It can be tough to believe, but gaming’s
premier side-scrolling platformer mascot has also been jumping and stomping
his way through the third dimension for nearly thirty years. And he’s faced
a lot of 3D boss fights during that time. I’m Kyle with 1upBinge, and these are
every 3D Mario boss from Weak to Powerful. We begin, fittingly enough, at the beginning,
with King Bob-Omb. He’s the boss of the first stage of the first world of the first ever 3D
Mario. Unfortunately for the oversized explosive, he’s also a complete joke, only able
to lumber slowly toward the plumber and attempt to toss him off the mountain.
Good thing it’s all uphill from here! Several such bosses in Super Mario 64 are
just larger versions of regular enemies, and Big Boo here is a translucent shadow
of the terrifying monstrosity he’d grow to become in Luigi’s Mansion.
You’ll face him three times, but each time Mario simply has to ground
pound him whenever he turns tangible. Honestly we’re way more scared of the mansion’s
freaky piano than this cowardly ghoul.
Mandibug Stack from the Galaxy games can only
take two hits, but at least they’re a more aggressive foe – and you don’t have to
fight them three times in the same world. Continuing with his intergalactic bug
extermination, Mario’s got to use his aerial power-ups to squash Bugaboom in both
Galaxy games. Bees or clouds: take your pick! He’ll instead be going all the way
to his Jumpman roots when he takes on Donkey Kong in Odyssey’s Metro Kingdom.
Mario will have to dodge barrels and climb rafters to reach Pauline, just like in
the arcade classic that started it all. On the subject of bosses that hang out in one
place, the Polluted Piranhas that guard various areas of Isle Delfino don’t put up much of a fight
themselves. However, they will spread their nasty paint and spawn goop-filled minions of their own,
so Mario will want to spray them down quickly. Gooper Blooper is another stop on Super
Mario Sunshine’s island cleanup tour. It will attempt to smash Mario with its
tentacles or gunk up the arena with ink, but its lack of mobility leaves it an easy target. The same is true of the giant spider
Tarantox, although Mario will have to be quick if he wants to avoid its toxic
spray and expose its vulnerable underside. Glamdozer can actually move around, but she
can’t do much when Mario clambers beneath her arena and attacks her from below.
As with many other bosses on this list, she’d be much more of a threat if
she’d picked a better battlefield. There’s obvious weak spots, and then there’s
Sorbetti with its giant red nose. This pile of slush also isn’t too intimidating
when all it can do is roll around. At least the Whomp King can try to crush Mario, and he’s got a few extra tricks in his Galaxy
2 rematch. But his fragile backside is still an easy target for Mario to stomp. In the
end, he’s just another stone to be trod on. We ought to feel a bit guilty about
beating up on the Dino Piranhas; they’re just newborns fresh out of their eggs.
But they’ll happily chase Mario around their small planets looking to chow down on their
first taste of plumber. In Galaxy Mario will have to smack their tails into their bodies,
while in the sequel he’ll be going directly for Peewee Piranha’s exposed backside. They’re
still ranking fairly low however, as even the strongest among them, the Fiery Dino
Piranha, isn’t a serious challenge. Neither is Prince Bully from 3D
World or his cat counterpart from Bowser’s Fury. They’ve got fireballs and
a pushy attitude befitting their name, but they’re all too easily stuffed inside
the pipes lining their arenas. Props for being one of the funnier ways of
defeating a Mario boss, though. The squirmy Wiggler of Super Mario 64 is much
less of a laugh, only ranking this high because of dodgy collision detection making it harder
than you’d think to land a hit on his head. Later 3D Mario games allow bosses to feel
threatening on their own merits. 3D World’s Motley Bossblob is more goofy than dangerous,
as you’d expect of a big bouncing clown, but in his second appearance the shockwaves
produced by his bounces can make it harder to reach him to get in an attack.
