Hammer Bro
| Hammer Bro | |||
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 Artwork from New Super Mario Bros. U | |||
| First appearance | Super Mario Bros. (1985) | ||
| Latest appearance | The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026) | ||
| Latest portrayal | Motoki Takagi (2005–2024) | ||
| Member of | Bowser's Minions | ||
| Variant of | Koopa | ||
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- “Our hammers fly high! Our hammers fly fast! And sometimes our hammers even hit something!”
- —Hammer Bros., Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam
Hammer Bros. (or Hammer Brothers[1][2]; usually formatted without the period when singular) are Koopas that stand upright and throw hammers at the player, first appearing in Super Mario Bros. They have bigger shells than Koopa Troopas and wear helmets, usually of the shell's color. Hammer Bros. have several times been described as elite members of Bowser's Minions. They were originally designed by Kazuaki Morita.[3]
General information[edit]
Physical description[edit]
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Hammer Bros. are yellow Koopas with green shells, cream-colored belly plates, and, since Mario Party, green shoes (although they sometimes are barefoot), as well as green and white helmets (though the colors change depending on the variant). They look like Koopa Troopas, but have a taller stature, smaller blue eyes and a lighter-colored muzzle. Hammer Bros. are notably always armed with black or gray hammers tied to wooden handles with rope. In Super Mario Bros. 3, Hammer Bros. wear black shells and helmets, while their hammers are slightly less detailed. In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Hammer Bros. are given a more realistic appearance than their Super Mario depiction, having a monotone appearance, as well as highly detailed hammers and helmets. In Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS / Wii U and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, however, Hammer Bros. have a vibrant, cartoonish appearance with less detailed hammers and helmets; in the latter, their helmets and shoes have a lighter green color. In the DIC Entertainment Super Mario cartoons, Hammer Bros. have drastically altered appearances, due to appearing with much darker skin tones, smaller body proportions, gray goggles, and shinier hammers.
In the first three Paper Mario games, Hammer Bros. are given an altered design, which has them wear blue helmets instead of their standard green ones and have more rotund body proportions resembling those of Koopa Troopas. In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Hammer Bros. are given red shoes and spiked armbands, which reappear in Super Paper Mario. From Paper Mario: Sticker Star onward, however, Hammer Bros. use their current-era design instead, while appearing with a paper outline.
Speech[edit]
In most older Super Mario games, Hammer Bros. are completely silent due to technical limitations. Most of the Super Mario RPGs and spin-offs give Hammer Bros. in-game text so others can understand what they are saying; in Super Mario RPG, Hammer Bros. appear to speak with Brooklyn accents, often saying "ya" instead of "you." In the DIC Super Mario cartoons, Hammer Bros. were given intelligible voice acting with Brooklyn accents. Hammer Bros. also speak intelligibly in various Super Mario comics, as well as Super Mario-kun. In contemporary Super Mario games, Hammer Bros. (and their variants) are portrayed by Motoki Takagi, who provided them with grunts, yells, and even a few lines such as "Let's go." While they generally have a high-pitched voice, they have a deeper voice in Super Mario Galaxy 2 and in games that reuse that game's voice clips.
Powers and abilities[edit]
Hammer Bros. possess superior agility, due to jumping as high as Mario (if not as high as Luigi) and quickly traversing small areas from hopping. Hammer Bros. hop very frequently, to the point where they hop while idling. In the way of weaponry, Hammer Bros. use black or gray construction hammers, though Super Mario RPG: Legend Of The Seven Stars and the Paper Mario games depict them with wooden mallets instead. In most games, Hammer Bros. throw their hammers at lower angles and farther distances, or higher angles at closer distances. The former games have Hammer Bros. smack their adversaries with their mallets as a melee attack; exclusively to the Paper Mario series, Hammer Bros. throw a barrage of smaller, weaker hammers, or a hammer with magical abilities like shrinking. Hammer Bros.' Skill Shot in Mario Strikers Charged has them attack the opposing team with a giant hammer, to daze them.
History[edit]
Super Mario series[edit]
Super Mario Bros.[edit]
Hammer Brothers were one of the many recurring Super Mario enemies introduced in Super Mario Bros. More often than not, they are encountered in pairs, hindering the player's progress by tossing claw hammers and jumping up and down one or two rows of Brick Blocks and the ground. While the player can avoid them by running past them while they are jumping, defeating them by any means of attack (jumps, hitting the block they are standing on from below, kicked shells, fireballs, or touching them while rendered invincible by a Starman) would grant the player 1000 points. If a Hammer Brother is visible for 100 time units (about 50 seconds in real time) without being defeated, it starts to chase after the player. If the player is to the right of a Hammer Brother, it does not give chase.
