﻿Hi everyone, I’m Andrew,
and while 'How to Kill' usually focuses on slashers, serial killers, and movie monsters,
I can think of another adversary who might be even more resilient than Michael Myers:
Bowser, King of the Koopas.
This terrifying turtle has menaced the Mushroom Kingdom for well over thirty years,
but if a simple plumber can take him down time and time again,
so can you.
I believe in you.
So snag some stars and stock up on shrooms,
because this is
How to Kill Bowser
Let’s-a-go!
So long-eh, Bowser!
Lucky for us, and the brothers Mario,
the reigning ruler of the Koopa clan isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Bowser has a very bad habit of living in places that are hazardous to his health,
leading to plenty of death by
Unsafe Environment
Bowser first appeared in, what else, ‘Super Mario Bros. 1,’
although you don’t actually run into him until world 8.
The first seven Bowsers you fight are cleverly disguised body doubles,
goombas and buzzy beetles forced to look like their king through dark magic,
and die for his cause.
I'm so sorry...
It’s easiest to see when you take the doppelgangers down with fireballs,
but that’s not how most players make Bowser meet his maker.
See, the King of the Koopas has a real thing for bridges,
tiny, easily destructible bridges suspended over a fiery pit of lava,
and for whatever reason, his favorite hangout spot is just inches away from the axe that can bring the whole thing tumbling down.
This scenario has played out over a ton of Mario games,
you make it to the end of a level,
grab an axe or pound a switch,
and send Bowser to a fiery death in a boiling pool of magma.
Now, that’s not always enough to kill him.
Sometimes, it merely strips the flesh off of Bowser’s dry bones,
leaving him a rampaging revenant until his son can resurrect him in an unholy rite.
Other times, it sets him up for a size upgrade courtesy of Kamek,
but in the end, it’s still just a bridge too far. Zing!
Death by drawbridge is probably the most common method of Koopa killing,
but Bower has put himself in plenty of other unsafe situations.
In ‘Mario 3,’ Bowser has bricked up his bottomless pit,
but after a few errant ground pounds,
he crashes through and falls to his doom.
You gotta build a good foundation.
In ‘Mario 64,’ he’s on a slightly more stable platform,
and even if he falls off, he can jump back just fine.
But for whatever reason, Bowser decorated his domain with giant, extremely touch-sensitive mines,
that explode the instant Mario tosses him into them.
I mean, I get it, if Mario gets tossed into them, they'd blow up, but you're kinda taking a lot of chances there, aren't you Bowser baby?
From 'Sunshine’s' giant tub with big red targets,
to the butt-roasting planetoid in ‘Galaxy 1,’
Bowser has been bested by his battleground on too many occasions to count.
When will he learn that successful conquest all about three things:
Location, location, location.
Seriously, when you’re making a last stand,
maybe there’s a more sensible choice than a giant POW block.
This ain't the time to be practicing feng shui.
Bowser’s been brutalized by so many stage hazards,
he should just set up shop at Final Destination.
It wouldn’t be a bad idea to turn items off, either,
because Bowser is constantly being killed by
Friendly Fire
In ‘Super Mario World,’
Bowser solved his gravity gaffes by taking to the skies in his Koopa Clown Car instead.
And while his flying face is a fearsome opponent,
apparently he never thought to build any weapons into it,
because his main means of attack is throwing Mechakoopas at Mario,
which can be easily kicked back up at the tyrannical turtle.
And after getting cracked in the face by enough clockwork Koopas,
the dictator is down for the count.
Don’t get me wrong, the cute little hover car was a great idea,
but much like Dr. Robotnik,
Bowser forgot the most important ingredient:
A roof.
Without that, there’s nothing stopping Mario from hopping in, hijacking his ride,
and ripping Bowser to bloody shreds with the unprotected propeller.
It doesn’t matter what kind of weapons he uses,
even when Bowser pulls a Thanos and drops a million meteors on Mario,
he just sends them flying back into his face.
Should have taken a page out of Mario's book, Star-Lord.
Game over!
And lest you think boys have all the fun,
Peach was able to turn the tables on Bowser, too,
by batting back his Bob-ombs until he’s blasted into oblivion.
