#Love Olimar’s weird little dog

[rosakikoza]

Piktober day 11: Bulbie

[weirdmarioenemies]

Name: Bulbie

Debut: Pikmin

Pikmin 4 has a doggone good time being as doggy of a game as it can! I'm sure you are well aware by now of the new Funny Weird Dogs!

And I love these weird dogs! They are wonderful. I'm glad they are so important and beloved. But I would like to focus on a different dog, the very first Pikmin Dog, who we have known about since the very first game! Olimar's dog, Bulbie!

With this, I have shown you both official images of Bulbie that exist. I wish there were more! Bulbie is a dog even weirder than Oatchi and Moss, a whole different kind of critter that also happens to get called a dog. Isn't that great? These people have the concept of "dog", and so far we've only seen it used to refer to these funny bipeds! Olimar has no problem referring to both Bulbie and Moss as dogs, so I am led to believe that "dog" is more of a category of creature to these people, rather than a distinct species. Like how "mole" is a category of creature to us!

We know a precious little bit of Bulbie Lore. He is lazy, and able to sleep anywhere. He loves carrots. He farts a lot. That's about all we know. Awesome! Sure sounds like a Dog to me! And of course, Olimar loves Bulbie very much. Just like he loves his whole family! He is a Family Guy, complete with Funny Dog!

You may already know, or you may have noticed yourself, but Bulbie looks quite like a Bulborb. This is because Olimar named these creatures after Bulbie, due to their resemblance! It is also for this reason that they are members of the Grub-Dog Family. You see? Bulborb is just like a dog! While it is sweet of Olimar to name the species after Bulbie, it must also make his encounters with them even more disturbing. Not only is this a (comparatively) massive, hostile beast that could easily eat him whole, but it looks like his beloved little friend! That's like a nightmare! Especially with other, scarier Bulborb variants! I am happy to know that his Bulborb experiences do not affect his love for Bulbie one bit.

As much as I love and talk about invertebrates and funny fish, dogs have always been among my favorite animals, and always will be! They're an extremely conventional animal to love, and for very good reason. They're wonderful! And on this post about Weird Dogs, I would like to talk about how dogs are, in fact, weird in their own ways.

They're always sniffing with their wet noses, which they keep wet to smell even better. They love to lick, and lick to show love. And that love is such an important thing! Dogs are creatures of love! It is our love for dogs that shaped them into what they are today! It is what drove us to shape this single subspecies into countless distinct caricatures of its noble ancestors. All still members of the very same species! The amount of dog customization that has occurred is ridiculous. Need a better way to hunt badgers? Make a Long Dog. Yeah sure! Why not!

Obviously, most dachshund owners today aren't interested in hunting badgers. They are interested in having a Pet. And a Pet Dog is such a truly incredible thing! There are not many animals that should be kept in a house around humans, but then there is Dog, literally born to be among humans. Born to be loved, and born to love! If you don't think that's one of the most wonderful things ever then get outta here!

This is an animal that runs around and spins in circles because it sees an ape that it loves so much. An animal that ends up learning snippets of human language, because those are the snippets that make it happy. An animal that gleefully exposes its vulnerable underside, because it trusts a member of a different species to rub it in just the right way that feels so nice.

Even with the general consensus on dogs being pretty dang favorable, I feel that it's easy to take a lot of their behavior and history for granted, to see them as the "default animal", when they SO aren't. The default animal would be a parasitoid wasp, silly!

If I was not able to convince you that dogs are weird, then just look up canine transmissible venereal tumor, obviously using your own discretion, because there will be graphic photos. If you ask me, this one medical anomaly easily makes dogs a contender for one of the weirdest animals EVER! Bet you didn't know dogs could be contagious!

I like funny dog Bulbie

[greasygrimoire]

Favorite Games of 2023- Pikmin 4!

I love Pikmin so it's no surprise I would have a great time with a new entry in the series (we don't talk about that 3DS one). After Engage and FF14, this is probably the game I spent the most time playing over the year. The campaign is surprisingly beefy and there are some extra modes that really add a lot to the game! I'm going to compare Pikmin 4 with the other games in this post, and discuss its impact on the series, so beware of Pikmin spoilers!

This game was a real surprise on announcement. The original Pikmin was one of those games I would rent multiple times from Block Buster instead of just buying it. I really loved the setting, exploring a world so similar to my backyard but so alien at the same time. I was fortunate enough to get the sequel, Pikmin 2, for Christmas shortly after release, and it quickly became one of my favorites.

