Scooby-Doo Mystery is a Sega Genesis video game based on the long-running Scooby-Doo franchise. The game was developed by Illusions Game Company and published by Acclaim and Sunsoft, and belongs to the adventure genre, with a point-and-click interface.
The game is divided into two separate episodes (or "mysteries"), with no connection to each other. The first one is Blake's Hotel: Daphne's uncle owns a hotel that is being haunted by the ghost of a long dead Native American chieftain. The second one is Ha-Ha Carnival: a local amusement park is being sabotaged, and the main suspect is a ghost clown.
General tropes:
- Adaptational Jerkass: Most of Velma's lines are complaining about Shaggy and Scooby only wanting to eat and not take any chances.
- Cowardice Callout:
- Velma's few lines are chiding Shaggy and Scooby for not wanting to take any risks.
- Shaggy hypocritically calls Scooby a coward when the latter refuses to investigate the Hall of Mirrors in "Ha-Ha Carnival".
- Minimalist Cast: The player controls Shaggy, while Scooby wanders about the screen pointing to possible clues. The rest of the gang (Daphne, Fred and Velma) disappear off screen and only return in the mystery's resolution. Apart from them, the only characters that appear during the mystery are either a Red Herring or the Big Bad.
- Password Save: The game provides the player with overly long passwords full of letters and symbols. Some specific passwords lead directly to the finale of each mystery, and the player just has to perform a certain action to finish the game.
- Point-and-Click Game: Although it was developed for the Genesis and the player can use the 4-direction cursor to control Shaggy, the interface
is akin to a point-and-click game, with a section containing commands (like "use", "talk" and "take"), and an inventory space accessible via the "C" button on the controller. - "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: This being the Trope Namer and all, it's really not much of a spoiler that the "ghosts" are crooks in disguise.
Blake's Hotel shows the following tropes:
- Abandoned Mine: Behind the wine rack in the basement, there is an abandoned mine that leads further into a maze entrance.
- Bridge Logic: After a bear scratches its back on a nearby totem pole, the pole is struck down and serves as a makeshift bridge for Shaggy to access a small wharf with a fishing rod.
- Christmas: The mystery does happen in wintertime, and there are even Christmas lights decorating the front of the hotel which are used as part of a puzzle later in the game. Otherwise, the season is incidental to the mystery at hand.
- Destroy the Evidence: In the kitchen, Shaggy spies through a peephole people in front of the fireplace, a fat man and a tall, thin man. The thin man gives the fat man a piece of paper, which the latter crumples and tosses it into the fire. The crumpled note is used to open the wine rack in the basement.
- Distressed Dude: Uncle Blake was captured by the villains and is being kept in a pillory, in a hole in the "The Dungeon" area, past the mine and the maze.
- Dumbwaiter Ride: During the chase sequence on the second floor, Shaggy and Scooby use a dumbwaiter as a hiding spot. The dumbwaiter is also used to access the back portion of the kitchen, where there are a fridge, the microwave and the oven.
- Expospeak Gag: Examining the snowman outside the hotel will prompt Shaggy to call it 'an accreted crystalline water homologue'. He also calls some gasoline 'liquid petrolium product'.
- Hell Hotel: Invoked by the villains. The hotel was not haunted at first, but sightings of a dead Native chieftain have begun to scare away the guests.
- Inconvenient Itch: Shaggy disturbs a hibernating bear with a heater, then uses a poison oak leaf on it. The bear becomes afflicted with a sudden itch and scratches its back on a nearby totem pole. This bridges a river to another screen.
- Indian Burial Ground: According to Uncle Blake's Infodump in the opening cutscene, the area where the hotel is located was previously an Indian burial ground, and the ghost haunting the place is called Ancient Chieftain, who is rumored to be buried nearby.
- Out-of-Character Moment: Shaggy isn't really the kind of guy to be giving the Expospeak Gag.
