Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime

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Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime is a Zelda-like action-adventure spinoff of the popular Dragon Quest series, released on the Nintendo DS in 2006. It's the sequel to Slime Morimori: Dragon Quest for the Game Boy Advance, which was never released outside Japan, though a Fan Translation was made.

In the quaint, faraway kingdom of Slimenia exists a Monster Town called Boingburg, which is populated completely by slime-like creatures. One day, almost completely out of nowhere, a mob of not-slimy monsters with tails called "the Plob" swoops in and kidnaps everybody. Everybody, that is...except for you, a slime nicknamed Rocket. Using your ability to stretch and bounce, your job is to infiltrate the Plob's various hideouts and rescue your friends (all 100 of them).

A third game has been released for the Nintendo 3DS.

Tropes used in Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime include:
  • Abnormal Ammo: Any item you can gets your ectoplasmic non-hands on can be used as ammo for your tank, including yourself.
  • Big Eater: The princess, whom you don't really save.
    • Heck she's so fat that her father states that a giant airship is bigger than her, before he backtracks and says a tank.
  • Blood Knight: Slival. It's his main motivation for joining the Plob in the first place.
  • Breakout Mook Character: For, obviously, the slime.
  • Continuity Nod: The Great Krak Pot, and Mount Krakatroda (which has a massive relief of ol' King Trode forging the alchemy pot in the main hall), are both such clear references to Dragon Quest VIII that it seems that D.Q.8 seems to be the ancient history of the world of the slimes, and that's not even pointing out Morimori the Slime. (Krak Pot is the alchemy pot of D.Q.8 given life, and also shows up in Dragon Quest IX).
  • Death of a Thousand Cuts: This is the main principle behind the Vulcan Cannon and it's ammunition, all of which does paltry damage on their own when shot out of the cannon. Placed on special slots for them, however, and loaded up with ammo, they deal 20 1, 2, or 3 damage hits, depending on how good the ammo is. They're unblockable as well and combining them with chilli peppers (which knocks all ammo fired out of the sky except the bullets, which don't count) ruins an enemy's day. It's small wonder there's only three Vulcan Cannons in the game.
  • Defeat Means Friendship: If you defeat and carry 30 enemies of one type back to town, you'll get them as a selectable partner during tank battles (and a commemorative statue in the museum). The statues get upgraded from bronze to silver to gold as you capture more of them. Even if you bring less than 30, they'll be hanging around Boingburg as if they were one of your pals.
  • Degraded Boss: Golem, who was the first boss in the previous game, has been reduced to mook status in this game.
  • Duct Tape for Everything: How Ducktor Cid fixes the Warrior Flute.
  • Embarrassing First Name: Boo Hooly.
  • Everything's Better with Princesses: Subverted by Gluttonella, the previously mentioned glutton.
  • Fang Thpeak: The impth, of courth.
  • Fat Bastard: Nobody, I repeat, NOBODY likes Gluttonella.
    • Averted with the king slimes. They note their own weight a lot, but are generally likeable.
  • The Family for the Whole Family: The Plob are a kid-friendly stand-in for the Mob, right down to their leader, Don Clawleone, a multi-tailed Platypunk who wears an eyepatch and uses crude gangster-speak. All of them, who are basically all the enemies in the game, are distinguished by their tails, hence their name in the original untranslated version, the Tails Gang.
  • Fastball Special: You can fire your allies or even yourself out of a cannon. Oftentimes, this is the only way to win.
  • Five-Man Band: A very subtle one.
    • The Hero - Rocket
    • The Lancer - Hooly
    • The Smart Guy - Swotsy
    • The Big Guy - Stony
    • The Chick - Bo
  • Funetik Aksent: Ducktor Cid.
  • Fusion Dance: Two tanks at the end.
  • Getting Crap Past the Radar:
    • Two items are the Bastard Sword and the Hell Scythe. These are presumably legitimate, non-dirty uses of the words, but it's still surprising they'd allow them in what amounts to a kids' game.
    • There's a tanuki statue in the Goonin's dojo, complete with traditional giant tanuki nuts.
  • The Goomba: Platypunks. Meanwhile the series' normal Goomba has A Day in The Slimelight.
