Talk:White Shy Guy

I always thought the White Shy Guy was acharacter. One only appears at a time. - User: Ultimatetoad

I think your right, only one White Shy Guy is seen at a time, maybe it is an actual character. -- Sir Grodus

"ahem" besides that, when they/it does appear, it looks exactly the same (unlike Birdo) - User: Ultimatetoad

Uhh Koopas all seem the same. Goombas too. And they're species...more than one appear. Paper Jorge

BUT no White Shy Guys appear at the same time. Plenty of different Goombas and Koopas appear at the same time. - User: Ultimatetoad

I sort of think that he's/they're an individual character, too. The manual says "You have not seen too much of him before" and persistently calls him a "he" rather than a "them". --YellowYoshi398 19:55, 6 February 2007 (EST)

In Mario &Sonic in the olypic winter games The White Shy Guy in Frosttown can give you a ticket to continue.
— The preceding unsigned comment was added by Club Penguin (talk).

A white shy guy can revive Black and White Yoshi. You have to finish the game with white or black Yoshi for a white shy guy to revive them. But you have to do it before you finish the game with them or you will have to find them again.
— The preceding unsigned comment was added by Tails777 (talk).

This is forum talk. Please don't chat on talk pages and chat in the forum instead. Mario JC

That seems strange for the manual of the game call the White Shy Guy a "he". That probably happens with the Mario enemies on the instruction booklet of Super Mario Bros.. Besides the Cheep-Cheep is called a "she". IceShadow talk · edits) 13:09, 11 July 2012 (EDT) 23:05, 10 July 2012 (EDT)

This page should cover a specific ally character, not a whole species. (see above) --ShyGuy12345 (talk) 02:38, 27 November 2018 (EST)

Pruning

This page currently covers all instances off white-colored Shies in the franchise, which is inconsistent with how we do the rest (except Black, which also needs cleaning up). I think that most items on here are generic enough (and pretty much equal with other colors in their respective games) to be merged to Shy Guy, just leaving behind the ally Shy Guy in Yoshi's Story. Any objections? Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 01:43, April 22, 2019 (EDT)

Sounds good to me. Niiue - Who has lost his tail? 01:47, April 22, 2019 (EDT)

Me too. ^(T|C) 02:01, April 22, 2019 (EDT)

Sounds like a good ccompromise, even though they are intended to be the same iteration. -- FanOfYoshi at 13:04, April 22, 2019 (EDT)

What do you mean by that? Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 13:09, April 22, 2019 (EDT)

Remove non-Yoshi's Story information

This talk page proposal has already been settled. Please do not edit this section or its subsections. If you wish to discuss the article, please do so in a new section below the proposal.

remove 6-0

See above. In Yoshi's Story, this is a distinct ally entity. In the rest, it's treated equally to any other color of Shy Guy (or even worse, just be a variant that happens to wear white).

Proposer: Doc von Schmeltwick (talk)
Deadline: February 26, 2020, 23:59 GMT

Support

1. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) Per above
2. Power Flotzo (talk) Per proposal.
3. Niiue (talk) Per proposal.
4. Obsessive Mario Fan (talk) Per all.
5. TheDarkStar (talk) - Per all.
6. LinkTheLefty (talk) There's excess information since white Shy Guys are a color variant most of the time, though my suggestion is to use an identifier since it'll probably be better in the long run.

Comments

Oh boy, do we need a "Shy Guy (species)" page? We have every other color of Yoshi pointed to Yoshi (species), even if some are distinct characters. 11:15, February 12, 2020 (EST)

The main Shy Guy article is already the species article though. LinkTheLefty (talk) 11:00, February 16, 2020 (EST)

Also: while the White Shy Guy is most notable for acting like an "ally entity" in Yoshi's Story, you can have more than one on-screen (and the Nintendo Power guide refers to them in plural at least once, on page 17), suggesting that it's not one character. I do kind of worry that a casual reader would look at the separate White Shy Guy article and wonder why other white-colored Shy Guys are not mentioned. Perhaps a full merge would be better? Same with the game's Black Shy Guy. LinkTheLefty (talk) 08:10, February 18, 2020 (EST)

