The 'Shroom:Issue 224/Pipe Plaza

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Director's Notes

Written by: Zange (talk)

Shroom2019 Zange.png

Hello hello and happy November!! Welcome to a wonderful new edition of The 'Shroom. Hopefully you've been enjoying the delights this issue has to offer so far, and now that you're here in Pipe Plaza, please continue to enjoy the delights!

I didn't really get a chance to talk about it last month, but I started a new job! I'm currently enjoying the thrills of being a barista at a certain large and green coffee chain. It's absolutely been a learning process but I feel like I'm picking things up nicely. Currently I'm trying to master the skill of being in charge of all of the drive thru happenings while also keeping on top of food that gets ordered. It's, uh. Definitely a learning curve.

We have all sorts of nifty things for you in Pipe Plaza this month! Remember that you, too, are always welcome to send in something to become one of the wonderful Pipe Plaza offerings as well! Just go to the sign up page to get started.

That's all from me this time, enjoy the rest of your month!

Section of the Month

A 'thank you' goes out to everyone who voted A Section of Muppetational Origins to first place this month! Additionally, congratulations are in order to the rest of our podium! Tied for silver is Boo1268 with Dry Bowser Data and TheBlueCatMenace with Awards Analysis! Thank you to everyone who votes for their favorite sections as well.

PIPE PLAZA SECTION OF THE MONTH
Place Section Votes % Writer
1st A Section of Muppetational Origins 5 25.00% Zange (talk)
2nd Dry Bowser Data 4 20.00% Boo1268
2nd Awards Analysis 4 20.00% TheBlueCatMenace
News and information
NIWA News
Trig Jegman (talk)
Stay up-to-date with the latest happenings from the NIWA wiki network!
read more
Mario Calendar
GPM1000 (talk)
Find out all about this month's Super Mario releases.
read more
To-Do Tracker
Camwoodstock (talk)
No clue what to do? Join the fun and see what's been done!
read more
Poll Committee Discussion
MightyMario (talk)
The best analysis of the polls around!
read more
Awards Analysis
Waluigi Time (talk)
Awards may have come and gone, but let's talk about the results!
read more
The 'Shroom Report
Waluigi Time (talk)
All the latest writers and all the milestones of the current ones.
read more
What's in a Campaign?
Shoey (talk)
Not quite the tall boi I had in mind...
read more

NIWA News

Written by: Trig Jegman (talk)

"Quarterly", she says. "I won't forget to do it!", she says. Real smooth. Anyway, here's the news from July to October:

New Member

Logo for Wiki Mario (Mario Wiki FR)

Wiki Mario, the French Super Mario Wiki, joins NIWA as the third French-speaking site and 41st site in the organization. Check out the sites today!

Staff changes

  • Bulbapedia: RotomAmiti and Driftin Soul have become Junior Administrators. Minibug and SuperPikaPool13 have joined the Leadership Board.
  • F-Zero Wiki: Trig Jegman hey thats me! becomes Bureaucrat.
  • Hard Drop Tetris Wiki: Trig Jegman resigns from their administrator position.
  • Inkipedia: Welcomes Yoshifan52 as its new chief of staff, following the stepping down of its prior leader Heddy. FancyRat is promoted to administrator, TomLegend101 is promoted to patroller, and Shahar resigns from all staff positions. Emi is demoted from patroller.
  • MiiWiki: Logangsta and Z-Gamer Guys have been promoted to moderator.
  • NintendoWiki: Trig Jegman has been promoted to administrator and interface administrator.
  • Pikmin Fanon: Blower Pot and PikminKartSuperCircuit become administrators. Trig Jegman resigns from the interface administrator position. A Friendly Amprat is promoted to bureaucrat. Gamefreak75, Peach Bulborb, Portal-Kombat, Scruffy, Volatile Dweevil, Ambetts, and Sir Pikmin have been demoted for inactivity—thank you for your service!
  • Rhythm Heaven Wiki: Tox is demoted from all positions. (A deleted user), Kievit, and PaperScarf are demoted for inactivity. SomethingAccurate37 and TheEggo55 becomes bureaucrat. TheJoeMaster becomes administrator.
  • StrategyWiki: Tinyuniverse is demoted for inactivity.
  • Super Mario Wiki: Xiahou Ba, The Nasty Warrior is promoted to bureaucrat.
  • WiKirby: Jellytost, Illiechez, and AdieuLain are demoted for inactivity. ShadowKirby becomes administrator.
  • WikiBound: Tacopill has been demoted for inactivity. We thank him for years of service!

