Petey Piranha

Petey Piranha
Official artwork of Petey Piranha from Mario Party: Star Rush.
Universe	Mario
Debut	Super Mario Sunshine (2002)
Smash Bros. appearances	Brawl Ultimate
Most recent non-Smash appearance	Super Mario Party Jamboree (2024)
Console/platform of origin	Nintendo GameCube
Species	Piranha Plant
Gender	Male
Place of origin	Isle Delfino
Article on Super Mario Wiki	Petey Piranha

Petey Piranha (ボスパックン, Boss Packun), is an antagonistic character and leader of the Piranha Plants in the Mario series.

Origin

Mario and F.L.U.D.D. encounter Petey Piranha in Super Mario Sunshine.

Petey Piranha made his debut as a boss in Super Mario Sunshine and has become a recurring boss in the Mario franchise. He is a mutated and larger version of a Piranha Plant with a red-colored head peppered with white polka dots, yellow iridescent petals with orange rims that surround it in the style of a lion's mane, thick green lips with vertical darker green streaks across them, leaf-like arms, stubby thorn-like legs and an underwear-like garment that matches the color scheme of his head.

Petey Piranha first appeared as a boss in the second and fifth episodes of the Bianco Hills area. In the former, he is seen spitting large amounts of brown goop from atop a windmill and in the latter, he is seen sleeping on a cliff, where he can be awakened with a Poink. In both boss battles, he attacks by spitting his brown goop on Mario, and if the player gets close enough, hitting Mario with his head by spinning it around himself. In the fifth episode, he gains the ability to fly and swing his arm to cause a tornado that sends Mario flying upward. He can be defeated by using F.L.U.D.D. to spray large amounts of water in his mouth before he spits out his goop to expose his belly button on his engorged belly, which can be ground-pounded on three times.

Petey Piranha also appears as a boss in New Super Mario Bros. as the boss of World 5. In that game, he flies above the player and will try to stomp on them.

In Super Smash Bros. Brawl

As a boss

Petey Piranha
A boss in	Brawl
Universe	Mario
Location	Midair Stadium

Petey Piranha appears as the first boss of the Midair Stadium level in The Subspace Emissary. Prior to the battle, during the Subspace Army's invasion on the stadium, Petey Piranha blasts Mario away with a cannonball and captures both Peach and Zelda in cages, leaving Kirby to battle him. He can be defeated by destroying one of the cages. The player can also attack his head, which splits the damage received to both cages.

Once one of the cages' health is depleted, the cage will break and free one of the princesses inside while Petey Piranha catches on fire, collapses, and explodes. If both cages' health is depleted simultaneously via an attack on his head, the game will randomly decide which princess is freed. The unsaved princess will be turned into a trophy by Wario. At the last level, Tabuu resurrects Petey, along with the other bosses, and sends him after the heroes in The Great Maze.

Petey Piranha can be battled in Boss Battles Mode. During this mode or in The Great Maze, his cages will be empty, and the sky in the arena will be blue, in comparison to the Midair Stadium level, where his cages will contain the two princesses and the sky will be an ominous red.

Rather than being voiced by Toru Minegishi who voiced the character in Super Mario Sunshine, Petey Piranha has a set of bestial roars, similar to how Donkey Kong, Bowser and Diddy Kong were given realistic animal sounds.

As a playable character

Main article: Petey Piranha (SSBB)

Like all Brawl bosses, Petey Piranha can be played as in Boss Battles through hacking, which will assign debug controls to Player 3. Only the Cage attacks are available to deal damage, causing him to be extremely bare-bones and by far the weakest of the game's bosses.

Moveset

Petey has only two main attacks. The first involves swinging one of the two cages along the ground. The second is a jumping attack, where Petey tries to stomp the player while holding both cages vertically. Any contact with Petey or his cages during this attack will meteor smash the player as he comes down from a jump.

When either cage is reduced to 1/3 health, Petey will roar and its body will glow momentarily, surrounded by a red aura. Petey will then speed up its attacks and often jump in a different pattern, usually two times in a row; his attacks will also deal slightly more damage and their knockback will be boosted.

