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How Old Is Bowser? Nintendo Confirms Mario Baddie's True Age
Bowser's age has been revealed, and it's...probably not what you were expecting.
If you're a Nintendo fan, you no doubt know Bowser, the gargantuan, bold, deliciously evil King of the Koopas who's been breathing fire through Mario games and other spinoffs since 1985. If you're deep into Mario lore, you also no doubt know a lot about his history, but even if you're not, you probably imagine the guy as some kind of ancient beast who's been working on his conquest of the Mushroom Kingdom and any other realm he can grasp since time immemorial.
Well, according to a new video from Nintendo of America...not so much.
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Earlier this month, Nintendo uploaded a short, innocuous how-to video to its official YouTube account, showing users exactly how to create their own Nintendo accounts, plus set up one for a child in the house. It's very straightforward and completely wordless, simply showing you what each screen looks like and how to navigate the account setup, but as IGN notes, there's one very amusing Easter egg embedded in all the steps. Creating an account includes entering your date of birth, and because Nintendo chose to use "Bowser" as the name of their user for this demonstration, that means they basically gave King Koopa an official, maybe even canonical birthday:
February 5, 1989.
Yes, that means according to this video, Bowser is just 34 years old, which an especially odd thing to hear for those of us who were alive before 1989 and can remember playing Super Mario Bros. with a fully grown Bowser as far back as its 1985 release. To make things even more confusing, the child account addition is his son, Bowser Jr., who's given a birthdate of March 3, 2011, almost a full decade after his 2002 debut.
So, Bowser is 34, and he has a 12-year-old son. Basically, he's your neighbor, that guy who's always trying to take control of the whole neighborhood by running the block party and bugging you about taking your trash bins in on time every week. We'll see if Nintendo starts to work more of Bowser's 34-ness into future games or films, or if we're just all going to pretend like we didn't see that.
Want more Bowser? The Super Mario Bros. Movie is available now.
