Your stance on Bowser?

Of course Princess Peach doesn't further his plans, but does it need to? Whenever he grabs her his plan is already set in stone anyway. I can say the same thing for the rpgs on how they always come up with some contrived reason for why they need Peach for their plan.

''People'' like the Mario Bros who pretty much always freakout whenever he appears.

They wrote Bowser to be the villain in the end for a very good reason, because its unexpected. When it comes to the rpgs,(and I want to emphasise that part) Bowser being the villain is the RARE thing to happen, its being unpredictable by being predictable. It is certainly not out of character since in the main series he's shown to be a fairly effective villain and not a bumbling idiot.

1. In the RPGs, maybe, but he's already the final boss of nearly every one of the platformers, but apparently that's not enough for Bowser's blind fanboys. That RPGs should be a moment for other villains to shine, without him hogging the spotlight, but they just couldn't keep a good thing going. They just shoehorned Bowser into Dream Team at the expense of Antasma, who was a far more interesting villain; someone who, unlike Bowser, hasn't had more than his share of time in the spotlight over the years. That was probably the one chance Antasma had to truly shine, and they completely blew it by wasting his potential.

2. Yes, it is out of his character, because as I pointed out on the last page, it was shown in the first Paper Mario that loyalty means a lot to Bowser ("The Koopa Bros. and Tutankoopa were complete wimps, but they were still loyal to me! I can't forgive Mario for disrespecting me!"). There were plenty of instances where Antasma could have turned on Bowser (particularly the part with the Dream Beats, and the part where he convinced Bowser to go to sleep), but he didn't. Like I said before, I honestly find it hard to believe that the same guy who couldn't tell a poster apart from the real thing is somehow magically able to tell whether or not someone's planning to betray him.

Oh sure, just blow off the series main antagonist for a generic count Dracula rip off. Seriously Antasmas had no potential and the developers clearly knew that. His design wasn't even all that unique, he's just Cackletta with a bat motif and nowhere near as entertaining as she was.

So because of a small line of dialogue in one game he can't betray anyone? Bowser likes loyalty when its to him. The most defining aspect of Bowser's character is that he is a greedy, extremely egotistical tyrant with delusions of grandeur. Everything in his mind exists for his own needs, his ego is further emphasised with how his army's flag is his face, his face is on just about everything he owns. Due to that nobody in his mind is equal to him. When Antasma asks him to work with him Bowser tells him ''I don't ''vork'' with anyone'' and thats true. Up to that point we had never seen him working alongside another villain. So him betraying Antasma in the end makes sense because its his needs ultimately before anyone else's. Plus after getting screwed over by Fawful in the previous game its not that unreasonable for him to have learned from that.

Antasma had no potential?

Haha, he has nothing but potential. He is basically an empty slate right now. He could be a lot of things. He could have been a lot of things. Bowser is the one who is coming up empty on potential right now. He seems to be falling into the same generic character lapses. No room to call Antasma generic when Bowser defines the word in his last few appearances.

1. Yeah, because Bowser is just brimming with originality, right? I mean, there totally aren't any other gigantic reptiles who've kidnapped a princess.

2. Antasma's design was supposed to have been an homage to all the previous Mario & Luigi antagonists, not just Cackletta.


That "I don't work well with others" excuse was a load of crap, and do you know why? In the previous RPGs, he was able to work alongside Mario with no problem, and he's his single, most hated enemy. In fact, Bowser even offered to team up with him in Super Mario RPG and Superstar Saga. Yes, it could be argued that he meant that he doesn't work well with other villains, but the Mario & Sonic series contradicts that completely, since he worked alongside Dr. Robotnik just fine without scheming to betray him.

Again, that just goes to show that his betrayal of Antasma was nothing more than their way of shoehorning Bowser into the final boss slot just to cater to his fanboys. Yes, I'll admit that Bowser was treated a bit unfairly in the past RPGs, especially Superstar Saga, but that doesn't excuse all the blatant favoritism that's been getting played towards him as of late.

Find me something that actually looks and acts like Bowser does, saying ''a reptile that kidnaps princesses'' is like me calling Fawful just another mad scientist, it completely ignores whatever qualities that makes the character unique.

Super Mario Rpg completely screws up Bowser in pretty much everyway he doesn't even breath fire in that game for crying out loud. In Superstar saga he agrees to help out but makes it clear from the very beginning that the moment they save her he is going to take her for his own, further proving my point that he only does things he personally will benefit from.

