"Underpants on the outside... for JUSTICE!"
— HeroSmash tagline
HeroSmash is a multiplayer superhero game, and the third MMORPG from Artix Entertainment, and the second made by them. note
Originally called SuperHeroQuest until the folks at Marvel Comics complained, the game had relatively little story to speak of before entering a period of Development Hell. However, a more detailed plot was likely planned. The game is arguably even more bizarre than most of Artix Entertainment's other games, since it's set in an ultra-modern city...
You, as a new smasher in Super City, get involved in a massive war over the Pandorian Malachite stashed away in a statue of Pandora. A young girl, Demolicious, and her band of robot Divas valiantly defend the malachite against the robotic forces of Luigi Davinci. Sadly, she gets outnumbered and the MacGuffin falls into the villains' hands. To add insult to injury, villains have outnumbered heroes in all of the game's wars ever since.
Next, you're meant to convince Death to join either the heroes or the villains by performing four trials for him. He duels with the player after the trials, then decides not to get into smasher hijinks after all.
After Death's trials, the player has to stop the Clock Blocker from meddling with time and causing The End of the World as We Know It. And still nothing is done about the lost Malachite.
Afterwards, the plot just drops, and the game's pretty much in Development Hell as of 2012.
The game is also no longer available to play at all since October 2021.
Located here
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This game provides examples of:
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Found below the subway at Brickstreet. It's also where you find Momma Chuds.
- After the End: The third Super Death trial takes you to a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
- Alien Invasion: The current arc with King Zong and the alien bugs seems to be leading up to one of these.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Yergen who has yellow skin for some unknown reason
- Ambiguously Brown: Electina, as well as one of the color system's skin color choices.
- Ambidextrous Sprite: Played straight most of the time as this is a 2D game.
- Averted with Demolicious in the Park War cutscene, who holds her wrecking ball with her left hand the entire time. She turns around to hit the player with her weapon still in her left hand.
- You'd probably expect Luigi daVinci to avert this trope in the same cutscene, but he plays it straight instead. His heterochromia change sides when he turns around.
- An Ice Person: Arctikiller.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Every single one of the game's faction war has ended with villains winning, and it's suggested the Clock Blocker does as well. Meta-wise, Artix Entertainment refuses to do anything about the game ever again after the consistent villain victories.
- Blank White Eyes: Everyone has this except for Yergen and some Super Heroes and Super Villains, due to the art style of the game.
- The nameless Distressed Damsel in the Corporal building and the Tutorial averts this trope, even though she has almond-shaped eyes.
- The little girl in the Yercom building averts this as well.
- The Pleasanton citizens appear to avert this, having Sphere Eyes instead.
- And now some heroes and some villains have the option to avert this trope by having eyes with pupils
- Captain Ersatz: Since its a Super Hero game it has some
- Players can choose to make their characters this
- Arctikiller is a Captain Ersatz of Iceman
- The Shock Bloopers are based on The Stormtroopers
- Galanor is based on RoboCop
- King Zong is a Captain Ersatz of King Kong
- The Plummer Brothers are based on Mario and Luigi.
- Harriet Popper is a female version of Harry Potter.
- Demolicious wears a costume similar to Psylocke's.
-
Broken Aesop: This is the only AE game where heroes fail to do anything correctly, whether through their incompetency or the devs sabotaging them at every turn. Considering all the other AE games are about heroes triumphing against the odds or attempting to, it makes Herosmash look even worse because it was similarly implied to follow this status quo. - The Cape
- Chest Insignia
- The Cowl
- Cut Short: Due to
the developer issues the game never progressed beyond Clock Blocker freezing time permanently. - Dark Is Not Evil: The Good Character wearing the Darkness Armor (in Black) or Echo Assault Armor.
- There is also Super Death who choose not to side with Good or Evil.
- Dumb Struck: After Luigi talks down to Demolicious, she is at a loss for words. She was snarling at him before that, even telling him to shut his mouth.
- Epic Flail: Demolicious' weapon of choice. Considering what her name is based on, though, it makes sense.
- Evil Is Easy: Unintended, but many glitches and bugs in this game favor villains, up to the point that there are very few players as superheroes. The worst case happened in the Park War, where the villains won due to a glitch in the war's turn-ins.
- Expy: There are Expies of some of the characters from Lore, and from other franchises as well.
- Martial Artix is a Karate version of Artix Von Krieger.
- Galanor is Galanoth mixed with Franchise/Robocop.
- Illinois Johnson is a Distaff Counterpart of Indiana Jones.
- Global Currency Exception: The denizens of the post-apocalyptic locale of Tradertown don't deal in Fame. Instead, they're interested in gum.
- Good is Not Nice: Demolicious when you choose to fight for her during the cutscene at the end of the first half of the Resurrection storyline.
- She knocks your character away with her wrecking ball just to get you away from her fight with DaVinci!
- She actually made her point when she told you to leave just because she didn't want any more people getting hurt because of her.
