Welcome to a very special entry, ladies and gentlemen! For this, our fourteenth day of End Boss Month, we’ll be taking a look at not one, but two of Mario’s lesser nemeses. For one game each, they stepped up and filled in for Bowser as the final boss. And of course, both were sent packing, because that’s what happens to villains that confront the portly, mustachioed man in the red cap.

And though they never stood a chance (because, once again, Mario), Wart and Tatanga are still noteworthy foes. One is a monster that threatens Sub-Con, while the other wreaks havoc throughout Sarasaland and kidnaps its princess.

Wart’s case, as the final boss of Super Mario Bros. 2, is a little special. As a lot of you probably already know, the second Super Mario Bros. game released in North America was not originally a Mario game. It was a crazy game designed as a tie-in to a TV network’s promotional event, and then converted and enhanced to become a Mario game for Americans that didn’t want to put up with the insane bullshit of the original sequel.

Regardless of opinions on its qualities as a Mario game, one of the aspects that Super Mario Bros. 2 shares with Doki Doki Panic is Wart. And though the games’ stories are different, Wart is pretty much the same. A big green asshole that refuses to eat his vegetables. So of course, it makes perfect sense for him to reside in a room that also just happens to have a device capable of launching vegetables that can be easily collected and thrown down is gullet.

And that’s not the most embarrassing part. Not only can he be beaten by Mario, Luigi, or Peach. He can be beaten by Toad. Yes, a mushroom retainer. One of those guys that were always happy to thank you before informing you of the obvious regarding the whereabouts of the princess. Getting beaten by Toad is basically the equivalent of getting beaten by one of the useless NPCs you sometimes see wandering around an RPG town. It does nothing but bruise the ego.

But then, oh wait! It was all a dream, and when Mario wakes up, the whole adventure, Wart and all, vanishes into the ether.

It just sucks to be Wart.

On the other hand, we have Tatanga of Super Mario Land, an alien from outer space that takes a page out of Bowser’s playbook and kidnaps a princess. In this case, Princess Daisy. The specific identity of the damsel-in-distress aside, Tatanga’s plot hinges on one thing; not getting his ass kicked by Mario.

But to Tatanga’s credit, he does throw a wrench into Mario’s usual running and stomping. He flies in a personal spacecraft, forcing Mario to take to the air in order to defeat him. In a bizarre twist, Super Mario Land is the only Mario game that has ever ended in the form of a side-scrolling aerial shooter. Not that this really helps Tatanga in any way, because he still gets blown out of the sky.

To be fair, however, Tatanga did return for a second go around in Super Mario Land 2. But it still sucked for him because once again, he was a boss in a Mario game. Furthermore, he wasn’t even the final boss the second time around. Demoted to the duty of serving as the boss of Space Zone, Tatanga has had to live with Wario stealing the glory and going on to greater and greedier heights.

And even if Tatanga were to return to his old form of Super Mario Land, well, good luck to him. Daisy isn’t exactly a wallflower anymore. She’d probably punch his teeth in.

So let us pour one out for Wart and Tatanga, the Mario villains that, while vile, could never live up to the legacy of a fire-breathing, skirt-chasing turtle or a greedy, garlic-breathed man in purple overalls.

Fucking overalls, man.