Through most of Mario's adventures in the nineties Bowser was not alone when planning his evil schemes to kidnap Princess Peach. Besides receiving help from his always loyal troops the King of Evil – recently self-proclaimed King of Awesome – also had the support of a part of his family: his seven children. They tried to make sure Mario wouldn't make it past their massive fortresseses filled the highest value of traps per square inch ever seen in a videogame. Unsurprisingly though, the younglings had inherited their father's ability to fail and so they were never able to achieve their goal.

Somewhere down the line something went terribly wrong, perhaps angered at their constant failures Bowser locked them up in one of his castle's many dungeons or maybe Nintendo just felt like getting rid of their most amazing group of young villains. The fact is that all of a sudden the Koopalings vanished from the Mushroom Kingdom and were replaced by the extremely annoying Bowser Jr., a character with the very same failure rate of his older brothers, but a Koopa with little to no charm.

The Koopalings were full of personality and easily recognizable. Each one of them was named after entertainment celebrities, and their rather unique visuals were – according to Miyamoto – based on some of the developers that were a part of the staff responsible for Super Mario Bros 3. Besides, every Koopaling had a unique fighting pattern providing players with different fun challenges along the way.

Bowser Jr. heavily contrasts with Bowser's other children. He is basically a smaller sillier version of Bowser himself, a character that was designed with little creativity in mind and that somehow took the Koopalings' rightful place as the offspring of evil for many years with a certain degree of success. While his hilarious brothers were cast in the shadows for more than a decade Bowser Jr. was out there causing havoc and making old-school Mario fans wonder why.

To Nintendo's credit the Koopalings did appear on a quality title these past few years. In the epic Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga players faced each one of these young maniacs on turn-based battles inside Bowser's Castle. While those clashes were indeed a lot of fun they just made players covet their platforming return even more intensely, after all it was on the glorious Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World where the Koopalings reached their superstar status.

Fortunately the waiting is finally reaching its end. New Super Mario Bros. Wii is said to feature each one of them in their original order, starting with Larry and ending with Ludwig. Players will face them twice per world, the first battle will be in a traditional setting while the last one – in the worlds' final castles – will be altered by Kamek and her magic, either giving them some new powers or twisting the environment around the battlefield, in a manner that will resemble Super Mario World 2 boss battles.

Larry Koopa, Morton Koopa Jr., Wendy O. Koopa, Iggy Koopa, Roy Koopa, Lemmy Koopa and Ludwig Von Koopa are ready and redesigned for their amazing return to the main Mario series, and personally having the opportunity to once again battle Bowser's kids gets me even more excited for the game's release in a few weeks. Now let's just hope that instead of being ignored after this game, the Koopalings will gain much more attention from Nintendo. And who knows, maybe one day Bowser Jr. will be the one vanishing into thin air.