Major developments

Major new game releases:

  • Super Mario Party Jamboree – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Jamboree TV
  • Fire Emblem Shadows
  • Kirby and the Forgotten Land – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Star-Crossed World
  • Pokémon Legends: Z-A – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition
  • Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition
  • Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment

StrategyWiki would also love your help covering other releases, such as Drag x Drive, Hades II – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, or Pac-Man World 2 Re-Pac.

  • Pikmin 4 and Pikmin Bloom have received updates for cross-compatibility, adding decor Pikmin to the former and Ice Pikmin to the latter.
  • Pikmin Fanon has rehauled their Ranks system.
  • A second Kirby Air Riders direct took place, showing off several of the game modes.
  • Pikipedia has a new featured article: https://www.pikminwiki.com/Party_Walk

Featured wiki projects

There's always something to do across the various sites in NIWA. Here's some possible leads for those looking to branch out. Don't forget to review each site's policies and rules when hopping onto a project.

SmashWiki

SmashWiki has a variety of projects that need completion. Some notable ones include cutting down on excessive trivia sections, changing infobox parameters for players, and reducing galleries.

Hard Drop Tetris Wiki

Hard Drop Tetris Wiki has been converting its Modern Mino Community article archives to a new format. While many of the recent installments have been converted, many of the older entries still need attention. The archive can be found here, and the template documentation is here.

This concludes this installment of NIWA News. For questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions, contact NIWA's Vice Coordinator Trig Jegman.

Mario Calendar

Written by: GPM1000 (talk)

Happy November, everyone! This year has absolutely FLOWN by. I can't believe it's already almost over!! It's been an insanely busy year for me -- I am about to be in my final semester of college! But no matter what, I will always have time for Mario Calendar :) if you're unaware, this is THE article for a fan of the Mario franchise. Here, you get to see every single Mario game that was EVER released in the month of November! So… shall we?

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

As I always say about November, what a month!! This is certainly one of the spotlight months for the Mario franchise, with incredible titles like Super Mario Galaxy, New Super Mario Bros Wii, Super Mario 3D World, and so many others coming out. In more recent years, we've gotten games like WarioWare: Move It!, Super Mario RPG, and Mario and Luigi: Brothership, so that's still very much a trend that lives on.

However, I'm pretty surprised by the complete absence of anything Mario-related in the November of big 2025. This is the launch year of the Nintendo Switch, and there's very little Mario presence in the 2025 holiday season! Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza were obviously the flagship Mario games this year, and they did just release the remastered version of the Mario Galaxy games. It's interesting to see how release strategies fluctuate from year to year.

I did say the "complete absence of anything Mario-related" this month, but that's not entirely true. Kao Yoshi is a free app that'll be releasing on mobile and the Nintendo Switch exclusively in Japan just a few days from now, on November 18th. It seems like it's kind of like the opening screen in Super Mario 64, where you can just interact with Yoshi's face. It's clearly for young children, but it is cool to see them continue to experiment with mobile as a platform. I haven't been all that impressed by Nintendo's mobile offerings, so I hope to see them improve in the future.

Anyways, that's it for this month! I hope you enjoyed this installment of Mario Calendar, and I can't wait to see you all again next month. Happy November :)

To-Do Tracker

Written by: Cam / Tori / Cecil / Claire / Macy (talk)

Howdy! The end of the year is creeping up on us, and with it, a whole deluge of emotions. The festive joys and seasonal anxieties! The ponderous reflection on a year gone past and how one's spent it! The things we've gained, the things we've lost, and the things we never could've predicted at all! Uh, we can't make a joke about the Mario Galaxy cast, as we're writing this the night before they reveal it, but we're sure we'd have something funny to sneak in here about it!

Us? Well, this month, we don't have any one-off Critic Corner pieces about super-cool oddly-specific internet things (in case you missed that), so we're just here to do what we've been doing all year long; provide you with an update on the state of the to-do bar. So, without further adieu...

Note: All dates here, unless otherwise specified, were taken fairly late at night in EST; around 1-3 AM EST. In this case, November 5th, 2025, was taken at 1:55 PM EST.

