StarTropics is an action-adventure video game released by Nintendo in 1990. The main character, Mike Jones, is an all-American teenager who visits the tropical C-Island to see his uncle. Mike finds out upon his arrival that his uncle is missing, so he sets out on a rescue mission, with his trusty yo-yo as his only weapon.

After a short while, Mike discovers that his uncle was abducted by aliens. After a series of sidequests involving talking dolphins, witch doctors, a giant octopus, an obstinate parrot, and zombie pirates, Mike reunites with his uncle - who has been trying to save a bunch of good aliens from an evil alien overlord named Zoda. Mike climbs aboard the alien craft and defeats Zoda, rescuing an alien princess and a bunch of alien kids in the process.

The game has overhead-scrolling dungeon crawlers reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda with a few twists, such as the ability to jump. The first game features a distinctive control system where all player and enemy movements take place on a grid, limiting where you can stop or turn but making it easy to line up jumps and attacks.

StarTropics is available on the Virtual Console on the Wii and Wii U for those who bought them, and the first game was included on the NES Classic mini-console as well as being part of the NES Online package for Nintendo Switch.

The game is followed by a sequel, Zoda's Revenge: StarTropics II.

StarTropics contains examples of:

• The All-American Boy: Mike's All-American-ness — contrasted with and found strange by the natives of the islands he's visiting (first game) and the people of different eras (second game) — is a large part of the game's humor and tone.
• Badass Normal: Mike is an average American teenager who happens to be the captain for his high school baseball team and was in the middle of visiting his uncle before being thrust into the current situation. In spite of his inexperience Mike is willing to go through countless trials fighting monsters and solving puzzles to save his uncle and after discovering the truth behind the monsters put a stop to the true enemy behind the influx of said monsters, he does this all with equipment that only a 15-year old would have access to such as bats, baseballs, and yo-yos.
• Bag of Spilling: Because losing everything between games isn't annoying enough, you lose all of your medicine, special weapons, and bonus lives between levels. Your heart meter is 'restored' to three, the bare minimum, but anything above that remains empty. This is especially obnoxious at the start of Chapter 8, which begins with a boss fight and no way to heal before it.
• Batter Up!: The second special weapon Mike acquires. With this, you can swat at enemies surrounding you. "Horse Hides" (slang for baseballs) are useful only against one boss, Broken Joe.
• Beauty Contest: You meet both Miss Coralcola and Miss Miracola. Mike can impress the latter by claiming she's more beautiful ("Smart and cute!").
• Big Bad: Zoda serves as the main antagonist.
• Blob Monster: Through his adventures, Mike encounters blob-like enemies.
• Bookends: The first and final scenes take place on C-Island.
• Boring Return Journey: After acquiring the scroll to awaken Bananette in Miracola from the mountain hermit, Mike heads back to town off-screen, which is truly a mercy considering how many dungeons chapter 3 involved.
• Boss-Arena Idiocy: Magma the Fierce, the first boss of Chapter 3 in the first game, appears to be an efreet, or fire genie. While the rest of that section of the cave was filled with lava, this guy decides to make his lair in the one room filled with water. Furthermore, he attacks you on a platform made of tiles, and includes switches that will collapse the platform and drop him in the water. This is the only way to defeat him - he's completely immune to all of Mike's weapons, and would have been invincible had he just made his lair in a room with lava in it!
• Boss Rush: Chapter 8 starts with a battle against Zoda, a few corridors with enemies, a boss battle against the ship's engine, a couple more corridors, and then a battle against Zoda in his true form. And if you die at any point in this, you get to do it all over again.
• Brand X: The pizza chain that Cleopatra's pizza comes from is called Caesar's Hut (a combination of Little Caesar's and Pizza Hut.)
• Brats with Slingshots: Projectile weapon of choice in Miracola's dungeon.
• Brick Joke: Two characters in the game^note A woman who claims to be the second oldest person in the islands and Dr. Jones if you talk to him again after he tells his story accuse Mike of having "bananas in your ears". In the beginning of Chapter 8, you jam bananas in your ears so you can't hear Zoda's gloating. In the ending sequence of the second game a character mentions that you still have them in your ears. That might be a Plot Hole, though, since he's seen taking them out at the end of the first game.
• But Thou Must!: Whenever Mike is asked if he'll do something, the game will not proceed until you give the answer the game is looking for. So literally that if you're given a yes/no question and you answer "no", the game will just repeat the question over and over and over and over until you say "yes". A few times, notably talking to King Arthur in the sequel, you can say no, but this just means you can't progress at all. You have to walk outside, come back in, and ask him again.
• Call-Back: In Chapter 6, you can find an apple in a hidden room. The game says "It's delicious! But nothing happens!".
• Cats Are Mean: Cleopatra's pet. It apparently starts chewing on people if left hungry.
