As Buzz Lightyear, Space Ranger, you are sent on various missions to apprehend intergalactic criminals by order of Star Command... by chasing them to their getaway spot while using a variety of weapons you happen to find.
The game features most major villains from the show, such as XL, NOS-4-A2, Warp Darkmatter, Gravitina, and more as your main enemies, leading up to a final battle with Zurg to ensure peace in the galaxy.
Tropes present in this game:
- Action-Based Mission: The final part of each mission showcases Buzz Lightyear attacking a villain.
- Already Done for You: If Buzz reaches the getaway spot before the villain does, Mira Nova helps lower the villain's defenses.
- Collection Sidequest: Here, you pick up the tiny three-eyed aliens scattered throughout the levels to rescue them.
- Defeat Equals Explosion: Every single boss in the game explodes upon death.
- Degraded Boss: A jetpack-equipped mook called Snark appears as the boss of Jo-Ad 1, before being reduced to a common enemy in the later planets.
- Enemy Roll Call: After you beat Zurg, you get to see the game's various mooks walking around the arena you fought Zurg in while the credits roll.
- Gameplay Grading: You are awarded with gold, silver or bronze medals for each stage, depending on how well you do in them.
- Giant Mook: Beetles (those gigantic red robots on wheels) are part of Zurg's army, just like in the show. They usually appear in pairs (compared to Hornets and smaller robots who shows up in larger numbers) and can take plenty of punishment before they blow up.
- Final Boss: Evil Emperor Zurg at Planet Z.
- Flash of Pain: Buzz flickers for a couple of seconds after getting hit.
- "Get Back Here!" Boss: The main gameplay of all of the stages, as you're chasing the criminal to their getaway spot.
- Hover Board: Buzz rides one during the game's racing sections.
- Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: The game's two difficulty settings are "Cadet" and "Ranger". The only difference between them is how much damage Buzz takes from enemy attacks.
- Lethal Lava Land: A mid-game section, which also features meteorite-like clumps of lava regularly arcing out from it to make platforming more challenging.
- Made of Iron: On Cadet difficulty, Buzz can take a comically-large amount of blaster fire and other punishment without going down.
- Mecha-Mooks: Nearly all of Buzz's non-boss opponents are robots and turrets.
- Pre-Rendered Graphics: The cutscenes are clips from the series, which leads to some repetitive dialogue as the same few clips are used every time you complete a level, despite the game also featuring new voice lines by the series' cast in other areas.
- Slow Laser: Buzz's blaster fires a bunch of discrete green projectiles. The enemy turrets fire equally discrete red projectiles.
- Sinister Stingrays: The levels set on Planet Flamar have a gliding airborne manta ray-esque enemy that takes potshots gnawing away Buzz's health.
- Spread Shot: Hostile yellow robots will fire energy orbs from their arm in bursts of three.
- Timed Mission: The entire game is made up of these:
- In every level, you have to make it to the getaway spot before the boss does, and if they make it there first, you have to rush there before the timer runs out or else they'll get away. Starting with the third level, there are also bombs Buzz has to defuse by shooting before they blow up (which results in an automatic mission failure).
- There are timed variants of these missions which remove the boss, but put Buzz on a strict time limit to balance it out.
- The missions involving finding XR's parts and returning them to him are also on a timer.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: In each level, you can collect little green men in order to win a medal, however the game also allows you to shoot at them until they die.
- Weak Turret Gun: While the turrets often look very bulky and well-armored, it still doesn't take any more shots to blow them up then to deal with a normal robot.
