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Character fact sheetName: Roy Koopa First Appearance: Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988) Home: Castle of Koopa Voiced by: Dex Manley (recent games), John Stocker (DiC cartoons as "Bully Koopa") Associates: Koopalings, Bowser, Koopa Kids |
General profile
Prince Roy Koopa, known as Bully Koopa in the DiC cartoons, is one of the seven Koopalings — Bowser’s elite minion squad. Roy is the muscle of the group: short, stocky, broad-shouldered and built like a wrestler, with a distinctive pink head, magenta shell with grey rim, and a permanent pair of wraparound sunglasses concealing his eyes. He is consistently characterised as the toughest, most physically aggressive Koopaling, with a fondness for confrontation and a deep-voiced, surly demeanour.
Although the "Bowser’s Kooky Kids" line introduced in the 1988 SMB3 manual styled the Koopalings as Bowser’s children, Nintendo officially reclassified them as Bowser’s loyal underlings in 2012 with the release of New Super Mario Bros. U. In the cartoons Roy is frequently used as the heavy enforcer for King Koopa’s schemes, often paired with Morton (Big Mouth) as the team’s muscle while the others handle plotting and gadgetry.
Quotes
Enemies
Roy’s primary opponents are the Mario Bros., whom he has fought in every game since 1988. He has particular hostility toward Luigi (whom he calls "the green one" in cartoons) and toward Yoshi after their first encounter in Super Mario World. He also opposes Princess Peach, Princess Daisy, the Toad Brigade, the Sky Land population (whom he displaced in SMB3), and any inhabitants of whichever world Bowser sends him to occupy.
Friends
Roy’s closest allies are the other Koopalings — Larry, Morton, Wendy, Iggy, Lemmy and Ludwig. Within that group he is most often paired with Morton, sharing the role of physical enforcer. He is loyal to Bowser without question and operates as a senior member of the airship/Doomship crew in the cartoons. Outside the Koopalings he occasionally appears alongside Larger Koopa Troopas, Bowser Jr. (in modern continuity), and an assortment of Sledge Bros. and Spike Top minions.
Appearances
Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988)
Roy debuted as the boss of World 5: Sky Land in Super Mario Bros. 3, having stolen the Sky Land king’s magic wand to transform him into an animal. His battle takes place inside his airship-castle, with Roy distinguished from his siblings by stomping the floor with such force that he stuns Mario, forcing the player to time their jumps around his ground-pound shockwave. He is defeated by the standard three-stomp Koopaling pattern. The instruction booklet listed Roy’s nickname as "Bully" — a name carried directly into the cartoons.
Super Mario World (1990)
Roy returned in Super Mario World as one of seven Koopaling castle bosses, ruling Roy’s Castle in the Forest of Illusion. His SMW fight introduced his signature ceiling-crush mechanic — Roy stomps so hard that part of the ceiling drops down, gradually shrinking the arena and forcing Mario to dodge while finding moments to counter-stomp. This compressing-room template was reused for many later Koopaling boss appearances.
Yoshi’s Safari (1993)
Roy appears in the Super Scope game Yoshi’s Safari as a boss on the Stage of Mt. Tickatock in Jewelry Land, riding a hot-air-balloon battery-suit. The fight requires Mario to shoot Roy’s balloon while avoiding his counterfire — once popped, Roy plummets and the player advances.
The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 (cartoon, 1989–1990)
In the DiC animated series Roy was rebranded Bully Koopa, voiced by veteran Canadian voice actor John Stocker, who gave Bully a gravelly tough-guy voice modelled on classic 1930s Hollywood gangster archetypes. Bully Koopa serves as King Koopa’s chief muscle, regularly tasked with crushing or smashing through obstacles, locking up the Mushroom King, or chasing the heroes through Doomship corridors. Bully’s personality — short-tempered, slow-spoken, fond of threats — was distilled directly from his SMB3 manual profile.
Super Mario World (cartoon, 1991)
Bully Koopa returned in the second DiC series alongside the rest of the Koopalings for a 13-episode run. The Super Mario World cartoon expanded Bully’s role slightly, giving him several episodes where he served as the main villain of the week and at one point operated solo at Cookie Mountain in "The Wheel Thing."
