Tiger & Bunny: On-Air Jack Introduction Guide

Pros: Let's you relive the stories from Tiger & Bunny anime, beautiful visuals and voice recordings (mostly from the anime)
Cons: very bad (and fixed) camera angle, missions relatively easy after first try

Contents
A. Introduction
B. Navigation
C. Controls
D. Missions Walkthrough *incomplete*
E. Conclusion

A.Introduction
Tiger & Bunny has 2 games on PSP, one being this and another called HERO's Day, which is more of a sim game I think. Unfortunately, both games are in Japanese and since I can't read Japanese, I figured out this game by trial-and-error. To ease the pain for other T&B fans who want a piece of T&B action, feel free to use this guide as a starting point to your adventures as Wild Tiger!

In this game you're in control of Kotetsu T. Kaburagi, in his Wild Tiger hero suit, and experiencing mostly the stories from the anime. There are fights against Lunatic, the showdown against Jake, and even chasing the creepy Blue Rose stalker. There are times you can switch between your partner during the mission, which is by default Barnaby Brooks Jr. unless you recently trained another hero in the gym (I'll get to that later).

On-Air Jack definitely brings back nostalgia for T&B fans who are in need of more T&B material after watching the anime and 2 movies countless times. Voice actors are still the same, considering how most audio clips are taken from the anime. The characters look decent enough in-game, and you can use their powers (albeit for a very limited time). Being Wild Tiger, your Hundred Power is only 5 minutes long, so every mission has a time limit of 5 minutes. And Hero TV is present in this game too; your successes in story quests will affect your hero points, hence affecting your hero rank.

While this game is something fans will enjoy, players must learn to accept that the camera angle for this game is very poorly done. The camera is fixed, and different areas will cause the camera to move to a different angle, making you disoriented. This can be frustrating during battles, such as my initial battle with Lunatic, who kept flying around the fighting space and hurling fire bolts at my Wild Tiger. Another problem is how the game can be easily won most of the time. Fighting requires you to mostly block until the enemy stops attacking, before you beat the crap out of them.

A hardcore gamer would probably discard this game within minutes, but if you're a Tiger & Bunny fan, I definitely recommend you to give this game a try, while tolerating its cons.


B.Navigation
When you first launch the game, there's only 2 options in the main menu: 1) new game, or 2) load game. Pretty straight forward there.

Once you enter the game, this is how your screen will be. I'll run through each option thoroughly,with their sub-contents.

1) Hero Rank

Hero Rank is your (Kotetsu's) hero rank, similar to the anime. The rank is based on your performances during missions and your audience rate at end of missions (I'll cover them in the next section). Hero Rank is actually important, as certain missions require a minimum Hero Rank or you cannot do that mission.

2) Lloyds' Office

Llyod's office is mainly to check: 1) Wild Tiger's stats,and 2) Hero Rank(as shown previously). Nothing much here, really.

3) Saito's Lab
In Saito's lab there are 3 options: 1) Unlock stuff, 2) Give the Gashapon machine a try, and 3) Check your Gashapon collection. I have yet to really understand the stuff you can unlock in the first option, but I do know that you need to spend PP (see further down) to unlock them, and that you can unlock special missions such as fighting the android Cis.

Gashapon machine uses 300PP per try, and you get figurines of various characters. Characters have multiple versions to collect apparently, and there are rarity to them. The second option seen in this screenshot simply brings you back to previous menu.

When you check your collection, you can zoom in on them and rotate them or whatever. Doesn't have much to do other that ogle at them. For some weird reason, they are sideways when you want to look at them.

4) Options
I didn't actually look into it, as I didn't have anything to change. First 3 options (green) are to adjust the audio, followed by the Save and Load options, and I don't know what the last 2 do. Probably reset the game? Will update this section. Eventually...

5) PP
Simply to show how much PP you get. PP is earned when you do missions, be it story mode or replay missions. PP is earned through audience rate attained at the end of the mission, along with taking down criminals or rescuing civilians while in the mission. These PP are used to train your characters and to unlock stuff at Saito's lab.

6) Story Mission
When you see a purple icon with an exclamation mark, that indicates a story mission. Sometimes a story mission requires a minimum Hero Rank, and you have no choice but to skip them. At times multiple story missions appear, and choosing one may make you miss the other (i recently chose 1 mission where I met Rotwang's androids, but missed the mission involving Sky High meeting Cis apparently). These missions contribute to the Hero Rank, and can be replayed.

7) Hero TV Command Centre
There are 2 options here: 1) See, and 2) Listen to BGM??!! Honestly haven't unlock anything for BGM, so I can't help much there. As for the first option, apparently all you get to do is see a screenshot of your story mission. Press Circle to view it, Triangle to share it on Facebook or Twitter, and Square is to delete it.