The wait between Pikmin 2 and 3 was about a decade. There were rumors and stuff but I had really written it off as one of the series that would be stuck on the Game Cube. In another ten years or so, Pikmin 4 released. It's weird to think about how old this series really is, Pikmin still feels a little-known, underrated couple of games. Now it seems like you could mention Pikmin to anyone peripherally interested in video games, and they'd probably have heard of it.

Anyways! Pikmin 4 was announced with a new type of player character- Oatchi the rescue dog. Initially I was a bit concerned this new, more powerful Captain would overshadow the Pikmin. The series has always been about herding your little plant guys to find food, treasures, and survive on the alien planet. I think the developers struck a great balance with Oatchi! He's strong, with great fighting abilities and carrying capacity, but doesn't feel overpowered. You still need Pikmin since there are so many collectibles.

That's maybe my favorite part of this game. Pikmin has always pushed the player to maximize their use of time and resources. It's a real time strategy series after all! Pikmin 4 goes nuts with this. Even though there's no time limit, you can get so much stuff done per day splitting your forces between the captain and Oatchi. I ended up resetting a couple of days just because I KNEW I could do better, hauling back more treasures to base and faster than last time. In addition to caves similar to Pikmin 2's, there are also new dandori challenges. These condensed maps are all about collecting treasures as fast as possible. Some of them are really tricky! I would have loved to see more of the harder challenges. The last few stages of the dandori master's cave system were a ton of fun!

In particular, the one challenge with the huge melon to dig up was hard. I took several attempts to figure out an efficient order to gather everything, when and where to send Oatchi, and which enemies to kill off first.

Another truly great moment was starting Olimar's mode. Once you rescue him, he'll offer to tell his side of the story up until his disappearance. This is a whole separate game mode with remixed levels, and a time limit like the original Pikmin. They pretty much stuffed Pikmin 1 into this game!!! This was a real treat to play, I know lots of players dislike the time limit in 1, but I love the higher stakes and stress. Pikmin 1 really did feel like being stranded on an alien planet- Olimar had to salvage parts and resources to fix up his shop and escape in time, or perish. This mode is one of my favorite parts of the game, but it has serious implications on the Pikmin timeline.

Olimar's story covers his first experiences with Pikmin. However, it's very different from Pikmin 1. He meets Moss, another dog, but these creatures didn't exist until Pikmin 4. I interpret this as basically restarting the Pikmin timeline- Pikmin 1 as we knew it, Pikmin 2 and even 3 don't happen before Pikmin 4, but are on their own separate line. This is a weird turn for the series, but so long as the new timeline maintains the series' trademark humor and intrigue, I'm ok with it. I can always go back and play the other three!

There are some other questionable decisions the dev team took. As you explore levels and kill enemies, the bulborbs, butterflies, and other monsters, zones start to really empty out. They start feeling less like ecosystems and more like little gardens someone dumped a ton of pesticides on. No big deal, the enemies will come back on your next visit, right? Unlike other Pikmin games, and most games in general, enemies do not respawn. Once you kill that bulburb, they're fucking gone. Exploring these miniature forest, swamps, and caverns, encountering weird little creatures, is a highlight of the series, and it's really sad to come back to a barren zone. Pikmin always had things to make you question your actions- is it really ok for Olimar and Louie to burn through this planet on a quest for money in Pikmin 2? Are the lives of the Pikmin sacrificed in your efforts to leave the planet worth it? Pikmin 4 really drives home that maybe this is wrong- these ecosystems are permanently ruined by the rescue team's efforts. I assume the enemies don't respawn just for gameplay's sake, but it definitely adds something to the overall narrative of the game.

Another thing I didn't care for was the dialogue and cast. Your fellow rescue team and the people you meet and save on the planet, for the most part, don't have anything of value to say. This isn't such a big deal but this game has a lot of talking for a Pikmin entry. Thankfully, the bestiary is full of entries written by Olimar and even Louie, with insights to the creatures you've encountered. Louie's entries are almost all about eating the creatures. He's such a fun character!

This one ended up rambling a bit, I don't write very often if you couldn't tell. I'll wrap things up by saying Pikmin 4 is another excellent game in the series. I'd say it even rivals Pikmin 2! I can't wait to see what the next game has to offer, in another decade or so.

Scrummy bone break

[bigbroemen]

イヌムシ科・grub-dog family

i just finished getting all of the different grub dog and grub dog-like species in my piklopedia in my playthrough of pikmin 2, so i thought id share what names the japanese version of the game uses for all of the different species’ classifications! i will be including all animals in the grub dog family, and despite the fact that they are not technically grub dogs, i will also be including the dwarf bulborbs and the bulbmin.

some notes before i start:

there are three words will come up frequently throughout the classifications of members of the grub dog family. these words are:

チャッピー chappii - this word is used as “bulborb” is used in the english translation while i mostly dont believe チャッピー chappii is derived from any particular words in japanese, i do believe that the phonetics of the word are meant to characterize the harsh “chomp” of snapping up food (チャッピ chappi), and perhaps the cuteness of the round and plump form that bulborbs take (ピー pii).

