Cool Spot



If you believe the critics, one of the more notable aversions to The Problem with Licensed Games. Cool Spot, a game released on several systems during the 16-bit era, is a Platform Game starring the red spot in the 7-Up logo. As this spot, your goal is to explore what appears to be a tourist town or seaport of some kind and rescue others of your number from cages that, for some reason, they are imprisoned in. Although this concept sounds lame, the game itself is surprisingly well-made and fun, with catchy music, large levels, intuitive controls, a decent level of challenge, and plenty of secret areas. With its generous time limits, the game encourages you to take your time and explore rather than immediately free your buddy and end the level.

Might need a better description.


 * 1-Up: 1-Up tokens (which add lives) look very similar to the collectible 7-Up tokens (which each add seven Cool Points out of 100). These can also be earned at the end of every levels -- including the Bonus Levels -- as a result of having enough Cool Points and time remaining on each level's clock.
 * Bonus Stage: Collect 75 of the little red spot tokens in a level and you can enter a bonus stage where you bounce around on bubbles in a (comparatively) giant 7-Up bottle and attempt to get as many points and 1-ups as possible before the timer, which is much shorter than it is for a normal level, reaches zero. The only way to get continues, which take the form of the letters of the word "UNCOLA".
 * These continues, in turn, had to be accumulated on Hard difficulty (which required 99% of the spot tokens, as opposed to 85% on Normal and 75% on Easy) in order to win a contest that has long since expired. If you used any of the continues, you would be unable to win this contest, as the continues could only be obtained once.
 * The reward for beating this challenge was a plastic Spot toy that was probably worth about 50 cents.
 * Book Ends: The game begins and ends on the beach. In fact, most of the game's level types are distributed symmetrically around the middle level: The second and second-to-last levels are the same type, as are the third and third-to-last levels and the fifth and fifth-to-last levels.
 * Bottomless Pits: Present in the each of the two pier levels. Some versions of the game also have one at the end of the train in the Loco Motive level.
 * Cap: You can have no more than nine spare lives.
 * Chaos Emeralds: The UNCOLA letters mentioned under Bonus Stage.
 * Check Point: Takes the form of flagpoles; walking past one raises a flag with your face on it.
 * Cool Shades: Present on every Spot. Also seen on some of the toys in the background of the toy-themed levels.
 * Every Ten Thousand Points: Extra lives are awarded at every 50,000 on Easy, every 75,000 on Normal, and every 100,000 on Hard.
 * Everything Trying to Kill You: Enemies include things like cheese-throwing mice in pajamas and toy chatter-teeth. Inverted in the sixth level, where nothing is trying to kill you.
 * Excuse Plot: You're a red spot. You free other red spots from cages that they're in for no obvious reason. What more is there to say?
 * The actual story is described in the manual.
 * Flying Saucer: Are present not as enemies, as you might expect in this sort of game, but as platforms.
 * Hollywood Science: Leaving aside for the moment the fact that this is a game starring a piece of a logo, it features bubbles popping underwater (or rather, undersoda).
 * Hyperactive Metabolism: You regain health by drinking (appropriately sized) bottles of the beverage whose (regularly sized) bottle you adorn.
 * Incendiary Exponent: The Goddamned Bats of the final level are sand fleas that inexplicably shoot fireballs.
 * Let's Meet the Meat: Possibly. See the example for Hyperactive Metabolism above.
 * Luck-Based Mission: If you're really good at not getting hit, this trope doesn't necessarily apply, but for the most part, you can only earn life-energy power-ups by defeating enemies. But they don't appear in any kind of regular pattern. Sometimes you might find two in a row; sometimes you might defeat 20 with no power-up.
 * Unless you're playing on the hardest difficulty setting, in which downed enemies will NEVER belch out these items.
 * Macro Zone: Since you're the spot off the logo on a regular-sized soda bottle, all areas in the game are like this. A folding chair, for instance, takes up a large segment of the final level.
 * Merchandise-Driven: Um... duh.
 * Palmtree Panic: The first and last levels are set on a beach.
 * Pixel Hunt: Sort of. It can sometimes not be obvious that certain hazards will actually hurt you and are not part of the background.
 * Product Placement: It stars the spot from the 7-up commercials that were made at the time.
 * Respawning Enemies: Present in the SNES version, but not the Genesis version.
 * Rule of Seven: Spot starts each life with exactly seven hit points. As such, Spot will fall over after taking exactly seven hits (without the aid of health restoratives).
 * Spin to Deflect Stuff: An enemy in Stage 7 can deflect Spot's attacks from the side when it spins.
 * Super Drowning Skills: In the kiddie pool level, falling in the water kills you.
 * Super Not-Drowning Skills: In the bonus stage, you suffer no ill effects whatsoever from being submerged in 7-Up.
 * Timed Mission: Every level -- even the bonus levels -- have time limits.
 * Totally Radical: Omnipresent.
 * Toy Time: There are two levels that are strictly toy-themed, and toys form an important part of several other levels.
 * Video Game Settings: Played with. The first level is a sunny, pleasant beach, but so is the final level. In fact, in general the game's levels form a very nearly symmetrical pattern: the first and last levels are on the beach, the second and second-to-last are on a pier, the third and third-to-last are inside the walls of a house, and the fifth and fifth-to-last levels are both on a shelf with toys on it. The only levels that break the symmetry are the fourth and fourth-to-last levels, which are a kiddie pool and a model train set respectively.
 * White Gloves: Found on all the Spots, and also present as pointers directing toward the end of the level and holding a timer as the item that gives you more time.

And notably averts:

 * Big Bad and Boss Fight: Conspicuous by their absence, in that they're practically a given in traditional platformers. You never even get a hint of who put your fellow spots in cages, let alone why.
 * Bosses are, however, present in the less famous Cool Spot Goes to Hollywood.