That may be something to consider for the future, but it's such a role difference that it would be a bit odd for, say, piping on templates and just organization on the page in general. As for the rest, there'd be an about template. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 20:27, February 18, 2020 (EST)

Then if everything except Yoshi's Story content is trimmed from the article, would you add a Yoshi's Story identifier (same question if Anti Guy merges into a Paper Mario series-specific Black Shy Guy)? LinkTheLefty (talk) 07:20, February 22, 2020 (EST)

Suppose there's no reason not to. Would "White Shy Guy" be better as a disambig, then? Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 13:40, February 22, 2020 (EST)

Yes, I imagine it would look much like the Yellow Toad and Blue Toad disambig pages. LinkTheLefty (talk) 16:27, February 22, 2020 (EST)

Reverse the above proposal

This talk page section contains an unresolved talk page proposal. Please try to help and resolve the issue by voting or leaving a comment.

Current time: Friday, January 31, 2025, 09:06 GMT

Since the last proposal to trim this article to only the Yoshi's Story information in 2020, a similar proposal for trimming Black Shy Guy failed a few months ago. The reasoning there was basically "we have the page, so let's cover all the relevant information on the subject". It's more intuitive for readers, as well as casual editors, if a page is about everything that it says it is without setting arbitrary limits on it.

For consistency's sake, I'm suggesting we follow that proposal's example to cover all appearances of white Shy Guys in some form and return this to something closer to its earlier version.

EDIT: Since it seems like this might be a desired alternative, I've added another option to add a section that will briefly cover all other appearances of white Shy Guys in the franchise with "lesser" importance, similar to this section on the page for Bowser's Brother that describes unrelated instances of a blue-colored Bowser. The Yoshi's Story White Shy Guy will otherwise be treated as the "main" subject of this article. It's not my first choice, but I strongly feel that if we're going to have a page called "White Shy Guy", we should at least have that information somewhere on the page even if it's not given top billing.

Proposer: Waluigi Time (talk)
Deadline: February 8, 2025, 23:59 GMT

Support reversing

1. Waluigi Time (talk) Let's not be shy about covering this.
2. Sparks (talk) Per Waluigi Time!
3. FanOfYoshi (talk) Per all.
4. Camwoodstock (talk) Y'know what? If we're going to have the Black Shy Guy article in the state it is, we might as well do the same to the White Shy Guy. We mentioned this would probably make a lot more sense in a world where we have articles like this for every multi-colored species variant again, and while we're clearly not there yet, this is a start on that. Worst-case scenario, we can just revert this proposal and trim the Black Shy Guy article back down.
5. Rykitu (talk) Per all
6. Tails777 (talk) I've always been on the side of splitting certain colored species/characters. Yoshi is the main one, due to the constant and consistent differences multi-colored Yoshis have had over numerous games, Shy Guy isn't too far off. Sure, colored Shy Guys are less notable than Yoshis are and I did initially support the idea of trimming the Black Shy Guy article down, but I eventually backed down due to my stronger support for this path forward. Per Waluigi Time.
7. Nintendo101 (talk) Per my comment below (isolated here), the fact that every Turbo Yoshi and Turbo Birdo gets an article of its own without hesitation, and the fact that the Black Shy Guy article we have is robust and lovely. If we are to have a White Shy Guy article at all, I have not seen a persuasive or substantive reason why it is a "bad idea" to aim for this.
8. Pseudo (talk) Per Nintendo101.

