Hero Core

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Hero Core is a Metroidvania Shoot'Em Up game by Daniel Remar, the creator of Iji. It uses old-school black and white graphics and 8-bit music to relate the never-ending war between Flip Hero and the Warmachine Cruiser Tetron. Though quite hard, it's a high-quality game with numerous bosses and endings.

Hero Core is also the sequel to an earlier game called Hero, also by Daniel Remar.

Tropes used in Hero Core include:


  • Arch Enemy: Flip Hero and Cruiser Tetron.
  • Attack Its Weak Point: Almost every boss has these little circular bubbles for weak points. You quickly get used to spotting and destroying them. If you can't see any, shoot its head. Only a very few bosses subvert this pattern, and those are all about your size. The Annihilator has a second. If you can't hit the head because it's facing away from you, shoot for the tail!
  • Attack Reflector: The Blade. Apart from cutting through dirt and metal, it allows you to reflect some of the enemies' shots. The reflected shots don't hit the enemies, but the Blade itself inflicts damages.
  • Big Bad: Cruiser Tetron.
  • Bittersweet Ending: The threat of Cruiser Tetron is ended forever, but Flip Hero is dead as well.
    • Doubly so since the question of whether Cruiser Tetron created Flip Hero to try and kill himself for good or Flip Hero went rogue is never answered directly. If it's the former, then the ending is bittersweet for both Flip Hero and Tetron!
  • Bonus Dungeon: The Annihilation mode is one of these.
  • Bootstrapped Theme: "Annihilator Factory".
  • Boss Battle:
    • Anticlimax Boss: Cruiser Tetron is actually quite easy compared to some of the other bosses. The Living Warmachine can be, too.
    • Best Boss Ever:
      • The Rocksmasher. It's a huge boss that you need to enter to defeat...and you spend the entire battle inside it.
      • Arguably the Reaper Drone, who, while being extremely hard, takes Flunky Boss to hilarious extremes, including being able to use its flunkies as both shields and weapons simultaneously.
    • Bonus Boss: The Living Warmachine. (As well as Zero, the level 0 specialist)
    • Cores and Turrets Boss: Rocksmasher, Liquid Metal Processor, Grand Mother and Star Splitter.
    • Cowardly Boss: The Eliminator/Hunter-Killer.
    • Dual Boss: The Elites. Also a Mirror Boss.
    • Flunky Boss:
      • The Reaper Drone takes this to its logical extreme.
      • The Grand Mother is this on multiple levels -- it spawns Mothers, which are themselves Mook Makers. The Guardian also has statues at the top of his room that come to life after you damage him enough, and the Liquid Metal Processor is a more standard example. Seems like Daniel really likes this trope.
    • Get Back Here Boss:
    • Sequential Boss:
      • The Star Splitter, Guardian, and Tetron.
      • Plasma Hydra is a variation of this. Blow off one head, out pops the next! Fortunately, at most 3 heads in a row pop up (in Normal mode, that is). So, not quite sequential boss, but a case of sequential boss targets.
    • Shielded Core Boss: The Liquid Metal Processor.
  • Boss in Mook Clothing:
    • Annihilators take a ton of hits to kill, and spam absurd quantities of bullets.
    • Warp Eidolons make creatures while floating around and spamming lasers.
    • Nodes on hard difficulty, spamming lasers as well, being surrounded by orbiting spheres and quite tough.
  • Boss Rush: With hard-style bosses, as a bonus feature. As of 1.2, a version with (slightly powered-up) normal-mode bosses is possible as well.
  • Brutal Bonus Level: Annihilation.
  • Bullet Hell:
    • Hard mode has elements of this. You can do this as well to a limited extent if you find the Expel ability. Just make sure to keep an eye on your health.
    • Though the Plasma Hydra boss fight has shades of this, it becomes ridiculous in Hard mode.
    • Annihilation's final boss fight.
  • Captain Space, Defender of Earth!: Flip Hero.
  • Cast from Hit Points:
    • The Expel ability. Applies to the Elite bosses, too. If they try to expel with one hit point, they can't- they only get a question mark over their heads.
  • Chest Blaster: The Guardian has a laser and something which obviously is a MPFB Devastator built into its torso.
  • Collision Damage: Flip Hero suffers from this. So do the Elites.
  • Combos: How Expel is triggered. ↑↓←→X
  • Cut Song: Both the Core theme and the boss music have completely different alternate versions. Neither are used throughout the game.
  • Destructible Projectiles: Homing missiles.
  • Determinator:
    • Cruiser Tetron could be this. His last stage involves him being barely able to fight, and only able to lift his gun briefly, but he's still shooting.
    • The normal ending reveals that Flip Hero hunts down Tetron again and again to protect earth, even though he rebuilds every time he's defeated - unless Flip Hero finds the way to finally destroy him
    • Anyone who has completed Hard or Annihilation difficulties without cheating.
  • Easter Egg: Oh so many. The Best Times room, Expel, Shapeshift, the Zero Specialist, reallyjoel's dad mode, Trollis' grave...
  • Elite Mook: The Elites and the Hunter-Killer are powered-up versions of lesser enemies. They offer a clue, and the ending reveals, that Flip Hero himself is one.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • One boss fight sets you against near-perfect copies of your character. This plays a part in the Good Ending.
    • The hidden mode is called Annihilation for a reason...
  • George Lucas Throwback: To late-70s, early-80s video games.
  • Good Bad Translation: The "retro" language imitates this.
  • Harder Than Hard: Annihilation (although it's easier than hard mode, really). Parodied with Reallyjoel's Dad mode.
  • Health Damage Asymmetry: Not actually in means of damage, but in means of fire rate and intelligence. Bosses - with the elites (128 HP each) as the most striking example since Flip Hero is otherwise identical with them - have health ranging from 50 or so to some hundreds of hitpoints, while Flip Hero has only 10-20.
  • Here We Go Again: In the normal ending.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: In the good ending.
  • He Was Right There All Along: You have to enter one boss before he gets violent.
  • Humongous Mecha: The Guardian boss. Also Cruiser Tetron and Annihilators.
  • I Cannot Self-Terminate: Cruiser Tetron is eternally locked in the cycle of dying at the hands of Flip Hero and being rebuilt and trying to destroy earth again. Killing him is the only way to end this, though it's questionable whether or not Tetron himself is a big fan of dying.
  • Intentional Engrish for Funny: One of the game's three language settings is "Retro!", and when selected it will display all messages and dialog in humorously-broken English.