And please don't try to bring the Mario and Sonic series into this, thats so non canon its hilarious, I mean for crying out loud those games take place on earth as we know it.

1. The other villains would be different. In fact, they almost always are.

2. Platformers have little story, you are right. No excuse though. K. Rool had more personality and he was in a platformer.

3. Plenty of Mario characters are deep. Have you played the games this forum is named after?

4. Mario is pretty deep in parts. Mario is like a pool, it has a deep end and a shallow end.

I called him a Dracula rip off because of his slavic accent, the fact that he turns into a bat, and does basically everything Count Dracula does except drink blood.

Yeah Bowser doesn't have any personality in the platformers, but the thing is NOBODY has any personality in the platformers. If they put in another villain do you think it will have personality? No! They'll just make it as bland as everything else. Thats what I mean when I say the villains would be no different. In the rpgs sure there are plenty of differences, in the platformers, no not really.

Yes I have played them, I've played them all and no, there are no deep or complex characters in Mario, I know exactly which characters you are thinking of. They are not deep or complex.

Have you heard of the worf effect? That happens to Bowser everytime a new badguy comes on stage. And more evil? I have yet to see any of the other bad guys besides maybe Dimentio come close to what he acomplished in games like 64 or Galaxy, or even to a lesser extent SMB3 where he invaded and took over 7 different kingdoms at once and still had enough resources to invade the mushroom kingdom and set up a proper defense of his own at the same time.

When did I ever say he was flawless? Answer: I didn't. You're the one who is coming off like an angry fanboy whose pissed off that your fav villains are constantly getting the shaft.

I actually can't see your sig since I'm using a mobile device to view this.

How am I making excuses? I'm using examples from this series for things he's done to justify my argument. If I were making crap up then yes it would be an excuse.

And you are presumably thinking of characters like Tec, count bleck, tippi, admiral bobbery, vivian, maybe Luigi? Or other such characters.

Hey, he/she called the fanboy card first.

And no they are not complex, there are very simple easy to figure out and understand character types. In order for them to be complex they need to be complicated which they aren't. Mario does not have complex characters, it never has and it never will.

Cackletta can turn into a bat, too. Does that make her a Dracula rip-off? I'm by no means saying that Antasma's Slavic accent wasn't a deliberate reference to Dracula, but that, among other similarities to him, were added by localization outside of Japan.

Also, answer me this: Do you really think for one second that Bowser wouldn't have gotten him ass handed to him in Dream's Deep if it weren't for Antasma? You're giving Bowser way to much credit, here. Aside from that copout at the end, he didn't even come up with his own damn plan that didn't involve having Peach kidnapped. For the most part, he did nothing but leech off of Antasma's work. He was the real villain. Bowser had little reason to even be in the game in the first place other than fanservice.


Wart, Tatanga, and Wario differed from Bowser in plenty of ways, even without having lines of dialogue.


Alright, let's examine the facts here, shall we?

-In addition to being the first villain to take over Bowser's castle or pose a threat to him in any way, Smithy's goal was to rid the world of wishes, so that he could unleash weapons into the world and conquer it, and ended up destroying the Star Road.

-Along with stealing (who was originally thought to be) Princess Peach's voice, Cackletta manipulated Mario and Luigi into disabling the Bean Star's security system. Also, after possessing Bowser, she took control of his army, caused lots of chaos and destruction at the Bean Bean Kingdom, and intended to do the same to the Mushroom Kingdom.

-Grodus aimed to unleash the Shadow Queen so that he could use her powers to destroy the world (and possibly the universe) and remake it in his own image. He, like Cackletta, also manipulated Mario into further his plan in some way. In general, he was just downright ruthless, seeing how he orchestrated the (presumed) death of his own right-hand underling, and was not above using dirty, underhanded methods to achieve victory (using Princess Peach as a shield), and came pretty close to killing Mario and his party in the process.

-The Shadow Queen, prior to the events of the game, was responsible for destroying the world, and had many people enslaved and killed in the process.

-Count Bleck "forced" a marriage between Bowser and Peach to create the Chaos Heart, and created a void in the sky to destroy the universe. He actually succeeded in destroying at least two two worlds so far; his own dimension prior to the game, along with the Sammer's Kingdom. The void that he created also came close to destroying all other dimensions, as well.

-Fawful took over both the Mushroom Kingdom and Bowser's castle, and intended to use the power of the Dark Star to conquer the rest of the world.

