History VideoGame / MischiefMakers

The game was made by Creator/{{Treasure}}, published by [[Creator/SquareEnix Enix]] (pre-merger), and released on the UsefulNotes/Nintendo64, with the English translation being done by Creator/{{Nintendo}}.

* {{Bishonen}}: Merco ([[spoiler:especially in human form]]). And he knows it.

''Mischief Makers'' is the story of Professor Theo, a space-travelling MadScientist, and Marina Liteyears, his [[RobotGirl robot]] creation and assistant, marooned on the strange planet of Clancer. Soon, the planet comes under attack by [[BigBad The Emperor aka The Monolith]] and his [[TheEmpire empire]]; agents from the Empire kidnap the Professor for unknown reasons, and it's up to Marina to rescue him (multiple times), at times helped and at times hindered by the bizarre Clancers and threatened along the way by the Empire's goons, including an EvilCounterpart called Calina and a team of animal-like supersoldiers called the Beastector.

''Mischief Makers'' is a 2-D PlatformGame (with occasional 3-D elements) where grabbing, throwing, and, yes, shaking objects is integral to gameplay. It's more puzzle-oriented than the typical platformer; you must often go through elaborate mazes of warp points, use [[ItemCrafting Clanpots]] to create specific items, find some specific enemy in the stage, [[GuideDangIt or do any number of other, sometimes unintuitive, tasks to proceed]]. All play is timed, and each level has a hidden Gold Gem to find; both time and [[HundredPercentCompletion Gold Gems collected]] affect the ending.

The game was made by Creator/{{Treasure}}, published by [[Creator/SquareEnix Enix]] (pre-merger), and released on the N64, with the English translation being done by Creator/{{Nintendo}}.

Unique for an N64 game is that the Analog stick isn't used at all. The D-pad is used for all movement.

* BossOnlyLevel: Exaggerated - ''every'' boss has their own stage. ''Mini-bosses'' have their own stages!

-->Ms. Hint: "You think this game is pretty easy, don't you? But soon strong enemies will appear."
* BrickJoke: A meta one with the GoldenEnding; you know how the game asks for your age when you create your save file? [[spoiler:It determines whether Marina ends up an adult or a child when she becomes a human]].
* CainAndAbel: [[spoiler: Professor Theo and Leo the Evil Emperor.]]

** One boss later on has Marina catching, shaking, and returning [[spoiler: ''Emotional concepts'']] of all things in order to defeat them.

* ChildhoodFriendRomance: There are a few hints that Teran's pal [[{{Tomboy}} Sarie]] fancies herself the Unlucky one, compared to Teran's sister Celes [[spoiler:-- who's not actually his sister, but the Princess who people have been saying has been missing for half the game. She's actually been in hiding and Teran is her bodyguard.]]
* CombiningMecha: The final boss fight combines Lunar's motorcycle, Tarus's tank, and Merco's drill into a giant robot.

* CoversAlwaysLie: A consequence of an apparent LazyArtist, the army of Clancers on the boxart are actually a copy-pasted Celes (notice the hats).

* EasingIntoTheAdventure: The first few stages of the game have no enemies and very few ways to even take damage. (It's outright impossible to die in stage 1-3, for instance.) They're close to being a tutorial, but they're fully part of the plot and they count toward your time and gem totals, just like everything else.

* {{Fanservice}}: [[spoiler:Marina turning [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FOAEvD6gH8 human]] at the end. Her appearance also depends on what age the player entered when making their file.]]

* ImprovisedWeapon: Marina gets through fights by grabbing and throwing a multitude of objects, from normally thrown objects, like grenades and shurikens, to flowers, robot parts, the enemies themselves, missiles, giant lasers, and even ''negative emotions.''

* RightfulKingReturns: In the fourth world, it's revealed in "7 Clancer Kids" that the good Clancers are looking for King Aster, the original ruler of the planet. The Evil Empire is afraid that if the King returns, the troops will follow him. [[spoiler: In the ending, King Aster does return to rule.]]

