Porcu-Puffer

From SMWiki

A Porcu-Puffer (or sometimes the unhyphenated Porcupuffer) is a fishy enemy from Super Mario World.

[edit] General Information

Porcu-Puffer is a large, inflated purple pufferfish with green spines growing out of its back. It has a white belly covered in green spots. Its buggy eyes have diagonal lines instead of round pupils and it has huge pink lips. Porcu-Puffer is possibly a larger variety of Spiny Cheep Cheep or may be related to SMB3's Boss Bass. It swims swiftly along the surface of the water, always staying directly below Mario so that if he falls in, he will land on its spiny back and take damage.

In the original game, Porcu-Puffer only has one major appearance in the Dolphin-filled sea of Vanilla Secret 3. (It also makes an appearance in a couple of bonus areas) Here, Mario rides on the friendly Dolphins' backs to avoid falling in the water with Porcu-Puffer. In some hacks, Porcu-Puffer also appears underwater. Under the surface, Porcu-Puffer still homes in on Mario's horizontal position, but it gradually drifts upwards as it does so.

Porcu-Puffer will hurt Mario if he attempts to jump on it, but he can "ride" it by continually bouncing off of it with spin jumps. It cannot be eaten by Yoshi, but is vulnerable to fireballs, cape swipes, stars, and thrown objects.

[edit] Hacking Information

Porcu-Puffer is sprite C3. It uses palette E, which is one of two palettes which is different depending on which level it is used in. Porcu-Puffer is usually purple with green spines and pink lips, but can show up as a dull greyish color all over if a different sprite palette is used. Porcu-Puffer will only show up properly with the underwater sprite set. (SP4=GFX06)

Porcu-Puffer requires sprite buoyancy to swim. If buoyancy is not turned on, it will still float after Mario, but gradually sink off the bottom the screen.