Cackletta

"Hah! Hmph! Well, won't this be fun! Oh, yes! If that's how it is, I'm ready for you! I'm going to knock you all the way back to the Mushroom Kingdom!"

- Cackletta

Cackletta is a witch from the Beanbean Kingdom and the main antagonist of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga for the Game Boy Advance and its remake.

Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga / Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions
Early in the game, Cackletta disguises herself as The Goodwill Ambassador to steal Princess Peach's voice and use it to steal the Beanstar with also replacing the princess' voice with "explosive vocabulary", which is composed of various symbols that drop from her speech bubble to cause minor explosions. Beanbean lore states that only one with a beautiful voice can activate the Beanstar's mysterious powers to grant any wishes, so Cackletta hopes to use the power of the Beanstar to conquer the Beanbean Kingdom and soon after, the Mushroom Kingdom. The Mario Bros. go to the Beanbean Kingdom to stop her, and they meet her for the first time on the Koopa Cruiser when she and Fawful attack the Bros. and the ship. She later attacks the Beanbean Castle Town and feeds Queen Bean a Belly Blech worm, which turns her agressive towards the brothers. After imprisoning Lady Lima, she then encounters the Mario Bros. again in Beanbean Castle disguised as Lima and tricks them into fixing the castle's plumbing, which turns off the Beanstar's security system and allows Cackletta to steal the Beanstar. Mario rushes up to the throne room to stop her, but Cackletta and Fawful get away and leave Queen Bean to take care of the Mario Bros. Later, Cackletta goes to Woohoo Hooniversity to carry out her plans with the Beanstar by also transforming several researchers into Laser Snifits. After Queen Bean is restored to normal and the Castle Town is repaired, the Mario Bros. (as well as Prince Peasley) travel to Woohoo Hooniversity.

Cackletta's plan backfires when she attempts to use Peach's voice by putting it in robots named "Peach-bots". It is later revealed that Toadsworth and the other Mushroom Kingdom residents switched Peach with Birdo, whom they dressed up as the Princess Peach since they were warned from Prince Peasley that he was aware of Cackletta's plan. This irritates the Beanstar; while this is happening, the Mario Bros. come and give her a surprise attack, and Cackletta finally battles them.

The Bros. emerge victorious over Cackletta and she becomes severely injured as a result. Fawful arrives and absorbs Cackletta's body into his "headgear". He is commanded by Cackletta to do an attack for her, but Prince Peasley stops him and sends him flying out of the Woohoo Hooniversity.

An injured Fawful lands in the Mushroom Kingdom side of Stardust Fields and sees an unconscious Bowser lying on the ground. He releases Cackletta's ghost from his headgear, which goes into Bowser's body and possesses him in the process. This causes Cackletta to become a fusion of herself and Bowser, called Bowletta. With the fact that Bowletta can control Beanbean and Koopa minions, she becomes more powerful and plans to steal the Beanstar again and get the real Princess Peach. She succeeds in Little Fungitown while Mario is sick with Bean Fever and Luigi is searching for the antidote in Guffawha Ruins, offering a request for the Bros. that they will find the Beanstar pieces and repair them with the exchange for the Peach. Prince Peasley has a plan to give Cackleta a fake Beanstar and meet her at the top of Joke's End. Then, Luigi tries to give Fawful the fake Beanstar, but the latter realizes that the Star is fake, knocking down the Bros'. suitcase and stealing the real Beanstar.

Mario and Luigi come to Bowletta, who refuses to release Peach. Later, another Princess Peach, who is holding her mouth, comes out along with Mario, who tricks Bowletta and Fawful into thinking that they are holding a "fake" Princess Peach. Bowletta drops the Peach she was holding and grabs the "real" one. In the Koopa Cruiser, Fawful and Bowletta ask the princess why she is holding her mouth, but she does not respond. In response, Bowletta scares her to reveal a big mustache, and she turns out to be Luigi, forcing him to make a getaway and eventually return the Beanstar to Prince Peasley.

