Bowser
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- This article is about the Nintendo character. For other meanings, see Bowser (disambiguation).
Bowser, known in full as King Bowser (Koopa), and known in Japan as Koopa, (pronounced "Kuppa," and written as クッパ in Japanese), is a fictional dinosaur from Nintendo video games, and is Mario and Luigi's arch-nemesis. Although Bowser has joined forces with the good guys in a few games, he never ceases to kidnap Princess Peach and has repeatedly attempted to conquer the Mushroom Kingdom since his first appearance in Super Mario Bros. As the central villain of one of the world's most popular video game franchises, Bowser is one of the most recognizable video game villains ever.
In all of his various incarnations throughout the Super Mario Bros. series, he has been depicted as obsessed with Princess Peach. Though he repeatedly tried to kidnap her, Bowser has never declared what he plans to do with her once she's in his grasp — eat her, marry her to have children that are half human and half Koopa, or keep her locked in a cage. He is also consistently depicted as nasty, brutish, and not particularly bright (although he has said an incredible number of one-liners). The official website for Mario Kart DS says that he's the ultimate best racer, and however can punch the lightweights the hardest, the middleweights the second hardest, and Wario and Donkey Kong just two inches away.
Name issues
Bowser has been known by different names over the years, which have since amalgamated into his current title. In Japan, he has always been known as simply Koopa, short for Big Demon Koopa. When Super Mario Bros. came out in the US, he was given the more American name of Bowser, King of the Koopas. Confusingly, the American cartoons, and the Super Mario Bros. movie consistently referred to Bowser as King Koopa, never "Bowser". Somewhere along the line the two names merged, and he is now known in America as being Bowser Koopa, with "Koopa" as his — and his children's — surname.
Appearances in video games
The platformers
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In his first appearance, Bowser appeared at the end of every fourth level. Invariably, these areas were "dungeon stages" — characterized by white brick platforms, ample lava and spinning sticks of fire that could burn Mario or Luigi. Bowser waited at the end, on a bridge over a pool of lava. By grabbing the axe at the right end of the bridge, Mario or Luigi could cut the rope at the end, somehow making the bridge collapse and send Bowser into the pit of lava below. Alternatively, Bowser could also be killed by repeatedly shooting him with fireballs. In the first seven encounters, death by fireballs would revert Bowser into a lesser enemy — like a Goomba or Koopa Troopa — as these Bowsers were not the genuine villain. Only the eighth and last Bowser was the true one.
Though Bowser appeared in the Japanese sequel to Super Mario Bros. (a title known in the United States as Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels), he appeared and behaved identically to his original incarnation. Only in Super Mario Bros. 3 did Bowser return with a new plot — and a new look. For the first time, players saw Bowser with a mane of red hair — a look that has remained with Bowser ever since. Bowser only appeared at the end of the final level — his castle at the end of Dark Land — where Mario and Luigi had to trick him into crashing through his floor in order to defeat him.
This game also introduces Bowser's seven children, the Koopa Kids. Despite the presence of offspring, Nintendo has never explained if Bowser has had a wife.
Bowser's final appearance in a standard Mario platform adventure is Super Mario World. There, Bowser again appears only as the boss of the last level: his castle in the Valley of Bowser. Here, Nintendo again introduced something that would continue to be associated with Bowser through the rest of his video game appearances. Bowser rode the Clown Car.
In Super Mario 64 and Super Mario 64 DS, Bowser invades Peach's castle and inprisons its inhabitants in the walls with the magic of the stolen Power Stars. Mario — and in Super Mario 64 DS, Luigi, Wario and Yoshi as well — track Bowser down by collecting the stars, one by one. In the end, Mario must defeat Bowser by catching him by the tail and tossing him into explosive devices stationed around the ring in which Bowser and he fight. In these games, Bowser appears noticeably taller and more menacing than in previous games.
