The 'Shroom:Issue 171/Strategy Wing

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Director Notes

Written by: Hooded Pitohui (talk)

Shroom 2021 Pitohui.png

Hello, readers of The 'Shroom! I know there's a lot of focus on Palette Swap this month, but we've worked hard here at Strategy Wing to bring you a great batch of sections, too. Your Mario Kart and F-Zero racers are here alongside your conqueror of Japan, and Baby Luigi (talk) rejoins us this month, too! Rather than bringing Parallax, Baby Luigi comes with a new section detailing The Sims 4 at length. Do be sure to give it a read!

As always, if you have any topic you'd like to write in detail about, take a look at our Sign-up page! We'd be happy to have you join us as a member of the Strategy Wing Team! Whether you want to follow the recent section Parallax's example and provide a guide on a topic you know well or you would like to make your own version of Mach Speed Mayhem to teach us everything about some obscure interest you have, we can find a place for you.

Section of the Month

Congratulations to Yoshi876 (talk) and his account of the City Tripper's performance for taking the win this month! Thank you all for your votes, and please, keep them coming as a way to show support to our writers.

STRATEGY WING SECTION OF THE MONTH
Place Section Votes % Writer
1st Racing Like the Staff 14 63.64% Yoshi876
2nd So You Want to Conquer Japan? 4 18.18 Chester Alan Arthur
2nd Mach Speed Mayhem 4 18.18% Superchao

Tips and Challenges

Still no F-Zero at E3, so we'll MK8's Mute City.
[read more]

We're about to learn how to create a Sim, so dress for the occasion!
[read more]

We battle Nobunaga, take Mino, take Echizen, and more!
[read more]
History and Facts

If this were a fighting game, Goroh might get hit with "Gustah Wolf!"
[read more]


Racing Like the Staff

Written by: Yoshi876 (talk)

Hello readers and welcome to Racing like the Staff, a section where I do 150cc on different Mario Kart games, but the twist is, I take on the Grand Prix by using the combination that a staff and expert staff member used in that Cup. If you're still a little confused, by this I mean if the track is in the Mushroom Cup, then that's the Cup that I race in. Unfortunately, I don't have copies of the Mario Kart games before Mario Kart 7, so it's only that, 8 and Deluxe that will be getting this treatment.

I was slightly befuddled while trying to match this with our special issue's theme, especially as we'd covered Melody Motorway already. But then it struck me! You can mute music if you don't like the song, so you can Mute City (look it's tenuous as best, please don't think too much about it). I was hoping for a Mario Kart announcement soon, but alas, I think Deluxe and that Home is all we're going to be getting…

The combination for the staff for Mute City is Mario with the Blue Falcon, Roller tyres and the Super Glider, and the stats are as follows:

  • Speed – Three and a half bars
  • Acceleration – Just under four bars
  • Weight – Two and a half bars
  • Handling – Three and a half bars
  • Grip – Just over three bars

Yoshi Circuit

Screenshot of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
Quite stressful race, will relax with Yoshis.

What a mess. Although I got up to a second, a Mushroom boost didn't go my way and sent me off the track, and put Bowser right on my tail – something he exploited once Ludwig hit me with a Green Shell. An inopportune slipstream sent me into a wall allowing Princess Peach and Villager Boy past, although Villager soon fell to me, and Bowser took the Princess out. I stayed behind the pair, after getting hit by Princess Peach's Piranha Plant, before taking her and Ludwig out with a Super Horn, a second Super Horn got me past Bowser before the end of the second lap. I hoped I might begin to build a lead, but someone's Red Shell put Bowser right on my tail as we exited Yoshi's nose, and it was curtains once a Blooper came and I drifted off track.

Excitebike Arena

After the mess of Yoshi Circuit, Excitebike Arena was a walk in the park. I beat Bowser off the start, although Princess Peach ended up beating me, but I got ahead of her before the first corner, and then sailed on to an easy victory with plenty of cheers from the crowd.

Dragon Driftway

Dragon Driftway from Mario Kart 8
The anti-gravity here saved me.