King Ka-Thunk might be one of the strangest-looking bosses in the series,
but get a handle on his erratic movements and he’s ultimately a straightforward “jump on
him three times and you win”-style encounter. Squizzard’s battlefield boasts more hazards, taking place in the middle of a sandy
sinkhole. He’s got a few attack patterns, but the Fire Flower handles everything he
can throw at Mario without much trouble. Sticking to the sand for now, the Hisstocrats
can pelt Mario with an array of projectiles and summon snake minions from under the
surface. The second, pink Hissocrat ups the ante even further with fiery boulders and
even more snakes. Why did it have to be snakes? Eels aren’t much better, but in fairness
the gigantic Eely-Mouth isn’t actually out to attack Mario. However, his appalling
gingivitis has poisoned the waters of Noki Bay, and the plumber will have to contend with
poison and the eel’s suction during his turn as an amateur underwater dentist. Is that
the weirdest job Mario’s ever held? You decide. Moving along now to more mobile foes, the Fury
Shadows race around the islands of Lake Lapcat. Mario will have to dodge stage hazards as he
chases down these dark Luigi doppelgangers. The Fury Shadows clearly took their inspiration
from Sunshine’s Shadow Mario. He menaces Isle Delfino with the power of graffiti and bad PR,
and Mario will need to hose him down in each world to clear the island of the messy menace. We’re
ranking Shadow Mario above his spiritual successor in Bowser’s Fury for several reasons. He’s more
persistent, sure, but his lack of a health bar and Mario’s lack of standard attacks in Sunshine
can really draw out the length of these encounters if your F.L.U.D.D. skills aren’t up to par.
Odyssey provides a water-spraying powerup of its own, and Mario will have to make use of those
abilities in the battle against Mollusque-Lanceur. The gargantuan octopus will surf through the
shallows of the Seaside Kingdom, spitting shells and dodging Mario’s attacks on his head. He’ll
have to be hosed down with water from a captured Gushen. It is a letdown though that his rematch in
the Mushroom Kingdom moves the action to the sky, a wide-open space with no environmental
distractions to get between Mario and the boss. The plumber has a long history of taking
down enemies with his platforming prowess as opposed to raw skill. The Tail
Bowsers of 3D Land pay homage to the earliest fights against the Koopa King,
tasking Mario with hopping across platforms and avoiding fireballs for his chance to
drop the masquerading minion into the lava. Mario will have to take a dive himself to
battle Kingfin. The skeletal shark certainly looks imposing, but it mostly relies on its
minions to threaten its opponents. Much like with Eely-Mouth, half the danger here lies
in managing Mario’s air supply underwater. Boss Brolder is another enemy with minions
of his own, and in his case they’re Mario’s ticket to taking him down. Hopefully his
little Brolders get some kind of hazard pay, since they’re just as much in danger of getting
squished by their master as he rolls along. Onward to another throwback fight.
Big Bully and Chili Bully are some of the most aggressive bad guys around, as
they’ll charge straight at Mario as soon as they spot him. He’ll have to score a ring out
of his own and knock them off their platforms – easier said than done in Chili Bully’s
case courtesy of the arena’s ice physics. Rollodillo would be a lot more frustrating
if it faced Mario on the ice, but without that slippery hazard its charging attacks
are fairly easy to dodge. You can give it a taste of its own medicine with
the rolling might of Rock Mario. Digga-Leg’s battle is even
more about proper timing, requiring Mario to dig straight
through the small planetoid and attack the robot’s defenseless underside. Talk
about fighting drills with…even more drills! Continuing the theme of earth-themed menaces,
Major Burrows tunnels through the ground at a respectable speed. Too bad for him he’s
an easy target once he’s on the surface. King Boo in Super Mario Sunshine doesn’t move
from his spot in the center of the arena, but appropriately for a fight accessed
through a casino there’s a high degree of randomness to this battle. You have
to hope for good luck on the ghost’s slot machine if you want to damage him…which
you do by feeding him peppers. Sure, why not? Thus far we’ve seen bosses that are highly
mobile, and other bosses that rely on their underlings or their artillery to get
the job done. But as the baddies grow more powerful we’ll start to see these two
strategies in tandem. Giga Lakitu is armed with the usual Spinies as well as a powerful
lightning attack from his angry thundercloud, and it’s up to Yoshi to gobble up the Koopa’s
own minions and spit them back at him. Baron Brrr steps up the challenge with
a battlefield that’s out to get Mario. He’ll have to navigate through chunks of ice
to reach Brrr’s perch, and after that contend with shockwaves and frozen projectiles.
