Plessie

Plessie is a that debuted in Super Mario 3D World. In the game, it allows the playable characters to ride it through certain levels, similarly to Dorrie in earlier Super Mario games.

History
Plessie first appears in World 1-4, Plessie's Plunging Falls, where Mario and company must ride it through a river to reach the Goal Pole. It also appears in World 5-1, Sunshine Seaside;, Plessie's Dune Downhill, where it slides through sand; , Deepwater Dungeon; and , Rainbow Run. Plessie also makes a few cameos outside of these levels. In, Champion's Road, it appears at the end of the stage alongside other friendly non-playable characters gather to congratulate the player. It also appears in the game's title screen, and in the credits scene.

To control Plessie, players can tilt either the control stick or control pad, depending on the controller. To speed up and slow down, players tilt up and down respectively. Players can also press the jump button to jump, which can be used to defeat enemies and reach higher ground. If more players are riding Plessie, they can cooperate to tilt it further. If Plessie falls off a course, however, the lives lost is dependent on the amount of players riding it.

Physical appearance
Despite being named after, Plessie is actually a big, bipedal. As such, it still features short but fully formed legs ending in feet with three toes, which allow it to run and even jump considerably high while running, and hands with three digits and a thumb, the latter being as wide as the arms and thus forming a fin-like structure when they are stretched, enabling it to swim with appreciable agility despite its size. Besides being three to four times as tall as Mario, even though the artwork made for the Super Mario 3D World Original Soundtrack shows it being around twice as tall as Mario, Plessie is visibly fat, and this trait is actually used to efficently slide on the belly outside bodies of water. Its body features a smooth skin which is orange on the upper side, while the bottom side, from the protrudring end of the snout to the tip of the tail and including the bottom part of the arms and of the hands, is white. The bottom of each foot, including the toes, is also fully covered by a white pad. Furthermore, the back features four darker stripes with rounded borders that are perpendicular with respect to the tail. Plessie's head features two big eyes, each with an orange eyelid, a white sclera and a big oval pupil surrounded by an aqua green iris. On the top and on the side, the eyes are surrounded by a black border followed by the brow ridge, which fully covers each eye. Right behind the eyes there is a twin-lobed crest resting on the median plane which is cyan colored, with the upper lobe being slightly bigger than the bottom one. The muzzle features protruding white cheeks on the back, and is relatively long and orange-colored on the top until the end, which is protrudring, extending beyond the lower jaw, rounded and fully white, featuring two crescent-shaped nostrils on the top. The mouth is toothless and features a wide, round, dark pink tongue. The tail is long and ends with a three-lobed structure resting on the coronal plane, similar to the crest and having the same cyan color as well. Plessie is always seen wearing a red bandana knotted on the left side of the neck.

Trivia

 * Plessie's name is a portmanteau of and Nessie. The former is an extinct group of large marine reptiles that are often confused as dinosaurs, whereas the latter is the nickname given to the.
 * Before and after riding Plessie, the GamePad player can pet it by rubbing it with the stylus. Doing so makes it laugh and give them five Coins.
 * The music played while riding Plessie is a remix of the music played in The Princess's Secret Slide in Super Mario 64.
 * The official Euroepan sites of Super Mario 3D World feature a short description of Plessie in which it is stated to be a dinosaur, referring to it as a male in languages where the term dinosaur is typically male, while in the Russian site Plessie is specifically staed to be a динозавра, a female dinosaur. Similarly, in the German translation of the Encyclopedia Super Mario Bros., where Plessie's species is not stated, it is referred to as being female.