phantom bride

In Paper Mario, after the fight with the Goomba King, Red Goomba and Blue Goomba in the Prologue, they hide inside the fortress while Mario must find a switch in the bushes outside. If Mario eats a restorative item on the first frame after checking the bush, the fight against the Goomba King will restart, as the game momentarily loads an invisible copy of Red Goomba next to the switch, and touching it starts a battle. This allows the Goomba King to be fought twice in the same playthrough, which is otherwise impossible.

The reason this happens is because the game often employs invisible copies of characters to make objects move, as it has code for characters moving in certain specific arcs (like jumping), and code for characters holding objects in their hands. Thus, the developers deduced that the easiest way to make an object move “on its own” is to have an invisible character hold it in its hands, instead of writing code that would allow the object to move by itself. In this case, Red Goomba is loaded in because he has a jump arc the developers wanted to reuse for the switch appearing from the bush. In the vast majority of cases, this is impossible to notice or exploit, but on few occasions like this one, it can cause unintended side effects.

I feel like I’ve been abandoned by life for a long, long time.

Episode 31: Her Tragedy

Conroy Maddox (1912-2005)