Game Theory: How Does Kirby Fly?

Hello

game

theorists, Matpat here, okay, real talk. This episode was originally intended to be the second half of the

theory

where we explore why Kirby is a threat to Dreamland, talking about the time he outright kills a father in search of his lost daughter just when they. we were about to meet, that happens in the

game

Planet Robobot, ultimately what I was trying to do was get to the reveal that Kirby's origin goes back to an ancient god of destruction, an entity that reincarnates from time to time and that past iterations are some. of the greatest evils of the Kirby-verse, including dark matter and zero, this is all heavily implied.

If you play some of the tougher battles on Kirby's Star Allies, you'll get quotes like this one about him waking up to a gentle breeze and a nap. Sometimes design decisions like the boss attack using a bunch of old dark matter attacks and even things like this background that is a direct riff on old Kirby's Dreamland 3 boss battle backgrounds made me rush to reveal reveals like these They were really interesting and really unexpected, I mean it's a Kirby game, you don't expect a deep and intricate story in a Kirby game, but apparently a lot of the Kirby community already knew this even more, so a lot of you just They weren't happy with how the

theory

was taking shape, so I heard them loud and clear and decided to change direction rather than redouble my efforts and make them even angrier with me.

Today we're going to change the subject from Kirby's story to the science of Kirby. Hopefully, the science is a little less controversial. Hello Internet, welcome to the game. Theory where, as a last note on the whole Kirby story business, if you're interested in delving into the depths of Kirby's story, I recommend checking out the Meteor channel, it's spelled Meteors with a z, but it's actually pronounced simply Meteor, is a creator of many. People pointed me out after the first part of Kirby is a menace episode and his material is really good and incredibly complete. He even did this incredible thoughtful analysis of that last theory, but in a totally fair, non-aggressive, non-showy way.

Which I have to say, I totally appreciate it, so show his video some love. He's a little creator who's doing some really great work, all dedicated to Kirby, and he

does

n't get the attention he deserves. Click on it. It's worth a look, so let's talk science. Last time we talked about the science of our little pink ball, we covered everything: its stretchy body, its arm bumps that seem able to grab onto things even though it has no fingers, its lack of a skeleton, and it all came down to one conclusion: Kirby is. a very sophisticated creature similar to an amiibo, but in all my analysis there was one thing I left out, an essential ability that really defines Kirby as a character in the words of Jablinski Games himself.

Thanks Jack Black, I hope you can find that slim one soon. I think it's Spanish for cats, so maybe that's a clue. Oh, and since I'm obviously addressing you directly through this artificial opening, let me take the opportunity to welcome you to the wonderful world of YouTube. Just know that you are now joining the noble ranks. from other elite tubers like james charles shane dawson and will smith that's hot it's hot anyway as jackie boy just pointed out we have to cover

kirby

's ability to fly no matter how much

kirby

's copying ability seems like the most iconic tool in your arsenal.

It wasn't actually part of Kirby's debut game, Kirby's Dreamland, but instead first appeared in Kirby's Adventure for the og Nintendo Entertainment System a year later, meaning Kirby has been floating around for a year longer than he has been. absorbing enemies and swallowing them to copy them. the abilities of him and that means he is also a power worth investigating, so what is the secret of him? How

does

Kirby fly now? The first obvious answer you get from anyone when you ask them this question is that they inhale air. Everyone knows that when Kirby flies he expands. his body swells and that's not just speculation, it's confirmed in the instruction manuals to quote the instruction manual for the first game, the quote from Kirby's Dreamland.