Dragon Driftway can go several ways for me, and thankfully the cards fell in my favour when we raced here. Although Princess Peach put up a good challenge at the start, the early anti-gravity boosts meant I stayed ahead, and while a Spiny Shell hit me on the second lap just as we exited the dragon, she only just zipped past as Lightning struck, and as I wasn't dealing with that recoil, I shot straight past and kept a good lead for the rest of the race.

Mute City

Boy did this perform on its hometrack, with the help of a Red Shell after Princess Peach got past us at the start after boosting off Ludwig. But once she was in the wingmirrors, no one even came close.

Given how well this did on certain tracks, I'm surprised at the absolute mess that was Yoshi Circuit, maybe it had to do with the corners, maybe like Rainbow Road if you get a speed boost when you don't want it, it becomes impossible to stay on. The combination was certainly fun, and I recommend you give it a whirl, but maybe just stick to the tracks with lots of straights on them instead of ones with lots of corners. Can't imagine Rainbow Road in this would be fun.

SIMulation

Written by: Baby Luigi (talk)

Sul sul! Or "hello" in normal speak. If you have noticed the change in title and tone, fear not. While my sister, LeftyGreenMario, and I have taken a break for writing for my former section called Parallax, which dealt with 3D modeling techniques, I have not quit writing all together, as I still have passion and inspiration within me to continue discussing subjects and things I personally adore and enjoy, and I want to share my passion for particular subjects with others. Or should I say, I have the "Inspired" emotion because of some unknown "inspired" moodlets that have given me the proper buff, and I am using the "Write Section" interaction in my computer right now.

That's correct if you're aware of how I'm speaking and what kinds of lingo I'm using. I'll be writing strategies and just talking about stuff for The Sims 4, one of my absolute favorite games of all time. While normally such a behemoth of a franchise typically needs no introduction to what it's really about, for those who are unsure, it's essentially a life simulation game, though the game itself is extremely open-ended and there is no single "wrong" way of playing it; there are lots of goals to complete, lots of things to do while you're at it, and the game's open-ended nature even encourages the use of cheats at points. The game franchise has been super influential and has helped sparked confidence in types of games which weren't the "norm" at the time: The Sims was the type of game that didn't require violence to complete goals, nor did it even have linear goals, and it initially had trouble getting out of the water because of its unorthodox gameplay. It is safe to say that games such as Animal Crossing, Tomodachi Life, Stardew Valley, and more owe in some part to showing the market that life simulation games can be very fun and successful in their own right. I've only started playing the game around last year in March of 2020, but I had fallen in love with the series overall and I'd spend hours at a time playing through it, a big reason is because of how flexible it is and how much user control there is, plus the games and franchise itself has a ton of charm in its witty writing: even its patch notes are very entertaining to read through. While I've only extensively played through The Sims 4, I did pick up on The Sims 3 and I plan on playing the rest of the games eventually, including The Sims 2 and The Sims, the former which helped codify the series. If my palette extends to cover more games, I may cover other entries in the series but as it stands, I'll focus solely on The Sims 4, and there is a lot of stuff to talk about. Support is still ongoing too, so I additionally may devote some months talking about the frequent releases of new packs. Just recently, we have Dream Home Decorator released, which focuses on Build/Buy objects and a home decorator career, and we had Cottage Living announced, which will focus on farm life; farming was a long requested feature from fans. It allows you to keep chickens as your farm animal! So exciting!

Create-a-Sim

Your entire game session is stored in a save, whether it's your buildings, the Sims you made, your households, and what goals you have completed. When you first start the game up, it prompts you to go through a tutorial which pretty much explains what you typically do in this game, how to command Sims to do actions, how to fill their needs, how to speed up time, and what not. You'll be partnered with a Sim named Alex Moyer, who is your roommate, and she is controllable who helps your Sim. You can choose to ignore the prompt to go through a tutorial and just start playing the game, even disabling the prompt altogether, and you can always go back to it via the game's settings.

However, before we go into that, you have to create your Sim first. You'll be taken into Create-a-Sim, often abbreviated as "CAS" throughout the franchise.