A total of 20 Hammer Brothers appear in the game: a pair in World 3-1, two pairs in World 5-2, two pairs in World 7-1, one in World 7-4 that is disguised as Bowser, eight in World 8-3, and one in World 8-4 before the true Bowser.
In the All-Stars version of the game, their hammers make a whistling sound whenever they are thrown, are slightly slower, and fly on a larger curve compared to the original, making them easier for the plumbers to pass through. In all versions of Super Mario Bros., regardless of what direction the Hammer Brothers face and attack, their hammers would always have the claw side face left, and the hammers would always rotate counterclockwise.
Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels[edit]
Hammer Brothers return in Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels. Here, they are more common than they are in Super Mario Bros. While they remain unchanged for the first six worlds of the game, starting at World 7 (in Super Mario All-Stars; Worlds 7 and 8 only in the original), the Hammer Brothers always pursue Mario and Luigi, instead of staying at one location. A few even appear in certain underwater levels. They first pursue the Mario Bros. in World 7-1, and their first underwater appearance is in World 9-1. Much like all green enemies that appear in underwater levels, including the "green" Cheep-cheeps, Hammer Brothers underwater are colored gray, but are colored green in the Super Mario All-Stars version.
Super Mario Bros. 3[edit]
Hammer Brothers, redesigned with more prominently-yellow skin, black helmets, and black Buzzy Beetle-like shells, act the same in Super Mario Bros. 3, though they hurl mallets as opposed to the claw hammers they wielded in previous appearances (a mere aesthetic difference), they no longer chase after the player after some time, and only defeating them with a stomp would yield 1000 points, as defeating them with any other attack (hitting the block below them, thrown shells, fireballs, tail swipes from Raccoon or Tanooki Mario, hammers from Hammer Mario, and contact with players made invincible by a Starman) gives out only 100 points by default, unless the enemy was not one of the first to be defeated by the thrown shell.
In this game, three new species of Hammer Brothers appear: Boomerang Brothers, semi-common green-skinned (light blue in artillery levels in the original version) variants that throw boomerangs that can return to them; Fire Brothers, rare, red-skinned variants which spit bouncing fireballs like those of Fire Mario; and Sledge Brothers, huge, green-skinned versions of standard Hammer Brothers that can immobilize the player by causing earthquakes whenever they land after a jump. Unlike Hammer Brothers, however, none of these new variants are capable of jumping between rows of bricks and the ground, a skill that remained unique to the main species in most (but not all) of their future appearances.
A total of 19 Hammer Brothers appear in the game, though they are never seen in any actual level except for the first Hand Trap (which features all Hammer Brother species). Instead, they and their variants patrol the map screen of every world except Pipe Land and Dark Land (which instead have Piranha Plant and Hand-Trap levels, respectively, that serve a similar purpose); touching one there results in a battle with them. Upon defeat, they leave behind a treasure chest that yields an item. Hammer Brothers are encountered in the following worlds and can reward one of the following items:
- Grass Land: Starman
- Water Land: Hammer, Starman
- Sky Land: Starman, P-Wing, Music Box
- Ice Land: Hammer, Lakitu's Cloud, Starman
Whenever a certain set of conditions are met, one of the patrolling Hammer Brothers on the map is replaced by a Treasure Ship, a coin-filled airship with no enemies except for a pair of Boomerang Brothers faced at the end of the level.
In the original Super Mario Bros. 3, regardless of what type of Hammer Brother it represents, the enemy's icon on the map would always be that of a Hammer Brother. This was changed in Super Mario All-Stars, where the map icons in Desert Land were changed to reflect a Boomerang Brother and a Fire Brother, and the icons in Giant Land were replaced by green Hammer Brothers, since Sledge Brothers are green in all versions of Super Mario Bros. 3. A further change was made in Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3, where the map icons in Giant Land were made to properly resemble Sledge Brothers.
Besides the enemy Hammer Brothers, it was originally intended that there be a Hammer Brother that hosted a Dice game. This was implemented as late as testing, but was eventually cut.
The game also introduces a power-up, the Hammer Suit. This power-up gives Mario or Luigi the ability to throw hammers like a Hammer Brother, taking out stronger enemies like Boos, Dry Bones, and even Thwomps. They are also invulnerable to fireballs while crouching.
