The trope page is quite clear about what our definition is: "An item which harms the player who picks it up or uses it instead of helping them." Chop out bad examples. It's that simple. The trope doesn't need fixing, the page simply needs maintenance.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.On it... with only 100 wicks I should be done within the hour. Or two.
Correct
- Ancient Domains Of Mystery: "Unidentified" herbs/potions could do anything.
- Bomberman: "Skull" item causes negative effects.
- Bubble Bobble: Red skull bubbles.
- Castlevania Chronicles Of Sorrow: "Spoiled" items with negative effects (unless you're undead)
- Clarences Big Chance: The hamburger item has permanent negative effects.
- Classic Video Game "Screw You"s
- Dark Castle - Some potions can kill you instead of powering you up.
- Delve Deeper - Some relics are bogus and penalize you when cashing them in.
- Demigod - Lord Erebus's skill drops a lethal potion (instead of a healing potion) on his death.
- Dungeon Crawl: Unidentified potions.
- Dungeon Of Doom: Some scrolls and potions cause Standard Status Effects.
- Dynamite Headdy: Melon Head / Head Trip powerup has negative effects.
- Ecco The Dolphin: Poisonous fish, contrast to normal fish (food/health powerups).
- Enigmata: "X" pickups are negative instead of positive.
- Everything Trying to Kill You (Bomberman example)
- Faxanadu: "Poison" items look very similar to "Potion" items.
- PlayingWith.Give Me Your Inventory Item: Example where a sleeping potion looks just like a healing potion.
- Grabbed By The Ghoulies: Harmful items that look similar to normal items
- Item Get! (The Legend Of Zelda example): Rupoors are found in chests just like ordinary Rupees, but drain Rupees instead.
- I Wanna Be The Fangame: Mario's Poison Mushroom is still lethal, just in a different way.
- Killer Game Master (pothole, lead paragraph)
- Light Crusader: Black potions with Interface Screw effect.
- Lil Monster: "Virus" and "Death" Gem items.
- Mario Kart: Fake Item Box and Thundercloud items.
- Mushroom Kingdom Fusion: Trope Namer and expies.
- Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: "Grimy" food and (especially) "Lookalike" items.
Ambiguously correct:
- Baten Kaitos: Food items can spoil over time, and cause negative effects
- Chocobos Dungeon: "Cursed" equipment
- Dragon Slayer II Xanadu: Black potions reduce your HP by half.
- Crystal Caves - Okay, the green mushroom is lethal, but what makes it different from any other hazard?
- Kings Knight: Down-arrow item functions as an inverse Heart Container
- Toe Jam And Earl: "Rotten" (or disliked) food items cause negative effects
Ambiguous:
- Action52: Money bags kill you in "Streemerz"?
- Adventure Island: Eggplants are cited as both Chest Monster and Poison Mushroom. Trope does not work that way, otherwise it's actually correct (item, not a monster).
- Billy Vs Snakeman - Potholed under Multiple Endings entry. Can somebody explain?
- Interface Screw (Rise Of The Triad): Mushroom powerup that induces a Mushroom Samba.
- Mutually Exclusive Power-Ups: Was in the lead paragraph; if the game requires one powerup to proceed, all others must be avoided. That makes them only a metaphor for Poison Mushroom, rather than an actual Poison Mushroom.
No. Just... No - Cleaning/chopping these unless otherwise noted.
- WMG.Ben 10 Ultimate Alien: Potholed in troper WMG, context of speculative evolution, potholed as "detrimental mutations". Not the trope, cleaned/pruned as misuse.
- Chrono Trigger: Was Chest Monster instead.
- Disadvantageous Disintegration: (Alphabounce example): Was Power-Up Letdown instead.
- Donkey Kong Country: Was Chest Monster; the fact that yellow/red Klobbers can knock bananas or life balloons out of the player is irrelevant.
Reference to ordinary mushrooms:
- Flower from the Mountaintop (One Piece): Literal toxic herb
- Garden of Evil (Vampire The Masquerade): Mushroom gardens
- Lethal Joke Item (Angband example): Literal poison shrooms can be used to attack enemies
- Lost In Blue - Literal mushrooms, and some species are toxic
- Magic Mushroom (potholed in definition)
- Characters.Pokemon Generation I Families: Reference to Paras and Parasect, the insect-mushroom Pokemon.
