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A third-person shooter released by Rare in 1999 for the Nintendo 64.
The game stars the titular group: Twin siblings Juno and Vela and their dog Lupus. After witnessing an attack on the not-Endor planet Goldwood against the not-Ewok Tribals by the bug forces of the evil emperor Mizar (not to mention getting attacked themselves), the group decided to come to to the aid of the Tribals.
Originally designed as a cutesy shooter, it got a Darker and Edgier makeover halfway through development and ended up better for it. When the game begins, the three Jet Force members are separated and have to take their own individual paths to the Big Bad's headquarters. Once they reunite, they're given upgrades (Juno and Vela get jetpacks, while Lupus is transformed into a tank) and are allowed to visit each others' previously exclusive levels. This is necessary for One Hundred Percent Completion, which then unlocks the true final level and the True Final Boss.
This being a Rare game, it also contains a good amount of their characteristic humor, such as furry dice in the cockpit of the Jet Force Gemini ship and a major character with the distinctly un-Sci Fi-ish name "Jeff". The main criticism comes from the One Hundred Percent Completion quests, which range from teeth-grindingly hard to hand-bangingly unintuitive.
Tropes used in Jet Force Gemini include:
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Inverted, as Floyd defects from Mizar this reason.
- Alien Blood: Green, with an option for Rainbow.
- All There in the Manual: The titular trio are the only survivors of their fleet.
- Attack Drone: Floyd, unique in that he is controlled by player 2.
- Awesome but Impractical: A few weapons, the Flamethrower and Shocker perhaps most of all. The Shocker becomes Awesome Yet Practical near the end of the game when there's glass panes with giant cyborg bugs behind them.
- Beating a Dead Player: Anything that's not a boss will continue to shoot at you after you've died. In the case of the final boss, he settles back down on his floating rock and laughs in your face or does a victory fist pump.
- Boss Room
- Breather Level: The Water Ruin stage, which has absolutely no enemies. Gem Quarry too, but you have a gem-scooping Mini Game to do there.
- Bug War: The whole game is based around blowing up various bugs into green goo. Why this hasn't been listed sooner escapes reason.
- Collision Damage: A bit odd for a third-person shooter, but it's there.
- Controllable Helplessness: You can twitch after dying.
- Cool Pet: Lupus. What's cooler than a dog with a GUN mounted on his back?
- Not to mention his foot-rocket boosters and tank upgrade.
- Crying Little Kid: Can be seen in King Jeff's vision of the invasion.
- And any time you decide to shoot a baby Tribal's parents.
- Cutscene Power to the Max: In the pre-boss cutscene on Eschebone, Lupus uses his hovering ability about 8 times longer than he can in gameplay. In several other cutscenes, he hovers a good deal higher than he can jump.
- Do Not Strafe With A Gun and the bosses will fill you full of holes.
- Dual Boss: The Eschebone Mantises, also those two bosses.
- Easy Levels, Hard Bosses
- Evil Laugh: Mizar before he fights you, and also after he kicks your ass.
- Evolving Title Screen: Depending on how far you were into the game, the title screen would change in order - Juno running solo, Juno & Vela running, the whole team running, the whole team running in their upgrades, the whole team walking on the Federation homeworld in celebration.
- Expy: Magnus. Think Yoda, only with floppy ears and greener.
- The Federation: The Union, although only briefly mentioned in-game and in the manual.
- Free Sample Plot Coupon: Cruelly inverted. When Mizar escapes from his palace after Lupus easily defeats him, he threatens the characters to redirect an asteroid to blow up planet Earth. Aware of this, King Jeff tells the protagonists that there is a huge mothership that will help them intercept the asteroid and find a way to stop it, but it's missing twelve pieces. Eleven of these pieces are scattered through the galaxy, so the three characters have to do a Fetch Quest to retrieve them. The 12th piece, technically the first, is in Jeff's hands, but he won't give it away until all 282 missing Tribals in the game are rescued. He doesn't even care if the aforementioned asteroid manages to hit Earth in the meantime.
