The Mario cast changes less than the laws of gravity. They're the most popular video game characters of all time and remain the reason 99 percent of all defeated video game enemies have footprints instead of haircuts.
As a consequence, Bowser and Mario
have been going at it for 25 years, longer than most real wars last. Figuring
it was probably time somebody honored their eternal antagonism by checking the
scoreboard, we dug in for the long, pedantic process of picking a winner in a
fictional conflict. What we got instead was the story of the most depressingly
one-sided rivalry in the history of not just video games, but possibly the
world.
What we’ve come up with are 4
reasons why Bowser is CLEARLY the most successful video game character of all
time.
The plot of Super Mario Bros. is
essentially the tale of one long real estate struggle, as Bowser attempts to
take over the Mushroom Kingdom and Mario shows up way too late to prevent him
from doing so. Despite forming the kingdom's entire defense force, Mario rarely
hears about an invasion until after Bowser has had enough time to build a
series of castles. Archaeologists have responded to invasions faster.
If he has time to build THIS, you're too slow. |
While Mario is always in crisis mode, Bowser's motives seem to oscillate between good old-fashioned land lust and not having anything better to do on a Sunday. One of the few times Mario arrives early enough to see Bowser make off with the Princess (Super Mario Galaxy 2) was when it was such an incredibly minor part of the plan. Bowser was clearly doing it just to piss Mario off. And when you can mount a planetary assault just to shout "Screw You!," you're winning so hard the scoreboard turns into a diamond.
The instant Bowser wants the
kingdom, he has it -- his life is what the God of the Old Testament would wish
for if he was given a magic lantern from the spirit of Alexander the Great. He
just sits back on his throne of fire and watches Mario scamper through the
obstacle course that he designed. Hell, some of the time, he probably
stages an invasion just because there's nothing good on TV.
#3. Personal Life
Mario's the most recognizable
family-friendly hero this side of Mickey Mouse, yet he's fighting to defend his
home against a villain who is better at that as well. Bowser has a
bigger family than Catholic sumo wrestlers, while the most famous hero in gaming
is a 40-something bachelor, presumably still living knee-deep in mushroom pizza
boxes, since we know he doesn't own more than one set of clothes. There are
college students more mature than him -- at least they don't have to gather
coins on their way to meet their girlfriends.
One big happy, evil family! |
We know Bowser's home life has to be
good, because even in the most annoying embodiments of the "rebellious
teenager phase" possible, Bowser Jr. and the Koopalings still hang out
with their father, learning the family trade. We never see his wife...Bowser keeps the woman he loves safe from harm and out of
the games.
The closest thing that Mario has to
a stable relationship is the perpetually kidnapped Peach. While the game
presents her prolonged disappearances as something between a shell game and a
hostage situation, she's never as thankful as you'd hope when you rescue her.
Meanwhile, she's perfectly happy to
race Go-Karts against Bowser. Their continual kidnapping/getting rescued game
of cat-and-mouse seems more flirtatious than anything. In the real world, after
the third time a woman disappears with the same man, either common sense or the
police usually tell you to stop filing missing-person reports, let alone smash
up his place trying to get her back.
So Bowser's got Mario's girl and
a Mrs. Bowser somewhere tending a beautiful three-bedroom castle. Mario has the
worst job in the world, and in his downtime, he's a lonely plumber.
#2. Learning From Mistakes
STOP STEPPING ON MY FREAKING MUSHROOMS!! What a dick... |
You can't blame Mario for having
less natural talent than Bowser. He's just a tiny plumber in a magical world
where both flora and fauna are deadly to the touch. Bowser, on the other hand,
is made of spikes and flame in a world where those are the most unavoidable
causes of death. He's also apparently the master of industrial-level
technology, while Mario relies on druid-level flowers and mushrooms for
weaponry.
When you've got that much going
against you, the only way to even the odds is to adapt on the fly and innovate
new strategies in the face of defeat. The good guys in the Mario Bros. universe
aren't the best at adapting. They're so bad at learning important lessons from their
mistakes that they make the bad guys from G.I. Joe look like the good guys from
G.I. Joe. Defending the Mushroom Kingdom should not be hard: It's a
magical kingdom of unlimited fantasy where stars are cute, flowers grant
magical abilities and everything with a shell is trying to kill you.
All they would have to do is station
guards at every entrance and give them very simple instructions: If someone
trying to enter the mushroom kingdom has a shell, he's not allowed in. Just
stop him, turn him around and get ready to do it again in 30 seconds when he
bounces off something else and comes back. That's not racial profiling; that's
common sense. And besides, Mario could never be accused of racial profiling...he comes from Japan, looks like a Mexican and has an Italian accent. If that's not diverse, I don't know what is.
Seriously though, how many times does Bowser have to invade, conquer, kidnap, and kill people before they stop inviting him to golf tournaments and race go-karts on the weekends? You might as well just ask Bowser if he could come invade for a little.
Bowser, meanwhile, has learned every
lesson the games have to give him -- and those lessons are all "Have a
party, buddy!"
Yep, he has a logo too |
#1. A Fate Worse Than Death
If a sports analyst wants to use
math to say Team A is much better than Team B, he'll often say, "If they
played 10 times on a neutral field, Team A would win nine times out of
10." If Team A is the Miami Heat and everyone on Team B is in a
wheelchair, he might say they'd win 999 out of 1,000. Well, we don't have to
use hypothetical scenarios for the matchup between Bowser and Mario.
They've played on a neutral field
billions of times and, whether you choose to believe that there's a Mario cloning machine just off screen at the beginning of each game or use
quantum physics' notion of multiple universes, the fact is that Mario has set
out on a quest to defeat Bowser billions of times, and his winning percentage
has to be somewhere well below .001 percent.
Mario has died millions, maybe
billions of pointless, futile deaths. His incredibly mortal coil is repeatedly
flung into everything from medieval spiked pits to relativistic black holes --
everything human technology has ever achieved has been used to kill Mario.
Now granted, most video game
characters are slightly more expendable than shotgun ammunition in Texas, but
Mario has it worse, because he's the family-friendly one. He's the My First
Character for everyone introduced to video games to try controlling. And since
he was the character that launched the NES and popularized home gaming in the
first place, most of the people who have ever controlled him had no idea what
they were doing at first. He's died more often at the hands of children than
ants, and was steered clumsily off more cliffs in the 80s alone than the entire
history of cars in Ireland.
Add the fact that most casual
Marionizers never beaten the game, and you've got an endless expanse of parallel
worlds where Bowser is not just winning, but winning with ease. In any coherent
universe in which Bowser exists, the odds are extremely likely that Mario is
either a minor blip on his security radar that went away within 15 seconds, or
an army of clones he entertains himself by killing over and over again.
In the end, Mario vs Bowser might be the most unhealthy
rivalry the world of fiction has seen to date. It's hard to wrap your mind around just how one-sided this little feud is, but Bowser has got it all figured out. He loses occasionally, but after winning around 10 BILLION times, I think it's understandable why he always comes back for more.
WE ARE....CULLINATION!
No comments:
Post a Comment