Bowser, I Love You
KoopaTroop909 ||| Review by Mariken S.
Here’s a queer one- and I mean that in the most literal sense of homosexuality. Bowser, I Love You is a fan game of the Super Mario franchise which concerns the turtle-like nemesis of Mario in a more romantic spotlight than usual. That is, the usual is a vague, cartoonish approximation of heterosexuality; a grim parody of Saint George and the Dragon. The Princess is kidnapped by the turtle-dragon named Bowser, and Super Mario promptly vanquishes the villain in the scope of about an hour. Revisionist fairy tales love to focus on the maligned monsters, and now such a trend has come to the sphere of computer games! In the pseudonymous nature of the internet, the creator of this game calls himself “KoopaTroop909”, the word Koopa is in fact the name of Bowser’s henchmen and his name in the Japanese editions of the Super Mario Bros. games. Clearly, this man is devoted to Bowser even in his choice of username.
The usage of the first person pronoun in the title clearly invokes a most intimate sentiment. Yet, who is the pronoun referring to: the player avatar who is thankfully not Mario or to the creator of the game, our dear KoopaTroop909? There is the titular confession at the beginning of the quest, yes, but this does not cancel out the maker’s sentiments as well. Could the hero of the story not feel genuine affection for the tyrant turtle? I suppose putting the player’s sentiments into the hero could create something to that effect. It is a well known fact that games of a production caliber not up to snuff are often played simply to gawk and mock at it by performative players. We ought to assume good faith of a hypothetical player and their assumed concern of Bowser.
The game begins with a mockery of Super Mario, Blaurio, making his way to the castle of the villain. He proclaims his unending devotion and love to Bowser with a bouquet of flowers. The King, in shock, comically sets the flowers and Blaurio alight! He accuses the hero character of being a spy for Mario, to which the hero refuses. Yet, outside the text of the game, the creator KoopaTroop909 serves this character in a roundabout manner. Even in a game where Mario is antagonized, he is still there! He is a prefabrication of what many people believe to be computer games, an easy semiotic so to speak. It is free advertising anytime he is inserted into a game, there is no escape. Regardless of this, Bowser demands the decapitated head of Mario— a quite un-Nintendo proposition. Blaurio agrees and sets off on an adventure.
The actual game play is of little interest. It functions as one would expect a Super Mario game to be: you jump, you squash and you die! Thankfully there are only four worlds with three levels apiece, if there were any more I think I would have given up. There is a nice touch being that instead of turtles, you face the bumbling servants of Princess Toadstool named Toad en masse. Anyone learned of this fiction’s setting (which is a surprising amount of people given the statistics of the Super Mario Wiki) knows that the turtles and brown mushrooms are the underlings of Bowser and thus it would be illogical for the player to fight them. The green dinosaur Yoshi is a halfway point boss who lobs green eggs at the player, thankfully it was not too difficult. The final world is a peaceful white and red castle in which the dreadful Mario inhabits. Blaurio faces off against Mario in a surprisingly and annoyingly difficult battle. At the end of the battle, the axe seen at the concluding levels of the original Super Mario Bros is used in a fantastic fashion that can probably be inferred from the previous paragraph. Suffice to write, Bowser reciprocates Blaurio’s love.
The credits say the usual— Nintendo’s ever-present dominion on copyright and giving thanks to all the people who extracted artwork from the computer games in a presumably illicit manner. The one unusual thing is KoopaTroop909 describing his intimidation with other men, his blooming bisexuality and his entryway through the love of Bowser, the turtle king. It is a small piece of the whole game but I think it is what makes it worth playing. It’s a sort of real life to virtual life connection, on how the two can influence and metamorphose each other. I give much praise to KoopaTroop909 for this odd little gem.