Like all bosses, Petey Piranha can be controlled with hacks in Boss Battles Mode. The start button will, like all bosses, self-destruct him. Unlike any other boss (besides of Meta Ridley), when controlled by a human, Petey Piranha will wait in a T-pose after either roaring or performing a cage attack.

Move	Input	Description
Jump Ready	+	Petey Piranha gets ready to jump. When controlled by a human, however, he can't actually do the jump.
Roar	+	Petey Piranha roars, and is surrounded by a red glowing aura for a brief time. This move slightly boosts the following attacks in speed, damage (by about 10%), and knockback (although the change is subtle). When performed by a human, it is currently unknown if it makes his attacks stronger.
Left Cage Smash	+	Petey Piranha smashes the cage in his left hand, which is the right cage from the screen's point of view. The attack is highly preventable but relatively swift and long-ranged. Damage varies from 12% (Easy in Boss Battles without boosts) to 40% (Intense in the Subspace Emissary after being boosted by Roar). Additionally, it KOs over 100% on the lower difficulties, but around 60% on Intense.
Right Cage Smash	+	Petey Piranha smashes the cage in his right hand, which is the left cage from the screen's point of view. The mechanic is exactly the same as Left Cage Smash.
Jump	Unusable	Petey Piranha jumps high, landing on either the center or the sides of the stage. If the player is near or past Petey (near or off the edge) he will jump in place; if closer to the center he will jump to the opposite side. After Roar Petey will usually start jumping twice in a row. This attack meteor smashes the player into the stage but can't KO. Its damage can be very high, 16% on Easy in Boss Battles without boosts to 40% on Intense in the Subspace Emissary after being boosted by Roar.

• 

  Petey Piranha leaping into the air.

• 

  Petey Piranha descending after leaping into the air.

• 

  Petey Piranha landing on the ground.

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  Petey Piranha swinging a cage along the ground.

• 

  Petey Piranha's roar upon being reduced to a 1/3 of his health.

HP and damage taken

HP Values
Midair Stadium	127			157			180			217			255
The Great Maze	162			186			200			222			245
Round	1-3	4-6	7-9	1-3	4-6	7-9	1-3	4-6	7-9	1-3	4-6	7-9	1-3	4-6	7-9
Boss Battles	115	170	190	150	205	230	187	240	262	225	282	310	325	377	400

Damage taken	×0.7	×0.7	×0.7	×0.7	×1.0	×0.7	×0.7	×0.7	×0.7	×0.7	×0.3

The resistance values above apply only when hitting Petey's body, which will deal the resulting damage to each cage. When hitting an individual cage, no resistance modifier is applied. When either cage's HP is depleted, Petey is defeated.

Like all bosses in Brawl, Petey gains an additional ×0.6 damage resistance modifier when fought in co-op mode, effectively gaining 67% more health. This modifier is applied whenever the second player is in-game and is no longer applied if the second player loses all their stocks.

Trophy

The Petey Piranha trophy can be obtained by using the Trophy Stand on Petey Piranha on Hard or Intense difficulty in The Subspace Emissary.

Petey Piranha's trophy in Brawl

Petey Piranha

A colossal Piranha Plant. Unlike its pipe-inhabiting cousins, it uses its legs to walk around. It can fly, too. As you might expect, it often appears as a boss character in Mario adventures. This may come as a surprise, but it also displays surprising dexterity in kart races and ball games.

: Super Mario Sunshine

: New Super Mario Bros.

Stickers

Name	Game	Effect	Fighter(s)
Petey Piranha	Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour	AttackDarkness+047 Attack +47	Ganondorf
Petey Piranha	Mario Strikers Charged	AttackBite+032 Attack +32	Yoshi Wario Pokémon Trainer Wolf

Petey Piranha (Mario Golf: TT)

Petey Piranha (Mario Strikers Charged)

In Super Smash Bros. for Wii U

Despite Petey Piranha making no appearance whatsoever in either version of Super Smash Bros. 4, he has unused animations in the Wii U version that are unique and are separate from Brawl.