Physical appearance and clothing

This one of my personal guys, Recaredo Rojo. He is based on one of my OCs, Redshift. If you're familiar with me, you may have seen him when I themed myself after him in my profiles in the Marioboards at one point. You can spot him in my user page.

While personalities, aspirations, and gender options will be covered in future issues, this is where the meat of the customization lies in: adjusting the look of your character, where you have a lot of free liberty to make them look however you please. You could aim with a pre-generated face, you can tweak them to match another guy, or you may have someone in mind that you want to make. What makes Create-a-Sim in The Sims 4 special over past entries is its push and pull features where you can adjust their physical features simply by clicking on faces rather than having to go through menus and adjusting sliders to get the look you want. This makes adjustments far easier as it saves time going through menus just to adjust the eye distance from each other. In addition, you can adjust various parts of the body now such as the width of your Sim's shoulders or their arm width as prior entries have locked bodies outside of weight and muscle size, which you cannot do in previous titles, though you still cannot adjust height without the usage of mods, as heights are typically difficult to work with and require some specific animation tweaks, especially those that involve animations for Sims of different heights such as kissing or hugging each other, which look awkward. When editing the face, you have access to a menu called "Detail Edit Mode" which allows you to further adjust more intricate details for the face of your Sim, perfect if there's a very specific look that you want.

Create-a-Sim comes with other features associated with your physical appearance. You can set the skin tone for your Sim, and there's a large variety of 'em, further expanded and introduced in Patch 103. You can create your Sim with an ideal skin tone or you can go crazy and give them like red or blue skin. Skin details such as freckles, birthmarks, scars, teeth shape, and wrinkles are available as well. Eye color is customizable as well, and you can adjust pupil size, though you cannot create cross-eyed and lazy-eyed Sims without the use of mods, unfortunately.

Another improvement this Create-a-Sim has over past entries is that you can now use hats with a specific hair-style you want: you can mix and match a particular pony-tail and hat, whereas in The Sims 3, if there was a hat you liked, but a hair style you did not like, you were kinda outta luck. Shifting between outfits is far more intuitive than ever, where you can keep your hairstyle across all outfits by default or you can change with the click of a button: while you could do this in The Sims 3, it is a hassle running in between menus, you have to uncheck the consistent option when you're done, and it causes bugs in the game where your naked Sim model will have a different hairstyle than you intended, requiring use of a mod, NRaas, to fix it. Eyebrows come with their own styles, and you can opt for them to share color with the hair or not, if you want to make a Mario-like different hair roots; You can also wear outfits not in your Sim's assigned gender thanks to Patch 34: finally you can have the cross-dressing Sim of your dreams.

As for clothing, it is much easier than it ever has been to find clothing that you want as clothing is all organized appropriately under subsections rather than requiring you to sift through countless menus in The Sims 3 (which load very slowly and poorly, mind you) just to find a particular style you want, but unfortunately, this comes at the cost of creating your own custom patterns and colors for clothing that Create-a-Style was from The Sims 3; Maxis has stated that they cut Create-a-Style because it is a contributor to how poorly The Sims 3 ran as compared to how well The Sims 4 runs. There are mods that add a color slider that somehow alleviates this issue, though if you want to play without mods, if there is a particular color for clothing that you want, you are pretty out of luck unless you want to mod the color swatch in yourself, which is do-able, but it takes effort to complete and knowledge of various aspects of modding. Console players of the game cannot run mods, keep this in mind as well. There are a lot of options to choose from, from full body outfits, to tops and bottoms, to shoes, to various accessories, to a variety of hats, to make-up, and more.

Outfits come in 8 categories: Everyday, Formal, Athletic, Sleep, Party, Swimwear, Hot Weather, and Cold Weather. You can wear whatever you like regardless, but keep in mind Hot Weather and Cold Weather have gameplay perks associated with them: you need to dress for Hot Weather when it gets hot and Cold Weather when it gets cold, otherwise your Sim will feel uncomfortable and they might even die if exposure is prolonged, especially if they don't wear the appropriate weather outfits. Your Sim can also opt multiple outfits for an occasion at once, introduced in The Sims 4, and they can have up to five separate outfits for an occasion. When you're in other outfits that aren't Everyday, Create-a-Sim will automatically categorize the outfits, where you can pick a fitting outfit for an occasion. Or you can go completely nuts and wear swimwear to formal occasions or wear a tank top as your "Cold Weather" outfit; it does not matter what your Sim looks like. Keep in mind that some outfits do come with their own buffs, such as a sad clown full body outfit providing a permanent Sad buff for your Sim. Your Sim can change their outfit any time by having them selected and selecting "Change Outfit".

