The 'Shroom:Issue 187/Pipe Plaza

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Director's Notes

Written by: Zange (talk)

Shroom2019 Zange.png

Spooky month spooky month :D

I hope everyone is having a good October so far! I've been super busy the last few weeks because I've been working tech for my college's production of As You Like It! It's a good time, except there's a very large chunk of time in the second half of the show where we have absolutely nothing to do and I get bored veeeeery easily. Also for whatever reason we have two weekends of shows instead of just one, but this is the second weekend so we're ALMOST DONE YAY

We've got some good sections in store for you this month! As always, if you're interesting in writing for Pipe Plaza (or any Shroom team), hop on over to the sign up page to learn more!

Have a good rest of the month~

Section of the Month

PIPE PLAZA SECTION OF THE MONTH
Place Section Votes % Writer
1st Poll Committee Discussion 6 54.55% Waluigi Time (talk)
2nd NIWA News 3 27.27% PanchamBro (talk)
3rd What's in a Campaign? 2 18.18% Mustard Machine (talk)
Mariowiki sections
NIWA News
PanchamBro (talk)
Stay up-to-date with the latest happenings from the NIWA wiki network!
read more
Poll Committee Discussion
Turboo (talk)
The best analysis of the polls around!
read more
Anniversary Announcements
Lakituthequick (talk)
The ongoings of the Mario Awards.
read more
Non-wiki sections
Mario Calendar
GPM1000 (talk)
Find out all about this month's Super Mario releases.
read more
Roleplay Update
MightyMario (talk)
MightyMario is providing us with all the latest happenings of the forum roleplays.
read more
What's in a Campaign?
Mustard Machine (talk)
This robot just barely made the cut!
read more

NIWA News

Written by: PanchamBro (talk)

Hey it's me PanchamBro. I'm a bit sick today and loaded with work, so no "That NIWA List" for now. I'll instead talk about this month's NIWA News, a section regarding news with each of the 32 members of the Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance. We'll be going through related wiki news over the past month or so. Let's begin.

Dragon Quest Wiki host move
Dragon Quest Wiki is still on its way to move to a new host after it was announced that FlyingRagnar would cease to host the wiki back in late July. However, the move has not occurred, and developments with the new host are slow, so I'll keep you updated as things pan out.
New Inkipedia Discord server!
Inkipedia now has its own Discord server! For the longest time, it had been attached to the ABXY Discord with other associated wikis by ABXY Inc. and Grifkuba, including StrategyWiki, but the community has voted to move to a new server If you're interested to join their new Discord server, please do so here!
New polls. Looks good. Serves Nookipedia well.
Nookipedia Poll.png

After 5 years of laying dormant, Nookipedia has finally reinstated its community poll system! Every 1st and 15th of the month, the poll will be swapped for a new poll, either decided by the poll committee or from a suggestion made by the community. If you're interested in submitting a poll, you can do so here!

WiKirby's up to no "Good"
WiKirby's community has voted to redefine the Good template, while removing it from all but a couple of pages on WiKirby. The template is also no longer permitted on media files (e.g. images, audio, videos). Now for an article to obtain "Good" status, editors can nominate a page using WiKirby's new Good recommendations system, where a Patroller will manually review the page.

That's it for any related NIWA news that I could gather for this month's 'Shroom. I'll be off to getting better and getting my work done, so I'll see you next month!

Poll Committee Discussion

Written by: Turboo (talk)

13th Poll Committee Banner

Hey, it's me, Turb from the Thirteenth Poll Committee. I'd like to extend a thank you to Waluigi Time for the strong introduction to this committee's first set of polls last month; today we'll be picking apart the next batch of two for this term. Let's dig in.

Archives

Mario Kart has 11 entries in the series. Which ones have you played? - (Ray Trace (talk), September 12th, 2022‎)

Mario Kart has 11 entries in the series. Which ones have you played?

