talking flower (mario)

Talking Flower/s are characters appear in the Mario series, their first apperance is from Super Mario Bros. Wonder. They are small flowers that talk to the player when approached; the messages they say are small reactions to what is currently ongoing in the level, which may serve as hints. They typically come in orange, but red and blue varieties also exist. The red variety appears in the Badge Challenges, in The Desert Mystery's Wonder Effect, Color-Switch Dungeon, which appears red when the ON/OFF Switches are set to "ON" and blue when they are set to "OFF", and also appear in The Final-Final Test Badge Marathon. Talking Flowers do not appear in any of the Castle Bowser levels except for The Final Battle! Bowser's Rage Stage, where they have a light-green aura around them, and their speech is distorted and higher-pitched so as to fit the level's theme.

Unlike the other characters, their dialogue is fully voiced, and they have separate voice actors in each of the game’s languages. Players have the option to turn either the speech bubbles or spoken dialogue on and off, and can change the language they can talk in. Their design is reminiscent of the angel's trumpet and devil's trumpet flowers.

According to an interview for Nintendo's Ask the Developer series, the Talking Flowers were a reconfigured version of a concept proposed by producer Takashi Tezuka where the game would provide live commentary on the player's actions. The original idea was scrapped due to it being too much work to implement, with the Talking Flowers being seen as a more practical alternative that better fit the Super Mario franchise.