Mario Kart 8

Bowser’s Castle is one of the most recurring locations in the Super Mario franchise. It is from here that Bowser formulates his plans and summons his various minions to take over the Mushroom Kingdom. It is often the final area in a game that Mario and his friends visit, to defeat the Koopa King and rescue Princess Peach. At least one race course set in Bowser’s Castle has appeared in every Mario Kart game to date, usually directly before Rainbow Road. These tracks typically feature a wide array of menacing obstacles and hazards to avoid, and the incarnation from Mario Kart 8 is no different. This track is loaded with an impressive gauntlet of traps that make it clear just how unwelcome you are in Bowser’s abode. Laser statues. Spiked pendulums. Rolling boulders. Giant fire bars. Lava geysers. Bowser’s Castle has them all. This track is the embodiment of the Koopa King himself.

You start the race just outside the castle, but as soon as the countdown ends, you zoom across the drawbridge – which is lowered over a moat of lava – and enter the fortress itself. It’s a huge, spiky, formidable building of stone and steel, inhabited by Hammer Bros and Dry Bones who are watching from the sidelines.

After racing through some dingy stone corridors, you’ll emerge into a vast room that seems to have lots of machinery with pressure gauges, gears, pistons, and valves. I always thought this course was basically a massive iron fortress with lava flowing through it, but during my most recent playthrough, I now think it’s meant to be themed after a steel foundry, and the lava is possibly molten iron. Whatever it’s supposed to be, Bowser’s domicile is spiky and industrial, and it really feels like the Koopa King designed it himself, to feed his ego and to show off how cool and menacing he is.

You briefly emerge onto the parapets of the castle (with one of Bowser’s airships flying overhead), but then it’s straight back into the citadel. A giant, fiery moving stone statue in the shape of Bowser himself constantly punches the forked road in this section of the course, creating ripples on the track.

Once you’ve passed the enormous Bowser golem, you’ll glide over a lava-filled chasm that has spouts of molten rock rising into the air. Then, as you land, you’ll find yourself outside the castle again. Avoid some boulders rolling down the slope, and you’ll arrive back at the finish line. You’ve avoided the gauntlet of hazards for one lap – just two more to go before you can claim victory!

Bowser was created by Nintendo designer and producer Shigeru Miyamoto. Miyamoto first envisioned Bowser as an ox, based on the large, intimidating ox-like King Gruesome from the Toei Animation film Alakazam the Great. However, Nintendo designer Takashi Tezuka pointed out that the character looked a lot more like a turtle than an ox. Miyamoto and Tezuka then began to redesign his look, making him spiked, shelled, and reptilian to reflect a leader of the turtle-like Koopa Troopas. Bowser’s final design was, according to some sources, based on the Chinese softshell turtle, but it also has hints of an alligator snapping turtle, the Tarasque (a medieval dragon/turtle), and Gamera, the iconic fictional turtle kaiju with the ability to breathe fire.

Next time, we’re off into space to race along Mario Kart 8‘s iteration of the famous Rainbow Road.