Even more curiously, there are no leftover models, textures, sounds or parameters with which these animations would correspond, as only the animations appear to remain in the game. The lack of leftover assets would appear to imply that Petey Piranha was scrapped at a very early stage in development.

In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

As a Final Smash

Petey in Piranha Plant's Final Smash

Petey Piranha appears as Piranha Plant's Final Smash, using the cages from The Subspace Emissary.

Cosmetically, Petey Piranha has a more saturated color scheme than he did in Brawl, and is more smoothly textured (i.e. no cracks in his skin as in the aforementioned title).

Additionally, he is mentioned in the Palutena's Guidance for Piranha Plant, as well as Paper Petey Piranha and Petea Piranha.

Spirits

Petey Piranha also appears as two different primary spirits. He can be obtained by enhancing the Nipper Plant spirit at level 99.

The Spirit Battle for Petey Piranha (Super Mario Strikers), though his artwork is from Mario Strikers Charged, uses a Giant Ivysaur puppet fighter and is fought on the Wuhu Island stage's Swordplay Colosseum layout. During the battle, the Soccer Ball item will appear, referencing the game of soccer in Super Mario Strikers, which features Petey Piranha as a playable character.

No.	Image	Name	Type	Class	Slots	Base	Max	Base	Max	Base	Max	Ability	Series
54		Petey Piranha		★★★	2	3319	9989	1616	4862	1322	3978	Giant	Super Mario Series
125		Petey Piranha (Super Mario Strikers) Petey Piranha (Mario Strikers)		★★	1	1663	6696	798	3214	865	3482	No Effect	Super Mario Strikers Series Mario Strikers Series

Names in other languages

Language	Name
Japanese	ボスパックン, Boss Pakkun
English	Petey Piranha
French (PAL)	Flora Piranha
French (NTSC)	Petey Piranha
German	Mutant-Tyranha
Spanish (PAL)	Floro Piraña
Spanish (NTSC)	Pepito piraña
Italian	Pipino Piranha
Chinese (Simplified)	吞食花头头
Chinese (Traditional)	吞食花老大
Korean	뻐끔왕, King Pakkun
Dutch	Petey Piranha
Russian	Пиранья Пети

Trivia

• Oddly, while Petey Piranha is seen spitting out a cannonball at Mario in The Subspace Emissary, in the Mario series, Petey has never had the ability to do so.
• If the player battles against Petey using Peach or Zelda in their default costumes, they will still be seen in the cage with the same costume.
• The models used for Peach and Zelda in the cages are of much lower resolution than the characters themselves and do not have fingers or legs.
• When idling, if Zelda's cage is attacked, Petey will make a deep grunt, but if Peach's cage is attacked, he will make two sharp grunts. He will not respond to hits on his head.
• Petey Piranha is the only boss to have two health bars, with both being dedicated to objects outside of himself. During the Midair Stadium battle, "Peach's Cage" and "Zelda's Cage" are displayed next to the health bars; in The Great Maze and in Boss Battles, the cages as aforementioned are empty and the health bars are simply labeled "Cage".

The Easter eggs of Petey's cages.

• The cages' designs have several Easter eggs, some of which can only be seen via mods that remove the in-game camera limitations:
  • The rears of the hooks have a small Chain Chomp attached.
  • The interior roof is patterned with Bob-omb and Blooper sprites.
  • The bottom trim is patterned with various Piranha Plant, Fire Piranha Plant, Muncher, and Nipper sprites. In addition, the back features a human face of unknown origin; this face is modeled as opposed to textured and is reasonably large in Petey's texture files.
• After Giga Bowser, Petey is the second boss to appear in a Final Smash.
• Much like Bowser and the Donkey Kong characters, rather than being voiced by Toru Minegishi with cartoonish voice clips, Petey's voice is comprised of bestial roars in Brawl.
• In the Mario series, Petey's neck is located behind the petals on his head, however in Brawl his neck appears in front of the petals. This design was later carried over to Ultimate.