Mario & Wario (Super Famicom Review)

Mario & Wario
Platform: Super Famicom
Developed by Game Freak
Published by Nintendo
First Released August 27, 1993
Exclusively Uses SNES Mouse
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

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Now that Devil World finally got a US release, the question is “what is the biggest Nintendo-published game to never get a US release?” Obviously most Nintendo fans would say “Mother 3.” But, I’m going to disagree. The thing is, that’s not really among the A-lister Nintendo franchises. Not like, say, Mario. And there is a Mario game that never came out in the United States. Not just any Mario game, either. It’s a one-of-a-kind Mario game from the creator of Pokemon. AND it utilizes the SNES Mouse. It’s called Mario & Wario, and it never saw the light of day outside of Japan. It has been referenced a few times, especially in the Smash Bros. series, but otherwise, it’s a non-entity in Nintendo’s library. It’s also likely to never be re-released again. Well, assuming Nintendo doesn’t do some kind of NES-Mini type of plug-and-play with the SNES Mouse for Mario Paint. Which, jeez, that sounds like a license to print money to me. If they did that, maybe they would include Mario & Wario with it. It’s not like there’s a need for Nintendo to create an English translation. All the text and even the logo for Mario & Wario are in English. Even though the game’s code includes a Japanese logo. The theory is that Nintendo accidentally manufactured and shipped the version meant for America to Japan. See kids, even the big boys make mistakes.

For this play session, I used Mario exclusively. I strongly advise anyone playing this to do the same thing. The princess is far too slow, eliminating what little excitement Mario & Wario has, and Yoshi is impossibly fast. It’s not like this is a typical mouse cursor you’re using. Especially for the smaller blocks, I had difficulty lining up Wanda to work her magic. I should also note that I have tremors these days, and by that, I mean my hands shake. I don’t have giant mutant worms attacking me. Almost every death I suffered was the result of clicking errors on my part, but your mileage may vary how much that factors in.

Mario & Wario is sort of like a more fast-paced, proactive, action-based version of Lemmings. Wario swoops over Mario at the start of every world and drops some form of a bucket on his head. You take control of his guardian fairy/glorified cursor, Wanda, who has to clear a path for Mario to reach Luigi. If you tap Mario directly, he changes directions, but otherwise all the interaction is with the stages themselves. There’s a wide variety of blocks that you have to click. Some of them stay on the screen until you click them again. Some are already on the screen and clicking them permanently removes them. Some run on a short timer before vanishing. Others work like switches and clicking one removes all of that variety while activating another color of blocks. There’s also tons of ladders that Mario will always take if he steps on them. Finally, there’s a small handful of enemies, some of which you can kill by clicking, while others you have to work around while making sure Mario avoids them.

These bats, for example, can be clicked four times when they’re perched or once individually when they take flight.

The actual “puzzle design” of Mario & Wario takes quite a while to find its footing. At the start of every level, you’re allowed to scroll around and get a lay of the land. It seems like most of the levels are straight-forward, with the path Mario needs to take already laid out, and you simply act as a caregiver. Assuming the level is maze-like, victory usually comes down to determining what is the final ladder and/or spring you need to use to reach Luigi and reverse-engineering from there. It takes a LONG time for the game to reach the point where I’d consider it to be genuinely challenging. You can play any of the game’s first eight worlds in any order you want, which is an ominous sign for the lack of difficulty scaling. There’s ten levels per world, and once you clear the first eighty levels, you have to play through two more worlds to finish the game.

I found it amusing that the bucket falls off Mario’s head when he falls. Really, Wanda could shove him out of the way at this point and the level would be solved. While I’m on the subject, Wanda’s magic wand can make blocks appear and disappear and can defeat enemies. Why doesn’t she just make the bucket disappear?

It’s not until the ninth and tenth world that truly meaty puzzles come into play, though some of those levels are annoying. There’s stages that have a glue-like substance that you slowly walk through, and you have to click the blocks to turn them over. They’re smaller blocks, and the small blocks in general are the hardest to do, so I hated those. I also wasn’t a fan of the levels where you just slap Mario back and forth like he’s in some kind of frat initiation as you wait for the obstacle to move out of the way. Mario & Wario mostly isn’t a puzzle game in the Baba is You sense. It’s not even really Lemmings-like, even though everyone lazily uses that comparison, myself included. It’s just the easiest comparison. In the entire 80 levels before the final two worlds, maybe a half-dozen stages required me to stop for even a moment and think about what moves I’d need to make. Maybe. It would have required more if I actually went for the four stars in every stage, but those only grant you an extra life. I didn’t need that many lives even when I made multiple clicking errors. It wasn’t until world seven that I died twice on any level, and I never died more than twice before world nine. I also never timed-out once over the entire 100 stages, though I had a couple close calls.