デメマダラ dememadara - this word is used as “bulblax” is used in the english translation in kanji, デメマダラ dememadara can be read as 出目斑, 出目 deme meaning “eyestalk” and 斑 madara meaning “spots” or “speckles”. for the sake of keeping translations as literal as possible, ill be referring to デメマダラ dememadara as “eyestalk spots”.

イヌムシ inumushi - this word is used as “grub-dog” is used in the english translation in kanji, イヌムシ inumushi can be read as 犬虫, 犬 inu meaning “dog” and 虫 mushi meaning “bug”. i just love this word. i love it as much as i love grub-dog. i love dogs and i love bugs and i love the little dog bugs.

the second line in the english piklopedia is reserved for the “scientific name” of the specimen being reported on. the japanese piklopedia uses the same line for the 和名 wamei, or the “japanese name” of the specimen. both terms, scientific name and 和名 wamei, though they may seem to have different meanings, are used in the same manner. tl;dr “和名 wamei/japanese name” DOES functionally mean “scientific name” but ill still be translating it as “japanese name”.

it might be a bit weird, but im going to refer to all the animals here as their translated japanese names

lastly, as much as id like to include translations of the japanese memos that olimar leaves regarding each specimen, i just dont have the understanding of the language to do so for each memo in a timely manner. each memo is a paragraph long and they include a lot of scientific lingo and a lot of specialized grammar, so wholely translating just one memo would take me at least an hour. ill just be leaving the english memos.

アカチャッピー・aka chappii・赤チャッピー Red Chappy

和名：ベニデメマダラ・ beni deme madara・紅出目斑 japanese name: crimson eyestalk spots

イヌムシ科・inu mushi ka・犬虫科 dog bug family

English Memo: This large organism has the familiar mandibles and cranial morphology of the grub-dog family, as well as the characteristic bulging eyes. As with most grub-dogs, the creature's cranium comprises half of its total length and girth. Showing a scarlet abdomen with white spots, this creature is primarily nocturnal, choosing to prey upon smaller creatures returning to their nests. Originally classified as the spotty bulborb, further research has reclassified this species as the red bulborb. Subspecies of varied colors have recently been discovered, but academics are divided into two rival camps over how to handle their classification.

so cute. i love you

ケチャッピー・ke chappii・毛チャッピー Furry Chappy

和名：シラガデメマダラ・shiraga deme madara・白髪出目斑 japanese name: white hair eyestalk spots

イヌムシ科・inu mushi ka・犬虫科 dog bug family

English Memo: This subspecies of grub-dog has a thick coat of soft white fur that obscures its abdominal markings. The fur also warms its vital organs, making this species well adapted to colder climates. However, its hair follicles are surprisingly frail, which can result in immediate hair loss if the creature is surprised.

these guys are called hairy bulborbs in the english translation, but i felt like that name didnt do its coat of fur justice. “hairy” sounds patchy and thin, but this guy has a very nice and thick coat of fur, that grants him the subtitle of “furry”

テンテンチャッピー・tenten chappii・輾転チャッピー Restless Chappy

和名：ダイダイデメマダラ・daidai deme madara・橙出目斑 japanese name: orange eyestalk spots

イヌムシ科・inu mushi ka・犬虫科 dog bug family

English Memo: This bulborb species boasts a garish color pattern, with a deep orange body and black spots. The orange bulborb's yellow, bloodshot eyes make it clear that this grub-dog is excessively edgy and high-strung, making it much easier to wake from deep sleep than other species in the bulborb family.

the テンテン tenten in this guys name has a bit of a fun dual meaning. its most likely meant to primarily mean 輾転 tenten, meaning “tossing and turning (in bed)”, as thats kind of how this guy differs from the red chappy in regards to game mechanics, but it can also mean 点々 tenten, which means “many dots”. i like this one a lot, he is a little threatening but still cute

fun story, translating this guy’s name and going back to the pikipedia to get information led me to editing my first wiki page. i felt a little rude barging in about it but i felt like i had enough evidence to make my case for the changes that i made. i also made sure to hop into the discord and mention it before i followed through with it

