is a character in Nintendo's Mario video game series that was designed as an arch-rival to Mario. Wario first appeared as the main antagonist and final boss in the 1992 Game Boy game Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins. His name is a portmanteau of the name Mario and the Japanese word warui (悪い), meaning "bad". Hiroji Kiyotake designed Wario and Charles Martinet voiced the character from 1993 to 2023, as well as other characters in the series, including Mario, Luigi, and Waluigi.
Wario is also the protagonist and antihero of the Wario Land and WarioWare series in handheld and console markets. In the handheld market, he is usually portrayed as a greedy treasure hunter while console games follow his exploits as a video game developer. Wario has also appeared in spin-off games in the Mario series, in other Nintendo properties such as in the Super Smash Bros. series of crossover fighting games, and in other media such as the Super Mario Adventures graphic novel. The character has received a largely positive critical reception.
Concept and creation
The character Foreman Spike, a possible inspiration for Wario, first appeared in the 1985 game Wrecking Crew; Spike is a construction foreman who bears a slight resemblance to Wario. Game artist Hiroji Kiyotake designed Foreman Spike, who Kiyotake imagined as "the Bluto to Mario's Popeye". Wario's first named appearance occurred in the 1992 game Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins. Wario's design arose from Super Mario Lands design team's distaste of making a game based around someone else's character. The creation of Wario allowed them their own character to "symbolize their situation". Nintendo originally considered making Wario a German character before he developed into an Italian like Mario.
Wario is portrayed as a caricature of Mario: he has a large head and chin; huge muscular arms; a wide, short, slightly obese body; short legs; a large, pointier, zig-zagging mustache; and a bellicose cackle. He wears a plumber outfit with a yellow-and-purple color scheme, which is a short-sleeved yellow shirt, purple overalls, and a blue W on his hat. He also wears green shoes and white gloves with blue W symbols. In his early appearances, Wario wears a yellow, long-sleeved shirt and fuchsia overalls. The name "Wario" is a portmanteau of "Mario" and the Japanese adjective meaning "bad", hence, a "bad Mario", which is also symbolized by the "W" on his hat, an upside down "M". Official Nintendo lore states Wario was a childhood rival to Mario and Luigi who became jealous of their success.
Wario was originally intended to be German; accordingly, German voice actor Thomas Spindler, who played the character in japan from 1996 to 2001, gave him several German lines. This ended when Wario's voice actor for markets outside Japan Charles Martinet, who has also voiced Mario since 1995, started voicing Wario on all markets. During his audition for the part, Martinet was told to speak in a mean-and gruff-sounding tone; he said voicing Wario is a looser task than voicing Mario, whose speaking manner and personality are freer-flowing, rising from the ground and floating into the air, while jealousy is one of Wario's characteristics.
Wario is often portrayed as a villain in video games in which he makes a cameo appearance. The development team for Wario Land: Shake It! stated he was not really a villain and they did not consider him one during development. They focused on his behavior, which alternates between good and evil. Etsunobu Ebisu and Takahiro Harada, producers of Shake It!, considered Wario to be a reckless character who uses his strength to overwhelm others. Tadanori Tsukawaki, Shake It! design director, described Wario as manly and said he was "so uncool that he ends up being extremely cool". Because of this, Tsukawaki wanted Wario to act macho rather than silly and asked the art designers to emphasize his masculinity. During an interview with Kikizo, video-game designer Yoshio Sakamoto, who was a member of R&D1 since its early days, has stated the project centered around Wario because the team "couldn't think of anyone else best for the role", and he was then described as "unintelligent" and "always idiotic", which is the reason he was chosen as the star of the WarioWare series. According to an early 1990s Nintendo guide, Wario was Mario's childhood friend, which Kotaku later contested in a parody article. Afterward, it was stated they were not related to each other and were considered childhood rivals.