Sigma Star Saga

A hybrid Shoot'Em Up / RPG developed by Way Forward Technologies and published by Namco for the Game Boy Advance in 2005.

An alien race known as the Krill attacked Earth 60 years ago, and, though they were driven off, the global ecosystem was left in tatters due to a "hole the size of Canada" getting carved out of the Pacific Ocean. Now, the Krill have returned, and humanity is ready for vengeance. You play as Ace Pilot Ian Recker, who, after leading the initial counterattack, is sent undercover in the Krill army to gather intelligence on a rumored superweapon they're developing. However, the lines between friend and foe quickly become blurred, and Recker is left in serious confusion as to where his loyalty truly belongs as he tries to unravel the mysteries of the Krill.

Out of battle, you walk around areas like in any typical RPG, but during random encounters, you enter a side-scrolling shmup battle. You're able to customize your ship's weapon using three different types of Gun Data chips, which are found in overworld areas. Cannon chips determine how your ship fires bullets (i.e. straight forward, spreading, aimed manually, rapid fire). Bullet chips determine what kind of projectiles you shoot (basic, long-range shots, lasers, wavy shots, rockets, etc.). Impact chips determine what your shots do when they hit enemies (nothing, create lasting explosions, turn around, burst into flames, etc.). One chip of each type is used to create a unique combination. With the total number of chips of each type, you can make exactly 15,680 different guns. However, you can only use one unique gun at a time, because you can only switch Gun Data outside of battle.

""Way to go fantasy nerd (sic). Did you find the +1 Dagger, too?""
 * Ace Pilot - Recker, as previously mentioned, as well as Psyme.
 * Action Prologue - The game begins with a fight against the Krill.
 * After the End - The game takes place sixty years after the Earth was nearly destroyed by the Krill
 * A God Am I -
 * Alien Invasion
 * Apologetic Attacker - Recker versus, and to a certain extent in.
 * The Atoner - Recker begins the game as leader of the elite Sigma Squadron. By the end of the first battle, he's the only member left alive, and he blames himself quite strongly.
 * A Winner Is You - Given the game's strong focus on its storyline, the multiple endings are all very brief and fairly anticlimatic. Additionally, the easiest one to achieve is arguably the best.
 * Back Tracking - This game is just plain loaded with it. Made significantly worse with the game's unescapable Random Encounters. At least the game is eventually nice enough to provide you with gun data that makes kills count more towards ending the fight.
 * Bad Boss - Commander Zelly seems to have a reputation amongst the Krill leadership for this sort of behavior, at one point stated to be worse than the guy everyone calls the Tyrannical Overlord. She shows it when
 * Big Boo's Haunt - The Forgotten Planet
 * Bizarre Alien Biology/Sexual Dimorphism - played for all it's worth. Apparently, the females are telepathic, and grow wings when they're in love. Said wings are detachable, and are given to the person she likes.
 * Bond One-Liner - "Looks like his schedule's clear now."
 * Boss Rush - Actually, it's more of a mini-boss rush, if such a thing exists.
 * Breast Plate - Female parasites seem more to protect their host's modesty than anything else (although, given their Bizarre Alien Biology, the upper chest and nether regions may very well be the only places female Krill are vulnerable).
 * "So do your slug bikini thing."
 * Cardboard Obstacle - Quite a few, actually. Lots of backtracking is required to get past most of them, and largely subverted by the scanner, which allows you to find most of the game's (hidden) equipment.
 * One of the straight examples of a cardboard obstacle is also more symbolic in nature rather than a result of poor design. The commander's room in Starbase 6 is accessible only via an item which you should already have, but the person inside gives some meaning to the method used to get in.
 * Character Level - During shoot-em-up battles, the enemies you kill leave behind experience orbs (which could be mistaken for suicide bullets, since they're basically tiny dots). Gathering enough of these boosts your maximum health. Interestingly, it is your character's (living) armor that gathers the experience, not the character himself.
 * Chekhov's Gunman - The pilot of the first boss ship,.
 * Chick Magnet - Recker, what with the way that Psyme and Scarlet treat him after knowing him for all of a few hours.
 * Curb Stomp Battle - On the last planet, there's a random chance you'll control a . As if controlling such a powerhouse wasn't enough, it's also invulnerable.
 * Dark-Skinned Redhead - Psyme is a purple-skinned redhead
 * Deadly Walls - Somewhat. If you crash into an enemy or the environment, your ship appears to explode, but you simply lose some health and "respawn", with brief Mercy Invincibility.
 * It should be noted that some enemies are more lethal than others in this regard - crashing into a boss, for instance, will probably take out a good 90% of your life bar.
 * Deadpan Snarker: Recker
 * Disc One Final Dungeon - The Forgotten Planet
 * Doomsday Device -
 * - Most of the game is spent searching for a series of six planets which will ultimately lead to a Doomsday Device.
 * Earthshattering Kaboom -
 * Eyes of Gold - Standard coloration for Krill eyes.
 * Exposed to the Elements - Female Krill  on the Ice Planet.
 * Floating Continent - Every planet seems to consist entirely of these (except, presumably, Earth).
 * Gambit Pileup - Keeping up with the plot in the latter half of the game can be somewhat difficult, to say the least.
 * Game Breaking Bug - Protip: don't shoot the "tombstone" enemies on the Forgotten Planet as your last kill of the battle. This occasionally makes the battle Unwinnable, since no more enemies spawn, but the battle doesn't end.
 * It's also a very bad idea to level up any time during the boss fight stage there, again for the same reason.
 * Giant Space Flea From Nowhere - Although most of the game's bosses tie in pretty well with the story, it does throw a couple of these at you (including a literal swarm of giant space fleas).
 * One of which (a giant flying skeleton) is Lampshaded hilariously by Scarlet when Recker tries to tell her about it:
 * One of which (a giant flying skeleton) is Lampshaded hilariously by Scarlet when Recker tries to tell her about it:

