DBWI: Bowser and Donkey Kong Switch Roles

MegaToon1234

MegaToon1234

Of course, since 1988, when Super Mario Bros. 3 came out, things started to become very unusual. It was the start of having Donkey Kong as the main villain of the Super Mario series. As for Bowser (the main villain of SMB1)? He fell to obscurity until Rare came along and brought him back as the main star of this game called “Bowser’s Kingdom” on the SNES in 1994. On a side-note, the Bowser from SMB1 is an old man in that game.

Now I have heard from the grapevine that Nintendo was gonna bring Bowser back as the main villain of SMB3, until they decided on Donkey Kong instead.

Because of what I had shown to you, what if Nintendo decided to keep Bowser as the main villain of SMB3? Will this affect the Super Mario franchise as a whole? Tell me what you think.
 

Don Corleone

I don't see major differences even within the series, other than the sprites used for level bosses or final bosses in some of the games.

The series has too many quests and too many non-quest products, like the Summer Olympics game from 1992 where they were all competing for the Mushroom Kingdom against Hyrule. Those would largely be the same whether they used Bowser, Donkey Kong, or someone else.
 
MegaToon1234

MegaToon1234

Don Corleone said:
I don't see major differences even within the series, other than the sprites used for level bosses or final bosses in some of the games.

The series has too many quests and too many non-quest products, like the Summer Olympics game from 1992 where they were all competing for the Mushroom Kingdom against Hyrule. Those would largely be the same whether they used Bowser, Donkey Kong, or someone else.
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What does that have to do with the DBWI in question?
 

bonachevski

The original Donkey Kong has Mario/Jumpman, a blue-collar worker, fighting Donkey Kong at a construction site. Later games had the forward-thinking, hard-working, and productive Mario and Luigi facing off against the environmentalist, traditionalist Donkey Kong. Traveling from an urban center (Mushroom City) to the dense rainforest (Kong Jungle) has a clear economic undertone possibly promoted by Japan's economic boom and the cultural drive towards productivity. IIRC after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, Nintendo downplayed DK for a few years. New Super Mario Bros 2 which came out in 2012 didn't even have DK at all. Maybe that would have been a chance to bring Bowser back to the spotlight? After all, if you're recovering from an environmental disaster its probably a lot easier to hate a spike-covered beast living in a volcano world than a monkey living in the jungle. But no, they had to go with King Boo instead.

Reading up on SMB1, its interesting to think what would happen if some of the changes were kept throughout the franchise. The turtle enemies were called Koopas but weren't anything like the Koopa Kourtiers we'd later meet in the Bowser's Kingdom series and instead acted like mindless drones (like the Konglings and Croco-Blockos in later games). Mario's love interest was "Princess Toadstool" instead of Lady Pauline, the hip and modern socialite we're all familiar with. I do have to admit that the lava levels were cool. Bowser would have had a really cool villain aesthetic, ruling over a volcano kingdom instead of an overgrown industrial ruin like DK.

As a Smash Bros fan though I can't imagine Bowser as an aggressive character. His fireballs and shell-throws make him one hell of a zoner already.
 
MegaToon1234

MegaToon1234

bonachevski said:
The original Donkey Kong has Mario/Jumpman, a blue-collar worker, fighting Donkey Kong at a construction site. Later games had the forward-thinking, hard-working, and productive Mario and Luigi facing off against the environmentalist, traditionalist Donkey Kong. Traveling from an urban center (Mushroom City) to the dense rainforest (Kong Jungle) has a clear economic undertone possibly promoted by Japan's economic boom and the cultural drive towards productivity. IIRC after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, Nintendo downplayed DK for a few years. New Super Mario Bros 2 which came out in 2012 didn't even have DK at all. Maybe that would have been a chance to bring Bowser back to the spotlight? After all, if you're recovering from an environmental disaster its probably a lot easier to hate a spike-covered beast living in a volcano world than a monkey living in the jungle. But no, they had to go with King Boo instead.

Reading up on SMB1, its interesting to think what would happen if some of the changes were kept throughout the franchise. The turtle enemies were called Koopas but weren't anything like the Koopa Kourtiers we'd later meet in the Bowser's Kingdom series and instead acted like mindless drones (like the Konglings and Croco-Blockos in later games). Mario's love interest was "Princess Toadstool" instead of Lady Pauline, the hip and modern socialite we're all familiar with. I do have to admit that the lava levels were cool. Bowser would have had a really cool villain aesthetic, ruling over a volcano kingdom instead of an overgrown industrial ruin like DK.

As a Smash Bros fan though I can't imagine Bowser as an aggressive character. His fireballs and shell-throws make him one hell of a zoner already.
Click to expand...
Yeah, makes you wonder, huh?
 
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