The Mushroom Kingdom’s Least Wanted: MIA Mario Villains

You can’t have a great hero without a great villain, right? Superman and Lex Luthor, Batman and The Joker, Luke Skywalker and dear old Dad, James Bond and monogamy, Indiana Jones and Nazis, and of course, everybody’s favorite Italian stereotype and a big turtle-dragon-asaurus! It just makes sense.

But… lots of great heroes have more than one villain, too. Superman and Brainiac, Batman and Two-Face, Luke Skywalker and George Lucas, James Bond and not having AIDS , Indiana Jones and George Lucas, Mario and… who? You’d never know it judging by the main games in the Mario series for the last couple decades, but Mario does have a rogues gallery consisting of characters that don’t rhyme with “Schnauzer.” Who are they and what happened to them? Read on!

The list is surprisingly long and reaches all the way back to Mario’s very first game. I’d say the best way to do this is chronologically with two VERY important exceptions. I’ll get back to those first two mystery guys at the end of the list. But first:

WART

Wart was the villain in Super Mario Bros. 2, the weird, not-totally-beloved red-headed stepchild of the original Super Mario Bros. games. Fittingly, Wart is something of an unloved red-headed stepchild himself, his only on-screen appearance after this being a cameo in The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening.

He also gets name-dropped in Mario Superstar Baseball and Super Paper Mario, not to mention “WART” is one of the player names you can randomly generate in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The neighbor Wart Jr. in the Animal Crossing games might be a reference as well, though the two characters share almost nothing in common.

What’s funny is that Super Mario Bros. 2 literally is a “stepchild” of sorts in the Super Mario Bros. series. As plenty of nerds already know, what we call Super Mario Bros. 2 in the States actually started out as a sort of Arabian Nights-themed platformer in Japan called Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic. Regardless, plenty of gameplay elements and characters from this game went on to become staples of the core Mario series: the ability to pick up and toss items and enemies, Shy-Guys, Bob-ombs and Birdo (the first transsexual character in video games) are all just as much a part of the Mario series as mushrooms, jumping and Yoshi. Red potions that take you to another dimension, Mouser, and of course Wart, sadly were not so lucky.

So what happened? Why haven’t we ever seen Wart again? Some would be quick to point out that at the end of Super Mario Bros. 2 we find out the entire adventure was a dream of Mario’s, so Wart, along with the other denizens of Sub-Con were never real… but that’s not necessarily the case! Shy-guys, Bob-ombs and Birdo all make appearances in later games!

The other argument is that Wart was kind of a dumbshit and had his room stocked with the very thing that can kill him, delicious (face-having?!) veggies. But look at Bowser’s career of villainy: the Koopa King has been making the same bone-headed moves since day one! And that’s probably the real reason we haven’t seen Wart again, he’s just too similar to that prima donna of Mario antagonists. Just a year later, we’d see a very different type of villain face off against the prince of pipes:

TATANGA

Wow… that’s a pretty disappointing way too make a first impression. But hey, that’s the official art for Tatanga in his debut game, Super Mario Land. He was a lot more bad-ass looking in the comics:

Tatanga, whether as a dweeby little weasel in a spaceship or as an iron-fisted bad-ass space monster holds the honor of being the first space alien in the Mario games. Kind of strange for the more fantasy-based Super Mario universe, but Super Mario Land is kind of a strange entry in the series. Luigi, Peach, and Toad not only don’t make an appearance, they’re not even mentioned. The worlds explored in Mario Land aren’t the stock platformer settings: ice world, fire world, jungle, castle, ect. Instead Mario’s adventure takes him through worlds based on ancient Egypt, China, Easter Island and Atlantis, and breaks up the running and jumping with side-scrolling shoot ‘em up levels. For real:

With so many odd elements in this game, it’s probably not a huge surprise that Mario Land and its successors weren’t made by the original Mario team, but a different (though no less talented) team at Nintendo. And while Mario has yet to go all Gradius on Bowser, this wasn’t the last we saw of Tatanga the Mysterious Spaceman.