In the meantime, Bowletta plans to destroy the Beanbean Kingdom and then, after the Bros. are destroyed, the Mushroom Kingdom. She enters Bowser's Castle and attacks Beanbean Castle Town again. After this, the Bros. go to Hoohoo Village and tell Blablanadon that Bowser's Castle is overhead and he should take them. Fawful informs Bowletta that the brothers are coming, so Bowletta orders the seven Koopalings and Fawful to guard her castle. The Bros. fight them all and eventually fight Bowletta, but just as it looks like they have defeated her, it turns out Bowletta pretended to be defeated and as this is happening, a Time Bob-omb comes into view, exploding and knocking the Bros. out cold. She then proceeds to swallow them. Inside Bowletta's stomach, Mario and Luigi with 1 HP find Cackletta's spirit inside the body and fight her.

After Cackletta is defeated, her spirit leaves Bowser's body, disappearing afterwards and Bowser returns to his original form.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Cackletta appears as a sticker in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

Personality
Cackletta is extremely selfish, sadistic, and has a stereotypical witch-like personality. Her only example of compassion is for her beloved minion, Fawful. She will do anything to eagerly get what she wants, such as flying directly from her homeland to stir trouble, and swipe the voice from Princess Peach in order to awaken the Beanstar for her own personal gain. She even attempts as far as destroying the Beanbean Castle, the capital of her own home, to swipe the artifact. From the beginning to midway, Cackletta easily gets tricked twice, meaning she could be easily gullible or plainly fueled by her highly self-absorbed attitude, especially prone to getting angry at her own mistakes.

Normal
Cackletta is quite tall, appearing to be about twice the height of the Mario brothers. She has green skin, like most members of the Beanish species. She has large, pink eyes, an elongated head with a large mouth and jagged teeth, and large purple horn-like objects on top of her head. She also has a bead on her forehead, which does not appear in her other forms (this is later fixed in the remake, in which she bears it on her soul). Cackletta wears a large purple robe with a pink undergarment and a yellow rim. When she raises her arms during the battle against Cackletta, the sleeves of her cloak are revealed to be very large and roughly frayed on the edges. These are somewhat reminiscent of bat wings.

In order to disguise herself as the Goodwill Ambassador from the Beanbean Kingdom, Cackletta dressed in a one-piece yellow suit during the game's opening sequence, taking on the appearance of Lady Lima (Queen Bean's royal advisor).

Bowletta
While Cackletta possesses Bowser and takes the form of Bowletta, she has the same body as him, but retains her facial appearance. She also has breasts visible on her chest.

Soul


In her soul form, Cackletta is a massive, floating, gaseous creature with no legs, two arms, and an enormous head (still bearing her trademark horns). Cackletta's head wears a perpetually blank expression with a large tongue, and (in contrast to Cackletta's other forms) has orange eyes with visible black pupils. Cackletta's main color is purple in this form, with her heart being pink: the heart is initially embedded in her cloudy body and only becomes fully visible (and vulnerable) when Cackletta's head and arms are destroyed.

Cackletta's soul is redesigned in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions, becoming larger, with newly color-coded hands denoting the elements they use: her left hand is red for fire, and her right hand is blue for lightning. She also now has a blue gem in her head, and her eyes are now a clear yellow instead of bloodshot and orange. As her health decreases, Cackletta's colors change to red with green eyes and heart and a gray gem. Cackletta's soul is darker in color as well, and uses a 3D model instead of a 2D sprite.

Powers and abilities
Cackletta seems to mainly have powers based on pyrokinesis and electrokinesis, much like the Mario Bros. themselves. When Mario and Luigi battle her in Woohoo Hooniversity, Cackletta can create clones of herself that can split into many bats with the ability to poison featuring her likeness, as well as send voids that travel across the ground towards the Bros.; falling into them alters the brothers' weight. This indicates she has magical abilities. Her powers are greatly expanded upon when she is later fought inside of Bowser's body where she can use aura attacks, create a pseudo-Fawful to attack, launch enormous balls of energy, and even stop time to fire laser beams from her eyes at her opponents. She can also replace someone's voice with "explosive vocabulary", which is best demonstrated with her theft of Peach's, or rather, Birdo's voice, with the explosive vocabulary being potent enough that Bowser was forced to put kidnapping Peach on hold due to it otherwise risking extreme damage to his castle holding her inside.