October & November To-Do Items
To-Do Item Oct 15, 2025 Oct 22, 2025 Oct 29, 2025 Nov 5, 2025 Nov 12, 2025
Spotlight focuses 5 4 4 4 1
Ongoing TPPs 1 5 4 8 11
Unimplemented Proposals 30+ 30+ 30+ 30+ 30+
Unresolved Discussions 304 305 270 276 253
Construction Projects 123 127 134 145 133
Rewrites Needed 158 158 159 158 158
Sourcing Issues 19,463 19,453 19,445 19,414 19,345
Stub Articles 789 787 787 795 803
Wanted Articles 1000+ 1000+ 1000+ 1000+ 1000+
Requested Deletions 5 8 8 11 13
Suggested Moves 62 64 63 63 65
Suggested Merges 66 66 66 68 70
Suggested Splits 64 66 67 68 68
Deprecated Templates 33 33 33 28 25
Unknown Meanings 2 3 2 3 N/A
Image Quality 3,977 3,968 3,989 3,989 3,985
Images Needed 692 689 688 690 685
Media Needed 432 435 447 448 452
Media Quality 2 2 2 1 1
Unused Files 100+ 200+ 100+ 100+ 100+
Files To Be Used 16 20 21 21 21

For some observations for how the numbers have progressed, and some potential targets:

  • Sourcing issues has seen a steady decrease, and the ever-monstrous "unsourced foreign names" sits at just over 16,900 pages as of writing. We mentioned unsourced sections last issue, and that's currently sitting at a resounding three pages--Gopher Bash, LodgeNet, and Recycled Koopa. Even just a few sources could help knock things down a peg for other editors, so, rev up those ref tags!
  • Requested deletions sees a very noticeable uptick, as things start to build up. Plenty of them are various obsoleted files, disambiguation pages, or redirects; some may need proposal, some might not. Hopefully, this can be just-about emptied out by next month!
  • Not too much has changed on the front of moves, merges, and splits; with the relatively low amount of active TPPs to clean them up, merges finally peaks over 70, but other than that, it's more of the same.
  • Media needed has, in fact, reached its dire goal of over 450 pages before the end of the year. A tragedy indeed... But, while any attempts to prevent it from reaching that point are down, they are by no means out. Many, many pages in this category are game soundtracks, and thusly, if a game has a Multimedia page, there's a good shot that they could, at the very least, be taken from needing media, to only needing more media, and in some cases, you may very well get lucky and be able to locate everything already!
  • Your eyes do not deceive you... Media quality is presently at exactly 1 item remaining. RHG1951 (talk) was able to finally bring order to the KAOS--ahem, chaos that plagued the audio of the Donkey Kong Country 3 GBA trailer. All that remains is one single quote, courtesy of the Koopa General. If you own a Blu-ray copy of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, you, yes, you, can personally clear out the entire category of its sole remaining file. This is quite exciting, as the last time a substantial category like this was picked clean was back in May of this year, when the second wave of "Descriptions needed" was cleared out. If we're lucky, a hero will come home to this file before Christmas; just make sure to avoid any Spiny Shells that come with going after first place!

Poll Committee Discussion

Written by: MightyMario (talk)

Hi, I'm MightyMario with a relatively simple and quick Poll Committee Discussion!

Archives

What are your thoughts on Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2? (TheBlueCatMenace, October 11th, 2025)

What are your thoughts on Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2?

The game is great and I love it. 27.40% (593 votes)
I have played the Wii or Switch version of the game and do not wish to play the remaster. 26.29% (569 votes)
I have not played Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2, but I want to. 22.74% (492 votes)
I have no opinion. 7.35% (159 votes)
The game is okay and needed more improvements. 4.34% (94 votes)
The game is good and I like it. 4.21% (91 votes)
I have not played a previous version of the game and am not interested in Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2. 3.51% (76 votes)
The game is okay but I prefer the Wii or Switch version. 2.63% (57 votes)
The game is bad, and I dislike it. 1.52% (33 votes)
Total votes: 2,164

Which Bananza power do you most like using? (Hooded Pitohui (talk), October 25, 2025)

Which Bananza power do you most like using?