Add a section for other white Shy Guys, but don't give full coverage

1. Waluigi Time (talk) Second choice.
2. Sparks (talk) Second choice too.
3. Camwoodstock (talk) Secondary option.
4. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) - That's basically what Red Boo's opening does, so I suppose that's fine.
5. PopitTart (talk) New first choice, per what I said in my original vote.
6. SComic (talk) First Choice, per all
7. Hewer (talk) This isn't a bad idea and is a good compromise for this situation. Consistency is ideal so I'd support Black Shy Guy getting this treatment too.
8. FanOfYoshi (talk) Second opinion
9. EvieMaybe (talk) per Hewer
10. Nintendo101 (talk) Secondary choice.
11. Tails777 (talk) Secondary choice, however I'd also like to voice that I agree with Mario's stance that we should probably tackle this issue as a whole rather than individual cases.
12. SolemnStormcloud (talk) Per all.
13. Pseudo (talk) I do believe fairly strongly that these Shy Guys should at least get a mention, so this is my secondary choice.
14. Salmancer (talk) I would like this proposal to not be used as a stepping stone toward granting every "different color, turns around at ledges" variant an article, so there.

Oppose reversing

1. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) - Per my initial arguments to clean it up in the first place. I oppose things like Sniffle Thwomp's Shy Guys (which are only white to make them look like medics) or random recolors among nine or so different colors (ie, treated no differently from orange, yellow, or green, which don't get split) clutter up an article where the point of the split is to cover what's different.
2. Jdtendo (talk) I would strongly oppose splitting Shy Guys by color, and this proposal would do just that, but only for white Shy Guys for some reason. This article should stay focused on its sole reason for existence: the White Shy Guy that helps you in Yoshi's Story, and bringing back the other random white Shy Guys would only clutter the article. Besides, information such as "a White Shy Guy appears as a playable character in Mario Kart DS in DS Download Play" is already covered on the main Shy Guy article in more depth, and you would not know by reading this sentence that this is also true for differently colored Shy Guys as well.
3. Super Mario RPG (talk) It's just a color. That's the only difference with a majority of the appearances.
4. Blinker (talk) Think of this like Koopa Shell vs the specific shell articles. Not all green Koopa Shells are covered on Green Shell, and that's okay.
5. EvieMaybe (talk) did you know the term United States of America technically also applies to Mexico and Brazil? just cuz White Shy Guys from yoshi's story are named White Shy Guys, it doesn't mean they're not a distinct, delineated subject, and it doesn't mean they have to share house with every white Shy Guy.
6. PopitTart (talk) Splitting up color variants just because of their color will just result in articles saying much of the same thing and dividing all their focus. I would say this page and Black Shy Guy should have separate sections listing off indistinct white/black-colored Shy Guys with a pointer to Shy Guy for more details at most.
7. PrincessPeachFan (talk): It would make things way too complicated.
8. Mario (talk) This isn't an endorsement of the current state of the page or the Black Shy Guy page, nor is it an endorsement of the planned trajectory of those pages. Not of a fan of Black Shy Guy being a glaring exception to the other color variants, and not a fan of how currently we have the Magikoopa colors but not the colors for Dry Bones, Koopa Troopa, Paratroopa, the other Shy Guys, the Pipes (maybe???) and so on. I don't mean we should change Black Shy Guy, but I rather we reach a consensus on how to deal with the broader issues of color variants before we settle on one change on the wiki. So, I'm going to go with the status quo option.
9. SComic (talk) Per all above. Different colors don't need new articles, but redirects like with the Yoshi article. Secondary choice.
10. Salmancer (talk) There could always be a policy page explaining how colored variations of characters/objects are organized.

Comments on reversing

We're abstaining for now, mostly because we feel like this would be best if we made a move to expand upon all the unique color variants for every species again, like how we used to have multicolored Yoshi articles and whatnot. ~Camwoodstock (talk) 12:17, January 25, 2025 (EST)

The issue there will always be that behavioral differences and similarities are inconsistent, and for Shy Guy especially since there's games where there's no difference at all (the Yoshi games, Paper Mario), and SMB2 changed its pink ones to blue in remakes. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 12:40, January 25, 2025 (EST)

That's fair! I would support that myself, but I think it would be a big step for the wiki if it passes. For now I'd like to focus on fleshing out the articles we do have as much as possible. -- Too Bad! Waluigi Time! 13:11, January 25, 2025 (EST)