  • Heart Container: Seeds of life.
  • Humans Are Cthulhu: The developers kept humans out of the game for the highly justified reason that they'd just go around killing off the slimes.
  • Hurricane of Puns: Well this is a Dragon Quest game. Special mention goes to the tree tank, named Chrono Twigger (a double pun, as Toriyama did the art for Chrono Trigger, and of course the Square Enix merger.)
  • Infinity+1 Sword: The Hero Sword.
  • Inept Mage: The Imps are this when the gamer tries to attack them.
  • Instant Awesome, Just Add Ninja: The three Goonin.
  • Item Crafting: Used to create newer and more powerful tank ammo.
  • Love Makes You Evil: Don Clawleone wanted the Warrior Flute to win the heart of one Chickadee Boo.
  • Mascot Mook: In this game, the Mascot Mook is the star of the show!
  • Metal Slime: No, the actual Metal Slimes don't count, as you're saving them, not fighting them. But there is a Metal Slime in this game - the Goody Bag. It appears very rarely in certain spots in every level, and if you manage to bring 30 of them back to town, like any other monster, you get to recruit it. It's a Disc One Nuke.
  • Monster Town
  • My Name Is Not Durwood: Gluttonella won't stop calling the Plobfather "John Claud Lonely" no matter how many times he tells her that's not his name.
  • Nice Hat: Slival's helmet, which is apparently 1000 times heavier than what most slimes can carry.
  • No Ending: Despite the fact that you rescued all the slimes and saved all of Slimenia from a Sealed Evil in a Can, the Plob is still active. Everyone from the Plob who battled you is still there raring to battle again.
  • No Indoor Voice: BIG DADDY SPEAKS IN ALL CAPS.
  • One-Winged Angel: Don Clawleone has a staff that turns him into a dragon which he uses when he's at half health. He calls himself "Don Dragone."
  • Orichalcum: Both in rock and orichalslime form.
  • Playable Epilogue
  • Playing Tennis With the Boss: The boss fight with Harvest Loon.
  • Punny Name: Everyone and everything. Even Rocket's name is a pun as well as he rockets around the game.
  • Reference Overdosed
  • Ridiculously Cute Critter: All the Slimes.
  • The Rival: Slival.
  • Too Dumb to Live: If you replay the final boss, you'll see that Princess Gluttonella is willing to resurrect a demon to get food Don Clawleone continuously denies he has.
  • Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: The aforementioned Princess.
    • One boss is fought by throwing the Cactiballs onto it's tongue. (Lickety Spit the Ggripevine.)
  • Saintly Church
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: There's an evil-looking navy flute that looks like the Warrior Flute, and if you play it, it will also summon a tank... except this tank is an incredibly evil and powerful tank bent on taking over the world that possesses Don Clawleone.
  • Sealed Evil in a Duel: Every time you go back to the Plobfather's room and beat him again, Gluttonella will come back and threaten to play said flute again if Don doesn't give him the food that she smells. She doesn't care that it could destroy the world, because she knows that you'll beat it again. Oh, and there is no food.
  • Ship Tease: If you talk to the townslimes, quite a few of them display affection for Rocket.
  • Shout-Out: Lots, mostly to Final Fantasy games. There's the obvious Cid tradition going on with Ducktor Cid. Squashed Cactiballs look a lot like Cactuars. And, there's a giant tree tank named the Chrono Twigger, including a similar font. There's also a boss named Harvest Loon.

"Ouch! Oh, no. I think I've broken something. Yes, that definitely feels spongy there..."

  • Tactical Suicide Boss: The Pot Belly wouldn't be in danger from you if he didn't keep throwing out random items from the Krak Pot that you kept throwing back.
  • Tank Goodness: About one-third of the game's major battles are done using a giant tank that you find.
  • Worthy Opponent: Rocket, to Slival.

The first game uses the following tropes:

  • Balloon Belly: Dragon Jr. does this during his boss battle.
  • Big Damn Hero: The entire town during the penultimate battle.
  • Big Eater: While not to the extent of Gluttonella, Bo swallows three cooked chickens in a single bite during the end credits.
  • Involuntary Shapeshifting: The game starts off with Hooly turning you into a Platypunk.
    • He also transforms you for the Bonus Boss battle against him once you've collected all 100 slimes.
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