I have not played Donkey Kong Bananza. 49.64% (1,169 votes)
Elephant Bananza 17.03% (401 votes)
Kong Bananza 16.01% (377 votes)
Ostrich Bananza 5.18% (122 votes)
I have no opinion. 4.20% (99 votes)
Zebra Bananza 3.69% (87 votes)
Snake Bananza 3.10% (73 votes)
I didn't enjoy any of the Bananza powers. 1.15% (27 votes)
Total votes: 2,355

Analysis

What are your thoughts on Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2?

Super Mario Galaxy Nintendo Switch icon

Many Mario fans' favorite Mario game(s) return on the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2. It's no surprise that the top option was that voters thought it was a great remaster of both Galaxy 1 and 2. However, others said that they had played other versions of the game and had no interest in playing the remastered version, coming in second place. Third place is reserved for those who have interest in the game, while the rest of the votes were for the options that said that they had no interest in the game or just thought the remaster wasn't that great.

Which Bananza power do you most like using?

Screenshot of Elephant Bananza when it is learned in Donkey Kong Bananza.

As Bananza has just recently released (it's November already?), the top spot was taken by those who had not yet played the game, but the Elephant Bananza was the most popular one in the poll, followed by the Kong Bananza, the Ostrich Bananza, Zebra Bananza, and the Snake Bananza. Elephant seems to be the most useful Bananza power, so that's probably why it was chosen the most. I guess you could say: Bananza Slamma! (First, Mario was an elephant, and now DK. What's next, Link as an elephant?)

That'll do it for this edition of Poll Committee Discussion! I'll be back next month to deliver a longer analysis of the latest polls!

(Also go read TV Tomorrow in Fake News!)

Awards Analysis

Written by: Waluigi Time (talk)

Hello there, 'Shroom readers! Surprise! It's me again, covering for another round of Awards Analysis. Today I'll be covering M15. Favorite Mario Kart Course and F5. Worst Boss Battle.

Archives

M15. Favorite Mario Kart Course

M15. Favorite Mario Kart Course

Rainbow Road (MKWorld) 10.35% (236 votes)
Coconut Mall 10.04% (229 votes)
Waluigi Pinball 8.99% (205 votes)
Rainbow Road (MKWii) 7.54% (172 votes)
Mount Wario 6.93% (158 votes)
Rainbow Road (MK7) 6.80% (155 votes)
Maple Treeway 4.95% (113 votes)
N64 Rainbow Road (MK8) 4.87% (111 votes)
Airship Fortress 4.78% (109 votes)
Yoshi's Island 3.99% (91 votes)
Total votes: 2,281

F5. Worst Boss Battle

F5. Worst Boss Battle

Boom Boom (Super Mario series) 15.91% (288 votes)
Mecha Maker (SMBW) 9.23% (167 votes)
Wonder Bowser Jr. (SMBW) 9.17% (166 votes)
Bowser (SMB) 7.68% (139 votes)
Bowser (PM:SS) 6.63% (120 votes)
Eely-Mouth (SMS) 6.57% (119 votes)
Polterkitty (LM3) 5.03% (91 votes)
Steak (PM:CS) 4.97% (90 votes)
Big Cheep Cheep (PM:SS) 4.70% (85 votes)
Cloud N. Candy (YS) 4.36% (79 votes)
Total votes: 1,810

Analysis

M15. Favorite Mario Kart Course

Rainbow Road in Mario Kart World
Well I'll be, there is gold at the end of the rainbow.

So we all know what happened last year, Coconut Mall finally broke Waluigi Pinball's nine-year winstreak in what was probably one of the biggest shakeups in the history of the Awards. With a narrow margin of 11 votes, a lot of eyes were on this award to see if that would hold... But who could've guessed that not only would Nintendo finally decide that it was about time we got a new Mario Kart, but also that one of its new courses would actually take first place after only being on the market for a whopping 10 days when the polls opened as a console launch title? Yes indeed, Mario Kart World's rendition of the iconic Rainbow Road took first place in its debut year. It certainly looks to have made an impression on folks - Lakituthequick had a very nice write-up about it when he presented this award - and it's pretty easy to see why. World gives Rainbow Road a unique grandeur in the way that it's initially hidden from players (even if everyone expected it and Nintendo themselves leaked it before release, but that's beside the point), and the track itself is just really freaking cool! I regret spoiling it for myself a little bit, but oh well.