@Jdtendo: Uh. The White Shy Guy Specifically is already split, because of Yoshi's Story. This is specifically about expanding its article more. ~Camwoodstock (talk) 13:23, January 25, 2025 (EST)

I know. When I said "splitting by color just for white Shy Guys", I meant "changing the scope of this article to any Shy Guy that happens to be white rather than Yoshi's Story's White Shy Guys specifically". Sorry if my wording was unclear. Jdtendo^(T|C) 13:28, January 25, 2025 (EST)

Aye, fair enough. ;P ~Camwoodstock (talk) 13:34, January 25, 2025 (EST)

@Opposition: I feel it's worth reiterating that the current state of Black Shy Guy is exactly what I'm aiming for here, and that was upheld by a proposal back in September. -- Too Bad! Waluigi Time! 14:28, January 25, 2025 (EST)

That proposal failed with a margin of just two votes (3-0-5), so it's not like there was a massive consensus. If this White Guy Shy proposal ends up failing, maybe we should retry pruning the Black Shy Guy with a new proposal. Jdtendo^(T|C) 15:10, January 25, 2025 (EST)

I think my fellow editors sometimes overlook the fact that the people who create Super Mario games are often utilitarian in design philosophy - they very rarely change the colors of any enemies at all unless there are accompanying behavioral differences, so it is almost never a purely cosmetic decision. We have been making the decision to keep different colored enemies housed in one article in spite of the games and their accompanying media not doing that themselves, which often explicitly list them as separate enemies too in their bestiaries. (This is not always done, as in How to win at Super Mario Bros., for example, but subjects are typically listed as separate far more often then not.) I clarify this because, to me at least, it has never felt particularly clear what the substantive reason why we lump different colored enemies into one article when the games don't, and overtime it has lead to unclear decisions. Is a Koopa Troopa being large but visually identical to its smaller counterpart a more substantive mechanical difference than being a different color and turning at the edge? Because that is the whole reason why Goombrat exists - to be the "Red Koopa Troopa" to Goombas. Why does the Gold Bullet Bill get an article, but not the purple and blue ones from Super Mario Sunshine? Why do subjects like the blue Bowser and Bowser X (the latter of which seems to even be the same person as Bowser) get separate articles, but not the Black Dino Piranha or pink Hisstocrat? Why can't the Red Koopa Troopa, which is immediately perceivably different from the green ones regardless of where it shows up in the wiki and has largely been listed as a different enemy from its green counterpart since 1985, not warrant a dedicated article but the Red Shell does? Is it because they are the same "species" as the Green Koopa Troopa? Then why does Rolla Koopa and Gold Koopa get articles of their own? Why on earth would we support having an all-encompassing Black Shy Guy article, but not one for White Shy Guys? Where can I see a list that tells me where just the white ones show-up throughout the franchise's history? Why can't I have that? There are a bunch of little reasons that answer different parts of these questions, a proposal here, an RPG-specific policy there, but I find none of them particularly satisfying, especially in aggregation and for how it impacts collective coverage of enemies in the Super Mario franchise. And I say this as someone who has integrated a lot of the enemy charts for the mainline games on this wiki. I don't envy a more casual reader trying to make sense of all these naked inconsistencies themselves. The best taxonomic systems are the ones that don't beg scrutiny. - Nintendo101 (talk) 19:16, January 25, 2025 (EST)

I agree with pretty much everything you just said, but I feel another reason that constantly comes up is that people find it excessive to have so many articles on colored enemies that might end up including a lot of generic information. And that's fair to some degree, but I'll say it again; being excessive feels like a dead argument when we have nine different Turbo Yoshi articles now. Tails777 Talk to me!

