>>712756450
>>Chan and Lee are at the Dojo
I always took those two for straight up Koopa Troop deserters. Call me a bleeding heart hippie but after seeing how Paper Mario 64 and TTYD handled all the Mushroom Kingdom races living in harmony and having clear delimitations as who the bad and good ones are, every other Mario RPG comes off as really stupid and kinda tasteless when they try to get tropey with Mario enemies. It's so idyllic in 64 and even the sequel, then Color Splash went back to those stupid Hotel Toads cowering in fear at a single regular Koopa Troopa in a cage, or that Shy Guy giving you that empty speech abouty how "he's a bad guy who walks back to right and you kill him most of the time but we're having a peaceful moment XDDD" it comes off super groanworthy to me.

>good koopa are regular koopa, bad koopa have bowser armor or sunglasses
>goomba are basically like country bumpkins
>TTYD's Rogueport is a melting pot shithole but you still see lots of species as NPCs for the first time like Bandits, not to mention Toads as immigrants for the first time in the series
>some species are altogether good and always your allies, you never fight a Cheep Cheep, a Boo(in the first game anyways) a Ninji or a Shaman
>speaking of Boos the ones in Gusty Gulch are tan comapred to the ones in forever forest because it's an arid mesa inspired by southern Spain
>you never fight a Shy Guy in TTYD but they still show up as troublemakers in your audience

Not that it was a very high bar but it's the best depiction of the Mario World bar none imo.