It's Nature vs the Machine when two of gaming's most iconic bosses go at it in Death Battle!
Intro[]
Wiz: The boss. Its purpose is to set the standard for the game ahead, to let the protagonist know what they're up against. A test to what they've accomplished, and a signal for what lies ahead.
Boomstick: Some of these bosses can be late-game pains in the ass, like the Yellow Devil of Megaman
Wiz: And some painfully easy intro tests, like Whispy Woods of Kirby.
Boomstick: Each of these two bosses has been around for quite some time now, with numerous reappearances, so if you think this is going to be merely throwing blobs against dropping apples, you're wrong. He's Wiz, and I'm Boomstick
Wiz: And it's our job to analyze their weapons, armour and skills in order to find out who would win... a Death Battle.
Yellow Devil[]
Wiz: As mankind progresses further and further into the future, robots are becoming steadily more common. Designed to accomplish tasks no human could risk, this new age of machinery is making scientific discovery progress faster than ever.
Boomstick: Such was the case with the Robot Masters designed by Doctor Light and Doctor Wily. Creations like Guts Man, Elec Man and Cut Man were built by the duo in order to help humanity. But if you couldn’t already tell by his evil genius hairstyle, Wily had different plans in mind that involved the exact opposite of helping everyone else.
Wiz: Wily stole the Robot Masters, and added them to his personal robot army alongside a handful of minor security bots, but his team wasn’t yet perfect. The Masters were initially designed for one specific task not meant to be harmful, so Wily set out to accomplish what the peaceful Doctor Light could not; he built a robot designed solely for combat.
Boomstick: Everyone expecting a giant Rock ‘em Sock ‘em robot with a mustache will be very disappointed, because Wily went all out on this particular machine. This creation was so powerful, Wily abandoned the usual “Man” surname and named it the Yellow Devil. No need to keep his evil intentions secret, I guess. In early United States releases, he was renamed Rock Monster, because of religious controversies, but this name was still fitting. While the Yellow Devil may not look like your usual rock, his golem-like appearance and indestructible shape-memory body certainly give him the toughness of one.
Wiz: The Yellow Devil’s primary means of defense is its extremely durable skin. It’s strong enough to take shots from everything Mega Man has in his arsenal whenever the two have done battle, from the Mega Buster to the Super Arm.
Boomstick: Why Wily doesn’t wear battle armour made out of this stuff, nobody will ever know.
Wiz: While it’s exact working mechanisms are unknown, the Devil is capable of dismantling itself into many smaller parts. There are no wires connecting these parts, so either it’s solid gelatin or it’s controlled by magnetic nanoparticles. I’d like to think the latter is more likely; The Devil’s body is made of a shape-memory allow, so it “remembers” it’s original shape and can revert back into it after being deformed. The reformation process requires heat, so the Devil’s control center must have a mechanism to heat up the devil’s body, by radiation or by electricity.
Boomstick: Wiz, that technology has been around since the 60s, and we’re talking about the year 200X. Chances are it’s completely different.
Wiz: Hey, all great science comes from the shoulders of giants.
Boomstick: Speaking of giants, have we mentioned how big this guy is? The Yellow Devil stands nearly 14 feet tall, enough to easily dwarf Mega Man. He’s got enough material in him to make solid blocks of goop the size of the Blue Bomber and use them as projectiles, with many more alloy to spare.
Wiz: But what’s the point in throwing your body away when you can just reform it? After disassembling itself, the Devil is capable of throwing its body parts across the room. The size and velocity of its blobs can do serious damage to smaller foes, and once on the other side of the battlefield, it can reform its original body. This has been the Yellow Devil’s standard attack method for years.
Boomstick: While he found it hard to dodge at first, Mega Man went on to defeat the Devil, giving Wily cause enough to upgrade it with a few more tricks, like actually attacking with its hands and feet. Credit where it’s due, though. If I were Wily, I wouldn’t have thought the volley of blobs would need any backup tactics either.
Wiz: The Devil is a robot, remember, and its control center is the only piece of typical machinery in its body; its glowing red eye. The eye is the Devil’s only weakness, and while it can cover it up with is body for absolute defense, it does, in the end, need to see. It is one of Wily’s primary security bots, after all.