-Of course, there's also the Shroob Princesses, but admittedly, I'm not all that knowledgeable about them (since I haven't played Partners in Time in eight years), but I do know that the two of them posed a major threat to the Mushroom Kingdom and the rest of the world, and Elder Princess Shroob, in particular, managed to manipulate the Mario Brothers into furthering her goal.


What I'm pissed off about is every villain in the series being considered expendable (with King Boo being a rare exception), while Bowser continues hogging the spotlight and getting a bunch of special treatment. Nintendo has no qualms with casting main villains aside in other franchises (such as King K. Rool and even Ganon on some occasions), but when it comes to Bowser, they're completely unwilling to do it. If that's not favoritism, then I don't know what to call it.

He directly says I come off as one just a few posts above this one.

I didn't say they were generic, I said they weren't complex, which they aren't. I can summarize them in just a sentence for each one. If something is complex it would be next to impossible for me to do that. Something can have development but still be simple.

Antasma kidnapped Peach so that he could steal her power and use it to escape his imprisonment in the dream world, so Bowser was entirely unneeded. I can think of other instances why it made no sense for Bowser to be there. Number one, how would he have possibly known about Pi'llo Island and/or to look for Peach there, of all places? Number two, the part about him being able to smell her perfume when he was at Mushrise Park... That also didn't make any sense, considering the fact that Peach was never over there in the first place, so how could that scent of her perfume have been there? And not to mention the fact that she was all the way in Dream's Deep, which was the very bottom of the dream world.


It's very different, because it's something that Dimentio had carefully planned out, and many things he did throughout the game foreshadowed it. With Bowser, that was clearly nothing more than some last-minute copout on the developers' part, and again, that sort of thing is not in Bowser's character. That's something that was done out of nowhere, or no other reason than to shoehorn him into the final boss slot.

Honestly, if Bowser was that distrustful of Antasma, you'd think that he'd have been hesitant about going to sleep while he's around.


Yes, but after learning of what it was and what it had the power to do, he knew that it would interfere with his plan to conquer the world, so he took steps to prevent the Star Road from getting restored.


That wasn't incompetence on her part. Cackletta's plan was foiled due to careful planning on Peach and/or Toadworth's part. If Prince Peasley hadn't warned them about Cackletta's arrival, then she definitely would have succeeded.


Wait, what? It was explicitly stated several times throughout the game that the Shadow Queen threw the world into the depths of terror a thousand years prior to the game's events. It was also stated that she was the one who created the Crystal Stars in the first place.


As far as controlling Bowser's henchmen, maybe, but he was already able to gain loyal followers even without Nastasia's powers.


He got inhaled, yes, but as far as becoming the Dark Star's slave? I don't recall that happening at all.


Since you keep bringing that up, I'll admit that Galaxy was one of the very few instances where Bowser seemed (the keyword, "seemed") like a competent villain, but when he ended up repeating that exact same plan in Galaxy 2, it pretty much lost its novelty by then. That's basically Bowser in a nutshell: The same tired, repetitive, and rehashed plans with little to no variation. How he, of all people, managed to get singled out as the "Greatest Video Game Villain of All Time" in the Guinness World Records, I will never know. Even outside of the Mario franchise, I can think of tons of better villains.

EDIT:


You're right, I did. For that, I apologize, but my opinion on Bowser still stands. I just don't see the same thing in him that many other people do.

Cackletta's incompetence is letting them get wind of what she planned on doing.

I know what the shadow queen can do, I meant about the bit where you said the universe, there is nothing about her that says she has the power to do that.

Without Natasia he could not get Peach to say ''I do'', no ''I do'' and no Chaos Heart, no heart no plan.

With Fawful this is more shown not told. At the end Dark Bowser is clearly the one calling the shots especially during the battle where whenever the dark star core retreats back to Dark Bowser Fawful looks upset by this and not in complete control.

Well Galaxy 2 basically starts out by saying Galaxy 1 never happened so its not so much repetition on his part there. And what about 64 where he steals all the power stars from Peach's castle to create his own worlds and power up his army? I already outlined all the other schemes he did in the platformers, I didn't even get into games like super princess peach, yoshi's island DS and the like. The one thing definitely consistent is his capturing of Peach, but I don't see why thats only a negative attributable to him when most of the other villains do that too.

And don't worry about apologies, we were both getting a bit heated up there so lets just be more friendly from now on eh?