Talk:Megasparkle Goomba

Might this be a reappearance of Mega Goomba?
There are fiveworld bosses given the "Bosu" naming scheme in Japanese. Two of them are definitely recurring, those being dancing Gooper Blooper and Shiny Petey Time. Tower Power Pokey and Mizzter Blizzard are definitely new. This leaves this guy, who conspicuously shared the JP name of Mega Goomba. Not only that, but the English names are similar too, just with "sparkle" randomly crammed in. It's been a while since I played the game, but the sticker-corrupted Megasparkle Goomba did tend to cram the word "sparkle" wherever he could if I recall correctly. Now, what remains is their different origins; one is an enlarged Goomba, another is a huge conglomeration of Goombas in one body. I don't think this should mater, as both have additionally been used for the Goomba King. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 01:24, November 16, 2019 (EST)
 * I'm gonna say it's a coincidence. This is just a byproduct of the Japanese names' tendency to generically call everything "Boss X" or "Big X" instead of expending effort coming up with actual interesting names. When Sticker Star came out, those NSMB bosses were one-offs who hadn't been seen in years, and they still are. I doubt they were even thinking about that NSMB boss when coming up with Megasparkle. 03:21, November 16, 2019 (EST)
 * In fairness, the Mega Goomba boss from New Super Mario Bros. was mentioned again in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, showing that it was still on Nintendo's mind for a while (or at least, whoever wrote the Giant Goomba trophy). That said, “transcreation” is a distinct possibility. LinkTheLefty (talk) 08:44, November 16, 2019 (EST)
 * Thing is the "Bosu" system was really only in place for Sunshine, Pinball Land, NSMB, and this game, with Petey Piranha being in every single one of them. I feel there's the distinct possibility that they brought back another. Gooper Blooper hadn't been used for years either, but he's still definitely him. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 12:13, November 16, 2019 (EST)
 * You're actually wrong about Gooper Blooper - his last appearance before Sticker Star was only a year earlier, and he made a few other appearances as well. The NSMB bosses have been MIA since 2006. In addition, Petey and Gooper are much more distinct and recognizable in that they're not just vanilla giant versions of regular enemies, while Mega Goomba and Megasparkle are absolutely that. 16:25, November 16, 2019 (EST)
 * They're giant versions of the wonkass versions of those respective enemies from those bosses' first game, except they didn't evolve to not be wonkass. On an additional note, I'd consider Mega Goomba to be the "most likely to return NSMB boss aside from Dry Bowser" (who is certainly not MIA) due to its development history making it a tad more notable than the rest. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 16:54, November 16, 2019 (EST)
 * They're not vanilla giant versions, as in having no distinguishing characteristics outside of their size. Ordinary Piranha Plants in SMS do not have legs or flower petals, nor do they wear red briefs (weirdly enough, they're also toothless, while Petey isn't). Gooper Blooper is a bit closer to his non-boss kin, but he still has very different tentacles and his head is spotted and shaped differently. So he's not just "the same thing, but bigger" even in his debut game, while Mega Goomba definitely is. 17:46, November 16, 2019 (EST)
 * The other NSMB "bosu" enemies weren't either, but that's still not really a valid way of saying "lol they can't be the same" Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 18:05, November 16, 2019 (EST)
 * I find a hard time believing that these were meant to be the same entity. While they share a Japanese name, that name is incredibly generic as 7feetunder pointed out. Even the concept for both of these bosses is generic, Megasparkle Goomba a bit less so. Making Goombas or standard enemies in general really big isn't exactly a groundbreaking concept NSMB came up with, especially when it comes to the Mario series. -- 18:27, November 16, 2019 (EST)
 * You could say pretty much the exact same thing with the amount of stuff we clump into the Big Boo article, and yet we still do. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 18:29, November 16, 2019 (EST)
 * Those other bosses aren't the focal point of this discussion though. They have distinct designs. Mega Goomba does not. NSMB is not the only game with a generic giant Goomba as a boss, so the fact that they happened to use the same generic naming scheme for the bosses in Sticker Star that they did for NSMB and multiple other games is not enough to prove that this specific one was an intended NSMB reference. Also, "lol they can't be the same" is not a valid summation of my comments. It's more like "there's not enough evidence that they are the same." 18:47, November 16, 2019 (EST)