Mario Kart 8/Deluxe 14.97% (3,189 votes)
Mario Kart Wii 12.83%% (2,733 votes)
Mario Kart DS 10.77% (2,295 votes)
Mario Kart 7 10.47% (2,231 votes)
Super Mario Kart 10.34% (2,202 votes)
Mario Kart 64 9.52% (2,027 votes)
Mario Kart Tour 8.75% (1,863 votes)
Mario Kart: Double Dash!! 8.24% (1,756 votes)
Mario Kart: Super Circuit 6.14% (1,308 votes)
Mario Kart Arcade GP Series 5.58% (1,188 votes)
Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit 2.02% (430 votes)
I have not played a Mario Kart title. 0.37% (78 votes)
Total Votes: 21,300

With both Microsoft and Sony porting formerly console-exclusive titles to PC, how do you think Nintendo should handle other platforms going forward? - (Vruet (talk), September 26th, 2022)

With both Microsoft and Sony porting formerly console-exclusive titles to PC, how do you think Nintendo should handle other platforms going forward?

They should port their games on as many platforms as possible. 30.27% (753 votes)
Nintendo games should remain exclusive to Nintendo platforms. 21.34% (531 votes)
No ports, but creating games specific to other platforms (Super Mario Run, Mario Kart Tour, etc.) is fine. 14.59% (363 votes)
I have no opinion on this matter. 13.83% (344 votes)
No first-party ports, but I would be okay if third-party developed games (Mario + Rabbids, etc.) came to other platforms. 12.46% (310 votes)
They should port their games to other platforms but with a period of timed exclusivity. 7.52% (187 votes)
Total Votes: 2,488

Analysis

Mario Kart has 11 entries in the series. Which ones have you played?

Even your parents might have played this one

This third poll is from Ray Trace (talk), asking a simple question with similarly simple options: what Mario Kart games have you played? Do keep in mind that this poll's results are slightly deceptive, since the massive 21,300 vote total is actually a result of the way Crowdsignal counts multiple-choice votes - that said, the individual options' numbers still hold up perfectly fine. In my experience, it's hard to find someone even vaguely into the Mario series who hasn't played at least one; the popularity of the Switch, Wii, DS, etc., combined with the games being released usually pretty early into consoles' lifespans, seems like it almost guarantees a purchase if they're what you're into.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, considering that, sheer sales numbers (a whopping 46.82 million for Deluxe as of June 2022), and being a multiplatform option, Mario Kart 8/Deluxe takes the top with 3,189 votes. Wii has a noticeable gap, trailing around ~450 votes behind MK8 but still having a strong second-place finish; DS and 3DS are also neck-and-neck with each other and fairly high up, and I think this follows the line of suggestion (that I admittedly made up out of thin air) that Mario Kart playerbases are generally tied to how popular their games' respective console is.

Where things get a little more intriguing is seeing Super Mario Kart above Mario Kart 64, even if only by 200 votes or so; I'd have expected the reverse when considering the games' ages, but maybe this can be attributed to SMK's general availability across Virtual Consoles and rereleases (e.g., the SNES Classic and Nintendo Switch Online) - a forum commenter (hi WT) outright stated NSO is the reason he played it, at least. Incidentally, Tour's placement below both of these actually doesn't surprise me, as though it perhaps doesn't speak for the general Mario Wiki main page voter base, I've found a lot of people I've talked to just don't have any interest in it, whether that's due to gacha or due to its control scheme and simplified gameplay.

The rest of the results seem as if they fall into a similar pattern as before, with Double Dash!!'s low placement feeling like a result of the GameCube's sales and Arcade GP and Home Circuit understandably being limited by their mediums, such as having space in your house, and actually being able to find the goddamn machines - pretty sure you'd get arrested trying to play them if they were in like, a Chuck E Cheese or something. Anyway, that aside, I will say I can't meaningfully explain Super Circuit's placement here as the lowest console Mario Kart. It's not sales, considering it's the fourth-best-selling game on the GBA and the GBA itself wasn't unpopular, so this one boggles the mind a bit. I think I might have forgotten I played it when I voted in this poll, so uh... I guess that could be a reason?

