Bowser's Inside Story: Playing in the Koopa

GameMario & LuigiNintendo DS

The best playground in the whole series is the inside of Bowser. Developed by AlphaDream and released in Europe on 9 October 2009, Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story sends the brothers deep into the Koopa King's guts while he keeps causing chaos on the outside. This guide breaks down the giant battles, the Blorbs and the return of Fawful.

What if the best playground for Mario and Luigi were neither a castle nor a flowery meadow, but… the inside of the Koopa King himself? That is the wild gamble behind Mario & Luigi: Journey to the Centre of Bowser (Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story), the third instalment in the Mario & Luigi role-playing series, released on Nintendo DS in 2009.

Developed by AlphaDream and published by Nintendo, this RPG has a reputation as one of the most inventive games in the franchise. Its master idea: running two adventures in parallel, one inside Bowser's body, the other outside, with the big villain himself at the controls. Here is why this trip through the Koopa's guts is still a Nintendo DS essential.

Contents

• An RPG deep inside Bowser's guts
• Two heroes inside, one villain outside
• Giant battles: when Bowser changes scale
• The Blorbs and the return of Fawful
• A title that winks at Jules Verne
• The 3DS remake and Bowser Jr.'s Journey
• Quick facts
• FAQ

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An RPG deep inside Bowser's guts

Released on Nintendo DS, Bowser's Inside Story is the third entry in the Mario & Luigi saga, after Superstar Saga (Game Boy Advance) and Partners in Time (DS). Like its elders, it leans on wall-to-wall humour, snappy turn-based battles and timed inputs you have to nail to dodge an attack or hit harder.

The masterstroke is its playground. After swallowing a booby-trapped mushroom, Bowser unwittingly inhales Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach and the little star Starlow (Étoile d'Or in the French version). The two plumbers end up trapped inside the Koopa's body, turned into a proper level to explore: stomach, muscles, nerve pathways… every organ becomes a playable area of its own, with its own enemies and its own puzzles.

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Two heroes inside, one villain outside

The real flavour of the game comes from its double viewpoint, constantly switching between two levels of action:

• Inside: you steer Mario and Luigi through Bowser's depths. The brothers solve platforming puzzles and fight off creatures on the bottom screen.
• Outside: you play as Bowser himself, a colossus who can inhale his opponents, soak up punishment and smash through everything in his path.

The two worlds are never sealed off from each other: they talk to one another constantly. To help Bowser when he gets stuck outside, Mario and Luigi sometimes have to act from within, stimulating his muscles or setting his organs in motion. Conversely, whatever Bowser does reshapes the environment the two brothers are exploring. This back-and-forth mechanic produces clever puzzles and a rhythm that never runs out of breath.

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Giant battles: when Bowser changes scale

You cannot talk about this game without mentioning its famous giant battles. At key moments in the adventure, Bowser swells to colossal proportions to take on enemies every bit as oversized as he is.

For these spectacular sequences, the game asks you to hold the Nintendo DS vertically, like a book. The touch screen is then used to dish out claw swipes and beat back enemy attacks, while the staging goes all in on the clash-of-titans feel. That shift in orientation, a rarity at the time, is part of the game's visual identity and creates a striking contrast with the painstaking exploration going on inside the body.

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The Blorbs and the return of Fawful

As the game opens, the Mushroom Kingdom is hit by a strange epidemic, the Blorbs (known as the Rouliboulite in the French version): the Toads who catch it swell up like balloons and then roll around with no way to steer. Behind the plague hides a distinctly shady travelling salesman offloading contaminated Blorb Mushrooms by the crateload.

This mysterious merchant is none other than Fawful (Gracowitz in the French version), already encountered in Superstar Saga, where he served as right-hand man to Queen Cackletta. Back and firmly set on revenge, he dreams of getting his hands on the Dark Star, a shadowy star with gigantic powers, so he can rule the world. It is partly to foil his plans that Mario, Luigi and Bowser, sworn enemies in normal times, find themselves forced to cooperate.

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A title that winks at Jules Verne

The French title is no accident. Journey to the Centre of Bowser is a lovely nod to Jules Verne's novel Journey to the Centre of the Earth: where Verne's explorers climbed down into the bowels of the planet, Mario and Luigi set off to discover the bowels of the Koopa.

That one phrase sums up what won over players and press alike: an original concept carried all the way through, a resolutely comic tone and three playable characters with sharply distinct styles. On release, the game was hailed as one of the high points of the Mario & Luigi series, and it is still regularly named among the best RPGs on the Nintendo DS.

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The 3DS remake and Bowser Jr.'s Journey

Ten years after the original, the game earned a second life on Nintendo 3DS under the title Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr.'s Journey This version came out in Japan at the end of 2018, then in Europe in January 2019.

Beyond visuals brought up to date, this remake adds a brand-new mode, Bowser Jr.'s Journey, which offers an extra angle on the story by putting Bowser's son centre stage. A fine way in for players who missed the adventure on DS, and for nostalgics keen to rediscover this great classic with a little extra content.

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Bowser's Inside Story at a glance

French name	Mario et Luigi: Voyage au centre de Bowser
English name	Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story
Japanese name	Mario & Luigi RPG 3!!!
Developer / Publisher	AlphaDream / Nintendo
Release (Europe)	9 October 2009 (Nintendo DS)
Genre	Role-playing game (RPG)
Entry	3rd in the Mario & Luigi series
Remake	Nintendo 3DS, January 2019 (+ Bowser Jr.'s Journey)

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FAQ

• Which console can you play Bowser's Inside Story on?
  The game originally came out on Nintendo DS in 2009 (9 October 2009 in Europe). A remake has also been available on Nintendo 3DS since January 2019, under the longer title “+ Bowser Jr.'s Journey”.
• Who is Fawful, the game's antagonist?
  Fawful (Gracowitz in the French version) is the big bad of the adventure. He was Queen Cackletta's former right-hand man in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, back for revenge and out to seize the Dark Star.
• Why do you play inside Bowser?
  After swallowing a booby-trapped mushroom, Bowser inhales Mario and Luigi into his body. You then control the brothers through his organs while also steering Bowser outside, with the two levels of action influencing each other.
• What are the Blorbs?
  The Blorbs (Rouliboulite in the French version) is the epidemic sweeping the Mushroom Kingdom: infected Toads swell up and then roll around uncontrollably. It is spread by the Blorb Mushrooms sold by Fawful.
• What's different about the 3DS remake?
  The 2019 Nintendo 3DS remake offers modernised graphics and adds a brand-new mode, Bowser Jr.'s Journey, which tells the story from the point of view of Bowser's son.

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