Ask Guru Gobbo #21

For the most part, I just don't have the systems they come out for. I haven't spend much money on video games or consoles because, well, I have a lot already. Atari up to PS2, I run a pretty wide range. I look too much at what I still need to get for those systems as opposed to what has come out for things I don't even have yet, which doesn't help. On top of that all, I try to spend a certain amount of time creating my own works rather than enjoying someone else's. I work on sites, write, draw, poorly program, etc. I'm at that point in my life where time is the real issue, not cash. I could buy them all in a heartbeat, really, but I just don't know when I'd get around to playing any of them.

I would like to get these new Kirby titles, but let's be honest, there ain't that many. Super Smash Bros. doesn't necessarily count as one, so that really just leaves Canvas Curse and Squeak Squad in the "new" department, both for the Nintendo DS which I currently lack. I'm a little indifferent to Squad after hearing mixed reviews regarding its length of play although I still want it in my collection, but I really want Canvas Curse as the whole concept just seems awesome. Air Ride and Crystal Shards could probably be brushed off closer to the "old" pile by now.

I really like to think of all the characters in Kirby as individuals, even though I know there are Waddle Dees in great excess. It's totally flawed and riddled with holes, like the variations seen in just Bobo, but that's the way I like to look at it for the most part. The more feral a being is, the more I'd see it like a regular Pop Star fauna. Mr. Frosty, and most all of the minibosses, I see as more unique and individual specimen of the Dream Land catalogue of species. Poppy Bros. would be one I see as a family, mainly since it is known that there are the brothers. I'm not sure what they might be a family of, but Boomer sure seems like he's in the same boat.

I've always seen it as naive to try and dissect the global ecology of video game worlds. When they blur the line between what's an animal and what's a person, things get shaky. A game like Metroid, yeah, anything that's not a boss is just a weird creature. It's on alien worlds with alien species. With Pop Star, on the other hand, while alien in right, it doesn't fit that sci-fi niche. I know that Grizzo is comparable to bears and Blipper to fish, but where do the Waddles fall in this equation? Or Knuckle Joe, or Kapar, or Keke, Propeller, Kibble, and what have you. Does any of these even have any meaning or am I pretty much blindly ranting? That, I believe, we all already know the answer to.

I know it really looks like it, but, again, this is what a moral analogue is suppose to be. It's a representation of our planet Earth in the bleak future after, supposedly, a nuclear winter. I'll restate that Pop Star is suppose to be light years away from us, and seeing as you can plainly see all of the other "stars" while looking at Shiver Star, it obviously cannot Earth. Besides, isn't Adeleine suppose to be a human visiting Pop Star to study art or something? If this was that far in the future, shouldn't she be one of those pulsating forehead humans or some type of cyborg? I never really got how she fit in with, well, anything, really.

Back to the point, the more it looks like Earth, the greater impact the message has. Again, Gozilla has drilled this point into our minds for years, and Akira as well as Princess Mononoke still awesomely remind us: nuclear war equal bad and love thy planet.

I ... don't know. My guess would be, as with the classic folklore of possession and mind control generally goes, those weak of mind and will are easier prey. Kirby is bold, courageous, and strong in mind. You have to have to be to be a hero like him. Folks like King Dedede, Dark Matter's #1 target, is greedy and selfish. This goes hand in hand with a weak spirit. False promises and grim intentions easily take root in such wickedly fertile soil.

In time, maybe. I don't really have much of a gambit of emotions to display. In fact, I didn't even make these faces for use in these feature. They just happened to be laying around when I volunteered for this job, and I thought, "Hey, why not?" I mean, really, only one of them is a positive reaction, the one you see to the right. The others were to express anger, sarcasm, disbelief, annoyance, etc.

As for Mecha Kracko, I don't really know why they did that. I can assume they wanted to have Doc with more machines but also wanted to have the ever awesome eyeball present in the game, too. When planning out the stage end bosses, they probably found themselves short stages and with too many foes, so they just decided to score two birds with one stone. Also, I feel (just my opinion, no real basis other than that) that is was kind of an apology for his previous appearance. I always thought Mecha Kracko should have been in Amazing Mirror rather than Squeak Squad. They already had an alternate Whispy Woods in King Golem, but then they just went for classic Kracko? A bit odd by my reckoning.

And, speaking of King Golem, what a segue! Your last question really could have gone either way. I do not think Mega Titan made much of an impact on anyway, despite being unique as you said. King Golem, however, was suppose to be passed over. As I kinda mentioned up there, from how I took it, he was the Mirror World's answer to Whispy Woods. I guess they thought they'd make the first boss a bit more of a challenge, even though I still take him out sans powers in record time regardless.

I wouldn't call it an ability if it wasn't copied from eating something. Yes, I'll agree it's analoguous to the Mini power and certainly is a nod to its existence, but it's just not a copy ability unless it's copied from someone or something.