There's also only 78 voters who haven't played a Mario Kart game at all, which feels both expected and surprisingly low, even when considering probably only around 2,000-2,500 people voted in reality. It's hard for me to really encapsulate why I feel like this - on one hand you'd 100% expect people who are visiting the site to have played MK8 at their friend's house once if nothing else (and thus they're properly able to vote), but on the other hand, it's a remarkably small slice of voters compared to the usual no opinion/opt-out answers (which have hit up to ~350 votes this term, as seen in our next poll).

One last thing about this poll is that it was ran before Mario Kart Tour updated and removed its gacha system in favor of a rotating-inventory shop (though it postdates the actual announcement of this change). I'd like to see if it's received an uptick in players at all, considering it's removed one of the game's biggest drawbacks. I've heard my share of complaints about the new shop as well, of course, but maybe this change has encouraged people to try it out at least once?

With both Microsoft and Sony porting formerly console-exclusive titles to PC, how do you think Nintendo should handle other platforms going forward?

The future us option 1 voters want

Vruet (talk) brings us our fourth poll of the committee, and it's a quite interesting one, tackling the topic of whether Nintendo should start porting their games to other platforms. Clearly the voters find this interesting too, because my God is this the most "competitive" poll of the term so far - still a clear victor, but with a less than 10% difference between the winner and the next highest option. This is certainly A Topic that I Have Opinions On (my opinion is port everything... haha...), and maybe you have opinions too! I'd personally assumed that either full-ports or full-exclusivity would win out based on all that, but I wasn't sure which - this can be rather divisive when it comes up, and as a result...

To get this out of the way, this is a poll where I actually would be genuinely fascinated reading 12,239 pages of heated debate over vote reasonings, and I mean that with no animosity. When looking at the objective text here, it only deals with porting to other platforms, nothing about how it might affect the Switch or existence of future consoles. That said, Nintendo has a very strong emphasis on brand loyalty that they've cultivated via their exclusives and IP sanctity policies, the latter of which is a whole other can of worms, so I'm wondering how much that factors into choices here - does it weaken their image to put their flagship series elsewhere?

Looking into forum comments again, one commenter voted for only having unique mobile releases since "[rereleasing] games on different consoles [...] could make [Nintendo] seem desperate and hurt sales for their own consoles", while another commenter voted full exclusivity and stated that "Nintendo doesn't deserve to release games on platforms that aren't mobile. And they should always strive to not be like Sonic (who went 3rd party after Sega left the console market) and Crash (who went multi-platform ever since Wrath of Cortex released.)" To me, this does suggest an aspect of Nintendo's image that is compromised by the idea of porting - these are essentially unanswerable questions without interviewing a Nintendo executive, but would it make the games take longer, or compromise their quality? Would it just seem off to see Xbox Series X Mario Odyssey next to the Master Chief Collection on someone's shelf? Again, though, I'd be enthused to see reasonings at large, because the other comments in our Poll Discussion thread dig into other options as well! No opinion/being neutral on ports, feeling Nintendo wouldn't be compromised by letting a few third-party games go, and simply thinking the Switch sucks ass to play games on, respectively. Lot of different perspectives just within the context of the community, much less the other 2,400 voters.

Now, to get into working off the numbers alone, 30.27% of the voters said they would want Nintendo to port their games to as many platforms as possible. Something that feels fairly safe to assume, and is applicable to analyzing basically every single option, is that the majority of voters own a Switch - hence, it's reasonable to think that their votes here aren't based on an inability to play the games. Reasons could vary from wanting as many people as possible to experience the games, to the features and graphical/performance upgrades a PC or other console release could offer, to, well, the aforementioned Switch quality comment. Just behind it is the exact opposite option that Nintendo should keep their games exclusive to their own platforms, with 21.34% of the vote. I already got into this with the rambling paragraph about brand loyalty and don't have much more to say about it here, but this is an option where it's hard for me to dissect a lot of other reasons with the poll being worded the way it is (Switch still exists, people just get more choices). Please send me your dissertations.

