DJ Grooves

DJ Grooves
Species	Moon Penguin
Role	Major character, Antagonist (determinant)
Appears in	Dead Bird Studio Picture Perfect The Big Parade Award Ceremony The Finale
Voiced by	Anthony Sardinha
Manual info	Hope you brought your dancing shoes, cause this funky penguin is heating up the dance-floor with his moves!
Trading Card desc	With a look like that, I'm surprised he doesn't star in his own movies. I wonder if this guy was ever a musician? He reminds me of someone.

DJ Grooves is a major character in A Hat in Time who mainly appears in Chapter 2: Battle of the Birds, either as a deuteragonist or main antagonist. He is a movie director who creates exciting and energetic films, and has Hat Kid star in two films called "Picture Perfect" and "The Big Parade". He was formerly the DJ of his own night club called the Club of 20 Grooves, but has since retired to make movies.

Having a rivalry with the Conductor, he's one of the two birds whom Hat Kid can help win the competition for the Annual Bird Movie Awards.

Appearance

DJ Grooves is a fat blue Moon Penguin with a black afro and large yellow feathers above his eyes, similar to that of a rockhopper penguin.

His outfit is rather flashy, but perhaps most notable parts are his star-shaped sunglasses and red platforms. He also wears an unbuttoned red jacket with golden buttons, which has a large gold star on the back as well as large jagged lapels. His high-waisted pants are dark blue with stars patterned on the side, buckled with a red belt. He also has a blue comb stuck in his afro.

Personality

DJ Grooves is a very stylish, glamorous, and charismatic bird. Most of the time he is very nice and energetic. He speaks in an overly flashy tone, and frequently uses long, extravagant words, such as "magnificent", "electrify", or "stunning". He is also shown to be poetic at times. When Hat Kid first confronted him, he flattered her by saying he was seeing "true inner beauty" and "an innocent soul with a heart of gold". He also often refers to others as "darling", regardless of his relationship with them.

Being stuck as "second best" for so long does affect him much more than he lets on. While he normally acts calm and collected, with him brushing the Conductor's words off, DJ Grooves does deeply care about his many losses, even to the point of desperation. This is seen in how he begs Hat Kid to act for him and especially in the finale, if he's the winner of the award, with him becoming more and more unstable as it progresses. While his words are spoken in a rather undisturbed manner in the first few phases, he seems to completely snap after the heart-to-heart sequence, repeatedly taunting Hat Kid in a maniacal screaming tone and even cracking up and laughing at some points.

Roles

Dead Bird Studio

In the first act of Chapter 2, DJ Grooves is first seen arguing with The Conductor, being accused of stealing Conductor's idea for movie props for his upcoming movies, which are the Timepieces that they found - which he denies, stating that he believes in the opposite. He then mocks The Conductor for making so many train related western movies. Throughout the rest of the act, DJ Grooves is spotted numerous times throughout the level, directing his movie. At the very end of the act, DJ Grooves is found admiring a plastic replica of the annual bird movie award. Once he spots Hat Kid, he will ask her to star in his movies and tells her to stand still for a picture, as prepares a bird passport for her. If Hat Kid did not move at all, He then has the audacity to say that Hat Kid is not photogenic; if Hat Kid did move, he will say that she ruined the picture. Doing either will result in DJ Grooves handing the picture and pens to Hat Kid, which she can customize all she wants. The picture will later be used as the portrait for the save file.

Picture Perfect

In the third act of Chapter 2, DJ Grooves has Hat Kid star in his latest movie: Picture Perfect. He says that Hat Kid must build her fan club, which can be done by greeting certain penguins, as well as collecting tokens of DJ Grooves' face. If the latter is done, DJ Grooves will drop down from the sky, and give Hat Kid an endorsement, which boosts her fan club. The endorsements include, but do not limit to: DJ Grooves intimidating innocent penguins in an alleyway by stating that Hat Kid is very dangerous; DJ Grooves putting a dog on top of a fountain and asking Hat Kid to knock it down; and more. Eventually, when Hat Kid's fan club is large enough, DJ Grooves will call for her to hold the newest prop, which is one of her Timepieces.

The Big Parade

In the fifth act of Chapter 2, DJ Grooves has Hat Kid play the role of a conductor in a parade, leading a band of owls around the rooftops of the set for his latest movie. He states that this movie will be "very easy". He will occasionally ask Hat Kid to perform certain tasks to make the movie more exciting, and more dangerous. These tasks namely include turning on the pyrotechnics, and activating homing firework cannons. Eventually, the Parade Surprise will be released from the large disco ball in the center of the map - a Timepiece. DJ Grooves will then instruct Hat Kid to catch it, concluding the film.

Award Ceremony - Fakeout

If Hat Kid decides to congratulate DJ Grooves as the winner of the Annual Bird Movie Awards, he will thank her for helping him win, and then give her a single Timepiece. He then asks if Hat Kid expected something crazy, which he dismisses. He is seemingly completely content giving it to her, and just being grateful for her help in his victory this time.

Award Ceremony - Confrontation

During the actual Award Ceremony, DJ Grooves can either be an antagonist or an ally depending on who won. If he was the winner of the award, he will be the main antagonist of the chapter, but if he lost, he will help Hat Kid in the boss battle.

