SWAT Kats is a video game adaptation of the TV series that was released in North America on August 1995.
This game provides examples of:
- Absurdly High Level Cap: The game features a standard RPG Level mechanic which is a rather unusual addition for side-scrolling games at the time. And as is usual, you can max the main characters to Level 99. Although you'll most likely finish the game at level 30-35.
- Adaptational Intelligence: To what extent is debatable, but in the show Mayor Manx was basically useless at best and an Obstructive Bureaucrat at worst. In this game, he's the one who issues requests for the SWAT Kats' help (look at how the mission assignments are signed by him).
- All for Nothing: The game ends on all the boss villains being arrested...and then immediately escaping.
- Ambidextrous Sprite: It can be interpreted that both SWAT Kats have two Glovatrix instead of one, but the limitation becomes obvious when playing as T-Bone.
- Amusement Park of Doom: Madkat Land. With a dash of Circus of Fear.
- Asteroids Monster: The kat-sized versions of Dr. Viper's bacteria monsters will split into smaller entities or even throw spawnlings at you.
- Bottomless Pits: There are several sections in the game that can be tricky to navigate safely since you can't see what's below.
- Black Knight: Some of Madkat's Mooks at Madkat Land are guys dressed in suits of armor whose helmets are designed to resemble jester caps.
- Blob Monster: In World 1. Not just the bacteria monster(s), but in the polluted industrial area near the Dead Forest, you encounter ooze creature enemies with vaguely humanoid shapes. Like (most of) the bacteria monsters, they're purple, but otherwise the similarities end there.
- Brain Monster: The first bosses of Worlds 1 and 4 involve you flying into monsters' mouths and fighting their multi-eyed brains.
- Broad Strokes: While Worlds 2, 3 and 5 contain more or less original stories made up for the game, Worlds 1 and 4 are kind "adaptation stew" versions/retellings of Dr. Viper and the Pastmaster's more memorable appearances.
- World 1 comes off as being basically "Mutation City" but with enemies from "The Giant Bacteria" and "Destructive Nature," and with an ending where you go to Viper's lair in the Dead Forest and fight the mad scientist himself in his lair.
- World 4 is, structurally, a retelling of the episode "Bride of the Pastmaster," but with a few different enemies and a (slightly) different plot. Just as in "Bride of the Pastmaster," it begins with you fighting a sea monster and being flung back in time, and when you arrive, the Pastmaster is threatening Megalith City using the same monsters from that episode, but in a different way; he's turning everyone to stone and he only uses the dragon to ride around on (you never directly encounter it) and instead the final big threat is one of the cyclopes.
- The Cameo: Several characters from the show appear in very minor roles, including Callie (who, of course, has been abducted by Dark Kat), Queen Callista (also endangered), Tabor (having been turned to stone along with Callista) and Commander Feral (whose big contribution to the plot is having to witness all the villains escaping).
- Some one-shot villains from the show appear, but you have to really look to notice some of them. Rex Shard appears, but only as a rolling disembodied head. In the last level you'll be shot at by a biplane in the background, and you'll probably have to stop and think to realize that was supposed to be the Red Lynx.
- Carousel Kidnapping: An inversion. Madkat lures several children to his Amusement Park of Doom through some unknown means and keeps them imprisoned there.
- Character Level: The game has an experience system where leveling up gives you a longer life bar but also more powerful shots.
- Checkpoint Starvation: If you die midway during a boss battle, you have to start all over again.
- Collision Damage: Every enemy can inflict damage upon contact. Some will lunge at you as their only form of attack.
- Cool Plane: You'll fight some giant bosses in the Turbokat Fighter during the third-person flight sequences.
- Cyclops: Not only do you fight a giant one as the final boss in World 4, but bearded cyclopes the same size as normal kats appear as regular enemies throughout the level.
- Dem Bones: The skeletons (or "zombies" as the model sheets call them) from "The Pastmaster Always Rings Twice" appear in World 4, wielding axes.
- Denial of Diagonal Attack: Not even being able to shoot up or down is a design flaw that significantly adds to the overall difficulty.
- Energy Weapon: There are some enemies that are armed with blasters or capable of projecting bolts of supernatural energy.
- Evolving Weapon: The Glovatrix projectiles will gradually change at every five levels of experience earned with each version reaching slightly further than the previous one.
