Supper Mario Broth: The Lost Levels, Issue 9, Week 44/2018: Piranha Plant Special

Welcome, Supper Players, Broth Siblings and Supperstars, to the ninth issue of the Supper Mario Broth: The Lost Levels feature! Thank you so much for your decision to continue to support my Patreon in November! Now, you may be wondering about the title of the article. I had a regular The Lost Levels feature prepared, however, with the news of Piranha Plant being announced as a fighter for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, I decided I would leave the prepared article for next week and instead write one that is focused entirely on Piranha Plant facts. I think now is a momentous time for Piranha Plant fans, and if I want to commemorate it, there is no better time than now! Before I start, let me briefly restate some things of note about the article series. For more detailed explanations, please refer to Issue 1.

• All images without an attribution have been recorded/created by me. If you wish to know what emulators/programs I used, please leave a comment. I will reply promptly.
• All comments and criticism are greatly appreciated, and all suggestions are evaluated and incorporated into future issues. You can shape the form and content of the articles with your feedback, so don't hesitate to tell me anything!

Now, let us enter a Piranha Plant Pipeway of obscure Mario information.
This is Supper Mario Broth: The Lost Levels.  

Due to the special nature of this article, instead of there being 8-10 large segments, this one will contain a larger number of smaller segments. With that said, let us first take a look at...

References in the Piranha Plant Trailers

Nintendo has released a reveal trailer (same footage as used in the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Direct) and a move showcase video for Piranha Plant. I will go through the videos and comment on any references within them to behaviours previously exhibited by Piranha Plants in the Mario series. Screenshots of these videos appearing later in the article will not be sourced individually.

By the way: did you know this is the first playable appearance by a generic Piranha Plant as a character that is directly being controlled by the player in real-time? While appearances of a Piranha Plant that is technically controllable due to being part of the player character's party or somehow attached to the player character exist, to directly control one has never been possible before. Petey Piranha, the only character belonging to any Piranha Plant species who has been directly playable before, is playable in 9 games, only 2 of which he is not locked behind the player requiring previous achievements to become playable.

We will start with the reveal trailer, which begins by showing Luigi next to a Koopa Shell, and three Yoshis (red, yellow and blue) displaying a dizzy/confused animation, which is later revealed to be a result of the Piranha Plant's poison. Note that the stage this is happening on is the Mushroom Kingdom U stage, based on New Super Mario Bros. U, and the Yoshis share their color with the colors of Baby Yoshis available in that game. Whether this is a deliberate reference or a coincidence of simply using the next three colors after removing the green Yoshi is unknown.

We then see Mario, who angrily approaches the Piranha Plant. Note that the Piranha Plant's pot has two semicircular pieces missing from the base.

This is a reference to a piece of official artwork from Mario Party 3, where the Piranha Plant held by Waluigi is also in a pot missing similarly-shaped pieces. While potted Piranha Plants have appeared several more times in the Mario series, each of the pots in those appearances had a flat base without that detail. Also note that there exists a misconception regarding the above Waluigi artwork that the Piranha Plant in it is supposed to be his partner from Duel Mode, which is also a Piranha Plant - this is incorrect; the potted Piranha Plant is from the Battle minigame Storm Chasers, although neither the in-game version from Mario Party 3 nor the remake version from Mario Party: The Top 100 feature the same detail on the pot. This is Waluigi with his partner Piranha Plant, which is not potted:

The Piranha Plant performs a few moves standard to Super Smash Bros. fighters that are not based on any specific Mario games, but then turns into a Spiny Piranha Plant from Super Mario Galaxy 2 in the last attack:

What is remarkable about this reference is that there is only one Spiny Piranha Plant in the entirety of Super Mario Galaxy 2; found in the second mission of Sky Station Galaxy. The fact that the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate team was able to find and reference such an obscure enemy shows the amount of effort put into developing the character.