Next up, we have the sentiment that Nintendo shouldn't port anything but still create games specific to other platforms in third with 14.59%. At the moment, these "other platforms" are just mobile OSes like iOS and Android, where their focus is on "bite-size" portable gameplay. I'd guess there's more a sense that people aren't missing out on anything, as a result; it's a "safer" option that's explicitly branded for something that isn't a real console, if that makes sense. Two years ago it was reported that Nintendo was stepping back from the mobile market, so we might not see any new games, but Super Mario Run is a standalone release and Mario Kart Tour is still receiving updates (we don't talk about Dr. Mario World). Incidentally, I'd be curious if people would start feeling differently if we saw exclusive Mario games for the PS5, for example, since this option is so open-ended. Mario with guns! Perhaps a medieval sword?

Now we get into the no opinion crowd, who have it with 13.83% of the total vote. I assume a lot of neutrality on this, admittedly based on forum comments again, comes from not being affected by the ports in either direction - they already have a Switch, they don't play PC games, they don't care if Mario is on the Ouya. After that, with 12.46% of the vote, is only porting third-party games, like Mario + Rabbids, which are still distinctly Mario but aren't developed in-house by Nintendo. Would this extend to things like Mario & Sonic, finally unleashing Olympic minigame hell onto the wastelands of PC? I'd think this is related to the idea that Nintendo could stand to give up some of their "auxiliary" games and trade that sweet, over-referenced brand sanctity for extra sales on stuff people might not have bought otherwise, while their heavy hitters stay locked where they are. Lastly, and somewhat curiously, there's a distinct lack of support behind the meet-in-the-middle option of timed exclusivity, coming in dead last with only 7.52% of the vote. Those who have a stake in this prefer taking more hardline stances, if I had to guess - most people who'd vote for this would rather take the ports up front with no strings attached.

As a wrap-up... in my opinion, it's hard to group together any options for an overhead view, since even the most superficially similar ones (port everything and port everything BUT TIMED!!) have different sentiments behind them. Even with some overlap between no-port options, i.e. a previous forum commenter voting full exclusivity despite their implication that mobile releases weren't an issue, it feels disingenuous to lump them into one big thing. Regardless, when I do the exact thing where I spent two sentences explaining why I didn't want to do it, you can roughly distill it into 37.79% of voters being in favor of some sort of full set of ports (third-party ports excluded due to being an edge case), 35.93% not wanting any ports outside mobile releases, 13.83% with no opinion, and 12.46% for the, uh, third-party guys. I feel like they don't fall on either side of the argument, but that's just me. Excluding them makes the votes closer than you'd first think, if that means anything!

Conclusion

That's all for October's Poll Committee Discussion. Honestly, these two were a bit of a nice contrast; simple vs. complex, pure fact vs. opinion. Catch us next month where another committee member will give you the lowdown on the next set of polls, and in the meantime, be sure to vote and add your opinion to the totals so that they, too, can rip it to shreds in November.

Anniversary Announcements

Written by: Lakituthequick (talk)

“I can't believe my character breaking down led to a sticker.”
—Smasher (talk · Boards)

Ah, dear 'Shroom readers, welcome. I hope you're prepared for an unforgettable Anniversary Announcements. The last one of the year!

The Tournaments

One last update on tournaments, as everything is wrapping up right now.

Awards Killing Game: Odyssey
The main part of the game on Circitus Island has ended. Soon, the remaining six players and several spectators will submit their endgame actions, from which a finale will be composed that concludes the game.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Tournament (Singles and Doubles)
The tournament has concluded, with the singles having been won by Ninelevendo and Yoshiwaker, with one loss each, and the doubles by team she can fix us, composed of Toadbert and Yoshiwaker. Congratulations to all!
Scribble Showdown
A bonus voting round is ongoing to vote on the best scribble of each player, and a finale is to be posted soon, but the game itself has ended, and has given us a winner: Gabumon, with a perfect 5 out of 5 wins! Congratulations!

Ah, well, that was wonderful. Good time was had by all, I'm pooped. Next month, Awards director elections go live in this paper, and next year, I will certainly be back for some fresh announcements. Thanks for sticking with me, and au revoir!

Mario Calendar

Written by: GPM1000 (talk)

Howdy everyone, and happy Mario Calendar day! I guess the rest of The ‘Shroom releases at the same time, but you all know what you’re really here for (Just kidding, everyone that works on this paper is so amazing and there’s so much talent and passion that goes into every single one of these columns and sections!!). Let’s jump into it!