"Blune: "I'm saying that with time you will see that things aren't so black and white.""
 * Gladiator Games - Early in the game, you are forced to fight another Krill soldier. Luckily, they let you keep your gun.
 * Green Hill Zone - The Forest Planet
 * Green-Skinned Space Babe - Purple-skinned space babe Psyme.
 * Gray and Gray Morality - Who are the good guys again?
 * Gray and Gray Morality - Who are the good guys again?


 * Ground Pound - A pair of boots gives you the ability to do this.
 * Goggles Do Nothing - Scarlet
 * Although
 * Hopeless War - The Krill military outnumbers humanity's by a very large margin.
 * Hot Scientist - Scarlet
 * 100% Completion - the game will acknowledge when you beat it if you found all of the gun data, and will make it all immediately available to you in the New Game+.
 * Innocent Fanservice Girl - any female Krill.
 * It's All Upstairs From Here - The Final Planet
 * Lethal Joke Item - Krill Puck
 * Lethal Lava Land - The Fire Planet
 * Locked in a Room -
 * Love Triangle - Recker, Psyme, and Scarlet.
 * Luck-Based Mission - Some random encounters are outright unwinnable if you are unlucky enough to be summoned by a large/slow moving spaceship in a constricted area that it cannot possibly navigate through without crashing (at least one such area results in a crash before the game even relinquishes control of the ship to you). And since there's no option to retreat, your only option when faced with any fight that you have no chance of winning is to commit suicide.
 * Mercy Invincibility - Notable as the game not only provides this normally, but there is also a power-up which provides it for every 30 hits you make. Can be something of a game breaker when combined with a gun that can score hits fast enough to keep it going near-constantly.
 * Missing Secret - sort of. The inventory code was for some reason copied over from the gun data code, resulting in about a gazillion more slots than you will ever be able to fill. May or may not count as a Missing Secret, but is definitely a case of lazy programming.
 * Mistaken for Pregnant - One particularly hilarious subplot partway through the game has Recker
 * The Mole - Recker,.
 * Multiple Endings - There are four different endings to the game... which one you see depends on.
 * New Game+ - After beating the game, it can be replayed with all previously unlocked weapons and ships available at the beginning... as well as get a chance to get the best ending, which is unavailable on the first playthough.
 * Non Lethal Bottomless Pits
 * Not Distracted by the Sexy - Well, Recker is distracted at first, but grows used to it by the second chapter.
 * Ominous Save Prompt - the game gives you a somewhat-unneeded one of these (as you would probably have remembered to save before heading into the battle in question, anyways).
 * One-Hit-Point Wonder - Subverted, although you only receive Mercy Invincibility if you crash into something.
 * One-Man Army - There are two instances in wich Recker wipe out the crew of a enemy base. All by himself.
 * Organic Technology - The Krill have some organic tech, though most of it is still mechanical. Their ships are living beings that form a psychic bond with their pilots to improve performance, and Krill Parasites are powerful living armor that, despite their name, are completely harmless, and in fact boost the physical capabilities of their wearer.
 * Painting the Fourth Wall - Recker takes off from the Namco building at the very start. The publisher? Namco.
 * Powered Armor - Krill parasites.