 * Again note the Big Boo point. Regardless, I feel at the very least it should be noted on each page that they may have been intended as the same thing. (Sorry about the strawmanning, it's just annoying when you finally get a response only immediately after a memory card decides to dump all its data for no reason) Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 19:09, November 16, 2019 (EST)

There are also these points we gotta consider. First, Megacrinkle Goomba is based on Megasparkle Goomba and is named in Japan (ドデカクラフト)ボスクリボー. Why is that Papercraft boss the only one given a new English name instead of the one character it's based on? I think this gives credence for localization simply spicing up the existing name Mega Goomba for the game they appear in. Second, in the two games Boss Goomba itself appears, it starts out as a regular Goomba before growing huge, and what's important here is that Sticker Star refers both the Royal Sticker powered individual and the 16-Goomba giant by the same name in both English and Japanese. SmokedChili (talk) 05:39, November 17, 2019 (EST)
 * Your theory has two flaws: 1, why would the localization team change Mega Goomba's name but not Gooper's or Petey's? 2, it requires the localization team to recognize it as an NSMB reference in the first place. Meaning that they would have to both remember that then-six-year-old boss and recognize it by its (incredibly generic) Japanese name. They probably saw it as just another giant enemy boss like Tower Power Pokey and gave it a flashy name because the Japanese one was boring as balls. Those giant Goomba bosses in the Mario Party series I mentioned are also named "Mega Goomba" in English, so I doubt they even cared whether or not this generic giant enemy boss was the same as a generic giant enemy boss from six years ago since, well, it's a generic giant enemy boss. Who would even notice if they weren't looking at the Japanese names? Certainly not me - when I played this game and fought this guy, the NSMB boss never crossed my mind at all. The sheer number of Japanese names for Big Boos also seems to indicate that the Japanese don't care much about the names or identities of supersized regular enemies either. 19:28, November 17, 2019 (EST)
 * I've already said how he sprinkles the word "sparkly" into everything while under the sticker's influence, with the most Petey getting being "SHINY PETEY TIME!" and I can't recall if Gooper speaks at all other than generic "bloop" noises (but I don't think he does). Regardless, considering them different seems more foolish than considering them the same IMO, especially with the Big Boo situation. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 22:02, November 17, 2019 (EST)
 * Why don't we merge Paper Mario (character) with Mario then? 22:31, November 17, 2019 (EST)
 * I think we maybe should do that, actually. And re-merge all of the Paper enemies. It's not like the articles as-is don't mention the actions of both versions of the character, anyways. I'm considering whether certain cases of "character-species" splits should be merged into one article (like currently with Draggadon, Big Boo, and sooooo many things from Super Mario 64). The reason for this? It's up to Nintendo's interpretation of the same concept for this iteration of said concept. They can decide to have Dorrie as an individual, and then years down the road make an actual species out of him after vaguely teasing the idea in some spinoff games, after all. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 22:46, November 17, 2019 (EST)
 * ...My point was, even if they share the same Japanese name, this is another case of "Localizers take it upon themselves to distinguish two different entities with similar names". Merging two different English names into one character when they both have different attributes just makes things confusing, not everyone is immediately aware of the shared Japanese names that may or may not be connected. 22:50, November 17, 2019 (EST)
 * Even then, Paper Jam treats paper entities as different from non-paper entities. Merging them would be ridiculous. 22:51, November 17, 2019 (EST)
 * Does it? They all still seem to be two halves of the same idiot to me. With the exception of Paper Luigi, all of the important character ones are always in the same place anyways. It's not ridiculous, it's common sense. Again, Nintendo's interpretation in each individual game can be different at any given time, but that does not justify a split. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 23:16, November 17, 2019 (EST)
 * At this point you're suggesting merging clearly distinct entities who appear on screen at the same time. Merging Mario and Paper Mario sounds particularly disastrous, good luck explaining 2/3 of an RPG's playable characters in one article without getting clunky and messy. Plus, if we'd do that, then it only makes sense to merge Dr. Mario, Mr. L, Rookie, and every other alter-ego because those are actually the same person. If an alternate version of Mario from another dimension doesn't deserve his own article, then Mario putting a lab coat on definitely doesn't. -- 14:17, November 18, 2019 (EST)