If you press up on the control pad, I can take a big breath and fly. the heavens and then later on exactly that same page, I quote again if you press the b button while I'm in the air, I can launch an air pellet that can be used to attack an enemy, unfortunately, I will fall like a rock without a A big breath of air, just press up and I'll be able to float as good as new, but there's a problem with that Kirby, he would actually get heavier if he inhales that air, not lighter. I mean, think about this Kirby weighing a certain weight if he's expanded. or not, it's just Kirby's weight and he's sucking in air from the atmosphere around him, that air isn't weightless, it certainly doesn't weigh much, but it does weigh something, so now it's the weight of himself plus the weight of the air he just swallowed if it couldn't float before, well it certainly shouldn't be able to float now, the same goes for balloons and to show that we actually have two balloons here of the same size and relatively equal weights, but if I start cutting this one and release the air that's inside of it, you'll see that even though it's just being pushed down now, so it looks heavier, but it's not true, just give it a second guys, the air coming out is actually deflating it.

The balloon is much lighter and if we've done this right, we should see that this one actually sinks more because blowing up a balloon with your breath will actually make it a little bit heavier than the deflated balloon because air has mass, it has weight. , that's why all the air molecules on earth are grouped together here in what we call the atmosphere it's because they're being oh there it goes, it's doing it science is working this is science in action ladies and gentlemen I'm very excited I haven't done it a science experiment since 6th grade is really cool, but anyway, in short, the right air has mass, that's why it's bunched up around the earth in what we call the atmosphere because the earth's gravity is literally working on these. air molecules bringing them closer to the planets.

If you add those air molecules that have a certain amount of weight into a balloon, suddenly the balloon actually weighs the balloon plus the air molecules, the deflated balloon is lighter, it doesn't seem like it should make sense, but it does. The balloon example, in fact, may be much more relevant than you or I realized look again at the mechanics of what Kirby does when he jumps the first time you press the button when he's on the ground he just jumps like a old normal platformer character pressing the button again while in the air is what makes him bloat but he still isn't flying yet he falls back to the pop star planet it's a lot slower but he's still falling it's not until When you press the button for the third and final time it actually starts to ascend to go higher, you keep pressing the a button and force it to move those little arms, but every time you stop you start to slowly descend, which takes us back to our original question, how then does Kirby fly or, more accurately, how does he fall further? slowly with a mouth full of air it is heavier than before, so why in its expanded form does it fall slower?

Let's look once again at the balloons at a certain level. It seems obvious that balloons fall slower when inflated, but they are also heavier when inflated. We just proved that through that shitty little experiment we did, this all has to do with something called air resistance, also known as drag. If you ever stick your head out the window of a moving car, you can feel the drag force of the air on your face or perhaps you have seen demonstrations of Galileo's classic gravity experiment, where a feather and a bowling ball are left fall into a void.

Inside that vacuum there is no air to create resistance and as a result, both the feather and the bowling ball hit the ground at exactly the same time, but outside of the vacuum, it takes a long time for a feather to fall and that is the power of air, Air resistance affects any falling object, a falling feather, a fall. bowling ball heck, even a falling piano will encounter a drag force as it falls, it's just that for a falling bowling ball or a falling piano or a swamp or in our case a falling deflated Kirby, the gravitational force caused Because of its weight it is so large and the drag force on it is so negligible that it will continue to fall and the drag will barely affect its speed.

However, there are ways we can affect the drag force. Look no further than drag racing. I'm about to attack, although it's not this kind of drag racer. I can understand the editor's confusion, since that's the kind of drag race I talk about most of the time. No, in this case I'm talking about cars, drag racing cars, to be specific, in a drag race after rapidly accelerating to a high speed. The dragster begins to deploy a parachute that intentionally creates an enormous drag force that allows them to slow down by acting as a brake that opposes the forward movement of the car.

Parachutes do exactly the same thing only this time we are talking about vertical speeds for longer. The skydive of the story was performed by Felix Baumgartner, who jumped from a height of more than 24 miles or 39 kilometers if you come from a place where his measurement system makes sense. At the fastest point of his fall, he was going 833 miles per hour, that is, 1,343 km per hour. hour, which is fast enough to break the sound barrier, and yet after deploying his parachute, the drag force of the air was enough to slow his descent to less than 20 miles per hour, so if the Drag force is enough to stop a speeding dragster or heck a skydiver who literally travels faster than the speed of sound, should be able to do something for our little friend Kirby and the games seem to know it.

