Pumpkin Panic

This article is about the Minigame souvenir. For the Record souvenir, see Pumpkin Panic (record).

“This game features everyone's favorite nonemotive witch-in-training: Ashley! Use the power of her magic to protect the patch from the mandrake's attack. Crush a pumpkin, and you could be in for something...magical.”

—In-game description, WarioWare Gold

Pumpkin Panic
Appears in	WarioWare Gold
Type	Souvenir Minigame
Info	Use Ashley's magic to turn the mandrakes into pumpkins. Defeat them with a final kick or by pushing them into other pumpkins.
Controls	/ — Move — Cast spell — Special move
Music track	Pumpkin Panic

Pumpkin Panic is a minigame in WarioWare Gold. It is obtained as a souvenir in the game's Toy Room. In it, the player controls Ashley as she tries to protect a pumpkin patch from mandrakes. Gameplay takes place exclusively on the Top Screen.

The game takes place on a wide path, with the pumpkin patch on the far right and fences for the top and bottom edges of the playfield. Ashley can move in eight directions. Normal mandrakes appear from the ground in various formations and numbers. Once they have fully appeared, touching them temporarily stuns Ashley. Most mandrakes stay still for a while, but given time they switch to advancing toward the pumpkin patch. Later in the game, certain formations can move up or down, and some even start out moving to the pumpkin patch. There is a fence in front of the pumpkin patch though. When a mandrake collides with the fence, the fence takes damage and the mandrake is destoryed. The fence breaks fully after the second hit, meaning a third mandrake reaching the patch ends the game.

The player can use the button to have Ashley cast a star shaped spell a short distance in front of her. This spell turns mandrakes into pumpkins, which are harmless. More importantly, Ashley kicks pumpkins forward on contact. They move forward a short distance, defeating any mandrakes they hit. They explode after landing on the ground or hitting another pumpkin. The first pumpkin exploding grants 100 points, but it also kicks the second pumpkin forward if it hit one. The points earned from mandrakes being hit by flying pumpkins and for pumpkins that explode after being kicked by another pumpkin varies, but generally speaking kicking a pumpkin into a mandrake is worth less points than kicking a pumpkin into another pumpkin into more pumpkins or mandrakes. Pumpkins start to flicker if they are not kicked soon enough, and then despawn afterward.

Gameplay switches between a day and night state, with the day state working as above. When all mandrakes of a day state have been defeated, a night state begins. There are two kinds of night states, which alternate whenever the game enters the night state. The first kind of night state is similar to the day state, except that all mandrakes start some kind of forward movement after spawning. Some will go directly forward, others will move to the top or bottom edge of the playfield as they move forward. The second kind of night state is a battle against a much larger mandrake. It starts from the far left of the playfield. Its abilities are as follows: it inches forward, waits, then summons mandrakes, waits then repeats. The mandrakes that appear are usually an arc of five to the large mandrake's right. However, when it is in the right side of the playfield it instead summons the arc of five to its left. When in the middle, both arcs of mandrakes appear. If the large mandrake reaches the pumpkin patch, it plows over the fence and the game is lost even if there are "hits" left. The large mandrake is immune to Ashley's spell, so it must be defeated by turning its mandrakes into pumpkins and then kicking the pumpkins at it. If it takes damage before summoning mandrakes, then it skips that step. The large mandrake is defeated after being hit five times, and all other mandrakes on screen turn into pumpkins as a result. The player receives a treasure chest for each large mandrake, which causes a new image to appear in the minigame's gallery. When a night state is completed, multiple pumpkins rain from the sky as the sun rises. This allows the player to earn a large amount of points before the day state begins again. Each time the cycle is completed, the trees and plant above the top edge of the playfield change. Their states corresponds to each of the four seasons.

Each pumpkin that bursts drops a purple orb, with longer chains of pumpkin bursts resulting in larger orbs. These orbs automatically fill up a meter on the top right of the screen. Once full, the player can press for Ashley to do a special move. This temporarily stops gameplay for a cutscene. When gameplay resumes all on-screen mandrakes, except for the large mandrake, become pumpkins. The large mandrake takes damage from the special move instead.

The Touch Screen shows a close-up of Ashley's 3D model movements and the score counter. Ashley has written dialogue for when the game starts, when the game enters the night state and when a new image in the gallery is unlocked. Ashley has spoken dialogue when the game ends.

This minigame features an aforementioned gallery of images featuring Ashley and Red, accessible from its menu. It consists of most of the Ashley artwork produced for Nintendo Badge Arcade, excluding the crossovers with other video game series and the Crazy Galaxy set. The images have to be unlocked by defeating large mandrakes.

Gallery

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  The Game Over screen

Names in other languages

Language	Name	Meaning	Notes
Japanese	アシュリーのパンプキンパニック[?] Ashurī no Panpukin Panikku	Ashley's Pumpkin Panic
French	Citrouilles en folie[?]	Pumpkin Frenzy
German	Kürbis-Chaos[?]	Pumpkin Chaos
Italian	Zuccamatta[?]	Crazy-pumpkin; Zucca is also used for "head", so the title could also be read as "Crazy-head"
Spanish	Caos calabacero[?]	Pumpkin Chaos (Calabacero refers to someone who sells pumpkins)