After Wario and Waluigi, Nintendo must give us Watoad

It’s been over 20 years since Nintendo introduced a new character “Wa” to Nintendo’s larger canon. Waluigi, a character destined to never appear in Super Smash Bros. as a playable character, was the last. It’s time to finally change that.

Nintendo took the gold with Wario, the greedy, greedy and carbonated antithesis of Mario. Since its introduction in 1992 Super Mario Land 2: 6 gold coins, the character of Wario gave Nintendo and other developers permission to go weird, using the chaotic neutral version of Mario as a vehicle for experiences like the games WarioWare and Wario Land.

Waluigi, born in 2000 by Mario tennis, felt like a natural extension of Wario, although the “bad Luigi” didn’t quite define the personality (or the game catalog) of his evil predecessor. In the meantime, Nintendo has also cleared the creation of Boshi, a bad-boy version of Yoshi who doesn’t wear shoes but wears a spiked collar. Boshi’s original Japanese name is Wasshi, borrowing the same Wa naming scheme introduced with Wario.

But why did Nintendo stop there? Why not “Wa” the entire Mushroom Kingdom to create a gigantic weird playground? Why not a Wapeach, Wadaisy, and, in keeping with the character traits, a benevolent and generous Wabowser (aka Wowser) who habit kidnap and kill someone? Shouldn’t Nintendo create a full mirror dimension of Bizarro World funhouse from Super Mario canon? This proposed alternate universe is sometimes known as the MarioCube Theory: If a (good) Mario thing exists, is there a (bad) Wario version of that thing?

I’m, of course, far from the first person to come up with the Wafication of the biggest Super Mario Bros. franchise. Twitter, Tumblr, and DeviantArt are chock-full of Wapeach and Wadaisy fan art – the dark and devious pair of princesses is well-worn artistic territory. Artists’ reflections on Wapeach and Wadaisy are often delightfully diverse, spanning the cartoonish drawings of Wario and Waluigi in female form in various ways: colder, crueler, sexier, bulkier, slender, more grotesque.

As for Wowser, one of the best imaginations created by fans of Bowser’s sweet and innocent counterpart Wa comes from the artist. Greg Melo. His take on Wowser just wants to do nice things for Peach and support Koopa Troopa’s organizing efforts, but he gets intimidated by Wario and Waluigi.

Nintendo and its partners have already flirted with building the Wa Extended Universe beyond what we know. Camelot Software, developer of Mario Tennis and Mario Golf, once offered to give Princess Peach the Wa a treat, but was reportedly shut down by Nintendo, which apparently did not want to tarnish the princess’ s healthy brand.

“We asked Nintendo about Wario and Luigi’s girlfriends,” Camelot president Hiroyuki Takahashi told Nintendo Power in an interview in 2000, “but Mr. Miyamoto said he didn’t even want to see theirs. girlfriends. ” One of these abandoned ideas would have received the name of Warupachi.

This is an area where Nintendo doesn’t seem willing to budge, and I think we won’t see an official Wapeach or Wadaisy in our lifetime.

However, a theory claims that Toadette – herself an expansion of Toad – is already secretly Wario’s equivalent of Princess Peach. Both love treasures, and the Mario Party games hint at a private relationship between Wario and Toadette: In Mario party 6, the name of the couple’s team is “Secret Friends” and in Mario party 8, their team’s name is “Double Agents”. Lots to think about.

Another theory holds that Captain Syrup, the pirate and ruler of Kitchen Island from the Wario Land games, is already playing the role of Wapeach. Syrup rules both an island of criminals and perhaps even the surrounding seas, making it a sort of royalty. Syrup and Wario are rivals, which could strengthen his position as Wapeach – if Mario and Peach have a good relationship, shouldn’t Wario and his “Wapeach” have a bad relationship?

While these two characters aren’t official “Wa” characters, there is still some hope – and a good candidate – for Nintendo to expand the Wa canon. My personal wish – and, I claim, our best option for a fourth Wa character among the playable and most recognizable heroes of the Super Mario series – is a “bad” version of Toad.

Here’s why:

1. Toads are mushrooms and they are good. Mushrooms, in Super Mario games, are good. However, Super mario bros 2 – you may know it as Super Mario Bros. : The lost levels – introduced Poison Mushroom, a debuffing (bad) version of the (good) Power Mushroom power-up. So, a poisonous Watoad (Woad? Warioad ?!) must and should exist somewhere in the damp dungeons of the Mushroom Kingdom.
2. Toad is a playable headlining character in several Super Mario games, including the original Super mario kart, New Super Mario Bros. Wii U, and World of Super Mario 3D. The toad and the toad also make the headlines Captain Toad: Treasure Hunter.
3. Nintendo is comfortable with using Toad as a model for other characters (e.g. Toadette, Toadsworth, Captain Toad), so why not give him a rival? The Paper Mario games also introduced the concept of a divorced toad, which signals interpersonal conflicts rarely seen in toads.
4. A bad version of Toad already exists in one form: Mummy-Me. It’s the undead, mummified version of Toad that terrorizes Captain Toad and Toadette in Treasure tracker. With this precedent in place, one can logically assume that a Toad is capable of wrongdoing … same murder!
5. The only other longtime character in the Mario universe, Donkey Kong, cannot have his name correctly changed to a “W” or “Wa” and appear in an E-rated video game. (Please do not write such a name in the comments to this article.)

Therefore, Toad is Nintendo’s most viable character to expand the Wa universe, which is in desperate need of expansion. The only question left: is Nintendo brave enough to do it?