We what? (imagine a pause of us clicking each of those links, as our expressions slowly turn to panic like that one .gif of Chef Skinner from Ratatouille) Okay, we have got to do something about that one at some point. No idea what form it'll take, but. Wow. Tour strikes again, we suppose. ~Camwoodstock (talk) 20:13, January 25, 2025 (EST)

I've seen wikis that split every color for enemies they can, and it causes rapid deterioration of navigability and ends up excessive and much more hurtful than helpful. Zeldawiki did that, and that... did not make that site easier to use. Granted, that was in conjunction with other problems such as pages being almost 95% empty sections, overuse of tabber with nonexistent images, and what words actually were present not saying much unique, but it was still a problem on its own in my opinion, and probably led to many of those other problems. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 20:23, January 25, 2025 (EST)

@Camwoodstock There's also the Turbo Birdo and it's 8 colors and the B Dasher Mk. 2 and it's 8 colors. And in fairness, I have brought this up a few times. But in my opinion, our coverage on colored things is kinda... half and half I guess. Tails777 Talk to me!

@Doc von Schmeltwick how was navigability impacted? - Nintendo101 (talk) 00:03, January 26, 2025 (EST)

Colors link to each other awkwardly, it makes page sections be a mess because which pool of color is used varies game-by-game, sometimes color is in the eye of the beholder (you see that here with pink/purple a lot, such as for Toads), it basically requires you to know which colors are present in which game beforehand to actually find the proper section in the proper article or else you're on a scavenger hunt between potentially upwards of six articles - ones that outright require you to already know the information to begin with to find it in the first place are the worst kind of user-unfriendly. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 00:31, January 26, 2025 (EST)

Wouldn't the fact that different sets of colors show up between different games be the exact reason why you would want to have dedicated articles for specific colored variants? Because at present, I, as a reader, have to go on a scavenger hunt to find out where a particular color of interest was in a particular game. Isn't that user-unfriendly? - Nintendo101 (talk) 01:10, January 26, 2025 (EST)

No? If I want to know what colors appear in game A, would it not be easier for there to be one page for the entity with a section on game A that lists them out, rather than look on each page to see which has a game A section? Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 01:47, January 26, 2025 (EST)

We'd be remissed to point out that currently, the Yoshi (species) article (Yoshis being probably the most famous "colored species" articles we used to have) lacks lists of colors that appear in a given game for multiple games. If you were to Ctrl+F "Blue Yoshi", you would skip over Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. The closest you get is the "Color variations" section, which only provides their first game. All this to say, uh, you currently cannot just go to one page for the entity with a section on a given game that lists them out. ~Camwoodstock (talk) 01:55, January 26, 2025 (EST)

To be fair, most games with colored Yoshis have the same collection of eight core colors. And it has the "eye of the beholder" issue for ones like pink/red, blue/light blue, and especially brown/orange sometimes. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 02:03, January 26, 2025 (EST)

i feel like "i can't find every game where Blue Yoshi appears in the Yoshi (species) article" is more of an issue with how the article is written rather than what it chooses to cover. you wouldn't need a proposal or a change in the article's scope to have them listed out — eviemaybe (talk / contributions) 19:24, January 26, 2025 (EST)

Honestly, the galleries are already a solution to that problem, since it's clearer for them in a "show, don't tell" kind of way, plus the colors still do have separate galleries since that's not as inherently redundant as repetitive prose. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 21:04, January 26, 2025 (EST)

I don't think the Zelda series is a very good comparison. It's handling of recolored enemies is very inconsistent between games, as one might expect from a series whose artstyle and character designs change so frequently. Green and Red Koopas at least have been consistently distinguished since the first game in a way that you just won't find in the Zelda series (except White Wolfos). Blinker (talk) 13:10, January 26, 2025 (EST)

Koopa have been usually consistent, but again, outliers exist. Green ones that turn at ledges have appeared on rare occasions, and that's not even getting into how they differ (or don't) outside of the standard 2D platformers. While yes, that is quite different from red Tektites being weaker than blue Tektites in half the Zelda games and vice-versa in the other half, it's still not a perfect split. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 14:18, January 26, 2025 (EST)

I want to remind that, in this series, we have:

>Color differences that mean absolutely nothing (Yoshi's Island's Shy Guys and Lantern Ghosts, Paper Mario's Shy Guys, an overwhelming majority of spinoffs where they're just recolors, retextures, or background filler - do you think we should split all the possible sidekick and audience colorations from Strikers Charged? -, Yoshi's Story's Shy Guys that shuffle their colors if you ground-pound near them and still act the same regardless - and do we really need to split the Shy Guy variants' colors for that game, like Snow Guys?)