クマチャッピー・kuma chappii・熊チャッピー Bear Chappy

和名：クマデメマダラ・kuma deme madara・熊出目斑 japanese name: bear eyestalk spots

イヌムシ科・inu mushi ka・犬虫科 dog bug family

English Memo: A midsize subspecies within the grub-dog family, the spotty bulbear's unique feeding habits set it apart from other grub-dogs. The spotty bulbear patrols a set path searching for prey, instead of passively feeding on creatures that wander into a limited territorial range. When entering bulbear habitat, it is wise to proceed with extreme caution until the bulbear's patrol path can be clearly identified.

i like these guys. theyre scary

チビクマ・chibi kuma・ちび熊 Little Bear

和名：クマデメマダラ・kuma deme madara・熊出目斑 japanese name: bear eyestalk spots

イヌムシ科・inu mushi ka・犬虫科 dog bug family

English Memo: A grub-dog larva in its third stage of development, this creature's body structure is nearing maturation. However, unlike mature bulbears, it has yet to claim its own patrol route, and thus is dependent upon its parent for guarding direction.

these things are in their third stage of development. assuming that the baby chappies are (i would say “probably” but you literally watch them get blasted out of the empress bulblax’s gooch) in their first stage, i wonder what the second stage looks like

ベビーチャッピー・bebii chappii Baby Chappy

和名：デメマダラ・deme madara・出目斑 japanese name: eyestalk spots

イヌムシ科・inu mushi ka・犬虫科 dog bug family

English Memo: As its name implies, this creature is a bulborb in an early stage of development. Its distinct bulborb coloration has yet to appear, but it already exhibits other uniquely bulborb characteristics. It is capable of hunting nourishment independently without the help of its parents.

these things can die. also blah blah english is a novelty in japan blah blah but i do like the english version’s use of “larvae” than i do the japanese version’s usage of “baby”, baby feels like a word for chordates

ヤキチャッピー・yaki chappii・焼きチャッピー Burning Chappy

和名：ヒノデメマダラ・hi no deme madara・火の出目斑 japanese name: fire eyestalk spots

イヌムシ科・inu mushi ka・犬虫科 dog bug family

English Memo: Bodily excretions of a highly flammable waxy substance interact with the cell structure of this grub-dog's skin, causing a chemical reaction that produces extremely high temperatures. The skin benefits from a spongy cell structure that diffuses the surface heat, protecting the creature's inner organs. Due to the astonishing amount of heat produced by this beast, it should be observed with great caution.

i translated 焼き yaki as burning, but it should be known that 焼き yaki has the specific connotation of cooking, specifically frying/stir-frying. i think that makes this guys name a little more fun. pikipedia translates it to “sizzling chappy”, which i also like, but i feel like “sizzle” is a little too weak sounding for how loud this thing crackles and pops w fire

ダンゴナマズ・dango namazu・団子鯰 Dumpling Catfish

和名：アミダンゴナマズ・ami dango namazu・網団子鯰 japanese name: net dumpling catfish

イヌムシ科・inu mushi ka・犬虫科 dog bug family

English Memo: A resident of freshwater pools and marshes, this aquatic creature regularly feeds on insects that land on the surface of the water. It shares a nearly identical skeletal structure with its close relative and terrestrial cousin, the bulborb. This may offer clues to its evolutionary origin and suggests that it only recently emigrated to an aquatic habitat.

this is a fun little deviance lol. i think the 網 ami, or net/web, in this things technical name refers to the texture of its blue hide. i kind of like that. also, this one has 鯰 namazu, or catfish, in its name, but you can see it doesnt really have a catfish’s signature whiskers; earlier models of the dumpling catfish do show it having whiskers, though. i actually kind of like the whiskers, i dont know why they took them out

クイーンチャッピー・kuiin chappii Queen Chappy

和名：デメマダラ（卵嚢肥大個体）・deme madara (rannou hidai kotai)・出目斑（卵嚢肥大個体） japanese name: eyestalk spots (egg sac enlargement specimen)

イヌムシ科・inu mushi ka・犬虫科 dog bug family

English Memo: Initial observations placed doubt on the capability of the grub-dog family to support a strong ant- or beelike social structure, but recent studies show the family is capable of such complexity. The egg sac of the largest female grub-dog within a given range swells to dramatic proportions in response to environmental changes, such as the sudden depletion of prey species. These females temporarily take on the role of pack matriarch. Also, in pack formation it has been observed that nearly all males not involved in species reproduction undergo natural sex changes. The characteristics of such specimens are quite intriguing indeed.