Tatanga pops up as a boss again in Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins, but in case the picture didn’t make it clear, he’s no longer the man in charge. Still naked though, so I guess good for him. Like Wart he gets a shout-out in Mario Baseball, and Daisy’s trophies in the Smash Bros. games reference him, but other than that, his only other role is as a flunkie for another lost Mario villain:

WARIO

I know, he’s not really lost, is he? I mean he’s in just about every Mario spin-off, he has two of his own series, both of which are going strong today. So how is the W-meister a lost villain?

Let’s compare the money-grubbing, fat, gross, rude, micro-game making anti-hero above, with the character in this video:

AHH!! HOLY SHIT! WHY WAS THERE GREEN STUFF HANGING FROM HIS TEETH?

Even when he starred in his first game, there was still the feeling that this guy was bad news and that playing Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land meant helping the bad guy win:

And the game itself carries this tone too. A lot of the minor baddies that populate the levels can’t even hurt Wario. In fact bumping into baddies usually knocks them on their asses, instead of damaging the player. It’s a ton of fun, and sort of a parody of the classic Super Mario games. Wario isn’t out to save anyone, he wants to steal a huge gold statue of Princess Peach… to pawn it back to her for enough cash to finally get his own castle (stealing Mario’s castle in 6 Golden Coins didn’t end well for the anti-Mario). And just when it’s in his smelly grasp, Mario swoops in, flying a helicopter, gives Wario a little salute, and airlifts the thing back to the Mushroom Kingdom. It’s a pretty good gag and a fun way to end a game where you play as the villain, but it also established Wario as less of a crazed, evil bastard, and more as a crass jerk who wants to sleaze his way to greatness, but can’t seem to catch a break. And this shift is really what makes him such a fun and unique Mario character. It doesn’t hurt that Wario Land II is one of the greatest platformers ever made.

That said I do occasionally miss the days when Wario was insane, evil and apparently a pyromaniac. He’s one of the most fun evil twin characters ever, and I’m glad his origins have been kept vague. And while it seems like his name is just Mario with the M flipped upside down into a W, it actually works on another level too: “warui” is a Japanese word meaning bad, so mashing it together with Mario gives you Wario.

Sadly, after Wario’s reign of weirdness, the only new villains in the Mario world come from the RPG spin-off games. I say sadly because characters introduced in the RPG spin-offs have no chance of being seen ever again. The star spirits from Paper Mario showed up in a Mario Party sequel, but as far as I know that’s the best an original RPG character has managed. Some of them got trophies in Smash Brothers, but other than that… these guys are done for. It’s kind of a bummer actually, some of the characters these games come up with are pretty terrific and would make fun additions to the “real” Mario cast. But, the “Mario RPG Ghetto” is very real, and for better or worse, these villains are trapped in it for the rest of their miserable days.

SMITHY

Smithy is an extra-dimensional weapons manufacturing robot that kicks Bowser out of his own castle and just about takes over the world in Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. Tatanga was Mario’s first space-villain, but Smithy is the first mechanized menace in the Mushroom Kingdom. Like any good JRPG final boss, he has about a million different forms you have to slog through to kill him. Surely his final/true form is awe-inspiring and bad-ass, right? I mean, this guy unseated Bowser and sent an army of sentient weapons to take over the whole continent, I can’t wait to see what he

Oh.

CACKLETTA

Hey, is that a girl villain? It is! Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga is a doofy title for a game, but it introduces us to the witch Cackletta, who steals Peach’s voice to take over the neighboring Beanbean Kingdom. It’s a pretty standard video game plotline at first, but after a couple wacky plot twists the witch has possessed Bowser (he’s such an attention whore!) and morphed them into a weird conglomeration:

By the end of the game, Mario and Luigi kill not just Cackletta, not just Bowletta, but Cackletta’s soul. Even if she wasn’t trapped in the Mario RPG Ghetto, I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be coming back.