In Super Mario Sunshine, Bowser cons his newly introduced son, Bowser Jr., into dressing up as Mario and painting the resort of Isle Delfino with graffiti. The ploy ulitmately ends in Bowser Jr. kidnapping Princess Peach. The young Koopa explains to Mario that Bowser told him Peach was his mother. In the end, Mario battles both Bowser and Bowser Jr., both in a giant onsen, high atop Corona Volcano. When Mario wins, the father and son watch from a distance, and Bowser apologizes for his deception; his son dismisses it, only wishing to fight Mario again, which pleases his father.
Appearances as Baby Bowser
Chronologically, Bowser's first run-in with Mario is Super Mario Bros. However, if one looks at the storylines of the video games, Bowser and Mario's first meeting is in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. This game takes place before any of the other adventures. In fact, Mario, Luigi and Bowser are all still babies. Kamek, a Magikoopa who seems to be a sort of parental figure for Baby Bowser, divines that the delivery of two twin brothers will end in tragedy for the Koopas, so he flies off on his broomstick to intercept the stork on his way to dropping off Baby Mario and Baby Luigi. Though Kamek is the primary villain in the game, Baby Bowser is the game's final boss. Kamek's last-ditch attempt at victory is casting a spell that makes Baby Bowser grow to immense proportions.
Baby Bowser appears again in the sequel to Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, Yoshi's Story. The Yoshies must fight the young king in his private chambers, where he's keeping their Super Happy Tree.
Though Baby Bowser looks a lot like Bowser Jr., the characters are separate. However, it's presumable that the developers' design for Baby Bowser influenced the later design of Bowser Jr. Also, while Baby Mario and Baby Luigi have shown up alongside their adult counterparts, Bowser has yet to meet his infant self. Rather, he associates with his son and the small Bowser clones that populate the Mario Party games.
In the upcoming Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, Baby Bowser appears at the beginning of the game trying to abduct the baby Princess Peach, only to be thwarted by the baby Mario brothers. From early screenshots, it is assumed that Baby Bowser will ally himself with the brothers due to the alien Shroobs invading the Mushroom Kingdom.
The RPGs
In Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, Bowser teams up with Mario, Peach, and their two new friends Mallow and Geno in order to get his castle back from an extra-dimensional invader named Smithy (or Kajido in Japan). This is the only other game in the series in which Mario and Bowser have intentionally worked together, aside from Superstar Saga, and the only Mario RPG game in which Bowser is a member of your party.
In Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga, he tries to kidnap Peach but somebody else has gotten there first and so ends up in a complicated adventure to help Mario get her back so he can kidnap her. Ultimately, Bowser becomes possessed by the disembodied spirit of the evil bean witch, Cackletta. This fusion of Bowser's body and Cackletta's soul produces Bowletta, a gender-vague villain with brute strength and magic powers. Bowser is eventually freed when Mario and Luigi destroy Cackletta's spirit for good.
Bowser appears as the central villain of the first game in the Paper Mario series. In this adventure, Bowser steals the Star Rod, a mystical device that grants wishes, and uses it to lift Peach's entire castle into the sky. The Star Rod makes Bowser especially powerful, so Mario has to collect the powers of the seven Star Spirits before he can fight him again. Bowser's partner in crime in this adventure is Kammy Koopa, a sycophantic female Koopa witch.
Both Bowser and Kammy return for Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, in which they play more of a comedic role than a villainous one. Bowser is enraged when he discovers that someone other than he has captured Princess Peach and sets out on a mission of his own to find her, only to be beaten to the punch at every turn. He is playable in this game, although unlike in Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, he has his own sidescrolling stage that came up ocassionally between chapters. These stages mimic those Mario ventured through in the original Super Mario Bros. Bowser and Kammy finally catch up to Mario in the game's final moments. The ensuing fight ends up giving the evil Sir Grodus and chance to steal Princess Peach away to the chamber of the Shadow Queen.
Bowser appears as a boss in Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, teaming up with his younger self against the Mario Brothers.