i like this one

ダイオウデメマダラ・dai ou deme madara・大王出目斑 Great King Eyestalk Spots

和名：ダイオウデメマダラ・dai ou deme madara・大王出目斑 great king eyestalk spots

イヌムシ科・inu mushi ka・犬虫科 dog bug family

English Memo: The largest member of the grub-dog family is normally found buried in the ground, with only the stalks of its eyes exposed. This camouflage allows the predator to surprise smaller creatures and use its long, adhesive tongue to capture prey. The thick hide and angular hump give the organism a distinct rocklike quality. During the rainy season, moss grows freely on its hump, making it nearly impossible to distinguish this lethal predator from a stone.

for the purpose of keeping it clear what each piece of this guy’s name meant, i kept the describers’ positions in the translation of this name parallel to the positions in the og japanese, but i know its clunky and not very grand sounding. maybe “great bug-eyed spotted king”? it couldnt ever get it to sound as good as “emperor bulblax” though

アカコチャッピー・aka ko chappii・赤子チャッピー Red Child Chappy

和名：ベニデメマダラモドキ・beni deme madara modoki・紅出目斑擬き japanese name: crimson eyestalk spots mimic

パンモドキ科・pan modoki ka・パン擬き科 bread mimic family

English Memo: Although initially identified as a juvenile red bulborb, groundbreaking new research indicates that this creature is in fact a member of the breadbug family. A close relative of the vanilla breadbug, it escapes predation through mimicry. Unique adaptation of the red bulborb's crimson coloration allows the species to safely commingle. Such effective adaptation and obfuscation by a prey species is rare, indicating this clever creature is a master of mimicry.

getting good pictures of these things was hard. this is a good one though

ユキチャッピー・yuki chappii・雪チャッピー Snow Chappy

和名：シラガデメマダラモドキ・shiraga deme madara modoki・白髪出目斑擬き japanese name: white hair eyestalk spots mimic

パンモドキ科・pan modoki ka・パン擬き科 bread mimic family

English Memo: Like the dwarf red bulborb, the snow bulborb is a member of the breadbug family that seeks to survive through imitating the appearance and behavior of a bulborb. Its pale coloration and blue spots make for easy identification. In particular, this organism mimics the hairy bulborb, but it is of course unable to grow the hair that gives the hairy bulborb its name. However, as the hairy bulborb has been known to lose its hair in certain circumstances, the snow bulborb is an effective mimic that is often mistaken for a member of the same species.

i think the implication that chappies can physiologically grow hair/fur while bread mimics physiologically cant is interesting. i would have loved to see fur on these guys though

テンコチャッピー・ten ko chappii・てん子チャッピー Restless Child Chappy

和名：ダイダイデメマダラモドキ・daidai deme madara modoki・橙出目斑擬き japanese name: orange eyestalk spots mimic

パンモドキ科・pan modoki ka・パン擬き科 bread mimic family

English Memo: Just as dwarf red bulborbs mimic the appearance of red bulborbs, it was theorized that an orange bulborb-mimicking variant must also exist. Recent fieldwork has confirmed this theory.

i also edited this guy’s page on the wiki for the same reason as the restless chappy. i actually went back just now to change a grammatical error i made in my edit last night LOL

ハチャッピー・ha chappii・葉チャッピー Leaf Chappy

和名：ヤドリピクミンとその宿主・yadori pikumin to sono yadonushi・宿りピクミンとその宿主 japanese name: parasitic pikmin and the parasitic host

ピクミン科・pikumin ka pikmin family

English Memo: This loathsome creature is in fact a parasitic form of Pikmin that has infected a bulborb. Unlike Pikmin that nest in Pikmin Onions, this parasitic relative spends its life inside the body of a host, usually a bulborb. Juveniles fall in line and mimic the actions of their parent until maturing to full independence. By burying its rootlike limbs into the nervous system of the host bulborb and infusing it with natural hormonal excretions, the bulbmin is able to control virtually all of the host's bodily functions. However, the host's voracious appetite seems impossible to suppress.

i always thought that the adult leaf chappy looked a little boney and malnourished in the face, compared to the plump faces of all the other chappies. i like to think its because the pikmin taking host in it is taking all of its nutrients and starving it as much as it can while maintaining optimal physiology. i think this could also explain its voracious appetite

[askroahmmythril]

Reference List for amiibo Fighter Names (Set 3)

25) Mario : Gonzales - This is a reference to Paper Mario : The Thousand Year Door.  While at the Glitzpit, Mario ends up taking up the role of a prize fighter, going under the stage name “The Great Gonzales.”  Admittedly, I’ve never played TTYD, so this name idea came from Neo I believe.  The baby Yoshi and the champion belt shown in the card are both, from what I gather, actual references to that area of TTYD.  So, uh... not much context I can provide from personal experience!

