Wow... now where do goombas live?

i see these many times in Norway..sure dont look super at ALL!

Man, there sure is a drought for news now that Halo 3 has been released hunh?

Taste funny to.

Hallucinations, eh? So, is it possible that after ingesting one of these that the entire world around you would appear smaller? I'd say it's doing its job right there.

Generally, you shouldn't ingest any brightly colored plant anyways. Or any ol' fungus unless you qualify for a degree in that area.

There's many of those in the Finland too. Nothing special :(

Im pretty sure I was thought in pre-school that you shouldnt eat shrooms...

@Amazingu:
GREAT COMMENT DUDE. Thanks for playing!

also what would happen if you merely licked it?

i wonder if the mario games would be better if he only licked the mushrooms...it could say "LICK GET!"

food for thought...

Mama mia, that'sa not what the shrooms are supposed to do at all!

I think kids in Europe are told many times not to eat that kind of mushroom. At least I was told many times.

Nitpick: the binomial name has to be italicized

How that is exactly news is beyond me. There is hardly any European not knowing this mushroom, since most get drilled at school never to eat that one. Wake me up when you see some real life MGS4 Babe-Monsters ravaging the EU landscape

@cyhborg:
Nitpick?

@4thVariety:
No one said it was news, kiddo. Bye bye! :(

and also i'm thinking: what if a mushroom man ate one of these mushrooms?
or just licked it?

oh and when mario does a "LICK GET!" he must have a silly licking animation.

@ashcraft:

y'know, as in fussing over small details?

I know a few people who tried taking fly mushroom. Thing is, it's really hard to get the right dose. Take too much and you'll end up in hospital or even dead. Even if you manage to get the dose right, the resulting trip can be bad, very very bad - think about the worst LSD horror you've ever had and you're not nearly close. And you'll still suffer from some serious poisoning.

To make this short: Don't do it. Leave it for the hardcore psychedelic crowd, who think that mescaline just doesn't cut it for them anymore...

Slow news day, is it, then?

The Smurfs were using these well before Mario and co reared their fat moustachioed heads.

the reason to why european kids doesnt eat this and then blame it on nintendo is because they are intelligent enough not to do that. unlike some others...

And they aren't even 1-up mushrooms :/

@Mentski:
Slow news what? Bye bye. :(

Hey fly amanita is fairly common in oblivion... maybe they should have some kind of mario themed mini game in an expansion.

word of advice, if you would like to try "flugsvamp", you can only chew it and then spit it out, or else you can die...

"I'm just surprised some moron hasn't gotten sick eating one of these and then blamed it on Nintendo!"

Might have something to do with the fact that those mushrooms are so common here that kids are told they are poisonous long before they play Mario. : P

Red + seeds = food

Red + no seeds = warning

Red + spitting fireballs = Induce vomiting immediately.

Lol, this post is almost as good as the booth-babe-rape-gate post for bringing out punks. First off people, just because YOU know of the existence of this mushroom and have been scolded since birth not to eat it...doesn't meant OTHERS do. I've never seen it in my life and I think it's interesting. I swear, some of you are just like the asses on gizmodo that constantly complain about non-uber-tech posts. "How is this game/mac/pc/usb related." Quit whining like you somehow pay for this service.

How is this ever news? This mushroom is older than the U.S. of A. I seriously do not get it!

@Heliophage: Well, honestly, that's as close to in game effects of a super mushroom as you're going to get.

Jumping on turtles seems like a real possibility for someone who's eaten one of these...but what, exactly, is the real life equivalent of a goomba?

@pfive81:
Swiss Chard is partially red and it has no seeds!

I remember learning about them in primary school in Poland. These things are lethal. My mother once told a story of a family that went mushroom picking to make some soup and didn't know about the side effects - all of them were dead by the time the ambulance arrived. On a positive note, there was the story about the seven foot tall Goral (an unusual ethnic minority) that somehow survived eating them.

Good thing that we don't get many tourists or immigrants to Poland and that the ones we do get don't go mushroom picking.

I could just imagine the Japanese tourists - scary.

about a year ago, nearly every single house within 3-4 blocks of ours had several clusters of these mushrooms appear in random areas of their lawn.

i never did hear any explanation for that.

@Aglet:
Happy trails! :(

@hueg_boss: That's because it's swiss.

It doesnt cause death and it does provide intense tripping action.

your stomach wont appreciate it though.

oh, and DONT.