• Chekhov's Skill: Mike is referred to as an ace pitcher frequently, this skill is required to defeat a boss. It's also apparently why he's so good at using the yo-yo as a weapon.
• Collision Damage: Touching any enemy or traps will do (often severe) damage. In the first game, Mini Bosses and above will kill you instantly on contact. It's made worse by the near total lack of after-hit-invincibility in both games, allowing enemies to land multiple hits on you in rapid succession.
• Continuing Is Painful: If you die at any point, you restart with only 3 hearts. This wouldn't be so bad if hearts weren't so hard to find and your weapon is weak unless you're at high health. You also lose any medicine and special items you had when you died, and depending on where the game places you back, you generally won't have a chance to recover them. Never is this more apparent than on the brutal difficulty final level due to Checkpoint Starvation.
• Copy Protection: StarTropics uses the infamous letter that comes packaged with the game, which must be dipped in water to reveal a crucial code needed to continue past Chapter 4.
• Creator Provincialism: Mike's hometown is in Washington State, where Nintendo of America is located.
• Critical Annoyance: The game had a soft beep that fired off every second or so or if you did some action, which is a strange case of this not being (as) annoying.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Movement feels stiff because every entity is anchored to a tile grid. This complicates trying to avoid projectiles and obstacles but guarantees that you'll always jump a set number of spaces. However, in the second game, movement is no longer rigidly enforced by a tile grid which opens the possibility of dying by undershooting or veering off-course when you jump.
• Disguised in Drag: Mike, when he has to access Shecola.
• Dismantled MacGuffin: The 3 Magic Cubes.
• 11th-Hour Superpower: The Super Nova weapon that you obtain partway through the penultimate chapter. It’s more of a Tenth-Hour Superpower in practice, as you still have two levels to fight through before the Final Boss.
• Epic Flail: The first upgrade of the yo-yo is a flail called Shooting Star and after collecting the second upgrade, the Shooting Star turns into the Super Nova.
• Enter Solution Here: StarTropics famously included a secret hidden frequency required to beat the game, hidden via Invisible Writing on the letter that came with the game and manual. A code you need to complete the game. Back in the day, if you threw this letter away, lost it, or didn't have the issue of Nintendo Power with the walkthrough — you were out of luck. The Wii U Virtual Console port of the game included the hidden code within its digital manual. Some gamers were "divided" about its presentation, but appreciated the effort. Unfortunately, due to an oversight on Nintendo's part, the Switch version of StarTropics does not include it.
• Fake Difficulty: The first game occasionally tricks you into jumping to the next screen...directly into a pool of water/lava.
• Fission Mailed: Mike escapes from Zoda's exploding spaceship, only to end up in the middle of the ocean. Mike briefly swims towards the left of the screen, then struggles to keep afloat. His head goes under, and you hear the usual "you just lost a life" jingle. The screen fades out... and then you're suddenly back Where It All Began, courtesy of the dolphin from Chapter 2.
• Flash Step: The Spike Shoes cause Mike to teleport behind every enemy onscreen and kick them. In practice, the item acts as a weak Smart Bomb.
• Foreshadowing: The chapter that features the Swallowed Whole incident listed below has the player visit an island shaped like a fish with its mouth open before it happens; The island's dock is positioned directly in front of the "fish"'s mouth.
• Friendly, Playful Dolphin: Mike rescues a baby dolphin so that the mother can help guide him in one chapter. They return the favor by saving Mike's life at the end of the game.
• Frothy Mugs of Water: The saloon in the Old West in the second game apparently pours ginger ale instead of booze of any sort.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • The graveyard/cemetery/Ghost Village dungeon seems like it just goes around in circles, with paths that actually lead out of the dungeon. So how do you progress? In one room, after defeating a slug, you have to notice a very slight dark discoloration near the wall on the right—you then need to press up against it to head to the next room. This is not an easy thing to see or notice.
  • Unless you find it by accident, have the manual, or search online, you won't know that, to reach your extra items (Medicine Jars, etc.), you have to pause and then press down.
  • The part of Chapter 5 (first game) where you have to play the giant pipe organ. The game's hint tells you which notes to play - but in solfège. For players who don't know solfège, it's a guessing game.
  • It's made slightly more cryptic by the fact that the musical tune that must be played is "Do Mi So Fa Do Mi" which has been warped by generations of parrots playing the telephone game into the final "Do me so far, do me." Or possibly a translation error based on the translator not being familiar with solfège. Also, you have to exit and enter the tower again if you mess up.^note For those that STILL find this clue to be too ambiguous, the simplest translation is: 135413.
  • Before the Internet made walkthroughs widely available, you were screwed if you didn't have the physical letter from Dr. J that came with the game. And if you couldn't decipher the clue, you were screwed even if you did have it. Fortunately, the Wii Virtual Console release hides the code in the Operations Guide, fittingly on the page that contains Dr. J's letter. The same can't be said for the NES Classic Edition and Nintendo Switch Online versions, though.
