Wario

Wario is a character who was first introduced in the video game Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins as a rival to Mario.

After rescuing Daisy from crazed spaceman Tatanga in Super Mario Land, Mario returned to his home away from home, Mario Land, where he had a cozy setup complete with his own castle. But Mario found that the entire original Super Mario Land adventure was Wario's doing; he had paid Tatanga to nab Daisy to give himself a chance at invading Mario's castle. The iconic M heralding Mario's ownership had even been flipped upside-down to a W.

Wario's name isn't as simple as a flipped M, however. In what is probably the best-working in-game pun Nintendo has made, Wario's name comes from the Japanese word "warui," which means "bad." And Wario is bad. So it works. But on top of that, the M/W relationship works interestingly too.

Mario had to venture through the six sectors of Mario Land — Tree Zone, Turtle Zone, Mario Zone, Macro Zone, Space Zone, and Pumpkin Zone — to collect the six golden coins that unlocked the gate to the castle. There, he fought the yellow and purple-clad Wario, an acquaintance from Mario's childhood who had long been jealous of Mario's fame and fortune.

Wario shot back with dark version of Mario's Fire Flower and Bunny Carrot, but Mario prevailed and shrunk his villainous alterego down to size.

Playing Mario's foil only made Wario popular. Almost immediately, Wario scored a starring role in Mario vs. Wario, a game in which Wario plunked a makeshift helmet — a bucket, a pipe, an octopus — on the head of Mario, Yoshi, or Peach. Players controlled the fairy Wanda with the short-lived Super NES mouse, creating and destroying blocks with a magic wand to ensure that the blindly walking plumber/dinosaur/princess would not fall.

Nintendo released a Tetris-style puzzle game, Wario's Woods, on both the NES and the Super NES in 1994, where he tangled again with Wanda and made an enemy of Toad for the first time.

The same year also featured Wario as a playable protagonist in Wario Blast: Featuring Bomberman!, a title that pitted Wario against the explosive-happy Hudson mascot. It's notable that today Wario if often associated with bombs — both Bob-ombs and generic explosive devices — and particularly so in the Mario Party games, which are also made by Hudson. It could very well be that Wario's association with the boom-booms arose from Wario Blast.

Wario had capped off a particularly lucrative year by overtaking the Super Mario Land series with Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land. Having lost Mario's castle, Wario sets out for Kitchen Island, the hideaway of the notoriously wealthy Black Sugar Pirates. Rumor had it that the pirated, led by Captain Syrup, had stolen a giant, golden statue of Princess Peach. Akin to Mario's animal suits in Super Mario Bros. 3, Wario donned a variety of different hats to battle enemies.

Wario's adventure led him eventually to Syrup Castle, where he found that the evil Captain Syrup was actually a beautiful woman. Her beauty belying her feistiness, Syrup summoned her genie to eliminate the obese, greasy intruder. Wario prevailed in the fight and even in Syrup's bombing of her own castle. He finally obtains the statue of Peach — only to have Mario sweep in, thank Wario and speed away with the statue.

In 1995, Wario starred in a Virtual Boy version of Wario Land. Though the next Game Boy game is called Wario Land 2, the Virtual Boy Wario Land is the true sequel, as it retains the magical hats as power-ups. Being a Virtual Boy release, of course, not a whole lot of people played this game.

Back on the Game Boy, Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land ended with Wario keeping nothing but the genie's lamp. Of course, the big guy wished for his own castle. Syrup and her Black Sugar Pirates returned to Wario's newly granted castle for retribution. He chased Syrup — and the money — all the way back to Syrup Castle on Kitchen Isle, where he once again had to battle the beautiful pirate.

Taking the series back to its birthplace on the Game Boy, the developers of Wario Land 2 threw a twist into the typical jump-and-stomp side-scroller formula. Wario couldn't die. Instead of taking damage from enemies, they would change his condition; stomping things would squash Wario flat, allowing him through narrow passages, while fiery foes would light Wario on fire.

This innovation persisted through Wario Land 3, which had Wario being magically sucked into a music box, much like Boo House music box Mario got sucked into in Super Mario 64. This mystical musical instrument lent its name to subtitle that appeared in the Japanese title of the game, Wario Land 3: The Mysterious Orgel. (According to ShdwRlm3, the author of a Wario Land 3 FAQ, an "orgel" is a certain Dutch organ.)