- Getting Crap Past the Radar: Every enemy (and most allies) can be blown to bits. Every one of them, each splattering more blood than the average Unreal Tournament contestant. And you can pick up their heads...
- Finding porn for a slavemaster giant mole seems worth a mention
- Girlish Pigtails: Vela.
- Gotta Catch Them All: The ship pieces and the Tribals. As in, you need to collect all the ship parts to get to the Final Boss, and you need to rescue all the Tribals, everywhere, to get all the ship parts. That particular side-quest causes the latter half of the game to drag.
- Guide Dang It: Considered the game's primary weakness.
- A good example is the second level. To progress, at the bare minimum, the player needs to shoot a panel in an easily missed segment of a room, located in a different room than the objective is, with no clue as to the location (and no indication is given that these panels are not decoration!). For more fun, 100% Completion requires finding more of these panels throughout the level, all hidden in even more out-of-the-way places!
- Probably the ultimate example, though, is the sheer obscurity of what you need to do to get one of the ship parts needed to take on the final boss. First, find a hidden passage so you can do one of the Floyd racing/shooting minigames. Then get a Gold rank on said minigame, which requires pretty much memorizing the path and the things you need to shoot. This will give you a set of earplugs. Now, take these earplugs to a bear on one of the hidden planets. No, the game doesn't tell you anything more than the fact that the bear is having trouble sleeping because of all the noise Mizar's troops are making.
- I Surrender, Suckers: If you catch a Drone unarmed, they'll raise their hands up in surrender. Often if you turn your back on them they'll pull out a grenade, and... Bye-bye, large portion of your health!
- Heroic Sacrifice Floyd.
- Twice.
- Karma Houdini: Jeff's brother Barry, who created the persona and robotic body of Mizar, gathered an entire army of marauding insects, murdered and enslaved countless members of his own tribe, slaughtered Juno and Vela's entire fleet, and was willing to pilot an asteroid on a suicide mission to destroy the Earth. All because he was jealous of Jeff's power and status. His only punishment seems to be a stern talking-to because he apparently "hadn't meant for things to go this far." Right.
- Jiggle Physics: Vela demonstrates an early, low-poly version of this.
- The Jimmy Hart Version: The character select theme sounds nothing like the Imperial March... In fact, the entire musical style could be called a Star Wars pastiche.
- Joke Weapon: "Fish food. It feeds fish. That's it."
- Lethal Lava Land: Eschebone, when it's not being a Womb Level.
- Live Item: the Tribals.
- Ludicrous Gibs: Go ahead, shoot that lone foot soldier ant with that shiny new Tri-Rocket Launcher. If that's not gory enough, turn on the Rainbow Blood mode, which doubles the amount of blood exploded enemies splatter and paint the entire room fabulous.
- Man Behind the Man: Behind Mizar is, of all things, King Jeff's missing brother.
- Mercy Kill: Sometimes Drones won't die instantly. They might fall to the ground and twitch in agony instead. The player can finish them off or let them expire after a few seconds.
- Mook Chivalry: The boss fight against the Mechantids starts off like this with the second one just hopping around on the background scenery, but that gets completely thrown out the window halfway through the fight.
- Moral Dissonance: Jeff refuses to give you the last spaceship part until you save all the Tribals. Note that this essentially means despite being one of the good guys, Jeff is holding all of Earth ransom for his people.
- Sometimes the drones will surrender to you in a room with a Life-Force door. The only way to get through the door is to commit a war crime.
- More Dakka: Chain guns and rocket launchers are your best friends.
- There's also one type of flying drone that shows up in groups of at least 12, each of which will shoot around 10 shots at a time.
- Ms. Fanservice: Being the only female cast member, Vela was likely designed with a certain audience in mind. She wears no helmet so we can see her blue hair, has a neckline along with the usual assets and of course a tiny skirt.
