Fossil Fighters

""Awaken an era.""

A(nother!) Mons series from Nintendo, Fossil Fighters (Bokura wa Kaseki Horider, or "We Are Fossil Hunters", in Japan) is a collection Mon RPG/paleontology sim for the DS.

On the tropical Vivosaur island, the Richmond archaeological foundation has built a fantastic resort. Using the brilliance of Dr. Diggins, they have developed a process to revive dead animals from fossil fragments. (Sound familiar?) As a side-effect of this process, the dead animals are not complete copies of the creatures they originally were in life--they gain unusual appearances and best of all--superpowers. Vivosaur Island has become a playground for the rich where wealthy young dinosaur fanatics can revive extinct animals in the form of superpowered monsters and fight them against each other for glory and fame.

Like most games, this one stars a young boy who aspires To Be a Master. You hunt fossils, battle other fans, and raise in the ranks, with the help of his... er, "friend" Rosie. But the island is lousy with the BB Bandits, a group of fossil thieves and general schemers who, naturally, want to Take Over the World. And who is this strange girl who keeps showing up to assist you...?

A sequel called Fossil Fighters: Champions (Super Kaseki Horider, or "Super Fossil Hunters" in Japan) has been released. It features improved, cel-shaded graphics (with FMV cutscenes), a female player character, a revamped movement system, new islands, new villains, and, of course, plenty of new vivosaurs (including the ability to Super Revive certain vivosaurs into evolved forms).