There’s even more to juggle in the battles against Topmaniac. It needs to be knocked into
the electrified fences that line the arena, all the while dodging smaller tops and
preventing Mario from getting shocked himself. And this top won’t quit either;
with Prankster Comets taken into account, it’s fought more times than any
other boss in Super Mario Galaxy. We are awarding extra points for persistence here,
after all. Super Mario Sunshine introduced us to recurring boss Petey Piranha, and although the
top-heavy flora is fought only twice in its debut game it nonetheless earns its memorable status.
The second battle can be especially frustrating, with Petey taking to the skies above Bianco
Hills where Mario will struggle to reach him with F.L.U.D.D. He’ll have a lot of
goop to clean up after that showdown. While we’re on the subject of nasty baddies, allow
us to introduce the first of the Broodals clan. Spewart trails poison wherever he goes, forcing
Mario to clean it up if he hopes to get close enough to attack the mad rabbit. You might
feel like you’re playing Splatoon for a bit, but Spewart does himself no favors
by largely sticking to arenas where there’s plenty of room to maneuver. He’d
be far more deadly in close quarters. That sure is true for Eyerok, the golem lurking
in Super Mario 64’s pyramid that attempts to crush Mario or shove him into the nearby pit. Eyerok was
the first in a line of similarly-designed Nintendo 64 bosses. He’s the most straightforward by a
long shot, but they had to start somewhere, right? Returning to the Broodals, we come to
Harriet. Bombs are both her weapon of choice and her main weakness, as Mario
will have to toss them back at her to remove her protective hat and give
her a good old-fashioned stomping. Rango’s hat on the other hand operates like a
boomerang with a strangely bouncy underside, one that Mario will have to use to get a clear
shot on the unusually tall rabbit. The Broodals really have cornered the market in weaponized hats
– and we haven’t even gotten to the worst one yet! That’s not their manager, Madame Broode,
either, but she’s a powerful foe all the same. She’ll sic her golden pet Chain Chomp on
the plumber, and he’ll have to avoid its charges and sharp teeth for the chance to take control
of the Chomp and smack its master in the face. He’ll be doing the same with coconuts in
the battle against Prince Pikante. This is another one where the boss is tougher on
account of his choice of arena. Pikante will assault Mario with fireballs as he drives
around on the ice. Between the projectiles and the slippery ground, you’ll really
have to watch your footing with this one. Now we come to a nasty duo of bosses that are
also incredibly difficult to rank. Boom Boom roars back from a long absence after
Super Mario Bros. 3 with a vengeance, popping up numerous times in both 3D
Land and 3D World as well as Bowser’s Fury. His flailing fighting style
is essentially unchanged each time, although he likes to mix it up with different
environmental hazards. 3D World additionally gives him some momentary invisibility, making
it harder to avoid his spinning shell. Boom Boom’s female counterpart
Pom Pom is a craftier foe, tossing boomerangs at Mario and hovering
in mid-air when she retreats into her shell. Her new tactic in 3D World
entails confusing her opponent with nearly-identical clones. Did she
pick that one up from Lemmy and Wendy? Torkdrift on the other hand doesn’t need
any allies to be dangerous. It’s a UFO armed with a full complement of lasers
and a protected core that Mario needs to break through using a captured Uproot.
Controlling this slow-moving creature will make it more difficult to maneuver around
Torkdrift’s attacks, especially in the Mushroom Kingdom rematch where it’s backed by a set of
pylons that release shockwaves of their own. Another rogue in the Odyssey Mushroom
Kingdom’s gallery, Knucklotec, has no need for any of that fancy sci-fi
stuff. All he needs are his fists, good for stomping and slapping and firing off
icy missiles. Unfortunately for him, that’s all Mario needs to knock him out too.