For Bower’s most recent romp in ‘Mario Odyssey,’
the King of the Koopas upped his fashion game by trading in his usual nudity for a spiffy white tux,
complete with a top hat that really packs a punch.
No, seriously, it punches you.
It’s pretty useless for ranged attacks though,
so when Bowser flings it at Mario,
the peerless plumber can take it himself and pummel his foe into a bloody pulp.
Now, this doesn’t finish Bowser for good,
he survives to get his proposal hilariously blown off by Peach,
and is then stranded on the Moon,
where he will presumably suffer a slow painful death from oxygen deprivation.
Speaking of slow, painful death,
we should talk about the ‘Super Mario Bros.’ movie.
Dennis Hopper’s “Koopa” is a far cry from the bwa-ha-ha brute from the games,
The lizard king, thank you very much.
Goomba!
but he’s pretty much the best and only good part of the movie.
He’s a more suave, refined tyrant,
but he makes the same mistakes as his pixelated peer.
After a last minute assist from the cutest Bob-omb ever,
Mario and Luigi use the dictator’s own de-evolution guns to transform him back into a primordial soup.
See ya later, alligator!
Campbell's Koopa noodle, possibilities!
Primordial soup. It was a Cup O' Noodles joke. Laugh!
Word of advice, your majesty?
You need to learn some self confidence.
You’re a six-ton fire-belching dragon turtle with razor sharp spikes,
you don’t need all of those gimmicks,
you can roast any rabble rousers with just a single breath.
At a certain point, you’ve got put all those gimmicks aside and believe in yourself.
Of course, that goes both ways, too,
because Mario and pals can pack a mean punch,
and destroy Bowser through
Brute Force
Going back to the bridges from the first game,
you didn’t actually need to touch the axe to topple Bowser.
A few well-placed fireballs would also do the trick,
but for the most part, destroying the devious turtle requires some performance enhancing powerups.
In the obscure ‘80s anime, for example,
it takes a cocktail of a Super Mushroom, Fire Flower, and a Starman to stop Bowser in his first animated outing,
which ends with Mario tossing the turtle by the tail twenty years before ‘Mario 64.’
I love a good callback.
So long-eh, Bowser!
You won’t always find enough power inside a question-mark block, though,
sometimes you need to bring in the big guns.
Like in ‘Paper Mario,’
where the big guy uses the Star Rod to make himself invincible,
until Mario and the starlings take Peach’s positive vibes and turn them into the Peach beam,
that rips through Bowser’s defenses and destroys him.
When it comes to the various flavors of Mario RPGs,
Bowser usually gets merced in the first act by a bigger, badder foe,
like Smithy, Elder Princess Shroob, the Dark Star, etc.
But, true to form, the Koopa King never stays down for long,
even though he might have a nasty bout of amnesia,
or find himself possessed by an unholy evil.
And when you do fight him, there are no traps or environmental hazards,
just some turn-based ass-kicking courtesy of the Mario Bros.
Still, these scenarios are pretty rare,
and for the most part,
you’ll find yourself facing off with Bowser in a pure platformer setting.
If you’ve got a Yoshi, you might have the edge,
because there’s nothing better at killing Koopa kings like a pissed off dinosaur with a belly full of eggs.
For Bowser’s entire life,
Yoshi has been mercilessly delivering dozens of eggs straight to Bowser’s skull.
Special delivery!
Yoshi doesn’t care if you’re a baby,
or if you’ve magically grown hundreds of feet tall and turned into a Mode 7 sprite,
he’ll just poop out bigger eggs and beat Bowser to death with them.
Bowser has been stomped, slammed, scorched,
but never truly slain,
unlike that wuss Ganon.
Still, he should really consider an alternate career path.
He’s got children to think of, after all,
and he’s a monster of so many talents:
tennis star, hotel magnate, mixed-martial artist,
and the best darn kart racer this side of Kong island.
Still, he just can’t seem to get over his princess fixation,
and even after thirty years of taking a beating,
I think it’ll be a long time before we say "so long-eh, Bowser” for good.