As for Walky being at the end when already consumed, this is the classic animator flub. It's not uncommon for characters who aren't in scenes to be depicted in quick shots or for things to get jumbled. When animation crews are all working on separate parts at different times, they don't really have the whole story. They're just drawing things happening. Crowded rushes are the worst since they are just digging deep to fill the spaces with any faces possible. Of course, you could look at it as Walky leaping out of Kirby's belly and fleeing since the singing was so horrid.

A request that isn't for the angry face!?! Yeah, I still had to make the face my reaction. Anyhoo, The deal with Señior Noodle Arms was priorly covered. He isn't from any Kirby game. It's just my mockery of Meta Knight's portrayal in the animated series, particularly the American dub, and how his shape is being changed, particularly in fan art. People actually draw the pudge ball, as that's what he is, just like Kirby, with thin, long arms as opposed to rounded flippers. It just doesn't sit right with me.

I have never heard of this game and, really, don't have much care to find out. Japanese rhyming? Eh.

As for the green Kirby color scheme, Super Smash Bros. Melee did, in deed, beat out Nightmare in Dream Land for having the first green version of the puff ball. It made sense that, if Kirby was pink with red shoes or yellow with brown shoes, whatever his base color was, his secondary color would be a darker version of said color. However, Nightmare in Dream Land, actually, did not do this. According to the official artwork and blurry screen captures I can find, those feet are orangish, not a darker shade of green. So, really, the Kirby series set how the colors should be, so Smash Bros. just updated their version for Brawl in order to match.

Kirby games are, by design and admission, a "beginner's game", but they are still suppose to offer fun and challenge to more advanced players. Cuteness aside, that's just how they wanted them to be. Now, you hopped on the boat at the wrong time, I'd say, since Nightmare in Dream Land had a reduced difficulty than its predecessor, Adventure. But, yeah, the games are pretty easy. They try to make the difficulty step up with things like Extra Modes and boss butches, which really get pretty hairy. But, most any video games are easy, by my account, nowadays. Take the original Final Fantasy. They had to remake it with an easy mode, for Pete's sake, so that the modern video game player wouldn't cry over trying to beat the first dungeon! "Now your adventure truly begins." Yeah, after a weeks of play. Stupid king. Stupid king. I'm gonna need something to get me through the rest of this. Pete, gimme that rice wine!

I know this isn't a Kirby question, but it has come up before. The "cake" is a prize offered by a computer system voice in the game The Orange Box. The computer puts you through all these trials, which later are designed to kill you, but promises that their will be cake. Scribbled on walls and various places are messages from other test subjects that read, "The cake is a lie." It's gathered quite a bit of cult following, it would seem, as I see this phrase come up pretty often. Now, I've never played this game, but I was described its several comical details and must say, putting the original gameplay aside, just the humor makes this game great.

I've touched a bit on where Squeaky Bogg came from before, actually in one of these offset, end things, and probably didn't get it up until after this was asked. Regardless, the idea was an evolution. No one gave it to me or inspired it. Well, outside of HAL and the Kirby franchise, but that's a given.

If you want to really go to his origins, the character came from, as stated in the past, a green Kirby. I had the idea to make some Flash cartoons using the green puffball. I never got Flash let along learned how to use it, so that pretty much went out the window like all the other ideas I had for cartoons. Anyhoo, the four possible Kirby colors, as was at the time all that were possible in Nightmare in Dream Land, were used as a basis on the matter. i always thought it was stupid that red came before green since, in truth, Kirby is red. That variety of color is already taken. Why did they have double red? Thank goodness they saw the error of their ways and changed that color to blue in the upcoming (should it ever come out) Wii title. I'm getting off base here, aren't I?

Green Kirby, yes. I hated that he was at the end. You'd need to actually have four people linked up to ever get him to appear, which just seemed wrong to me. This fourth player was left out of doing anything, which was established in the storyboards of the cartoon's introduction. The other three were chosen, but poor Player 4, was left with nothing to do. So, the story focused on him. For sake of fun, I used Roman numerals and called him "Pl. IV" or "Pliv" since I didn't want to call him "Green Kirby".

I began making little changes here and there. First, I put purple shoes on him since that was a favored color scheme. I began to incorporate "goblin" aspects to him, including a beak-like nose and pointy ears. I stuck a crooked tail on him in some cases. Again, touched on a little before, I didn't really like having a slightly modified Kirby, or heavily in this case, and the changes didn't really work with the round body. I thought, "Well, why not use another Dream Land character as a model?" So, after shopping around, I took all the additions off the "Kirby" base and stuck them on the general frame of Broom Hatter or Blopper. I wiped off the nose, turned the stubby arms into Poppy Bros. hands, and had a pretty good thing going.

And that's the moral of the story, kiddies: if you want to make a fan character stand out, don't use the main character as a basis. Pick one of the lesser used frames to build upon so it still fits in yet is set apart from the standard fare.