Check out Kirby's epic thread. This is one of the few games where Kirby can't actually fly. can't inflate itself with air and flap its little bumps to stay afloat, it's probably because it's literally a two-dimensional creature made of thread, instead its usual puff is now replaced with a parachute, even the game creators seem to understand the underlying meaning. physics of what's going on Kirby doesn't fly, he floats and descends slowly, he's a sensitive little balloon man, at least when it comes to flying, calculating drag force is quite complicated and depends on a variety of different factors, the density of the air the viscosity and compressibility of the air and a lot of other things, in fact, there are so many factors that go into determining this that, instead of taking into account each variable in the equation, most of the time Scientists simply perform a test to determine the overall drag coefficient and then base all future calculations for that same object and condition on that initial test;

However, the main thing we can take away from this drag equation here is that the drag force is directly proportional to the area of ​​the object that is experiencing that force. This is why skydivers can slightly slow their descent by extending their arms and legs, it is increasing the area of ​​their body that is exposed to the force of the air, it is also why a parachute actually slows them down because the area suddenly becomes much larger. than the person themselves, so the bigger Kirby can get, the greater the drag force and the slower he can fall and what better way to get bigger than by swelling up like a balloon by making pixel measurements on Kirby's sprites in Kirby's Dreamland for Game Boy and comparing them to the size of his swollen form shows that when he floats, his radius increases by 41, meaning his exposed horizontal area increases to 198 percent of his original size, which is almost doubled. the amount of drag force acting on your body and this is true for other games in the Kirby Superstar series for SNES, which is a 225 difference Squeak Squad 201, etc., etc. in each and every case, inflating itself up to the drag force that Kirby will feel is increasing about twice what it was originally for those of you who are about to say, but manpad the area of ​​the surface of a sphere is actually four times pi r squared, they are technically correct but remember that drag acts in one direction if Kirby is falling the air hits him from below and although Kirby can be a sphere from below , Kirby's shape is a circle, so pi r squared, the fact that Kirby is a sphere affects the resistance calculations in other ways, but before that he is shaped like a sphere. and after inflation, which means that the only thing we really care about when calculating the change in drag force is the change in its radius.Funny enough, this tactic has also helped King Dedede, a flightless penguin, finally find his wings, so to speak, oh it's beautiful as of late.

In the games, he has borrowed some of Kirby's moves, rising up to ascend into the air and it is all thanks to Kirby, as the description of his trophy in Super Smash Brothers Melee says a quote: He is able to suck in air and fly. as Kirby does, but only as a result of vigorous action. The training he underwent after being surpassed by Kirby, so it turns out that Kirby is not the only one who has the habit of copying the abilities of his enemies. This little story also explains why Ddd doesn't fly in some of the previous Kirby games.

Apparently reaching epic proportions is a pretty acquired skill, especially if you're not a living balloon creature and instead are a penguin with an existing biology, but more importantly it explains why Ddd's methods of levitating seem so similar to Kirby's, that they suck in a little air. Flap those little fins and let the drag force of the air push against gravity so there you have it. Ladies and gentlemen, proof of why Kirby is able to fly, not only is he a giant amoeba creature, but he's also like a giant sentient balloon with little wings and remember it's just a theory, a game theory, thanks for watching, boyo, hello, oh, don't give.

Me with that look you may have fooled everyone else, but I know what you really are god of destruction, god, I hate popping balloons, you're welcome, the internet and the world, I saved you, everyone else thinks he's a child innocent, he has infinite power, I still think he's a threat I don't care what the rest of you think don't give babies buttons for the nuclear arsenal that's what Kirby is fine so I blew him up I threw my scissors I almost got killed They stab the foot that's why you don't give me just any scissors