GAME BOY ESSENTIALS

Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3

Boxart
An asburdly good cover that tells you everything you need to know about this game.

Garlic Lover

Game Boy Screenshot

A perplexing thing happened after the release of Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins. You go to your local video game store in 1994, eager to see new Game Boy titles, and you come upon a thing called Wario Land? Underneath that title is written Super Mario Land 3. Suddenly, Mario is no longer the star of his own games. You kind of remember Wario since he was in the advertising for the previous game, but why is the villain of the last Game Boy adventure a hero now? He’s fat, he’s slow, he smells, he doesn’t jump very high. Yet he’s front and centre in this new adventure and everybody agrees the game is genuinely awesome! How could such a slovenly idiot take over for the world’s most famous plumber? What happened?

To answer this question, we have to dig into Nintendo’s internal politics. We might have this reflex to think that Nintendo is this monolith that does everything led by the genius Shigeru Miyamoto but the truth is far from that. Very far from that. In the early ’90s, Nintendo was divided into different independent divisions shaped by their managers. These managers have been compared to a daimyo, the landlords of feudal Japan answerable only to the shogun and the comparison is apt. The division managers had to fulfill the missions given to them by Nintendo’s leader, Hiroshi Ymauchi, but they had a lot of leeway on how to achieve these missions. Just like those daimyo with the shogun.

Let’s list the divisions; it’s going to be easier for us to understand what’s happening with Wario Land.

The whole division system at Nintendo stopped in 2002, with an internal reorganization along software and hardware development. Wario’s birth is rooted in the old divisional system: Wario was created inside the R&D1 team managed by Gunpei Yokoi, not at EAD managed by Shigeru Miyamoto. R&D1 made all the Mario Land games for Game Boy even though Mario was Miyamoto’s creation. Nintendo had this informal policy that the creators of characters decided what was best for those characters, so there was a kind of internal licensing of Mario. This sounds strange so let me explain. Nintendo’s developers have always made sure to ask permission from a creator before using their characters if the creator is not directly involved in the project. Let’s take Mario’s appearance in NES Open Tournament Golf. Ueamura, who was making the game at R&D2, asked Miyamoto’s permission to use Mario in his golf game. Nothing was written down and no money exchanged hands; it was just expected to always ask informally for permission.

R&D1 thus asked Miyamoto to use Mario for the first two Mario Land games. Actually, they asked because Hiroshi Yamauchi, the ruthless leader of Nintendo, forced them to ask. Yamauchi wanted Mario games on Game Boy. The R&D2 developers later explained they felt constrained because they had to make games that felt like a Mario game. Meaning that Miyamoto probably expected them to make a game that felt like a Mario platformer. Nothing was written anywhere; it was probably just Miyamoto asking them to make a good game that felt like Mario. It’s all very Japanese. By the time they were thinking of making a third Mario Land game, however, a little thing had changed; Miyamoto was now making his own Game Boy games.

At this point what I am saying is conjecture. While the developers of Wario Land have publicly said they felt constrained using Mario and chose to use their own character instead, I think the real reason is it no longer made sense to have R&D1 use Mario on Game Boy. Miyamoto was hard at work making his own very expansive Game Boy platformer starring the plumber himself. It would release a mere four months after Wario Land as the inadequately titled Donkey Kong. Having two platformers starring Mario release around the same time was too much for Nintendo in 1994.

I fully believe Miyamoto asked the R&D1 staff to take Mario in a completely different direction in a third Mario Land game to ensure that both games did not step on each other’s toes. Faced with this issue they used their own creation, Wario, for their next platformer. Constraints lead to greater creativity and an essential game.

The… Story?

