When you think about Mario’s greatest nemesis, you probably think of Bowser, the turtle tyrant who dreams of making Princess Peach his bride. To veteran Nintendo players, though, Bowser isn’t a very vexing foe. By the time you’ve mastered a new Mario game’s various mechanics, giving Bowser the boot (Goomba’s shoe style) is a walk in the digital park.
However, certain other foes make gameplay endlessly frustrating. You know: the ones who make you want to scream “Mama Mia!” and ragequit your attempts to rescue the Mushroom Kingdom. Who are the worst offenders, though? Check out these classic Mario enemies so annoying that they made us all want to throw the controller.
1) Donkey Kong
Long before Bowser came on the scene, Donkey Kong was Mario’s most famous enemy. Despite being the title character of the arcade hit Donkey Kong, this great ape wasn’t the hero. Rather, he was a King Kong-inspired villain who had kidnapped Pauline (known back then only as Lady), the girlfriend of Mario (known back then simply as Jumpman). It was up to Mario to master one platforming challenge after another to put this ape in his place.
While Donkey Kong is passive in some stages of this arcade game, he actively throws barrels your way on the first level. And he’s frighteningly good at it: barrels come in different patterns and varieties, and you never know when one of them will fall down the ladder you are climbing. Touching a barrel means certain death, and that makes this ape with the fastball the earliest Mario enemy that made players want to scream.
Fans can only hope he seems just as deadly when his new solo movie hits theaters.
2) Hammer Bros
In the original Super Mario Bros., it doesn’t take too long to get the hang of defeating Koopa Troopas and Goombas. Their movements are predictable enough that these bad guys barely count as roadblocks to experienced players. There is one foe, though, that makes even veteran players stop running forward out of sheer fear, and that’s the Hammer Bros. As the name implies, these terrifying turtles toss hammers out in lazy and unpredictable patterns. Unless you’re already powered up, getting hit by a single hammer means certain death.
Unless you have the Fire Flower, these guys are instant bad news. They appear in places where you can’t easily go over them. You can try to go under after they jump up, but you never know when they’ll jump back down or just throw a few more hammers your way. Plus, they appear in pairs, so even if you defeat one bro, his counterpart will be there to avenge him.
Violent brothers who intimidate do-gooding interlopers through brutal hammer violence? Forget Bowser, these guys should just go work for the mob!
3) Lakitu
Younger Nintendo players usually don’t find Lakitu too scary these days. Riding in his cloud, this helpful turtle does helpful things like hold the virtual camera in Super Mario 64 and serve as a referee in the Mario Kart series. In the first Super Mario Bros., though, Lakitu wasn’t so helpful. In fact, he represented almost certain death to those without the speed and reflexes necessary to run away fast enough.
In that original game, Lakitu would show up and start dropping eggs like he’s throwing Molotov cocktails. The eggs are annoying enough to dodge, and when they hit the ground, each one hatches into one of the Spinies that hurt if you try to jump on them. Long story short? Whenever this cloud-riding creep shows up, he turns the level you are playing into a frantic fight for survival.
4) Blooper
Most casual Nintendo fans probably don’t know the Blooper by name, making them some of the most overlooked Super Mario characters. Of course, being overlooked doesn’t make them any less deadly! Bloopers are the squids that Mario encounters in any given underwater level in Super Mario Bros. These enemies are particularly annoying because they cannot be jumped on; any kind of squid contact will hurt or kill you. A single Blooper may spell doom unless you happen to have the power of a Fire Flower, and even if you’re rocking fireballs, you have to remember that these guys show up in groups.
The Blooper’s real secret weapon, though, is its erratic movement. Simply put, it’s much harder to predict what this killer creature will do next compared to, say, Goombas. On top of that, Mario isn’t a great swimmer, making it weirdly difficult to navigate from Point A to Point B. It’s the perfect storm of bad controls and unpredictable enemy movement, which is why the underwater levels remain the worst and scariest parts of this beloved game.
5) Phanto
As Mario villains go, Phanto isn’t exactly a household name. He is one of many strange villains to appear in Super Mario Bros. 2. Any pedantic Nintendo fan will be quick to point out that this game was not originally developed as a Mario title, which is why familiar foes like Goombas and Koopa Troopas are nowhere to be found. But even among the new guys, Phanto is arguably the most annoying of the bunch.
At first, he’s just a floating face that offers no real threat. But once you steal the key he’s guarding, this face begins relentlessly hunting you. How relentlessly, you ask? He will follow you across screens, into different rooms, and through Subspace. Phanto is also nearly impossible to kill, and even if you manage it, he comes right back to life on the next screen. Play this classic sequel long enough and this thing may very well end up haunting your nightmares.
But what else can you expect of a game that’s secretly just a bad dream?
6) Angry Sun
Super Mario Bros. 3 is a nearly-perfect sequel. It features the triumphant return of many classic enemies like Goombas, but it also adds crazy new foes to the roster. This includes Bowser’s demented children (later retconned into being minions), all of whom serve as mini-bosses. However, none of them can hold a candle to the hottest and angriest villain of all: the freakin’ sun!
In two levels of Super Mario Bros. 3, players must deal with an angry sun. At first, it just watches you; soon, though, it begins swooping down like a solar vulture, hoping to kill players who aren’t quick enough to dodge its attacks. The fact that the attacks are so hard to avoid is a big part of why this foe is so annoying. It can be defeated, but that brings up the question of who the real bad guy of the game is. Like, how can Bowser compete with the plucky plumber who decides to cast the entire world into endless darkness?
7) Monty Mole
These days, Monty Mole is a pretty chill character. Certainly, he doesn’t look like an archvillain when you see him behind the wheel in the excellent Mario Kart World. However, when the character made his debut in Super Mario World, he was a complete menace. And that’s mostly because they popped up out of the ground in random places; once they hit the surface, they alternate between running back and forth (becoming an ersatz obstacle course) and heading straight for the player.
You can try to run, but Monty will just chase you down. Oh, and don’t think that your speed will necessarily be enough to save you. When this malicious mole gets tired of the chase, he’ll content himself to launch rocks at you. After a few of those rocks hit you when you’re in mid-jump, you’ll understand why we hate Monty so much.
8) Lava Bubble
In Super Mario Bros., one of the most annoying enemies is the one nobody ever talks about. At the end of that game’s eight worlds, Mario must always raid Bowser’s castle, eventually squaring off against the big guy himself. But getting to the Bowser confrontation means avoiding falling into a pit of lava. And nobody has made players fall more than Lava Bubble.
These guys are basically living traps who wait to pop out of the lava whenever the player is jumping from Point A to Point B. They get a few more tricks in later games, but they’ve arguably never been so annoying as in the first Super Mario Bros. game. To make matters worse, you can’t even kill these guys, making them one of Mario’s most annoying foes.
9) Dry Bones
Speaking of annoying foes who can’t be killed, Super Mario Bros. 3 introduced Dry Bones. They don’t really look impressive at first: simply put, they are the reanimated bones of a Koopa Troopa. And the first time you jump on one, you’ll probably think you’ve dispatched this foe for good.
Alas, that’s not so! Pouncing on this enemy may reduce him to a big old pile of bones, but it doesn’t take long for him to reassemble and rise from the dead. Unless you happen to have star power or the Hammer Suit, you’ll also have no way of killing these bony bad boys. Adding insult to injury is that they are often placed to be unkillable obstacles in areas where you might try to fly with the Raccoon Suit.
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