The next special attack shown is the Piranha Plant producing a spiked ball and blowing to hold it in mid-air above itself, which is a reference to the relatively common Ptooie enemy, debuting in Super Mario Bros. 3. However, then the Piranha Plant blows the ball to the side, which no species of Ptooies except the rare Glad Ptooies from Super Princess Peach can do.

Whether the ability to blow the spiked ball to the side is a deliberate reference to Super Princess Peach or a coincidence is unknown.

Then, one of the alternate colorations for the Piranha Plant is shown, with a green head with yellow spots and a yellow stem; this is a reference to the original color scheme for Piranha Plants in their first appearance in Super Mario Bros.:

The alternate coloration also includes the change from pot to Warp Pipe; as we see later, four of the colors use a pot, while the other four use a Warp Pipe. 

The Piranha Plant is shown to have small yellow feet, visible when it is running or performing aerial attacks; this is unprecedented, as all Piranha Plants with feet or legs seen in Mario games have green extremities (or yellow with white tips in the case of Piranha Sprouts from Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, however, none are purely yellow).

However, it is likely that the feet are recolored by the same code that colors the stem, meaning that the default Piranha Plant color will have green feet. 

After this, the Piranha Plant showcases its poison attack, during which it assumes the coloration of the Putrid Piranha enemies from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, which have that same attack.

Note that it was not necessary on part of the team to use that coloration; Putrid Piranhas were also present in the first Paper Mario, where they had standard Piranha Plant colors - but the team chose to reference Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door nevertheless, despite it not being referenced often in the actual Mario series.

The next shot shows the remaining six colorations of the Piranha Plant.

Let us go through all the different possible references. The only yellow Piranha Plant outside the previously discussed Glad Ptooie from Super Princess Peach is the Glad Piranha Plant from the same game. No Piranha Plants of the exact shade of pink of the next coloration exist, but Peewee Piranha from Super Mario Galaxy 2 is the closest. The black coloration could either be a reference to the Inky Piranha Plant from Super Mario 3D Land or the Pale Piranha from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. The light grey one is very likely a reference to the Bone Piranha Plant introduced in New Super Mario Bros. 2. There have been a wide variety of purple Piranha Plants in Mario series history, I believe that the purple coloration is more likely to be a reference to Prickly Piranha Plants or Dino Piranha from Super Mario Galaxy, although being inspired by Piranha Creepers from Super Mario 3D World or even Bungee Piranhas from Yoshi's Island DS is also possible. Finally, the light blue coloration matches only the Frost Piranha from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.

(There are also examples of Piranha Plants being able to change colors, resulting in many colorations also matching the Super Smash Bros. ones, but I concentrated on finding Piranha Plants that were always those colors instead of only having them as a possible color scheme.)

(Above: a yellow Piranha Plant from the Piranha Panic minigame in Mario Superstar Baseball.)

Note that all of this does not take into account stem and pipe/pot colors, which to my understanding appear to have been picked randomly - especially the yellow stem for the light blue coloration; as the only games to give Piranha Plants yellow stems were the original Super Mario Bros. and the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2, known internationally as The Lost Levels, and while the latter contains blue Piranha Plants, they have red stems instead of yellow.

In the next attack, the Piranha Plant greatly elongates, which may be a reference to either Stalking Piranha Plants from New Super Mario Bros. Wii or the Elasto-Piranha from Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, which is able to elongate even further.

Finally, the Piranha Plant is shown to be able to fly by rotating its leaves like helicopter blades, presumably as its Up+B special attack. This may be a reference either to the Jumping Piranha Plants from Super Mario World or (less likely) Piranha Pests from Yoshi's Story. 

Note that no Piranha Plant with a stem has been shown to be able to fly this way before; the ones that have flown did it by flapping their leaves like bird wings rather than rotating them.

At the end of the video, the Piranha Plant's Final Smash, Petey Piranha, is shown. This is, of course, a direct reference to the first boss battle in Super Smash Bros. Brawl's Subspace Emissary mode, where Petey Piranha is holding two cages with Princess Peach and Princess Zelda inside, respectively. For the Final Smash, the cages are initially empty, but capture other fighters if they touch them.

