Video Game / Mega Man Star Force: Pegasus, Leo, and Dragon

All he wanted to do was stay in his room
and stare at the stars.

The first game in the Mega Man Star Force series, which tells the story of Geo Stelar's struggle to come out of his shell and how that was complicated by an Alien Invasion.

Years ago, the Space Station Peace fell to earth under mysterious circumstances without any sign of its crew or its captain, Kelvin Stelar. The loss of his father led Geo to fall into a three-year depression, in which he would spend all his time in his room and only leave the house to go stare at the stars. It's on one such outing that Geo receives a strange signal... and the alien on the other end of it.

Enter Omega-Xis, or Mega for short, who warns Geo of the coming FM-ians and how they plan to cause trouble on Earth, which Geo and Mega can only prevent by combining forces—by undergoing a Fusion Dance called "wave change", Geo can use Mega's power to become Mega Man.

Geo, a recluse at the best of times, has no wish to use this power or fight any aliens, but even he can't escape the necessity of it all, and Mega promises him that, if he complies, he might learn a thing or two about what happened to his father....

This game was released in three versions in December 2006, Pegasus, Leo, and Dragon, each named for the Super Mode Mega Man unlocks during the course of the game. An anime adaptation aired in October of the same year, while the games were still being promoted. (If you're looking for the Fan Remake, see Mega Man Star Force DX.)

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Tropes seen in the first game include