Cackletta is also stated to be a master of disguise that can imitate almost anyone, but is only seen mimicking Lady Lima in the earlier portions of the story, an ability similar to that of Mimi. She retained this ability when she was reborn as Bowletta, as demonstrated in the Minion's Quest mode for the remake, where she posed as Bowser.

Woohoo Hooniversity
Cackletta's main attack during the battle is creating lightning bolts to strike the brothers. The arm she lifts for this attack show whether she will attack Mario and then Luigi, Luigi and then Mario, or both at once. She can also create two clones of herself, so when one of the duplicates is attacked, it divides into a swarm of Cackletta-like bats and attack the brothers. They are not very dangerous because they only cause very little damage, although they can give venom if Mario or Luigi make contact and will poison the Mario Bros. When the real Cackletta is attacked, the fake ones disappear. In order to figure out which Cackletta is the real one, the players should look at which arms each of them raises to do the lightning attack. The real Cackletta will raise both of her arms, attempting to strike both of the brothers at once. Cackletta also has a special attack where she makes voids in the ground that move toward Mario and Luigi, so they can fall in and drop from the top of the screen and hit the ground while making them heavier. This attack causes Heavy G. She can only use this attack once at the very beginning of the battle, and also near the end of the battle. Her clone attack in the 3DS remake is changed slightly: the real Cackletta laughs briefly while the rest do not. After doing so, she will also attempt to switch places with one of her clones multiple times to confuse the player. She also clones herself far less frequently than she did in the original game. In this boss fight, Cackletta gives 300 EXP in the original non-Japanese release. However, due to a glitch, this amount is multiplied by 3, causing her to drop 900 EXP instead, which is more than the next two bosses, Popple/Rookie and Mom Piranha.

Bowser's Castle
The brothers start the final boss with 1 HP, so it is recommended that they quickly heal on their first turn. In battle, the Mario Bros. must destroy both of her arms and her head in order to expose her heart. When her heart has been exposed, the Mario Bros. must attack it to finally destroy her and complete the game. With Cackletta's exposed heart, she will use it to revive her head and arms, and then heal them as well. After two full battle rounds of Cackletta's heart being exposed, she will conceal it once again and the entire process repeats.

Cackletta's attacks are as follows:


 * Her head creates an enormous energy ball that will attempt to crush one of the Mario Bros. The brother must attack with his hammer constantly until it explodes. If timed just right, the brothers can hit it twice in one swing, although the timing required to make this happen is very tricky and precise.
 * She stretches her arms out at the Mario Bros., attempting to flick them. This can be countered by hammering her hands quickly.
 * Her right hand summons two fireballs to rotate around the Mario Bros., which should be dodged by jumping at the right time.
 * Her left hand summons a ball of electricity that must be hit with a hammer. Hitting it will make it slide to the next brother and this must be repeated until it breaks. Over the course of the fight it will take more hits to break.
 * Her hands can also attack by sweeping the Mario Bros. The brothers must jump over an arm when her eyes are pointed down and stay still when they are up. This attack requires all of her body parts to be available. Elder Princess Shroob's tentacle sweep and the Dark Star Core's arrow attack are similar to this attack.
 * Cackletta's head also has the ability to partially heal either itself or one of her arms or heart (only when exposed). It can also boost the attack power of itself or one of her arms.
 * If Cackletta's head is attacked while her arms are still present, they will immediately attack in retaliation, either using her finger flick or arm swing attack.