The second video linked at the beginning of this segment contains mainly a repeat of the various special moves and a few standard moves that are not sourced from any Mario games; however, it also shows the Piranha Plant sleeping - which could be an idle animation or a taunt (it is unlikely that this is its actual sleeping animation due to the fact that in Super Smash Bros., characters flash red when sleeping).

This is referencing the Piranha Plants' first 3D appearance in Super Mario 64, where they could be found sleeping around Whomp's Fortress and would be woken up if Mario moved too quickly near them - which is referenced in the video by having the Piranha Plant wake up because Luigi approached with a quick walking speed.

All in all, depending on what the designers actually referenced, the material going into the creation of the Piranha Plant character could be taken from sources that are relatively obscure, such as one-off Super Princess Peach and Yoshi's Island DS enemies; although even the clear and unambiguous references are also rather deep.

Now, let us look at some obscure facts regarding Piranha Plants.

The Fishy Plants of Super Mario World

If you have played Super Mario World or its remakes, you may have noticed that the regular Piranha Plants have been replaced with the helicopter-like Jumping Piranha Plants. However, in a few locations throughout the game, regular Piranha Plants can still be found - upside down, that is.

This, of course, raises the question of why there are no regular Piranha Plants coming up from pipes; after all, if the code and graphics are already there, reversing the direction in the code and mirroring the sprites vertically should be trivial.

In fact, there is an unused object in the code that has the correct behaviour for a right-side up Piranha Plant - but due to it never being properly implemented, the stem does not render correctly, instead being replaced with a sprite of a stranded Cheep Cheep:

While the idea of a Piranha Plant attached to a fish is certainly interesting, we can verify that this is indeed unintentional, as prerelease screenshots exist of the enemy being rendered correctly, before being taken out of the game:

Note that this Piranha Plant is also yellow, although the level of in-depth research required on part of the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate team to reference this specific beta Piranha Plant design with the yellow coloration would have to be immense, and it is much likely to be either a reference to any of the other Piranha Plants outlined above or simply a yellow coloring without a specific source.

Interestingly, this enemy is "used" twice in the code - as in, there is stage information containing it that would spawn it if the stage were loaded - but the catch is, the stage itself is unused, as well.

As you can see by the multitude of haphazard floating platforms, many of them overlapping pipes, this stage was likely not anywhere near completion or a usable state before being abandoned.

There is also another reference to this plant - but not in Super Mario World itself, and instead used in the SNES Test Program, a cartridge containing software to test and troubleshoot SNES units for use by the Nintendo World Class Service (the name of Nintendo's customer service in the 1990s).

This needs to be viewed in the context of other Piranha Plant sprites, so here is the explanation of these four from left to right:

1. This is an unused sprite of the Venus Fire Trap, a fire-spitting Piranha Plant variation, found in the code of the SNES Test Program. While neither the upward-faced stem nor any Venus Fire Traps appear in Super Mario World, the SNES Test Program contains many sprites that can conclusively be traced back to the Super Mario World beta, making it very likely that this was supposed to be included in Super Mario World at some point. In addition, the art style matched that of Super Mario World closely.

2. This is the sprite of the Venus Fire Trap from its first appearance in the NES version of Super Mario Bros. 3. Note that the outline of the stem and leaves is very close to the SNES Test Program version, however, it is not identical.

3. This is the sprite of the Venus Fire Trap from the Super Mario All-Stars version of Super Mario Bros. 3. The stem and leaves on it have also been colored and shaded, but in a different manner from the SNES Test Program version. 

4. This is the upside-down Piranha Plant sprite from Super Mario World turned right-side up. Even though it is the closest in coloration to the SNES Test Program one, the outline and shading of the stem and leaves are not an exact copy.

This lets us conclude that the stem and leaves in the unused sprite are original and not taken from other sources; which together with the fact that Venus Fire Traps share stem and leaf graphics with regular Piranha Plants in all of their appearances lets us conclude with a high probability that this is what the stem and leaves of the right-side up Piranha Plant from Super Mario World would have looked like.

