Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team

"Welcome! This is the portal that leads to the world of Pokémon!"

The first entry (or rather, entries) in the Roguelike Pokémon spin-off series known as Pokémon Mystery Dungeon, Red Rescue Team and Blue Rescue Team were released for the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS (respectively) in 2006.

The story concerns the player character who awakens in a world inhabited exclusively by Pokémon, with no memories but their name and the subsequent discovery that they've inexplicably been transformed from a human into a Pokémon. Natural disasters (earthquakes, etc.) have been plaguing the land, and concerned citizens — er, Pokémon — have been banding together in "Rescue Teams" to help out Mons in need. The player quickly allies with another Pokémon to form a two-Mon rescue team of their own, while slowly piecing together clues about how and why they got here.

Tropes used in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team include:

• Advanced Ancient Acropolis: The "Ruins" friend zone, hinting it may be Humanity's Wake.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Medicham of Team Meanies proudly declares that their ultimate goal is World Domination. (...which they intend to accomplish by doing rescue missions?)
• Colony Drop: A large meteor is threatening the planet.
• Covers Always Lie: The covers have the various members of both Team Meanies and Team ACT surrounding what appears to be the main characters. In the game, Team ACT are one of the good guys while Team Meanies are Card Carrying Villains.
  • Except late in the game Team ACT has to hunt you down, so its more of covers always spoil
• Everyone Is Bi: Genders were (largely) missing for some reason. (Your Player Character is still identified as the gender you choose.) Thus, gender-based moves (like Attract) worked on any and every opponent Pokémon.
• I Choose to Stay: After completing the main story arc.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Gengar.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: While the possible consequences of this are generally ignored, the game drops a few small hints here and there:
  • The game manual's introduction of the setting intones that not only does the player get turned into a Pokémon, but that their "thoughts and feelings" also become "more like a Pokémon".
  • When first introduced to their rescue team base, the player is excited, but immediately questions whether the feeling is truly theirs, or the results of being turned into a Pokémon.
  • In the postgame, Lombre comments that he doesn't want to evolve into a Ludiculo if it means his personality will change from serious to carefree.
• Not Quite Dead: Despite that flashbacks heavily imply she was killed, the postgame eventually reveals that the Gardevoir from the Ninetales legend is actually sealed within an ancient ruin.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Two of the game's final missons involve you taking Gengar to go and apologize/fix some stuff in his past that upset the balance in the first place.
• So What Do We Do Now?: The main arc's ending.
• Wham! Line: Gengar: "Kekeh! And that human is the rotten coward that abandoned Gardevoir, correct? I don't think the human can complain about anything if we get rid of it. Isn't that right, (Player Name)?"
• We Could Have Avoided All This: The game is rife with this trope, such as the conflicts involving Skarmory/Zapdos abducting Diglett/Shiftry.
• You Are Worth Hell: In a postgame event, Latios is so desparate to locate his younger sister Latias in Pitfall Valley that he doesn't care if he becomes lost forever in it himself, so long as the two of them are together. About the only thing stopping him is that you tracked down and defeated him in battle first.
• Your Days Are Numbered: Revealed to the player before The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, by Gardevoir: "Your role is nearing its end."