Hotel Mario (1994)
In Philips’ CD-i game Hotel Mario, Roy operates "Roy’s Hothouse," one of seven Koopaling-themed hotels Mario and Luigi must clear of his minions. Roy appears in the game’s notoriously poorly-animated FMV cutscenes between worlds, delivering threats in his signature gravelly voice.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii (2009)
Roy returned to mainline platformers in New Super Mario Bros. Wii as the boss of World 6 (the Cloud world). His updated fight has him firing himself out of a Bill Blaster cannon to ground-pound the arena, forcing Mario to dodge his cannon-flight path and counter-stomp him during recovery. This redesign — the modern Roy with sleeker sunglasses and clearer pink skin — has been the canonical design ever since.
New Super Mario Bros. 2 / New Super Mario Bros. U (2012)
Roy appears in both 2012 NSMB entries: as the boss of World 6 in NSMB 2, and as the boss of Soda Jungle in NSMBU. The NSMBU fight escalates his cannon mechanic — Roy fires himself horizontally across the arena rather than vertically, and uses a power-up version of the Bill Blaster gun that fires Banzai Bills at Mario between his own cannon-shots.
Paper Mario: Color Splash (2016) and Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam (2015)
Roy appears as a major boss in Paper Mario: Color Splash, encountered at the Sunglow Ridge railroad station where he wields a Paint Star and operates a Banzai-Bill-firing locomotive. In Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam, Roy fights as a tag-team boss alongside Wendy in the "Mount Brrr" chapter — his RPG-style and paper-style versions appearing back-to-back in the same battle sequence.
Mario Kart 8 / Deluxe (2014/2017) and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018)
Roy and the other Koopalings became fully playable in Mario Kart 8, finally giving him a non-boss role in a mainline Mario game. He returned in the Deluxe port and remains a fixture of the franchise’s racing roster. He also appears as one of Bowser Jr.’s alternate costumes in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, retaining his own voice clips and Clown Car colour scheme.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder — Nintendo Switch 2 Edition (2025)
Roy appears in the Super Mario Bros. Wonder — Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Meetup in Bowser’s Castle DLC, returning as part of the multi-Koopaling boss rush. This is his first 2D platformer appearance since 2012.
Trivia & Official Sources
- Roy is named after pioneering rock singer Roy Orbison (1936–1988) — part of Nintendo’s 1988 Western "Bowser’s Kooky Kids" line-up that named six of the seven Koopalings after famous musicians (Roy Orbison, Iggy Pop, Lemmy Kilmister, Wendy O. Williams, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Larry / Lars Ulrich).
- Roy’s permanent sunglasses are a tribute to Roy Orbison’s own iconic sunglasses, which Orbison wore at virtually every public appearance from the mid-1960s onwards.
- The German Club Nintendo magazine of August 1991 described Bully Koopa as "der Muskelmann der Koopa-Familie" ("the muscleman of the Koopa family"), highlighting his physical strength over the intellectual schemes of his siblings.
- In the official Encyclopedia Super Mario Bros. (Pix’n Love, 2018), Roy’s entry highlights his Bill Blaster cannon as "the defining Koopaling boss-mechanic of the New Super Mario Bros. era."
- Voice actor John Stocker, who played Bully Koopa in both DiC Mario cartoons, is best known to Canadian audiences for voicing Toad and Beaver from The Raccoons; he also voiced Smitty Bacall in Inspector Gadget.
- From New Super Mario Bros. Wii (2009) onward, Roy has been voiced by Dex Manley, whose gruff vocal delivery has become the modern canonical performance.
- Roy is the only Koopaling whose eyes are never shown on screen — his sunglasses remain on in all canonical art, sprites, 3D models, and animated cutscenes. Concept sketches from the Nintendo of Japan archive (republished in the 2018 Encyclopedia) show his original SMB3 face design with visible eyes, but this was rejected before final development.
- Roy’s NSMB-era Bill Blaster cannon is mechanically identical to the standard Bullet Bill cannon enemies, but uses a unique pink-tinted variant exclusive to his boss fights.
- In Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Roy is the heaviest of the seven Koopalings in the kart-class weight tiers, sharing the heavyweight bracket with Wario, Waluigi and Bowser himself.
- Roy is one of the few Mario antagonists whose nickname ("Bully") was adopted directly from his official Nintendo manual profile into the DiC cartoon series — most other Koopalings’ cartoon names (Hop, Hip, Kootie Pie, Big Mouth) were original creations of the DiC writers.
- In the unreleased "Super Mario All-Stars Vol. 2" pitch documents from 1994 (later leaked online), Roy was originally going to appear as a playable character in a planned but cancelled remake of Hotel Mario.
- Roy’s presence in Dr. Mario World (2019–2021) as "Dr. Roy" gave him the unique skill of clearing a vertical column of viruses with each match — thematically matching his Bill Blaster mechanic.