This is, however, not the only unused Piranha Plant from Super Mario World. The above animated sprite was intended to be used in the map screen, but along with others (a tiny Koopaling - unclear which specific one due to its size, a blue bird and a Lakitu) was scrapped.

Piranha's Eye View

The distribution of the goop in Super Mario Sunshine is often not random, but instead made in such a way that the goop appears to create an image when viewed from above. This is made particularly easy for developers by the way the goop is handled in the code: when loading a level, the game checks a monochrome 512x512 pixel texture for white pixels, and overlays an image made out of goop onto the level made out of the white pixels it finds. This is also the reason that goop can never be under any sort of cliff or overhang, as the code applies the goop straight down from the sky.

This is also the reason that staying under the pavilions during the Phantamanta battle keeps you safe - the game literally has no way to put goop there in the first place, which it cleverly presents in-universe as a shadow monster projecting the goop from above so that the limitation appears intentional.

(Note that special goop that sticks to walls is also present in the game; however, each one of the occasions on which goop is on a wall uses a different, separate goop map.)

One of the images made out of goop that can easily be missed is the mission required to proceed at the beginning of the game when Mario first enters Delfino Plaza. The statue that later becomes the location of the portal to Bianco Hills has sunk into the goop, and the policemen task Mario with cleaning it up. The goop does not look like anything specific from a normal angle:

But zooming the camera out and turning it in such a way that south is on the bottom and north is on top of the screen reveals:

And it becomes even clearer if we take a look at the goop map extracted from the data:

It's Petey Piranha - although he is very stylized, especially regarding his petals, it is still clearly him due to an X marking his weak spot on his stomach. It also makes sense for the goop to be shaped like him since he is found in the level that said goop is covering up.

The reason why the image is so hard to recognize is that it has the wrong orientation. As you can see, Petey's legs point south - but the player will, in most cases, approach the area from the north-east, as that is where Mario starts and is told immediately where to go. In fact, since the area is on the south end of town, approaching it from the correct side to see Petey's body is almost impossible unless the player decides to make Mario swim all the way around the town and then jump onto shore near the goop - which is very unlikely on a player's first playthrough. Since this particular mission can not be replayed on that save file ever again, most players encounter it only once and are not given a chance to recognize the goop shape.

Misplanted

New Super Mario Bros. contains a 2-player mode where one player controls Mario and the other Luigi, and both need to collect as many Power Stars as possible within a time limit in one of five exclusive stages. (The music playing during that mode is exclusive as well, being a remix of music shown during the game's trailers, and curiously, it has been referenced partially during a battle theme in Paper Mario: Color Splash.)

Multiplayer stage 4 is pipe-themed and contains Piranha Plants - although not as many as could be expected from a stage made entirely out of pipes, the number being only 2. Could it be that more Piranha Plants were intended to appear at some point during development?

This could be the case, as viewing the level inside an editor reveals a Piranha Plant out of bounds, far below the stage. The Piranha Plant points down instead of up like the two that can be normally encountered, but it does not line up with any of the pipes, so it is unlikely that it was simply misplaced due to one number being off. The developers may have kept objects out of bounds before inserting them, and the Piranha Plant in question could have been forgotten.

Supplanted

Super Mario Bros. Deluxe for the Game Boy Color is unusual among pre-7th-gen Mario games for being released in other territories before Japan, having its US release on April 30, 1999 and its Japanese release on March 1, 2000. As such, we can see text being localized from English to Japanese instead of the other way around, as was prevalent at the time.

The Ranking menu is populated by default high scores before the player creates their own; these are registered under the names of Mario series characters. Note that two of the names carry a special significance; beating the 100,000 point score registered to Boo will unlock the You Vs. Boo race mode, and beating the 300,000 point score registered to Luigi will unlock Super Mario Bros. for Super Players mode, which consists of levels from the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2, known internationally as The Lost Levels. Luigi is significant to this as that game was the first to give Luigi abilities different from Mario's (including his higher jump), and the first game to let a single player play as Luigi without needing a second player to play as Mario.