- My God, What Have I Done?: King Jeff has one of these moments after he, in a fit of rage, uses his rather incredible magic powers to zombify the entire planet of Tawfret. Granted, that was a mistake: he was aiming at the bug soldiers, but one of them shot him and the zombie-beam hit a tree instead...
- Naming Conventions
- Meaningful Name: The star sign Gemini is the twins.
- Odd Name Out: The main trio and villain have astrologically themed names, while the tribal leader is named (King) Jeff.
- Stellar Name: The titular trio.
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Lupus, the third member of the heroic trio, is a robotic amphibious tank/dog.
- Non-Human Sidekick: Lupus and Floyd.
- One Hundred Percent Completion: Actually required in order to complete the game, at least as far as rescuing the Tribals is concerned.
- Four-Person Army: The titular trio and Floyd defeat Mizar all on their own.
- Panty Shot: Vela pre-upgrade
- Parental Bonus: One NPC is missing his pants. Find them, give them back to him, and talk to him again, and he'll comment that his "yin and yang" are "warming up nicely".
- Press X to Die: You can run into fireplaces and other heating elements to damage yourself.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The protagonists during the whole game when you consider its back story.
- Rule of Three: You don't get a rocket launcher. You get a Tri-Rocket Launcher. Not to mention that there's 3 main characters, and Cluster bombs explode into 3 smaller bombs.
- Shout-Out: Collecting upwards of 300 decapitated Drone heads allows you to replace the standard Mooks with Rare's mascot, Mr. Pants. There's also an unlockable racing minigame/multi-player mode, which shares a track with Diddy Kong Racing.
- Silliness Switch: Rainbow blood, the characters' original super deformed designs, and enemies appearing as Rare's mascot, Mr. Pants, are all unlockable. And you unlock them by decapitating the bugs and collecting their heads.
- Spam Attack: After you destroy Mizar's wings in the second fight, he goes absolutely nuts and proceeds to attack three times as much as he did in his earlier phases.
- Suspicious Videogame Generosity
- Take Your Time: After defeating Mizar the first time, he flees and commandeers a passing asteroid, putting it on a collision course with Earth. The characters' own ships aren't fast enough to catch up in time, but fret not! All the player must do is embark on a planet-hopping quest to collect parts of a ship that is fast enough. All this time, Mizar's asteroid will remain effectively in limbo en route to Earth.
- A real life Lampshading adds to the hilarity. Because the search for the ship parts and Tribals is all time consuming, many people ended up resorting to guides. Only, there weren't many guides available because the game took forever for practically everyone to complete. When a 100% complete guide finally is released, the introduction paragraph taunts the gamers with (paraphrased) "Yep, it's been 6 months since this game shipped. And it's been 6 months since that asteroid left to destroy Earth. And you STILL haven't collected everything to chase after it. But fret not, we have a guide to help you."
- Took a Shortcut: Lampshaded by Magnus. "I move pretty fast. I know."
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: Oh so many instances.
- The Tribals can be shot and killed in the same way as the enemies. This includes women and children and baby Tribals.
- Depending on where (and with what) you shoot a Drone (or Tribal), they can be decapitated, explode in an audible shower of blood, or collapse on the ground, twitching. And if you want to, finish the job with the Tri-Rocket.
- Other options include setting them on fire or watching them jerk in agony as you slowly fry them with the Shocker.
- You can collect the heads of your enemies. Or the Tribals.
- You can disguise yourself as an enemy, and stand outside the mook's nightclub,with the queue of 20-30 Mooks trying to get into the place and decapitate all of them with a single shuriken...
- Collecting the ant heads even gets you a reward; get enough and you can use the Silliness Switch.
- What the Hell, Player?: NPC's will chew you out for shooting them.
- Womb Level: Eschebone is a lava world and one of its denizens is a giant worm. The player enters through its mouth and exits through...the other end.
- You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Vela.