The Super Mario Bros. Movie has finally ground-pounded into cinemas, and it looks to have exactly three objectives on its to-do list — make mincemeat of the box office, make the kids fall in love with the portly little plumber all over again, and one-up the 1993 effort. Though that last goal is no daunting hurdle, it nevertheless looks to have gone three-for-three on its checklist, and with that delightful little teaser of a post-credits scene, we could be in for some more Mushroom Kingdom shenanigans in the future.
By all accounts, the name of the game for the Mario Bros. Movie was fan-service; just about every scene had a reference from the beloved games either tucked away or stealing the spotlight, and while it may have taken away from the character development, seeing the Mushroom Kingdom’s colorful denizens come to life surely put a smile on many a young Switch owner.
But the slew of cameos wasn’t just for Nintendo’s newer crop of fans. There was one classic character in The Super Mario Bros. Movie that only the real OGs would have likely been able to pick out, and that’s Foreman Spike, the former employer of Mario and Luigi who never missed a chance to torment them.
But where does Spike, a character that looks about as grounded as Nintendo characters get, even come from? Here’s the full breakdown of everything Foreman Spike.
Who is Foreman Spike?
Voiced by comedian Sebastian Maniscalco, Spike’s role in The Super Mario Bros. Movie is rather limited. As detailed above, we learn that he was the former employer of Mario and Luigi before they quit his construction business, the Wrecking Crew, to start their own independent plumbing gig. After berating the brothers over their new commercial and generally just being a sizeable douchebag, he takes his leave, and we don’t really see him again.
The video game version of the character isn’t much different, and if the brothers’ employment at the Wrecking Crew is as faithful to the games as the rest of the film was, they had good reason to quit. As the boss of the demolition site in Wrecking Crew, the game where he originated, he bafflingly goes out of his way to make life miserable for Mario and Luigi, from knocking the brothers around with a hammer to beating them to the punch for some hidden goodies out of spite.
He’s a curious character, doing everything he can to prevent the completion of the very job he supposedly hired the brothers to do, but in fairness, the movie puts about as much thought into the characterization as most of the cast, so we can’t fault the logic gaps too scathingly here.
What games does Foreman Spike appear in?
Spike’s first and most well-known appearance is in the aforementioned Wrecking Crew, a 1985 Nintendo Entertainment System title where he served as the main antagonist, making life miserable for Mario and Luigi by way of the mischief outlined above.
He also appeared in the sequel Wrecking Crew ’98, a Japan-only Super Famicom game, in which he joins forces with Bowser to construct a series of high-rise buildings in the Mushroom Kingdom. Spike finds himself up against Mario once again when the red-clad plumber, ever the environmentalist, embarks to destroy the work of Spike and Bowser when he realizes the buildings are depriving the local plant life of the sunlight they need to survive. Gameplay-wise, he features as the CPU-controlled challenger in the fourth level of the single-player mode and can be selected as a playable character in the multiplayer mode after his defeat.
Spike also features as a playable character in 2001’s Mobile Golf, a Japan-only Game Boy Color title. This is perhaps his most elusive appearance, as he, along with Mario, Peach, and Yoshi, were only unlockable via the wildly unpopular peripheral known as the Mobile Adapter GP, which allowed certain Game Boy Color games to connect to certain Japanese mobile phone networks to access multiplayer modes and additional content. In Mobile Golf, he had the highest initial stats out of the entire cast, though this was offset by having his AI be more mistake-heavy.
Beyond those three appearances, Spike has made a number of small cameo appearances, many of them in modern titles. The Wii U eShop-exclusive title NES Remix, in which the player plays through reimagined stages of NES titles as they try to accomplish certain challenges, features some Wrecking Crew stages, and Spike returns to antagonize Mario in a handful of such challenges. He also appears as one of the many costumes Mario can get in Super Mario Maker, and will occasionally show up in the Wrecking Crew-based microgame in Nintendo 3DS title WarioWare Gold.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is now playing in theaters.
Published: Apr 6, 2023 09:47 am