YMMV / Ty the Tasmanian Tiger

What's that, mate? Got a load of tropes ya want to argue about? You beauty, put 'em down!

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Crikey, we're gonna get into a scrap over these!

• Adorkable: Ty himself; the hero of Southern Rivers is a socially awkward 22-year-old with a penchant for corny jokes. Go figure.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: The entire series is actually an Evil Plan by the Bunyips to get TY powerful enough to wipe out the Quinkan, leaving no force powerful enough to stop the Bunyips. Hey, they're not good guys in Aussie folklore, so their benevolence in-game is more than a little off-putting.
• Annoying Video Game Helper: An interesting case for Lenny the lyrebird; he's not as helpful as you'd want... until you start doing the opposite of what he says. He later gets a job telling stories to kids in daycare, which are actually all true, being recountings of boss fights from the first game (albeit a bit exaggerated).
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • In the second game, Boss Cass' final form is... himself. No fancy mechs (on his part), no special effects, just the one cassowary running around like a little bitch. Though hitting him with the Shadow Bunyip's Frickin' Laser Beams is a guilty pleasure...
  • The Quinking in the third game starts off as a powerful and hard to predict Ty clone, but once pushed will turn into a giant dinosaur-like creature which is far easier to predict and is overall much easier than his first form.
• Awesome Music: Several songs in the third game, like Kakaboom Island's music and the mini-boss theme of that game sounds dang awesome. The past two games also have pretty good music, notably "Avine Rescue Now Redux", Ride of the Valkyries on banjos.
• Cheese Strategy: Shadow the Bat can be easily beaten in Ty 1 by exploiting the Zoomerang's long range and staying far away from her.
• Complete Monster: The Quinking, from Night of the Quinkan, is the leader of the Quinkan with a contempt for all life, which he desires to kill or enslave. Prior to the events of the game, he has his forces invade the Dreaming, seeking to conquer it and kill all of the Bunyips. After being summoned to Southern Rivers by Boss Cass, he forces Cass to become his slave before sending his forces to invade Southern Rivers, destroying Buramudgee and turning the rest of the land into a hellish war zone in the process, so he can have them prepare for his arrival so he can destroy all life and enslave any survivors. When Ty returns and helps Bush Rescue fight back against the Quinkan, he attempts to have Hexaquin kill Ty. When this fails, he has his forces kidnap Shazza to use her as bait for Ty so the Dragonquin can kill him. After Ty acquires the Shadowrang and prepares to assault the Quinkan homeworld, he sends his forces to stop him, nearly killing Ty's friends in the process.
• Demonic Spiders: Fittingly, the enemy Giant Spiders. While it’s easy to hone in on them by biting them, they can be hard to identify at first due to them blending in quite well with their surroundings (especially in Bridge on the River Ty, which takes place at night, providing perfect camouflage for the black-colored spiders), and due to their tendency to quickly jump behind Ty and thwack him with their giant legs before the player has much time to react. Not helping matters is the fact that they’re impervious to all boomerangs except for the Flamerang, Frostyrang and Kaboomerang.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Shade the bat from TY 3, the kind daughter of a previous villain with a very appealing design. Many wish she played a larger role in the game.
• Even Better Sequel: The first game is a decent but by-the-numbers collectathon with little interesting going on aside from the unique setting and some interesting gameplay mechanics. The second game turns into an open world game, turns the focus onto Grand Theft Auto style missions and dramatically expands the scope of the gameplay while improving the issues with the first game. The third game is a lot more controversial, however.
• Game-Breaker: Specifically, any of the boomerangs that can explode, or let you launch multiple homing boomerangs at once. TY 3 allows you to make them blow up. Precision accuracy? What's that?
• Harsher in Hindsight: This commercial has the remaining major mascots with attitude Spyro the Dragon, Crash Bandicoot, and Sonic the Hedgehog all incapacitated, hospitalized, and supposedly killed by Ty and it claims that "a new hero" is on the way. Said new hero didn’t get a game for years, becoming forgotten for a very long time. Spyro, Crash and especially Sonic would hit some major speed bumps of their own, but would still survive and continue to get new releases which would overshadow Ty, even after he made a comeback.
• Memetic Mutation: "Best. Rang. Ever," and "I, for one, welcome our new Quinkan overlords!"
  • Then there's this little beauty.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The horrible Giant Spiders... which have a tendency to be black, in poorly-lit areas, and jump out at you without warning, all while making an unsettling thumping sound with their giant legs. Fun! TY himself isn't fond of them either, as shown in "Rex Marks the Spot".
    TY: Ugh! Spiders! I hate spiders!
  • The giant roaches can give those spiders a good run for their money.
  • The mission in the second game involving crocodiles in the sewers. In any 90-degree corner can one round a bend and just encounter a croc without any warning.
  • Also from the second game is the second boss Buster, a giant collection of nanobots that look like spiders with red eyes that form several things such as a sphere or humanoid being, both of which are freaking gigantic. His bizarre cybernetic musical theme accentuates how horrifying he is.
  • The sharks that you encounter throughout the series. They may only take one hit point away per bite, but they are surprisingly numerous, and unless you are in a submarine with torpedo's, they are invincible.
  • Beyond the Black Stump from the first game. The first part of the level is a devastating forest fire, complete with dead trees and burning debris. And to make matters worse? You have to find the eight koala kids again, many of whom are trapped by burning logs. Imagine being Sheila in that situation.
• Polished Port: The PC versions of the first three games have HD graphics and numerous other improvements. The second game, in particular, benefitted from many improvements such as the ability to use the regular rangs alongside their upgraded versions, the kart races now have voice-acting, better powersliding (and even miniturbos), and controls, Wobbygong Bay received elements that had to be excluded from the original release due to space limitations (such as Dennis boating, a humpback whale who gives Ty a friendly wave, and a pirate ship), and the prologue can be replayed using the rangs the player has collected since then.
