Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 landed on the Game Boy in early 1994, and it was the first game Nintendo ever built around a villain. No princess to save, no world to rescue. Wario had just lost out on Mario's castle in the previous game, so his whole mission here is to swipe a golden statue of Princess Toadstool from a band of pirates and hold it for ransom so he can buy a castle bigger than Mario's, pocketing every coin he passes on the way.
This was also the first time you could actually play as Wario. He had turned up two years earlier as the villain and final boss of Super Mario Land 2, and now Nintendo handed him his own adventure, produced by Gunpei Yokoi, the man who invented the Game Boy in the first place.
The best part is how the ending works, and plenty of people who played this never saw the full range. Your reward at the end scales directly to how much money you hoarded. Finish rich and a genie hands Wario a grand European castle. Finish a bit short and you get a Japanese-style castle, then a log cabin, then a treehouse, and if you were truly hopeless, a tiny birdhouse. But max the coin counter at 99,999 with every treasure collected and the genie gives Wario an entire planet with his own face carved into the surface of it. Greed as a difficulty reward, years before that was a common idea.
The whole thing is built on inverting Mario. Instead of mushrooms and flowers, you smash magic pots to become Dragon Wario, Bull Wario or Jet Wario. Walking straight into an enemy does not even hurt him, the exact opposite of how Mario works, and it had a battery save so you could actually chase all that treasure over many sessions.
Even his name is a joke at Mario's expense. Designer Hiroji Kiyotake, the same man who designed Samus from Metroid, built Wario because his team was tired of making games around someone else's character and wanted one of their own. They picked the name before they even drew him, mashing Mario together with the Japanese word warui, meaning bad. Bad Mario. That is literally what Wario means, and the W on his cap is just an upside down M. This little Game Boy cartridge started a franchise that runs all the way to WarioWare today. Did you have this one, and what did your castle look like?
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#warioland #wario #supermarioland3 #gameboy #nintendo #gunpeiyokoi #nintendord1 #platformgames #retrogaming #retrogames #90sgaming #gamingnostalgia #1994 #videogamecommercial #gameforestgf #youtubeshorts #gaming
Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 landed on the Game Boy in early 1994, and it was the first game Nintendo ever built around a villain. No princess to save, no world to rescue. Wario had just lost out on Mario's castle in the previous game, so his whole mission here is to swipe a golden statue of Princess Toadstool from a band of pirates and hold it for ransom so he can buy a castle bigger than Mario's, pocketing every coin he passes on the way.
This was also the first time you could actually play as Wario. He had turned up two years earlier as the villain and final boss of Super Mario Land 2, and now Nintendo handed him his own adventure, produced by Gunpei Yokoi, the man who invented the Game Boy in the first place.
The best part is how the ending works, and plenty of people who played this never saw the full range. Your reward at the end scales directly to how much money you hoarded. Finish rich and a genie hands Wario a grand European castle. Finish a bit short and you get a Japanese-style castle, then a log cabin, then a treehouse, and if you were truly hopeless, a tiny birdhouse. But max the coin counter at 99,999 with every treasure collected and the genie gives Wario an entire planet with his own face carved into the surface of it. Greed as a difficulty reward, years before that was a common idea.
The whole thing is built on inverting Mario. Instead of mushrooms and flowers, you smash magic pots to become Dragon Wario, Bull Wario or Jet Wario. Walking straight into an enemy does not even hurt him, the exact opposite of how Mario works, and it had a battery save so you could actually chase all that treasure over many sessions.
Even his name is a joke at Mario's expense. Designer Hiroji Kiyotake, the same man who designed Samus from Metroid, built Wario because his team was tired of making games around someone else's character and wanted one of their own. They picked the name before they even drew him, mashing Mario together with the Japanese word warui, meaning bad. Bad Mario. That is literally what Wario means, and the W on his cap is just an upside down M. This little Game Boy cartridge started a franchise that runs all the way to WarioWare today. Did you have this one, and what did your castle look like?
Subscribe to Game Forest GF for retro gaming content every single day.
#warioland #wario #supermarioland3 #gameboy #nintendo #gunpeiyokoi #nintendord1 #platformgames #retrogaming #retrogames #90sgaming #gamingnostalgia #1994 #videogamecommercial #gameforestgf #youtubeshorts #gaming
