3D Dot Game Heroes

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8-bit gaming, Playstation 3 style

3D Dot Game Heroes is a title for the Play Station 3. It's an homage to The Legend of Zelda series and retro gaming in general. You play as a young hero trying to save the kingdom of Dotnia from some legendary evil. It references and parodies several gaming themes and clichés. It's not limited to gameplay either. The entire game is depicted as a 2D title that has been converted into high-definition 3D; old-school sprites now look like giant chunks of polished LEGO bricks. Though hardly groundbreaking, its humor and nostalgia appeal to older gamers.

This Shout Outs list is a secret to everybody.

Tropes used in 3D Dot Game Heroes include:

• Action Adventure: Much of game is based upon the first Legend of Zelda.
• Affectionate Parody: Due to being a parody of the two, the base game is a hybrid of The Legend of Zelda and Dragon Warrior.
• Ancestral Weapon: Your first sword belonged to your grandfather.
• Ascended Extra: The Shadow Mitsuo boss from Persona 4 that tried to breach the fourth wall. The style from that boss made itself into it's own game.
• Awesome but Impractical: Missile Towers
• Badass Princess: The female Royal class PC.
• BFS: The default swords are already powerful, but upgrading makes them ridiculous.
• Bow and Sword in Accord: One of the weapons you'll get early on.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: You can ask an NPC for an Infinite Money Code. He'll just mock you and say to earn it yourself.
  • Also happens throughout New Game+.
• But Thou Must!: Used, by name, by the Princess after you save her and refuse to take her along. She will continue to say this until you agree.
• Cap: You can only upgrade the swords so many times.
• Character Customization: The Character Editor lets you build and upload "any" 3D sprite you can think of.
• Classic Cheat Code: Entering the Konami Code hides the animation for your shield.
• Cool Sword: Swords are retractable and long enough to slash through the entire screen at full power.
• Death Mountain: Right down to the falling rocks and red color motif.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: You can upgrade your sword's length and width. The innuendo did not go unnoticed by the game developers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKTThEUweoU
• Everything's Better with Princesses: Princess Iris has gone missing. Good luck finding her.
• Evil Overlord: Dark King Onyx.
• Evil Sorcerer: Fuelle, the Dark Bishop.
• Excuse Plot
• Exposition Fairy: Lee provides most of the backstory.
• Fairy Companion: You start with Lee, and can gain two more.
• Fetch Quest: Several of the sidequests.
• Game Breaking Bug: If you install the game to your hard drive to reduce load times, it will randomly crash.
• Game Within a Game: Dash Circuit, Blockout and Block Defense.
• Generation Xerox: Dotnia's legendary savior was your grandfather. Guess what you get to do.
• Good Morning, Crono: The hero starts his/her adventure waking up at an inn.
• Gotta Catch Them All: The six sages and their respective orb powers. Also, the Beastiary.
• Graphics Induced Super Deformed: Intentionally invoked.
• Grappling Hook Pistol: The Hookshot Wire Rod knockoff.
• Guide Dang It: Good luck finding the Hookshot Anchor Rod upgrade on your own.
• Hammerspace: There's no way you'd be able carry your sword otherwise.
• Harder Than Hard: Spelunker Mode. Also qualifies quite literally as Nintendo Hard.
• Hello, Insert Name Here: Your character's name. You can also choose the name of custom heroes.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Of course!
• Heroic Mime: In keeping with the retro theme, the main character says nothing throughout the quest.
• Homage: To classic gaming in general, to The Legend of Zelda specifically.
• Hyperactive Sprite: All sprites walk on the spot, even when not moving.
• Impossibly Cool Weapon: Your swords can magically grow when you have full hearts.
• Improbable Weapon User: Aside from attacking with physics-defying swords, you can also wield a fish.
• Infinity+1 Sword: The Giga Sword becomes this if you spend a lot (and we mean a lot) of money upgrading it.
• Item Crafting: Makes your weapons even more ridiculous.
• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: Appearances by practically every Dragon Quest IV character (with slightly altered names), in addition to Dragon Quest II, Dragon Quest V, Final Fantasy II...
• Loading Screen: Complete with references to several classic retro games.
• The Maze: Getting to the second dungeon
• Metal Slime: The Crystal Slimes, which have a fair amount of HP and move entirely too fast.
• Money Spider: You can make a small fortune by killing bosses.
• Multiple Endings: Aside from dialogue differences based on your character class, saving the princess also factors in, but can't be done in the same run as the regular ending.
• New Game+
• Ninja Maid: You can play as one.
• Nintendo Hard: The first few dungeons aren't so bad. It's enough to make you lower your guard before the agonizingly difficult fifth dungeon, where the dungeon's gimmick requires you to start the dungeon completely over if you die. No, all those keys you found don't mean squat; the state of the switches dictates how you move through the dungeon, and it always resets on death. Oh, and the boss has entirely too much HP.
  • Not to mention that filling your Beastiary changes boss strategies into Endurance Battles (i.e. hitting them with a rather weak Book).
  • Getting the Wing Sword and Wyrm Sword. Pre-patch 1.01, the Wing Sword was quite possibly too hard to even qualify for this.
  • Spelunker Mode, for obvious reasons.
• No Bulk Discounts: Averted. Items such as torches, lamps, arrows and bombs are sold in packs, and the packs are always less expensive (per unit) than they are if purchased separately.
• No Hero Discount: You'll have to chop through countless minor enemies and grassy patches to afford everything you'll need.
• Nostalgia Filter: This game partly spoofs it by having old game mechanics in a 3D world, and through the backstory.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: Spelunker Mode.
• One-Winged Angel: Fuelle, the final boss, is this. After you beat him once, the Dark Orb turns him into an incarnation of the Dark King Onyx.
• Our Dragons Are Different: They're generally of the Western variety, but four Hero sprites are small dragons with interesting summaries (e.g. "too small to breathe fire or fly").
• Plot Coupon: The six orbs.
• Princesses Prefer Pink: Princess Iris has pink as one of her main colors.
• Puzzle Reset: For the most part, leaving the room and returning is enough.
• Saving the World: Or at least Dotnia.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Dark King Onyx.
• Shifting Sand Land: Have fun getting to the third dungeon.
• Shout-Out: In spades.
  • The loading screens are taken from Castlevania, Mega Man, Final Fantasy, and several others.
  • The Legend of Zelda: the plot, puzzles, enemies, weapons... Everything. Even the Cuccoos. Not to mention the quotes. It's dangerous to go alone! Take this! It's a secret to everybody!
  • Metroid: one of the NPCs mentions that you can't use the apples to do bomb jumps.
  • Final Fantasy: Lake Garland, which is near Colneria Village. Also, "Pam nepo ot 1L sserp!". And there's an inventor named Dic The title screen music is extremely similar to the Final Fantasy Crystal Theme. A version of Minwu from Final Fantasy II sacrifices himself to get you the Ultima Book. The player sees a recreation of the scene in Final Fantasy II where Josef saves Firion, Maria and Guy from a boulder; in Final Fantasy II, it killed him, but the hero can destroy the boulder to save Josef.
  • Metal Gear: a pre-dungeon message from Little (Big) Boss warning the player to beware of pit traps is word-for-word from the NES game.
    • Metal Gear Solid: Origin's line: "Kept you waiting, huh?"
  • Bionic Commando: the line about Superb (Super) Joe's location being discovered is word-for-word from the NES game.
  • Dragon Quest: a few enemies, like the Crystal (Metal) Slime. The music played when loading a file from the start screen is extremely similar to that used in every Dragon Quest game. The Dragon Quest "puff puff" Fanservice Running Gag appears here as "poof poof". King Block and the Small Blocks he trades items for reference the Mini/Small Medals that can be traded to one person (often a King) for rare item, appearing in all Dragon Quest games starting with Dragon Quest IV (and the remakes of Dragon Quest III).
    • Dragon Quest I: Fuelle asking you to join the dark side (and the game not letting you).