Technically, the game had five different orgels, which Wario had to collect to restore to power the figure who summoned him into the world to begin with. When Wario did, however, the figure revealed himself to be Rudy, a giant clown bent on world domination. Wario dispatched the freaky clown, received thanks from those Rudy had imprisoned, and returned home with priceless treasure in tow.

The Game Boy Advance realized the most recent Wario Land outing in full color in 2001. Reading the paper one day, Wario learns of a newly discovered pyramid discovered by archeologists. According to legend, Princess Shokora owned the pyramid until she fell under a sleeping spell. With dreams of even more riches in mind, Wario hops into his purple convertible and sets out for another adventure. After clearing the four different branches of Shokora's pyramid — the Emerald, Ruby, Sapphire, and Topaz Passages — Wario fought and defeated the sinister force called the Golden Diva, thereby freeing Shokora from the Golden Diva's curse.

Meanwhile, as Wario released game after game on Nintendo's portable systems, he began making appearances on various Mario spin-offs on other systems. Mario Kart 64, released in 1997, introduced Wario's voice — easily one of the most irritating in a video game, but perfectly suited for Wario's nasty temperament. Nintendo can't seem to put the Mario characters on a golf course, tennis court, race track, or giant board game without sticking Wario's big-nosed face in the middle of it all.

Wario returned once more to the puzzle genre in Dr. Mario 64, where he tangled with Mario's doctor alterego, Rudy, and Mad Dr. Scienstein, among others. The various puzzle stages were framed by a story involving Scienstein stealing Dr. Mario's megavitamins to cure ailing Rudy. Players can either pick Dr. Mario or Wario's scenario, encountering different foes on the quest to Rudy's castle.

Wario's latest feat is the new WarioWare series. Picking his nose while watching TV one day, Wario sees a news report about the booming success of the latest Game Boy Advance game, Pyoro. Wario, eager to jump on a new, lucrative business venture buys a computer in hopes of developing his own best selling game. He even founds WarioWare, Inc. and names himself the president. Unfortunately, Wario is not very smart and can't think of any ideas. He calls his friends — Mona, 9-Volt, Jimmy, Dribble, Spitz, Kat, Ana, Dr. Crygor and Orbulon — to drop what they're doing and brainstorm 5-second microgames. The action is unique and varied, to say the least, and Wario shows in many of the title's over 200 microgames as a playable character — clad this time in tough guy biker gear. These appearances include everything from riding a motorcycle to pulling a flag up a flagpole. Several of the microgames infuse Wario into Mario titles he never actually appeared in, like Super Mario Land and the original Mario Bros.

WarioWare sold well — both in Diamond City and in the real world.(In fact, the game ends with Wario making truckloads of cash, but then skipping out on paying his friends for their ideas). The game was recently ported to the Gamecube as well — in real life, I mean.

By playing WarioWare well, players can unlock special microgames, like Dr. Wario — a Wario-pirated version of Dr. Mario. There's also Fly Swatter, the old coffee break game from Mario Paint, a version of the Game & Watch Classic Sheriff starring Wario, and Pyoro, the seed-eating game-within-a-game that inspired Wario to found his company.

The microgame madness didn't permanently distract Wario from his duties of being a pain in Mario's neck, however. Wario and Waluigi popped up in Mario Power Tennis, just in time to cause trouble. The game's amusing intro movie features the Wario Bros. teaming up with Bowser to hi-jack the tennis tournament and cause Bob-Omb havoc. The forces of good triumph, naturally. Beyond the intro movie, Wario enhances his tennis skills with an extend-o-glove and a contraption that delivers an electric shock in order to super-power his shots.

The port of Super Mario 64 to the Nintendo DS system marks the introduction of Wario into a "real" Mario game — by which a mean one of the central Mario adventures and not a ancillary game. Wario is the last of the game's four heroes to be unlocked. Once he's out and about, he proves to be a powerhouse. He can break blocks that Mario, Luigi and Yoshi can't. Wario also inherits the metal power-up from the original Super Mario 64.