For over 30 years, the Super Mario Bros. series has been one of the greatest franchises in gaming history. And as dynamic as the Mario brothers are, they wouldn’t have made it this far without a good villain. Fortunately, they’ve got a fantastic villain in Bowser a.k.a. King Koopa, who happens to be an iconic character in his own right. With Bowser making his return later this year in the highly anticipated Super Mario Odyssey, now is the perfect time to look back at the lore behind one of our favorite video game bad guys.
The YouTube channel Did You Know Gaming? recently posted a video that put the spotlight solely on Bowser and brought to light some of the lesser known aspects that went into his creation. If you’ve ever seen the original box art for Super Mario Bros., you may recall that the first iteration of Bowser looked very different from his final form. While Shigeru Miyamoto was inspired to create Bowser by the Ox King from the anime film, Alakazam the Great, designer Takashi Tezuka played a very influential role in crafting the design that ultimately made Bowser such a memorable villain.
Intriguingly, the video also points out how to reveal that various enemies impersonated Bowser in the first Super Mario Bros. NES game, and demonstrated how Bowser could appear to be made up with four colors when the system could only display three colors at that time. Additionally, the video also touched on the origins of Bowser’s name, Bowser’s haiku from Super Mario Bros. RPG, and the status of Bowser’s seven Koopalings, as well as the amusing musical influences behind their names. The Koopalings were even Bowser’s children at one point, but thanks to retcons, Bowser Jr. is an only child and all of the Koopalings are just henching for their king.
What did you think about Bowser’s history as related by this video? Let us know in the comment section below!
Image Credit: Nintendo