Where is Wario?
I’ll do you one better: who is Wario?
I’ll do you one better: why is Wario?
WarioWare: Get it Together is the latest instalment in Nintendo’s most bizarre franchise: a
series which started as a spin-off from Super Mario Bros, and which is now going back to
its platforming routes as players race to complete tiny jumping challenges in mere seconds.
The big question is: why?!
Why Wario?
Just…why?!
The answer is that sometimes it’s more fun to make something weird than to stick to an
established formula.
The name “Wario” was invented before his character.
The team at Nintendo Research and Development 1 thought to combine “warui”, the Japanese
word for “bad”, with Mario, to make Bad Mario.
They imagined this new character as the anti-Mario – he seemed like the perfect villain for
the game that the team was working on: Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins for the Game
Boy.
Said director Hiroji Kiyotake: “We imagined Wario as the Bluto to Mario’s
Popeye.”
The team were, at this point…struggling.
They were Nintendo’s primary software developers for the Game Boy, and were making good games,
but they weren’t always very satisfied with the projects they had to work on.
Nintendo had several development teams at the time.
Research and Development 4, headed up by Shigeru Miyamoto, was cranking out hits like Super
Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda.
Research and Development 1 was then tasked making portable versions of already popular
Nintendo Entertainment System games.
They weren’t given a lot of freedom to experiment, and all their bottled up creativity was threatening
to burst.
They had already begun pushing boundaries with Super Mario Land, a scaled down version
of Super Mario Bros, which they had filled with unorthodox ideas, such as scrolling shooter
levels.
Now, desperate to make Super Mario Land 2 something even more unique…they found themselves
going too far beyond the established Mario formula.
Said Kiyotake: “With Super Mario Land 2, one of our ideas
was to not be bound by the conventions of the previous games.
However, when we showed our first draft to everyone, they were like, “I don’t know…
is this Mario?”
We realized we were on the wrong path, so we toned down that idea and made something
a little closer to the existing Mario world.”
When the time came to follow on from Super Mario Land 2, the team opted to pivot away
from Mario, and focus on the character that they really identified with.
Wario was the perfect mascot for R&D1: like Wario, the team felt like they were set up
to be a carbon copy of an iconic pillar of the Nintendo empire.
Like Wario, R&D1 didn’t want to play by Mario’s rules.
What followed was a series of inventive Wario Land platformers.
Because the team didn’t need to follow the Mario rulebook, they were able to experiment
more, trying out different level designs, power up solutions, and gameplay mechanics.
Wario, though, wasn’t the only Nintendo property that R&D1 were tasked with working
on.
They moved on to new hardware, creating a game for the ill-fated Nintendo 64 Disk Drive.
Said designer Goro Abe: “At the time our team was working on a game
called Mario Artist: Polygon Studio for the N64 DD.
As you know it was an extra accessory for the N64.
In Polygon Studio you could create 3D models and animate them in the game, but there was
also a side game included inside.
In this game you would have to play short games that came one after another.
This is where the idea for Wario Ware came from.”
This, finally, gave the team at R&D1 an outlet for all of their pent-up creativity that had
nowhere else to go.
They took these minigames and began to expand them.
They were concerned, though, that the higher ups at Nintendo wouldn’t approve of their
experimentation.
They worked on it secretly until they had enough to show off to their manager, in the
hopes that they could convince him to allow them to finish their work.
They had the feeling it would be a hard sell.
To their surprise, he simply looked at their prototype, and said, “okay”.
So why put Wario of all characters front and centre in this new microgame collection?
According to Yoshio Sakamoto: “We got the idea of using Wario and the
other characters because we couldn't think of anyone else who would be best for the role.
Wario is always doing stupid things and is really idiotic, so we thought him and the
rest of the characters would be best for the game.”
Once the game had been approved, everyone at R&D1 began making suggestions for tiny
microgames, sticking them on post-it notes on the director’s desk.
As word of the project spread, even people who weren’t involved with the game began
offering suggestions.
Of course, with such a bizarre game about Wario, not all of the ideas could actually
be used.
Said Goro Abe: “There were some games that we didn't include
because they were either too obscene, or they were too Japanese.
There were some games that we thought that people would not understand, so we decided
not to use them.
“Most importantly, if the game was too difficult to play, then we didn't use it.
We wanted to make sure that the game was easy to understand, and that you could play it
with your instinct, and just by looking at the screen.
If you could not understand what you had to do in the game just by looking at it, then
it would be too difficult.”
The finished game is one of the strangest titles that Nintendo had ever released…at
least until the next one.
Before long, Wario became the star of far more ridiculous games in this unorthodox series.
The moral of the story?
Don’t be afraid to be weird.
People may not always appreciate what makes you different.
You may be expected to toe the line and act like everyone else.
R&D1’s experience with Wario shows that actually, if you can find the right avenue
to express yourself, people will embrace your quirks, and truly celebrate the things that
make you unique.