The differing design philosophy of the Wario Land series

A while ago, I saw an interesting description of Wario's abilities in the Wario Land games. That being, that he's basically like a playable boss character rather than a traditional platformer protagonist. That not only is he a villain or anti-hero by nature, but in terms of gameplay mechanics too.

And I think this is worth exploring, since it explains a lot of the design decisions that go into the series.

Like say, Wario's character sprite being huge compared to other video game protagonists. Mario is generally dwarfed by his enemies, with anything bigger than a Goomba being his size or taller. Same goes for the likes of Sonic, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Rayman, etc.

Wario is the exception. Wario is absolutely massive compared to every non-boss character in the games. Look at Wario Land 4, and compare just about any enemy here to Wario himself:


With a few rare mostly background character exceptions (Utsuboankō and Togenobi, Hoggus and Captain Coin/Ghost), they're either the same size or smaller. They have virtually no chance to defeat Wario himself, and are basically cannon fodder on any difficulty lower than Super Hard mode. It's like one of those fan games where Bowser blasts through hordes of Toads and Yoshis. You're not the underdog there, your enemies are.

Similarly, Wario is also built like a tank too. Yeah it's not as noticeable in Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 and VB Wario Land (since he dies in two hits), but even there the majority of enemies can't actually damage him on contact. Compared to just about every platformer protagonist in existence, Wario not taking collision damage is a big deal.

And then the next few games just ratchet it up to eleven. Wario being invincible in II and 3 means that he's literally guaranteed to win any encounter he falls into, and any level he plays. So, the games don't try to kill you or make you restart the level. They just try to delay you as much as possible to frustrate you (and Wario) into giving up. That's the entire difficulty setup there.

Meanwhile Wario Land 4, Wario World and Wario Land: Shake It just make Wario so tough that while death is possible, it's simply very unlikely to occur. Wario has 8 hearts worth of health in Wario Land 4, and 10 hearts of health + two full restores in Wario Land: Shake It. That's not gonna hit zero unless you're extremely careless.

So, the gameplay loop is that you're basically the near invincible boss charging through levels while the enemies and obstacles are trying to chip your health down enough that you lose before the end. It's less like the hero trying to survive a gauntlet of obstacles and more like the villain trying to fight off an army.

But yeah, I think it's an interesting setup to be honest. What do you think?

so basically Wario is a gigachad
this is why I love him lmao

Making big enemies for small portable games (especially on good old gameboys with the sprite limitation - no more than 10 8x8 sprites on a singular line) isn't the best play. Plus it's time consuming and not practical in most situations (easier to fit a goom in a tunnel than a fat octopus whose 4 legs cover the whole screen !). But Wario indeed plays like a powerhouse (at least in WL2 and 4, 3's progression kinda messes with that feeling), and I appreciate the effort you made to spawn new conversations around the series, as we've not seen a wario land game for centuries, and we're all slowly getting mad from content starvation. Somebody raids nintendo HQ and force the old R&D1 team to develop a new game, please ! I'll cover all the expenses, including the ammunitions.

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BlanchonUltime said:

Making big enemies for small portable games (especially on good old gameboys with the sprite limitation - no more than 10 8x8 sprites on a singular line) isn't the best play. Plus it's time consuming and not practical in most situations (easier to fit a goom in a tunnel than a fat octopus whose 4 legs cover the whole screen !). But Wario indeed plays like a powerhouse (at least in WL2 and 4, 3's progression kinda messes with that feeling), and I appreciate the effort you made to spawn new conversations around the series, as we've not seen a wario land game for centuries, and we're all slowly getting mad from content starvation. Somebody raids nintendo HQ and force the old R&D1 team to develop a new game, please ! I'll cover all the expenses, including the ammunitions.

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That's true, though it would have been pretty easy to make Wario a lot smaller and have him a similar size to Mario in either Super Mario Land 1, 2 or SMB Deluxe. Those games all had enemies that were generally as big or bigger than the main protagonist.

But I guess a lot of Wario's traits could have some level of serendipity writes the plot to them too. Him being quite slow probably made it easier to show off the improved graphics and render less on screen on the limited hardware.

CM30 said:

That's true, though it would have been pretty easy to make Wario a lot smaller and have him a similar size to Mario in either Super Mario Land 1, 2 or SMB Deluxe. Those games all had enemies that were generally as big or bigger than the main protagonist.

But I guess a lot of Wario's traits could have some level of serendipity writes the plot to them too. Him being quite slow probably made it easier to show off the improved graphics and render less on screen on the limited hardware.

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It's even more probable when you consider the exploration and puzzle aspects of those games. Lots of dawdling and so opportunities to show funny bits of Wario's personality (WL4 does that really well). Then Wario already had a strong persona in its first appearance in SML2, being the literal final boss (with a kinda big sprite), which is inline with what you say.

That's an interesting thought right there. Having him use a large player sprite definitely makes it easier to show Wario's personality. Even if Wario Land 4 did it the best, even the first game showed Wario looked disappointed when he failed at a task, or notably happy when he got treasure or beat a level. And we all remember how shifty he looked opening chests in 3...

Plus it definitely made it easy to see puzzles and their solutions while playing due to the slower pace.

I definitely feel like they wanted to take advantage of Wario's size and I bet they had a lot of fun with it, right off the bat in Wario Land 1 they got the Wandering Gooms and they're completely harmless and are meant to be pushed around even if you try to jump on them, and while this could just be an antepiece for the pirate ones, I feel like it's also because they really wanted to emphasize how different Wario is built in terms of both proportions and gameplay

On the other hand, there are a few enemies that are closer to Wario's size too. In 1 there are those mole pirates, in the 3rd one there are those polar bears and the robots that bonk you, and I'm less familiar with it but in the 2nd one I think there's also a seperate 2nd hen that's big and angry? But Wario can still pick all these guys up and throw them too, it's just a little more work for him and is an upgrade in 3 but I think the fact that he can still do it instead of nothing shows he won't let anything get in his way and even the large fry's are small fry's to him. Heck, even that dinosaur from Wario World is GIGANTIC. iirc sure Wario takes a little longer picking up bigger enemies and he may need to stun them first BUT he can still do it, and once he does they're screwed

I think there might be a mechanic in some Wario Lands when you pick up big enemies or objects, Wario gets slowed down slightly and can't throw them as far, but I'm not entirely sure since it's kind of hard to notice sometimes. While interestingly I don't think 4 has any throwable enemies around Wario's size, I know that when you pick up one of those apple throwing Ringotsuki it slows you down a bit. Again with the smaller enemies Wario absolutely just pushes them over, and sure the bigger ones have a bit more resistance, but the fact that Wario can still pick them up and handle them as if they were a helpless smaller enemy is too hard to ignore, I think they intentionally made it that way because that's the kind of force Wario is

Wario definitely gets slowed down when picking up larger enemies in Wario Land 4. Compare his speed when carrying a Spear-Mask vs when carrying a Ringosukī. He throws the former way further, and moves at a speed close to his normal fast walking speed.

CM30 said:

Wario definitely gets slowed down when picking up larger enemies in Wario Land 4. Compare his speed when carrying a Spear-Mask vs when carrying a Ringosukī. He throws the former way further, and moves at a speed close to his normal fast walking speed.

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Interesting, lots of Wario Lands are full of puzzles and bonus rooms that use almost every mechanic in the book, but I always wondered why this one was under-utilized . Like Wario Land 3 has a dedicated room for the snowball transformation where you gotta make it big enough or else the startup frames won't be enough to break through the snowman blocks, so you think they'd have a puzzle where you gotta throw an enemy at a block that's a bit too far out of reach or something