In the Game Boy Advance version, three more Hammer Brothers appear in World-e. In Bowser's Last Stand, the player can enter one of three doors, each leading to a tweaked version of the Hand Traps, with the first door leading to a room with all the Hammer Brother variants, including a pair of Hammer Brothers encountered after the section's first Boomerang Brother, stationed by two rows of eight bricks and an Advance Coin. A single Hammer Brother can also be found at the beginning of the second section of Koopaling Confusion, stationed by two wooden platforms under the level's third Advance Coin.
New Super Mario Bros.[edit]
In New Super Mario Bros., Hammer Bros. (along with their variants the Sledge Bros., Fire Bros., and Boomerang Bros.) appear once again. Their hammers, now in the form of claw hammers once again as opposed to mallets, are one of the few hazards that can damage Shell Mario even when crouched.
As with Super Mario Bros. 3, only one pair appears in one regular stage, jumping up and down two rows of blocks under and over the third Star Coin of World 2-4. Starting in World 5, however, Hammer Bros. begin appearing on the map in a method similar to Super Mario Bros. 3. However, unlike in Super Mario Bros. 3, Mario is not forced to enter an Enemy Course when he touches them on a map, but they will appear within the level they are over on the map if Mario selects said level, akin to the red Flying ? Blocks. Defeating them will cause a Fire Flower, Mini Mushroom, Mega Mushroom, 1-Up Mushroom or Blue Shell to appear.
Boomerang Bros. are the most common of the Hammer Bro variants in the game, with one found in World 2-5, two in World 7-3, and two more separate individuals in World 8-7, a level that also features the only two Sledge Bros. (mistaken as Sumo Bros., which are a different type of Koopa) and the only pair of Fire Bros. in the game.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii[edit]
Hammer Bros. appear in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, along with Boomerang Bros., Fire Bros., Sledge Bros., and a new variation called Ice Bros. that throw Ice Balls to first damage, then freeze, the player. Only four Hammer Bros. are seen (thus making them the second rarest type of Hammer Bro in the game, behind Boomerang Bros.), with two separate individuals and one pair encountered in World 1-3. Yoshi cannot eat Hammer Bros. (or any of their other variants), though he can catch their hammers with his tongue and spit them back at them, defeating them and causing them to release coins.
Super Mario Galaxy 2[edit]
After an absence from Super Mario Galaxy, Hammer Bros. and Boomerang Bros. reappear in the Wii game Super Mario Galaxy 2 and its Nintendo Switch port, marking the first time that they are seen in a three-dimensional Super Mario series game. They are much larger than in previous games, relative to Mario. They attack by throwing two hammers aimed at Mario or Luigi, before leaping elsewhere and repeating. As in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Yoshi can eat the Hammer Bros.' hammers and spit them out as weapons. Mario can defeat a Hammer Bro by spinning or jumping on him. The Hammer Bro is knocked on its shell as a result, which leaves him vulnerable to the next attack; Mario can walk into him or jump on him to defeat him. Though tough to do, a ground pound also defeats them instantly.
Hammer Bros. only appear in each world's final galaxy: Bowser's Lava Lair, Bowser Jr.'s Fearsome Fleet ("Bowser Jr.'s Mighty Megahammer" only), Bowser's Galaxy Generator ("Bowser's Fortified Fortress" only), and Grandmaster Galaxy.
Super Mario 3D Land[edit]
Hammer Bros. appear along with Boomerang Bros. in Super Mario 3D Land. They act the same as in Super Mario Galaxy 2, except they take one hit to defeat, and they reuse the Boomerang Bros.' voice from Super Mario Galaxy 2. They mostly appear in castle levels. In Special 8-Bowser, Hammer Bros. hold blue + Clocks, and must be beaten to extend the level's short time limit.
New Super Mario Bros. 2[edit]
Hammer Bros. return in New Super Mario Bros. 2, having the same role as they did in previous games. Like every other enemy that is affected by the Gold Ring, Hammer Bros. become gold and throw three coins each time instead of hammers while under the effect. Like in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, they appear in only one level during the adventure story, World 2-2, which features just three of them.
A total of 24 Hammer Bros. also appear in DLC courses. Four are featured in the third course of Challenge Pack A, one in the beginning of the second course of Coin Challenge Pack B, 15 in the first course of the Mystery Adventures Pack, and four in the final section of the first course of the Impossible Pack.