Boomstick: To stop the eye from getting hit so easily, Wily equipped it with the ability to shoot plasma, in either multiple balls of energy, or one widespread laser fire. I wish Light had designed this guy first so he could be known as Microwave Man: able to cook your pizza pockets just by looking at them!
Wiz: He was once able to split up into three smaller versions of himself, but was forced to revert after taking too much damage. This is likely because the kinetic energy from Mega Man’s attacks would pressure the Devil’s alloy into reforming its original shape.
Boomstick: Why don't we just accept that he's sentient goo? Not every piece of fiction has to conform to 21st century Earth science, you know.
Wiz: you know, the wonderful thing about the laws of physics is that they exist everywhere.
Boomstick: I can think of multiple exceptions, chief being Sonic 06
Wiz: There’s not much else to the Devil’s arsenal, but there doesn’t need to be. He can only be defeated by attacking his eye, and even then, it takes a significant amount of force. Powerful weapons like the thunder beam, super arm and fire storm are purported to be its weakness, but that’s only because they do more damage than the usual Mega Buster or Rock’s other weapons. Even they can’t put this behemoth down in one shot.
Boomstick: Unfortunately, its artificial intelligence isn’t the most adaptive. Even with all his defensive tricks at his disposal, the Devil will often only resort to using the same tactics over and over to defeat his foes. As a consequence, he has lost to Megaman a shitload of times. It seems even Wily got tired of rebuilding this guy after his failures, because he later designed a MK 2 Yellow Devil, and a much more liquidy Green Devil to keep Light’s warrior off his ass.
Wiz: Keep in mind, a shape-memory allow will revert to its exact shape with energy input. This means that the Devil’s standard pose is his default shape; if he expends too much energy outside of it, he will revert. This is why he usually sticks to simple methods of attack.
Boomstick: And his indestructible nature means that he is still one of the deadliest foes Mega Man has gone up against. If Wily trusts it to guard his castle against the likes of Mario, Captain Falcon and Samus, I can trust it to put up a hell of a fight even with minimal style.
Link hits the Yellow Devil in the eye, causing it to stop in place. Its eye flashes red, and the Devil explodes, clearing all fighters except Link from the field.
Boomstick: Awe, shit, he explodes?.... AWESOME!
Whispy Woods[]
Wiz: The last of the plant phyla to grow on land, yet predating the earliest land animals, the trees covering the Earth have long shaped its environmental history, providing a staple niche in every ecosystem they can be found.
Boomstick: Wiz, why are you even talking about Earth? Kirby lives on the planet Popstar, and we have no idea what its evolutionary history is like. I mean, just take a look at this fucker! It has a face! And it’s so cute, too.
Wiz: The hero of Popstar, Kirby, often makes his home in the food and fun-rich forests of Dreamland. So it’s no surprise that, when he’s called off to adventure, he will likely counter Whispy Woods, the Mighty Oak, early on.
Boomstick: Let’s be honest, he’s not all that mighty. Sure, he can face the planet-cracking Kirby and survive to tell the tale, but if you look at his size compared to the 8-inch ice cream scoop, he’s probably got to be one of the tiniest trees around. He’s like Baby Groot’s brother.
Wiz: But his exact size keeps changing in between appearances, and his full height has never been able to record because his branches often blend in with the surrounding flora. On Earth, which has similar gravitational limitations as Popstar, Oak trees can grow to an average of 80 feet tall including the canopy, and 25 feet across.
Boomstick: Whispy is then clearly on some form of diet pill because there is no way his wood is that thick. Heh heh. But no doubt his trunk contains some seriously strong vasculature structure, because how else could he keep holding up his absolutely massive amount of leaves and trinkets?
Wiz: Wait, how did you know about vascular tissue?
Boomstick: I didn’t. I’m reading off of your notes. Don’t mind me.
Wiz: He may be strong enough to keep it up, but he certainly isn’t afraid to drop it down. The apples he grows are the same size as the mighty Kirby; much bigger than regular Earth apples. If we scale the weight accordingly, he is able to drop them to the ground with an astonishing impact force of almost 200 newtons!