""Yes, well, let's not waste any more time with empty threats or the revealing of plans, mmm?""
 * Absent-Minded Professor: Dr. Diggins in the first game, Professor Scatterly in Champions.
 * Absurdly Low Level Cap: In the first game, it's set surprisingly low at just twelve, and you can get as high as rank eight by fossil cleaning alone (ten if you get a full set of rare red fossils). The second game ups the cap to 20, though viviosaurs gain stats more slowly to go with it.
 * Acceptable Hobby Targets: The three commanders of the Barebones Brigade? They're a hipster, a hippie, and a metalhead. The game especially has fun taking potshots at Cole, the hipster, and Todd remarks that it's no wonder everyone was so terrified of him.
 * Adventurer Archaeologist: Nevada Montecarlo, who is a Dark-Skinned Redhead version of Lara Croft (with Indiana Jones' whip).
 * Champions has an even more direct Captain Ersatz of Indiana Jones called Joe Wildwest.
 * All Natural Gem Polish: Everything you find in the Jewel Rocks.
 * Ambiguously Gay: Cole in Champions. It's hard to tell which parts of his campness just come from his obsession with fashion, and which parts come from... somewhere else.
 * Announcer Chatter: The two announcers like to prattle on with each other about nonsensical things only tangentally related to the battles taking place.
 * Returns in the second game, but now the announcers are inexplicably talking dinosaurs.
 * Art Evolution: Champions featured a much more detailed, and more Animesque, art style than the original's more cartoony look.
 * Art Shift:
 * Author Avatar: The first game's announcers are the game's two creators, and the idea of putting them in the game started out as a joke.
 * Awesome but Impractical: Many high-level viviosaurs with really high Attack or LP are devastating from the Attack Zone... but if they end up in the Support Zone somehow, they'll turn your attacker into a quivering pile of useless mush. T-Rex is a perfect example--he has the highest attack in the game and can attack all of your enemies at once, but, if he ends up in the support zone, he reduces all your attacker's stats by 50%!
 * Zino and Centro. Every hit from them will be a critical-but their accuracy is so terrible that the rest of the team needs to be focused around buffing accuracy/evasion stats to get them to even land a hit.
 * Awesome McCoolname: Joe Wildwest in Champions
 * Bag of Holding: We really have no idea how a twelve-year-old can lug around up to 64 fossils as long as his entire body and not get sore.
 * Big Ol' Eyebrows: The samurai, with a Big Ol Unibrow chaser.
 * Black and Nerdy: Dr. Diggins is a professional-grade blerd. Who's dorky enough to wear shorts and a Hawaiian shirt beneath his lab coat, no less.
 * Blunt Metaphors Trauma: It's no wonder Nick Nack mangles foreign languages so bad--he barely gets English! "I can have my snacks and feet them too!"
 * Bonus Boss: Sweet Raptor Jesus! After you beat the final boss, almost every character you've fought before becomes a Bonus Boss. Almost all of them have maxed-out teams, some of them you have to fight one right after the other, and the prizes for beating them range from "Bragging Rights Reward" to "Olympus Mons." You can even take on the Final Boss again as often as you like! The most difficult Bonus Boss fight, however, is probably against  all at once.
 * There's also an Early Bird Bonus Boss named Petey, who requires you fight him with three very specific viviosaurs. If you take the time to max out said three and wait until you're near the end of the game, he's not so tough... But try him without copius Level Grinding, and he proves to be quite the Killer Rabbit.
 * Butt Monkey: Rosie.
 * Call a Rabbit A Smeerp: The names have been changed to emphasize that Vivosaurs aren't really dinosaurs, and also to make them more marketable. There's a mode that gives detailed information on the animals that inspired each dinosaur.
 * Camp Gay: Nick Nack.
 * Canon Name: The main character doesn't really have one, but Nintendo's guide suggests "Buckland", after an early paleontologist. The official mini-manga gives his name as "Hunter."
 * Hello, Insert Name Here: Egregious example on the flipside, in that you can change your character's name at practically any time in the game. Oddly, you can't change the names of and/or nickname your Mons.
 * Cel Shading: Champions uses cel-shaded graphics, as well as more detailed graphics in general.
 * Chekhov's Skill:
 * Cloudcuckoolander: Trip Cera in the second game. His first name seems appropriate.
 * Collector of the Strange: Since you can't use them to revive viviosaurs, nobody wants dropping fossils. Except Nick Nack...
 * John Guano replaces him in the sequel. John's even weirder, if that's possible.
 * Combat Commentator: In Fossil Fighters, they're Author Avatars. In Champions we have a two talking Vivosaurs.
 * Continuity Nod: In Champions, Pauleen is a throwback to the first game's Digadig tribe.
 * Convection Schmonvection: Mt. Lavaflow in the first game, and Mt. Krakanak in the second.
 * Cowardly Lion: Todd in Champions.
 * Dark-Skinned Redhead: Nevada Montecarlo, who also likes to Whip It Good.
 * Deconstruction: Rosie can be seen as a deconstruction of The Load/Distressed Damsel. She is those things, but realizes it, and is sorry for the times when you have to save her. After one instance she even asks if you hate her.
 * Dem Bones: The [BareBones] Brigade's boneysaurs in Champions.
 * Did Not Do Research Mostly averted, however there is one notable example, namely when reading the tablets that Dr. Diggins left behind from his visit to the Jurassic Period. In it, he says that he almost got eaten by a tyrannosaurus. In the Jurassic period. Before tyrannosaurs had even evolved. *facepalm*.
 * Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Averted. When the bad guy pulls out an Olympus Mons, you need to get your own before you can properly challenge him. (Unfortunately, you can't keep it - see No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup below)
 * However, it's later played straight with
 * In Champions
 * Dinosaurs Are Dragons: The Fire-type Vivosaurs breathe fire, but remember - they're no longer Dinosaurs, they're Vivosaurs.
 * The Super Revive function in the sequel plays this to the hilt, essentially morphing your Vivosaurs from dinosaur-like creatures into more draconic monsters.
 * In Champions,
 * Dinosaur Motif: In Champions, the male PC has a T-Rex motif, while the female PC has a triceratops motif.
 * Disc One Final Boss: Frigisaur, and the leader of the BB Bandits with him.
 * Disc One Final Dungeon: Boy, isn't Mt. Lavaflow climactic! The lava! The Heel Face Turn! The impending epic battle between the opposing forces of Frigisaur and Ignosaur! ...Wait, whaddiya mean half the plot threads still haven't been followed up on?
 * Disc One Nuke: The Spinax you're given at the beginning of the game is strong enough to last you until endgame.
 * In Champions the starters are powerful enough to last you the entire game, particularly Dimetro.
 * Do Well, But Not Perfect: In Champions, there's a man who wants your help making hard-boiled eggs in the hot springs. They need to be in there for 10 seconds exactly, and hardly a millisecond longer. However, boiling the eggs for 9.9 seconds exactly is the only way to get the  fossils. Better bring a stopwatch.
 * Downloadable Content: The original game briefly featured four of the five Mysterious Egg fossils available for download on the Nintendo Channel, but they were taken down eventually. (They're still available in-game, though; it just takes longer.) Champions features Frigisaur and Ignosaur from the first game, along with sidequests from a... strange character named Ryne, and downloadable fights with
 * Dude, Where's My Respect?: Averted. The NPCs' dialogue changes to praise you as you progress through the story and ranks.
 * Dueling Games: With Dinosaur King and, less directly, Spectrobes.
 * Elemental Powers: It turns out that the cloning process gives these to animals as a side-effect.
 * Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors
 * Elvis Impersonator: Rockin' Billy from Champions.
 * Everything's Better With Dinosaurs (duh!)
 * Evolutionary Levels: The have a devolution beam. It turns humans into "theriodonta", a ratlike mammal ancestor.
 * The three "Transformation-Class" Vivosaurs also transform into later descendants of theirs: Guan turns into T-rex, and Proto turns into Tricera. Aoptryx is somewhat more confusing--it can turn into any neutral-type Vivosaur. Even those that technically came before it. And even those it could not possibly be related to (Apato isn't even a theropod!).
 * In Champions, some vivosaurs can "Super Evolve" into stronger forms.
 * Expy: Pauleen in Champions has a lot in common with Rosie from the first game. In addition to being your designated female hanger-on and being surprisingly powerful for such a young age, both have bright pink Twin Tails... and the same (accidental, in Rosie's case) Verbal Tic.
 * Flying Seafood Special: And inverted when fighting in Bottomsup Bay.
 * Fossil Revival
 * Genius Sweet Tooth: Dr. Diggins has a weakness for Dino Cakes.
 * Genre Savvy: The final boss of Fossil Fighters Champions:
 * Genius Sweet Tooth: Dr. Diggins has a weakness for Dino Cakes.
 * Genre Savvy: The final boss of Fossil Fighters Champions:

"P.A. Leon: I was wondering, why do we talk through every fight?
 * Getting Crap Past the Radar: Professor Scatterly in the second game manages to slip a "Sod it" past the radar. Similarly, the game goes to absolutely zero lengths to disguise the fact that Pauleen has a girl crush on the female protagonist. She grabs the female PC's hands, stares deeply into her eyes, and then admits she has no idea why she's blushing.
 * Global Currency Exception: Redundant fossils are donated to the museum, which gives you donation points based on how good they are. These points are the only currency the cleaning station store accepts.
 * Good All Along:
 * Gotta Catch Em All
 * Green Hill Zone: Greenhorn Plains in the first game, and Treasure Lake in the second.
 * Harmless Freezing: Frigisaur freezes you and Rosie completely after your first fight with it. But you're still OK.
 * Harmless Villain: The Barebones Brigade aren't exactly what you'd call menacing at first. Their eeeeevil plans involve such plots as "Pampering girls so they forget to participate in a tournament," and "Fill the hot springs up with powdered gelatin so people get stuck and can't participate."
 * Not So Harmless:
 * Heel Face Turn:
 * Hot Springs Episode: In the second game, there's a hot spring-themed dig site called Hot Spring Heights. Not surprisingly, most of the plot in that area revolves around the hot springs.
 * Humans Are Special
 * Infinity+1 Element: all use a special element nothing else does.
 * In Champions also use this on top of  from the original along with
 * Infinity+1 Sword: T-Rex, natch. Also, Compso, who debuffs the enemy's attack power by 90%.
 * Even moreso are, with their ridiculous support effects, and crazy abilities.
 * Interspecies Romance:
 * Joke Character: In the first game, Anato. Its expression can only be described as "derpy," and even the game goes out of its way to point out how stupid it looks. It's a viviosaur who tries to sell itself based solely on the fact that it looks ridiculous. From a gameplay perspective, it also tries to lay claim to having a 100% effective Confusion skill, but said skill also does no damage and costs 240 FP. Similar skills on other viviosaurs not only do damage, they also cost over 100 FP less.
 * Justified Trope: The game goes out of their way to emphasize that Dinosaurs didn't really have superpowers, and a great deal of the Vivosaurs aren't even really revived from Dinosaurs, per se, but are rather other forms of prehistoric life.
 * Katanas Are Just Better: Mihu, a ceratopsian found in Japan, has katanas for horns. It's also one of the rarest fossils in the game, alongside T-rex.
 * Kid Hero: The main character.
 * King Incognito: During Champions, you're tasked with finding the Princess of Nomadistan, who has quietly entered the tournament; and are shown a picture of a girl and her dog that you ran into earlier.
 * Lampshade Hanging: The Combat Commentators sometimes do this.
 * Kid Hero: The main character.
 * King Incognito: During Champions, you're tasked with finding the Princess of Nomadistan, who has quietly entered the tournament; and are shown a picture of a girl and her dog that you ran into earlier.
 * Lampshade Hanging: The Combat Commentators sometimes do this.