Despite being dethroned from its short-lived reign, Coconut Mall did still manage to outperform Waluigi Pinball once more. I won't retread old ground going into a whole analysis, but if you're interested, you can read this Awards Analysis from last November where Hooded Pitohui did a deep dive into those results, and then come back here and be disappointed because he's better at writing this section than me. Coconut Mall's lead is cemented a little more than last time, 24 votes ahead of Waluigi Pinball, but whether that's just because we had more voters in general this year or new options happened to pull more of the Pinball voters than the Mall voters, who's to say.

Outside of the top three, we've got the typical year-to-year shuffling, but nothing that seems too interesting, to be honest (or at least nothing that can be attributed to significant property boosts from World). What is worth acknowledging though is that, aside from Rainbow Road, none of the other newly-added options did well, all three of them languishing at the bottom. Dino Dino Jungle, the only retro course of the bunch, fared best, which makes sense considering it's had a lot more time with players. Whistlestop Summit, meanwhile, ended up tying with write-ins for Big Blue! Makes you wonder how many of the voters actually played the game and if Rainbow Road was more of a hype train scenario. This award is once again going to be very interesting to watch next year after World has had more time to settle in.

F5. Worst Boss Battle

Artwork of Wonder Bowser Jr. from Super Mario Bros. Wonder
Two years in a row of me showing something that's not the winner of this award!

Don't you love a write-in success story? Well, this might not be one of those considering it's a Fail Award, but close enough. Boom Boom and my personal first pick for this award, the Mecha Maker, are still holding on to the top two, but third place is a newcomer - Wonder Bowser Jr., trailing by only a single vote and proving that the bosses in Super Mario Bros. Wonder do, in fact, kind of suck. I don't think he would've gotten as much flack if he wasn't one of three bosses in the game and gotten shamelessly recycled so many times, but he was so he does. What's kind of funny is that the Awards Committee did float the idea of adding him to this award back in 2024, but we ended up not doing that. But he got enough write-ins for us to try him as a full nominee, and lo and behold, there he is taking the bronze in a very close race. Between this and the results of Favorite Super Mario Bros. Wonder Level, I guess our track record with Wonder isn't very good.

The original incarnation of Bowser from Super Mario Bros. is still holding steady in fourth, even though he's been knocked out of the top three, but he's not the Bowser I want to talk about. That dubious honor instead goes to Bowser as the final boss of Paper Mario: Sticker Star, our other new addition! (Ironically, he actually pulled ahead of Wonder Bowser Jr. in write-ins last year.) I can't say I remember much about Bowser's boss fight in that game that makes it egregiously bad, or at least not any worse than the rest of the boss battles and their weird insistence on making fights extremely difficult unless you happen to have a specific Thing, but I guess people don't like him. Interestingly, Big Cheep Cheep from the same game dropped down from fourth to ninth this year, which would suggest to me that Bowser acted as a lightning rod of sorts for the "we still don't like Sticker Star" crowd.

There's not much else of note here, besides Clem from Luigi's Mansion 3 dropping from a middling ninth last year to a pretty sad sixteenth. Considering that Wonder and Sticker Star already had representation on this poll with some pretty lousy bosses, I don't think this is explained so much by the new nominees pulling votes from Clem as much as it is Luigi's Mansion 3 fading from public consciousness a bit, and/or changing voter demographics.

Conclusion

It's fun when I get to talk about interesting new things happening instead of old things staying the same. Maybe next year we'll even get a new winner for Favorite Major Character! Haha, just kidding, that would be silly. Be sure to come back next month when my right-hand man Sparks will be analyzing more awards!

The 'Shroom Report

Written by: Waluigi Time (talk)

Hello there, 'Shroom readers, and welcome back to The 'Shroom Report! Spoilers for the rest of this section, but you may notice that FunkyK38 has reached the milestone of 100 Fun Stuff sections - that just so happens to mark 100 consecutive issues of Where in the Marioverse is Carmen Sandiego?! Unfortunately, it slipped past us so we weren't able to acknowledge it in the last issue when it actually happened, but better late than never, right? That makes her the second writer in the history of the paper to pull off the feat, following Quizmelon with TV Tomorrow. Congrats Funky! Anyway, for all that and more from Issue 223, here's the latest report, only made possible by Meta Knight dutifully maintaining the spreadsheets!