Boomstick: How much is that in pain?
Wiz: To put it in perspective, the force required to crack a human skull is 2300 newtons.
Wah. Wah. Wawawawawa.
Boomstick: I’m not impressed.
Wiz: Well, that’s just if he drops them from his bottom branches, which he does most often in order to get more accurate hits on Kirby. If he dropped them from 80 feet and they didn’t get slowed down by other branches, they’d have an impact force of... 520 newtons. So, it may not be deadly, but they'd sure hurt, and he is capable of unleashing his whole load in one massive attack that even Kirby can't devour fast enough before he's buried.
Boomstick: Oh, the dirty jokes I could make with what you just said. Fortunately for Whispy, he keeps lots more up in the branches than unlimited nutrition. He can drop parasitic worms, indestructible spiked Gordos, and even BOMBS if pressured enough! If he needs a little extra help on his side, he can also spawn mooks like the Waddle Dee to come to his aid.
Wiz: He also possesses poisonous apples which even the world champion eater Kirby can’t swallow. But despite this, the hero of Popstar has defeated him many, many times in combat; even more than King Dedede. So, over the years, he’s adapted many, many tricks to keep himself in the game.
Boomstick: This tree doesn’t just have a mouth for adorable decoration. He’s capable of shooting concentrated puffs of air as a ranged attack, blowing hard enough to push away almost every foe in a big blast of wind, or inhaling so greatly that he can suck in even the land’s fattest penguin, and spit him out in a cruel twist of irony.
Wiz: To defy biology even further, Whispy can increase his defenses to near-invulnerable points by spinning in place extremely fast. This causes his branches to drop much more ammo than usual, allowing for more widespread damage.
Boomstick: He can grow vines to whip some ass, injure enemies with his nose, and is perfectly capable of living on top of another tree... wait, how the fuck?! Don’t trees have roots? Which are trapped in dirt? How can he spin around? Or live on top of a sibling? Does he even have roots?!
Wiz: Oh, yes. Whispy does have roots. Deadly ones that can shoot out of the ground as a surprise attack to catch opponents off guard! Whispy’s lower body is incredibly mobile, even underground. He can surface and retreat his roots at any time he pleases. A tree’s root system is incredibly large; by calculating the area of Whispy’s crown using an Oak’s average dimensions, and then multiplying it by 5.5, we can estimate that the surrounding 4000 square kilometers make up Whispy’s attacking range!
Boomstick: Holy hell! Are we sure this guy doesn’t live next to Hogwarts?!
Wiz: And to scare hylophobics even more, when injured enough, Whispy is capable of entering a beserk mode where he LEAVES THE GROUND and marches after his pray. Think his face was cute before? THINK AGAIN!
Boomstick: That may just be the most terrifying thing the Kirby series has to offer.
Wiz: The downside is, to go mobile, Whispy has to decrease the length of his roots to a more manageable level, and even then, he can only move ever so slowly.
Boomstick: That may explain why Kirby has encountered him in so many different forests. And kicked his ass in so many different forests. Despite all this, Whispy Woods is one of the easiest bosses Kirby has ever faced, and has never pulled off anything close to a victory. He is capably of consistently outsmarting the greedy Dedede when the guy gets hungry for apples, but many of his victories against him ironically rely on Kirby for help. Plus, Dedede's not too bright.
Wiz: Though he packs serious firepower in his canopy, he will rarely drop anything other than apples, likely due to limited stock. He’s an apple tree, not a bomb tree. He also suffers from some allergies, and will occasionally require a medical mask which limits his mouth’s potential.
Boomstick: Seriously, how much innuendo about a guy made of wood can you fit into one analysis? But let’s be real; his opponent is one of the strongest fighters in all of Gamble Galaxy. For Whispy to keep coming back alive from his encounters means that either Kirby is holding back, or this Mighty Oak doubles as a Mighty Tank.
Whispy’s woods shoot up from the ground, destroying the campsite of Kirby and his friends. As they look on in terror, the wood on his trunk molds into his iconic face.
Interlude[]
Wiz: Alright, the combatants are set, let's end this debate once and for all
Boomstick: IT'S TIME FOR A DEATH BATTLE!!!