In his first video game appearance in Super Mario Land 2, Wario had taken over Mario’s private island. This private abode for the world’s most successful video game character has a giant statue of him, a private hippopotamus launchpad to the moon, his very own haunted house, and a gigantic palatial castle all for the glory of the famous plumber. The young developers of R&D1, including Wario’s creator Hiroji Kiyotake, were egging on Mario’s success. Mario is so successful he’s got a castle and an enormous statue dedicated to himself. In a sense, they were egging on Miyamoto himself. I mean, Miyamoto had a whole division within Nintendo, with a ton of budget and staff, all dedicated to supporting him. I read the exaggerated reverence to Mario in Mario Land 2 as a playful jab at Miyamoto the superstar.

In that previous game, Wario’s role is like Bluto from the classic Popeye cartoons; Kiyotake, the creator of Wario, has said so himself. He’s an evil version of Mario jealous of his success so he stole his private island, just like Bluto would kidnap Olive Oil or the baby with two names. Since everybody enjoyed Wario’s farcical take on Mario, it became clear they could elevate him to protagonist, giving them exciting new gameplay opportunities. They were now making a Wario game so they could make their own choices; they no longer had to respect the Mario gameplay traditions. They could even make fun of them now. That’s why Wario loves raw garlic. Mario eats mushrooms, so Wario eats another vegetable-adjacent thing.

They also chose to adorn Wario with a varied collection of hard hats in this game as a take on the special abilities Mario can use. The whole upgrade system is based on collecting three different hats with different capabilities, and the game starts with an explanation for why Wario is wearing hard hats in this game instead of his cap.

Game Boy Screenshot
Wario runs through the wall of the save screen.
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He hits the corner of the pipe and loses his cap.
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He sees a hard hat on a hanger.
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He picks it up, gives a thumbs up, and the game can begin.

The rest of the story couldn’t be simpler. Here it is straight from the manual:

Remember Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins? Wario tried to take over Mario’s castle, but didn’t have much luck. Wario, being the persistent guy he is, has not given up. Now, he wants a castle more than ever before.

One day, Wario was practising being mean when he thought to himself, “Rumour has it that the pirates of Kitchen Island have stolen the giant golden statue of Princess Toadstool. Mario is looking for it but, if I find it first, I could cash it in for a princess’ ransom. With that cash and the pirates’ other treasures and coins, I could buy a palace that is way bigger than Mario’s pathetic excuse for a castle. Ga, ha, ha, ha…! What am I waiting for!?”

Full of confidence, Wario took off. He didn’t even stop to think of how tough the Brown Sugar Pirates were. Their leader, Captain Syrup was known the world over for being a really rotten and ruthless guy.

Can Wario find the coins and treasures hidden on Kitchen Island? What will his new palace look like? Will he keep being so mean and ugly? Let’s find out!

The Vibes are Good, Even Though Wario Is A Big Boy

I have talked again and again about the challenges developers had in making games fit within the minuscule 160 by 144 pixels resolution of the Game Boy. Developers had a hard time adapting to the smaller real estate at first, but we have a game here from the fifth year of the Game Boy’s life from the same division who created the Game Boy. They knew that the secret to a good action game on Game Boy came from an adapted level design, not a small character. So they really indulged themselves and made Wario enormous on the screen.

Game Boy Screenshot
All the Mario and Wario sprites from the three Mario Land games.

He’s huge! When you play the game, you might not realize it but he’s also very slow. Even when dashing, Wario does not move particularly fast compared to other titles on the portable console. A big sprite that doesn’t move fast is much easier to see on the poor Game Boy screen. I’m sure the big success and enduring legacy of this game is in large part due to its visual affordances. People loved this game because you could understand what was happening. Unlike something like Donkey Kong Land.

Playing the Game

I cannot stress enough how this game appears effortless. You play it and you don’t really think of how much effort it takes to be this unceremoniously fun. You just walk around with Wario, jump on enemies to stun them and use your dash to make them fly all over the place. You collect coins, keep an eye out for secret treasure and encounter new situations that require you to think cleverly. And you have a great time doing all that.