Your Sim also can get a Career outfit that they wear when going to work, which do not show up in Create-a-Sim. Some of these are pre-generated while other careers have outfits specifically catered to your Sim when they reach a certain level in a career (for example, your Sim will don a suit if they reach the max level in the Entertainer career or get a police outfit in the Detective career). You typically cannot edit these without the use of mods such as MC Command Center, causing some headaches to some people because pre-generated outfits may not....look the best at times and it looks embarrassment they show up to work at a business career in a gaudy tank top with flip flops and ripped jeans.

Note that I employ very heavy use of custom content, or "cc" as it's colloquially known as in the community, though the images above are not taken with custom content enabled. Unlike many other games, The Sims 4 has built-in modding support: content you add to the game simply gets added to Create-a-Sim and other custom parts of the game, rather than replacing anything, making it great if you want to use expanded customization options! There are tons of custom content out there, and the modding community is extremely robust, making it likely you'll find something you like if you searched for custom content you want! Unlike script mods that change the core gameplay around, custom content for Create-a-Sim and Build/Buy will likely not break in updates, so you never have to worry about updating the added content unless of course the objects come with their own buffs that an update may break.

Anyway, this pretty much covers what improvements in terms of physical appearance this Create-a-Sim offers, barring some updates that may add some new stuff to it in the future. Creators such as myself can spend a lot of time in it, selecting outfits, and making the Sim they have in their head, whether your Sim is handsome or an absolute freakshow. Every single Sim in the game is editable, even generated townies, so you can populate your town how you like. Sims are organized by households rather than individuals, and they are stored to your personal Gallery, so you can plop them wherever you want into other saves if you want to mess around in a new game. You can always revisit Create-a-Sim while you're playing in-game, such as going to a mirror or through Manage Worlds, though traits like your Sim's personality, gender, and body frame get locked unless you use a cheat or mod that enables full edit of them. In the following issues, I will cover aspirations, personalities, and other aspects in the Simology panel so stay tuned for those!

So You Want to Conquer Japan?

Written by: Chester Alan Arthur (talk)

Welcome back, 'Shroom readers, to another edition of So You Want to Conquer Japan? Last month, using my brilliant military strategies we were able to solidify control over the East as well as eliminate Imagawa from this world. This month, we're going to be taking on Nobunaga's Ambition's namesake, Oda Nobunaga, in our quest to fully unify Japan and bring an end to the warring states period.

Come on Oda are you even trying?
Nobunaga’s sole conquest

So we're going to start by sending our spies into Oda's fief Mikawa (or fief seven), and look at that, only 44,000 soldiers? Oda, what have you been doing this whole time? So obviously this battle isn't going to be much. With only 44,000 soldiers, we shouldn't have any trouble taking it. Because we're about to take Mikawa and therefore keep Suruga (fief seven) out of the grasp of invading armies, we're going to be good to throw almost our full force - in this case 380,000 soldiers - into Mikawa.

Truth be told, this is a pretty annoying fief to take as a conqueror. The castle acts as a bottleneck, so you you're really only going to be able to attack with one unit the entire time, and because of the castle's location, you’ll need to eliminate all of the enemy units before you'll be able to get to the enemy general. Because of this, Mikawa can actually be pretty tough to take since the enemy will get the defensive benefits from both the castle and the town. But in this case, it's not going to be a huge struggle, just more of a minor annoyance because of our huge numerical advantage. We're going to have our cavalry charge through, and, before you know it, the enemy general is dead and we've taken Mikawa for our own! Now one thing I wanna note is, for this map (as well as other maps), I'm going to avoid putting a unit of my own on top of the town because when you do that it brings down the morale of the citizens which leads to less tax revenue in the fall.

