Ask Guru Gobbo #162

A) You seem to be mixing up the concepts of "familiarity" and "awareness". There were, for example, plenty of kids where I went to school and I knew them. However, there were only a handful that I knew well and grew up knowing, due to social circles and general movings about of families.

There's a big difference in the impact something has on one when it is imprinted on a younger mind -- the whole "nostalgia goggles" concept. A friend of mind who didn't grow up States-side never got the appeal of the Indiana Jones movies. Similarly, I never found Harry Potter worth any of my attention.

There's no real right or wrong in this case, just preference. It'd be like picking a blue option when it's your favorite color. It's not the best choice by any objective criteria, but it is favored. I could probably go on with these analogies, but I'll save the rest of it for my book: Gobbo Compares Ingrained Preferences for Three-Hundred Pages. A best seller no where, that one.

B) Anyhoo, addressing the second half of your first paragraph, saying that the stories are better in the later games is like saying that you enjoy the atmosphere of Earth better than Mars; one simply doesn't exist to any creditable degree, making it an effective non-comparison.

C) Hah. "Owl pellets" is probably one of the best comparisons I've heard in a while. I concede the point and will probably steal that and use it as my own.

D) I have no real thoughts on Tarzana. He seemed to just be a background character who carried an equally useless King Dedede through Triple Deluxe until it was time for the real big-bad to appear. With the standard formula being that the big-bad appears RKO style -- outta nowhere! -- it's fitting that he was a false flag. I guess that the spider wizard also literally took the king's place in being assumed the culprit. Still, I just don't like his design, with his weird double-face. Of course, being a fan of Dream Land 3, the more like a sphere, the more I likes 'em.

I noticed this, too, and in retrospect it makes a lot of sense. In fact, I was planning on doing some write up or another about it, but it sort of lacked much to discuss.

I originally took Waddle Dee to be wearing some sort of hood with a bare face sticking out. However, various appearances in comics and such would portray the body as a bit ruffled when injured or such, as though it were fur. This made less sense when you consider that his "cousin" Doo is brown bodied but unclad. With Japan being big on monkeys, it's easy to see that Dee was actually some form of ape -- being the tailless term.

If you look in Mass Attack, they even have a particular type of Dee that scurried up a tree and tosses out its contents. Previous to this, I do not believe there is any sort of "duh" moment that drives the point home prior to the very obvious display you mention. However, looking at general pictures of Japanese cartoon monkeys, the fact is pretty clear, particularly with the cheeks.

The idea of King Dedede commanding an army of bumbling monkey soldiers, also, just seems very apt for his character, don't it?

Most of this stock was already generated for the invasion. Many of the locations are factories where spares are laying about or abandoned units have been left. Think of a war and an enemy getting control of an ammo depot. Would anyone say, "Well, why did you have so many bullets? Now your enemy will use them against you!" True, but you planned on using the first. Also, when you realize that they are using the same model of firearm, it's already too late to get rid of all your stock for the chance that they could get it as well.

Also, the game wouldn't have much of a gimmick otherwise. Furthermore, I don't know about you, but I took back Popstar in about a week. Do you know how long it takes to completely change a production line? Not easy.

I've always taken it that the corners are more a representative area magnified. For example, if the one corner is portrayed as a sandy canyon but a glitzy neon district in another, that is because there are a lot of square miles on the star. They won't zoom in to some puny speck on the map and let that be the representation. No, it has to be a whole corner of the dang planet.

Furthermore, it is unclear if there is a top and bottom to Popstar. Maybe some of this representation is just viewing the world from another side? I can't imagine it's a cloudy park on both ends.

I'd make reference to "Bulbasaur with a bandage" and several other repeated occurrences as such. Of course, I am referring to the first season of Pokémon. Ash had a Bulbasaur uncreatively named Bulbasaur, because nicknames are forbidden. In an episode with a whole herd of that kind, Ash's had some knock on the head and a bandage placed on it to signify it as the Bulbasaur. Squirtle did the same thing in another episode only with a pair of shades, a throwback to his origin episode.

