Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions

MARIO & LUIGI: SUPERSTAR SAGA + BOWSER'S MINIONS

Today, let's cover the first of the two remakes of the Mario & Luigi series. This one is of Superstar Saga, mostly with heavily updated graphics, a few ease-of-living updates, and some minor changes to cutscenes and so on, but that's not really why we're here is it?

No, we're mainly here for the Bowser's Minions portion of that name. Bowser's Minions is a side story and minigame added in to the story, following a plucky Goomba as he gathers an army of minions to his side shortly after the Koopa Cruiser's crash toward the game's start in order to find Bowser and back him up. This game has a completely unique gameplay gimmick to it, where you pick a team of minions to go into battle, each with certain skills, and then they mostly act autonomously, fighting an opposing army and taking them out if you've planned right.

Over the course of the game, you pick up four captains: our Goomba protagonist, a Shy Guy, a Boo, and a Koopa. These captains have their own commands that they can input to help their squad: they can surprise an opponent and cut off their special attack, boost their team's spirit, hit a block to score a bonus, play dead to distract an opponent, call down lightning, block an enemy's attack, play a game of catch with a bob-omb, and drop a thwomp. The Goomba captain can also face off one-on-one with the enemy captain, the Shy Guy can call in a backup ally, the Boo can pull off a sneak attack, and the Koopa Troopa will strike in his shell.

As for their forces, they typically come in three varieties: a melee fighter, a long-range fighter, and an aerial fighter, in a rock-paper-scissors kind of deal (aerials beat melee, long-range beat aerial, so on). The minions include Goombas (with Para, Tail, and Stack varieties, Koopa Troopas and Paratroopas, Dry Bones, Boos (with Bomb, Tail, and Big varieties), Broozers, Shy, Spear, and Fly Guys, Bandits, Buzzy and Para-Beetles, Hammer, Fire, Ice, and Boomerang Bros, Lakitus and Spinies, Pokeys, Chain Chomps, Chargin' Chucks, Piranha Plants, Spikes, Bob-Ombs, Mechakoopas, and four types of Magikoopa. Bowser Jr. and the Seven Koopalings can likewise eventually be recruited, as can the Backstabber Trio from Bowser's Inside Story, and Starlow and Prince Peasley for some reason.

Most of the enemies are common enemies appearing throughout the original game, with Fawful as the main villain. Not much to say for stages, seeing as they're pretty basic long stretches for battles to take place on, with familiar locales from the original game in the background.

That's pretty much it! Let's see what we've got:

Characters:

Mario: handstand, jump, crouch, spin, spin on bar, hammer, spring, key, pick up and throw, giant, float, fly

Luigi: invisible

Wario: metal

Yoshi: fire breath, tongue

Donkey Kong: punch, barrel, stomp, jack, grow giant, throw enemies

Donkey Kong Jr.: hop, throw switches

Pauline

Birdo: Robirdo

All characters appearing in SMB2, SMW, SMW2, and SMB3

All characters appearing in the DKC series

All characters appearing in SM64

Diddy Kong

Dixie Kong

Tiny Kong

Wizpig

Taj

Timber and the other racers

Team Captains: deny, rally, bonus block, play dead, lightning, parry, bob-omb, thwomp, face off, backup, sneak attack, shell strike, aerial, melee, long range

Bosses:

King Bob-Omb

Goomboss

King Boo

Chief Chilly

Stages:

Construction Site

Big City

Forest

Ship

Jungle

Desert

Airplane

Iceberg

Rocky-Valley

All stages appearing in SMB2, SMW, SMW2, and SMB3

All stages appearing in DKC series

Palm Beach

Poison Swamp

Secret Factory

Ice Area

All locations in Diddy Kong Racing

Minions Battlefield

Thanks for reading! Next up, let's cover the other Mario & Luigi remake!