Goomba: [Goom-bah]  

1. A common enemy type in the Mario series of videogames. 
2. A minion of the villain Bowser.

 Minor henchmen, known as the lowest of enemies. They are easily dispatched of with any form of attack. They lack intelligence, and will often walk off of cliffs. Their only form of offense is to run into the opponent, and they have no concept of what defense is. When defeated, they will either give points, coins, or other similer objects. As coins can heal  Mario, they often amount to little more than walking containers.  
They come in multiple forms, though each form improves very little. Some have wings, and are upgraded to the status of floating jump-off point, while others come in an even weaker variety that are dispatched of even more easily. Often voted as the most pathetic minion in history, any victories obtained by them are attributed either to extreme luck, or a pathetic and disgraceful opponent. 
 
See also: Things that killed me five times in a row.

      Goomba: [Goom-bah]  

1. A common enemy type in the Mario series of videogames. 
2. A minion of the villain Bowser.

 Minor henchmen, known as the lowest of enemies. They are easily dispatched of with any form of attack. They lack intelligence, and will often walk off of cliffs. Their only form of offense is to run into the opponent, and they have no concept of what defense is. When defeated, they will either give points, coins, or other similer objects. As coins can heal  Mario, they often amount to little more than walking containers.  
They come in multiple forms, though each form improves very little. Some have wings, and are upgraded to the status of floating jump-off point, while others come in an even weaker variety that are dispatched of even more easily. Often voted as the most pathetic minion in history, any victories obtained by them are attributed either to extreme luck, or a pathetic and disgraceful opponent. 
 
See also: Things that killed me five times in a row.

The goomba is a awesome enemy. Just remember that there is strength in numbers. Thumbs up for this blog post.

Here's some more fun facts for you.  In Japan they're known as kuriboo (クリボー), pronounced kooreebow.  I wonder if they called them goomba for the mafioso slang?
 
Way back when with Super Mario Bros 1, I used to think they were actually noses with mustaches moving back and forth.

LOL Cool post. I love putting my boot under those lil pests.  
 
@Diamond: I had no idea their known as kuriboo in Japanese. Did you happen to edit the Mario Bros page with that info?

These things keep killing me in SMG2 whenever the camera angle goes kinda isometric. 
 
I do enjoy slurping their wings off with Yoshi so they plummet into a black hole though.

I really liked that they brought him back on Galaxy 2. It was great seeing all those little guys walking around.

I thought this was a Goomba.