Crowning Music of Awesome: Bowser's Inside Story

     Given the nature of Mario games, the term epic is rarely used to describe a scene or musical piece. The music is pretty good and there are some songs that do stand out, but for the most part, Nintendo keeps it's portly hero pretty vanilla.

     However, there are times when Nintendo is too busy with other projects and they hand off one of their franchises to one of their internal studios. With Mario and Luigi , they did this with AlphaDreams and the results were amazing. I am not here to talk about the game though, but the music, which sets the bar to new heights for Nintendo.

     There are plenty of songs from the Mario series I could choose as a subject for Crowning Music of Awesome, but today I would like to talk about the Final Boss Theme from Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story. The OST was done by Yoko Shimomura, no stranger to Nintendo franchises as she worked on the soundtrack to Super Mario RPG. It is clear that she drew inspiration from her previous work with the first Kingdom hearts game on this soundtrack as the music has a more RPG flair to it.

     I like to think that The Final Boss Theme is a perfect theme for Bowser. It exemplifies his never give up, too stubborn to die attitude which is a rarity these days in video games. In most jRPG's the villain has a god complex with a holier then thou attitude towards people and to some, incredibly fey. Bowser on the other hand has no god complex. He knows he is the biggest and the baddest. If Mario throws him into a pit of lava, he crawls out and plots more. He knows when he is beat and will plan for another day while he licks his wounds.

     Why I decided to make this track a Crowning Music of Awesome is because it is set to one of the best battles in Mario RPG history. Instead of facing off against some weaponmaster hellbent on invading the world, time travelling aliens, or a voice stealing, power hungry witch, we are dealing with an ancient power who decided to use Bowser as a template in its creation. However Bowser doesn't care and declares war on his dark doppleganger. The Mushroom Kingdom will be his to rule and this song solidifies a clash of titans.

     Of all of the villains Nintendo has come up with, Bowser is by far my favourite. While the Wind Waker iteration of Ganondorf gave the player some much needed depth for the character, he is still just a man with a god complex. Bowser isn't. He has twice stolen the Mushroom Kingdom Castle, usurped the power of wishes and even decided to make his own galaxy. Bowser just doesn't care. He just does what he wants, damn the consequences.

     Until a portly plumber decides to show up and dump him into a pit of lava or the core of a sun.

     This is Daimo Mac and I am lost in the music.