• Aliens Speaking English: FM-ians are totally foreign to Earth but can communicate with humans perfectly.
• Another Dimension: According to the original Japanese version of Ryuusei no Rockman 1, Geo's world is still connected to the world of Lunar Knights—enough to have a crossover bonus. While it was Dummied Out in the original English release, the Mega Man Star Force DX fan hack restores the dungeon.
• Applied Phlebotinum: Z-Waves ("Zet Waves" in Japan). Natural EM Beings are technically made of these. Extensive exposure to Z-Waves, however, presents a risk of turning matter into more Zet Waves, and living creatures are turned into EM Beings. Daigo uses this to his crews' advantage by having War Rock soak them in Zet Waves, which saves them from bodily death in space. In the anime, the ability to transform matter into Zet Waves is the hallmark of the AM-ian race, which is why War Rock is not the FM-ian he first thought he was.
• Astral Finale: The final act of the game consists of King Cepheus coming to earth with the wreckage of the Space Station Peace; Geo needs to find a way to get to the Space Station and cut the King off before he can reach the planet.
• Bad Mood Retreat:
  • Geo stargazes at Vista Point when he's feeling down (especially when angsting over his absent father).
  • Pat goes to an abandoned amusement park called Dream Park when he's unhappy.
• Big Bad: King Cepheus with Gemini as The Man in Front of the Man.
• Bonus Dungeon: Deep Space, where the Satellite Admins dwell.
• Butt-Monkey: Jammers. Several chips depict them being maimed, electrocuted, or otherwise harmed severely, and each of their appearances almost always ends with them running away in panic, if they survive.
• Character Level:
  • Mega Man has an established level tied into how many power-ups he's collected (as was the case in the early Battle Network games).
  • Not just the main character! Your in-game brothers also level up, depending on your progress in the story, maxing out at 60 in the first game. Their level dictates both the amount of HP bonus they give to Mega Man and their Favorite Cards, which Mega Man can use through the Brother Force. (e.g. At level 60, Sonia, Luna, and Bud can each respectively provide a copy of Pegasus Magic SP, Dragon Sky SP, or Leo Kingdom SP).
• The Computer Is a Lying Bastard: During the Junkyard level's Metal Detector Puzzle in the first game, Mega Man has to use an onscreen sensor to find the Hertzes needed to open the way forward. When cyber-tractors start plowing across the field, it seems you lose the signal for the Hertz and have to start pinpointing another area. The problem? If you instead look up a guide, you'll learn that the Hertzes' locations are actually fixed. The sensor losing its signal actually meant nothing.
• Console Cameo: The Transer—everyone's walking around with a Nintendo DS strapped to their forearm.
• Contrived Coincidence: Certain boss designs happen to share visible motifs with the stage or some related plot device, but these similarities have next to no justification in the plot.
  • Taurus Fire, an upright mechanical bull with an internal combustion engine, is fought at the end of a stage located inside a truck that just so happens to be present, and the truck's cyberspace must be traversed by bullriding.
  • Cygnus, the one winged FM-ian in the game, just so happens to use Tom Dubius, inventor of a winged jetpack, for his host.
  • Queen Ophiuca, a Lamia, just so happens to rampage at a mall that just so happens to be hosting an exotic snake exhibit.
• Cutscene Boss: For whatever reason, the developers didn't program a proper boss fight against Margrave Rymer in the first game. Instead, he's taken out by Django, Sabata and Mega Man in a quite long cutscene.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: In the first game, Mega Man does some roof-hopping during a Big Damn Heroes moment, which is impossible in normal gameplay. Heck, Mega Man can't exist except on the Wave Road. In the third game, he even jumps off of a high platform to transform, which is also literally impossible in gameplay.
• Downloadable Content: The first game offered you the Andromeda Giga Card and Legendary Master Shin's Brother Data (which earned you a Giga +1 Bonus) could be downloaded back when the Download Station still hosted them.
• Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Luna's in the first game, who apparently are against any kid having any sort of behaviour outside what they consider acceptable. Trying to get Luna to transfer to another school because they feel Luna's being dragged down by her friends and Echo Elementary, there's also this line they say to Geo and Sonia when they see them together:
  Mr. Platz: Elementary school students on a date? I can't say that I approve of such behaviour. Children have no business acting like adults, and going on "dates". If you have time to play pretend, you should spend it studying to get better grades.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing:
  • After Bud meets Taurus, it's mentioned that a stream of incidents have occurred related to the destruction of red objects. It's easy to figure out that Taurus Fire is the cause of this due to the stereotype of bulls charging at red objects.
  • When you actually make it to the TruckComp, Omega-Xis makes an off-hand remark about how Taurus Fire is a pushover who attacks in straight lines. This actually foreshadows that Taurus Fire can charge at you and that he can be easily taken down with the limited cards you've gained at this point.
  • When Omega-Xis claims that an FM-ian could fall from the sky, cue a winged Tom Dubius falling from the sky, quickly foreshadowing that he's going to be the next boss you fight after Taurus Fire.
• Genocide Survivor: The Satellite Admins and Omega-Xis are the only survivors of Planet AM.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: The first JammerG is inexplicably immune to damage until the plot gives you the Star Force; he doesn't even have a token defensive maneuver like Bass' aura. The following plot segment features the AM-ians giving Geo and Omega guff for losing.
• Hunting the Rogue: Omega-Xis is hunted by the other denizens of Planet FM under King Cepheus's orders to retrieve the key that controls the FM-ians' Doomsday Device, Andromeda. This results in Omega-Xis crashing into Geo and convincing the boy to become Mega Man as they fight off an impending Alien Invasion.
• Infodump: The first game goes through a lot of text during the opening sequence trying to lay out basic worldbuilding and mechanical explanation
• Interface Spoiler: If The Law of Conservation of Detail didn't give it away already, Mega Man can hack into literally anyone's Transer and examine their personal information, including their favorite battle cards. Characters who become EM Humans will have their Henshin Hero forms listed among their favorites, blatantly giving away future plot developments to anyone who makes the mistake of exploring too much too early.
• Justified Tutorial: Luna teaches Geo all about setting up a Player Page in the beginning of the first game, because Geo really doesn't know how to do it.
• Kick the Dog: Blair Loude, Echo Ridge Elementary's principal, argues with Mr. Shepar over how the latter fails to meet the curriculum and that his goal as principal is to improve the school. However, once he makes his point, he immediately starts talking about how improving the school would improve enrollment and allow them to raise tuition. Loude also forces Shepar to use the ambiguously tested "study wave" to download information directly into the children's brains by threatening to fire him.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Most of the humans possessed in the first game/anime series suffer from this after being released. Omega-Xis has it too in the anime, with no memory of his past as an AMian.
• Lazy Artist: In the first game, Cygnus and Libra don't have front-facing sprites, which rather ruins the effect when the FM-ians have finally seized the Andromeda Key.
• Loners Are Freaks: And easy targets for the military FM-ians who try to exploit their jealousy/shame/fears.
• The Man in Front of the Man: The ending of the first game reveals Dragon-in-Chief Gemini had been manipulating the FM King into destroying planets with Andromeda.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Early on in the Libra scenario in the first game, Geo finally tells Luna just how much she's living up to her name by following him all the time.
• Resigned to the Call: Geo's not much for heroism in the first game, but goes along anyway due to feeling With Great Power instinctively. He later accepts his role more wholeheartedly.
• School Play: Luna first successfully got Geo onto the school's very grounds by telling him he was the only one who could fulfill a very important, nigh essential, part for the play Class 5-A was putting on. As it turns out...
  • Playing a Tree: Geo's important part is largely to model a pair of tree branches, which he wasn't aware of until it was too late.
  • Notably, the play is about the Taurus Fire scenario from earlier - complete with homemade Mega Man and Taurus Fire costumes. Unfortunately, Luna happens to be a Dreadful Musician when it comes to the Creative Arts in general^* She named Zack's dog "Catnip", for example., so even when Pat can't make it and Geo ends up wearing the Hero's costume, Luna still fails to recognize him. (She also fails to draw the connection from having Bud wear the fearsome "Cow Man" costume — but, then again, she spent that particular fight more or less passed out).
  • And when he appears on stage, we're treated to a brief chunk of the Moving Scene score (normally reserved for moments of heroism), with Mega Man appearing in his full and proper costume...until Zack accidentally knocks out the lights. When he gets them back on, Geo's back in the miserable costume — both Luna and the audience are left unsure whether he was actually in the costume or whether Luna was imagining things.
• Scunthorpe Problem: In the first game, the e-mail system contains a filter to prevent swear words from being sent. This filter renders a certain Cipher Mail unusable in the US version because it fires mistakenly on the word "Glasses".
• Unintentionally Unwinnable: Depending on the cards you have available, if you let any battle with a Magera or one of its relatives in the first game go on too long, you may wind up in a position where you can't overcome its combination of Aura and Holy Panel defenses. Zack's post-game virus gauntlet sidequest from the first game has one such bout, which you cannot run away from.
• Unrealistic Black Hole: AMAKEN's Science Museum contains a machine that actually generates a small black hole. At one point, Mega Man needs to repair it so he can draw together the fragments of the Wave Road and proceed.
• Villain-Possessed Bystander: Nearly all of the villains are locals put under More than Mind Control by Energy Beings trying to root out and destroy Omega-Xis.
• The Virus:
  • Bob Copper warns that extended exposure to the alien life form Z-Waves will turn human beings into more Z-Waves.
  • The shapeshifting "EM Human" monsters created by the Jammer that stalks the school in the first game, who claims that anyone exposed to them for too long will also turn into monsters.
• Writing Around Trademarks: The department store owned by Luna's parents is based on a Real Life location—while the English translation calls it Nacy's after Macy's department store, its Japanese name Department Store 103 is based on the famous Department Store 109 in Shibuya, Japan. The Japanese name of Times Square, Yashibu, is even an anagram for Shibuya.
• Zodiac Motifs: Some bosses in the first game are named after constellations that appear in the zodiac, between individuals like Taurus Fire, Gemini Spark, and Libra Balance.

