vertically, is the only way to kill them. The game never hints at this, nor do jump attacks have any significance elsewhere.
- Attack of the Killer Whatever: Killer vegetables! They even have their own headquarters.
- Beard of Evil: Grögh has one.
- Bee-Bee Gun: It shoots bees, and ammo comes in the form of beehives.
- Big Bad: Grögh the Hellish.
- Big Bad Wannabe: The Magic Mushroom wants to copy the Pharmacist's Groga to make his own and rule the world in lieu of Grögh.
- The Brute: Grogh is more like this.
- Build Like an Egyptian: The Reversed Pyramid level.
- The Cameo: Rayman appears during the credits. In return, the big general guy from the intro appears in Rayman 2: The Great Escape where he sells the Grolgoth to Razorbeard.
- Cat-and-Mouse Boss: The Robotsuitcase: it chases after you with its stick but will run away from you once you turn into Super Ed, hence becoming able to rip it a new one.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Doc.
- Conspicuous Electric Obstacle: There are electrified lines hanging mid-air, being nuisance to Ed.
- Convection, Schmonvection: To the point that you can jump on lava on a friggin' Pogo-Stick! Lava is also powerless to water, apparently not heating it up or mixing with it in any way.
- Deranged Animation
- Disney Villain Death: The Peapod in Vegetables HQ falls into a lava pit when Ed gets Ketchup the tomato to smash into him.
- Dressing as the Enemy: The Chamaleon Powder allows you to do this if you step on the right platform. You have to use it a couple of times.
- Everything Is Trying to Kill You: Living Vegetables armed with forks, boxing mushrooms, elderly mummies, toasters, scarabs, yo-yos, teeth....
- Eyes Do Not Belong There: Doc may be wearing an eye patch because one of his eyes relocated to the top of his head (Except in the N64 version, where his character model is symmetrical due to graphical limitations.).
- The Faceless: Agent Xyz, who is never seen without his Newspaper-Thin Disguise.
- Fan Disservice: The Huge Barman at the beginning of the Glacier Cocktail.
- Flame Spewer Obstacle: There are flamethrowers that emit jets of flame.
- Floating Limbs: Everybody in the game has these.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: In the PC version, we first see Grögh as he's being booted out of a bar. He's clearly a druken loser. Then the can falls from the sky and lands in front of him. Grögh takes one sip, and suddenly becomes ruler of the Earth. "This time drinks are on ME! and EVERYONE is gonna get a taste!"
- Gaia's Vengeance: According to Suzy, this is the reason why the whole world mutated like that in the first place. It comes a bit like out of nowhere.
- Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Magic Mushroom, who randomly shows up to steal your final piggy bank.
- Green Aesop: You can at least notice that the bad guys are operating in heavily industrialized settings and polluting the world with their products. Suzy also makes a statement along these lines at the end of the game.
- Grimy Water: The poisoned water will kill you. Also the hot water from one of the latest levels.
- High-Class Gloves: Hard to say because of the lack of arms, but Suzy seems to wear these. (Her hands are purple but her skin is whiteish.)
- Horny Vikings: Subverted in the PC version. Grogh doesn't actually gain the horned helmet until after drinking the Tonic.
- Hub Level: The South Plain.
- Impossible Hourglass Figure: Suzy again. Practically Hourglass shaped indeed.
- Jerkass: Grögh is more a Bully than a serious overlord.
- Karma Houdini: The Pharmacist... Maybe? See What Happened to the Mouse?.
- Kiss of Life: if you chose Suzy (Continue) in the Game Over Screen, she'll give Ed several of them.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In the final level you're confronted by a guard who asks you "Do you think this is a video game!?"
- Least Common Skin Tone: Everyone has something to say about Ed's unusual purple color... Despite often having weird skin tones themselves.
- Lethal Lava Land: Doc's laboratory, also an Underground Level. Also the Canyon.
- Mad Scientist: Doc. Also the Pharmacist, who's on Grogh's side.
- Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: Suzy fits this trope.
- The Man Behind the Man: Grögh is behind the Killer Vegetables. And the Pharmacist is behind him, but that's not important.
