Not Feeling Great About Wario's Future

[warelander]

It's true that the poop stuff and so on existed on the old websites and I'm not a fan of that, but at it's core that is just Wario having a crass sense of humor and openly talk about stuff most would deem uncalled for. My main problem with those is more the complete lack of wit, especially compared to translated manual examples of it, which also had Wario mention his extended bathroom times or talking about his insides:



Thing is, we have devolved from Wario just having a crass taste in conversation subjects, to him being a master of farts who can rip several varieties of them and will demonstrate them with glee.

It's not even internally consistent, since the japanese Mega Microgames website even had him mention he dislikes farting in front of others, because he thinks it would damage his coolness. Now he literally shits himself while demonstrating a fart and is proud of it.

Literally the last thing they did for the website and the one thing they put on Nintendo Today, is to commission Takeuchi to draw Wario's arse, so it can be clicked on for farts. You never saw specific art of Wario on the toilet back then, just because he likes spending a lot of time there.

 

[warelander]

More than anything I also have to genuinely ask who the fart stuff is even for. Out of every franchise on Nintendo Today, Wario has the most baffling presence. Others get unique animations, preview content for upcoming releases, activities that are meant to engage with their casts in a fun way or talk about the history of whatever game or series is featured.

Wario gets farts.

Instead of talking about the history of WarioWare, it's cast and everything that makes it unique.

Wario gets farts.

It's not even like Wario can't find success anymore. Get It Together wasn't a monster hit, but it is one of WarioWare's best selling titles and around a million and half units sold, with some notable reach the series usually doesn't get, it a good place to be.

Nintendo just failed to meaningfully follow that up and it is something that will never cease to baffle me.

Wario is still reliably popular, people always ask for him to be in stuff, anytime Wario Land content comes up people get gleeful about it and WL itself remains in high demand and as Pizza Tower and Anton Blast have shown, is so wanted that spiritual successors become big success stories.

Even WarioWare still has a future, given GiT did well and the attention MindWave is getting shows that a strong hook and presentational identity like say, the GBA games also had, still catches eyes.

More than anything Wario needs a new champion at Nintendo, who pushes for him and his cast to get more support and presence elsewhere and for his series to get more push towards a healthy direction, instead of the character being degraded into a vehicle for basically fetish content at this point.