26) Mega Man : Retro Rock - Given the music theming a lot of Mega Man classic has, going with a music theme to this card just made sense.  Plus given his name is Rock, it just works.  Originally I was going to call him ClassicRock, but alas, that was too long.  The names for amiibo figures are limited to 10 characters.  I used the light panels from the background of Top Man’s stage for the setting, and kind of themed the stage itself as the blue field Robot Masters tend to show up in during their intro poses.  And of course, we have a Sniper Joe on keyboard, and Met on drums.  Neo added extra details of course, such as the name of the Mega Man composer on the keyboard, and a GutsMan.EXE symbol on the drum kit.

27) Meta Knight : Dueloscuro - This one’s just a play on how Meta Knight often seems to be given a Spanish sounding accent.  Dueloscuro is a portmanteau of “duelo oscuro,” Spanish for “dark duel.”  “Tomad la espada!” meanwhile is “Get the sword!”  Basically it’s all a reference to Meta Knight’s frequent sword duels with Kirby, with a Spanish flair.

28) Mewtwo : MasterMind - Given Mewtwo is the most famous of all Psychic types most likely, I’d say he qualifies as a mastermind.  Plus how many of us really DIDN’T just chuck a Master Ball at him...?  Anyway, the various codes in the background refer to various Pokémon mechanics, such as catch rates, damage calculation, and IV calculation.  In Neo’s version, he also had the calculation for shiny chances, and made the binary in the background (mine was just random 0 and 1 gibberish) actually mean something, it translates to a speech Mewtwo gives in the first Pokémon movie, if memory serves.

29) Mii Gunner : Coverfire - When trying to figure out what to do with the Mii Gunner, it came to mind that since she was wearing orange (at least the Smash 4 one did, the Ultimate Mii Gunner wears yellow), I could make it an Advance Wars reference and have her as a soldier for Orange Star.  Neo added some slogans to make it look a bit more like a recruitment poster or such.  I think it worked out rather nicely.

30) Mii Swordfighter : RentAHero - So.... I may have played a little too much Find Mii.  Thus the reference to go for with Mii Swordfighter seemed pretty straightforward.  I had the idea to fill out the cast with the summonable party members, the rabbit, dog, and cat knights.  The play coins in the nameplate refer to the two play coins you had to pay to indeed basically rent a hero.

31) Mr. Game & Watch : PRIMETIME - Mr. Game & Watch is basically the start of Nintendo’s venture into video games.  Thus, the prime point of the timeline.  I went with a bit of a timeline structure here, showing his position between Nintendo’s start of making Hanafuda cards and before Donkey Kong first showed up.  His Judge sign being 1980 is the year he actually debuted.  As for the sun in the upper part of the image, that’s actually a reference to Neo himself, who previously went by “MrGandWatch.”  The “Weird Sun” as it’s been dubbed was sort of a logo of his of sorts.

32) Ness : Psi Cadet - This one’s a reference to Psychonauts.  Man, I love that game.  Ness being a psychic kid would fit right in at Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp.  The area shown here is the Collective Unconscious, basically the “world hub select” area where you can quickly get into the other stages of the game through various doors.  The nameplate is styled after the certificates you get each time you earn a merit badge in the game.

33) Olimar : Zen Garden - Pretty much a centralized reference, given how frantic Pikmin life can be, I just wanted to give the captain and his friends a little down time, relaxing in their own private zen garden.  While technically Olimar does not use Rock Pikmin anywhere in his Smash moveset, it just felt weird to not include them with everyone else.

34) Pac-Man : NOMCO7650 - Also a self contained reference, this parodies Namco, the company responsible for Pac-Man.  Of course, he likes to eat things, so NOM.  Here he’s sampling the various pixel bonus fruits from his home game.  It was kind of fun, trying to draw them all with pixely bites taken out of them.  The 7650 comes from an important number Namco places in a lot of their games.  The Japanese pronunciation of this series of numbers, na-mu-ko-o, sounds like their company name.

35) Palutena : TheLightFM - Of all things, this came from a Mystery Science Theater line.  At least the name itself.  During “This Island Earth,” there’s a scene where someone enters an empty aircraft, and a gentle sounding voice says “Welcome.  Please be seated!”  Mike then says “You’re being kidnapped by The Light FM!”  Basically like it’s an easy listening radio station.  Given Palutena is a light goddess, and she basically uses her telepathy like radio contact to guide Pit through his adventures, for some reason this just worked to me.  Neo again added some fun easter eggs, like a Hades styled mug on the desk, along with one of the actual Smash 4 soundtrack CDs.