For new readers or anyone needing a refresher, please open the box below.

​

Sections that are not applicable this month are crossed out.

  • First-Time Writers lists everyone who wrote their first section for The 'Shroom in the previous issue.
  • New Sections lists recurring sections that started their run in the previous issue. This includes returning sections that previously went inactive.
  • Guest Sections lists one-off submissions from the previous issue.
  • Milestones covers certain section numbers reached in the previous issue. Writers are mentioned for every 10 sections written in a team and every 50 sections written overall, teams are mentioned for every 100 sections, and The 'Shroom itself is mentioned for every 500 sections. Additionally, established writers are mentioned the first time they contribute to a particular team.
  • Most Sections Written lists the current all-time record holders.
First-Time Writers
Writer Section
Vivavivi004 (talk) A Short and Sweet Review of Super Mario Galaxy 63!
Guest Sections
Section Writer
TV Tomorrow Boo1268
Pumpkin Puzzle Boo1268
The Ghostly Gallery Boo1268
Dry Bowser Data Boo1268
A Review of SMLWiki.com Camwoodstock (talk)
A Short and Sweet Review of Super Mario Galaxy 63! Vivavivi004 (talk)
ANOTHER Top 13 Spooky Halloween Songs Boo1268
Poltergeist Playthrough Boo1268
Milestones
Writer Milestone
Aomaf (talk) 10 Palette Swap sections
Boo1268 1st Main/Staff section
1st Pipe Plaza section
1st Strategy Wing section
50 overall sections
FunkyK38 (talk) 100 Fun Stuff sections
Lakituthequick (talk) 150 overall sections
Shoey (talk) 500 overall sections
TheBlueCatMenace 30 Fake News sections
1st Pipe Plaza section
Most Sections Written
Team Writer Number of Sections
Main/Staff Henry Tucayo Clay (talk) 142
Fake News Waluigi Time (talk) 173
Fun Stuff Shoey (talk) 165
Palette Swap FunkyK38 (talk) 213
Pipe Plaza Yoshi876 (talk) 128
Critic Corner Hypnotoad (talk) 217
Strategy Wing Hooded Pitohui (talk) 168
Overall Yoshi876 (talk) 747
'Shroom Trivia
The tradition of scavenger hunts in The 'Shroom goes all the way back to Issue LXIX (69)! Seven of them have run throughout the paper's history. Earlier iterations were much less advanced, simply placing images around the paper and asking readers to send a forum PM to a 'Shroom staff member with the locations to prove they solved it. The higher-tech version of the scavenger hunt, courtesy of Lakituthequick, was first used in Issue 129. Interestingly, every scavenger hunt so far has been tied either to Halloween or a Holiday Special.

Congratulations to Shoey for being the third 'Shroom writer to reach 500 sections!

What's in a Campaign?

Written by: Shoey (talk)

Hello and welcome back to What's in a Campaign?, a section where I take a look at various competitors from the hit show Robot Wars. Last month I took a look at the clucking heat finalist Robochicken. This month we take a look at what is truly one of the robots of all time, Series 3's Aggrobot!

A fearsome blue wererat!

Built by brothers Peter, Bob, and Jon Leach, Aggrobot is a very strange-looking robot. It's very tall, maybe one of the tallest robots we've ever looked at. A very tall pyramid slope in the middle of the robot serves to protect its innards from axe machines. Powered by twin motors with a paint job based on an apparent werewolf rat, for weapons, it's Series 3, so you know Aggrobot has two! The first is of course a simple front wedge with a tongue to help Aggrobot get under its opponents. At the back, we've got an obligatory useless weapon in the form of a spring-powered spike cannon. Oh Series 3 of Robot Wars, what will you think of next! This is a very strange-looking robot with a decent enough wedge at the front, a probably useless weapon at the back (as was the style at the time), and as much ground clearance as you can put on a robot!

As a reminder, all pictures are sourced from the fantastic Robot Wars Wiki. If you'd like to watch any of these fights, a video has been provided with timestamps provided in the section.