If DJ Grooves wins

When sneaking through the basement under Dead Bird Studio, Muffled voice lines of DJ Grooves can be heard, as he mentions having seen a Timepiece a looong time ago, how Hat Kid doesn't even know of this particular Timepiece's existence, and the fact that she has a lot of them so she probably won't care.

Hat Kid will find DJ Grooves at the bottom floor of the basement, an underground stage, where his boss fight will start. In the first phase of the battle, DJ Grooves has 4 unique attacks: a dive-bomb from either side of the balcony that aims directly at Hat Kid, whistling for stage lights to fall onto the arena, jumping down from the stage for a ground slam, and dropping down on a giant disco ball that stuns and sends out a shockwave.

As the battle progresses, DJ Grooves gains extra attacks: darkening the arena as he charges at Hat Kid with a knife, homing in on her while rapidly swinging multiple knives, and calling upon cars to circle her in the middle of the stage and then jam into each other. On top of the Disco Ball Drop being able to fake out with a delayed fall, DJ Grooves can create photo copies of himself to magnify the effects of both the knife charge and the disco ball drop. The slam attack is gone from this point, and the balcony drop is also absent.

Midway through the fight, he will stop to have a "heart-to-heart" with Hat Kid. He will tell her that the reason for him wanting to keep the Time Piece is because he's certain the Conductor cheated his way to getting all the previous trophies, and DJ Grooves feels as if they rightfully belong to him. When asking her for the Time Piece, Hat Kid can either reply "Maybe" or "Nope". If she replies with "Maybe", he thanks her, but declares that he can't let her get out alive because he cannot risk the Conductor finding out. If she replies with "Nope", he will call Hat Kid "selfish", and still refuse to give it up. Regardless of what is picked, he will proceed to strap a bomb onto her, starting the next phase with an 80 second timer.

DJ Grooves will then continue to attack Hat Kid with yet again a new set of moves: he can take out large saw blades to run across the floor in spreads of three, jump up to the balcony to toss out three sets of saw blades before dropping from the balcony, and running around the stage in a frenzy, taunting Hat Kid about the imminent explosion. After hitting him 5 times, the Conductor will step in, saying he will find a way to defuse the bomb. After 5 more hits, the Conductor will come back with the defuser - a comically large pair of scissors - and direct Hat Kid over to him so he can cut her free, successfully disarming the bomb and stopping the timer.

Once the bomb is disarmed, the battle enters the final phase. DJ Grooves will send 4 knife-wielding parade owls to follow Hat Kid around. DJ Grooves will start doing attacks from phase 1 of the fight, as well as the stabbing attack. Upon taking six more hits, he will be defeated, screaming "I hate you, darling!" as he collapses to the ground.

If The Conductor wins

DJ Grooves will show up during the boss fight in order to defuse the bomb, using a comically large pair of scissors. When running over to him, he will cut the fuse off, disarming the bomb and stopping the timer.

Time's End

In The Finale, he is one of the many people standing in line to be judged. He appears again during Mustache Girl's boss fight, but he has no dialogue during the fight. During the final phase of the fight, he and the Conductor kill each other in order to help Hat Kid defeat Mustache Girl.

They both come back after time is reset, and are seen in the final cutscene hanging off of Hat Kid's Spaceship, begging her to stay alongside the Snatcher, Cooking Cat, and a Mafia Goon.

Bon Voyage!

DJ Grooves does not show up in this Act, but he is mentioned by a Moon Penguin on board of the S.S. Literally Can't Sink. They say that DJ Grooves expressed interest in going on the cruise, but decided to focus on his next movie due to The Conductor being on board.

Gallery

See: DJ Grooves/Gallery

Trivia

• His eyes can be seen behind his glasses using the camera badge, revealing that they are rather small and cute-looking. These can also be seen in "Conductor and Grooves' Big Dreams".
  • Other Moon Penguins have similar-looking eyes as well.

• In Murder on the Owl Express, if the cardboard cutout "Auntie" is chosen as the murderer, it is revealed to have been DJ Grooves intending to try and help Conductor make a better movie.

• In what appears to be his room, Grooves has 385 (presumably fake) trophies in his room in the Dead Bird Studio basement. According to internal game files, these are "bronze" trophies suggesting this may be his collection of awards that he has never exactly won.

• There's several oddities regarding the Chapter 2 boss fight that may suggest that DJ Grooves was intended to be the only winner and antagonist from the get-go.
  • During the Chapter 2 boss battle, the boss will always use a DJ Grooves-sized hitbox, despite the Conductor being much smaller.
  • Internally, the fight is referred to as "DJGrooves_Boss", regardless of which boss the assets are actually from.

• In the original version of Chapter 2, Trainwreck of Science, Hat Kid would have crashed the Owl Express onto the moon in order to find more Time Pieces. Here, she would have met DJ Grooves, still running his club.

• Most of DJ Grooves' voice lines have takes done by a woman, meaning that he was female at some point in development.
  • It is possible that this was the case in Trainwreck of Science. The Conductor has a voice line telling Hat Kid to "go in there and show her who's boss" and saying that if she does he might forgive her for crashing his train, as well as other lines for him cheering her on during the fight. He also has several other dialogue lines that might imply the club was somewhat sinister in nature. Considering all of this, it is likely that DJ Grooves was the intended to be the boss of that chapter.

• There are voice lines in the game files that suggest that DJ Grooves was going to have a bigger part in the finale, with him cheering on the Conductor, but were cut for unknown reasons.