This upgrade has increase my "level" 1. Remember eat vegetables also to grow strong.

  • Interface Spoiler: Various questionmark items in the menu.
  • Internal Homage: Remember Iji? Annihilation difficulty gives you a first-hand view of Ciretako!
    • Iji itself contained an homage to Hero, the game to which Hero Core is a sequel.
    • Cruiser Tetron's second phase duplicates his attack pattern from the original Hero
  • King Mook: The Reaper Drone and Grand Mother.
  • Lava Pit: Averted. Lava (molten metal) can be flown through freely and only serves to shut down your weapon for a period of time.
  • Luck-Based Mission: The behavior and fire patterns of several enemies is random. For instance, fighting the Guardian or an Annihilator-with-mook on hard mode is a lot easier if you get lucky with their movement.
  • Mascot Mook: The Drone.
  • Mercy Kill: The final fight against Tetron Cruiser is implied to be one of these, as you free him from the endless cycle of hate that he's locked in. It's really driven home by the final form, where Tetron is unable to even stand, limited to lying prone in the corner and feebly trying to hold up his arm to shoot you.
  • Metroidvania: It's a blend of this and Shoot'Em Up. Also a slightly unusual example, as none of the upgrades are required to reach the final boss, though getting there without the item received for killing your first boss requires using a secret move.
  • Minimalist Run: See Metroidvania above. Furthermore, a Bonus Boss is only accessible on one of these. Annihilation mode is also this. You don't get any upgrades from bosses, and it's much more linear.
  • Mistaken for Granite: Guardian's room contains some statues of standard enemy machines you fought many times. Appearing to be decoration, they actually are idle machines and aid the boss once he lost a certain amount of Hit Points.
  • Mook Maker:
    • Spawners, which were the only Mook Makers in the original Hero.
    • Mothers are archetypal for this; however, other foes [1] have this habit, even if they only create Mooks as a side effect of, for example, firing their Wave Motion Gun. One boss even spawns Mothers, making it a Flunky Boss on multiple levels.
    • Tetron is this in the back story.
  • Canon Welding: Annihilation mode will seem familiar to fans of Daniel Remar's other big game.
    • Subverted; the fact that Annihilation takes place on the Ciretako looks like it's supposed to make Hero Core canon to Iji, but in his official guide, Daniel states that Annihilation mode isn't canon and he just did it to get people wondering about it.
  • Multiple Endings: There are at least two endings to the game. Beating the game with all computers used gets you the best ending.
  • Nintendo Hard: Normal mode is fairly easy, but Hard is brutal. Annihilation is worse.
  • Non-Lethal KO/Death Is Cheap: For Flip Hero, who has a built-in restoration unit. Also for Tetron, except in the good ending.
  • One Bullet At a Time: There is a limit of six (non-Expel) bullets at a time.
  • One-Hit Kill: The final boss of Annihilation difficulty can do this. Fortunately, you can see the blowing out lines where this will hit.
  • One Steve Limit: Subverted.
  • Powers of Two Minus One:

