How do you evolve a franchise with an almost static main character? You look at your antagonist: Bowser, King of the Koopas. Also known by its objectively superior Japanese name: Great Demon King Koopa.
Super Mario’s World is a look at the characters that have made the Mario franchise a household name for 35 years.
Based on Nintendo’s own history, each new Mario the game has high expectations. It’s easy to understand why: if they’re not completely inventing or revolutionizing how video games are played, they’re refining or perfecting an existing approach to game design. One new Super Mario the title appears once, perhaps twice, per generation, and its 35-year-old dynasty is the company’s proof of how effective its approach was.
Mario himself, however, does not change much. Mechanically and visually? Absolutely. But Mario, like yours original name of “Jumpman” openly said, it’s good for one thing: jumping. Mario games have to do with the joy of movement, and Mario is the one who moves it. Meanwhile, Bowser is also a pure character. Mario is good at jumping, but Bowser encourages him to reach new heights.
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Both inside and outside the universe, Bowser is the driving force of all Mario titles. He starts each story by kidnapping a royal member. He usually defines the main trick of the gameplay using it or forcing Mario to learn new skills to face him. When Bowser helps to cover an island with poisonous paint, Mario places a conscious water cannon; when King Koopa steals Peach’s castle and flies to the center of the galaxy, our plumber learns to defy gravity.
Bowser is everything a game needs to be. But somehow, all of these disparate skills and personality changes never seem deeply in conflict with each other. Combined, they make him the coolest character in games. And that before we even scratch the surface that he is the single recurring parent all over Mario franchise.
In his first appearance, Bowser is quite a barebone. It mainly serves as a bouncy brick wall at the end of each castle. In Super Mario Bros. 3, he is the ruler of an entire world (Black Earth) complete with a steampunk army of wooden tanks and propeller aircraft, access to medium-level magic and a gang of seven loyal Koopalings. (They used to be your children, now they’re just a gang of anime-style minions with distinct personalities.)
Inside Super Mario World he gets into mechanized enemies, introducing his Koopa Clown Car into the myth. In Super Mario 64 he is a master of black magic, trapping all residents of Peach’s castle in walls and paintings, as well as a deeply imposing physical presence, towering over Mario and dividing the ground below them with his steps.
Bowser is a necromancer, an expert in space technology and dark matter physics, a military commander, a dictator, a single father and the leading man behind a series of bold global assaults to steal the perfect items for his moon wedding. And that is only in the main games.
In any other medium, that list of real things a character did would be ridiculous. This would give Lex Luthor a run for his considerable money, and even comic book characters need an occasional continuity reset when things get a little crazy. However, it works for Bowser because it gives Mario – and by extension us as players – an even greater challenge to overcome. The better Bowser, the better we will be to defeat him.
This is not to say that it is a blank slate of generic villainy; at least, not always. With one big exception (we’ll get back to you in a minute, sunshine), Bowser is portrayed as bad enough to ruin most Mario titles. Depending on what you do Galaxyis ending, it may actually have killed everyone in the universe. But there is a lineage of Mario spin-off games that looked at Bowser and made one of my favorite character choices in story history: Mario RPGs allow Bowser to be funny.
The opening of Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars it’s perfect. Mario runs to fight Bowser (again) and rescue Princess Peach (again). For the first time, Bowser speaks directly to Mario and the player. The two have an epic showdown at the top of a pair of damn chandeliers while one drug remix his Super Mario Bros. 3 fighting music plays (composed by Yoko Shimomura, no less). Their rivalry has never been more intense or cinematic.
Then Mario hits him in less than a minute, Bowser cries when he thinks no one is looking, and Peach is immediately kidnapped by a gang of darker and more competent villains. The rest of the game sets up a dynamic now recurring in RPG spin-offs: Bowser working alongside Mario (and for the only time, Peach) to get rid of the intruding villains and restore their status quo as a regular antagonist. We see him gathering his smaller and smaller troops for smaller and smaller returns. We see him kissing a strange Viking who loves cakes, or Mario, or both.
Most of the Mario RPGs maintain this peculiarity of their characterization, which rarely ages. But there seems to be a limit to the charms of Comedy Bowser: the main games themselves.
Super Mario games are fun and humorous, but rarely funny. The only time the silly and clumsy version of Bowser appears as a villain is in Super Mario Sunshine, and this is weird. Put aside the fact that it is the debut in the Bowser Jr. franchise, now reconverted as Bowser’s only child. (And unlike Baby Bowser, who is actually just Bowser as a delinquent child raised alone by his wizard butler, Kamek. Is Bowser Batman?) Let’s even ignore that Peach was kidnapped because Bowser, afraid to reveal his true identity from your mother son to your son, lie and say that Princess Peach is your mother and Mario is your captor. The weird, stupid and totally acted out voice sunshine Bowser is distracting because Bowser is not at his best. It is not the right place for the silly Bowser of Mario RPGs, as the story is not involved enough to match it.
Like all strong personalities, it needs to be used at the right time and in the right way. The comedy Bowser is great as a rival or teammate, but does not bring the intensity of a real villain. Dark Wizard Bowser works as a source of constant and static opposition in a simple platform game, but he would feel like a shadow of himself in RPGs when he couldn’t let his personality shine.
The two versions, curiously, embraced their most exclusive aspect: their paternity. Bowser Jr. is portrayed as an enthusiastic and technology-oriented member of Bowser’s army in the main games, balancing his father’s more outdated dependence on black magic and aircraft. In the most recent RPGs, especially Paper Mario: The Origami KingBowser’s status as a sometimes competent warlord and patient and caring father is a big part of his character arc. In a multimedia franchise owned by a company that approaches changes cautiously and sparingly, Bowser continues to grow.
In Mario’s universe, babies are literally delivered by the stork. Monarchies are normal and just. Plumbing is universally subsidized. Things are simple. Bowser is anything but. He changes his career, has a complex and evolutionary relationship with the people around him and has personal and professional goals. He’s the type of guy who looks at a castle and says, “I could steal it.” And then he does.
In another story, in which he makes fewer kidnappings and forced marriages, Bowser would be his favorite anime protagonist. Instead, he is the perennial villain. The biggest turtle to be kicked by Mario like all the others. But we know he can handle it. And it will come back bigger, stranger and better on the other side.
Mike Sholars is a freelance pop culture writer who believes that the best way to celebrate the things you love is to roast them relentlessly. He loves video games and anime. Follow him on Twitter @Sholarsenic.
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