 * Power-Up Letdown - One of the game's highlights is the vast array of options to customize your ship's guns. You'll find lots of these upgrades hidden all throughout the game as you progress through it. Only a small handful of them are actually worth the trouble to find.
 * Puzzle Boss - At least two, one of which has an entire paragraph on the trope's page about how unfair it is.
 * Random Encounters - Whenever one of these occurs, you are beamed up to a spaceship, and fight enemies shmup-style until you shoot down a certain amount of them. Bonus points to the "random" aspect, as the ship you pilot is also random. Possibly the only justified use of this trope in video game history.
 * Rapunzel Hair - Psyme, though it's only noticeable in a few shots (her parasite makes her look like she has short hair).
 * Real Men Wear Pink - The girl wings. Even the game makes fun of you for it.
 * Verbatim from the game: "YOU GOT THE GIRL WINGS! Wings like a GIRL!!" The "magical" sound effect when you deploy them certainly doesn't help matters.
 * Respawning Enemies
 * RPG Elements - Sort of; it's an RPG with space-shooter Sidescroller elements.
 * Rubber Forehead Aliens - Purple skin, finlike ears, and unusual outfits aside, the Krill appear pretty much identical to humans.
 * Shifting Sand Land - The Sand Planet
 * Shout-Out - In the beginning of the game, a human fighter flies straight up into a giant alien laser, causing severe damage to the mothership.
 * Single Biome Planet - Used heavily, even in Earth's case (Earth is at one point referred to as the "Ocean Planet").
 * Slap Slap Kiss - Recker's relationship with Psyme is something of a volatile one. When he first meets her, and she spends most of the game calling him an idiot for not automatically knowing everything about her Bizarre Alien Biology. She threatens to kill Recker several times, and that's before she gets really pissed off at him.
 * Slippy-Slidey Ice World - The Ice Planet, though the "slippy slidey" portion is averted.
 * Smart Bomb - And they can even kill some enemies your normal shots can't destroy.
 * Storming the Castle - The Very Definitely Final Dungeon
 * Stripperiffic - Scarlet (a human) really isn't wearing that much more than Psyme (a Krill female), especially considering that.
 * Sword of Plot Advancement - You eventually receive a puck (yes, a puck) which - in addition to fixing a few Broken Bridges - can be kicked at your enemies. For far much more damage than your gun does.
 * Spam Attack - The best gun data combinations all tend to be these.
 * The Virus - A very significant portion of the game's plot centers around a mysterious, human-developed virus.
 * Turned Against Their Masters -
 * 24-Hour Armor - The parasites hardly ever come off--according to some dialogue on the Ice Planet, some Krill don't even take them off to shower.
 * Twin Telepathy - Psyme's younger sisters Lolly, Folly, and Sliss are "tri-oplets": triplets that share a Psychic Link. They always operate and often speak in unison, leading the Krill to consider them as a single Hive Mind-like entity. They also count as The Dividual.
 * "Wake-Up Call" Boss - The third boss stage
 * Weapon of Mass Destruction - The game's plot hinges on a superweapon that both sides would very much like to have in their possession..
 * Welcome Back, Traitor -
 * What Measure Is a Non-Human? - Admittedly, the humans have a reason to hate the Krill, but making boots from the skin of dead Krill pilots is probably overkill.
 * Winged Humanoid - Sort of.
 * With This Herring - Played mostly straight with Earth (you get a gun and not much else), heavily subverted with the Krill.
 * Womb Level -
 * Zombie Apocalypse -
 * Womb Level -
 * Zombie Apocalypse -