- Mooks: Killer Vegetables and also Helling Guards.
- Non-Action Big Bad: Grögh may look tough, with how he's big and looks like a viking, but he's actually quite a wimp. When you do finally encounter him at the end, he relies on a giant robot entirely to fight you, and gives up after one direct slap.
- Newspaper-Thin Disguise: Agent Xyz uses one all the time - we never get to see what he looks like. Even if you try to manipulate the camera to what he looks like, all you see is his newspaper.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The reason why the plot even exists. So, Ed attempts to ingest a tonic of unknown properties to get the courage to ask a girl out, but it apparently had a funky flavor. Turned out the Tonic had more funkiness than just the flavor: The residue spit from the tonic also caused the screws to come to life and become crazy. He then attempts to eject the tonic from the ship... which lands on earth, specifically right on the recently evicted-from-the-bar drunkard Grögh, he drinks it, starts to mutate, spills it in the conveniently nearby brook, causing the mutagenetic effects of the tonic to mutate the planet. This starts causing a LOT of oddities such as flying sheep and psychedelic skies with an overall background that looks like something taken from an acid trip, and then Grögh declaring that all drinks are on him. Shortly thereafter, Ed was busted for his reckless action and is sentenced to clean up the mess he caused.
- No Body Left Behind: Most enemies in the game, the Magic Mushroom, and Grögh. It's a bit unclear whether this is supposed to indicate that they're dead or not. Averted with Robosuitcase.
- Noodle Implements: Sort of. How does Doc construct a catapult out of six copies of the following items: springs, propellors, jumping stones, domino stones and piggy banks?
- Noodle Incident: In the Special Edition, Doc mentions '[his] poor wife' while on the subject of how Ed's second power-up, the blowpipe, had a few failed prototypes.
- Orcus on His Throne: Grögh the Hellish himself isn't actively doing anything against Ed and leaves all the work to his minions, until the final battle where he pilots a giant robot.
- Pass Through the Rings: You have to do this in the flight training levels.
- Playing with Fire: One of the Killer Vegetables is a Giant Jalapeno who can breath fire at you.
- Product Placement: You get popcorn that turns you into SuperEd from vending machines. Both the popcorn and the machines have been retextured in the retail versions so they instead dispense Nestle Crunch chocolate (in the PC version) or Newman's Own sauce (in the N64 version); even though the manuals still state the machines dispense popcorn.
- Projectile Toast: Used as a weapon by Doc's robot toasters.
- Shock and Awe: The Magic Mushroom's main form of attack.
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The Glacier Cocktail and Ski Slope
- Stupid Evil: Grögh the Hellish: When defeated he mentions that his original idea was just to bully and scare everyone around with his newfound powers, and the whole evil empire and alliance with the Killer Vegetables thing was the Pharmacist's idea, which he resents.
- Super Hero: SuperEd, yeah!
- Super Not-Drowning Skills: You can stay underwater indefinitely, but you're limited to shallow depths. Once you earn the flask, you can dive as deep as you want, as long as you want.
- Take Our Word for It: The Reset Button being pressed at the end and the world returning to normal. We only see Ed and Suzy's reactions and then the ending's screenshot.
- Technicolor Toxin: The purple poisoned water in the final level.
- Took A Level In Bad Ass: Ed, you have to admit. He started as a goofy, incompetent Janitor bullied by others and ended up kicking asses with his stick, saving planets and getting a hot, human-like girlfriend.
- Top-Heavy Guy: Whenever Ed becomes Super Ed. Suzy even asks him if he can use the tonic to turn himself like that 24/7.
- Video Game Flight: You can eventually use your bow tie as a delta aviator.
- Villain Shoes: Late in the game you get a chance to disguise yourself as Grögh at one point, which is used to fool a guard into opening a door for you.
- Vocal Dissonance: In the beta/special edition, Grögh the Hellish sounds like a young prankster despite his big, viking-like look. He has more fitting voice in the regular edition and the pre-rendered intro cutscene.
- You All Look Familiar: The Helling Guards. The only difference may be the outfit.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The game never reveals what happens to the Pharmacist, Xyz, or Ed's race after the can is taken care of.