 * Except "alternate persona" and "the exact same person from another world" do not the same thing make. I'll concede that it may need a bit more thought, but I didn't want to rush that sort of thing regardless. In any case, I see no reason to not re-merge the paper enemies, as they aren't characters, they're a species, and we have things such as the distinct-looking Bob-ombs from SMB3 and the varyingly-statted Magikoopas from the first PM covered in the same place, so I see no reason that this identifier should hold any more weight than a color variation in that case. Besides, we already make some exceptions to that due to them debuting in a PM game.Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 15:16, November 18, 2019 (EST)
 * In the E3 2012 footage, Megasparkle Goomba was originally named "Boss Goomba"; what other reason would they have to go from that to "Megasparkle" without thinking of Mega Goomba, and why couldn't they have thought of any other name if they didn't connect the dots? Not to mention, Mizzter Blizzard is also a "Boss" enemy in Japan, meaning that having a generic look of a generic mook isn't a dis-qualifier from the boss status from a developer's point of view, especially if there's also "vanilla big type" enemies in. That also makes Mario Party Mega Goombas a bad example because the Megas both have "kyodai" in Japan to identify them as "big types" and appear alongside "boss" and "king" types. SmokedChili (talk) 10:07, November 18, 2019 (EST)
 * Considering how often Mega is used in the Mario series to describe "really big stuff", the presence of "Mega" in the name alone isn't really convincing that these were intended to be the same entity. Frankly, the amount of stretching that has to be done to say "Mega Goomba and Megasparkle Goomba might be the same thing" makes me think this is a bad idea and they should be left alone. -- 14:17, November 18, 2019 (EST)
 * And there's nothing saying that Atomic Teresa and Boss Teresa are the same thing other than the English name, which can be said the same of later Kyodai Kuribo and Boss Kuribo. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 15:16, November 18, 2019 (EST)
 * If we really want to be consistent with how we handle Big Boos, then Mega Goomba shouldn't even be considered a separate entity to begin with. 16:59, November 18, 2019 (EST)
 * I'd vote to keep-as-is. -- 10:04, November 19, 2019 (EST)
 * It's not stretching to use the original releases as a prime reference and the translated versions to see how they compare, what was made up and what was lost, how consistently do this phenomenon and that inconsistency occur, and if it's intentional or not. For Boss Kuribo, which has two appearances and one reference in Japan, there is Mega Goomba in NSMB, Megasparkle Goomba in PMSS, and Papercraft Megacrinkle Goomba in M&L:PJ. That's three different names in English, always a different one. Megasparkle was in early footage Boss, a direct translation of the Japanese name of Mega, before it was intentionally (how and why else) changed and ended up similar to Mega. There wasn't a Megacrinkle in previous games, yet it's blatantly based off Megasparkle, so it has to be Megasparkle, early known as Boss, directly taken from the Japanese name of Mega. Essentially, it's not that Mega and Megasparkle might be the same thing, it's actually that, taking the original releases and their history into account, they are the same thing. SmokedChili (talk) 10:21, November 20, 2019 (EST)
 * My main problem with this suggestion is that it hinges entirely on two factors that I don't find very convincing. 1. Having the same incredibly generic Japanese name. Petey Piranha, Gooper Blooper, the weird King Boo from Sunshine, Cheepskipper, Lakithunder, Kamella, Topmaniac, Tower Power Pokey, Mizzter Blizzard, and Boss Brolder, among countless others I'm sure, all use the "Bosu " name. It's nothing new or original, and I doubt anyone would try arguing that a generic giant Piranha Plant boss using that naming scheme is supposed to be Petey. 2. Having a somewhat similar English name, which definitely isn't grounds for a merge, and feels particularly flimsy considering how generic "Mega Goomba" is as a name. Mega is very commonly used in the Mario franchise to describe "really big stuff". The same player's guide for New Super Mario Bros. that named Mega Goomba also gives the mega identifier to Mega Cheep-Cheep, Mega Deep-Cheep, Mega Unagi, and of course we can't forget about Mega Mario/Luigi and the Mega Mushroom. Sticker Star also throws mega around for all the Megaflash stickers. Like 7feetunder said earlier, he didn't even think of a possible connection between the two while playing the game, and neither did I until this was brought up. I'd also speculate that the papercraft was renamed to "Megacrinkle" because, well, it doesn't sparkle, but obviously that's not really evidence for anything. At this point, the "similar English name" argument doesn't hold up at all without the "same Japanese name" argument, which in my mind makes this nothing more than a merge based on Japanese name only, and I'll have to continue to oppose. -- 12:31, November 20, 2019 (EST)