Wario does not immediately defeat enemies that he jumps on; they are merely stunned. Afterwards, like I previously mentioned, you can dash into them to get rid of them. But you can also pick them up and carry them around. This inevitably means that you can throw them! This presents a whole new twist on the Mario formula. In this game, they don’t explore it too much; you mostly use carried enemies to clear out other more devious enemies that you can’t stun by jumping on them.

Wario’s dash comes from his use of hard hats. Exactly like Mario’s power-ups, Wario picks up items that grant him abilities. You have a dragon hat that belches fire, a jet hat that allows you to keep your height for a long period, and the regular hard hat. There’s a unique quirk with the regular hat; you can upgrade it. If you pick a hard hat, and then another one, the hat gains horns, giving it a butt stomp that pulverizes enemies when used. It’s a welcome twist on the good old Nintendo platformer.

The game is also really fun because it’s far more difficult than Super Mario Land 2. That one was painfully easy. I’m not saying Wario Land is Dark Souls or anything, but they dialled the difficulty far better this time around.

Wario does all his exploring to fun music by Kozue Ishikawa and Ryoji Yoshitomi, two composers with limited credits to their name. They created a weird soundscape that’s well adapted to Wario. He has his personal theme derived from this game.

Modern Collectibles

Game Boy Screenshot

Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land features a surprising modern gameplay element: a list of impactful collectibles. Most games in 1994 still featured inconsequential hidden things. Previous Mario games had hidden 1-ups or coins, but nothing special. Super Mario World had the coloured blocks, but it was embryonic and basic. Wario Land features 15 properly hidden treasures, which make Wario richer for the final tally at the end of the game. Those treasures require finding and carrying keys to get the treasure inside. But those chests and keys are sometimes very well hidden, forcing you to find segments in levels where you can go up without realizing it, for example. Some hidden treasures are inside hidden levels, and there’s a whole optional hidden world as well. To help you manage all those secrets, the game has many interesting conveniences.

I’m very much a collect-a-holic. If a game I like has a list of things you can collect, I’ll do it. You really have to go overboard to make me abandon it. The best example where I abandonned collecting objects are the riddler challenges of every single Batman: Arkham game. There are 440 things to find in Arkham City alone. They must have spent a quarter of the game’s development making all the puzzles for the Riddler’s trophies, and maybe 1% of players collected them all. Who thought that many collectibles were the correct amount? Did they stop at some point, or were they putting in trophies until the last minute of development? To top it off, you don’t get to see where those fuckers are on the map until you interrogate specific goons, which is a complicated task itself. There are side fetch quests to help you plan your main fetch quest! But I digress, Wario Land makes it a wonderful breeze to search for its hidden treasures, unlike the Arkham games, in large part because it guides you in the right direction. Every level with at least one secret will have a little pip inside it on the map.

Game Boy Screenshot
The two levels with a circle inside the circle have at least one hidden thing.

You also have a conveniently ordered list of all the treasures you have found, helping you figure out where you might have missed something. If you find treasure D and have yet to find treasures B and C, you know they’re hidden earlier in the game so that significantly narrows your search. The only missing convenience is a different level indicator when you have found everything in that particular level. It’s nevertheless a very good quality-of-life system for a Game Boy game from 1994 and I was able to find all the treasures as a kid in the ’90s with only the help of those systems. I completed Wario Land without ever needing a guide and to me that’s the mark of a well-made collect-a-thon.

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Conclusion

Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 is much more fun than Super Mario Land 2. It’s a much longer game, with way more stuff to do. Its cutscenes are kind of classic at this point. I’m a bit weary of spoiling this if you haven’t played the game, but there’s a beautiful joke when you beat it that really seals the deal for me. After you have defeated Captain Syrup and her villainous genie, her castle is revealed to hide a ginormous golden statue. What a score for Wario! Until asshole Mario shows up with a helicopter and steals the statue from under your nose. Mario was nowhere to be seen in the manual or anywhere in the game; it just happens. Dejected, Wario has to give money to the evil genie to pay for a castle of his own. It’s a slightly crazy capstone on a slightly crazy little classic.