Wario
is a character in Nintendo's Mario franchise that was designed as an antithesis of Mario. Wario first appeared as the main antagonist and final boss in the 1992 Game Boy game Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins. His name is a portmanteau of the name Mario and the Japanese word warui, meaning "bad". He is usually portrayed as a selfish and greedy treasure hunter who, in karmic irony, routinely loses his spoils by adventure's end. Hiroji Kiyotake designed Wario, and Charles Martinet voiced the character from 1993 to 2023.
Wario is also the main protagonist and antihero of the Wario Land platformer series and the WarioWare party game series. He makes regular appearances as a playable character in Mario spin-offs and other video game series, including Mario Sports games, Mario Kart, Mario Party, in which he is typically paired with the character Waluigi to form a comedy duo that rivals the partnership of Mario and his brother, Luigi. Wario has also been featured in several entries of the fighting game series Super Smash Bros..
Concept and creation
The character Foreman Spike, a possible inspiration for Wario, first appeared in the 1985 game Wrecking Crew. Spike is a construction foreman who bears a slight resemblance to Wario. Game artist Hiroji Kiyotake designed Foreman Spike, whom Kiyotake imagined as "the Bluto to Mario's Popeye". Wario's first named appearance occurred in the 1992 game Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins. Wario's design arose from Super Mario Lands design team's distaste for making a game based around someone else's character. The creation of Wario allowed them their own character to "symbolize their situation".Wario is portrayed as a caricature of Mario: he has a large head and chin; huge muscular arms; a wide, short, slightly obese body; short legs; a large, pointier, zig-zagging mustache; and a bellicose cackle. He wears a plumber outfit with a yellow-and-purple color scheme, which is a short-sleeved yellow shirt, purple overalls, and a blue "W" on his hat. He also wears green shoes and white gloves with blue "W" symbols. In his early appearances, Wario wears a yellow, long-sleeved shirt and fuchsia overalls. The name "Wario" is a portmanteau of "Mario" and the Japanese adjective, meaning "bad", hence "bad Mario", which is also symbolized by the "W" on his hat. Wario was planned to be a temporary name, but it proved popular with the staff. Waluigi was created to be the tennis partner of Wario in Mario Tennis and early material from Nintendo of Europe portrayed them as brothers, but their relationship has since been ambiguous. When asked whether Wario was a brother to Waluigi in 2008, voice actor Charles Martinet stated that while he did not know, he felt that they were just "two nice, evil guys who found each other".
Nintendo originally considered making Wario a German character before he developed into an Italian like Mario. Wario was intended to be German at one point; German translator Thomas Spindler gave him German lines when he was brought on to voice Wario. This part of Wario was eventually dropped; Martinet's Wario voice did not have any German influence. During his audition for the part, Martinet was told to speak in a mean-and gruff-sounding tone; he said voicing Wario is a looser task than voicing Mario, whose speaking manner and personality are freer-flowing, rising from the ground and floating into the air, while jealousy is one of Wario's characteristics.
Wario is often portrayed as a villain in video games in which he makes a cameo appearance. The development team for Wario Land: Shake It! stated he was not really a villain, and they did not consider him one during development. They focused on his behavior, which alternates between good and evil. Etsunobu Ebisu and Takahiro Harada, producers of Shake It!, considered Wario to be a reckless character who uses his strength to overwhelm others. Tadanori Tsukawaki, Shake It! design director, described Wario as manly and said he was "so uncool that he ends up being extremely cool." Because of this, Tsukawaki wanted Wario to act macho rather than silly and asked the art designers to emphasize his masculinity. During an interview with Kikizo, video game designer Yoshio Sakamoto, who was a member of R&D1 since its early days, stated the project centered around Wario because the team "couldn't think of anyone else best for the role", and he was then described as "unintelligent" and "always idiotic", which is the reason he was chosen as the star of the WarioWare series. According to an early 1990s Nintendo guide, Wario was Mario's childhood friend, which Kotaku later contested in a parody article. Afterward, it was stated that they were not related to each other and were considered childhood rivals.