BEHOLD THE LAND OF NOBUNAGA

With Mikawa taken, we're going to set our eyes upon Owari (fief seventeen). Unlike the last few wars, which were rapid fire wars, we're actually going to wait at least a season before we invade. Oda has 207,000 soldiers in Owari and we only have 360,000 soldiers in Mikawa, so we're going to begin the process of sending soldiers to bolster the front. First, from Kaga we're going to send 200,000 soldiers into Shinano, and then we'll send those soldiers into Mikawa. While we're doing that, we're also going to begin bolstering the armies of our fiefs that have no enemies on their borders, and the reason we're going to that is so that we have soldiers that can be fed into our frontline armies. Of course, multitasking should be a strength of any general, so, while we're doing all that, we're also going to declare war on Oda and turn this from Nobunaga's Ambition into Kenshin’s Ambition! So we're going to invade from Mikawa for strategic reasons that will become apparent later. For these same reasons, we're going to invade with 500,000 soldiers.

The lands of Mino!

I, uh, forgot to take a photo of Oda's fief stats but he still had 207,00 soldiers. Owari is a pretty standard fief, but since we attacked from the west we're able to stack our units right next to Oda's units, preserving much-needed rice. Because Oda had so many soldiers and because he had the defensive benefit from sieges benefiting the defender, we actually ended up losing quite a few soldiers (a little less then half our army). Luckily Oda apparently had a full treasury and, being that it's feudal Japan, we took the money he had and immediately conscripted more soldiers!.

Invaded eh? Good
Hida, our new land

So something I had prepared for (and was kind of rooting for) happened shortly after, with our old ally Tokugawa invading Mikawa from fief nine. So the reason I was hoping for this is because I was hoping he'd invade personally, allowing us to cut him off from the rest of his soldiers. Sadly, because Tokugawa is a coward, he instead sent a regular general to do it.

Intel from our spies
Really should have consolidated his defenses
Behold Echizen

Unfortunately we're outnumbered, so, despite putting up a hell of a fight (even knocking the enemy unit to 3,000 soldiers), we lost this fight and we lost the territory we just conquered. But in what will be a classic Pyrrhic victory, while they may have conquered our territory, they only left themselves with a garrison of 24,000 soldiers and completely surrounded themselves in enemy territory. Not only that, but it would drop Mino to only 59,000 soldiers, making it perfect to be invaded from Owari. And that's just what we're going to do!

Valuable info

Mino contains an entire side that's protected by mountains, which would require a lot of time to travel around. Luckily, from where we invaded we do not need to traverse the mountain, and because of our superior numbers and because Tokugawa himself is here, our enemies fled as soon as we broke the first line, giving us control of Mino and scattering his empire. With his empire scattered, we're going to take advantage. First, we're going to move troops from Kaga, Suruga, and Echigo into Shinano (fief sixteen), and then we're going to invade Hida, which currently has 228,000 troops, with the 500,000 troops from Shinano.

For Hida, we're going to do things a little differently, because we're going to be able to surround the enemy general on two different sides. We're going to station our cavalry to attack from the north and our rifle unit to attack from the east. We took a bit of a beating in this battle, losing our rifle unit as well as having some of our soldiers foolishly decide to desert us. But at the end, our numbers were just too much to overcome, and our infantry unit breached the castle walls and slayed the enemy general.

With that victory and Hida being brought into our fold, not only have we dropped Tokugawa down to three fiefs, we've also made it so all of his fiefs are connected to territory we own. But that’s good enough for me, and a spy has told us that Tokugawa has holed himself up in Echizen (fief five), and I think it's about time to take him out once and for all! In an extremely annoying decision, Tokugawa left Echizen and invaded Hida and took it back over because I sent a lot of its troops into Mino, which I was going to use to invade Echizen. So of course, I immediately invaded him back and honestly neither battle was very interesting and in fact that later battle ended in like three turns, but the important thing is I got Hida back, making that whole sequence pointless! Not only did he not have Hida for more then like nine seconds, he also reduced his forces in Echizen from like 150,000 troops to 49,000 troops. So we're going to invade from Kaga (fief four) with 170,000 troops. Man, Echizen is a boring flat land, but, as it is part of Japan, I want it. Not only did we easily take Echizen, but, because they had the nerve to invade Hida, I decided to slaughter every soldier before putting Tokugawa to the sword to send a message to the rest of the Daimyos. Because we personally slayed Tokuagawa, not only do we get Echizen, but we also get the rest of the territory Tokuagawa laid claim to, because to the victors goes the spoils!.