>Color differences that are a result of palette limitations (the gray enemies in SMB2 NES become green in deserts to account for Pokeys)

>Color differences that differ between versions of the same game (all of SMB2's pink enemies other than Birdo become blue in its remakes, the gray/green ones are each specified to one type, while Beezos' robe colors change, with red switching the behavior it's used for, the original robe color going on the shoes; then, there's the two handheld versions of DKC and how they changed Zinger, Kritter, and other enemies' color types)

>Color differences that are inconsistent between different games (Koopa Paratroopas are a big offender here. Horizontal-flying ones have been green or red, depending on the game, and NSMBW even had vertical-flying green ones)

>Monochrome games (SML2 for instance, for which the artwork shows Koopa Troopa being green, but the behavior is of the typical red ones)

>Color differences from art evolution (the tragic extinction of the green Piranha Plant, which was originally the main type while red was the subtype)

Even one of these points would be enough to make me say that splitting all the colors would be a terrible idea. All together, it's a super terrible idea. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 02:03, January 26, 2025 (EST)

I feel like none of these details are well documented on the site or adequately accessible to readers, and some of it quite interesting. It is the type of info that would benefit and be more clearly communicated if we had dedicated articles for the colored variants explicitly outlined as distinct by Nintendo in the first place, like the Green Koopa Paratroopa. Things like Biddybuds should never be split because their colors are purely cosmetic (and are importantly not provided individual names from Nintendo in game bestiaries), but they are the exception, not the rule, for Super Mario enemies. — Nintendo101 (talk) 07:15, January 26, 2025 (EST)

Actually the Para-Biddybuds and Shy Guys get individual names in the Mario and Luigi 3DS remakes. PrincessPeachFan (talk) 07:59, January 26, 2025 (EST)

Everything you describe here actively makes me want color articles more, honestly. These strange cases are part of the Super Mario franchise, and are worth acknowledging!--PopitTart (talk) 14:15, January 26, 2025 (EST)

How would they be properly split without redundancy and confusion? Along with the port's color-switching, Beezo has the extra problem, which I forgot about, of gray ones being officially mis-identified as pink. Then there's things like the baseball games' inconsistent handling of color; Koopa and Paratroopa are green and red, respectively, while "Red Koopa" and "Green Paratroopa" get the color labels. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 14:20, January 26, 2025 (EST)

The official misnaming goes deeper than that, actually; the Nintendo Player's Guide for All-Stars refers to the now-blue Shy Guys and Snifits as "Shyguy Pink" and "Pink Snifit" respectively, and on top of that the images used for each of the 3 Snifit colors are swapped around. Their descriptions still match the names though. Personally, and I'm aware this may be a really weird take, I think the variant articles should be about the unique behavior, regardless of color. Pink Shy Guy would be about the Shy Guy that turns around at ledges, acting as a compliment to Red Shy Guy who doesn't, even if the former isn't always pink. At the least, It always turns around.--PopitTart (talk) 14:42, January 26, 2025 (EST)

Thing is, this is reminding me of the Orange page where we cover Oranges in all their appearances when they only made like one or two notable appearances (DK 64 and Jungle Climber). PrincessPeachFan (talk) 07:59, January 26, 2025 (EST)

Talk:Magikoopa#Alternate_colors might be worth a look. I'm on the fence about this. It's me, Mario! (Talk / Stalk) 12:13, January 26, 2025 (EST)

That one may need reopened considering Brothership has made the normal ones be orange to differentiate from the "character" blue Magikoopa... not unlike what Bowser Jr.'s Journey did. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 12:39, January 26, 2025 (EST)