In the RPGs, Bowser's personality is very comical, portraying him as a sort of oafish anti-hero.
Spinoffs
Bowser also appears in secondary Mario Games like Super Mario Kart, Mario Kart 64, Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, Mario Superstar Baseball, Tetris Attack, Mario Kart Super Circuit, Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, Mario Power Tennis and Super Smash Bros. Melee. In these games he is not the villain, but rather a selectable character that the player can choose to play as. (Also in SSB Melee, there exists a monstrous form of Bowser called Giga Bowser, much larger than any of the playable characters, appearing as a boss in need of vanquishing.) A giant Bowser also cameos in the SNES port of the original Sim City when a monster disaster strikes. Bowser has yet to become playable in the Mario Party series, however, and it is likely that he never will be, although a couple of the games allow the player to select the small Bowser clone. He is a disruption rather than a player in the upcoming Super Mario Strikers.
Appearances outside of video games
Bowser's first appearance in any Mario media outside of the games came in the obscure Mario anime movie, Super Mario Bros.: Peach-hime Kyushutsu Dai Sakusen. Here, he was voiced, oddly enough, by deep-voiced Japanese female soul singer Akiko Wada. It was in this OVA that started the idea of Bowser having unrequited affections for Peach, as he kidnaps her with the intention of forced marriage. Bowser was then featured as the villain of all three of the Japanese folk tales adaptated for the Super Mario Bros. 3 OVA films, even the Wicked Queen in Shirayukihime.
Before American game players could even consider him a regular in the games, Bowser was the regular antagonist for The Super Mario Bros. Super Show. Although he usually went by the "King Koopa" monnikor, Bowser frequently took on a new alter-ego, depending on whatever the episode was parodying. Although he had only appeared in one game released thus far in America, Bowser not only commanded his own troops, but also those of Wart from Super Mario Bros. 2.
In this series, Bowser was drawn completely different than in the artwork for the games. Here, he had no hair (as he did in Super Mario Bros.), and he wore a crown in place of his red mullet, not to mention he had green scales all over his body, except in the case of his belly, which was colored a darker shade of yellow than in the game artwork. In spite of the discrepancies from his official game artwork appearance, this version of Bowser frequently appeared in Mario merchandise over the course of the cartoons' run.
A live portrayal of the cartoon version of Bowser was featured as part of the Ice Capades that same year. Here, he is portrayed by Christopher Hewett (a point so obvious that one of the hosts of the show points out that he "looks like Mr. Belvedere"), wearing a rather poor costume with no mask. In this ice show, Bowser plans to use the NES he's stuck in to infect computers with a deadly virus (though that probably couldn't happen in real life). Interestingly, in the ice show, Bowser states that he only tries out villainous schemes like world domination just because he likes to cause trouble.
Even more obscure than his Ice Capades appearance, Bowser was, ironically, the host of a children's show. King Koopa's Kool Kartoons featured a man wearing the same Bowser costume as the one at the Ice Capades, except this time, the costume actually had a mask that resembled King Koopa's face. In each episode, this man would play cartoons for a live audience of children and would then give them gift certificiates and/or various NES products. Perhaps because the show was only broadcast in Southern California during the holiday season of 1989, little information is known about it, such as why Bowser was hosting a Krusty the Klown-esque show in the first place.
Bowser's next media appearance was being the regular antagonist in the Mario comics published as part of the Nintendo Comics System, which used the same design as the cartoons. It was these comics that confirmed Bowser's full name to be King Bowser Koopa.
Back in the world of Mario's cartoons, Bowser continued to regularly antagonize the Mushroom Kingdom regularly on The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3, this time with the help of his seven kids. Although Bowser liked to think of himself as a really nasty villain, he cared very much for his kids, often doing whatever he could to please them (especially the constantly-whining Kootie Pie). Bowser would stay the main villain on the Super Mario World cartoon, although there his appearances were less frequent.
