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Friday, July 20, 2018

Koopas Dominate Sports

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - We're superior.

As you may expect from the webmaster of a site called KoopaTV, I (only) play as the Koopas in any of Mario's sporty spin-offs. My loyalty and dedication to my own kind is paying off pretty well — between all the members of Koopa Kingdom, we're doing very well and scoring just fine. There's a reason why we thought it was a good idea to attempt to enter the 2016 Summer Olympics as Team Koopa — WE HAVE THE SKILLS.

I wasn't sure whether or not to separate this by sport or by Koopa, since there'll be some redundancy on the basis that Koopas are multi-talented, so I hope this reads well. By the way, for the purposes of this article (and, well, in general), Mario Sports Mix doesn't exist. No one ever talks about it. It's a mess.


Baseball


The Koopas are some of the best baseball athletes around. When Bowser is up at bat, it's irregular if he doesn't just get a homerun. Almost every Koopa has chemistry with King Bowser in Mario Superstar Baseball (...Magikoopa doesn't), and chemistry gives a power-up to the folks who share it. (Stronger hits, better fielding.) King Bowser also has the fastest fast ball, from a pitcher's perspective, in the game. The Mario Superstar Baseball metagame literally revolves around King Bowser Koopa.

Similar to King Bowser Koopa, Hammer Bro. and Boomerang Bro. are also extremely good, getting consistent homeruns with his sweetspot hammer, or an amazing curve for base-running, respectively. Magikoopa has fantastic fielding with his magic wand, as well as a great Star Hit that hugs the foul line and ensures you get on first base... or second.

The folks like Koopa Troopa, Paratroopa, and Dry Bones are also pretty reliable and decent fielders with good throwing arms. Bowser Jr. may actually be the weak link. Since Magikoopa lacks chemistry with the rest of the Koopas besides Bowser Jr. (fixed in the sequel where Magikoopa has chemistry with Bowser), and there aren't enough for a 9-player team, I recommend King Boo and Boo (Boo has chemistry with Magikoopa) instead of Goomba and Paratroopa to fill the last slots. Boo and King Boo are ridiculous as-is, and also serve as additional pitchers, if not main pitchers since King Bowser's fielding chemistry and Laser Beam abilities can be put to better use if he's not pitching.

Golf


King Bowser can drive the golf ball farther than anyone else and maintain a reasonable amount of control. Power is very important in Golf, you know. Plus, Koopa Troopa's quite capable of getting eagles:
 

Soccer


Otherwise known as association football. Super Mario Strikers had... a rather limited selection of characters to play with, but Mario Strikers Charged featured Dry Bones as an excellent sidekick. He can... TELEPORT. Past the opposing goalie. With the ball. I've never heard of Dry Bones teleporting in any other context, but that's a particularly useful ability, is it not?

Football


Otherwise known as American football, though the Koopa clan and America have no commonalities. Koopa Kingdom is home to a “great Koopa tradition” of football, and we have the only organised football team(s) in the entire world. It stands to reason that we dominate the football space among our peers. Not only by default, but our Chargin’ Chucks are amazing in their own right! They have excellent synchronised running, football throwing and rolling, charging and tackling, and Mario-crushing techniques!

Mario & Luigi Paper Jam Chargin' Chuck Corps boss battle special minigame airplane stepping on footballs
Under Koopa Kingdom rules, what they're doing to Mario is legal.
 

Basketball


This is just about Mario Hoops 3-on-3, where everyone agrees that Paratroopa is excellent. I can't tell you anything much beyond that since I've never played the game, but that's what I've read. No reason to doubt that.

Mario Hoops 3-on-3 Bowser Paratroopa Bowser Jr. character selection art
The three Koopa representatives in Mario Hoops 3-on-3:
Paratroopa, Bowser Jr., and Bowser.
(Screen capture from a guy named Super Mario 112324, so as you might suspect, his actual video is biased. And boring.)

Competitive Dancing


Are you kidding me? Koopas are amazing at dancing, especially break-dancing. That's partially what our shells are for. Even that good-for-nothing Koops is a professional break-dancer.

King Bowser, notably, doesn't even use his shell for dancing. He's doing flips in the air... and landing on his feet!

Dance Dance Revolution Mario Mix Bowser dancing boss fight aerial flips jumping moves
Bowser can easily do multiple flips like this in a row, and actually land without breaking a sweat.
Losers like Mario needed to go collect Music Keys to be able to match King Dad's dancing prowess.