New Super Mario Bros. U / New Super Luigi U / New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe[edit]
Hammer Bros. return along with their variants from New Super Mario Bros. Wii in New Super Mario Bros. U. Much like the Fire Brothers of Super Mario Bros. 3, only three of them appear in the entire game, with all three individuals appearing in a single level early in the game (as is the case in New Super Mario Bros. Wii and New Super Mario Bros. 2), Rise of the Piranha Plants, separated rather than being paired up. However, Hammer Brothers do make further appearances in two Coin Courses in World 
Coin-1 and World Coin-2, and also appear in several challenges. The same number of Hammer Bros. also appear in New Super Luigi U, with two separate individuals in Piranha Gardens (the game's equivalent of Rise of the Piranha Plants) and another stationed near the end of All Aboard!, an airship level which features every type of Hammer Bro, like the first Hand Trap of Super Mario Bros. 3.
Super Mario 3D World / Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury[edit]
Hammer Bros, along with Boomerang Bros. and Fire Bros., reappear in Super Mario 3D World and its Nintendo Switch port Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury acting the same way as in Super Mario 3D Land. However, their hammers are thrown higher and closer to them, like in the 2D games, rather than lower and farther. Cat variants appear in Lake Lapcat.
Super Mario Maker / Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS[edit]
Hammer Bros. reappear in Super Mario Maker and Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS as enemies that can be placed into levels. They, along with Sledge Bros, have new sprites for the Super Mario World style. Unlike their past appearances, Yoshi is now capable of fully eating Hammer Bros. and spitting their hammers out. Giving them wings make them hop and jump higher.
An unused death animation for them in the New Super Mario Bros. U style can be found in the files of Super Mario Maker.
Super Mario Odyssey[edit]
Hammer Bros. along with Fire Bros. appear in Super Mario Odyssey as enemies found in the Dark Side, Metro Kingdom (where they wear their traditional helmets), Luncheon Kingdom (where they wear chef hats, and throw frying pans that have the same properties as their hammers), and Moon Kingdom (where they don white top hats). Mario can capture a Hammer Bro by first removing their headwear with Cappy, and then throwing Cappy at them a second time. As a Hammer Bro, Mario can use their weapons as an attack (as in his Hammer form) which can also hit ? Blocks, and in the Luncheon Kingdom, the frying pans can destroy blocks of cheese to reveal items hidden underneath. The game reveals that Hammer Bros. have blue spiky hair with yellow tips underneath their helmets, similar to that of a Chargin' Chuck. Hammer Bros. also appear in certain 8-bit segments in the Cloud Kingdom and Luncheon Kingdom, where they act the same as they did in Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Maker 2[edit]
Hammer Bros. return in Super Mario Maker 2, retaining their behavior in its predecessor. This time, not only can they now be attached to parachutes, but they now also appear in the Super Mario 3D World game style. Fire Bros. only appear in the Super Mario 3D World game style, as well as a new, Sledge Bro-like version of them, Heavy Fire Bros.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder[edit]
Hammer Bros. reappear in Super Mario Bros. Wonder. They first appear in Pipe-Rock Plateau Palace and return in the level Fluff-Puff Peaks Palace and only two KO Arena levels—Fluff-Puff Kerfuff and Sunbaked Skirmish—with their final appearance being The Final Test Wonder Gauntlet. Like in the Super Mario Maker games, Hammer Bros. can be eaten by Yoshi.
Super Mario Bros.: Peach-hime Kyūshutsu Dai Sakusen![edit]
Although no Hammer Brothers appear amongst Bowser's invasion force at the beginning of the Super Mario anime film Super Mario Bros.: Peach-hime Kyūshutsu Dai Sakusen!, an individual one does appear later. This Hammer Brother (which, depending on the selected scene, is inconsistently depicted as both rather large and completely to-scale) is assigned to guard a cave where a recurring pair of Goombas trap Mario, Luigi, and Kibidango. However, Luigi (who was searching for coins at the time) digs an escape tunnel, and they escape from the Hammer Bro without being caught. In a last-ditch attempt to retrieve the prisoners, the Hammer Bro throws hammers at a cliff that Mario, Luigi, and Kibidango are trekking across, and causes the top of the cliff that Kibidango and Mario are on to fall, smashing the area that the Hammer Bro is on and burying him beneath several rocks.
Robed, book-carrying Hammer Brothers are later seen acting as singers during Bowser and Peach's wedding towards the end of the film, and another Hammer Brother is seen applying makeup to Princess Peach for the said event.
Amada Anime Series: Super Mario Bros.[edit]
Super Mario Momotarō[edit]
Hammer Bros. appear in the Super Mario anime series. In Super Mario Momotarō, two elderly Hammer Brothers play the role as the adoptive parents of Mario and the parents of Princess Peach. They are called Ojīsan and Obāsan, the Japanese words for grandfather and grandmother.