The always-versatile Cappy can take command of Knucklotec’s stone hands and use them to lay
the smackdown on this god of the Sand Kingdom. The boss of the Luncheon Kingdom, Cookatiel,
doesn’t look as bad at first glance. How bad could a giant bird in a chef hat be? Pretty
bad, as it turns out, as it’ll be trying to cook up Mario in its giant stew pot while tossing
a variety of savory missiles his way. Once again, Cappy’s transformation powers
are the key to this boss battle, but it’ll also require some precise
platforming to get Mario up to where he can punt the foul fowl into its
own pot. Anyone up for chicken soup? Now we’re really getting into the heavy
artillery. The Undergrunt Gunners of Super Mario Galaxy pilot cannons that lob water
or electricity at their targets. While they may be stationary, each of them
takes advantage of their environment, demanding Mario deploy power-ups and fancy
footwork to work around spikes and electricity and make it up to the Gunner’s perch. The one in
the Toy Time Galaxy deserves special recognition, for sitting atop an obstacle-laden
tower as it fires down at Mario. Monty Moles may be content with mere turrets,
but any mechanized monstrosity commanded by Bowser or his son is always going to go big or
go home. Mecha-Bowser may well be the largest such device piloted by the Koopas, although
Jr. doesn’t take full advantage of its power by confining it inside a theme park. It’s
packing a flamethrower and an arsenal of Bullet Bills to shoot at Mario as he careens
around on a roller coaster firing rockets at the mech – violating who knows how many
park safety standards in the process.
Megaleg can just about rival Mecha-Bowser in
size, even if it’s stuck on a planet only just big enough to support it. Thankfully
Mario gets to fight this one on foot, scaling the metallic limbs that give Megaleg its
name and turning its own Bullet Bills against it. Quite a few of the bosses in the Galaxy
games are fought on such planetoids, and we’re giving Gobblegut the prize for the
best use of the disorienting effects of a small, spherical battlefield. Gobblegut’s got a fearsome
bite and enough strength to tunnel through the tiny planet, and the upgraded black version that
Mario faces in the Battle Belt Galaxy adds lava into the mix. It’s a struggle just to keep track
of which way is up when taking on these dragons. Now we’ve finally made it back to the Broodals.
Ordinarily we’d have expected Topper to place lower in the ranking, since he’s the first of his
group to challenge Mario. But Topper ups his game more than any of his cohorts, adding ever more
hats with each fight. By the time Mario’s made it to the Rabbit Ridge tower, the Broodal
leader’s sporting so many spiked top hats that they fill the battlefield. It’ll take
some fancy footwork to not get tripped up. While we’re playing “the floor is lava,”
let’s look at a boss that uses actual lava instead of hats. King Kaliente is a huge
step up in difficulty from his cephalopod cousin Gooper Blooper. In addition to the
variety of fiery attacks he brings to bear, Kaliente’s also been taking notes from bosses in
The Legend of Zelda, deflecting the projectiles Mario bats back at him over and over until one of
them slips up. His second fight will be even more of a strain, with sinking platforms ensuring
that Mario will always have to be on the move. Kamella combines similar levels of
firepower with high mobility of her own, not to mention a team of Magikoopa
minions ready to add to the chaos. She gets even more dangerous in the Deep
Dark Galaxy, where she’s learned how to teleport and take advantage of the
cramped quarters of a crow’s nest. From the top of a ship to the top of
a castle tower – the Ruined Dragon more than earns its title as the
“Lord of Lightning” with a whole host of electrified attacks. It also may
be the scariest boss in any Mario game, an unusually realistic-looking dragon assaulting
Mario in the midst of a storm. He’ll have to be quick to avoid getting zapped and expose
the weak spot beneath the dragon’s crown. The RoboBrood may not be as intimidating, but as a
robot mech combining the power of all the Broodals it’s even more of a struggle to take down.
