Imitater

The Imitater is a potato spud artist which can mimic any plant besides upgrades. It can be used to cut the recharge time of plants in half although it takes up a seed slot. It costs $30,000 to buy the seed packet from Crazy Dave at his store, Crazy Dave's Twiddydinkies, making it the most expensive plant in the game.

Suburban Almanac Entry
Imitater

lmitaters let you use two of the same plant during a level!

"I remember the Zombie Wars back in '76," says Imitater in a raspy, old-man's voice. "Back then, we didn't have all these fancy peashooters and jalapenos. All we had was guts. Guts and a spoon."

Usage
After purchasing the Imitater, it appears on the lower right part of the plant selection screen in a new added box on the side when choosing your seeds. Selecting it brings up an overlay, asking which plant it shall imitate for the round. After selecting, it will take up a slot as the imitated plant in a melancholy gray.


 * Note: The Imitater cannot copy upgrade plants such as the Gloom-shroom or the Cob Cannon. It also cannot imitate more than one plant.

The Imitater, when planted, will appear as itself, but after a couple of seconds, transforms into its copied form. The copied form, aside from being in monochrome costs as much and behaves just like the original plant. On the iPhone version the imitater is the same color as the plant. Imitated explosives will explode, and an Imitater Tall-nut can still take loads of damage.

It isn't necessary to choose the original seed packet as well, or to use the original version of the plant before using the Imitater version. There is no clear benefit to having only the Imitater or using it first, there is in fact a disadvantage to it, as the Imitater requires time to transform. Therefore, an Imitater can be eaten or smashed by a zombie while transforming.

Strategy
The Imitater can be used to effectively halve the recharge time for the selected plant, assuming the copied plant was also selected.

Good candidates for Imitation:


 * Wall-nut
 * Tall-nut
 * Pumpkin
 * Squash
 * Sunflower, or Sun-shroom
 * Jalapeno
 * Cherry Bomb
 * Doom-shroom

The only disadvantage to the Imitater is the time it takes to transform. When placed right in front of zombies, they may eat it before it finishes transforming. This is mainly a problem when using it to imitate explosive plants which are placed right into the middle of the group of zombies they're intended to destroy, and it also creates a problem when trying to use it as a last minute defensive plant, as it takes a regular amount of chomps to eat while it is transforming. It isn't impossible to use effectively, but there is a risk that it will be eaten before it explodes.

Trivia

 * The word 'Imitater' is actually misspelled. The correct word is 'Imitator'. In the game it is spelled Imitater because "tater" means "potato" and the Imitater is a potato.
 * The Imitater is the one of the two gray plants in the game, along with the Spikerock.
 * On the computer version, the Imitater, instead of appearing in the Suburban Almanac in the same spot as in the plant selection screen, appears as a small drawing in the upper left corner.
 * The Imitater is the only plant that can be planted on any surface.
 * The Imitater, when flattened, will turn into the flat version of the copied plant with its original colour, even before transforming.
 * On the iPod Touch/iPhone/iPad version, the Imitater turns into an exact replica, without the black and white color, although on the seed packet appears greenish.
 * The Imitater may be a representation of a mime, as it is black and white and wears a beret.
 * The Imitater is the only plant without any statistics in the Suburban Almanac such as Sun and damage.
 * This is because the Imitater will have whatever stats that the plant it copies.
 * The Imitater cannot copy upgrade plants although the imitated plant can be upgraded.
 * If an imitated plant is upgraded, it returns to the 'normal' color of the upgrade.
 * The Imitater is gray, yet the projectiles it fires are the exact same color as the original projectile.
 * Since the copied plants of the Imitater are not monochrome in the iTouch, iPhone and iPad versions, the seed packets for the copied plants are different from the PC and Mac version. In the iTouch and iPhone version, the seed packets are shaded by a green square. In the iPad, the seed packet is a lot brighter than the regular plant.
 * The Imitater is the most expensive plant you can buy at Crazy Dave's shop.
 * The Imitater is the only non-upgrade plant that is bought from Crazy Dave's Shop, excluding the Zen Garden plants.
 * The Imitater, the Cattail, and the Gatling Pea are the only plants with headwear.
 * Besides the Flower Pot, The Imitater is the only non-Upgrade Plant that cannot be obtained for the Zen Garden.
 * The Imitater's transforming animation is not shown on the DS version.
 * While spinning, the Imitater looks like he has lots of arms on his back.
 * The Imitater is one of two potatoes in the game, the other being the Potato Mine.
 * When the Imitater has copied something, the copied plant is full health, even if the Imitater has been damaged.
 * The Imitater forms is not completely grayscale, it just became whiter so a little color can still be seen.

Bugs
On the XBLA version, in co-op mode, the game will not let you pick the Imitater when there's already 3 seeds or more selected. A simple fix to this bug is to select the Imitater before you select more than 2 seeds.