{{quote|REALLY == THREAT LEVEL 255 == }}

  • Rank Inflation: In the boss rush, there are five ranks above A: "Hero", "Lord of Game", "You can stop now", "Seriously" and "reallyjoel's dad". The last few aren't intended to be achievable, but Daniel Remar put them in based on the ridiculous performance of certain Sacred Grounds runs.
  • Recurring Boss: You have to destroy several Generators to progress, just like in the first. Also, the Eliminator/Hunter-Killer, who attacks many times until you are powerful enough to beat him.
  • Restart At Level One: To avert this, Flip Hero didn't gain any levels and equipment upgrades before fighting his way through Tetron's asteroid. Which is why Annihilation is a Minimalist Run and Low-Level Run...
  • Retraux: Up to two colors simultaneously!
  • Robotic Reveal/And Then John Was a Zombie: In the good ending, although this probably wasn't a secret to the characters.
  • Sequence Breaking: You can bypass most of the game and get to the final boss with Expelling.
    • Marathon Boss: Fittingly, the Plasma Hydra in Hard Mode. Also, Tetron and the Guardian.
  • Series Mascot: Flip Hero seems to be this for Remar Games, seeing as he gets referenced in a few other games that have nothing to do with him and appears in the Remar Games logo in the Garden Gnome Carnage Flash version. In a strange variant of the trope, he's not even from Remar's most popular game.
  • Speed Run: Daniel Remar made one for the Normal and Normal Boss Rush modes, as he did for Iji.
  • Sound of No Damage: A high-pitched "ding", which also fell under Most Annoying Sound before its volume was reduced in an update.
  • Stationary Boss: Tetron's final form, which, aside from being awesome, also makes it incredibly easy. Also, Generators and the Plasma Hydra.
  • The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: Open the badass savefile in a text editor and it will threaten to erase your data if you try to change anything - IN SONG!
  • Took a Level in Badass: Everything in Hard Mode, especially bosses. And especially the Reaper Drone.
  • Turns Red: Inverted with several of the bosses, as Daniel Remar dislikes cheap shots. That is, all bosses that have multiple phases start with the hardest one. Unless it's the Plasma Hydra.
  • Useless Useful Spell: Both the Expel ability and the Blade are pretty much useless in combat. However, both have a specific function in speedrunning, and the Blade can slaughter certain enemies and bosses. Also, Shapeshift is mostly for fun
  • Wall Master: The Eversion-like hands suddenly coming out of walls in Hero Forever. They don't damage you, but "just" steal your flags (that's bad already, though, since collecting flags is the point of Hero Forever) and will really creep you out the first time you encounter them.
    • One of them even takes you to an easter egg in Annihilation mode.
  • The Walrus Was Paul: Daniel has stated that one of the main reasons Annihilation mode is set on the Ciretako is to create Epileptic Trees.
  • Why Won't You Die?: Found in some Apocalyptic Logs in Annihilation Mode.
  1. ↑ Hunters create Spews, Warp Eidolons create Phazes. The first boss casually creates some Drones.
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