Bowser returned to American-published comics with a manga-like serial based on Super Mario World that ran in Nintendo Power throughout 1992. This comic's storyline was apparently inspired by the aforementioned anime movie, as it also featured Bowser intending to marry Peach in order to take over her kingdom. This time, he had also captured many Yoshies and had a hypnotist Magikoopa trance them into carrying his gigantic wedding cake. But even after having the same Magikoopa hypnotize Peach into agreeing to marry him, Bowser still didn't emerge victorious.
Bowser was then featured as the villain of the Super Mario Bros. movie, where he was the tyrannical ruler of the parallel city of Dinohattan. In the movie, Bowser had the appearance of a human evolved from a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Not content with ruling one dimension, Bowser was constantly in search of a piece of meteorite that he planned to use to bring him to Earth to conquer it. In the end, though, not only does Bowser fail in his attempted takeover, he is also zapped by his own de-evolution guns, first de-evolving him into a T-Rex, and then nothing more than primeval ooze.
Bowser also was briefly mentioned in Gex (video game series) 2 on the PlayStation (although, ironically, there was no mention of him in the N64 version).
Koopa Clown Car
The Koopa Clown Car is King Bowser's favoured mode of transportation. First used in the SNES game Super Mario World, it resembles a manic white clown face with a green propeller on its underside. Top speeds and maneuverability are unknown, but if the Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour opening movie is to be believed, it can just make running pace, with King Bowser inside. The Clown Car is very spacious: it can hold the Koopa King, a kidnapped Princess and a couple of Mecha-Koopas, to deal with any bothersome plumbers, or a few Bob-ombs.
In addition, the Koopa Clown Car has also been featured in Super Mario RPG, Paper Mario, Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. It was also used in the Super Mario World cartoon episode "Send in the Clown", which, fittingly, revolved around a phony circus that Bowser was staging.
Bowser's children
In Super Mario Bros. 3, Bowser is for the first time joined by his seven children, the Koopalings. Their names are Ludwig Von Koopa, Iggy Koopa, Lemmy Koopa, Roy Koopa, Wendy O. Koopa, Morton Koopa Jr., and Larry Koopa. On their cartoon shows, their names were changed to Kooky, Hip, Hop, Bully, Cootie Pie, Big Mouth, and Cheatsy, respectively. Who exactly is the mother of these children is unknown.
The Koopalings continued to accompany Bowser for Super Mario World, Mario Is Missing, and Yoshi's Safari, as well as the cartoon shows and comic books, but mysteriously disappeared afterwards. They would, however, make a returning appearance as mini-bosses in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga.
In Super Mario Sunshine, Bowser is joined by what appears to be his eighth kid, Bowser Jr., who later goes on to serve as his partner in subsequent Mario sports game.
Throughout the Mario Party series, Bowser is accompanied by a seemingly infinite number of little Koopas whom resemble him, dubbed "Baby Bowsers" until Mario Party 4, at which point they were called "Koopa Kids". Starting at Mario Party 5, 3 differently-colored Koopa Kids (Blue, Red, and Green K. Kid) appeared. In the console games, there was only one of each color, but Mario Party Advance featured many in the Koopa Kid mini-games.
The real relationship between Bowser and the Koopa Kids is unclear presently. Some fans speculate that he had one child that he cloned using the Koopa magic referenced in the manual to Super Mario Bros. Others suggest that they are simply clones of Bowser himself. Until Nintendo says otherwise, speculation is all we have. [GS]
Bowser's voice
Bowser's first voice was that of Issac Marshall, in Mario Kart 64. Then he was voiced by Scott Burns, in the following video games:
- Super Mario Sunshine
- Mario Party 4
- Mario Kart: Double Dash!!
- Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour
- Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga
- Mario Power Tennis
- Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
- Mario Party 6
Lately he has been voiced by Frank Welker, in Mario Party 5, Mario Kart DS, Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time and Super Mario 64 DS.
In the cartoons, Bowser was voiced by Harvey Atkin, and in the movie, he was portrayed by Dennis Hopper.