DIC cartoons[edit]
The Super Mario Bros. Super Show![edit]
- “We got a score to settle, sink wimps!”
“Yeah! It's plumber pummelin' time!” - —Hammer Brothers, "The Trojan Koopa"
In The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, two twin Hammer Brothers[4] first appear in the episode "Do You Princess Toadstool Take this Koopa...?" where they appear to attack Mario and Luigi when the two escape King Koopa's dungeon, only to accidentally hit each other on the head with their hammers instead. The second and last appearance of the Hammer Brothers is in the episode "The Trojan Koopa", where they appear as main antagonists and act as guards of King Koopa's island fortress.
In the show, they look similar to the Koopa Troopas in the series, with the only differences being the helmets, hammers, pinker faces, and yellow spots on their limbs.
The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3[edit]
In The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3, Hammer Brothers make minor appearances in a few episodes and their appearance changes once more, this time to better resemble their in-game appearances. Although Hammer Brothers do not make many appearances, their larger counterparts, the Sledge Brothers, are quite prevalent.
Two Hammer Brothers appear in "Oh, Brother!" After Kooky pulls Mario back through the pipe with the Plumber Pole through the Pipe World and into the dungeon, the pair of Hammer Brothers appear and apprehend Mario.
Hammer Brothers also appear in the episode "Toddler Terrors of Time Travel", where a team of them are loading crates onboard the Doom Ship. One Hammer Brother picks up the crate that Mario, Luigi, and Toad are hiding in and complains about how heavy it is as he carries it to the Doom Ship's helm, while another Hammer Brother effortlessly carries four crates at once.
In the episode "The Venice Menace", when a Boom Boom attacks the sunken hotel the Mario Bros. are in, a Hammer Bro. breaks in by tossing a hammer at their window, flooding the room in the process. Mario and Luigi trick the Boom Boom and the Hammer Brother into entering a closet, where they change into their Frog Suits and trap the enemies.
Super Mario Bros. (Valiant Comics)[edit]
In the Super Mario Bros. series by Valiant Comics, several Hammer Brothers appear in the crowd of monsters chasing Mario in the story "The Fish That Should've Gotten Away". Several Hammer Brothers (although they do not wield any hammers) also appear to pester Toad, who had become a reporter, in the comic "The Kingdom Enquirer"; aside from these two appearances, Hammer Brothers also appear in several of the false advertisements that are featured in the comics.
Nintendo Adventure Books[edit]
In Koopa Capers, two Hammer Brothers bring Luigi to Bowser after a flying carpet deposits him outside Bowser's Castle. If Luigi decides to look around the castle for clues about Wendy O. Koopa's disappearance, Bowser tries to call in a Hammer Brother to act as an escort for him, but Luigi declines the offer.
While traveling through the Koopahari Desert in Pipe Down!, the Mario Brothers bring up a previous close call with some Hammer Brothers during a past visit to the region.
In Dinosaur Dilemma, two Hammer Brothers can be found sleeping in Bowser's Castle by Mario and Yoshi, and are woken up by their cuckoo clock as the two try to sneak out of the room. Depending on how the reader solves the accompanying puzzle, the Hammer Brothers either knock the heroes out and make a meal out of them, or their hammer blows keep missing, and weaken the floor to the point that they go falling through it while Mario and Yoshi escape.
In Flown the Koopa, if the reader chooses to have Luigi be the head of a Brachiosaurus costume the Mario Brothers don, they run into a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Depending on how the accompanying puzzle is solved, the T-Rex can turn out to be two disguised Hammer Brothers, who see through the Mario Bros.' costume, use some rubber cement to seal them in it, and capture them with the intent of making a meal out of the two.
Mario the Juggler[edit]
A Hammer Bro appears in Mario the Juggler, as an enemy exclusive to Game B that throws Mario a heart to juggle. Periodically, he catches the heart and then tosses it back at him.
Yoshi's Safari[edit]
In Yoshi's Safari, Hammer Brothers, as well as Boomerang Brothers and Sledge Brothers, occasionally appear as mini-bosses; in this game, Hammer Brothers attack Mario and Yoshi by quickly throwing hammers at them, which need to be dodged or knocked away by a blast of Mario's Super Scope. After being blasted repeatedly by Mario's Super Scope, a Hammer Brother is defeated.
Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3[edit]
Though Hammer Brothers themselves do not make a direct appearance in Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, the Spiked Koopa boss has the Japanese name ｢トゲブロス」 Toge Burosu ("Thorn Bros.") and wears a helmet vaguely like a Hammer Brother.
Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars[edit]
- “HEY! Are YOU lo