Bowser

**Bowser**, the King of the Koopas, father of the Koopalings, is the sworn enemy of Mario. He is a giant turtle with flaming red hair and many characteristics of a dragon. He has spikes protruding from his massive shell, a long spiky tail, fangs, red eyes, and the ability to breathe fire. He also wears a spiked collar and armbands.

In Super Mario World, Bowser takes over Overworld, kidnaps Princess Peach and imprisons all of the Yoshis in eggs. He gives each of his seven Koopalings power over a portion of Dinosaur Land and builds his own castle in the aptly-named Valley of Bowser. He uses Sprite Palette 1.

## Boss Strategy

   Interestingly, in the game's final battle, Bowser flies around in a clown-themed flying vehicle, throwing Mecha-Koopas  and Big Steelies at Mario instead of fighting his old foe face to face by breathing fire at him (mikeyk made a custom Bowser sprite which follows his classic attack pattern, however).

In Bowser's first stage of attack, he will simply fly around in a wide U shape. To defeat him, the player must wait until he throws out two Mecha-Koopas. The player must then stomp them and throw them upwards at the right time so they will hit him in the head. Once Bowser has been hit twice, he will fly off into the distance, but that does not mean that the player has won. After he is gone, ten fireballs will fall out of the sky. After a bit, Bowser will come back, and Princess Peach will wiggle free for long enough to throw a Super Mushroom to the player before battle resumes.

In his second stage, Bowser will fly in an almost straight line at the top of the screen, staying as close to Mario as possible. Every once in a while Bowser will flip upside down and drop a giant iron ball that will roll toward Mario, which can be avoided by either spin jump or jumping over it. After two of those balls have dropped, Bowser will throw two Mecha-Koopas out again. Because Bowser is flying so high, the player must jump, then throw the Mecha-Koopa up to hit him in the head twice. Once this has been accomplished, he will fly off and drop ten more fireballs, and once again the Princess will wiggle free to throw a Super Mushroom.

Upon Bowser's final stage, he will bounce around wildly trying to crush Mario underneath. His clown-themed flying vehicle are also gained the angry-look face, the player must wait for Bowser to stop to throw two Mecha-Koopas out. Once the player throws one at him (which he will most likely foolishly jump into), he may crush the second one. If this happens, the player must wait for him to throw two more Mecha-Koopas, and throw the last one at him.

Bowser will be defeated, and will drop the Princess, causing the game to play the ending sequence.

## Hacking information

Bowser is sprite A0, which you can find in the "tileset specific sprites" menu in Lunar Magic 1.91 and further versions.

The Bowser fight requires level mode 10 and the sprite memory to be set to 10. This will blank your level out and replace it with "CANNOT RENDER: This is a boss battle level!" There is nothing you can edit in this level aside from the graphics, unless you have very intricate knowledge of ASM. Any changes you make to palettes or music will have no effect.

Bowser is stored at Level 1C7, which is ironic when you realize that the title screen is at Level C7. He also occupies unused levels 9B and 19B.

The bowling ball is sprite A1 which you can also find the "tileset specific sprites" menu in Lunar Magic 1.91 and further versions. It can be used in a normal level, but few hackers have had success with this sprite. It uses Palette F and requires SP3 to point to GFX24, so vanilla hackers will have to switch to the Mechakoopa tileset. Bowser and his Clown Car are both stored at GFX21.

## Related Glitches

* If a ball is popped with Cape Mario, if looked close enough, a part of the Princess's face can be seen, as proved by a YouTube video, which can be seen here.
* If the player presses and holds up until the ending music starts, Mario's tilemap will switch between running, walking, and looking up, as demonstrated in this YouTube video showing the glitch. The glitch remains in the GBA version of the game.