- Characters.Pokemon Generation V Families: Reference to Foongus and Amoongus, literal mushroom Pokemon (and Chest Monsters).
Reference to the Trope Namer, not the trope:
- Extra Turn (Mario Party example): Pruned
- FanFic.Game Over: Pruned
Exempt
- Booze-Based Buff (see also)
- Chest Monster (see also)
- Fake Powerup (redirect)
- Heal Thyself (see also)
...(hour later) This is only the A-M range, but I'm going to stop for now.
edited 19th Mar '11 11:30:09 AM by Stratadrake
An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.The Action 52 example counts. In the Streemerz minigame, there are bags of money just sitting around. Walking into them acts like you picked them up, but it damages you.
Adventure Island is a bit tricky. It acts more like a powerup than a chest monster, but is a very animate powerup. You break open an egg, and a little eggplant follows you, draining your vitality. You can't attack it outright, so it's not really a creature. But since it flies out of the egg and starts following you, like the fairie powerup (I think the game had a fairy powerup, or am I mixing up my games?) it seems a bit more animate and sapient than a plain ol' toxic powerup.
The Lost In Blue examples still count as an example, as collecting food is key to this game. So a Poison Mushroom is a Poison Mushroom.
EDIT: Never played the game, but I'd say the Rise Of The Triad example counts as well, if it works how I think. It's a first-person shooter, so having the screen go all multicoloured and wavy when things are trying to kill you is probably not a good thing.
edited 19th Mar '11 6:34:15 PM by TriggerLoaded
Don't take life too seriously. It's only a temporary situation.Part of the problem is that it specifically mentions that they're similar to Chest Monsters, which might make people confused, as well as the third variant mentioning a powerup that could randomly give a negative effect, which could be considered a Power-Up Letdown. I've changed the description to clear up ambiguity.
"Thorough preparation must lead to success. Neglect nothing."What category would you put Feeding Frenzy in? It has the poisonous minnows — in Feeding Frenzy 1 they disable the player's controls for a period of time and leave your fish immobile in the water, in Feeding Frenzy 2 they reverse the controls.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.Judging entirely by the Wikipedia page, probably a Poison Mushroom since it presumably looks close enough to a normal fish.
"Thorough preparation must lead to success. Neglect nothing."Since it sounds like eating fish is a powerup, I would assume eating poisonous fish counts as a cursed powerup. Do normal fish refill your life and/or energy and/or let you keep living?
Don't take life too seriously. It's only a temporary situation.Let me try that again: "What category of game is Feeding Frenzy?"
edited 20th Mar '11 9:07:33 AM by Madrugada
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.Time to finish up the hunt. Starting with N and working my way down...
Exempt:
- Laconic.Poison Mushroom (laconic)
- Pokedex Of Tropes (Just For Pun)
- Video Game Items and Inventory (index)
- TropeNamers.Video Games (index)
- Es.Video Juegos (index)
Obviously correct:
- One-Hit-Point Wonder (Grabbed By The Ghoulies): "Trick powerup" with temporary negative effects
- Platform Hell (opening paragraphs)
- Post Apocalyptic Mayhem (fake item barrel)
- Power-Up Food (Kirby): Anime version of one item; causes a hiccup storm that prevents Kirby from swallowing/copying his enemies.
- Power-Up Letdown (See Also)
- Prince Of Persia: Occasional poison potion mixed in with healing potions.
- Re-Volt: Bomb powerup that serves as a Hot Potato before exploding.
- Sonic And Knuckles: Robotnik powerups.
- Super Mario Bros (series): Trope Namer
- Super Mario Bros Z: Reference to the Trope Namer
- Super Mario War: Reference to the Trope Namer
- Super Star (Syobon Action)
- Surprisingly Improved Sequel (Soldier X): Reference to "Power-down" items.
- Tareme and Tsurime (Super Smash Bros): Reference to the Trope Namer.
- Task Maker: Skeleton Scroll, Depression, Devil's Scroll reduce your stats if used.
- The Deadliest Mushroom: Disambig note.
