Paunch

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Kangaroo

The kangaroo, named Paunch in the Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko instruction manual, is a helper that is exclusive to the bonus stage, Marsupial Madness.

Appearance

The Kangaroo is a big, brown kangaroo whose idle animation involved hopping in place. Judging from the pouch that all marsupials are known to have, this kangaroo is female. Gex capitalizes on this fact and hides inside the aforementioned pouch for the entirety of the bonus levels in which the kangaroo appears, and is completely incapable of exiting the pouch until the level is finished or if Gex fails to beat the challenges in time.

Powers & Abilities

Paunch, being a kangaroo, is capable of very powerful kicks, and also uses her legs to jump to incredible heights.

Gallery

"Paunch"

Paunch action figure

Trivia

• Paunch is the only Helper whose levels are entirely bonus stages that lack the same theme as a regular level.

• Appears to be inspired by the 1982 Sunsoft arcade game Kangaroo, where you play as a Kangaroo wearing boxing gloves, who rings bells and has monkeys throw apple cores at him. In that game the goal is to get to the top by scaling each level and climbing the ladder on each side.
• This is the only Helper to receive an action figure in the cancelled ReSaurus toy line.

• Of all the Helpers in the game, this Helper is the most mysterious, as most of the bonus levels are modeled after main levels (i.e. Holiday Broadcasting and The Buccaneer Program), while her levels are seemingly original and lack any main level to be based off of. This has led many gamers to believe that there was a level planned that had the kangaroo in it, possibly one based on nature documentaries like those seen on Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel. However, Crystal Dynamics and Eidos (now called Square Enix Europe) has yet to comment on this. If this is true, then the level would've been located in Slappy Valley, the only hubworld that was located in a forest and was more in-tune with nature. It theoretically would've been located in the halfway point in between Mission Control and the larger half of Slappy Valley, which, unlike Funky Town, which had key items hidden in its halfway point, lacked anything of real value outside of Fly Coins.