Region Abbreviations

Abb. Region
ALL All Regions (JP/NA/EU/AU)
JP Japan
NA North America
EU Europe
AU Oceania/Australia
SK South Korea
CHN China
UK United Kingdom

Console Abbreviations

Abb. Console
NES Nintendo Entertainment System
Famicom Family Computer Disk System
SNES Super Nintendo Entertainment System
N64 Nintendo 64
GC Nintendo GameCube
GB Game Boy
GBC Game Boy Color
GBA Game Boy Advance
DS Nintendo DS
3DS Nintendo 3DS
Switch Nintendo Switch
Wii VC Nintendo Wii Virtual Console
3DS VC Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console
Wii U VC Nintendo Wii U Virtual Console
VB Virtual Boy
G&W Game and Watch
64DD Nintendo 64 Disk Drive
MS-DOS Microsoft Disk Operating System
CD-i Philips CD-i
IQ iQue Player
NVS Nvidia Shield
ACPC Amstrad CPC
ZX ZX Spectrum
Coleco Colecovision
TI-99 Texas Instruments TI-99/4A

Wow, that is quite the month!! Super Mario Odyssey is obviously the standout thing that came out this month, but let’s not forget that there’s a new game coming out five days after this issue releases! The new Mario + Rabbids game is coming out (unfortunately, for some reason, Japan is getting it a month and a half later), and I’m really looking forward to it. It also seems like late October is where they like to release new games--Super Mario Odyssey, Luigi’s Mansion 3, Mario Party Superstars, and Mario + Rabbids are all recent examples of that. Anyways, I hope everyone enjoyed, and I’ll see you next month!

Roleplay Update

Written by: MightyMario (talk)

Hello again! This is MightyMario with Roleplay Update! Let’s see what happened in the Roleplay section in September!

New RPs

No new RPs, unfortunately.

Notable Events

  • In Mushroom City Car Wash, an Invader Zim arc by Toadettefan has begun. The devious Irken Zim and his half dog, half robot companion GIR crash land on Terra. Oxide welcomes them to the Car Wash, which gives Velo the idea to contact Zim’s biggest nemesis: Dib Membrane. Unfortunately, this results in Velo getting fired from the Car Wash, but Dib ultimately receives the message to begin an invasion of the planet.
  • Meanwhile, in the ongoing second tale of Tales from the Megaverse, the crew of the Halberd land inside the Devastator and split into teams. A foe from before kidnaps First Mate Axel and Luz goes on the hunt for a “ghost”.

New Bans

None. Keep that streak going!

And this was another edition of Roleplay Update! I’m MightyMario and see you in November for more updates!

What's in a Campaign?

Written by: Mustard Machine (talk)

Hello again, and welcome to another What's In a Campaign?, a section where we look at various robots from the hit UK show Robot Wars. This month, we'll be looking at one of my personal favorites, a robot that straddles the line between joke robot and destructive. This month, we're looking at the cylinder-shaped spinner, Series 6's Barber-Ous.

Oh, now the name makes sense.

Barber-Ous is an interesting little robot that's essentially a spinning drum connected to two wheels. Designed by friends Simon Rafferty, Christopher Watts, and Guy Radford, Barber-Ous started development after they were rejected from Series 4 with their robot Rotraktor because the producers felt it was too boring. Because of this, the team decided to create a robot with a visually striking design. Inspired by an old fashioned barbershop pole, Barber-Ous is essentially, well, just that, a barber pole, being a long full body spinning drum. First appearing in Series 5, Barber-Ous was a smaller robot with a smaller drum. For Series 6, the robot was rebuilt, now having a much wider drum as well as thicker wheels. This new design weighed 100kg and had a top speed of 10mph.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Barber-Ous is, unlike most robots who were armored in metal, Barber-Ous is armored in high-grade plastic! The idea behind this was that, in addition to looking better, the creators had also noticed that plastic seemed to cause axes to sort of slide off, as opposed to piercing through like they did with metal. Now you might think that Barber-Ous was something of a joke, what with it being a long plastic drum. But in reality, Barber-Ous was capable of causing a lot of destruction tearing apart part of Panic Attack's side skirts in Series 5 and being perfectly able to destroy its opponents.

