All hail Wario

[Administrator]

"Anti-heroes" aren't supposed to look like Wario. Anti-heroes aren't supposed to have characteristics at all, technically - the whole point is that they're defined by negation - but in the course of countless gothic, noir and gritty fictions, they've come to share certain traits in the popular imagination. Anti-heroes must be lean, sexy, glowering and little-spoken, with a regulation two days' worth of stubble and a variety of intriguing scars. Their lips must be curling, bloodless, sardonic. The eyes? Glowing, slitted, bionic and/or bloodshot. The apparel? Trench coats, mirror shades, knee-high boots, flapping bandages and anything cut from dark leather with sharp angles that smells ever so slightly of S&M.
Wario isn't lean or glowering, and I sincerely hope you don't find him sexy. Originally created to serve as Mario's foil in Super Mario Land 2 for the Gameboy, Wario is an odious bubble of fat and muscle wrapped up in ghastly purple overalls, wobbling about on stupid duck feet, his face all but obliterated by an enormous, lipless maw, hat clamped down like the seal on a barrel of toxic waste. Wario is a loveless abomination who exists to break things, pillage things and generally speaking indulge himself, which is to say he is pretty much like any video game character, only without the usual veneer of respectability. Wario is repulsive. Wario is brilliant.
Building a protagonist around the idea that most video game protagonists are glorified looters may not seem revolutionary in this, the era of "No Russian" and "Would You Kindly", but it was quite the shock to my system back in 1994, when the original Wario Land popped up on the Game Boy. Wario Land was actually the first Mario title I played - a Sonic the Hedgehog diehard, I'd turned my nose up at Nintendo's machines until the sight of Wario's obscene grimace in a friend's hands won me over. Alas, the folly of youth - but I like to think that Wario Land's producer Gunpei Yokoi, original head of the famous Research and Development 1 team, would have been tickled that I'd come to Mario second. After all, Wario Land is as much a cheeky revolt against the success and spirit of Shigeru Miyamoto, Yokoi's star protégé and subsequent rival, as it is an offshoot of the Mario franchise.
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