Typically, Goombas are brown and look like mushrooms (or chestnuts) with feet. They have bushy eyebrows formed into a scowl, and occasionally upward-pointing fangs. Goombas are blue or gray in the dark underground areas of the Mario video games and darker brown in night-time areas, and this is probably intended to show the lack of light while saving palette colors. "Little Goomba" is the name sometimes used for an ordinary Goomba in the games. The other distinct types of Goombas have their own names as well. When they are jumped on, they each seem to flatten into a pancake.
Goombas can attack Mario by touching him from the side or (more rarely) falling upon him from above. However, they can be defeated by jumping or stomping on them. Goombas are typically the weakest enemies in Mario games; their only attack is walking slowly towards the player, and they can usually be dispached in one hit. In the various Mario RPG titles, they are weak enemies encountered near the beginning of the game, but have stronger incarnations that appear later on in the games.
Little is said in Mario games about Goombas themselves, except that, according to the manual of the original Super Mario Bros. (p. 12), they are mushroom creatures and traitors to the Mushroom Kingdom. According to their MVP bio in Mario Superstar Baseball, the Goomba trophy from Super Smash Bros. Melee, and the introduction and enemy glossary for Super Princess Peach, Goombas once lived in peace in the Mushroom Kingdom, but they betrayed their homeland to side with Bowser. Mario games such as Paper Mario elucidate that not all Goombas are bad,suggesting the possibility that originally they were just Mushroom Kingdom folk turned rebel. They are, according to Super Mario RPG, the lowest level of King Bowser's army.
Para-Goombas, like this one from Yoshi's Safari, have wings.Variants of the Goomba include the Microgoomba (マメクリボー; Mamekuribou meaning "Bean-Goomba") and the Paragoomba (パタクリボー; Patakuribou meaning "Wingbeat-Goomba"). The Microgoomba is a miniature, parasitic Goomba that either attaches onto Mario to reduce his jumping ability or hides under a brick and jumps whenever Mario approaches it (the latter is known as a Pile Driver Micro-Goomba.)To destroy the Micro-goombas, Mario just simply has to dunk himself in water or vigorously repeat quick jumps and the Micro-goomba will drop off. The Microgoomba first appears in Super Mario Bros. 3 along with the Paragoomba. According to the Super Mario Bros. 3 game manual (p. 35), Microgoombas are the children of the Paragoombas. In comparison with a regular Goomba, the Paragoomba has two wings which give it the ability to fly across the game screen. In Super Mario Bros. 3, it appears in two shades of brown: the lighter colored Paragoomba can fly and occasionally release Microgoombas, while the darker colored Paragoombas do not release Microgoombas, and merely hop along the ground like green Paratroopas. Paragoombas roughly correlate with the seagoing Blooper enemies, who sometimes lead a string of nuisance Baby Bloopers.
