Labelling this a critique of Mario's chronic objectification of princesses might be a bridge too far, but it's hard to look at how consistently Wario breaks the fourth wall - smashing through the side of the save file menu when you start the game - and not wonder whether a joke is being had at Miyamoto's expense. At the end of the original Wario Land, meanwhile, Wario discovers a gigantic golden statue of Princess Toadstool in the ruins of Captain Syrup's castle, only for Mario to swoop down in a helicopter and pinch it. The point, perhaps, is that Wario forces the upstanding Mario to see the world through cold, avaricious eyes in order to wrest back what's rightfully his. At the beginning of Super Mario Land 2, Wario kicks Mario out of his own castle, obliging the poor plumber to scour the land for magic coins with which to procure access to his own home. Wario's role in the Mario saga isn't just to oppose Mario but to undermine what he represents. After all, Wario Land is as much a cheeky revolt against the success and spirit of Shigeru Miyamoto, Yokoi's star protégé and subsequent rival, as it is an offshoot of the Mario franchise. Alas, the folly of youth - but I like to think that Wario Land's producer Gunpei Yokoi, original head of the famous Research and Development 1 team, would have been tickled that I'd come to Mario second. Wario Land was actually the first Mario title I played - a Sonic the Hedgehog diehard, I'd turned my nose up at Nintendo's machines until the sight of Wario's obscene grimace in a friend's hands won me over. Wario is brilliant.īuilding a protagonist around the idea that most video game protagonists are glorified looters may not seem revolutionary in this, the era of "No Russian" and "Would You Kindly", but it was quite the shock to my system back in 1994, when the original Wario Land popped up on the Game Boy. Wario is a loveless abomination who exists to break things, pillage things and generally speaking indulge himself, which is to say he is pretty much like any video game character, only without the usual veneer of respectability. Originally created to serve as Mario's foil in Super Mario Land 2 for the Gameboy, Wario is an odious bubble of fat and muscle wrapped up in ghastly purple overalls, wobbling about on stupid duck feet, his face all but obliterated by an enormous, lipless maw, hat clamped down like the seal on a barrel of toxic waste. Wario isn't lean or glowering, and I sincerely hope you don't find him sexy. The apparel? Trench coats, mirror shades, knee-high boots, flapping bandages and anything cut from dark leather with sharp angles that smells ever so slightly of S&M. The eyes? Glowing, slitted, bionic and/or bloodshot. Their lips must be curling, bleached, sardonic. Anti-heroes must be lean, sexy, glowering and little-spoken, with a regulation two days' worth of stubble and a variety of intriguing scars. Anti-heroes aren't really supposed to have preset characteristics at all - the whole point is that they're defined by negation - but in the course of countless Gothic vampire stories and cyberpunk adventures, the role has come to involve certain visual traits. "Anti-heroes" aren't supposed to look like Wario.
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