Video Game / Vectorman

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Vectorman is a 1995 Run-and-Gun game developed by Blue Sky Software and published by Sega for the Sega Genesis.

Well, it looks like the environmentalists were right. In the year 2049, Earth has become inhospitable to human life, thanks to all the littering and pollution, forcing humanity to escape to space in order to find new homes to inhabit. They leave mechanical "Orbots" behind on Earth, tasking them with cleaning up the planet for their return. (Sound familiar?)

Raster, a high-level Orbot who watches the cleanup through a planetwide computer network, is accidentally attached to a working nuclear bomb by a lesser Orbot and subsequently goes insane, becoming an evil dictator named Warhead. He declares himself ruler of Earth, brainwashes all of the other Orbots, and begins preparing to execute any humans who dare return to Earth... not so fast!

Enter Vectorman, a humble Orbot in charge of cleaning up toxic sludge by discharging it into the sun, and since he was off-planet at the time of Warhead's takeover, he was not affected by his brainwashing. As he lands on Earth after his last trip, he finds chaos and confusion. Being the only Orbot left capable of challenging Warhead's rule, Vectorman takes it upon himself to destroy Warhead and restore peace to the Earth, destroying as many of Warhead's followers as he can.

Aside from the very stunning pre-rendered graphics, part of the game's appeal was the entire design of the "Orbots" themselves - characters made out of several individual sprites (which, as the name indicates, were mostly spherical in nature) that could be rearranged in a variety of different ways. The gameplay played this up, allowing Vectorman to transform into a variety of different forms, arranging his orb sprites so that he resembled things like scorpions or tanks instead of a humanoid, each form having their own gameplay quirks (or even entire stages dedicated to them).

The game is followed by a sequel, Vectorman 2.

Tropes featured in Vectorman include:

• 1-Up: The player can gain extra lives by collecting pickups that are in a form of "1UP" text.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Warhead, the villain of the first game, was a peaceful managerial robot overseeing the decontamination of Earth, until improper maintenance lead to his head being replaced with a nuclear weapon and in turn, him becoming a genocidal maniac; converting all the other Orbots (again, meant to decontaminate the Earth for the benefit of mankind) to its cause. Averted in the case of Vectorman.
• Big Bad: Warhead, an Orbot who rules over Earth and plans to keep it inhospitable for humanity.
• Cheat Code: The code for moving anywhere you want is appropriately C-A-L-L-A-C-A-B (L meaning Left on the d-pad).
• Chiaroscuro: Quite a few environments feature intense contrasts in lighting. Vectorman's sprite darkens or brightens to reflect this. Under the right circumstances, just using the Arm Cannon can generate a dramatically half-lit sprite.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Finding a 10x power-up and then collecting a 1-up before it runs out.
• Directionally Solid Platforms: You can jump onto the majority of platforms from underneath.
• Double Jump: Jet Boots, mounted on Vectorman's feet can be used to gain an extra boost mid-air. Also a useful weapon.
• Enemy Roll Call: All the enemies are listed in the closing credits if you beat the game without cheating.
• Every 10,000 Points: The score needed for your first extra life is 10K, 20K, or 40K, depending on difficulty level. Each additional extra life requires double the score compared to the previous.
• Fat Flex: A variant; as Vectorman is an Orbot, sometimes when he does his Victory Pose, his chest falls and he pulls it back up.
• Flash of Pain: Vectorman's blaster makes bosses lighten up... briefly.
• Floating Limbs: The Orbots' limbs consist of floating orbs. As an animation for leaning on a wall, Vectorman in particular can pop out two orbs on its arm, and juggle them with the hand on that arm before tossing them back in position.
• Funnel Cloud Journey: The final stage (aptly named "Twist and Shout") and Final Boss battle involves being sucked up a tornado, dodging and/or blasting furniture, before reaching the top of the funnel cloud, where you balance on roofs while shooting Warhead.
• Hand Blast: Vectorman's main weapon is a laser fired from his hands.
• Harder Than Hard: "Insane" really can be, given the one life and three hits (those can be gone in a flash). "Wicked" for the second game fills this slot better, thanks to the overhard enemies.
• Heart Container: The "Max Health" power-up fills your health meter and adds another HP to your limit.
• Hornet Hole: It's not really a beehive, but levels 21-22 of the second game take place in some kind of egg-filled insect nest complex, which also has some Eternal Engine shades. The eggs that hatch contain enemies from every part of the game.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: There's "Lame", "Wicked" and "Insane". Replaced in the second game by "Lame", "Cool", and "Wicked".
• Lens Flare: Probably one of the earliest examples of lens flare in a video game occurs during one of the ice levels.
• Locomotive Level: Level 2 of the first game has Vectorman morph into a train to battle Warhead on a set of levitating tracks.
• Logo Joke:
  • The first game's Sega splash screen has Vectorman landing on the Sega logo and nearly losing his balance. You can actually control him fully here and there's a semi-hidden TV in the top right that has a smart bomb you can use to short out the logo, as well as a level skip minigame you can trigger.
  • Vectorman nudges the letters in the word "Genesis" on the box art.
• Mini-Game Credits: In the first game, you can move Vectorman around the startup "Sega" screen. You can even damage it. It even functions as a sort of level skip. Bump into the logo and shoot it enough times and you get a letter-catching minigame. Catch enough and you can start the game on later levels.
• Never Trust a Title: Vectorman is not a Vector Game.
• No Fair Cheating: Use a single code anywhere in the first game, and you can't see the credits. This was doubly important when the $25,000 grand prize was the factor.
  "Congratulations! Now play without cheating."
• Numerical Hard: In addition to how hard the rest of the game is, your difficulty selection determines the score needed to get an extra life (10K, 20K, or 40K to start and doubling with each additional extra life, as noted above), the number of lives you start with (4 on Lame mode, 2 otherwise), and the number of HP you get per life at the start of the game (5, 4, or 3).
• One-Hit Polykill: The first game has a power-up called the bolo gun, a slow-moving shot which "crashes through enemy Orbots" and continues going through any enemies until offscreen or hitting a wall. It also has the possibility to push the enemy and hit it multiple times.
• Palette Swap:
  • The first game uses several palette-swapped versions of the first level's tileset in subsequent levels.
  • This also happens in both games whenever Vectorman's sprite changes palette due to lighting, e.g. becoming dark when in shadow or being brightly lit by something nearby. The palette swapping of these things may have been intentional, or it may be a Good Bad Bug.
• Power Copying: Most of the transformations in the second game come from power-ups dropped by enemies.
• Pun-Based Creature: The sixteenth level of Vectorman 2, "Recycle or Die", has giant fire ants as enemies, which attack by shooting fireballs. When Vectorman defeats them, they leave behind power-ups that temporarily allow him to shoot fireballs as well.
• Punny Name:
  • Many of the level names are nods to (or puns on) '90s pop culture.
  • Raster and Vector are graphics types. Raster is things like photographs, videos, etc, and vector is CGI dots-and-lines. Raster graphics break up into pixels when viewed too closely/blown up too big; vectors don't. The villain (originally) being named Raster before getting too big for his breeches and fighting the incorruptible protagonist Vector, may be a reference to this.
• Scenery Porn: The first game tried to add as many background effects as possible including texture warping and lightning strikes.
• Score Multiplier: One of the items doubles the amount of points yielded.
• Scoring Points: Score counter is increased by destroying enemies and collecting objects.
• Screen Shake: Destruction of objects cause the screen to shake violently.
• Sentry Gun: Sentry guns in Vectorman come in form of robotic arms with a projectile-shooting end are mounted on surfaces.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The first game has two examples. The first one, "Day 4: Absolute Zero" combines this trope with Under the Sea, as Vectorman is at the bottom of an iceberg and must climb his way up to the top. Once he reaches the top, he must battle a robotic pelican and a robotic polar bear. The second, "Day 5: Arctic Ridge" has Vectorman battle enemies as he makes his way through an arctic pipeline.
• Spike Balls of Doom: The first level's boss has spiked metal spheres attached to its wings.
• This Is a Drill: One of Vectorman's powerup forms. Used to break through certain floors.
• Timed Mission: Levels must be completed within a time limit. Certain pickups extend the timer.
• Trash of the Titans: In the original game, by the year 2049, the Earth has become so overrun with pollution that human civilization has fled to the stars, leaving the Orbots to clean the Earth.
• Vector Game: Subverted. The whole reason behind the game's title is because it looks like a vector game. But, ironically, the game actually didn't use vector graphics, but rather pre-rendered 2D sprites similar to Donkey Kong Country. His initial rival, "Raster," is named for an inversion of this.