- Extra Eyes: The brains of the giant bacteria monster and "oil-sucking eel," which serve as the first bosses in Worlds 1 and 4, both have four eyes, and a fifth which opens up and attacks you when you destroy the other four. This kind of makes sense for the bacteria monster because (even though the sprite is the two-eyed version) the original monster was made by mutating a guy with eyes in the back of his head, but the sea monster is eyeless both here and in the original episode.
- Eyes Do Not Belong There: When you fight both the (giant) bacteria monster in World 1 and the sea monster in World 4, you go inside their mouths and fight their brains, which have four eyes. Destroying those four eyes causes a fifth eye to open up in the center of the brain and shoot eyeballs at you. Then there's Dr. Viper's lair in the Dead Forest, which has eyes in the walls.
- The Face of the Sun: The sun has a cat's face on the map screen.
- Final Boss: The game is finished after a final boss fight against Dark Kat.
- Floating Platforms: Some will constantly move up and down or left and right and others will remain stationary and move only when you're on them.
- Temporary Platform: Of the timed-type that rotates between tangible and intangible and the crumbling-type that will give way when you jump on them.
- Giant Hands of Doom: During Madkat's boss fight, he leaps up and offscreen and then his giant hands come down from above to claw at and try to crush the player multiple times.
- Grimy Water: There's murky-colored water in the first world that will kill you upon contact.
- Knock Back: The SWAT Kats and most of the enemies will get pushed or thrown back when they get hit. Unfortunately, this means you can die easily from getting knocked off a small platform.
- Lethal Lava Land: Dark Kat's Lair which is the final world of the game.
- Level Grinding: This is pretty much mandatory for increasing your strength in order to have more life and attack power.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Madkat's Mooks with boxing gloves appear to be ordinary kats, probably hired to guard Madkat Land for him, but the knights are another story, given how when defeated, their helmets pop off and continue marching around with little legs trying to kill you. Are they mechanical, like the windup horsemen (see below)? Magical? Or are they just really short kats in suits of armor?
- Mecha-Mooks: Madkat has windup guys riding hobby horses on springs in World 2, while the Metallikats have robot soldiers (from "A Bright and Shiny Future") in World 3.
- One-Hit Kill: There are some hazards that will cause instant death regardless of the current amount of life you had.
- Railroading: Although the game lets you choose which world to start on at the very beginning, your character will be simply too weak to get through worlds 2-4. Thus, you'll have to play through them in the proper numerical sequence in order to progress.
- Red Boxing Gloves: Worn by Madkat's Mooks in World 2.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: T-Bone has higher attack power but less speed and shorter jumps. Razor has lower attack power but moves faster and jumps higher. T-Bone's special item is the Demolition Bazooka which removes blocks (and bounces off enemies) while Razor's special item is the Jetpack which allows him to reach areas that are inaccessible to T-Bone.
- Respawning Enemies: Enemies will always reappear when you move the screen away and back to their original spawn points which is a design issue that both discourages backtracking and rewards level grinding.
- Reused Character Design: The kids in World 2 are the same boy and girl recycled over and over.
- Rocket Punch: The standard attack of the Metallikats grunt robots.
- Shock and Awe: You'll pursue Hard Drive in a chase sequence and then fight him as a mini-boss where he'll attack you with bolts of electricity.
- Short-Range Long-Range Weapon: Your main weapon, The Glovatrix, has a surprisingly poor reach at the start of the game.
- Super Drowning Skills: Unfortunately, there's no swimming mechanics. So any non-lethal water that you see is just simply there to indicate a no-fall zone.
- Taken for Granite: Petrification is a special attack of the cyclops boss which, predictably, is a One-Hit Kill. You also find Queen Callita and Tabor having been turned to stone in this manner.
- Timed Mission: Most of the areas in this game are short and straightforward and don't give you much time to go exploring them. And there are some maze-like areas that have a generous amount of time to let you figure out where you are and where yo need to get to.
- Time Travel: Refusing to accept defeat, the Pastmaster catches the SWAT Kats in a time portal that takes them back to The Middle Ages.
- The Unfought: The Pastmaster's dragon from "Bride of the Pastmaster" has been Demoted to Extra and only appears a few times flying by in the background with the Pastmaster riding on his back. You never directly encounter him and instead that world's final boss is the cyclops.
- When All Else Fails, Go Right: Most of the areas have you starting off in the left and needing to go right to find an exit. The remaining few are either maze sections, a Lift of Doom, or Rise to the Challenge.