36) Peach : Lady Luck - I went with a bit of Mario Party referencing here, which then turned to casino style.  Basically Peach in some of the earlier Mario Party games, for one reason or another tended to be one of the most difficult AI opponents to deal with.  When items became a thing, reasons for this became all the more apparent as she would prioritize grabbing the Plunder Chest, an item that let her steal items from other players.  She was always a thing to deal with.  I’m not sure if it’s viable for the numbers on a real die to be positioned as they are here, but I wanted to show a 6 and a 4 since Mario Party debuted on the N64.  Due to the Luck theme, I went with an overall casino motif as I just really like that style.  Like, I actually collect playing cards, and if I had more access to them, I’d probably collect poker chips too.  Just always liked how they looked and felt.

[rintezukas]

ok so i beat it and now i get to go off on a masturbatory rant about it

pikmin 4 main story final boss spoilers

it was bad it was bad it was so fucking bad to the point where i actually doubt i was ever engaging with it properly. im going to split this up into three sections not because im under any delusion anyone who bothers to read this is going to care particularly if its organized but so i can like. keep myself from going too hard on any one aspect and forget the others The Story

SUBSECTION LOUIE ok so the postgame sets louie up as this like... fucked up amoral force, barely present as a character or reachable by character interaction other than violence, he says maybe like 30 words total across like 15 text boxes. its like hes in a fucking fugue state and they never provide literally ANY explanation for his behavior even after you beat him. maybe the fucking. side story has something about this but i doubt it because olimar was surprised louie was there too so probably he didnt factor into that. louie just goes around kidnapping people and like... trying to turn them into fucking aliens or something. this is literally fine, dont get me wrong, i think this is an interesting way for a character to be, but given that louie is an established character who didnt behave like a fucking. bizarre evil caveman in the two previous games he showed up in (in 3 he did bad shit but it was like. just normal selfish guy bad shit and had clear motivations behind it) it comes off as like... fucked. this guy is supposed to be a lazy and childish food genius forced into treasure hunting work and instead hes like if a tornado could be an asshole. this is literally not what i set out to talk about anyway SUBSECTION THE DOG

despite legitimately falling in love with oatchis character design and behavior and shit i actually hate the presence of dogs in the story of pikmin, or more specifically like the needless wrench they throw into the series, but thats mostly something that goes in implications. why it's relevant to bring this up at all is that it pissed me off extra hard that the big culmination of the pikmin 4 storyline is a big inexplicable dog. its more or less stated to not be from the planet (or it would have been born with pikmin traits - see implications) but also it has a human artifact around its neck and has clearly been here for long enough to get old and grey and scraggly. i think its design is... on this weird line between cute and ugly that i think i could have fallen in love with it too if not for its presence in my life being one defined by misery. you are probably wondering why ive lapsed back into implications, and that's because i have absolutely fucking nothing to say about the dog's presence in the story, because it has none and i think that's bad, i think it's bad for the final boss of the game to be a guy with no clear motivations riding an animal with no clear origin or presence in the world.

or, like, at least its bad for pikmin? this could be more interesting in a different kind of game but for a long-awaited returning franchise having an endboss built almost completely out of the New with a little side detail that sort of character-assassinates the Old is like. its sure as fuck a bold choice and not one i feel worked out.

The Gameplay

The gameplay of Pikmin 4's final boss is, i feel, difficult to talk about without first explaining the circumstances under which i came to it.

Cavern for a King is, for the first 95% of it, honestly one of my favorite parts of Pikmin as a franchise. Not the favorite! Not my favorite. But it's up there. You start off at kind of the height of your power - i maintain that making you gradually restore the pikmin cap to 100 over the course of the game was fucking insane but by the endgame when youre working with a serviceable cap of 60-80 and you finally get to 100 it feels like an actual power boost and not an "i should have had this from the beginning because pikmin is about swarms" thing. having 100 feels like a big deal, and as you progress through the opening segments of this 20 floor boss rush it makes a lot of otherwise scary shit feel like a breeze.

eventually you hit your first hurdle, and attrition begins to take hold. if you're smart, you start making increasingly cowardly decisions. if you are instead stupid like i am, you also start doing that, but fuck up, and by the middle section youre having to come up with new behaviors on the fly to clear totally new bosses with fewer pikmin than youve had in a long, long time. you keep waiting for reinforcements youve been trained by previous caves to expect that never come. i am kind of a lameass, and my first impulse when encountering difficulties is to chalk it up to bad design unless i really tell myself not to fucking do that. i didnt even feel that here though! going through floors 1-17 of Cavern for a King was exhilarating and fun. i think i had to engage the baby-mode turn back time thing like twice, which was fine, whatever. on floor 18, which has you fight an extra-large emperor bulblax in terrain that it can stomp to turn into water, i was out of blue pikmin and made the decision to go back up and get more pikmin, and i realized that i was kind of approaching it as a marathon when it could have been a series of much less grueling sprints. you get to go back to floors youve reached previously, to be clear, unlike in pikmin 2, but i was enjoying the challenge and felt sad to leave it. i cleared floor 18 easily with only a few losses, was met with an eerie, pleasant rest stop at floor 19 - no new pikmin, but plenty of candypop buds to redistribute my population to face whatever boss was coming up next, and continued to floor 20, where