As this was Series 3, Aggrobot qualified via the Gauntlet, which was used as the qualifier for Series 3 even though the Gauntlet wasn't even part of Series 3! Placed in Heat C, Aggrobot's opponent was originally going to be Daisy, another weird robot whose weapon was a metal bar that was described as being like a skip (jump) rope that would swing all the way around the robot to hit its opponent. But Daisy had technical problems and ended up being replaced by Binky, another kind of weird robot whose weapon was a snowplow-like plow that moved independently of Binky. It's an issue of weird robots… Anyway, the fight (1:26) starts with the two machines slowly bumping into each other as Aggrobot drives away.

That's no way to treat a lady, Aggrobot!

The two robots attempt to charge at each other but miss, sending Binky into the wall and, more importantly, under the floor spikes, which really go to town poking the underside of Binky! Binky actually gets impaled by these spikes, allowing Aggrobot to reverse into Binky and hit him with his spring-loaded spike. Now, I don't want to alarm you guys, but this spring-loaded spike does, how you say, no damage to Binky. Instead, it just sort of pushes the plow machine away. Aggrobot then reverses into Binky with a mighty [citation needed] slam, this time making a small hole in the shell of Binky!!! Binky and Aggrobot both end up on the floor spikes as Aggrobot keeps trying to use its spring-loaded spike.

I'm not convinced Binky is actually still moving, but this is pre-Refbot (which is basically the wild west of Robot Wars), so the fight keeps going. It appears the House Robots agree with me that Binky is dead because Sgt. Bash, Matilda, and Sir Killalot all come out to fuck Binky up. But during the chaos, Aggrobot, defending it's fellow Robot Wars competitor, attacks Matilda and knocks Matilda's shell off, leaving the House Robot naked and embarrassed as Aggrobot goes on to the Heat Semi-Final.

In the Heat Semi-Final, Aggrobot gets an all-time tough draw as it gets matched up with not only Heat favorite but probably Series favorite, Razer! For some reason, Robot Wars commentator Johnathan Pearce refers to this as a grudge match I don't know why. This is Aggrobot's first appearance on Robot Wars! But yeah, sure, grudge match.

Just ripping it apart

The fight (4:35) goes about how you would expect. Razer immediately gets its claw into the side of Aggrobot's face, bringing it down into the wererat machine. Aggrobot briefly escapes, but Razer quickly gets to the back of Aggrobot and, after briefly getting blocked by the spring-powered spike, manages to bite down into the back of Aggrobot before slamming it into the wall. Razer cuts right through the armor of Aggrobot, but doesn't seem to be doing much actual damage to the innards of Aggrobot. This is probably because the tall shape of Aggrobot's armor is protecting it from Razer's claw. Razer lets go and Aggrobot attempts to attack Razer with its spring-powered spike, which, yeah, sure, guys. I'm sure that's gonna go great! Aggrobot quickly realizes that's a stupid plan and decides to run away instead! The quicker Razer catches up to Aggrobot and the two robots bump into each other, with the the pyramid shape of Aggrobot making it difficult for Razer to bite into Aggrobot's armor. Razer charges into Aggrobot and this time gets its claw onto the wedge of Razer. For 90% of robots this would be game over, but again Razer can't get the crushing jaw into Aggrobot and again Aggrobot escapes unharmed! Aggrobot attempts to go on the attack, launching its spring-powered spike at Razer, which shockingly does nothing. Razer pushes Aggrobot into the wall, but, again, the crushing claw just slides right off of Aggrobot's sloped armor.

The two again bump into each other, then finally it happens. Razer gets behind Aggrobot, pushing it into the wall and getting its claw into the right spot right (where the spring-powered spike is). Finally having the position it needs, Razer just goes right through it like a hot knife through butter!

A shock victory for Aggrobot!

You can literally see pieces of Aggrobot tear like somebody tearing a piece of paper in half. I'm pretty sure the spring-powered spike is completely destroyed by this attack! The attack lifts Razer off the ground - it got that deep in Aggrobot's armor! Razer backs up and Aggrobot still has life, reversing to get away as Razer comes back on the attack, getting to the side of Aggrobot, lifting it up, and getting just inside the armor of Aggrobot.

But then something happens! Razer's crushing arm goes all the way up, causing the wheels to go off the ground. As this happens, Razer's back spike embeds itself into the ground. At the same time, Razer's claw breaks, meaning the team can't lower it. All of this causes Razer to breach itself with its wheels lifted up. Razer is immobilized! Aggrobot pulls off one of the most stunning upsets in Robot Wars history to put itself into the Heat Final, one win away from a Series Semi-Final!!!

