hi

“It’s tempting to assume”: someone’s assumption is about to be criticized

In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, being Electrified is a purely beneficial status condition for anyone who receives it (whether it is Mario's party or an enemy), as all it does is deal contact damage to whoever attacks that character with a non-ranged attack.

However, it turns out that in the game's code, an unused functionality for Electrified exists that would have made it act more like the Paralysis status common in RPGs (e.g. like the Pokémon series games), whereby it would also have a chance of preventing the afflicted character from making a move on that turn. Note how in the footage, Mario and Goombella only briefly shake instead of being able to perform their attacks.

This actually explains an odd behavior in the game whereby enemies would sometimes use items to cure Electrified when it never needed to be cured in the first place (bottom image, dramatization from an earlier post explaining this phenomenon). These enemies must be acting upon a script written under the assumption that Electrified is still able to incure the Paralysis-like effect, which was not updated when the effect was removed during development.

The Spiky Goomba in the scenario means well, he is simply acting on outdated information.

HanMatsu's day 🌱🐱