8) Gym

Here is where you train your heroes. The first option is to train just Kotetsu, while the second option lets you train the rest of the heroes. Training different station for Kotetsu increases a certain stat of Wild Tiger, with max level of 3 for each stat. I don't understand most of them, although I know 1 of them is attack power. These stats can be seen in Lloyds' office. Training Kotetsu requires PP.

Like Kotetsu, these heroes require PP to train. But training would level them up in general, without the increase of individual stats. This is understandable as you'll be using Wild Tiger most of the time. The higher the level, the more time you can control these characters when you switch to them while in-mission. Trust me, the initial time limit for using each hero partner is very short. Each time you come here from a mission or training Kotetsu, the present heroes in the gym would change. You can unlock more gym equipment for a huge amount of PP, and I have yet to figure out why we should. I am guessing unlocking more gym equipment allows more heroes to be shown in the gym each time (to increase chance of seeing a certain hero you want to train). Max level for all these heroes is 3. Also, if your mission has a hero partner involved, your partner would be Barnaby by default, or the hero you trained just before the mission (this pattern seems likely, although i cannot 100% confirm it).

9) Replay Missions
Here you can replay story missions to earn PP to spend, but they do not affect your Hero Rank. Also, special missions unlocked at Saito's lab can be played here. I've unlocked 1 so far, which involves fighting Cis in a train. You can choose to use Wild Tiger or Barnaby, and select your own partner for the mission.

Missions unlocked from Saito's lab would allow you to choose your main hero between: Wild Tiger (default hero suit), Barnaby (default hero suit), Wild Tiger ("crap suit"), Barnaby (Darkness Bunny suit). Using anything other than the default Wild Tiger suit as your main hero will not have tag team options during the finishing blow sequence.

C. Controls
The controls are mainly explained in the first mission, but I'll run through them for us non-Jap reading people.

Not too sure what they're saying here, but basically each mission requires you to finish the objectives within 5 minutes, while garnering audience rate (the % value at the bottom right of the screen). Appeal goes up when you defeat criminals, complete the finishing blow sequence, rescue civilians, do those close shaves (on missions involving riding the Double Chaser), or step into the On-Air Jack spotlight. Audience rate goes down when you get hit (unless you blocked it). Doesn't make sense? Read on!

The controls:
Analog/D-Pad: move
Square: light attack
Triangle: heavy attack
X: jump
O: grab/grappling hook (for Wild Tiger. Varies according to hero)/interact
R-button: block

Things to note:
-camera angle is fixed, making movement a hassle at times.
- O button is used for various things: activate On-Air Jack/rescue civilians/capture criminals. You can grab objects or criminals with this button too.
- O button varies for every hero when not used for interaction with other things. While Wild Tiger will shoot his grappling hook, Barnaby would perform a quick dash forward instead.
- Like any fighting game, you can mix and match the light and heavy attack buttons for combos. Jump+attack buttons are also possible.
- Blocking will block away most attacks (hence preventing criminals' hits from reducing your Audience rate). However, there has been attacks that are shown to ignore blocks.
- Certain attacks do not need blocking initially. For instance, normal rifles being shot at you do not reduce your audience rate until a certain threshold (probably due to your hero suit's armor). But nonetheless, blocking is good.

When you see criminals having stars on their head, you have limited time to go near them and hit the O button to initiate the finishing blow sequence. If not, they will just disappear, and you get the "criminal captured" basic points only. This sequence requires you to press a series of buttons accordingly. This series may branch out in the middle (for Wild Tiger, usually a branch would appear after the 1st 3 buttons), hence allowing a variety of possible takedowns. More can be unlocked as you train the other heroes, unlocking level 2 and level 3 tag team takedowns. Depending on which sequence you choose, it may be an individual takedown,or duo takedown. Most of them are familiar, like Wild Tiger using his Good Luck Mode, or his accidental falling kick that was used on Jake Martinez. Missing the cue or pressing the wrong button will result in a "No Good", and another hero will come in to steal the spotlight! This would mean the finishing blow failed, and you don't get the points for it. The longer the finishing blow sequence that you choose, the more points you can get out of it (along with audience rate).

When you see that orange circle on the ground, run to it and stand within it (you will know by the enlarging of the circle). Pressing the O button would activate it, and there will be a short video of Wild Tiger (or him and  Barnaby if he's tagging along for the mission) doing a pose or promoting his sponsors. These don't count in the Time Limit, but boosts audience rate. Let's call them On-Air Jack spots.

Pressing the O button will,by default, make Wild Tiger shoot his grappling hook, unless he is standing near an object or a criminal that isn't holding a shield, in which he would grab them instead.