THE SHADOW QUEEN

Hey, another girl villain, cool! She’s probably a funny, wacky boss like Cackletta, right? Actually the villain of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is a one-thousand year-old eldritch abomination who covers the earth in blackness. Though she does have a penchant for possession like Cackletta:

Soul-crushing darkness has never been so adorable! This is likely the only time outside of Smash Bros. or Mario Party where Mario can bludgeon Peach with a hammer and not get the Mushroom Kingdom equivalent to the death penalty. Which is probably like… getting tickled for ten hours straight no matter how much you yell “stop for real!”

What makes The Shadow Queen really cool is that for the majority of the game, you’re racing to stop a completely different baddie, Sir Grodus, the leader of The Xtacles The X-Nauts.

In return for reviving The Shadow Queen, Sir Grodus gets murdered right in front of you holy shit.

THE SHROOB PRINCESSES

The novelty of female villains and space villains now completely gone, Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time tries to keep things fresh by having a pair of ladies who are also space aliens as villains. They’re pretty straight-forward alien invader-types, though while one is a dainty, Peach-looking creature, the other is a big ol’ man-beast:

COUNT BLECK

Count Bleck is some kind of inter-space emo-pimp creature and the villain (SO WE THINK) of Super Paper Mario. Really, there are two things that are awesome about Bleck:

Yep, Bleck and his minions trick Bowser and the Princess into marrying each other, and even better turn Luigi into a cocky, gentleman-thief called Mr. L that pilots a mecha called Brobot L-Type:

There’s some convoluted back story to Count Black and his minions, and eventually you find out that he wants to destroy the world over a lost love, and that’s interesting I guess, but nowhere near as cool as Mr. L and his Brobot.

FAWFUL

Fawful actually made his first appearance in the first Mario & Luigi game as Cackletta’s nerdy inventor Engrish-spouting sidekick. His schtick was surprising and hilarious in Superstar Saga, so much so that he sort of side-stepped the Mario RPG Ghetto and appeared as a shop-keeper in Partners in Time. And then again as the main villain in Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story. While “I HAVE FURY” and “The mustard of your doom!” were funny in the first game, I was over it by the third.

So that wraps up the review of Mario’s rogues gallery… with two very important exceptions:

DONKEY KONG

Look I know this is hard. Everyone loves Donkey Kong Country, but that sharp-dressed gorilla started out as a damsel-snatching brute that basically set the mold for Bowser. Here’s that beloved ape as he was in in his days as an early 80s n’er-do-well:

So what happened? Why did Nintendo allow Molester Kong to race Karts and play Tennis and adventure with chimps wearing sweater vests and baseball caps? Well in Mario and Donkey Kong’s second game, we either find out that Donkey Kong is just as good as Mario… or Mario is just as bad as Donkey Kong:

Look in the upper left corner. Donkey Kong is in a cage, put there by Mario, who is whipping wild animals into a frenzy so they’ll attack DK’s baby son. Clearly this means we have one more entry in Mario’s rogues gallery:

MARIO

Mario played villain in the second game he starred in. Sure he screwed things up for Wario at the end of Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land, but his intentions there were heroic. In Donkey Kong Jr. he’s imprisoning an endangered wild animal and trying to kill a baby gorilla. Not surprisingly, Mario has yet to play a villain in one of his own games, but it’d make for a hell of a twist in the next one.

And before any fellow dweebs try to tell me “But what about Shadow Mario or Cosmic Mario?!” Keep in mind that Shadow Mario was just a disguise for Bowser Jr., who unfortunately is still in plenty of games, and Cosmic Mario has shown up as recently as Super Mario 3D Land. So while weird clones of Mario love to cock-block him (or clam-jam Peach, depending on how you want to look at it), Mario himself has yet to reprise his role of antagonist.