Ask Guru Gobbo #06

Sora Ltd. is more of a label than a company. It might as well just be his name, but that's not how things fly in the world of business. It actually is that few of real employees, but since of his reputation, when work needed done for their first game, Super Smash Bros. Brawl for example, Sora "borrowed" employees from another gaming institute, Game Arts. In effect, he is just a free lance game developer who has no real connections to any static employees. They are taken on board for the time needed when need arises. At least, that's how I understand it.

Spanish Meta Knight, as most people probably have read in the lstest Mailbag issue appears to be quite the mystery. This was actually a joke I made for the RR Election '08. I wanted to blitz out as many candidates as possible, but one of the political parties was a bunch of jokes and rejects. Spanish Meta Knight is what I always call Mets from the American dubbing. I like Eric Stuart as much as the next guy, but I have no clue why he sounds so Spanish. It's completely unfitting to the character, to the setting, and to the show in general. However, since people pretty much just vote for whatever contains the words "Meta" and/or "Knight", he sky rocketed up to third place (Last I checked, that is. He may have taken the lead on Kirby). It's really quite horrible. Anyways, the election was poorly publicized and largely only known to those who voted in the recently revived Monthly Poll feature on the main page. Of course, most of the Mailbaggers had no clue what any of this was, outside of Disaster Kirby who actually keeps tabs on these sorts of things.

As for the question losing but name keeping, it was a slip up on my part. I was generating the next session's page, starting with the top (that questioner catalogue) and took names to fill it out in order. At this time, I was also clearing out the old cache of answered entries. I uploaded the reduced file still with the original, longer version open. Well, then I slipped up and closed the unedited version before taking off all the questions. Yep, I'm an idiot. You can even tell me so, and I'll answer admit it again, folks.

Oo, a personal question. Well, here's the story of how I was hired at ol' RR:

I joined the forums and started trying to be active in the community at the eve of '03. Back then, KindarSpirit wasn't as elusive as she is now, but still hard to find. She wound up being one of the few people who didn't hate my guts. She was also a fan of my artwork, which was basically all I was known for since I was a silent lurker for the most part.

Roll forward in the years, and the Frontpage Picture Challenge started to be managed by Kindar herself. This was basically what made me join the community back in '03, and I submitted pictures all the time. However, updates were rarely monthly and often skipped. Soon, one day, I just said to Kindar, "You know, I make these pictures about every month anyways. I could just do this." She was pleased with the idea and made me a staff member that very minute.

Of course, since most people are hired through actual recruitment, I had to gain notoriety when already hired at the site. So, I started small and slowly built up credibility by always making my deadlines at the start of each month. After that, I struck a cord with Ivyna J. Spyder by helper her smooth out some niches in the Kirbypedia. After some more time wallowing around, Robo Mecha Dedede had a ... falling out, of sorts, with the site, and I picked up the Fan Comics from him. I also created a means to more easily generate the ever popular Mailbag since my request to take up that task from RMD, too, was too subtle.

After that, I just went crazy and started mettling with anything that I could and tried to blitz the site with updates to forgotten or under upkept content, my favorite kind as its where I've gotten every job title from. Polls, radio, election, fan contests, I wanted to just see what would stick with site goers. At this time, Disaster Kirby had started Project R.A.I.N.B.O.W., but he didn't needed help to fill in some of the project portions, so I volunteered once more.

And that's how I got to this position: by having way too much spare time.

The show had the slumber last forever since it needed a story element. If Kirby would have waken up after five seconds, it wouldn't have been much of an episode. When games jump from the screen to the ... screen in television form, concepts and themes are borrowed, but it is never an exact transition. It has to make a compelling story or difficult obstacle to overcome.

As for the healing, rest is replenishing. In many games, a night at the inn will recover some if not all of your health and magic/special/whatever points. They decided to use this trend in Squeak Squad since Sleep was a (non-secret) ability and needed to have some form of Copy Scroll upgrade option.