PHASE 1

i came face to face with a big stupid dog that was the easiest fight in the entire game, except that its health was noticeably pretty high. i had time to remark, like, what, did they want to draw THIS out? or i guess it probably has phases but this is taking a long fucking time for the warmup.

PHASE 2

oh okay i guess they gave it ice powers, for some reason? it shoots balls that you have to avoid or you get rolled up and potentially separated from your pikmin. annoying because i had already spent a lot of time on the first fight. PHASE 3

now it shoots spinning electricity spike balls that sort of spin and make you jump over the lines of electricity they draw on the ground. if you have any yellow pikmin, you can kill the balls, but it took an embarassingly long time for me to intuit that and also it takes a long fucking time for them to kill them such that the dog will probably jump on and eat them and they quickly build up so the arena basically becomes unusable until you manage to knock the dog over by navigating through the fucked up awful laser mess and managing to hit the dog's tail with enough pikmin at once, which clears all of them and makes the dog vulnerable so you can do like 2% of its life in damage before the cycle begins again. this is where that old thought pattern that this might be bad game design and not my fault creeps in, but the embarrassment from earlier tamps that down. i am almost certainly approaching this wrong.

PHASE 4

similar shit but with fire and shockwave patterns to jump over instead of spinning electricity balls. honestly pretty manageable, and since this was the third element of the traditional pikmin trio - water-electricity-fire - i was riding high on the notion that i was about to be done with this, at least. nonetheless, my train of thought at this point is about vicious, horrible shit that i hope the devs suffer for putting me through this, etc etc. this is about how i react to any circumstance i don't like if it goes on for long enough and i am not proud of that. i strike the final blow and make a noise like a snake dying.

PHASE 5

The dog turns green, starts flying and begins to fire particles that coat the floor in a sort of purple-red smoke that instantly kills any pikmin that touches it at all, including while they're on the dog, and including white pikmin because this isn't poison it's some other shit that you couldn't have accounted for no matter what. All of its attacks are now this - move wrong, and you lose most or all of your squad instantly. Navigate between these randomly placed AOEs, place 15 weight on the dog's tail, and deal as much damage as you can while it's vulnerable before the cycle continues. Later on in this fight, the dog will begin using a "fear scream", which scatters your pikmin randomly. They will run into the AOEs and die, so make sure this attack never hits you even once too. If you throw your pikmin wrong while trying to hit the tail, they will likely land in an AOE and die. Do this more times than you know numbers for, as far as you fucking know. You will not be counting because you will be focused on doing the other shit.

i would like to echo back to the earlier thing about this being a series of sprints rather than a marathon, because that point holds true to this fight as well. as i discovered after giving up and resolving to do better in the previous phases in case having more pikmin on this one would make it doable, you can go back up and get more pikmin, and it will stay on this phase, and it doesn't matter at all because all of its attacks can completely deplete your squad or at least leave you with like 10 pikmin, and sometimes a purple pikmin isn't among those ten so you can't win anymore and have to press the rewind. i pressed the rewind a lot because i didnt care about any kind of self-imposed challenge for this thing anymore. if there was a menu option to make it die i would have pressed it.

after this phase it dies, and then you win the game. pikmin 4 is very, very good, because despite the bad experience i had i actually still think it's my favorite entry in the franchise. The Implications

so like are dogs from the fucking planet or not? whats up with moss? why was there pointedly so much shit implying theyre from the planet if they arent? are dogs just a constant of the pikmin universe, and pikmin on pikmin planet have learned to parasitize them? if they arent from here, what the fuck was the big dog doing there? what was moss doing there? why did they unambiguously say "pikmin parasitize organisms to create leaders" (hi jasper - if you somehow read this far, they directly say that and youre smart as fuck for figuring it out having not played 4 yet) and then not put bulbmin in the game? why were they so wishy washy on something as simple as "what planet are dogs from", and why, despite that, did they place so much emphasis on the question in the story?

I dont think the final boss of pikmin 4 is very good at all!