- The Grim Reaper: Super Death.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: You can choose your character's name.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Demolicious.
- Jetpack: There are some examples
- Some players have Jetpacks even though they can fly without Jetpacks
- Rocker from Skull Deep
- Mr Purple in the trailer.
- Just Like Robin Hood: If what Demo says about trying to sell the malachite to help her sick dad is even true in the first place.
- Part of her reply to the player, "I'll not resort to stealing anymore. We will find a more honorable way to work through his sickness."
- Leotard of Power: A handful of armors ingame look like this on female characters. Also, Demolicious has this.
- Lizard Folk: The Alligator Man of Alldinguo.
- Mass Super-Empowering Event Pandora's ultimate sacrifice caused a lot of people to develop powers.
- Monochromatic Eyes: Some NPCs have colored eyes with no irises, and players can also color their eyes in one color because of the game's simplified art style.
- Meaningful Name: Several NPCs are named in this manner, and players can choose to name their characters like this.
- Hottica's name is clearly related to fire.
- Ditto for Electina, replace fire with lightning.
- Demolicious is a portmanteau of "demolish" and "delicious."
- Multiple Endings In the Resurrection storyline, the player can choose to support Demolicious or Luigi Davinci.
- If the player supports Demo, he/she is fighting alongside Demo, until she orders the player to leave. The player refuses, so Demo knocks the player away with her wrecking ball. She then jumps in to face Luigi. It gets worse for her from there.
- If the player supports Luigi, when Luigi orders Demo to be thrown out, the player obliges and punches her. The player then helps Luigi to start up an extraction device.
- Regardless of your choice, Demolicious is caught by two of Davinci's robots, made fun of, and thrown out. Luigi gets his hands on Pandora's malachite anyway.
- My Greatest Failure: Demolicious' failure to protect Pandora's Malachite.
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: King Zong from the latest release is basically an alien King Kong.
- Not Wearing Tights: Enforced due to a complaint from Marvel and DC about the use of the term "super hero." The enhanced humans are referred to as Smashers ingame.
- Oh, Crap!: The Beetle Basher gets two of these moments, the first time when the player and Llussion team up against it, and the second time when the hero is about to either destroy or chain up and apprehend it. On both times it says "Oh Uh!"
- Our Mermaids Are Different: The people of Aquatia.
- Playing with Fire: Hottica.
- Poison Is Evil: Played straight after alpha testing, as the only way to buy poison powers is to make your character a villain. CAN be subverted after buying said powers if you're willing to spend days removing your villainous reputation and building up your heroic reputation at the same time.
- Posthumous Character: Pandora.
- Shock and Awe: Electina.
- Shout-Out: The Darkness Armor is similar to The Punisher
- The Echo Assault Armor is based on Batman
- As mentioned on Captain Ersatz, the Shock Bloopers.
- The whole Friday the 13th event is a reference to The Saga of Darren Shan.
- The Sky God Armor and Sky Hammer are a reference to The Mighty Thor.
- The Mega Movie Plex so far has shout outs of Pirates of the Caribbean, Kung Fu Panda (with a Street Fighter Shout-Out with the Female Lotus Armor and Hair being based on Chun-Li), X-Men, Green Lantern, Transformers, Harry Potter, Captain America: The First Avenger, ThunderCats (2011), Conan the Barbarian, Doctor Who and Assassin's Creed.
- The Plummer Brothers from the latest release are shout-outs to Mario and Luigi.
- Some of the costumes also fit this trope: Red Trooper is based on Superman, Last Fantasy is based on Cloud, Iron Eagle is based on The Falcon, Rocky Armor is based on The Thing, the Horrible Doctor armor is based on Dr. Horrible, and Midnight Phantom is based on The Phantom.
- Skulldeep looks similar to The Legion of Doom's Hall of Doom
- Standard Female Grab Area: The killbots that grab Demolicious in the park aim for her arms. She's unable to move as a result, but snarls at Luigi instead. Until Luigi laughs at her and points out her failure.
- Standard Snippet: At the beginning of the Corporal Saga, a remix of "The Girl from Ipanema" plays.
- Super-Deformed: Lampshaded by Night Wraith in a recent mini-release. To paraphrase, he said his head is too big and he's going to fall over his pointy feet.
- Superhero Packing Heat: If The Character has a Gun and uses it all the time
- Terms of Endangerment: Just before Luigi's speech to Demolicious, he calls her "mia bella," Italian for "my beautiful."
- The Bad Guy Wins: Luigi, and no thanks to the majority of players supporting him. The rest of the wars in the game are heavily biased towards evil players as well. No wonder this game's going down the drain.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Luigi Da Vinci declares that Demolicious wanted to sell the heart for her own selfish desires, while she is hanging from a pair of Luigi's robots that grabbed her arms. Luigi's only half right — the reason she wants to sell it is for money to help her sick dad.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: Yergen who is shirtless all the time