-If the hook hits a criminal with a shield, Wild Tiger would yank away the shield. This is necessary as the shield blocks all of Wild Tiger's attacks.
-If the hook hits a criminal (not all), it will pull him to Wild Tiger, who will grab him. Pressing either the Triangle, X- or O-button will cause Wild Tiger to throw the target. The square button one will throw him directly in front of you, while the triangle button will throw him further with greater force. I can vouch that the triangle button throw damages the criminal, as I used only that move to defeat Lunatic in my first encounter with him.
-When you hook on a fence-like wall with red borders, Wild Tiger would pull himself to it and cling on. This skill is useful for reaching certain objectives, and is a necessary skill throughout the game.
-The hook cannot work on certain criminals, such as the big robots Kriem controlled.

Remember how the orange circle means an On-Air Jack spot? Well, a green circle would mean there is a civilian that needs rescuing. When you are close enough, the circle becomes yellow, and that is where you press the O-button to interact. This will open up a series of buttons you need to press in sequence, and doing so will rescue the civilians, giving you points and also boosting audience rate. Getting hit while rescuing cancels the rescue, so be sure that there are no criminals assaulting you while you are rescuing.

Take note that while some missions have the objective of eliminating criminals, there may be civilians lying around (or vice versa), which provides bonus points, similar to the On-Air Jack spots. Optional, yet helps your audience rate.

D. Missions Walkthrough *potential spoilers*
I will split this section to two parts, the first part giving the basic objectives only (for people who want a challenge and not get spoilers), while the second part tells people things they need to note or do/don't do during each mission.

Mission objective:
No. 1: Defeat tall criminals, rescue civilians.
No. 2: Defeat the statue
No. 3: Chase down the statue
No. 4: Unknown
No. 5: Unknown
No. 6: Rescue all civilians
No. 7: Defuse all bombs
No. 8: Defeat all criminals
No. 9: 1) Defeat the 2 jet-pack henchmen, 2) Defeat Pauly
No. 10: Defeat all criminals
No. 11: Defeat all criminals
No. 12: Unknown
No. 13: Defeat the Myers sisters
No. 14: Defeat all robots (2 stages)
No. 15: 1) Defeat all robots, 2) Defeat Jake
No. 16: Defeat Jake (2 times)
No. 17: Eliminate all criminals
No. 18: Rescue all civilians
No. 19: Chase down Lionel Hawke
No. 20: Unknown
No. 21: Unknown
No. 22: Defeat all androids
No. 23: Chase down the robot
No. 24: Unknown
No. 25: 1) Defeat the Mr. Hopper, 2) Defeat Lunatic
No. 26: Defeat the robots
No. 27:


Mission guide:
No. 1: Walkthrough mission, which is more or less my entire "Controls" section above.
No. 2: Defeat the moving statue. Simply stand near it, block until the you are prompted to attack (by pressing a designated button), and you will knock it down. While it's down, unleash your attacks on it.