With that last conquest I believe it's time to call it a month. As you can see, almost all of Japan is now under our control with only five independent fiefs left, all of them in the west. So join us next month in what could possibly be the last section of So You Want to Conquer Japan? when we finalize our conquest and unify Japan. But before we go, let's get the official tally of Japan!.

It's almost ours

Status of Japan

-Ashikaga (11) and Tsutsui (14) are both on the brink with only one fief each.
-Chokei (12) has managed to expand his domain three fiefs.
-And we have managed to expand our empire to a massive eleven fiefs!

Mach Speed Mayhem

Written by: Superchao (talk)

Founder and chairman of the Fuck Samurai Goroh Club.

Hello, 'Shroom readers! Welcome back to Mach Speed Mayhem, where I just give up on guessing who I get anymore! Because once again, a last minute swerve is what gave me #17: Antonio Guster! How about that. Anyhow, it's time to look at Samurai Goroh's once-greatest friend... and now, his arch-enemy!

"At last, my Falcon cosplay is almost complete!"

Main Series

The list continues - yet again, Antonio Guster was introduced in F-Zero X! We didn't know much about him at the time, beyond the basics. Guster had once been Samurai Goroh's right-hand man. His most loyal companion, and trusted ally. And then, Goroh betrayed him! And for that reason, Guster and his red helmet set out in the Green Panther to gain his revenge! And that's it. As always. F-Zero GX expands it... by focusing VERY HARD on how much Antonio Guster hates Samurai Goroh. And also giving him a new blue helmet, probably because his old one looked a lot like Falcon's. His new bio just confirms that Goroh betrayed him and handed him over, and when he got out he went solo with one goal in life: get revenge on Samurai Goroh. Why on the F-Zero track? So his humiliation is in front of millions!

Boy, do his interviews nail that in! Compliment Guster on his victory? He tells Goroh to suck it! What was the key to his victory? How much he hates Goroh! His followup plans? MORE Goroh violence! He even wants to create the Victims of Samurai Goroh Society with his billion space credits, signs his autograph in memory of Goroh's defeat, and most notably? When Mr. Zero tries to compliment him on his baseball skills, Guster just starts thinking about throwing baseballs in Goroh's face! Sheesh, man. He's pretty appreciative of his fans, though! And he does have a good job when not racing, as a bodyguard. Pay him and he doesn't care, he'll protect anyone! And under his helmet is his true hairstyle... a mohawk! Not a skinhead do or an afro. It's a mohawk. Don't... don't ask me how he fits it under there, I don't know either.

Antonio Guster does get a little more play in the F-Zero GX story mode than the default, at least! He makes his first appearance putting in the work as one of the Chapter 3 bet racers, helping to fill out the field of twelve. He can't match ones like Billy, Zoda, or Super Arrow, who will leave the real impressions, but at least he tries his best! It's just not that good. He makes his inevitable return in Chapter 7 to help fill out the 30-car field, and at a certain point, you run out of neat ways to talk about how there's so many guys in this race. But he's still there. Good for him!!

As for his machine! The Green Panther was made by the inventor Toraemon Echigona, and then obtained by hook or by crook by an intergalactic bandit gang. Goroh then answered who bandits the bandits, and kept it around as his spare machine for a while. When he ditched Guster, though, Antonio decided it was time to show up Goroh, and obtained the Green Panther for himself! The official stats are A body, B boost, and D grip - it's built to go. In F-Zero X, the machine is... eh. It's there, you know? There are other, better machines that play the strengths of this one better, such as full-blown sliders or boosters. It's usable, though it'd probably be remembered better if it didn't come in the last batch. As for F-Zero GX... still holds out! With fast acceleration and iron body, this machine is practically indestructible! The low top speed and bad handling are the drawbacks, though, and they combine to keep it from being a true top contender. Still, it's got plenty of utility!