What is notable is that despite the different names for most of the characters in Japanese, most of them were able to be localized despite the character limit being 6 and no Japanese script being available, resulting in the Japanese names needing to be spelled using the Latin alphabet. Special attention should be given to the localization of "Troopa" to "Noko2", that being a creative way to spell "Nokonoko", the Japanese name for Koopa Troopa. However, one character needed to be changed due to name length.

Toad's Japanese name is "Kinopio", which simply cannot be spelled with 6 characters without sacrificing some sound, which is why it was localized to "Pakkun", the Japanese name of the Piranha Plant. (Technically, the name is "Pakkun Flower", also sometimes Romanized as "Packun Flower" and "Pakkun Furawa", but this is similar to shortening Koopa Troopa to "Troopa" in the English version.) Also note that the same change would need to have happened in reverse if the game was released in Japan first - as "Piranha" also has 7 letters and would not have fit and "Plant" being ambiguous (although a case could probably be made for "PPlant").

Spiny Folklore 

Speaking of things Piranha Plants grow out of, there is exactly one level (2-6) in New Super Mario Bros. U that features a strange enemy that does not have a name in English - as no guides bothered to name it - which looks like a cross between a Piranha Plant's head and a Spiny Egg. 

Strangely, it was given official art, although it was merely one of many enemies showcased in a very detailed promotional image of the game's world map with different kinds of enemies overlaid on it. These enemies - or perhaps more accurately called objects, as they only follow physics from Lakitu's throw and do not move by themselves - hatch into fully-grown Piranha Plants similar to the Strawberry Seed discussed above.

What makes these objects unique is that they are the fifth (chronologically) reference in the Mario series to the Japanese folklore character Jugemu, which was previously limited to Lakitus and Spinies, and now also includes Piranha Plants.

Jugemu is a simple humorous tale about a boy who has been given an extraneously long name due to his parents not being able to decide on one name and then giving him all suggested names at once. The story's details differ, but all include the repetition of the long name for humorous effect. This is the name in question, with five parts highlighted:

The highlighted words have been taken from the tale to become names of Mario series enemies/characters in Japanese. Starting with Super Mario Bros., Lakitu is named "Jugemu" and Spiny Eggs are named "Paipo". Both of these slipped by the translators once each; Lakitu's Cloud is called "Jugem's Cloud" in the NA manual for Super Mario Bros. 3:

And in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, the Dark Lakitu's tattle mistakes "Paipo", the word for Spiny Egg, for "pipe", and talks about how they "attack by throwing pipes".

Then, 15 years later, two more references to the tale were added, with Lakilester, one of the partners from Paper Mario, being named "Pokopi", and his girlfriend Lakilulu being named "Pokona".

Finally, an additional 12 years after the last references, the object resembling a Piranha Plant egg was named "Gurindai", bringing the total of references to 5. At this rate, it is likely that other references will be added sporadically with further decade-long pauses between them.

Bossy

Petey Piranha's Japanese name is "Boss Pakkun", which translates literally to "Boss Piranha"; this is common among Japanese Mario character names, as many characters that receive unique names like "Lakithunder" in English are instead named "Boss [species]", in this case "Boss Jugemu", or "Boss Lakitu", in Japanese.

There is one instance of the localization team forgetting that Petey Piranha had a unique name in English, and translating "Boss Pakkun" as "Boss Piranha Plant":

On the left is the Glossary from the NA version of the game; on the right the European version. As you can see, the NA version does not use the proper name.