Other Koopas do a lot of break-dancing, notably Hammer Bro. whenever he plays baseball.

By the way, King Bowser has even more dancing techniques, like... whatever the hell this is:




Kart-racing


Koopas have proven to be some of the best kart-racers that have ever existed. It starts where, in Mario Kart: Double-Dash!!, Koopa Troopa and Paratroopa have the best special item — Triple (Red) Shells. Simple concept, but extraordinarily useful. Defence is no issue. Offence is amazing. In later games, the Koopas had their triple shell technology stolen, and everyone got to use triple shells. (Probably Petey Piranha and King Boo's fault, which is why they were banned for a long time from the franchise.) But back in that day, when it was proprietary, you better believe they were a force to be reckoned with.

In Mario Kart DS, Dry Bones and his Dry Bomber kart were notoriously great at abusing the infamous “snaking technique” that was very controversial back then. (I won't go into snaking here, but just know it defined the entire metagame.)

Let's skip to Mario Kart 8. (Since Funky Kong isn't a Koopa, so Mario Kart Wii was a bad time.) In this game, Morton Koopa Jr. and Dry Bowser are considered to be in the top tier, since they have the fastest speed. It's not uncommon to see races dominated by Morton.


Top Mario Kart 8 metagame Morton Koopa Jr. Dry Bowser players tier
Mario can't handle the Koopa domination among top players.
(Screen capture from a guy named DEAN WEEN who claims this lobby has the best players in the world.)

Tennis


Last, but certainly not least, is the sport that inspired this article's creation — tennis. Mario Tennis Aces is on a lot of people's minds, and quite frankly, Koopas are absolutely dominating the top tiers. Bowser Jr., Bowser, and Koopa Troopa all range from game-breaking to fantastic. When I say game-breaking, I mean that yesterday, Mario Tennis Aces was patched just to nerf Bowser Jr.:

Bowser Jr. is way too good. He has no weak points. Before the patch, he could be charging a hit, and move pretty freely. His shots are very powerful. His angles were scary. His hits curve. He could return the ball from anywhere. I mean, he STILL can return the ball from anywhere. Check out the range of his Trick Shots — other characters can't do this from across the whole court. And this is AFTER his nerf:
 

Bowser  Jr. is set to get another nerf pretty soon. Him getting a dedicated nerf-patch and still being broken is sort of like Bayonetta in Super Smash Bros. For Wii U. Yeah, so maybe people will go and hate him like they hate Bayonetta. I wouldn't mind.

Meanwhile, King Bowser has very fast hits and a great range, since he has long limbs. Koopa Troopa is the fastest playable fellow with his amazing shell movement, and he has a great Drop Shot.

The Koopas have been doing great at tennis since long before now. For example, Paratroopa is one of the best characters in Mario Power Tennis, with an amazing lunge, and awesome power shots.

Conclusion


Where there are sports competitions, there are Koopas competing. When Koopas compete, Koopas win. One argument that Super Smash Bros. is not a sport is that Koopas don't win in that, unless it's really early in the metagame when no one knows how to play. Otherwise... watch out. Lurking in our shells are powerful athletic spirits!


If you have further examples of the amazing abilities of Koopas, please feel free to share in the comments section below! Everyone should appreciate Koopas at all times. You may have noticed that Ludwig never mentioned his own abilities once in this article. ...No comment. By the way, this article was updated on July 21st to include the football section. Ludwig apologises for omitting the great feats of the Chargin’ Chucks.


You could also consider this a three-year-delayed response to the guest post about how black people dominate sports.
After this article was published, Bowser Jr. got nerfed again, and now he has an existential crisis.
Recognising the performance of individual Koopas is great for morale, so this article includes a picture of Paratroopa with a trophy.
Add Paratroopa to the good-at-Mario Tennis Aces category now that he's playable there.
King Bowser is diversifying his sports repertoire with new sports not even considered here, like archery and skateboarding.

2 comments :

  1. Wow. You actually do reference the Bayonetta shenanigans.

    Just for reference, recently, I uploaded this bit of devil's advocacy about THAT:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOJZlIuJEaw

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There's several layers of Bayonetta shenanigans going on!

      Since this article was published, there were more Bayonetta shenanigans (which you've seen me write about) and also another round of nerfs for Bowser Jr. in Mario Tennis Aces.

      Delete

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