ok so i'm on a mission to make so many more music specific shinies, but i'm running into errors with a dir en grey gif and i'm flat in the bed with double vision so i gotta tap out
in the meantime tho, i wanted to share my first aural vampire stamp :3 {aaand the dir en grey gif in question }
they're also one of my favorite bands and i must share them with the void, or y'all, whichever wants it lol
Released: May 7, 2022
Type: Prop
Game: Super Mario Bros. 3
Don't touch these jellyfish, or they'll stun you with an electric zap! They aren't very aggressive and simply prefer to drift through the ocean all day. Since Super Smaash Bros. doesn't have underwater combat, Jelectro is little more than a background decoration. As usual, I also made versions of the textures based on the updated SNES sprites and even their appearance in the Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 cartoon.
Just like Magical Sweeper, this is a model I've planned for a long time, down to the texture setup. You can't tell just from these images, but I recreated the entire spot animation exactly as it looks in the NES sprites. Setting up all of the spots took just as long as making the entire rest of the model! I'll have to make an animation showing it off.
Yesterday, we talked about Spike Eel, an enemy forgotten because it was a one-off replacement for an enemy that has been seen many times before, and a couple more times since. Today we’ll talk about Jelectro, who has just about the opposite problem! Jelectro is a one-off enemy who hasn’t returned since, but has been replaced numerous times! But more on that later, because first we gotta talk about Jelectro itself!
If you have been paying attention to which mods write which posts, then you may have gathered before that I, Mod Hooligon, have declared jellyfish one of my favorite animals. And that’s just as true now as it has ever been before, and Jelectro is no exception! Jellyfish, save for box jellyfish, don’t really have eyes, but Jelectro here has some of the cutest li’l eyes imaginable! Truly “eyes with no other features” is one of the best faces you can give any creature in anything ever. Scientific fact!
What is NOT precious is this female Jelectro, apparently named “Smookers” that appeared in one comic at some point. C’mon! Jellyfish don’t have much visible sexual dimorphism to begin with! Why does she have lips. Why does she have lips.
Anywho, Jelectro pretty much serves as a standard underwater obstacle, hovering around in place, saying “don’t touch me!” Not anything too special, but a nice way to give underwater levels some flair! Heck, I kind of lied when I said this enemy was a one-off, as they replace Spike Traps in BOTH Super Mario Maker games, but only in the underwater theme in the Super Mario Bros. 3 style, which was their debut anyway. So does that really even count?
And this brings us back to our main question, “What in the heck happened to Jelectro?” We’re gonna be talking about quite a few cartoon jellyfish, so the rest is all under the cut!
So to show up in this part of the list, I decided to make two big rules for myself, which are that I shouldn’t include spin-off games, since most spin-offs use their own sets of enemies anyway, and that I should only count generic jellyfish enemies, mostly because I feel Jumping Blooper is weird enough to get a post of its own.
I immediately went to break that first rule, however, with Leuko, who feels like a pretty clear successor to Jelectro. Leuko, as you can see, has the EXACT same eyes as Jelectro, and even attacks with electricity, something that runs consistent with Jelectro’s name in every language! However, in no language, do Leuko and Jelectro’s names line up. Whether Leuko is based on Jelectro, a similar enemy by coincidence, or a similar enemy on purpose, is up to debate within the Weird Mario Enemies scientific community.
Next up, in Super Mario Galaxy, we got Jammyfish, who has a different face than Jelectro, but still a pretty precious one, with little kissy lips. Would you kiss a jellyfish? Unlike Jelectro, Jammyfish survey a small area, and CAN be defeated, though would you really want to kill Jammyfish? Again, the question as to why they didn’t just use Jelectro is a little baffling, especially considering Jammyfish isn’t even the only jellyfish in Super Mario Galaxy!
There is also THIS jellyfish, referred to internally as an “Electric Jellyfish,” but only ever referred to in official material generically as a “Jellyfish.” Why ARE so many jellyfish in media electric, anyhow? Aren’t jellyfish stings more of a poison thing?
In the modern era, it seems the role once held by Jelectro is now held by Jellybeam, who is a suitable enough replacement, all things considered. Same precious eyes! Jellybeams are considerably more vulnerable than Jelectro, able to be destroyed by fire flower fire balls, but destroying them is a bit less practical, as they give off light in darkened underwater levels! It seems that after ages of juggling jellyfish, this is the one they settled on, as after its debut in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Jellybeam continued to appear in games like New Super Mario Bros. U and Mario Kart 8. Still though, it’s best we remember the long line of jellyfish that came before, and that we celebrate all of them.
Just like I said, here is an animation showing off Jelectro’s spot animation. The patterns on all four original NES sprites have been faithfully recreated!
