Koopa Troopa

After the release and success of the arcade game Donkey Kong (1981), Nintendo began work on a follow-up game more prominently focusing on the character of Mario, which released as Mario Bros. (1983).[1] The idea of creating a turtle enemy came as a result of developing its core gameplay mechanics. After designers Gunpei Yokoi and Shigeru Miyamoto established that the game would revolve around Mario possessing superhuman jumping abilities that were to be used to jump between different floors of platforms, they approached how enemies would be attacked.[1] They came up with the idea of the player attacking enemies from one level below, making Mario hit his ceiling so that it would bump the enemy's floor and defeat them.[1] However, this method of defeating enemies was deemed too easy in playtesting, so they instead implemented a two-step approach of having to stun the enemies first. When thinking about what types of enemies it would make sense to stun like this, they came up with the idea of a turtle getting stuck after getting knocked upside down on its shell.[1] So the gameplay was set up so that the player would now hit the turtle from below, knocking it on its back, and then jump directly on it to defeat it before it was able to correct itself.[1]

With the premise established, they turned to creating the turtle character itself.[2] Miyamoto initially dictated what he wanted it to look like to a Nintendo designer, but the initial draft came out looking like a very realistic looking turtle that Miyamoto felt did not fit in well with the rest of the Mario art style.[2] Instead, Miyamoto drew the concept art himself, emphasizing a cartoonish large head and more of a tortoise-like shape.[2] With discussing the anatomy of turtles with fellow Nintendo staffer Hirokazu Tanaka, they came up with the idea of the turtle character getting knocked out of its shell entirely. While conceding that this is not how turtle shells work, Miyomoto liked the idea because it helped with visualizing when the turtle was still in a stunned state; out of its shell, it was stunned, and once it returned, it was active again.[2] While Miyomoto initially wondered if this was a form of "lying to children", in the end, he decided that the ability to entirely remove the body from the shell would be a key difference between a turtle and a Koopa Troopa.[2]

For the Mario Bros. game the character would be named "Shellcreepers", but in subsequent Super Mario games, the character would be renamed Koopa Troopa.[3] Up until very late pre-release builds of its follow up game, Super Mario Bros. (1985), Koopa Troopa was the only enemy in the game; however, playtesting found that his 2-step process of defeating him was too difficult for early stages of the game.[4] Rather than change Koopa Troopa, this led to the creation of another long-running Mario character - Goomba.[4] Similarly, when developer Takashi Tezuka wished to create a new enemy character that could fly - he found himself unable to due to size and memory restrictions of the Nintendo Entertainment System hardware.[5] Instead, to save on memory he decided to build off of the established Koopa Troopa design by adding wings to the top of his shell.[5] While Miyamoto expressed hesitation at first, he was convinced when he saw the final design, and thus, the Koopa Paratroopa was born and implemented into the game.[5]

The design of Koopa Troopa would influence and impact the creation of other Mario characters as well. In creating a second playable character for Mario Bros., the developers decided to make a palette swapped version of Mario, and due to hardware limitations regarding how many different colors could be appearing on screen, they decided to use the green color used for Koopa Troopa, eventually leading to the creation of Luigi and his trademark green color scheme.[6][3] Koopa Troopa's design also influenced Bowser's final design.[7] Miyamoto's initial instructions to character designer Yoichi Kotabe resulted in more of an ox-like character design, and their efforts to revise his art to make him look more like Koopa Troopas resulted in Bowser's final design.[7]

GameDaily listed Koopa Troopa as the eighth best Mario enemy.[17] IGN's Audrey Drake listed Koopa Troopa as one of the best Mario enemies, saying that it is one of the most "iconic Mario enemies out there. In fact, they're pretty much synonymous with the franchise."[18]

In October 2022, The Daily Dot reported that a Koopa Troopa video clip from New Super Mario Bros. U went viral on TikTok. In the video, two Koopa Troopas running in unison slowly make progress in crossing a spinning circular platform. However, in this game, Koopa Troopas always stop and briefly dance whenever the game's background music hits a certain point. In the clip, they stop and dance, and it cancels all of their progress on traversing the spinning platform, keeping them stuck in a loop. The video elicited much commentary on Koopa Troopas being forced to dance at inopportune times. The Koopa Troopa clip amassed 20 million views in under a month, and inspired over 20,000 similar videos related to Koopa Troopas dancing to the sound clip.[19]

Since their introduction, Koopa Troopas have become the iconic enemy of the Mario franchise, often referenced in popular culture relating to the series: in 2007's The Simpsons Game, a Koopa Troopa appears as the apparent bride of the eccentric geek Professor Frink after Bart and Lisa rescue him from Donkey Kong in a parody of the popular arcade game.[20] A satirical article was written by The Pitt News columnist Ben Korman, criticizing the Mario series for its offensive treatment of the Koopa Troopas, stating that the character Mario was rewarded for his slaughter of "innocent, healthy turtles".[9]

• Koopa Troopa at MarioWiki.com