Given the locations of the stars, I get the impression that, at one point in development, they were essential towards beating the stage. The “puzzle” elements of Mario & Wario are more often than not designed around THEIR placement. The typical path to victory is too much of a cinch. If you factor in the stars, suddenly the game seems more elegantly planned. But, they’re just for 1ups. The game doesn’t even track how many stars you collect in each stage after the fact. A modern game would allow you to replay every level and go for perfect scores. On the off-off-off chance Mario & Wario is ever remade, I’m sure the game would be like that, where it charts how many stars you collect each level.

I wouldn’t go so far as to call Mario & Wario a dull concept, because I did enjoy the game enough to play it from start to finish. It’s just not a thrilling experience. Especially early levels. World 1 is so bare bones it doesn’t even feature the stars at all. The opening stages of each new world are glorified tutorials that introduce whatever new element that world introduces. There’s cannons that you can click to change their direction, but you can also click their projectiles to eliminate them. Or perhaps there’s indestructible spiky balls that you have to dodge. But, once you have your path laid out, it’s rare that you have to stress obstacles that might interfere with that. Genuine excitement doesn’t really show up until you’re over eighty levels in. EIGHTY! Holy crap. That’s a lot of slogging through okay-but-mundane levels while waiting to get to the really good stuff.

This specific sequence here was the one that gave me the most problems. To beat it, you have to time when the spiked balls are inside the timed block. BUT, you also have to keep Mario close enough to the edge that he starts to fall before the block vanishes and releases the spiked ball you trap. Mario doesn’t just fall off ledges instantly. Players are given a tiny grace period where he hangs over the edge before falling. Without this grace period, Mario & Wario would be next to impossible.

Mario & Wario isn’t the most brainy of puzzle games. It’s more about staying calm and thinking on your feet. You can’t make any moves outside of the present screen you’re on, but for the most part, they didn’t incorporate that into the puzzle design. Only two or three levels are dependent on you making a move that won’t factor in until later in the level. The most notable one is level 8-10. On it, you start the stage next to a ladder. Below you are two fireballs, and if you don’t close them in immediately, you won’t be able to beat the stage after you spend quite a bit of time making your way to the exit. That’s really the only stage where victory is determined the moment you start the level. On one hand, that means there are no GOTCHAs in the game. On the other hand, there’s no real challenge, either. It’s the least bold possible design they could have done for a game like this.

And really, once you click these two squares, the rest of the level is a lay-up.

Had I played Mario & Wario outside of an emulator, I don’t think I would have liked it as much. There’s no save files, so the entire game must be beaten all at once. I wasn’t limited to beating in a single sitting thanks to save states. Even then, I almost stopped playing when I realized I’d have to redo all the early world that I already played once in 2020. They’re too easy, and the novelty of playing a lost Mario game had long run its course for me. Thankfully, I didn’t play deep last time. The promise of unseen levels was enough to get me to put the time into Mario & Wario. This go around, I beat the whole game. I’d say a little over half the levels are, while not exciting, certainly compelling enough that Mario & Wario holds up slightly more than it would have just as a historic curio.

The last twenty levels are genuinely hard. I wish there had been more stages like this, because I had such a fun time figuring them out. I also started losing lives, but by this point I had built-up close to thirty of them, so there wasn’t any tension.

You would think Nintendo would have done something with Mario & Wario by now. It has one of the finest pedigrees in gaming, and Nintendo has a touchscreen console that would work perfect with this type of gameplay. They’re remaking Mario vs. Donkey Kong, but a Mario & Wario remake would make even more sense, wouldn’t it? It has that tantalizing “forbidden fruit” aura about it. An unreleased-in-America game that utilizes unconventional controls and has gameplay unlike anything else in the entire franchise. Oh, and it was almost even weirder. Mario & Wario was originally conceived as a Super Scope game. Yes, really! The stumbling bucket-headed gameplay was still there, along with creating a path for Mario to reach Luigi, but you’d also fire nets at the screen to capture enemies.

Despite the name of the game, there’s no direct encounter with Wario except during bonus levels, where you click-mash Wario for bonus coins. There’s no final boss battle. The game just ends after 100 stages. By that point, you should be more than ready to be done with it. A little bit of Mario & Wario goes a long ways. It must have been MADDENING to play this without saving.

The only reason Game Freak moved away from making this a light gun game was because TVs were getting bigger and the Super Scope was losing its universal compatibility. Frankly, it’s a miracle Mario & Wario exists at all, as it seems like it came close to being cancelled altogether, instead of just cancelled globally. It’s not clear why this never came out in the United States. It got previews in magazines like Nintendo Power and the SNES Mouse was in more homes than the Super Scope, which got four or five exclusive games. Maybe it was because Mario and Wario barely matter in a game called Mario & Wario. Or maybe because they felt American fans associated Mario with action games, and Mario & Wario is a mild-at-best puzzler. A fun one, but certainly not a great one. Mario & Wario is just alright. Even though it has gameplay merit, really, the curio factor is the main reason anyone would want to play this in 2023. Yet, the formula this created seems like it has potential to live-on. Will the SNES game ever be re-released? Probably not. Will Mario & Wario be remade as a touchscreen game? I wouldn’t bet against it.
Verdict: YES!
Check out my review of Mario Clash for the Virtual Boy!