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It's been a while since Ilini had a proper text regurgitation session! You have been warned.
I have recently been on a "Mario & Luigi" series marathon (currently nearing the end of Bowser's Inside Story) building up to Brothership, the one title I haven't played yet. Due to having natural association with the entire Mario canon, that means I've had someone else on my mind as I play through them... WARIO! His penthouse in my gray matter is a luxury very few can afford.
As seen by the above fanart and its 2012 publish date, I am far from the first person to have this idea... but now that they're fresh in my memory, I'd like to come back to some questions which will hopefully build into complex, interesting answers: if there were another Mario & Luigi sequel, would Wario & Waluigi as playable characters make for an interesting central mechanic and selling point?
Off the bat, I think the lesser known duo would fit into one of these games like a glove, for one main reason: the series is very familiar in absurdist cartoon comedy antics. It is fascinating to see what the original M&L trilogy in particular was able to get away with: from flattening babies so they can crawl under crevices, to putting on intense water weight and having your brother bonk you over the head to spit it out like a projectile, to being force-fed and then thrown on a treadmill to work off the gains in seconds, lighting yourself on fire in the process and setting off the most inconveniently-placed bomb storage. Even the RPG sister series Paper Mario would be hard-pressed to regularly pull off half of the crazy scenes thrown to the wall of the brothers together. As such, these displays of cartoon logic were inevitably going to bring Wario to my mind: another character who easily slots into comical physicality. One of the most memorable aspects of the Wario Land series are the reactions/transformations used in some of the games: Wario is not above doing whatever it takes to further his goals, and if that means being flattened or fattened or set ablaze, he will not hesitate to do so.
This absurdist association is also true of Waluigi to a lesser extent, merely on the basis of being in less games. While there have been aspects of his character shown to be slapstickian and absurd similar to Wario, most notably his ability to swim in midair as seen in Mario Tennis, he sadly is moreso regulated to a generic sidekick of the big W in his spinoff roles. That said, I think he would still be a welcome addition alongside Wario to Mario & Luigi, because disregarding the comedic antics, these are still role-playing adventures that try to tell stories and develop characters and dynamics. Not vey deep ones, M&L is very much "baby's first" JRPG in that regard... but there are attempts to go beyond the nearly nonexistent plots of Mario's platforming series. So this could be an opportunity to finally develop these characters in a new light, on top of putting them through humorous situations!
Unfortunately, we now come to the most complex question of this entire equation. Because on top of being unhinged displays of creative control in both trying to develop stories and humiliating the Mario name, the M&L series are also video games. And one aspect that almost every sequel focused on was changing up the playable characters. How do we include Wario & Waluigi as playable characters without making it redundant from a gameplay perspective?
The most simple and straightforward idea is to have Wario & Waluigi be alongside the usual brothers at all times, for 4 playable characters to control at once. If Mario uses the A button and Luigi uses B, Wario can get X and Waluigi gets Y; perfect! This could open up opportunities for more complex gameplay, potentially having larger enemy encounters to match the increased party headcount. Unfortunately, this overlaps with the first sequel, Partners in Time, where the baby versions of the brothers work and level up alongside their older selves, and use the same buttons.
Another idea is to have Wario & Waluigi be a separate party from Mario & Luigi, able to make progress in the story through their own methods, but never directly working with each other. This too unfortunately has multiple overlaps: Partners in Time also lets you separate the baby characters from the main party, which is used for both unique puzzle solving and forced combat encounters. It also has some similarity to how Bowser's Inside Story handled the titular character: Bowser plays separately and differently from Mario and Luigi, and they never team up beyond an oblivious Bowser influencing the brothers' goals.
An idea from the main developer of Pizza Tower shows a more focused take: only having Wario alongside the brothers, where they all team up together for his special attacks. While I am in love with the idea of the brothers inflicting Wario's different forms, this concept also has some overlap with the final AlphaDream sequel, Paper Jam, where Paper Mario appears as a third more powerful character, with the others joining in on his special attacks. However, all of these previous concepts did get me thinking of another idea... visualized by some sprite mockups!
(Credit to Starpower for the custom Warios and Waluigis, although they seem to no longer be active...)
My concept for a "M&L&W&Γ" takes from all that has been previously discussed, while also involving a little more than the party shifting. I would have all four characters: Mario, Luigi, Wario and Waluigi, working together. You can control all four of them as a group for some parts of the game, but not most. The game would be designed so that certain locations, let's call them dungeons, would only be accessible by certain combinations of characters, with a minimum of 2 to control at once. The way for these combos of characters to access such locations is simple: the special overworld moves that are used across the series as "keys" to access new locations. For example: let's say there is a long gap that nobody can cross with a jump. Waluigi can learn how to stretch out like a bridge, allowing Mario and/or Luigi, but not Wario (too much weight!), to cross. For a more complex one, let's say there's a cliff that nobody can jump up, with a door sealed by a powerless electric circuit at the top. Wario could inflate like a balloon and carry one brother up (any more is too heavy and causes him to fall), but which? Well, let's also say Luigi gains his electric powers from Superstar Saga back. Have Wario ferry Luigi up to unlock the door, then they can explore what it seals together. These locations could then be designed around the party of compatible characters, building puzzles around their regular and combo moves, and designing enemies around their strengths and blind spots.
Furthering the topic of enemies and combat, the parties of characters would also influence how each encounter is handled. This concept would go back to the Superstar Saga method of special attacks being tied to the unique overworld moves, which always felt more intuitive to me than pulling out random doodads. This results in a lot of different unique attacks, available depending on which combination of characters you enter a battle with. On a smaller scale, the solo attacks would also involve a little more planning around. While Mario and Luigi would retain their classic jump and hammer, Wario and Waluigi would use a slightly different pair: a dash attack (hello again, Land!) and an uppercut from below. My reasoning for the latter is that while each character would be able to jump on the overworld, having everyone use a stomp attack could be redundant. The uppercut would be less effective against grounded foes, but it could hit more specialized enemies with ease, say, ones that can both fly and have spikes on their noggin. All of this is to say, enemy encounters would end up offering more strategy than usual with these party rules in play. If you're using Mario and Luigi, how do you hit those flying spiked enemies? How about enemies that protect their front from hammers, dashes or uppercuts? In the case of none of anyone's solo moves having valid targets, what combo attacks can you fall back on?
