Gaming@NINA

There he is.

Some of you might remember Tatanga from Nintendo's first foray into a poratable Mario Bros game, Super Mario Land from 1989 for the Nintendo Gameboy, where Tatanga played the final boss. Or rather, he WAS the final boss.
Some of you might also remember his presence in the second Super Mario Land game (1992), where he is simply the boss of the 'space' stage.

This mysterious figure from space only won himself one game (a good one at that) only to be a sub-boss in a medeocre stage (oh no! it's space land to you can jump high and fall slowly) in the sequel of that gome. Wart from Super Mario Bros. 2 (1988) was at least explained away by being part of a dream (crappy but true), and Smithy from Super Mario RPG (1996) is obviously a SquareEnix character and out of Nintendo's hands. Koopa has always been a prominant fixture in Mario games, and the final boss from Super Mario Land 2, the infamous Wario, was even given his own serires of games. But Tatanga, I expected to at least see him as an unlockable character in a Smash Bros or Mario Kart game.

So long Tatanga. We hardly knew ye.

And now, a ulegy from the manual for Super Mario Land for Gameboy:

"This unknown space monster appeared suddenly from deep space. He drives the war robot Pagosu, and attacks with scattered, meandering rockets."

Nintendo have probably just forgotten about him, but you never know, he might even make an appearance in Super Mario 128 (Revolution).