Death Battle[]
(Queue Stage Music 1)
It’s a peaceful day in Green Greens, as the forest inhabitants dance and play while Kirby is off fighting the sun and the moon. A little Waddle-Dee is walking down the forest path, but stops when its stomach starts to rumble. Hungry, it plops down on the forest floor, and a thought cloud is shown where the Waddle-Dee is wishing it could eat some apple pie. Suddenly, the sound of rustling leaves is heard, and an apple plops down next to him. He looks up, and the camera zooms out to show a happy Whispy Woods as the surprise gift-giver. Two more Waddle-Dees run over and jump up and down at Whispy; he happily shakes his branches again and drops two more apples. The three Waddle-Dees each grab an apple and smile at Whispy to say thank you.
They turn to leave, when out of nowhere, a massive yellow foot comes smashing down and crushes the three flat instantly. Whispy gasps.
(Silence)
One surviving apple rolls over to a shocked Whispy’s trunk. The foot is revealed to belong to the Yellow Devil.
Yellow Devil: Bumo! Bumomomo Bubumomomo!
The devil fires a single eye blast to vapourize the last apple, and Whispy’s face turns from an expression of shock to an expression of anger.
FIGHT!!!
(Queue King Dedede's Theme)
Whispy begins to blow puffs of air at the Yellow Devil, but the robot simply stands still and the puffs dissipate weakly when they reach him. Whispy switches tactics and lines his branches with apples. They drop, but harmlessly bounce off the Devil’s head. The Devil’s eye rolls. Whispy pouts and strains his face; apples begin to fall much faster, but they continue to do no damage to the Yellow Devil whatsoever.
Eventually, the Devil gets annoyed and stomps the ground, sending all the dropped apples flying out of the way. His eye begins to glow red, and he shoots three eye blasts at Whispy, who counters with three air puffs. Or, rather, tries to counter, because the blasts blow right through the clouds and hit Whispy in the face. The Yellow Devil then closes his eye and chunks of his body begin to fly at the might oak. The Tree closes his eyes and his entire front gets covered in the Devil’s goo. Whispy is heard inhaling, and when the blobs pop back into shape, he exhales a massive breath that blows the Yellow Devil a few meters away, smacking him with falling apples as he goes. One hits the Devil in the eye, causing him to wince.
Yellow Devil: Bumo! Bumoooo!
Whispy chuckles to himself and drops more apples. This time, the Devil smacks them out of the air towards Whispy, but the tree inhales the apples and spits them back at a much greater force. The apples all hit the Devil’s eye, and the combo is finished off with Whispy dropping a Gordo on it. The Devil’s eye cracks, and in retaliation, the monster fires multiple eye blasts at Whispy. Whispy is more prepared this time, and blocks the blasts by dropping more Gordos from his branches to intercept the blasts. Wily’s robot picks up the Gordos and throws them at the tree, where they lodge themselves in his trunk. Whispy is visibly in pain, but begins to spin in place rapidly. As his speed picks up, the Gordos fly off of him, and various apples, worms and Waddle-Dees fall from his branches. The Devil turns into a big yellow ball to hide his eye, and all the projectiles are rendered ineffective.
(Queue Benny Hill Theme)
When he changes back into his humanoid form, the Devil tries to walk towards Whispy, but the tree smirks and shoots one of his roots up from below to trip the Devil to the ground. With his face in the dirt, another root shoots up and damages his eye even more.
Yellow Devil: Buuuuu! Moooooo!
The Yellow Devil gets up and stomps down with his foot, but Whispy’s root is quick to retract. Woods continues to shoot his roots at the Devil, but they do no damage before they are forced to retreat to avoid his leg or a giant smack with his hand. This awkward game of whack-a-mole continues for a bit before it ends when the Devil successfully stomps on one of his roots, causing Whispy to wince.
Taking advantage of his pain, the Devil forms a cube from his body and launches it at the tree. It hits him square in the face, slightly bending his nose. As he readies another cube, however, Woods grows two vines and grabs his hands to immobilize him. The Devil rolls its eye and pulls down hard, snapping the vines; his eye closes again, and his body once more throws its blobs at Whispy.