@cbisquit:

Haha, I was thinking the same thing. I was looking around for my alembic and mortal and pestle. Time to make some healing potions!

Heh, I'm starting to think this was just posted as Banhammer bait, judging by the previous comments. Regardless, as an amateur Mushroom hunter I will agree that most people should just never eat any mushroom they find out in the wild (esp. those darn Amanitas, all very pretty, most very deadly). That said, I've had a few tasty specimens of wild mushroom I found myself, my favorite being the Chicken Mushroom, so if its something you're interested in go for it, but be very, very cautious before you actually put something in your mouth, do your research.

That's a pretty crazy looking mushroom. Looks delicious... (not really)

@DaiMacculate: I don't think it was meant to be banhammer bait specifically, but clearly a lot of people forgot that this is a gaming blog, not a page solely for news. It even says so up in the corner:

"Gossip, cheats and leaks for obsessive gamers. Don't get a life just yet."

I think this post might count as 'gossip'.

Seems like Ban Monday is off to a flying start.

HOW IS THIS NEWS??!

;(

We have alot of these here in Norway along whit other trippy shrooms. A friend of mine once took some of the Amanita and he got very delusional. I remember him standing infront of his workbench taking a piss in one of his drawers. I asked im what the hell he was doing wich he replied whit an angry tone. "Cant you see i`m taking a fucking piss dammit!" Good times, good times :)

As others have pointed out, this isn't deadly, unless you eat a lot and then avoid medical care after the symptoms (mostly varied, though strong nausea/vomiting, hallucinations, stomach pain, etc) appear. I've had the displeasure of eating quite a lot of these myself, and I'm still alive. It's not something I'd recommend, though.

What's interesting with this family of mushrooms is the mild taste. Some non-poisonous amanitas are excellent in stews. At the same time, it makes the poisonous amanitas even more dangerous. The death cap (Amanita phalloides) and the destroying angel (Amanita virosa) are widely regarded as the world's most dangerous mushrooms.

According to a widely believed myth, the vikings ate fly amanitas before pillaging villages. The hallucinations inflicted rage, raised morale (signs from the Gods) and made the Vikings a lot more dangerous. Though hallucinogens such as fly amanitas were often used for such purposes in more primitive societies, there's little concrete evidence that the Vikings used them this way.

I took an anthropolgy course that dealt almost entirely with this very mushroom and the whole time I kept wanting to allude to Super Mario, but was too afraid of fouling my professor's impression of me (not all academics think there's great merit in a pervasive video game generation). There's a lot of ancient culture derived from the practices surrounding this fungus and I can't help but think that Shigeru Miyamoto drew upon all of that when he created a techni-colored kingdom based on fly agaric. In fact, those versed in the esoterics of shamanism and hallucinogens would easily see the blatant drug references troughout SMB. Up until 2002, hallucinogenic mushrooms were legal and widely avalable throughout Japan... and that actually explains a lot.

News to me. :D

Bash is living up to his nickname today so I'll revise what I was going to say to just warn folks not to eat one of them there no matter what Mario told you in a dream. It impossible to gauge the dosage of the active ingredients of any one mushroom and you really don't want to kill yourself before all the new games come out this fall, right?

[peyote.com]

This brings back memories. These shrooms were often referenced to in the fairy tales I heard/read as a child.
They're usually more flat, though...

Did you know that in ancient times, these were used as bug repellents?
People took the skin (the red 'n white part) of it and hung them from the ceiling.
Bugs would be attracted to them and then die shortly after eating from it. Don't be inspired by this, though. If you don't wash your hands thoroughly after touching the skin of this shroom and you eat some finger food, you could end up badly poisoning yourself.

So, it sounds like the "healing" properties of the "Fly Amantia" mushroom in Oblivion only refer to it making you feel better... ;)

I wrote an article about finding one of these mushrooms in Atlanta GA a little under a year ago...

[www.gamevoxpop.com]

Cool, cool. Now find me a tanooki suit. I, too, want to turn into a statue for a few seconds. You know, in case those damned turtles attack me again.

Is there a baby bowser on the side of that mushroom?

Screw that! Get me a green one!

I guess no one here ever played Oblivion then. This is used to poison flys, so don't eat it. You put bits of it in a dish of water and when they eat it they die. Flies don't give you much XP however...

No abnormal growth and hallucinations? I'll pass.

Is that what's called Fly Agaric??

that's cool as hell... you see; its not all hate kotaku. you can be good if you want to. :-)