The perfect machine for your army camo buddies.

GP Legend series

Despite the F-Zero: GP Legend anime making Samurai Goroh a major, significant character... Antonio Guster only got one episode. Part of this is the flip in dynamic. Since Goroh was changed from the jackass bandit to the heroic space pirate, Antonio Guster went from the wronged friend to the deadly fiend! We first see Guster when he and the rest of the Goroh Gang are busy raiding a Dark Million transport ship, with Guster as their explosives expert. He's a lot more destructive than Goroh enjoys, and when the mission ends with one big explosion that levels the ship? That's a bridge too far, and Samurai Goroh decides - you're out, for being a loose cannon! Of course, Guster is not at all happy with this as he heads to take some time off...

Naturally, Goroh is wrongly pinned as the one responsible for the destroyed transport, Rick thinking that this is out of character and choosing to seek out Goroh to get it all squared away. Meanwhile, Dark Million's knowledge of Guster, the legendary powder keg of the galaxy, is enough for Zoda to come up with an idea. He sends his goons to go recruit Guster, with praise and charm for his deadly skill with explosives, talking about how Goroh's just holding back his true potential, and in return? Guster offers him a grenade. Not that Rick does much better with Goroh, considering he gives him a bunch of non-answers... though when Lisa Brilliant calls Goroh out to his face, he admits that while Guster's been having some problems, Goroh would never turn his back on his right-hand man.

Get out the way, get out the way!

The Race of the Day takes up the rest of the episode, and while it starts with some classic Rick and Goroh combat, Guster pretty quickly swings in and demonstrates that he decided to work with Zoda after all. Having rigged the course ahead of time, Guster decides to prove his superiority with a consistent supply of bombs, consistently setting them off in hopes of sending both Rick and Goroh plummeting to their doom. Rick logics out that this was an internal conflict from the start, and as the race is red flagged, these three men continue to macho it up, Guster getting ready to bomb Goroh to kingdom come until Rick slams him out of commission. Despite Guster's attempts to both fight Rick and bomb Goroh, Goroh easily puts him at swordpoint, ignoring Guster's declaration of continued hate unless he dies and simply dismissing the man. And so, Antonio Guster walks out of the series, never to be seen again.

The two GBA games featured him, at least! F-Zero: GP Legend had Guster in a minor role in the story modes of Samurai Goroh and Lisa Brilliant. In the former, Guster poisons Goroh, setting Goroh's entire storyline in motion as he desperately seeks a way to cure the poison. After pinballing all over the cosmos, Goroh comes face to face with Guster, trouncing him - and referring to him as a longtime rival rather than an ex-ally, interestingly - and claiming the antidote as Guster rides off with Black Shadow. In the latter, Guster directs an amnesiac Lisa Brilliant towards Zoda, hoping the latter will reward him for the chance to manipulate her. He's a very single-target man! F-Zero Climax doesn't have anything interesting, the two bios both restating known info. Still, always good to check!

Other Information

Antonio Guster in the anime is a case of minor translation instances getting out of hand. There's a line in F-Zero: GP Legend, the English release of story mode, that was translated to imply that Guster was the brother of Lisa Brilliant (which would have made family reunions hilariously awkward later), but nope. Said line is actually Guster referring to Brilliant as a superior in a bandit gang. And thus, another misconception took root because nobody cared enough about F-Zero to do lots of deep digging... Alas.

Well, that's all for this month! Tune in next month after you figure out who I'm talking about!

The 'Shroom: Issue 171
Staff sections Staff NotesThe 'Shroom Spotlight'ShroomfestPoll Chairperson Election
Features Fake NewsFun StuffPalette SwapPipe PlazaCritic CornerStrategy Wing
Specials Community Awards DossierCommunity GalleryMusic on a StaffUltimate Location Battle