  • Broken Joe is only vulnerable to the baseball, and then only when his mouth is open. The baseball doesn't even have an effect on any other monster, and it's likely that players will have already deemed them useless and never think to try them - or try them but hit him with his mouth closed and assume they're as ineffective against him as they are against everything else.
• Heart Container: In a direct lift from The Legend of Zelda I; you get more either by finishing dungeons or finding them in the overworld. It's even possible to farm one in a later chapter through the use of abusing continues.
• Heroic Dolphin: Mike rescues a dolphin in the second chapter. It returns the favor at the end of the game.
• Indy Escape: The Megatons parody this by virtue of being giant bowling balls.
• Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence:
  • The game barriers that appear extremely short, but nonetheless cannot be jumped over.
  • A partial example with the various square platforms that you have to jump onto, even if they're right next to each other. This is used against you at one point when you're put in a room with the floor consisting entirely of platforms and full of mummies you'd be able to easily outrun if you could just walk normally.
• Invisible Monsters: Several ghosts, including the boss in the page picture, are invisible until exposed with a Magic Rod.
• It's Up to You: When you finally meet Dr. J, he decides he prefers the comforts of his asteroid crater than setting foot in the UFO.
• Joke Item: The Big Apple in chapter 6 of the first game. It's delicious but it doesn't do anything.
• Leap of Faith: Required several times throughout the game to trigger invisible platforms and otherwise continue on through the dungeons.
• Lighthouse Point: In the second chapter of the first game. The guy in charge of it has a wife who will tell you of a bottle washing up on the east beach, containing the code for the sub's dive function.
• The Man Behind the Curtain: Zoda first appears as a cloaked figure with a horned helmet. When Mike first confronts him he turns into a giant floating head and a giant hand. After the beatdown, Zoda shifts back into the cloaked form, and then into his true form, a slobbering Xenomorph-esque monster. Zoda's true form isn't exactly weak, and it is unclear why he chose to hide his true form and present himself as the cloaked, helmeted figure, but it may be because his true form is ugly.
• Meaningful Name: Star Tropics is mostly set within a tropical climate across many different islands, and it is later revealed that aliens both good and bad are heavily involved in the plot.
• Mercy Invincibility: The first game had only a little bit, but the "snap-to" motion of the controls mitigated how much damage you'd take a bit.
• Mirrors Reflect Everything: Mirror Shields — predating Zelda's "Mirror Shield" by about a year. Useful for taking out wraiths and pirate ghosts.
• One-Hit Kill: Physical contact with any of the bosses in the first game is instant death, as is contact with the Megatons (those giant bowling balls in Captain Bell's Cave).
• One-Winged Angel: Zoda's second form on the spaceship.
• Poison Mushroom: Signposts may reward Mike with an extra life or two... or steal one of them away. The signposts are adjusted in the second game to never take away lives.
• Polly Wants a Microphone: Peter the talking parrot. He demands a gift before he'll talk to you, and what he says is a clue to the puzzle in Captain Bell's tomb. He's also the great-grandson of the original Captain Bell's pet parrot.
• Post-Defeat Explosion Chain: Bosses usually make multiple explosions upon being killed.
• Properly Paranoid: Dr. J suspected something might happen to him, and took measures that turn out to come in handy, including encoding a secret message into an otherwise normal letter written to his soon to visit nephew.
  Mike, I found some strange runes in my last voyage. Since then someone has been watching me! I put a tiny transmitter in my shoe. Its frequency is 747MHz. Perhaps I worry too much, but better to be safe than sorry.
• Public Domain Soundtrack: "God Save the King/Queen", the then national anthem of the United Kingdom, plays when Captain Bell's ship sinks after solving the piano puzzle and finishing the dungeon that the puzzle unlocks. American players may be confused as to why "My Country 'Tis of Thee" is playing, as the tunes are identical.
• Puzzle Boss: Magma the Fierce, first boss in Chapter 3. He's completely invulnerable to weapons, and has to be fought by finding and then hitting two buttons to break the platform he sits on.
• Ray Gun: Only found in the spaceship levels. A more powerful version fires 3-way scattershots, but has shorter range.
• Ring-Out Boss: The robotic alien that you fight at the end of Chapter 7. You have to shoot him relentlessly to push him far enough back so that you can trip a switch to make part of the floor disappear and then keep shooting him until he falls into the void. He can be killed from damage but it is far quicker to push him out.
• Running Gag: Several NPCs comment on Mike's having bananas in his ears. In the final chapter, he actually does jam a pair of them into his ears to fend off Zoda's psychic invasion of his mind.
• Scoring Points: You only see it after you beat a dungeon and there's no explanation as to how you score points. You don't see your final score after beating the game.