It doesn't have a name because the character is Waddle Dee. It is the essence, the quintessential, the very being of Dee. However, the game developers also don't want to do something silly like not have the Waddles appear as regular enemies. The Helper system in Super Star got around this by changing the color palette of the sprite when it was good or bad. The Crystal Shards just replaced the standard baddie with N-Z so that Dee was a known ally and helper. No accessories needed.

The bandanna is, basically, the easiest way to denote the Waddle Dee was significant without doing something as silly as giving it its own unique name or thinking up a new iconic enemy to have flooded throughout the game.

Yes and no. Individually, they are your standard, can-be-inhaled, easily defeated enemies. Usually, what makes an enemy boss (or mini-boss) caliber is being unable to be inhaled -- until defeated (Mumbies excluded) -- and taking more than one hit to go down. However, they appear in a cluster (at least in Adventure) where all must be defeated in order for the scene to be exited. In that sense, collectively, the gaggle is considered at least mini-boss caliber. Swarms are a weird thing, however. Forest and the trees, what not.

I can't really say that I'm surprised by these things existing. Between the fact that there are rampant cat cafés crawling with kitties and even raccoon equivalents -- I believe -- in Korea, the idea of being surrounded by something adorable while paying too much for something to drink just seems fitting. After all, these venues have alway justified their prices with their atmosphere, and having a Waddle Dee plush in a chair is a lot better to me than some unkempt hipster bumming the wi-fi, complaining about the economy on a 2k-some laptop. Ugh.

Back to the point, I think I'd feel bad eating Whispy Woods, no matter how delicious he looks. I might just have to scour the internet to pick me up one of them Invincible Candy t-shirts now.

Beats me. I mean -- perhaps, since the drums are in a similar shape to his traditional weapon of choice and arguable inspired likeness betwixt the two, they felt that it would be more beneficial to have him wield a weapon less like the scenery. That, or maybe it's your fault. Did you ever think about that, Hantho? You know what you did! And to prevent me from spilling the beans in the next installment, blackmail~!

Do... do you not know me? Honestly, however, there is nothing wrong with a monster of the week format -- other than the teleporter and King Dedede purchasing them from Nightmare Enterprises. It's what Power Rangers did, many episodes of Digimon, and to an extent Pokémon. Focusing on a new character or bad guy every week is nothing bad. It was all the surrounding garbage that made the show awful and unbearable. Notable, Tiff and Tuff.

There was nothing wrong with Kirby fighting monsters. In fact, when you look at it, that really is the core basis of most his games. The problem was that Kirby took the backseat to two annoying twerps and was only called up near the end of the episode to clean up the mess. Also, a strong environmental message which just seemed odd. The show was, in essence, Captain Planet.

This could be chalked up to a matter of dimensional distortion. For example, if one has a square and splits a line down each axis, it will become four quarters. These pieces can be shuffled about but always maintain the same surface area, so long as they are not overlapping. However, if one were to split the three axes of a cube, there would be eight equally sized chunks. Now, just looking at them from one side/one face, this octet is going to cover a lot more surface area than an equally sized square split in four (twice as much, actually).

Since the game is side scrolling, there is no real depth seen with these many Kirbies bouncing about. Really, you could stack two ranks and two files on top of each other and get the about the same size as, say, when the Jumbo Candy is eaten, which is about the same size as the "giant" Waddle Dees encountered, actually regular Waddle Dees. Of course, the pink puff is more a sphere, and those are way more wacky than mashing together blocks and leave gaps, so there's arguable room to stick a ninth in the middle between the rest. This only leaves about one Kirby left out that could be assigned to the limbs.

For more information on close-packing equally sized spheres, consult geometry! Math, it's super cool.

... This, this might be the most educational thing I've ever written here. To counter, a fart noise.