Slate Johnson: I'm wondering how we can see every fight happening!

P.A. Leon: Excellent point, Slate."

"Not as excited as me! BOOYAH, GRANDMA!"
 * Large Ham: Saurhead
 * Large Ham Announcer: All the announcers, but special mention must be given to Trip Cera. A couple choice quotes:

"Trip: Just like my wife with a credit card! Zing!

Ty: You're not married, Trip.

Trip: I'M SO LONELY!"

"There is a literal river of sweat running over my laptop! Seriously, I may electrocute myself before the day is over!"

"Rosie: Oh, I can't believe I didn't make the connection before... Knickknacks... Nick Nack. Ugh. Waa ha ha! To think we're out looking for knickknacks for a guy named Nick Nack... It's like some awful joke!"
 * Last Lousy Point: The five elemental who can only be obtained by getting every other viviosaur in the game and then maxing their levels. Yikes! They used to be downloadable from the Nintendo Channel on the Wii, but have since disappeared to make room for the Champions demo.
 * More generally, you may find yourself gritting your teeth over the last lousy point of every single fossil you can clean. Properly-cleaned fossils are worth a ton of experience points, way more than you can reasonably give any specific vivosaur through combat. It's not mandatory to get everything perfect, but for perfectionists...
 * Leaked Experience: Three vivosaurs participate in each fight, but all five that you're carrying get the experience.
 * Lizard Folk: In the second half of the game
 * Gratuitous Foreign Malaproper: Nick Nack does this. Airy cat oh! Donkey shine!
 * Mask Power / Masked Luchador: Saurhead, who wears no less than thirty full-head dinosaur masks at any given time. Can't risk being unmasked, after all.
 * Pauleen from the second game also wears a mask.
 * Metal Detector Puzzle: This is your entire means of finding Mons--you have sonar and need to search the ground for stuff.
 * Mister Muffykins: Joannie and Madame Pooch in Champions.
 * Mons
 * Mythology Gag: Many visual details of the Vivosaurs are based on facts about their dinos:
 * Some are name puns (Krona is covered in clock-like Roman numerals, and Coatlus was made to look like its namesake, Quetzalcoatl.)
 * Others are based on the location of their discovery (U-Raptor (Utahraptor) has feathers that look like a Native American headdress, Carchar has Egyptian details, Chinese Shanshan is designed to look like a Chinese Girl crossed with an Asian dragon.)
 * The fact that Breme (Bradycneme draculae) is vampiric is both a name and location reference, as it was discovered in Transylvania and and consequently named after Dracula.
 * And more have their own fun facts (M-Raptor was exceptionally bird-like and so resembles a parrot; Megalo was one of the first discoveries ever, so according to the graphic designer "I deliberately used the design of a dinosaur as it was conceived by people long ago.")
 * Nerf: Support effects were nerfed quite heavily in Champions. In the first game, vivosaurs had their full support effects regardless of their level, making things like Compso incredibly dangerous. In the sequel, support effects grow when your levels do... meaning the game gives you a Compso in the very beginning of the game, and feels no remorse.
 * But there's also an inversion, as some game mechanics got stronger in the transition from the original game to Champions. In the original game, only the vivosaur in the Attack Zone could have a negative status effect put on them, and switching zones got rid of status effects. This made attacks whose only purpose was to cause a status effect somewhat weak, but this hurt poison attacks especially--you would need to use a chain of either knockback or excite skills to get a poison attack to work, and the extra damage frequently wasn't that spectacular. In the sequel, however, all zones can have status effects and rotating doesn't get rid of them, meaning the extra damage from poison is more likely to stick around.
 * A similar inversion applies to counterattacks. In the first game, counterattacks only had a 40% chance of working, making them a rather weak and luck-based strategy. In the sequel, counterattacks were upped to a 70% success rate, making them far more dangerous.
 * Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: The Dinomatons are robot dinosaurs, and the aforementioned Breme is a vampire dinosaur.
 * And the sequel brings us skeleton dinosaurs.
 * No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: A rare living example in Frigi(saur) and Igno(saur). As soon as you defeat the former, the latter vanishes as well due to them cancelling each other's powers out. Still, it removes a god-like power from your party to prevent a Game Breaker.
 * Nothing Is Scarier: When, no music plays even in friendly areas.
 * Odd Name Out: Three of Holt's V-Raptors in the mini-manga are Odin, Thor, and Steve.
 * Olympus Mons: Frigisaur and Ignosaur.
 * Omnicidal Maniac: in the first game.
 * Overly Long Name: Avoided. Many dinos have these, but their Vivosaur counterparts have them cut short.
 * : Subverted.
 * Peninsula of Power Leveling: There's a bonus boss post-game that most people have trouble with. However, with the right team (ex. Seismo, Hoplo, and Compso) you can consistently defeat said bonus boss over and over again in about 6 turns each time by abusing a team skill and how long-range attacks work, making leveling up all your vivosaurs to rank 12 easy.
 * Playable Epilogue: A whole crop of stuff opens up after you beat the game. Unusable Enemy Equipment becomes usable, new areas open up, everyone becomes a Bonus Boss, you get both the Olympus Mons...
 * Pop Quiz: The second go through the Secret Tunnels has you correctly answering dinosaur trivia to advance in the maze.
 * Power Trio: Hunter, Rosie, and Holt become one of these in the mini-manga. In Champions, it's the player, Todd, and Pauleen; with Rupert as Sixth Ranger.
 * Power-Up Letdown: Getting the upgrade for Dark Fossils lets you find red fossils, which you could already find anyway, jewels, which you could find anyway, and dino droppings, which you couldn't. Also, dark fossils have an outer shell that can only be broken with a hammer. If there's a speck of outer shell covering that perfect red fossil, expect to lose some points smashing it.
 * Punny Name / Meaningful Name: Where to start? We've got name changer Ty Tull, advice giver Tipper, Sam Inaro who teaches seminars... And these are just from the first game.
 * Gets a lampshade at one point:
 * Gets a lampshade at one point:

"Fast cars are exciting, right? Maybe we could have people battle while driving around a racetrack! No, you're right. That's a dumb idea."
 * Never Heard That One Before: Even the NPCs warn you that "We've heard all the jokes" about Bea Ginner (who teaches novices).
 * Purely Aesthetic Gender: Averted, ever so slightly, in Champions. Whether you choose the male or female PC at the start determines your secondary starter: males get T-Rex, while females get Tricera. They also have a slightly different set of starting icons. Everything else is the same, though.
 * Maybe. It's not unheard of for a male player to have a Tricera starter.
 * Quintessential British Gentleman: In Champions, both Professor Scatterly and Rupert show signs of it. Rupert is more of a nascent one, though he certainly shows signs of Britishness.
 * Randomly Drops: Some fossils are much rarer than others, and you'll have to go back and forth between the main town and the area where they're found if you want to complete your fossil collection.
 * Ribcage Ridge: Treasure Lake in the second game has a gigantic skull of some variety, smack dab in the middle of the lake.
 * Rich Idiot With No Day Job: A great deal of the Fossil Fighters are implied to be this.
 * Road Apples: Yes, you can dig up fossilized dino dung. Nick Nack and John Guano are the only ones who want it for whatever reason (the shop will accept it, but will pay next to nothing).
 * Robot Buddy: KL-33N, the cleaning robot. Rupert has a prototype digging robot called Di66-R.
 * Rule of Cool
 * Running Gag: In Champions, every time, it is always described as "lumpy."
 * Save Scumming: If you save before you talk to the cleaning robot, you can reload the save until he gives satisfactory results.
 * Schmuck Bait: The Secret Tunnels of the Mole Brothers contain several treasure chests, but a nearby plaque warns you that "greed is its own setback." Opening them keeps you from advancing in the maze. It's later confirmed that opening these chests is why Lemo and O'Mel got separated in the first place.
 * Science Marches On: Some dino facts that were considered accurate at the time of the first game have since had evidence against them. Champions does its best to update this information, some of the big changes being microraptor's ability to fly (we now believe they could), styracosaurus' collars (females did turn out to have them) and allosaurus' three claws (original called them "typical", Champions says they're "distinctive").
 * The most obvious changes are where a dino is now recognized by a different name. Champions retains the old vivosaur names due to the Grandfather Clause, but corrects the actual name in the profiles: Shanshan(osaurus) is a young Tarbosaur, Seismo(saurus) is a diplodocus, Anato(titan) is an edmontonosaurus, and Spinax has gone from an altispinax to a becklespinax.
 * Set Bonus: Putting three vivosaurs with something in common on the field can unlock a special attack for each.
 * Shout Out: One poor nameless NPC is tasked with standing guard over a warehouse, and nothing else. Keep talking to him, and he'll eventually reveal the "deep, philosophical" thoughts he's been having: "What is a man's life worth? Nothing but guarding a miserable pile of secrets?"
 * The cleaning robots resemble Japanese emoticons.
 * A cinematic from the sequel shows a helicopter transporting new people to the island.
 * In Champions, one park staffer is trying to come up with new ideas:
 * In Champions, one park staffer is trying to come up with new ideas:


 * One staff member in Champions informs you that "Your dig site is on another island!" She then wonders why that sounds familiar.
 * Champions also features a fisherman who became lost at sea. His name is Robinson, and he also talks to a ball, whom he calls his best friend.
 * When its programming goes haywire, Rupert's robot says things such as "I AM ERROR." and "A WINNER IS YOU."
 * Shown Their Work: The information on the extinct animals, also see Mythology Gag above.
 * Significant Anagram: The Mole Brothers' names are Lemo and O'Mel. Hm. I wonder what those are anagrams of?
 * Skull for A Head: Don Boneyard
 * Slasher Smile:  has one, but it's not immediately obvious until he
 * Slippy Slidey Ice World: The Glacier dig site from the first game, though it doesn't open up until the endgame.
 * All of the Ilium Island digsites in Champions apply. Ilium isn't called "The island where warmth goes to die" for nothing!
 * The Slow Path:
 * Somewhere a Paleontologist Is Crying: Mainly in the 3-D graphics for the dinosaurs.
 * Stat Grinding: A mild case in the first game; most stat gains are at levelups but vivosaurs also gain HP gradually between levels. Champions removes this.
 * Stock Dinosaurs: But also includes any new prehistoric mammals and dinosaurs discovered during the creation of the game.
 * The sequel appears to be continuing this, including many other prehistoric creatures from before and after the age of dinosaurs.
 * "Stop Having Fun!" Guys: Rupert in Champions. After witnessing Todd take his loss to you in stride, he's baffled as to why Todd's not upset about losing. Though it turns out it's less arrogance that his way is the right one and more ignorance that there are other ways in the first place.
 * Turns out it comes from his dad, who tried to drive the "have fun" mentality out of him and wanted him to bail out when facing even a 50% chance of failure.
 * Strangely Effective Disguise:
 * Summon Bigger Fish: Calling up Ignosaur to fight Frigisaur.
 * Taken for Granite:
 * A Taste of Power: Do you go straight to the confrontation with  in your party... or do you have some fun with the godlike beast beforehand?
 * Terrible Trio: The BB Gang. Also counts as the Goldfish Poop Gang for the first half of the game. In the sequel, it's the Barebones Brigade.
 * The Tetris Effect: Expect to see fossils in various states of cleaning every time you close your eyes.
 * Tyrannosaurus Rex: The game's mascot, and somewhat of the Infinity+1 Sword. One NPC ensures the player near the end of the game that "all the hype you've ever heard about it is true!"
 * The Unintelligible: Rex of the BB Bandits.
 * Eloquent in My Native Tongue:
 * Unusable Enemy Equipment: Boy, the Dinatomatons sure are cool, aren't they? Who wouldn't want a Robot Dinosaur That Shoots Beams When It Roars? Well, sorry, but you don't get none. And you'll have to keep your paws off too...
 * Vendor Trash: Digging up and cleaning gemstones is the only way to make money. The better the gem, the more money.
 * Verbal Tic: The Digadigs, including Pauleen in Champions. Rosie picks it up when she is mystically made part of the tribe, and she is very diga-displeased.
 * Video Game Cruelty Potential: Roise asks "you probably hate me now, don't you?". You actually are ABLE to say "yes".
 * X Meets Y: Jurassic Park meets Mons. (Nintendo Power said "meets Pokémon", but "meets Spectrobes" is much more apt.)
 * We Cannot Go On Without You: In the first game's Master-rank Level-Up Battles, losing even one vivosaur makes you lose the whole fight.
 * "Well Done, Son" Guy: Rupert's father is... difficult to please, shall we say.
 * White-Haired Pretty Boy:
 * In the sequel, Rupert.
 * Wind Is Green
 * Womb Level: The Bonehemoth in Champions.
 * Word Salad Title: In Champions, all the songs in the sound test have silly and non-indicative names, like "Sleepy Robin," "Chocolate Soiree," or "Raspberry Bell."
 * Working Title: The sequel was originally announced for the West as Super Fossil Fighters, matching the Japanese title.
 * You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Rosie's pink hair could be passed off as an artistic rendtion of a strawberry blonde, but there's really no explaining why Dr. Diggins' hair is green.
 * Siamo actually has blue hair, despite being a dinosaur.