Of course, we all know that the real advantage of Sleep is seeing Kirby's sleepy face. Tee hee!

I do have a favorite, actually, and it saddens me since it appears in the grand total of one game throughout the ever growing series. I'm quite vocal (typal, I guess?) about my admiration for this li'l fellow, Blopper. For those of you unfamiliar with the guy, it is one of the enemies from the original Dream Land. As if that didn't make it obscure enough, it was also only found in the Extra Game mode of play, where it replaced Cappy. Instead of a mushroom, it was as cupcake with a thick layer of frosting complete with a cherry on top in place of a cap. That being said, it behaved much like Cappy, hopping about almost harmlessly. Also, when an attempt at inhaling it was made, you only snagged its top and the hidden creature below bounced back. This thing looked like a wiggling blob that I can best describe as a jelly bean with a tapered top. Now, what made this guy worthy of the Extra Game distinction is that, unlike his harmless predecessor, until his cover was removed, he launched out gooey globs of his frosting in all directions. They could be quite a handful!

I would say they have some, but it isn't that many. Their faces have similarities, but it is hardly the same. Really, they both just have beady eyes. If everyone who had beady eyes had the same face, then there'd be a lot of identical twins runnin' around. Truthfully, their eyes are not even that much alike. Kirby has tall, thin, ovals foe eyes while Ness has a bit more stout of stark black ovals. Also, Ness has a stubby nose cheeks that puff out, in comparison to Kirby's nigh-on spherical face. His eyes are set a bit further apart. In truth, it's hardly like someone was decapitated and had Kirby perch on their neck, which, unrelated, would be quite a sight.

As for control over elements, Ness uses Psychokinesis, a completely mental ability, which if I recall my Earthbound, just allows him to sorta blast stuff. Kirby doesn't have any power over the elements. His sole ability is to take on other things' abilities. He's not suppose to go, "Hey, I can control fire!" It's more of an, "Hey, Hothead spits fire, so now I can, too!" Granted, they've taken a lot of liberties with this as the series has progressed, which I believe peaked with the television series.

This answer has a follow up in Session #10.

People asked the same thing when Robo Mecha Dedede left the site, and there was a huge panic. Here's the thing: RMD performed the functions of the Mailbag and the Fan Comics. The roles of Glod and Diddgery were ...

Yeah, I really don't know. Active members in the community, yes, and no one can replace that role for anyone ever, but as for a next-in-line type of thing, there isn't any shoes to be filled.

I always think they are part of the Meta Crew, myself, but then I have to remind myself that such is not true. They seem like they belong, being armored and weapon wiedling, but the blade bearing battlers have nothing to do with Meta Knight. This is another example of liberties taken when a property transits from game to T.V. This is one of such examples, too, where the interpretation is not a poor one.

1) I would think that another Adventures of Lolo game would be more possible with the appearance of the character in another series. Since they have, I'd assume, more notariety now, a game should be easier to get off the ground. Like you said, start it off with some Wii re-releases to kinda show people that Lolo is older school than even Kirby and then follow it up with some newer stuff.

I have played some of the Lolo games, actually, although I don't remember which. I want to say the trilogy but may have skipped out on some. I only played them a long time ago as video rentals. Ah, back in the day. The theme escapes me, but the challenging puzzles still stick in my mind. Those were some great games.

2) As for what my icon may be, it's an original fan creation (if such a thing can even exist) that I call Squeaky Bogg. It was made in the fashion of what an old, Dream Land character would look like, being simple and minimalistic. It's not a flame, although I can see where that'd come from, but a little horned pudge. Its body type was based off of that used by Broom Hatter, just with a thick, stiff tail bent behind.

Now that's a devoted fan! It's true, one of the other Kirbies can use Magic to summon a Meta Knight into the room you are currently in even if they are no where near that location. I've had it happen to me more than once, and it's actually the only way I've ever seen Meta Knight attack. I have no luck with the roulette.