• Retroactive Recognition: The Second and Third game has Nolan North as part of the voice cast early in his voice acting career. Three and two years respectively before Uncharted: Drake's Fortune put him on the map.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Kart racing was a fun distraction to the main quest that people enjoyed... Until it was made mandatory in three with absurd conditions that just make doing these missions a chore. Krome fixed this in the PC version to make them less painful to complete.
  • The pictures in Ty 1. They are hidden in (nearly) invisible boxes around every level, and can only be seen clearly with the Infrarang, which also beeps to alert you to their presence. However, this can only be obtained after the fifth level, meaning that you have to back-track through at least four levels if you want 100% completion. ^note  There are no pictures in Outback Safari, as you can't switch away from the Lassorang. It also means that you have to constantly switch from your powerful 'rangs to what is essentially a normal boomerang that makes annoying sounds. The boxes can also be quite hard to spot, especially in Snow Worries and Beyond The Black Stump, where the black and white boxes are hidden in black and white trees.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: Kart racing! It can either be done from the main story mode (where it's theoretically a useful way to get opals, but we know you're just doing it for fun) or as an option from the main menu (so you can skip the middleman, play any character you want, and even go on a grand tour of all the courses in the game).
• So Okay, It's Average: Many find the first game to be a fun but very by-the-book collectathon platformer with levels that are too big and fairly generic missions that fail to break up the tedium.
• That One Level: The race missions in Night of the Quinkan. They're already the worst part of the game, but there's also the ones that have you collect thunder eggs and score first place to even win. If you played Diddy Kong Racing and remember the silver coin challenges, the thunder egg races are the same idea. The first one, Redback Stash, isn't too bad, but Dennis Dilemma Is worse. Rather than placing thr pieces around the track, three of the racers actually hold them and you have to be lucky to hit them to even get the pieces. Not to mention, in the original version you had to deal with the bastard AI and get lucky to get away with a win.
• The Scrappy: The Redback Gang in the third game. They contribute almost nothing to the plot ( Other than repairing the Spywing when it gets shot down on the final mission with Ty's friends inside), have bland and annoying personalities and are the givers for the oft-despised race missions in which they often enforce nonsensical rules (I.E. racing on an experimental kart that is too fast, no items, and collecting six thunder eggs and winning with the second thunder egg race being the worst of them all). There's even one mission where you have to retrieve a nuclear kart they made and stupidly left in the open before the Quinkan find it, nearly accidentally giving the enemy an advantage. There's also the annoying running gag where each of the three members have to reveal their embarrassing real names, none of which are even THAT funny.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The voice acting changing between games one, two (three different actors in as many games for Shazza and Sly), and three, and the excess of mech or Gunyip levels in game three.
  • The Doomerang being Nerfed in the sequels by heavily limiting its flight was not warmly received.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Ridge in Night of the Quinkan. When he first appears, it seems as though Ty has another ally that will help fend off the Quinkan invasion... only for him to only help in the second overall mission and remain in Burramudgee as the gatekeeper for the remainder of the game. Sure he has to keep an eye on the gate so no Quinkan gets into Burramudgee, but that still practically makes it egregious that he never helps Ty ever again, not even in the final mission. Hell, he isn't even in the ending. You would be forgiven if you played through the entire game and forgot he even existed.
  • Ditto for Julius in the same game, he only appears for one mission (which is dedicated to rescuing him) and (outside of his random tip boxes) vanishes for the rest of the game. What makes this jarring is that 1, he was in the intro roll call as if he would play a big role in stopping the Quinkan and 2, this is part of three missions in which you find old Bush Rescue members and bring them back with Julius being the only one to not return.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The final level sets up a rematch with Sly as a penultimate fight before Boss Cass, but his rematch with TY is merely relegated to a brief cutscene.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • In the first game, the security drones you can munch your way through to reach new areas are introduced in the first stage as if they're going to be a major recurring mechanic, but they only appear in four other stages after that in the whole game, one of which isn't even needed to progress, and another of which is in the secret bonus level. The sequel thankfully rectifies it by making them a lot more common.
  • Also in the first game are the Bunyip powerups, which make Ty invincible and give him special attacks that can kill several enemies at once. After it is introduced in the first stage, it only makes three appearances afterwards - twice in Beyond the Black Stump, once more in Rex Marks the Spot, and then never again after that.
  • Once again in the first game is the Zappyrang, it's extremely useful for opening the door to the final levels... and that's it.
    • Although there was going to be a fourth set of levels where the Zappyrang was to be used for puzzles centering on electricity. However this never happened.
  • The second game introduces the Bunyip mechs, out of the main four, two of them (Specifically the Sub and Lifter Bunyips) are barely used. The Sub Bunyip is only used for two whole missions in the game, and the Lifter Bunyip: Three times. Twice for a mission and once for a very small bonus area.
  • The second game also has the battle mortar. Whenever Ty is in the Battle Bunyip, he can use these to fire explosive shells at bigger enemies. These things only appear in the prologue mission and the second Fluffy boss fight and nowhere else.
  • The third game has a similar substitute of the battle mortar: The Bunyip cannon. The only difference is that it fires a green beam that can be charged. Like the battle mortar, it's only used in two locations and never again. One of these two areas even removes them after mission completion.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Lily, from about ten feet away, does not look female. She also has a bad case of Larynx Dissonance, and TY backs away from her as soon as she finishes speaking.