Over the course of the fight, Cackletta will gain 3 new moves, each after a certain amount of the heart's HP has been depleted:
 * At around 25% HP lost, her head can summon a mirage of Fawful that will shoot streams of energy balls from one brother to the other that must be jumped over before flying up to one of the brothers and laughing at them, flying away to repeat the attack if he isn't hammered. The tell for which brother the stream of energy balls will start with is the same as Fawful's tell on the Koopa Cruiser: laughing for Mario and spinning for Luigi. If the mirage isn't hammered after a few cycles of the attack, it will vanish and the attack will end.
 * At around 50% HP lost, her head can move her eyes up or down, indicating where she is going to fire a beam for each brother. If her eyes move up, she is going to fire upwards. If they move down, she will fire downwards. A few seconds later, she will stop time before actually firing the beams, forcing the brothers to jump or stand in the correct position ahead of time. This process repeats a few times before finally ending.
 * At around 75% HP lost, her head can summon many blue balls of magic that will teleport around the battlefield before appearing in front of a brother and flying into them. The ones that turn pink target Mario, while the ones that turn green target Luigi and the blue ones don't target either brother. When hammered, the magic balls will be launched back and damage any of Cackletta's exposed targets.

In the 3DS remake, some of Cackletta's attacks are changed:
 * She is able to use her laser beam/time stop attack from the very start of the battle; as a trade-off, she will only execute it once on any given turn (though much faster when angry).
 * Her fireball attack doesn't last as long, and the electric ball attack has the electric ball move closer to the brothers every time it is hammered.
 * Cackletta has an additional ability not seen in the original game: she can raise her arms over the brothers, and then bring them down on top of them. This attack can be countered with the hammer. She can also attempt to flick one brother and smack the other, which has different timings.
 * Her aura balls now have rings that tilt in different directions, most likely to assist those with color-blindness. Red balls with rings tilted left target Mario, green balls tilted right target Luigi, and blue balls with no tilt are harmless.
 * Many of Cackletta's attacks are also more powerful in the remake, including the massive energy ball, to the point that it is an effective one-hit KO if it lands.

Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga

 * Instruction booklet bios
 * English: The Beanbean Kingdom's resident witch. Why is she so evil...?
 * Japanese: マメーリア王国に住む魔女. さまざまな悪事を企てる目的とは⋯？ (A witch living in the Beanbean Kingdom. What is the purpose of her various evil plans...?)
 * Official Nintendo Player's Guide: Cackletta is a mysterious witch with terrifying powers. Her ambitions are unknown, as are her reasons for stealing Princess Peach's voice. She's a master of disguise, able to imitate almost anyone.

Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions

 * Japanese website bio: ピーチ姫の声をうばっていった魔女. なにやら悪事をたくらんでいるようすだが⋯⋯？ (The witch who stole Princess Peach's voice. She seems to be planning to do something evil...?)

Quotes

 * "Eeeyah ha ha ha ha!"
 * "Who would have thought you'd catch up to the Great Cackletta in even a hundred million years?"
 * "Perhaps the three of you can sit down over tea to discuss the finer points of foreign policy!"
 * "The moment when all the world will bow down to me has come at last..."
 * "EEYARGH!"
 * "Pests! Loathsome pests! And at the worst possible moment!"
 * "I'm going to knock you all the way back to the Mushroom Kingdom!"
 * "Are you still conscious? Ugh. You're a persistent pair!"
 * "I shall dispose of you quickly and then eat you for lunch!"
 * "EEYARGH! It can't be!!! Impossible!!! I... No... How could I... And to this filthy little pair! HOW COULD I LOSE?????"

Themes
"Fawful and Cackletta" is rearranged for the battle against Dark Fawful in Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr.'s Journey.

Trivia

 * A small part of Cackletta's theme can briefly be heard in the music for Peach's Castle after Fawful's takeover in Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story.
 * In the French versions of Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story and its 3DS remake, after the defeat of Dark Bowser, Fawful says "J'ai joué les sbirrres... pourrr une hystérrrique..." ("I played the henchman for a hysteric...") in reference to Cackletta. This would imply that he did not think highly of his former leader.
 * Cackletta's battle theme is rearranged for the battle against Dark Fawful in Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr.'s Journey.
 * The way that the player battles Cackletta's soul by fighting her head, hands and heart is very similar to the battle against the second form of the final boss Isana (イサナ) in AlphaDream's first game  before they developed the Mario & Luigi series. In this battle, the player confronts Isana's head, hands, and a blue portal-like object (instead of the heart).
 * While preparing for the second fight with Fawful in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, when he mentions Cackletta, her name is misspelled "Cakletta." This error is fixed in the remake.