Mario won’t be able to do it alone; instead, he’ll need to rely on captured enemies
to destroy the bot’s leg armor and stun it long enough to target the Broodals in their
cockpits. All the while he’ll have to deal with bombs, spinning discs, and the mech’s charge
attack. It’s a Broodal all-star brawl! Still, when it comes to robot fights, we’ve got
to hand it to Bowser Jr. in the Galaxy games. Whether he’s piloting his airship, the fully-armed
Megahammer bot, or the towering Boomsday Machine, Jr. puts out more firepower than anyone else in
the Koopa Troop. It’s that last encounter that winds up as the tyrannical tyke’s personal
best, with missiles, spinning fire wheels, vacuum suction to disrupt Cloud Mario’s
attempts to climb the tower, and even tank treads for mobility. It’s a good thing for
Mario that Jr. hoards all this top-of-the-line tech for himself, rather than putting it
in the hands of his rank-and-file minions. It’s going to take some unexpectedly
strong baddies to top a performance like that. Bouldergeist is another one
of those head-and-two-hands bosses, but one that really puts its paranormal
control over stone to good use. Not only can it cover itself in rocks to protect its
body, but it can also toss them at Mario, form them into hands to attack and block, and
even create waves of stone pillars. The ghost might be helpless once it’s stripped of its armor,
but it’s getting to that point that’s the problem. That’s also true of Wiggler in Super Mario
Sunshine. It might be much larger than most other Wigglers, but what really earns it a place
this high in the ranking is its speed and erratic movements. The only way to damage Wiggler is to
spray plants on the beach that will trigger the eruption of sand structures that will flip the
big bug upside down, but the timing needed for these can be incredibly frustrating. Admittedly
it could be worse though – imagine this boss fight if the Wiggler hadn’t cleared those
obnoxious Cataquacks off the beach first! Even worse than a giant, enraged caterpillar is
a giant, enraged caterpillar robot – and it’s one that’s winning our Bronze Medal. Mechawiggler
clings to the side of New Donk City Hall, firing off the electricity it’s stolen and
occasionally phasing onto the ground level to charge Mario. What makes this creepy teleporting
bug harder to squish is that Mario will need to take control of a slow-moving tank to have
enough firepower to damage it. Mechawiggler doesn’t get an upgrade for its rematch in the
Mushroom Kingdom, but it does come as a pair now. Mayor Pauline really needs to get tougher
on the electricity-siphoning robot bug problem. But if she’s got problems, pity the poor
hotel manager of Sirena Beach. The elusive Phantamanta takes our Silver Medal, as
it’s one of the toughest bosses in all of 3D Mario. It may only appear to be a bright
shadow of a manta ray gliding across the ground, but it leaves behind a trail of electric goop
in its wake that can bury people and structures alike and will give Mario a painful zap if he so
much as brushes against it. That makes hovering over Phantamanta to break it into smaller
pieces all the more difficult, especially near the end when tiny aggressive mantas are
swarming all over the beach and painting it with lethal sludge. Hard to watch where you’re
stepping when the whole map is a danger zone. We all knew however who was taking the Gold
Medal for the Most Powerful boss in 3D Mario, though. Bowser is the final boss of every one of
these games, and while he’s taken many forms and employed many strategies over the years each
of them stands as the ultimate test at the end of Mario’s journey. Bowser is fought more than
twenty times across eight games though, and as might be expected not all of his battles show him
at his full strength. His early appearances in 64 and Sunshine don’t really impress, with their
challenge coming more from getting the angle just right when spinning him around or…taking him
seriously when he’s chilling out in a hot tub. He quickly steps up his game by the time Galaxy
comes around, with his usual tactics of fireballs, shockwaves, and the time-honored Koopa shell
spin. Later games power Bowser up even more, seeing him grow big enough to punch planets in
Galaxy 2, swipe Mario’s power-ups for himself in 3D World, or get into the weaponized hat
game in Odyssey. But we’re handing out the prize for the strongest of the strong to
Fury Bowser’s kaiju-sized throwdowns with Mario in the game that bears his name. These boss
battles combine all of Bowser’s strongest skills, massively scaled up for maximum carnage.
All that’s left to consider is just how the Koopa King is going to outdo
himself yet again in the next game.