This ties in with a larger problem in localization in general: whenever you localize a name, you never know how "relevant" the character will end up becoming. It is often expected that more "quirky" names are given to characters that do not appear to be intended to be staples of the series, and instead localized to one story; but as it often happens, characters may become unexpectedly popular, and the name given to them under the impression that it would not be needed for more than one project ends up being used for dozens of them, including many pieces of merchandise. The name "Petey Piranha" was given to the character in the context of there being only one of him in Super Mario Sunshine, justifying the human-like name; but since then, games where there are more than one Petey Piranha were released (such as Puzzle & Dragons: Super Mario Bros. Edition), since in the original Japanese, nothing about the name "Boss Piranha" specifies that there should be only one of them.

Too Close

As everyone who has played Super Mario 64 will know, the Piranha Plants in Whomp's Fortress wake up if Mario approaches them at a fast enough speed. However, the hitbox for the Piranha Plant's attack when it has woken up is completely unlike what it should be based on appearance.

This is how close Mario can stand to an awoken Piranha Plant and not be affected. As you can see, the Piranha Plant's model engulfs almost the entirety of Mario without it counting as a hit; in fact, if Mario is left in this position long enough, he will fall asleep in an inversion of the usual situation; as long as Mario is present, the Piranha Plant will not itself fall asleep.

Octopus Queen

Super Mario Galaxy contains a number of unused models in its code; perhaps the most that have been discovered in any 3D Mario game to date. One of them is a Piranha Plant named "OctopusQueen":

Unfortunately, there is no code from which it is possible to determine what this enemy's purpose was, or why it was called the Octopus Queen. Note that King Kaliente, the lava-dwelling octopus boss from the game, is called "Otaking", or "Octo King" in Japanese; there are also Octoombas, Octoguys and green enemies known simply as "Octopus" in the game which round out the octopus theming. Why a Piranha Plant would be counted among them is unknown; although it is curious to imagine that there was some sort of interaction planned between King Kaliente and his (presumable) wife, the Octopus Queen, who is actually a Piranha Plant.

Not Floating?

One of the bosses fought in Super Mario RPG is Megasmilax, a unique Piranha Plant-type enemy that grows additional heads whenever it is watered by a Beezo (known as a "Shy Away" in that game). The sprite for Megasmilax depicts the heads as moving in a manner consistent with floating, while the stems are completely rigid and motionless.

Also note that the heads move up and down to such a degree that the ends of the stems are visible, making it unlikely that this is simply an exaggerated bobbing animation and instead a Piranha Plant with floating heads. The game contains some enemies that are much larger than Megasmilax and still move the entirety of their bodies, so if this is intended to be head-bobbing, it is animated conspicuously differently from the rest of the game.

Compare it to the Czar Dragon, who is fully animated despite being larger:

However, head-bobbing is apparently what the animation is supposed to represent:

The official render for Megasmilax depicts it with heads attached to the stems. I understand that those who have seen the render before meeting the boss (possible by reading articles about the game in magazines or buying strategy guides) would not find the animation to look like floating, but this may be surprising to those who have encountered it in-game first.

Oh My!

A relatively well-known Easter Egg in Yoshi's Island is that it is possible to defeat Naval Piranha, the boss of Level 3-8, without activating the boss transformation cutscene; simply hop onto the leftmost edge of the platform on which its small form is sitting and hit it with an egg from there.

This causes Kamek to appear and instead of initiating the boss transformation, simply say "OH, MY!!!" in giant letters used nowhere else in the game. Then, Kamek leaves and Naval Piranha explodes, ending the level without needing to fight a boss.

What is less known is that this is referenced in Yoshi's Woolly World - although it is no longer effective.

In this game, Naval Piranha is the boss of World 4-8, and before the battle, Yoshi again has the opportunity to hit the boss with an egg. However, this time, Kamek appears and merely says "Oh my!" again before going back to his usual script; and Naval Piranha frees itself from the string tied around it by the egg shot before the normal transformation sequence plays out. 

This concludes this week's Supper Mario Broth: The Lost Levels. Thank you once again for your support. Please join me next week for Issue 10, featuring the topics announced in the last issue, as well as:

• Crazy Cap Travel Guide Analysis
• What Happens Behind Your Back in Super Mario 64
• How Well Do You Remember Character Design Details?

Thank you very much for reading.