It revolves around Ace's attempts to foil the grandiose animal poaching scheme undertaken by a number of his old enemies. It takes him to places all over the world, including Alaska and Bavaria.
Typical for the era, the game features 2D cartoon graphics and adult humor reminiscent of Leisure Suit Larry.
The game is currently abandonware and can be downloaded here
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The game provides examples of:
- Adaptational Nationality: While the creator of Captain Nemo character was French, the character himself was not. His nationality was left vague in the original book, but eventually revealed in its sequel, where it turned out he used to be an Indian prince who fled from his country after failed uprising against the British. Interestingly, Verne initially intended to make Nemo a Pole and a veteran of equally fruitless uprising against Russians (Poland was, at the time, another nation under foreign occupation just like India), but the publisher forced him to change it for political reasons. Nevertheless, Captain Nemo was never French and never meant to be — so the French vibes all around the Nautilus like the portraits of his supposed relatives (whose last names, by the way, are all "Nemo" — even though that was not his real name at all) are totally out of place.
- Art-Style Dissonance: The game features cartoony graphics in the style of the Ace Ventura animated series — but also plenty of adult humor.
- Bag of Spilling: The inventory gets cleaned out between each major segment.
- Batman Cold Open: The game begins with Ace about to foil a bald eagle poaching scheme by The Griffon.
- Big Ball of Violence: The rather one-sided fight between Ace and Vanilla is shown this way.
- Bond Villain Stupidity:
- Jacques successfully captures Ace when the latter boards his submarine, then simply leaves him trapped on the lower decks instead of finishing him off. This gives Ace time to locate his hideout and devise an escape plan.
- Lardus also refuses to simply kill Ace immediately, but at least keeps him locked up. When he does get around to putting Ace in a Death Trap, he makes the mistake of leaving him unattended, allowing Spike to step in and save him.
- Dark Action Girl: Vanilla Sundae, who serves Phatteus Lardus loyally and has zero trouble beating Ace up.
- Deadly Dodging: The final puzzle requires Ace to evade Lardus' laser gun long enough to destroy the castle's support columns.
- Delivery Guy Infiltration: One way to slip past the bouncer after the Alaska case is by doing this.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The way Ace obtains the trust of the Alaskan tribe is performing an act of nose rubbing with two of the tribeswomen. The act takes place offscreen with a lot of suggestive moaning and sounds from all parties.
- Exposed to the Elements: Downplayed. Ace is still wearing his usual short-sleeved garb up in Alaska, but he dons a fur coat when riding a snowmobile across the landscape.
- Failure Is the Only Option: After a fashion. In order to access Lardus' website, you need to enter the login and a password. The thing is, you may come up with whatever you want — but no matter what will you type, in the end it will turn out that the password was incorrect and thus alerted Lardus to Ace's plans.
- Fat Bastard: Phatteus Lardus is very obese and very evil.
- Faux Affably Evil:
- Vanilla Sundae, the right-hand woman of Phatteus Lardus. She appears all nice and friendly to Ace, but in reality, she is just as ruthless as her boss.
- Likewise, Lardus himself is unvariably polite towards Ace when taking him on a trip around his castle — even shrugging off constant insults from Ventura — but still shows his true colors when the hero rejects his offer and has him imprisoned and killed not just without a shred of remorse, but with obvious satisfaction.
- The Ghost: Atrocia Odora never directly appears in the game in spite of being one of the three antagonists.
- Guide Dang It!: The game has a puzzle where you need to assemble several elements into a totem. No hints are given. You're supposed to understand the themes of the game and guess that it's an approximation of a sexy woman.
- Hamster-Wheel Power: The kidnapped sled dogs in the second case are used in this manner.
- Harmless Electrocution: Ace get hit by lightning or zapped by electric eels, but it just results in X-Ray Sparks.
- Have a Gay Old Time: The old-school appearance of Jacques' submarine has Ace joke they've been transported back to "the gay 1890s".