* {{Sentai}}: The Beastector are a villainous example. [[spoiler:They're a heroic team brainwashed by the BigBad.]]

* VoiceGrunting: Most dialogue takes the form of text boxes with accompanying beeps at varying pitches representing characters' "voices", but Marina and most other important characters have several exclamations or other short lines of actual voice acting. Some of these are surprisingly distinctive and memorable, like Lunar's "Eat lead!" and "Through fire, justice is served!" or Marina's "STOOOOOOOPPPP!", or "Shake Shake!" both of which happen quite a lot.

* JustEatHim: Oddly subverted. Theo gets eaten by a giant lizard at one point and it clearly ''does'' chew him very thoroughly. But when you defeat him, Theo pops out intact.

* WidgetSeries: This game can seem really strange, especially to anyone unfamiliar with Japanese tropes.

* WhoYaGonnaCall: One level requires Marina to capture seven ghosts in a specially-designed clanpot.

For a game that has similar gameplay mechanics (grab and throw to be precise), check out ''VideoGame/{{Solatorobo}}''.

* ShootTheMedicFirst: Migen will heal his son if you don't take care of him first.

* BoobsOfSteel: An unusual example, Marina is by far the strongest female character in the game... She is also the only female character in the game who actually has any sort of bust.

->''A robot maid riding a cat riding a missile, versus a member of an all-furry {{sentai}} who's riding a transforming mech? It doesn't get more Japanese than this!''

* SlippySlideyIceWorld: Mt. Snow.
* SpeedRun: Each level is timed, and the player is given a rank depending on how quickly it was performed. You are given one of the gold gems if you minimize the total time across all levels. Getting S rank on every level requires often speedrunner levels of precision. Even on speedruns, sometimes the player only gets A rank.

* YouGottaHaveBlueHair: Marina has green hair. Tarus has actual blue hair.

''Mischief Makers'' is the story of Professor Theo, a space-travelling MadScientist, and Marina Liteyears, his [[RobotGirl robot]] creation and assistant, marooned on the strange planet of Clancer. Soon, the planet comes under attack by [[BigBad The Emperor aka The Monolith]] and his [[TheEmpire empire]]; agents from the empire kidnap the Professor for unknown reasons, and it's up to Marina to rescue him (multiple times), at times helped and at times hindered by the bizarre Clancers and threatened along the way by the Empire's goons, including an EvilCounterpart called Calina and a team of animal-like supersoldiers called the Beastector.

* TwoAndAHalfD: A few stages have stuff fly in from the background or a few faint decorations in front the play area. Merco's mech also flies into the background for the first phase of the fight. Your first real boss fight has the giant boss in the background and you have to throw his own fists back at him by throwing them up towards his face.

* CoversAlwaysLie: A consequence of an apparent LazyArtist, the army of clancers on the boxart are actually a copy-pasted Celes (notice the hats).

** Celes, Teran's sister. In "Wormin'!" Marina has to save her from a giant clancer worm. In the cutscene at the end of "7 Clancer Kids", Calina takes Celes hostage, but Marina saves her from that too.

* NoPlotNoProblem: The overall story has a plot, even though it isn't super involved, but many levels are rather inexplicable and rarely set up before hand. You start the level surfing on a giant rocket? Ok, sure. You spend an entire level riding a giant bee that hasn't been seen since it was a miniboss all the way back in act 2? Kind of odd, but whatever. You need to bring the king of Clancer back his tricycle while escaping an AdvancingWallOfDoom, only for the tricycle to never come up for the rest of the game? Why the hell not?

* LateToThePunchline:
** To a kid, it's not immediately obvious why Marina gives Professor Theo a MegatonPunch when he tries to "hug" her. Until you realize... [[DirtyOldMan He's not really trying to HUG her...]]
** Arguably, ''the entire game.'' The game's story relies so heavily on [[{{Troperiffic}} Japanese tropes]] that much of it, farcical though it may be, can be borderline incomprehensible to someone who isn't familiar with the Japanese kids' shows or general melodrama that it [[PlayingWithATrope plays with]].