Tropes seen in the anime include

• Adaptation Deviation: The anime is both Lighter and Softer than the game, featuring plot events that happen on a different schedule (e.g. Geo starts going to school in the first few episodes), many characters are Denser and Wackier, and the second half of the first season transitions entirely into episodic Filler to give Character Focus to the FM-ians.
• Filler: After hitting a mid-season climax by summoning Andromeda and having Rock Man gain the Star Force, the second half of the first anime season transitioned to a holding pattern of giving Character Focus to the supporting cast while the FM-ians got up to various hijinks trying to get Andromeda back up and running.
• Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul: In the anime, the Brother Band engine contained in the space station Kizuna is basically a Good Feelings Cannon, designed to foster and reinforce the idea that the humans were indeed coming in peace. Of course, the space station was destroyed, as King Cepheus was under the impression that the Brother Band was heralding an invasion.
• Good Morning, Crono: At the beginning of the anime, Hope Stelar wakes Geo up in the hopes that her son will be able to fix the family's EM food creator.
• Homage: Wolf Woods' Character Focus arc late in the first season is a Lighter and Softer Whole-Plot Reference to Old Yeller, with the distinct riff of the canine pet acclimating to a human rather than the other way around. Wolf Woods inevitably goes mad from the full moon and must be defeated by Rock Man, but he leaves behind a replacement pet for his human.
• Hostage for MacGuffin: In the anime, Cygnus pins Geo down and threatens to kill him unless Omega hands over the Andromeda Key. Omega acquiesces, only for Geo to be saved by a Deus ex Machina moments later anyways.
• The Reveal: In the first game, Omega-Xis is actually a survivor of the destroyed Planet AM. In the anime, the Sages have to reveal this to him.
• Punch-Clock Villain: The FM-ians in the anime are portrayed like this, and actually spend more time screwing around, doing things like playing in game shows and shopping that they practically replace the real main characters as they go through their comedic antics. Which arguably makes it that much worse when Gemini murders each and every last one of them in cold blood as they spend their last day on Earth just having a good time.
• Sanity Slippage: In the anime, emotional humans who spend time under the influence of FM-ians may suffer from blending personalities with their FM-ian. Shinsuke and Tsukasa, in particular.
• Villain-Possessed Bystander: In an early anime episode, a local artistic malcontent accidentally undergoes Fusion Dance with an EM Virus, which exacerbates his bad attitude and turns him into The Berserker.
• We Want Our Jerk Back!: The "EM meteor" Radion VI in the anime imposes profound changes on the local Energy Beings, in particular turning War-Rock into a limp-wristed milquetoast who lavishes compliments on everyone around him, abhors violence, and even when he can be convinced to fight won't use battle cards because it would be rude to eat while standing. Not only does this drive Geo insane, when he's finally free of the effect, War Rock goes on a rant about how awful the experience was.

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