- Too Fast to Stop: Some Gradius games feature a "Speed Down" powerup (specifically "not a Poison Mushroom") to counteract having too many speed boosts.
Mostly correct:
- Parodius: Powerup roulette includes one outcome that removes all powerups you have.
- Power Incontinence (Bomberman): "Disease" powerup makes Bomberman uncontrollably drop bombs.
- Standard RPG Items (Nethack)
- The Legend Of Zelda Four Swords Adventures: Some treasure chests comtain bombs that will cause a One-Hit Kill for anyone who doesn't take cover when it goes off. May need rewriting to be more clear.
- The Runaway Guys: Reference to the Trope Namer, while the guys were playing Mario Party.
- The World Ends With You: The Red Skull pin.
- Way Of The Samurai: Rotten rice balls, healing (and literal poisonous) mushrooms.
- We Buy Anything (The World Ends With You)
- Zombies Ate My Neighbors: The mystery potion has a chance of turning you into Mr.Hyde, wandering around in search of neighbors (or the other player) to kill until it wears off.
Ambiguous:
- Nexus War: Demons drinking angel tears sounds more like a case of Allergic To Good or Revive Kills Zombie.
- Pang (Super Buster Bros): Dynamite powerup sounds more like Power-Up Letdown: It can actually be useful in some of the levels, but in survival mode it's definitely more trouble than it's worth.
- Poison Mushroom (Lone Wolf): Can somebody explain what makes the Sommerswerd intentionally dangerous, and not Power-Up Letdown?
- ROM Check Fail
- Rune Factory 3: Some foodlike items, including literal mushrooms, may have negative effects, but can be used against enemies as attack items.
- Super Mario Bros 3 X: No context given
- System Shock: Cigarettes and alcohol? Isn't that Booze-Based Buff?
- The Corruption (Star Wars RPG): The Dark Side Force powers?
- Universal Poison: Had linked both to Power-Up Letdown and Poison Mushroom. Trope does not work that way, but Poison Mushroom was actually correct context here.
- SoBadItsGood.Video Games (Two Worlds)
- Wild Guns: The pea shooter deals no damage. I'm assuming it can be acquired as a power-up, right?
Confused for Chest Monster
- Phalanx: Hidden level with enemies disguised as powerups
- Thexder: There are no "items" per se in the original; everything is an enemy of some kind.
Reference to actual mushrooms
- Rise Of The Kasai: Intended for use as enemy traps/attack items. Whether they pose a risk to the player isn't mentioned.
- The Lost Woods (lead paragraph, pruned)
- Ultima Online: Exploding mushrooms?
Okay, in summary that's almost 20% confirmed misuse, ranging up to near 40% depending on whether the ambiguous ones count.
edited 20th Mar '11 10:44:44 AM by Stratadrake
An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.Do remember that Poison Mushrooms can be literal mushrooms. At least they are in Angband.
Wild Guns is correct. I remember adding that one myself. Goddamn pea shooters, and they always seem to appear right before the boss too.
edited 20th Mar '11 5:50:26 PM by troacctid
Rhymes with "Protracted."Likewise, some items are clearly obvious that they have negative effects, where even a rookie player will identify it's not the real thing. I don't know whether that counts as a true Poison Mushroom, because Poison Mushrooms tend to superficially resemble beneficial items to make the player use them by mistake.
An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.As long as it's a fake powerup that harms you instead of helping you, it counts.
Rhymes with "Protracted.""Fake powerup" carries a number of additional implications/complications that are not strictly part of the definition. Just like how Chest Monster isn't any monster that's capable of harming you but won't do so unless you provoke it first.
For example, single-use attack items are not Poison Mushrooms by themselves. They have a damaging effect, sure, but that's not enough.
An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.What game category is Feeding Frenzy? I'd like to add the poisonous minnows, but do not know which folder to put it in.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.Action game seems to be the best fit.
"Thorough preparation must lead to success. Neglect nothing."Thank you.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.Fixed. We can close this.
Poison Mushroom is a powerup/item that yields negative results when used.
The trope is not:
Using Poison Mushroom in these ways is misuse and needs to be cleaned up.
edited 19th Mar '11 9:37:09 AM by Stratadrake
An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.