Whispy, now really ticked off, exhales and then inhales greatly, creating a massive vortex of wind. As he’s already mostly apart, the Devil’s body parts get sucked into Whispy’s mouth, leaving his eye on the ground. Whispy’s branches shake, and a bomb drops out next to it.
(Queue Carmina Burana ~ O Fortuna, 0:00-0:24)
As the Devil’s eyeless body struggles to escape Whispy’s jaw, the bomb begins to beep faster and faster.
And faster.
And faster.
And it goes off, covering the area in smoke.
(Silence)
The smoke clears, and the Devil’s body lies on the ground with an outstretched hand covering up his eye. The Yellow Devil is heavily injured, but he managed to escape Whispy in time to protect his eye with his invulnerable body. The machine stands up, and turns slightly orange; he is MAD.
(Queue Carmina Burana ~ O Fortuna, 1:37-2:32)
Unlucky for him, so is Whispy. The tree’s eyes turn slanted, and his round mouth becomes wider and grows a set of massive wooden teeth. As Whispy screams, the Earth shakes, startling the Devil, and Whispy rises out of the ground using his roots for legs. The mighty oak begins to march forward towards the Devil, dropping all sorts of junk from his branches. The Devil, who needs his damaged eye to see, slowly retreats and smacks away numerous apples, worms, Waddle-Dees, Gordos, Goombas, Aperture Science turrets, the Ark of the Covenant, Dan Hibiki and the four-star Dragon Ball as Whispy approaches. Trying to keep himself at range, he begins to fire eye blasts, but the falling objects block most of them. The ones that do hit Whispy don’t seem to damage him at all.
Yellow Devil: Bu...Bu...Mooo! Bumomo!!!
In a last resort, Wily’s creation fires a laser along the ground to hit Whispy’s roots. They burn right through on one side, and cause the tree to awkwardly fall to the ground at a slight angle, unable to move. The Devil stomps forward and grabs Whispy with his hands. The enraged tree tries to push back, but to no avail, and is slowly lifted up off the ground. The Devil’s eye begins to glow red, and the view switches to right in front of the mighty oak. The wood around his face begins to glow red, and suddenly the pitch-black of his eyes and mouth turns bright orange before the laser beam fired from the Devil’s eye pierces the oak and burns a round hole right through his trunk. The Yellow Devil then breaks the trunk in two over his knee and tosses the halves aside.
Yellow Devil: BUMO!
K.O.!!!
The Yellow Devil turns into blobs and flies off away from the forest
Whispy Woods’ still-smoking trunk sets fire to a nearby tree, and the flames begin to spread
Results[]
Boomstick: Remember kids, only you can prevent forest fires.
Wiz: This unfortunately didn’t turn out as close of a match as we had initially predicted. While both combatants were immune to their opponent’s main attacks, only the Yellow Devil had the luxury of being immune to most of Whispy’s specialty attacks as well.
Boomtick: The compound that makes up the Yellow Devil’s body can tank fire, bombs and Mega Buster blasts so hard they can pierce brick walls. Are we seriously going to question if apples could pierce it? Whispy’s heavier artillery would only prove useful if it managed to get a hit on the Devil’s eye, something that would be hard to do by dropping them from above.
Wiz: Even Whispy’s roots couldn’t help, as they were unable to piece the Devil’s skin to hit its eye. And an unfortunate effect of the planet Popstar is that everything is much smaller than on planet Earth. Oak is not very dense, and Whispy is mostly hollow, so there’s no way that his body could withstand a large amount of force from the Devil’s repeated attacks. Kirby may be strong, but his attacks are dealt over a very small surface area, unlike the Yellow Devil who stands 13 feet tall; over 21 times the size of Kirby.
Boomstick: And while Whispy could certainly inhale his enemy’s attacks and spit them right back akin to Kirby, most of the Devil’s projectiles would probably set him on fire from the inside.
Wiz: Unfortunately for nature, the machine wins yet another round.
Boomstick: Was Whispy tough enough to put up a good fight? I wooden’t be so sure.
Wiz: The winner is the Yellow Devil.
Next Time[]
Boomstick: Next time, on Death Battle!
