This is...GREEN ORANGE?
MAY YOU ATTAIN ENFRIGHTENMENT:
- NO
- NO
- NO
ZeroRanger may not have horror as its focus, but it does have its share of moments that can startle players or make them lose sleep at night.
As per Nightmare Fuel page policy, all spoilers are unmarked.
- At the end of Stage 1-4's first act, you arrive on the surface of the GREEN ORANGE planetoid, which features Nothing but Skulls across the whole surface. The miniboss at the end of this segment is a larger skull that, when defeated, sucks your ship into its mouth, triggering a Smash to Black before the stage title card appears.
- The inside of the GREEN ORANGE base has what looks like intestines in the background, giving the impression of a Womb Level.
- At the end of Stage 2-1, you fight Catastrophe again, except its core now features an inexplicable skull. Defeat this boss, and you'll go to the Score Screen...only to be greeted by the Boss Warning Siren again and Catastrophe snapping its wings off to reveal its One-Winged Angel form, an Ax-Crazy cobra mecha while frantic music plays. Instead of the usual cryptic advice that tells you what weapons you can get out of it when it's destroyed, it just tells you about attaining "enfrightenment" and its numbered points are all just "NO". Or in the Great Oppressor timeline, it tells you to "take heed and just run away" and all three "tips" are "IT'S NOT WORTH IT."
- At the end of Stage 2-2, 2nd Apocalypse's head shoots out of the ship you just destroyed, about to presumably take on an extra form like Catastrophe did... only for the lights to go out and a new boss to devour it. When the lights come back on, you see what finished off Catastrophe: a massive onion-headed mech, Pandemonion. The "advice" screen comes up again, but this time in ominous unknown script.
- During the FinalBoss segment in Stage 2-4, after destroying the Lotus Jewel, GREEN ORANGE threatens to kill you and for a split second
, she forms a pretty twisted Nightmare Face. - When Despair is defeated at the end of Stage 2-4, she lets out an absolutely bloodcurdling scream (in a manner similar to Marx) as she forms an agonized face of despair (ahem) and fades out.
- The bleak circumstances at the end of the game. You've defeated GREEN ORANGE and just blasted your way out of her base... only to critically damage your fighter in the process. Erasure appears to inform you that you'll die in about 4 minutes from lack of life systems, GREEN ORANGE's forces destroyed all planetary life anyway, and gives you one possible final out: To travel back in time and stop the original form of GREEN ORANGE. Accept her offer and you travel through an absolutely trippy landscape with more of the mysterious onion people you see in the background. To top it all off are the stakes for this final battle: If you lose all of your lives, your existence is erased and so is your saved progress. Remember the weird cutscene you see when you first started the game, with the black monster towering over the glowing white humanoid followed by a Smash to Black? That was Mido/Dori's previous failed attempt at stopping GREEN ORANGE, and it's your game over cutscene if you lose.
- The soundtrack version of the White Vanilla stage 4 theme, "4th Shade", an otherwise energetic track, has some eerie and foreboding "Psycho" Strings near the end as the track starts to fade out, until the strings are all you hear.note