- Scooby-Dooby Doors: Scooby and Shaggy are chased by the ghost chieftain on the second floor. After going through every door, the door to the gardener's room, at the end of the hall, is open to explore.
- Secret Path: A secret trapdoor in Uncle Blake's office leads to the basement.
- Secret Underground Passage: In the hotel's basement, Scooby and Shaggy discover a hidden passageway behind a wine bottle rack.
- Shout-Out: The magic word used to activate the statue is 'XYZZY'.
- Violation of Common Sense: To thaw a cowbell frozen in a block of ice, it has to be put in a microwave. Yes, metal in a microwave. Shaggy was lucky he only got some Harmless Electrocution instead of having the whole lodge burn down.
Ha-Ha Carnival shows the following tropes:
- Amusement Park of Doom: The main setting of the mystery is an amusement park.
- Balloonacy: When the "test your strength" game magnet is launched onto the ferris wheel, Shaggy sends Scooby up with a balloon to get it.
- Cannot Tell a Joke: The darts game guys apparently suffers from this, which is why all his applications to be the carnival clown were rejected.
- Car Fu: More like bumper car fu: in a minigame, the ghost clown drives a bumper car against the player. The player must bump their car against the clown's and win the minigame.
- Celebrity Paradox: The guy running the roller coaster's playing a video game about Scooby Doo while he waits for customers, something that surprises the actual Shaggy and Scooby.
- Cheating the Rigged Game: Right next to the beginning of the episode, a "test your strength" is available. Shaggy (the player) has to break the game by using a pole, since it is already rigged to begin with (by a hidden magnet).
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: Once the clown's caught, instead of handing him over to the police, he's tied to the "Test Your Strength" Game, which the carnival's strongman hits, launching him into space.
- Developer's Foresight: If you look into the camera obscura at the arcade and see the clown, when it cuts back, you'll probably notice the surly guy at the darts game is gone. Which makes sense, because that's who the clown actually is.
- Distressed Dude: The carnival/amusement park's administrator was captured, placed inside a coffin in the Haunted House attraction, and wrapped in mummy bandages.
- Hall of Mirrors: Part of the amusement park setting and one of the places where the ghost clown appears.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: In the mirror funhouse, the player can use a mirror to frighten the ghost clown with its own reflection.
- Interface Screw: On the funhouse's spinning platform, the player's directional controls are inverted: "right" leads to the left exit; "down" to the middle exit; and "left" to the right one.
- Jerkass: The rude, thuggish guy working the dart game is actually the clown. This explains why he was repeatedly denied the position of a someone who was supposed to make park guests laugh.
- Lost at Sea: Of a minor scale. Daphne, Fred and Velma are on a boat adrift just some miles away from the amusement park's wharf.
- Message in a Bottle: One from the park administrator can found floating in the waters in the park.
- Mirror Monster: The ghost clown attempts this in the hall of mirrors: he hides inside one of the rightmost mirrors in the room, and can frighten Shaggy and Scooby if they approach it.
- Monster Clown: The main villain is a ghost clown.
- Out-of-Character Moment: Shouldn't Fred be the one setting the trap instead of leaving Shaggy and Scooby to do it while the rest of the gang gets the authorities?
- Spectacular Spinning: Inside the clown-faced funhouse, Shaggy and Scooby find themselves on a spinning wheel. Behind them, there are three exits: one leads to the bumper cars, another to the hall of mirrors, and the third to a mad scientist's laboratory with a sleeping Frankenstein's monster on a gurney.
- "Test Your Strength" Game: Right next to the beginning of the episode, a "test your strength" is available. Shaggy (the player) has to break the game by using a pole, since it is already rigged to begin with (by a hidden magnet).
- What the Hell, Player?: Try to leap off the bungee jump without attaching the harness and Shaggy will yell at the player for attempting that.
- You Must Be This Tall to Ride: The kid is prohibitied from riding the roller coaster because of this. The player needs to snitch some boots to make the kid taller.