• Shock and Awe: The most powerful weapon in the first game is a lightning gun. It lacks the range of the ray gun, but has a wider beam and does more damage.
• Skippable Boss: Not by design. However, if you use the Game Genie code for infinite health, you can jump onto the C-Serpent, walk up its body and jump into the next room rather than go to the trouble of fighting it.
• Spikes of Doom: Spikes are rather common in the series.
• Stat Overflow: The game has a rare health pickup that heals Mike all the way to his eventual maximum even if he hasn't extended his health bar that much. But if he does this when his health bar isn't extended to the maximum, it will gradually decrease to its current limit.
• Sue Donym: When Mike is temporarily made female in order to infiltrate Shecola, he makes up the alias "Michelle" on the spot.
• Super Drowning Skills: Mike dies instantly when he falls in water... despite being very athletic and vacationing in the tropics.
• Swallowed Whole: Eventually, Mike is swallowed by a giant whale and reunites with Dr. J.'s assistant, Baboo. He confesses that he has withheld vital information from Mike, fearing the aliens who kidnapped Dr. J. would come after him. Baboo is relieved to see Mike safe and sound, but dismayed they had to reunite in the belly of a whale, of all places. Together they work on escaping the huge beast by building a fire and promptly getting sneezed out.
• Talk to Everyone: Most notably in the first game, where in the three big villages (Coralcola, Miracola and Bellcola) assorted guards will not let you pass until you have spoken to every single person in the village, even though almost none of them have anything useful to tell you.
• Theme Naming:
  • All the towns in the first game are named "(Blank)cola." Leading to the unappetizing town in chapter 4 called Tunacola.
  • When speaking to an NPC, the generic response Mike gets is, "You're from Americola?", or, "Spacycola....?" The lady guard in Shecola assumes 'Michelle' is from a place called Radicola.
  • Zoda is one letter away from Soda... and as an added bonus, one of the NPCs in the Playable Epilogue talks about how Mike "creamed Zoda".
• Too Awesome to Use: Medicine, especially since your inventory is emptied after every dungeon. In fact, it's probably best to use medicine after you've beaten the boss (!), before the exit.
• Trial-and-Error Gameplay: There are several screens where entering is instant death.
  • One of the more interesting ones is early in the first game. One room gives you a Medicine, a vital item, and opens a door to another room. This room also has a Medicine, and opens another door. In the next room... you jump straight into water, as the room has no floor. Only floating bones in the water.
  • In Magma the Fierce's dungeon in the first game, you enter a room with two tile paths leading upward on either side of the room. After jumping from tile to tile for two rooms, you have to jump upwards at the top edge of the room. One path leads to safety, the other path leads to instant death, and there is no way to know this ahead of time. Hint: the right path is right.
  • In the Ghost Village dungeon in Chapter 3 of the first game, every single obvious path locks you into an exit out of the dungeon, forcing you to restart. In order to actually complete the dungeon, you have to ignore the obvious paths and instead find the hidden ones. Maliciously, the final fake path is only a few rooms away from the boss, meaning you can complete most of the dungeon and then have to restart it again.
  • Captain Bell's cave has a couple. There are two rooms full of boobytrapped tiles which start collapsing after you jump on them. You have to find a switch to open the door before the tiles all crumble. There's also a room where immediately upon entering it you land on one of the tiles that will sink after a split second of your bodyweight - not too tough if you know it's coming, but it will catch you the first time.
• Tropical Island Adventure: As the title of the games suggest, the first game mainly takes place on tropical islands.
• Unique Enemy:
  • Squidos appear on just one screen in the game, mostly so you can try out your new Smart Bomb attack.
  • Four purple leg-fish things appear in the first room with the bubbles that make Mike unable to use his weapons. They don't do much, and are mostly there to teach players about how the bubbles work without surrounding them with nastier enemies.
• Unstable Equilibrium: The power of your weapon is tied to the amount of hearts you have, and decreases as you take more damage.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: When you finally kill Zoda in the first game, he'll start barfing right before he finally bites the big one.
• Water-Geyser Volley: At one point of the game, the protagonist jumps on a water geyser that sends him atop of a mountain.
• Womb Level: The whale in the first game. You learn Dr. J.'s assistant, Baboo, was heading for the east after arriving on the chapter's island, and later sail that way yourself when suddenly you're swallowed whole by the Monster Whale and work to escape it.
• Writing Around Trademarks: In light of "yo-yo" becoming a trademarked term, for the Virtual Console release of StarTropics, Nintendo changed the weapon's name to "Island Star."
• You Shouldn't Know This Already: You have to jump on the tile ten times to create a bridge in Chapter 3, but it won't work until after you are told to do so in Shecola, supposedly because you have to shout a magic word to make it work. You also can't play the tune on Captain Bell's organ until Peter teaches it to you, even if you-the-player know it already.