I'm real tired of folks using this assumption to mischaracterize Mario as a Diet Wario.
Mario is a blue-collar plumber. That's his WHOLE character design. He's a humble man who wears his work uniform even when visiting royalty, and lacks the resources or the showmanship necessary to host giant go-kart competitions named after himself. He's also reactive, not proactive. We never see him initiate anything: if Peach doesn't invite him for cake or Bowser doesn't invade, he's content living a peaceful life with Luigi. These are all REALLY important aspects of Mario's character, because without them he's almost indistinguishable from Wario. Wario is the proactive seeker of fortune and fame who puts his name on everything. If Mario ALSO does that, then Wario has no reason to exist.
A good rule of thumb: if it's something Wario would say or do, then Mario WOULDN'T.
The spinoffs aren't parties BY Mario, they're parties FOR Mario, organized and funded by the people he's helped, primarily Princess Peach. You think Bowser would peacefully participate in an event hosted by Mario? Never. But if PEACH was hosting, then of COURSE he'd show up, invited or not.
Lastly: folks often wonder about whether we should consider the spinoff games canon, which is totally fair, because they create a LOT of questions: How/where are they building all these crazy tracks, stadiums, and boards? Does Waluigi really own a giant pinball machine? Is Mount Wario a location or an instruction? My personal headcanon is that (with a few exceptions) they take place in Mario 64 painting worlds. That lets us hand-wave most of the logistics.
So..., I've been watching & playing a lot of Mario Superstar Baseball lately and I thought of more ways Bowser would secretly help Luigi win (and I thought of a reason why Bowser would intentionally lose).
Counting this as a sequel to this Bowuigi Mario Party post I made a while ago.
The #1 reason why Bowser intentionally loses: After Bowser and Luigi start dating, Luigi tells Bowser the story of how he has never won a single game/race/etc. From tennis to soccer to even Mario Kart, every single sporting or party event Luigi has participated in, he has never won 1st place. While that had upset Luigi in the past, he eventually stopped being competitive and changed his mindset to, “As long as I’m having fun, it doesn’t matter whether I win or lose.” However, Luigi's story causes Bowser to set himself out on a mission to intentionally lose any/every event he participates in just so that Luigi can experience the amazing feeling of winning 1st place.
Okay, now let's talk about the different ways Bowser will let Luigi win (see under the cut because this will be a long post otherwise):
1. Baseball:
If Bowser's pitching and Luigi's batting, Bowser will pitch the ball as normally as possible.
If Bowser's batting and Luigi's pitching, Bowser will either try to strike himself out by "unintentionally" missing every pitch Luigi throws at him, "unintentionally" hit a pop fly, or when he does hit the ball, he will use his slowness to his advantage and purposely run slow to where he can easily get out.
When it comes to other characters (Mario, Peach, Daisy, etc.), Bowser will act less suspicious by giving it his all (although he will occasionally do one of the methods mentioned above).
2. Tennis:
Bowser will "unintentionally" hit the ball hard enough to where it lands outside the line.
Since Bowser can't run very fast, he will use this slowness to his advantage and will "unintentionally" miss the ball (assuming the ball isn't directly near him).
If the ball if coming towards Bowser, Bowser will sometimes (not very often) let the ball hit him.
3. Golf:
Bowser will "unintentionally" hit the ball hard enough to where it either goes out of bounce or it misses the hole.
Bowser can also hit the ball too softly, but considering that it's Bowser, he'll usually hit the ball too hard.
4. Soccer pt 1 (Super Mario Strikers):
Since Bowser is not a playable character in Super Mario Strikers, the only way he can really help Luigi out is by wreaking havoc to where it puts Luigi's opponents at a disadvantage and puts Luigi at an advantage (somehow).
Since Bowser is a playable character in Mario Strikers Charged & Mario Strikers: Battle League, Bowser can help Luigi out in multiple ways:
Mario Strikers Charged: Bowser has terrible movement & passing abilities. Bowser will use this to his advantage to either "unintentionally" pass the ball to where either Luigi or one of his teammates can easily steal the ball during a pass or run slow enough to where Luigi/one of his teammates can directly steal the ball from Bowser (while he has possession of the ball).
Mario Strikers Charged: Even though Bowser can shoot really well, when it comes to Mega Strike, Bowser will "unintentionally" have terrible timing.
