De website Cracked.com is zo vriendelijk geweest om de grootste vijand van Mario (en dat is niet Donkey Kong) eens nader te bekijken. Want wat blijkt volgens hun Bowser is één van de meest succesvolle game karakters ooit. Hij is een goede vader, heeft een sociaal leven en leer oa van zijn fouten:

You can't blame Mario for having less natural talent than Bowser. He's just a tiny plumber in a magical world where both flora and fauna are deadly to the touch. Bowser, on the other hand, is made of spikes and flame in a world where those are the most unavoidable causes of death. He's also apparently the master of industrial-level technology, while Mario relies on druid-level flowers and mushrooms for weaponry.

When you've got that much going against you, the only way to even the odds is to adapt on the fly and innovate new strategies in the face of defeat. The good guys in the Mario Bros. universe are more like a man called "Lefty" having another try at unblocking that garbage disposal. They're so bad at learning important lessons from their mistakes that they make the bad guys from G.I. Joe look like the good guys from G.I. Joe. Defending the Mushroom Kingdom should not be hard: It's a magical kingdom of unlimited fantasy where stars are cute, flowers grant magical abilities and everything with a shell is trying to kill you.

All they would have to do is station guards at every entrance and give them very simple instructions: If someone trying to enter the mushroom kingdom has a shell, he's not allowed in. Just stop him, turn him around and get ready to do it again in 30 seconds when he bounces off something else and comes back. That's not racial profiling; that's common sense. This is a land so easy to defend that even TSA agents could manage it.

Bowser, meanwhile, has learned every lesson the games have to give him -- and those lessons are all "Have a party, buddy!!