Wario - Concept and Creation

Concept and Creation

A rival to Mario first appeared in the 1985 game Wrecking Crew in the form of Spike, a construction foreman. Although Spike bears a slight resemblance, Wario was not to receive his true debut until 1992. The first named appearance of the character occurred in the 1992 game Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins where he was designed by game artist Hiroji Kiyotake, who was also responsible for designing Samus Aran of Metroid. The motive for Wario's design arose from the distaste of Super Mario Land's design team towards designing a game based around someone else's character. The creation of Wario allowed them a character of their own to "symbolize their situation".

Wario is portrayed as an exaggerated version of Mario; he has huge, muscular arms, a large moustache, and a bellicose cackle. The name Wario is a portmanteau of Mario's name with the Japanese adjective warui (悪い) meaning "bad"; hence, a "bad Mario" (further symbolized by the "W" on his hat, an upside down "M"). Voice actor Charles Martinet, who had voiced Mario since 1995, auditioned to provide the voice for Wario. Martinet was told to speak in a mean and gruff voice, and described voicing Wario as a looser task than voicing Mario, since Mario's voice and personality is free-flowing, coming from the ground and floating into the air, while one of Wario's cornerstones is self-pity. Starting with Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land, Wario experiences rejuvenating effects from garlic in a similar manner as Mario is powered up by mushrooms. The character is also often seen making use of bombs, as in Wario Land and Wario Blast. The WarioWare series prominently uses bombs as a visual motif in every microgame to represent the time limit.

In video games in which Wario makes a cameo appearance, he is often portrayed as a villain. However, the development team for Wario Land: The Shake Dimension stated that he was not really a villain, and they did not consider this during development. They focused on his behavior, which alternates between good or evil. Etsunobu Ebisu, a producer of The Shake Dimension, considers Wario to be a reckless character, who uses his strength to overwhelm others. Tadanori Tsukawaki, the design director of The Shake Dimension, described Wario as manly, and said he was "so uncool that he ends up being extremely cool". Because of this, he wished for Wario to come off as macho rather than silly, and requested that the art designers emphasize his masculinity. Wario was chosen as the star of the WarioWare series because the developers felt it was the best character for the franchise, in particular for frequently acting stupid.