As a reminder, all pictures are sourced from the fantastic Robot Wars Wiki. If you'd like to watch any of these fights, check out this video. Time stamps are provided in the section.

In the qualifiers, Barber-Ous faced off against Demolition Man and ICU (Killer Carrot 2 was also supposed to be in this one but bowed out for unknown reasons). In this fight, the Barber-Ous team accidentally had their controls reversed and fought the qualifier with inverted controls. Despite this, Barber-Ous managed to qualify for Series 6 along with all three robots it was supposed to face off with in the qualifiers. Unfortunately for Barber-Ous, qualifying was kind of a curse, because Barber-Ous was placed in Heat K alongside the terrifying Hypno Disc. Worse still for Barber-Ous, their first fight was in the four-way melee alongside Hypno Disc. Facing off against Hypno Disc as well as 4x4 (who, strangely enough, had a rag on their weapon in hipes they could snag Hypno Disc's blade despite entanglement devices being illegal) and the classic joke bot, Granny's Revenge. Barber-Ous started the fight (4:25) hot, taking Granny's Revenge into the corner with its drum and nearly throwing the poor lady out of the arena (and immobilizing her in the process). Avoiding Hypno Dis,c Barber-Ous wisely went after 4x4, next attacking it with its drum (snagging the rag in the process) before immobilizing 4x4 with repeated blows to the side.

Would have been a pretty cool out

It's a good thing Barber-Ous took out 4x4 when it did, because, right after 4x4 is immobilized, Hypno Disc strikes Barber-Ous a single time with its disc and completely immobilizes the the barber pole. Because of this, Barber-Ous, for the first time, makes it through to the second round! This fight is honestly weird because it's clearly supposed to be a classic "watch Hypno Disc destroy a bunch of silly robots" kind of fight. But, like, Barber-Ous is the one who immobilizes Granny's Revenge and 4x4 in the fight itself.

In the second round, Barber-Ous was matched up with Series 5 heat finalist Kat 3 and her "dreaded" axe. Barber-Ous surprisingly manages to end the fight (9:15) in a mere two blows. The first blow rips off a chunk of Kat 3's paneling, with the second blow flipping Kat 3 over.

Spinners are the real flippers.

Kat 3, for some reason, wasn't able to self-right and was counted out, sending Barber-Ous to the heat final. Unfortunately, this Heat Final pit Barber-Ous against Hypno Disc (14:20), who had already KO'd Barber-Ous with a single attack, Barber-Ous has a plan this time. The team figures if they can get around Hypno Disc, they should be able to strike at its weaker backside. It'll be difficult, but with a little luck and some skillful driving, it just might fail completely. Instead, what happens is Hypno Disc and Barber-Ous circle each other for a second.

The only way this fight was going to end

Then Hypno Disc lands a single blow on Barber-Ous, completely KOing it, sending it out of the competition.

Barber-Ous straddles the line between a joke robot and a legitimate competitor, because, on one hand, Barber-Ous did legitimately have the ability to knock out its opponents and do serious damage, as seen in its fights against 4x4 and Kat 3. But because of its decision to be armored in plastic as well as its long body, Barber-Ous was susceptible to being knocked out quickly or being pitted. After its Series 6 run, Barber-Ous would never win another fight, falling in the first round of Extreme 2's challenge belt competitions, losing in the first round of its Series 7 heat, and, finally, losing a special battle of the spinners that took place in Series 7. Sadly, Barber-Ous was scrapped the year before Robot Wars returned in 2016, which prevented it from being in the reboot. Barber-Ous is one of my favorite robots, with a very striking design, a powerful weapon, and a funny concept, and, while it never did great (only making it out of the first round in Series 6), it was a perfect example of a fun robot who inspires a long-lasting memory.

That's all for this month. Join us next month when we look at another robot.

The 'Shroom: Issue 187
Staff sections Staff Notes • The 'Shroom Spotlight
Features Fake News • Fun Stuff • Palette Swap • Pipe Plaza • Critic Corner • Strategy Wing
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