Travis Strikes Back
Travis Strikes Back is a visual novel game mode embedded in Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes. A chapter of Travis Strikes Back must be read between playing Death Drive Mark II games, as it tells the story of how Travis Touchdown and Jeane acquire the Death Balls.
Style
Travis Strikes Back is entirely text-based with no gameplay interaction other than pressing the button to proceed the text. It is rendered in black and green graphics based on old monochrome monitors. The layout of the screen consists of character portraits in the left and right windows, the location name in the top window, art of the current environment in the bottom window and text in a large middle window. Each chapter is about the journey to find a single particular Death Ball, and usually involves Travis coming into contact with somebody who has a connection to Dr. Juvenile. He also frequently runs into characters from previous games by Grasshopper Manufacture, with a particular focus on The 25th Ward: The Silver Case.
Chapters
- #1: Absolute Zero
- #2: Magic Tiger of the Mound
- #3: National Census
- #4: Modern Observation
- #5: Hell's Chainsaw
- #6: Quark-Gluon Plasma
- #7: On the Eve of War (added in Bubblegum Fatale)
Behind the scenes
Many of the character portraits in Travis Strikes Back and Badman Strikes Back resemble characters from anime (most frequently from classic Gundam series), while the generic "man" portrait is based on TV character Max Headroom.
It is strongly suggested that the portraits are not necessarily reflective at all of the characters' real appearances. Most notably, Travis comments on Henry Cooldown's hairstyle change, which is eventually seen in No More Heroes III; however, the portrait shown in Travis Strikes Back has Henry's original hair.