In his earliest appearances in Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins and Wario's Woods, Wario displays considerable magical power, using spells on the population of islands to turn them into his minions, create duplicates, and grow very large. These traits were discontinued starting with Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, in which he is rejuvenated by garlic in a similar manner to Mario being powered by mushrooms. In the WarioWare series, he becomes a smelly slob, while in Mario Strikers: Battle League, his super shot special involves smashing his butt into the ball, followed by him devouring a giant clove of garlic. In WarioWare: Touched!, consuming garlic transforms Wario into "Wario-Man", a superhero with powers relating to garlic-induced flatulence and bad breath. In other games, he uses farts as his special attack. Wario prominently uses bombs as tools and weapons in the WarioWare series as a visual motif to represent the time limit of a microgame.
Appearances
''Wario Land'' series
Wario first appeared as a villain in the 1992 Game Boy video game Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins, in which he captures Mario's castle. Tatanga, the villain of the first Super Mario Land game, is a henchman of Wario in the second, implying Wario is responsible for the events of both games. Wario also serves as a villain in the 1993 Japan-only puzzle game Mario & Wario, in which Wario drops a bucket on the heads of Mario, Princess Peach, or Yoshi. This was followed by the first game in the Wario Land series, Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, a platform game that marks Wario's first appearance as a protagonist and introduced his first villains, Captain Syrup and her Brown Sugar Pirates. In his next appearance in Virtual Boy Wario Land, Wario plays similarly and has the ability to move in and out of the background. A sequel to the Game Boy game Wario Land II features Captain Syrup's return as the antagonist. This game introduces Wario's invulnerability, allowing him to be burned or flattened without sustaining damage.In 2000, Wario Land 3 was released for the Game Boy Color; it is another sequel that uses the same mechanics and concepts as its predecessor. The following year, the sequel Wario Land 4 debuted on the Game Boy Advance and incorporates Wario's ability to become burned or flattened and reintroduces the ability to become damaged from standard attacks. In 2003, Wario World, the first console Wario platform game, was released for the GameCube. It has three-dimensional graphics and gameplay and does not incorporate major elements from previous platform games. Wario: Master of Disguise for the Nintendo DS introduces touch-screen control of Wario and incorporates puzzles into the gameplay. The series' most recent release, Wario Land: Shake It! for the Wii, reintroduces Captain Syrup. The game uses a hand-drawn animation style; Wario's design required more than 2,000 frames of animation.
''WarioWare'' series
In 2003, the Wario franchise introduced a new series of games, the first of which was WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames! for the Game Boy Advance. The game's premise involved Wario's decision to open a game development company to make money, creating short "microgames" instead of full-fledged games. The game's gameplay focused on playing a collection of microgames in quick succession. Mega Microgames! was later remade as WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Party Games! for the GameCube; it featured the same microgames but lacked a story mode and focused more on multi-player. In 2004, two sequels were released for the game. The first was the Game Boy Advance game WarioWare: Twisted!, which used the cartridge's tilt sensor to allow microgames to be controlled by tilting the handheld left and right. The second was the Nintendo DS release WarioWare: Touched!, which incorporates the DS's touch screen and microphone into its gameplay.One of the Wii's launch games in 2006 was WarioWare: Smooth Moves, which used the Wii Remote's motion-sensing technologies in a variety of ways. The Nintendo DS and Nintendo DSi have offered two new releases: 2008's WarioWare: Snapped!, which can be downloaded with the DSiWare service and uses the DSi's built-in front camera in its gameplay, and 2009's WarioWare D.I.Y., which allows players to create microgames. Game & Wario for the Nintendo Wii U was released on June 23, 2013. Although it does not use the WarioWare name, it incorporates gameplay and characters from the WarioWare series. The game also pays tribute to the original Game & Watch games. In 2018, the Nintendo 3DS game WarioWare Gold was released, featuring 316 microgames and combining elements from Twisted and Touched. He also appeared in the 2021 Nintendo Switch game WarioWare: Get It Together! and the 2023 Nintendo Switch game WarioWare: Move It!, with 223 microgames.