If you were to conduct a survey that asks players to pick the best enemies from the extended Mario universe, I reckon you wouldn’t find many surprises there. Goombas and Koopas are too iconic to ignore. Shy Guys are so lovable that it feels wrong to defeat them. Even baddies like Dry Bones have stood the test of time long enough to appear on the silver screen. Each of those classic monsters deserves their spot on any list.
Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, however, reminds us that there are so many Nintendo critters beyond the household names, and many of them are overdue for their flowers. Just look at one of gaming’s great weirdos: Raphael the Raven.
First introduced in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island, Raphael the Raven is a black bird with big feet and a thousand-yard stare that can burn a hole through your chest. He, or at least a Raven like him, gets a moment to shine in Yoshi’s latest adventure, appearing in the game’s outer space biome. (Big year for moon.) In his habitat, Yoshi can use Raphael to hop between small moons, Super Mario Galaxy-style. He’s a sort of cosmic entity who has mastered the dark art of gravity, which begs a very important question: What heck is Raphael’s whole deal, anyway?
That’s one of the Mario universe’s strangest mysteries, because there’s not much information about Raphael and the bird species he’s part of. We know so little about them that there’s even debate around whether they are ravens at all. (Mario fan wikis note that they’re actually hill mynas, citing a line from a Japanese Yoshi’s Island strategy guide.) All we really know is that they are flightless birds and Yoshi really hates them. And honestly? The fact that we don’t have much more to go on is what makes me love them.
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