No. 3: Chasing the second moving statue. This is the first of a handful of chase missions you will encounter. Distance and speed gauges are given to you at the top left, and as usual these missions have 5 minutes to be completed. The way to rake up audience rate is to follow behind obstructions (eg. cars) until the last few seconds when a "!" appears and steer clear. You have a speed boost that regenerates constantly, and its gauge length depends on the level of Barnaby. When you are close enough to the statue, an attack prompt is given, which after pressed will mean mission accomplished.
No. 4: Unknown
No. 5: Unknown
No. 6: This missions is just rescuing civilians, but the fixed camera angles make it a pain in the ass. Try to move fast, because some civilians are rather far. And keep a keen eye for On-Air Jack spots.
No. 7: The main mission is to defuse all bombs, but there are civilians and criminals scattered around the map. You are not obliged to rescue and defeat them respectively. You will need to use your Wild Shoot to reach some of the bombs, which can be rather frustrating for first-timers due to camera angle. If you want to jump over the fence after Wild Shoot-ing yourself to it, simply press the jump button and move the analog in the direction a bit, so that Wild Tiger won't move too much and maybe end up falling back down.
No. 8: Simply defeat all the criminals. You may want to take out the one in the middle with the bazooka first, since his range is rather long. Other than that, quite a straightforward mission.
No. 9: For the first part, you need to defeat Pauly's henchmen. They will fly around with their jet-packs, so simply use Wild Shoot to snag them and throw them around. Pauly comes in after you defeat his henchmen, and you just need to block his array of attacks before attacking him. Highly recommended to do a short attack combo (I use Wild Tiger's uppercut combo of Square+Triangle) to rinse and repeat. Using a longer combo might prevent you from blocking Pauly's incoming attack since he won't flinch when attacked upon. You cannot Wild Shoot him.
No. 10: Quite straight forward; take down the criminals, rescue the civilians and get On-Air Jack spots if you want. Look out for grenadiers; their grenades explosion will hurl you away and also reduce the audience rate.
No. 11: Again, defeat all criminals. Considering how near they are, the middle guy with the bazooka might keep harassing you while you take out his allies, so feel free to take him down ASAP with extreme prejudice.
No. 12: Unknown
No. 13: These sisters are annoying when together; divide and conquer. Use your Wild Shoot to snag one and throw her far away from her sisters, making it easier to apprehend her. The blue one has shoots an electric ball that does not move too fast. The yellow sister shoots a bullet that splits into 3 and converge to the point she aims at. The red one (with green hair) shoots multiple fast purple balls at once. Also, don't stand near them when they recover (in fact, this applies to most bosses), because they attack upon recovering. This can be easily resolved by blocking though.
No. 14: Defeat all robots. First time would be solo, second time with Barnaby for back up.
No. 15: For the first part, defeat all robots, but this time you're using Barnaby. He can still grip onto the fences by pressing the Circle button, but instead of Wild Shoot he uses a quick dash. The second part involves using Wild Tiger to fight Jake. If you've seen the anime, you know that Jake can read people's minds. In this game, your attacks are always blocked. If you try to do an attack combo, he would probably counter you. For me, I tend to block until he attacks, before using Triangle to do 1 punch charge at him, before blocking again. Rinse and repeat. You can use your Wild Shoot on him; it won't snag him, but it can cancel his attack (this applies to several bosses actually). This is useful if you want to be more aggressive.
No. 16: You need to defeat Jake, once with Wild Tiger and once with Barnaby. As before, he cannot be defeated as he'll block all your attacks. You just need to keep hammering him until your mission is considered accomplished. For Wild Tiger I just did the Wild Shoot+Triangle attack to ensure Jake could not attack. Sometimes if your hero end up too close to Jake he would do this barrier attack that throws you back. For Barnaby it's much easier: keep using the Triangle attack on Jake (don't spam it because you don't want to do an attack combo, which Jake can and will counter). It forces Jake to block. Assuming Jake has a chance to attack, he would do an attack where he leaps into the air, and send a hurl of projectiles on your location, before landing there. Simply run around to avoid this, but not too far off. Getting the On-Air Jack spots are good if you want audience rate.
No. 17: Really straight forward. Wipe the floor with those criminals, and get OAJ spots and civilians for extra ratings/points.
No. 18: Well, rescuing all civilians doesn't need explanation.
No. 19: Chase down Lionel Hawke. I'd recommend using the speed boost only when he is visible, or his smoke obstruction might appear too fast for you to avoid.
No. 20: Unknown
No. 21: Unknown
No. 22: Simply eliminate the androids. They are more resilient than normal criminals, but still manageable.
No. 23: A standard chase, just avoid the robot's fire.
No. 24: Unknown
No. 25: Mr. Hopper loves to hop, so use your Wild Shoot to snag him and throw him around. You can run to him after that, block his recovery attack, and quickly do a short attack combo. Rinse and repeat and you'll have him down in no time. Do note that the camera angle kinda sucks, so moving between roofs might be a chore. Next is Lunatic. After defeating him the first time you should know his moves. Snagging and throwing is the safest option, because he will hop away whenever he recovers.

Hint: Assuming you're on the lowest of the 4 roofs. The one to the left of the screen (second lowest roof) would require you to make one big round to reach it, ie. you need to jump from roof to roof just to make 1 round. If you're on the lowest roof and the villain is on that second lowest roof, you can save yourself the trouble by trying to Wild Shoot him while jumping; you should be able to snag him and throw him elsewhere.
No. 26: these robots are a pain to take out when they are clustered together. You can't do a combo without getting interrupted by their assaults. If possible, try to get the attention of one and pull him to one side to take out.

E. Conclusion

When you complete the story mode, you will have a credit scene of the dynamic duo riding along the expressway, where there is nothing much. You can steer them though, which removes some boredom of the credits. Never tried crashing cars here... Anyway, once the credits are finished and you load your saved game, you will restart the story mode, resetting your hero rank and the levels of all other heroes. However, things you've unlocked and Wild Tiger's stats will be retained. Previously unlocked missions will remain unlocked in the  "Replay Missions" section.

With that, I have more or less run through the basics for this game. I hope that this guide has helped you! It's not the best game out there, but this game is definitely one worth playing if you're a Tiger & Bunny fan, even if you cannot understand the Japanese. You get to experience the plots again, and team up with other heroes. I'm not sure where you can find the game (legally or illegally), but I'm pretty sure you can find it!