- Human Cannonball: Ace defeats Vanilla by having Spike knock her out, then shoving her in the prop cannon of Lardus' opera and firing her into the restroom. Which happened to be visited by Lardus just prior, with bad case of gases and diarrhea.
- Just Between You and Me: The bad guys are fond of telling Ace about their plans when they think he's at their mercy.
- Laxative Prank: While watching the opera, Lardus suddenly has to excuse himself and hurriedly goes into the bathroom. It turns out it's because Spike slipped laxatives into his caviar.
- Legion of Doom: Three of the villains from the original animated series (namely Jacques DuManque, Atrocia Odora and Phatteus Lardus) team up in a grandiouse animal poaching scheme.
- Living Battery: Ace has to use electric eels to restore the power to his apartment between the first and second case.
- No, Mister Bond, I Expect You To Dine: Jacques has a spread of seafood ready when he meets Ace on his submarine, presumably to torment him with what was done to the sea animals.
- Polite Villains, Rude Heroes: In the final chapter, Phatteus Lardus remains polite towards Ace when giving him a walk through the castle while the latter won't stop insulting or otherwise trolling the adversary.
- Pretentious Pronunciation: Lardus insists his name is pronounced "Lar-day-us" when Ace says it as "Lardass".
- Punny Name: All major villains have those, just like in the animated series.
- Jacques is the least obvious one for non-poliglotes — his last name "DuManque" pretty much translates to "De Lack" or "De Shortage".
- Atrocia Odora is an evident play on words "atrocity" and "odour".
- Phatteus Lardus is an equally obvious pun on "fat" and "lard", both regarding his girth.
- Red Herring: Plenty of them.
- In the Nautilus part of the game, you have a tube of hair gel in your inventory, but it's not used anywhere.
- Also in the Nautilus part, in Jacques' quarters you can find a pearl — which also has no use in the game.
- In the Alaska part, once you open the satellite dish storage panel, you can pick up a screwdriver — but you don't get to use it either.
- After you return home from Alaska, you can try to get through the bouncer into your flat either by giving him money, or by using the pizza delivery disguise or the sweepstakes disguise. The money and the pizza delivery disguise will both work — but the sweepstakes disguise will not.
- Ruder and Cruder: The overall tone is a bit more mature than the all-ages friendly cartoon with stronger Toilet Humor, a scene that plays out with noises out of a sex scene and Ace getting to curse a bit.
- "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: In a rare heroic example, Ace poses as the ghost of Captain Nemo to scare away Jacques DuManque.
- Sidequest: In the Alaska part, the Russian soldier camp sequence is completely irrelevant to the story, and it's perfectly possible to complete the game without visiting it.
- Submarine Pirates: Jacques DuManque, one of the villains involved in animal poaching, has a submarine named Nautilus. Yes, that one.
- Take Your Time: After driving Ace to Lardus' castle, Vanilla leaves him alone in the room and announces the tailor that's going to make his outfit (the one Ventura ordered simply as a bait the villains) will visit him soon. In reality, you may wait as long as you want and check out all the... exhibits inside, but Lardus won't arrive until you do what is going to be necessary to progress further in the game — namely pick up the access card and unlock the window shutter.
- Toilet Humor: There are a number of fart jokes throughout and a bit involving Yellow Snow in the Alaska segment.
- We Can Rule Together: It turns out Phatteus Lardus invited Ace into his castle — instead of, you know, just having him killed — because he thought he could actually convince the hero to join him and offer his knowledge about rare and endangered animals to help hunt them down even more effectively. After Ventura tells him in no uncertain terms where he can shove that offer, Lardus drops all pretense of courtesy towards his guest.
- We Will Meet Again: Lardus swears revenge on Ace for destroying his castle.
- You Are Fat: Ace makes a few jokes at Phatteus Lardus' weight when they meet.