 * Ultimately, your argument hinges on "I doubt they'd remember this thing." Problem is, the same game featured the return of another thing that was a no-show since debuting in NSMB, and a bit later a golf game would feature the return of another thing that hadn't been seen since the same game, only appearing in ONE level. So no, I think they can remember, even with the somewhat generic name. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 03:13, November 21, 2019 (EST)
 * I never said anything about "I doubt they'd remember this thing". Nintendo has proven many times that they can remember concepts that haven't appeared in a game for years and bring them back (though I could also go for a while on stuff they've abandoned and should bring back, but that's irrelevant to this discussion). My problem is that there's not enough evidence to definitively say that they're the same, only extremely generic names that have had their naming conventions used across many other games. While it's possible that they could've brought back Mega Goomba for Sticker Star and reworked him beyond recognition, I really don't see a concrete connection here. -- 12:28, November 21, 2019 (EST)
 * Sorry, I suppose that was more 7's argument. Regardless, I fail to see how enlarged Goomba with same name and basic function as other enlarged Goomba is that big of a stretch. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 14:54, November 21, 2019 (EST)
 * 1. So? All it shows is that the Japanese naming conventions for Mario enemies have been more consistent than the English ones. In case of ”bosu” types, their deviation from the base varies from notable to almost non-existent, and NSMB Mega Goomba / Megasparkle Goomba fall into the latter extreme. The ”bosu” enemies that reappear have also kept their designs from their debut, Mario Pinball Land being an expection. 2. The localizers made the catch-all term "Mega" and named Boss Kuribo "Mega Goomba", thus lumping him with the ”Megas” in NSMB (most of which were named ”Dai” along with a couple ”Kyodais”) and Mario Party as well as Mega Mushroom. As it goes for ”bosu” enemies, all of them are always in their ”boss” state as we see them, including NSMB Mega Goomba who despite his non-distinct appearance has the power to grow gigantic. Compare that to the Big types such as ”kyodais” and Yoshi's Island ”biggu” bosses whose size alternates between natural and the effect of Kamek's magic. All the five Sticker Star ”bosus” start as ”bosus”, including Megasprakle Goomba despite him not looking any different from his fellow Goombas and, y'know, sparkling, and has the power to grow gigantic. Ultimately, NSMB Mega Goomba and Megasparkle Goomba don't just share the same Japanese name, but also the function as bosses who look like ordinary mooks with the power to grow gigantic. It thus falls on localizers for creating this inconsistency in names. SmokedChili (talk) 07:56, December 7, 2019 (EST)

Bumping this after replaying PMSS a bit. I'm thinking more than ever this is a deliberate attempt to revitalize the NSMB boss. Anyways, I noticed the SSBB trophy mentions Mega Goomba, and the SSBfWU trophy mentions Megasparkle Goomba. Anyone know what the respective JP text to each is? Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 01:39, July 1, 2021 (EDT)
 * The same name does not always mean they have to be treated as the same thing. The concept of these two is too different to consider them the same thing; NSMB is a Goomba that grows huge, and PMSS is sixteen Goombas combined, with one of them (who is actually the one referred to with this name) wearing a Royal Sticker. Like others have said, the name "Boss Goomba" is a generic name and seems like a stretch to be intentionally based off the NSMB boss. Notice that even Tower Power Pokey and Mizzter Blizzard are called "Boss enemy that they are based off" as well. 12:51, July 1, 2021 (EDT)
 * As previously established in the enormous conversation above I don't think you were around to be a part of, the same difference applies to Goomboss (a single enlarged Goomba in PM64, and an amalgamation of several in SM64DS). Anyways, please don't bog down the specific question I asked with an unrelated point, that's rude... Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 16:10, July 1, 2021 (EDT)
 * I actually don't have an answer to that question, nor am I even aware of the Smash Trophies (I have never played Smash myself), just leaving my thoughts on the situation in general. 16:52, July 1, 2021 (EDT)
 * Here's Big Goomba's Japanese trophy description from SSB Wii U, and here's the one from Brawl. Both mention a Boss Kuribō. Someone else will have to translate them, but the Brawl description appears to be the only one that mentions NSMB (the "New" part of New Super Mario Bros. and "WORLD 4" are in English).