    • Dragon Quest II: people turned back from animals thanks to a Mirror of Truth.
    • Dragon Quest III: there's a town named Ortego (after "Ortega" the name of your father in Dragon Quest III), and a cave with an old man who asks you if you want to change your job (but doesn't let you here).
    • Dragon Quest IV: a slime in Raejack wants to become human someday, and achieves it. One of the random NPCs in Raejack is clearly intended to be Nara/Meena/Minea from Dragon Quest IV. She's a fortune-teller with an irresponsible sister, who's looking for a hero that's not you, but still detects a great light within you. A later sidequest outright confirms it, as her irresponsible sister turns out to be a dancer named Mary, while she's Mina. A merchant Tirenco (Torneko Taloon) looks for legendary armor. You'll even find a princess Alena on her way to a fighting championship accompanied by her tutor Brey and the priest Cristo... the princess later searches for a cure for her Cristo's illness. The hero has dream sequences about "Rosy", an elf whose tears are gems and who is bullied by humans for that reason and "Pizzaro", who vows to destroy all humans because of this.
    • Dragon Quest V: an NPC has to choose between marrying a rich girl or his childhood friend... for bonus points, his reasoning for each is lifted from Lucky Star: He actually likes the childhood friend, but he thinks the rich girl has a better spell list, which is exactly what Konata said about each.
    • Also, the Heroine playable character.
    • The male Hero class's standard ending is word-for-word from Dragon Quest I.
    • > An easy prey approaches!
  • Metal Wolf Chaos: one of the playable characters is a battle suit named President. Also you can talk to the king at one point in the game where he mentions that he's "...the king of the great kingdom of Dotnia!" to which the guard next to him responds, "Yes, Mr. President".
  • Darkstalkers: the Succubus playable character resembles Morrigan.
  • Tenchu: the Rikamaru, Ayame, Rin, and Tesshu playable characters.
  • Otogi: the Raikoh playable character.
  • Onore no Shinzuru Michi o Yuke: Shippu.
  • Fuuun Shinsengumi Bakumatsuden Portable: the Okita playable character.
  • Super Mario Sunshine: Life Up GET!
  • Demon's Souls: an entire cave which includes: Sticky White Stuff; examining a certain corpse will get you a Hero's Soul; a nearby NPC will chide you by saying, "Come on guys, this game isn't THAT hard...". There's even a readable message that you can recommend, which makes someone, somewhere regain their health.
    • Also, "I've got this Demons game, wanna trade? It's too hard!".
  • Armored Core: multiple NPCs mention how cool it'd be to have a 3D mech game. Also, W. Glint.
  • Next to the dead body in the first room of the Flame Temple is some writing lamenting how he accidentally wrote his own name in the "Satori Note". Oddly enough, "satori" is Japanese for "enlightenment"... so he's lamenting the fact that he's going to become enlightened.
• Spin Attack: While pressing the X button to thrust your sword out, you can press a different direction to swing your sword in that direction and (terrain permitting) hit enemies in a wider area.
• Stock Video Game Puzzle: Moving blocks, pressing switches, killing everything in the room, etc.
• Sword Beam: For the most part, having full HP empowers your sword to strike farther, wider, or harder than normal. But a few swords can shoot actual energy beams when used at full HP.
• Sword of Plot Advancement: One of the first things you acquire.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Tormenting the Cucoo Chicken wannabe.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Keep slashing the cucco Chicken. Then see if you'll make it out of Raejack alive.
• Video Game Settings: Everything from Octorok Octon-infested rivers to mummified golems in the desert dungeon.
• Video Game Tools: Boomerang, Bow and Arrow, Shield, Hookshot Wire Rod, Candle, Lantern, etc.
• Welcome to Corneria: Nearly all of the NPCs have fixed dialogue that doesn't change much as you progress through your quest. As a bonus, the name of the kingdom is Colneria.
• What Do You Mean, This Game Is Not Zelda?!: Ironically, reviewers and many people think this game is a rip-off of classic Zelda, when the game actually makes Homage to them.
• A Winner Is You: One of the Sages says this after the final battle.