In the Heat Final, Aggrobot faced off against fellow newcomer Blade and its mighty spinning lawnmower blade of doom! Unfortunately for the Aggrobot team, Razer completely destroyed their vaunted spring-powered spike, so that's gonna be no use in the Heat Final. Although, honestly, Blade is so low to the ground I'm not even sure if it would have been able to reach Blade. The fight (9:49) starts with the two robots charging at each other, with Blade getting an early advantage by getting its blade into the side of Aggrobot.

Aggrobot getting an assist from Shunt!

While the spring on Aggrobot's spike isn't working, it still works as a static spike, so Aggrobot attempts to pierce through Blade's armor with it, but it doesn't go so well. Blade pushes Aggrobot around the arena before Aggrobot spins around, hitting Blade with its wedge as Blade drives off. The two robots tentatively dance around each other until Blade again charges at Aggrobot, getting to its back and pushing it in a circle around the arena. Blade pushes Aggrobot into the arena flame jets before slamming it into the arena wall and letting it get jabbed by floor spikes.

Aggrobot then reverses Blade into Shunt and Blade takes a mighty axe blow… which just kind of bounces off its armor. But Aggrobot's advantage doesn't last long, as Blade rams it into another arena wall. Aggrobot gets its wedge stuck on the wall, so Blade takes advantage, hitting its opponent with four or five mighty shoves. By the time Aggrobot manages to get unpinned from the wall, Aggrobot slowly gets off the wall but shortly after loses all power. Smoke starts emitting from the robot as Blade shoves it onto the flame pit. Aggrobot is declared immobilized and Blade moves onto the Series Semi-Final.

Aggrobot would be a recurring albeit minor player in future Robot Wars, appearing in every classic Series except Series 5 and Extreme 2. Aggrobot never made it to another Heat Final. A seeded machine in Series 4 with the number 20 seed thanks to being a Heat Finalist and beating Razer, Aggrobot managed to make the Heat Semi-Final. In this campaign, it won its opening round melee after Saw Point (a robot with saws for wheels!!!) drove over Oblivion 2 and bent its chassis, but then lost to S.M.I.D.S.Y. in the Heat Semi-Final.

IT HAS SAWS FOR WHEELS!

Aggrobot did qualify for Extreme 1, now sporting the weapon design it would have for the remainder of the Series, a lifter at the front and crushing jaw at the back. Aggrobot would lose its only fight, said fight being a three-way Mayhem match with a spot in the first Annihilator on the line. In this fight, Splinter defeated both Aggrobot and Killertron. Aggrobot would qualify for both Series 6 and Series 7, doing very little in either. In Series 6, it successfully made the Heat Semi-Final through avoiding being murdered by 259 before being killed by Vader in the Heat Semi-Final. In Series 7, it was eliminated on a judges' decision in the opening round of its Heat, having done very little throughout the fight.

Aggrobot 3 doing something?

Almost all of Aggrobot's fame comes from Series 3 and its shock "defeat" of Razer, with the fight being mentioned, conservatively, 47 times each time Aggrobot appears. In every fight, Aggrobot is hyped up as a robot who defeated Razer, which is technically true! But with the way it's presented, you'd think that Aggrobot had done something big to defeat Razer. When in reality, it won by taking advantage of its long body preventing Razer from getting to its most important innards and by being able to withstand an ass-kicking long enough for Razer to break down. Which… I guess is a skill in amongst itself! Aggrobot was an okay-at-best robot throughout the history of Robot Wars, but despite making so many appearances, it really doesn't have any more notable moments. It was just kind of there and every now and then managed to squeak through the first round before inevitably losing whatever 1v1 fight it participated in. But still, it'll always be remembered for Series 3, where it became the first robot to knock off Matilda's shell, made a Heat Final, and became one of only six robots to ever defeat Razer and one of only four to do it in a 1v1 battle!

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The 'Shroom: Issue 224
Staff sections Staff Notes • The 'Shroom Spotlight • Poochy's Picks • Awards Director Election • The 'Shroom Spooky Scavenger • Credits
Features Fake News • Fun Stuff • Palette Swap • Pipe Plaza • Critic Corner • Strategy Wing
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