Mario Strikers: Battle League: Since it's been years since I've played Battle League, I'm going to assume that Bowser can more or less use the same tactics from Mario Strikers Charged.
6. Mario Kart:
If Luigi's in 2nd place and Bowser's in 1st place, Bowser will "unintentionally" give Luigi the lead by hitting a hazard (fake item box, banana peel, etc.)
If Luigi's in 1st place, Bowser will "unintentionally" use his items (red shells, green shells, blue spiny shell, etc.) on every single racer except for Luigi.
Nintendo not caring that much about Mario canon creates some inconsistencies that are really fun to try to explain in-universe. My favorite example is Toadette’s relationship with Wario & Waluigi.
Mario Parties 5, 6, and 8 had custom names for every character pairing. These included Secret Friends for Wario/Toadette in 5/6, Double Agents for Wario/Toadette in 8, and Diabolical Duo for Waluigi/Toadette in 5/6.
The implication is that Toadette is totally down with Wario and Waluigi’s mischievous ways, but they keep their friendship on the down low - presumably because Toadette’s other friends don’t like them very much.
But in the exact same era, a different team over at Bandai Namco was making Mario Superstar Baseball and its sequel, Mario Super Sluggers. These games have a chemistry system, where characters that like each other play better, but characters who don’t get along with their teammates play worse. And it’s not just a trinary good/neutral/bad system. Every single character relationship has an internal rating from 0-100.
Toadette’s chemistry with Wario and Waluigi is on the lower end in these games, rated 16 and 17, respectively.
So what gives? Why do they seemingly like each other in one series and not in the other? A few theories:
The Mario Baseball games all take place after Mario Party 8 and they had some sort of falling out between the games.
The Mario Baseball games all take place before Mario Party 5 and they became friends between Sluggers and MP5.
They do like each other, but gotta play as enemies during baseball so Mario and co. don’t get suspicious.
They are friends, but they’re the kind of friends who actively lose brain cells when they’re together, so they’re as incompetent as enemies.
Theory 4 is probably my favorite, but it comes with a couple of problems. First, iff that’s how chemistry worked then Wario and Waluigi’s chemistry with each other would be waaaay lower than 99. Second, saying chemistry ≠ how much characters like each other means we’d have to ignore that Toadette seemingly hates Bowser more than Peach does, which is an incredible bit of characterization for her.
I think the moral of this exercise is that Mario canon is fun and malleable and you should look at the contradictions but also be willing to cherry pick for those crumbs of good characterization!
i drew baseball rosa for a mario sports collab on twitter by @johnzu_ on twitter, the collab can be viewed here ^-^ 🩵✨⚾️
https://twitter.com/johnzu_/status/1785399512724574358/photo/1
Imma be honest I literally played this game got all the kremlings and never touched it again... not cause it's bad or anything just cause idk I'm stupid
So one day, I remember enjoying Mario Superstar Baseball, and thought "hey, so many Mario Sports titles made a comeback for the Switch, why not Baseball?" Then I remembered that Sluggers for the Wii was the last time King K. Rool made a physical appearance in a game until Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. So to build on that, I decided to wonder what a playable roster for a Mario Baseeball 3 would be like if we were allowed more extended universe characters like WarioWare or Luigi's Mansion characters.
For the next few months, I came up with a possible chemistry chart for the various characters I wanted. When I included characters, I set some rules for myself in that there could not be any RPG characters (especially since the likes of Geno and Mallow are in a legal limbo from being co-owned by Square Enix), no variations of pre-existing characters (no babies and especially no metal characters), and only using species characters unless I can single out an individual from their kind (there is no recurring Shy Guy, but there is a recurring Magikoopa in Kamek). The actual mechanics for Superstar Baseball had chemistry based on a scale between 5-99, but to make it easier on myself, I went with a scale of 1-5 with 1 being bad and 5 being great).
The second chart is a list of possible palette swaps for species characters. A green X means that this the species main color, yellow Y means its a possible color, and red means that this color is not available for them.
In Mario Superstar Baseball in the Exhibition Records of the MVP one can read the description of Petey Piranha, and this description reveals to us Petey is a mutant.
"A mutation created this boss of the Piranha Plants."
Written by Eris the Lorekeeper
