Talk:Wario Land (series)

I'm calling for deletion. This is REALLY pathetic; It's more a disambiguation page than an article. :| My Bloody Valentine

It does look like a disambiguation page, but I don't think it should be deleted. I'd say let's just keep it as a disambig page until someone rewrites it. Time Questions 05:51, 2 June 2008 (EDT)

I'll rewrite it, but should I include Wario World and Wario: Master of Disguise in there? I always kinda saw them as spin-offs of Wario Land... --Gyroid X

Consider Wario: Master of Disguise as related to the Wario Land series

This talk page proposal has already been settled. Please do not edit any of the sections in the proposal. If you wish to discuss the article, do so in a new header below the proposal.

consider part of the series 9-0
Similar to my last proposals, I've come up to do some research: even though there is a total of six games in the Wario Land series, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate also considers Wario: Master of Disguise to be part of the series. I was wondering if there's a possibility to consider Master of Disguise as related to the series by adding it to the "Other related games" section.

Proposer: GuntherBB (talk) (blocked)
Deadline: December 17, 2023, 23:59 GMT

Support

#GuntherBB (talk) Per proposal

1. Camwoodstock (talk) We already supported the one to classify DKJB as a DKC game due to Nintendo's treatment of it, and well, Master of Disguise is even closer to Wario Land's gameplay than Jungle Beat was to the Country games. We don't see why not, especially since per Smash Ultimate, this seems to be Nintendo's own stance on what series this game belongs to.
2. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) - Per SSBU. I'd be fine with considering it a full part of the series, even.
3. DesaMatt (talk) - Per all.
4. Super Game Gear (talk) I brought up this idea in the talk page, so per proposer and the others above.
5. Hewer (talk) I have been wondering if Master of Disguise being called a Wario Land game in SSBU might not have been a mistake after all, per all.
6. DrippingYellow (talk) Per all.
7. 7feetunder (talk) See linked interview below. I'm still kinda iffy on the alleged similarities, but if the director himself says so, then there's not much room to argue against this.
8. Shokora (talk) – Per all
9. ThePowerPlayer (talk) Master of Disguise is a platformer featuring Wario, so I've always thought it should be grouped with the actual Wario Land games plus Wario World.

Oppose

7feetunder (talk) SSBU also lists the Dice Block and River Survival as being from the "Super Mario Series" instead of the Mario Party series, so if that's the only real argument for this, I'm not buying it. "Master of Disguise is even closer to Wario Land's gameplay than Jungle Beat was to the Country games" would be a meaningless statement even if it were true, since the gameplay of Jungle Beat is not close to DKC to begin with. Wario Land and Master of Disguise are platformers starring Wario, and that's all they really have in common. Everything else is different. The gameplay style revolving heavily around changing costumes, winning Touch Screen minigames, and finding key items. The lack of Wario Land characters or even obvious substitutes for them (even Jungle Beat had those). The far greater emphasis on plot that any other Wario platformer. No matter how I look at it, it just doesn't fit.

Comments

@7feetunder To be fair, the Wario Land series didn't really have consistent gameplay to begin with aside from being 2D platformers. There was the "Mario platformer with a charge ability and emphasis on coins" WL:SML3 and VBWL were, the Looney Tunes-esque invincible reaction-fests WL2-4 were, and the waggle-based mechanics of Shake It!; most of them didn't have a consistent cast other than Wario himself either, with Syrup being in 3 games being an outlier. Also, minigames for finding treasure appeared as far back as 2, even not counting the coin and health gambling games in the first two. Also, SSBU doesn't distinguish series from franchise, hence the Mario Party thing. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 16:09, December 5, 2023 (EST)

...We had written an entire 4k+ character-long essay basically explaining our full thought process, and then you basically said the main part we were trying desperately to articulate. Oops. We can still share it if someone just desperately wants to know, but don't hold your breath on it! ...though we will say at the very least that the two Mario Party spirits that were mentioned were ones from post-launch; odds are, those were probably just a mislabel nobody caught in the wake of trying to put together one of that game's first Free Updates At A Later Date™ we've come to know and... know. ;P ~Camwoodstock (talk) 17:17, December 5, 2023 (EST)

To be fair, SSBU does have a few oddities in its spirit listing, particularly its inconsistency in how it treats inclusion in game series. e.g. Elline is under the Kirby series, but Prince Fluff is just listed as being from Kirby's Epic Yarn. There's also spirits listed as being from Donkey Kong Barrel Blast and Donkey Kong Jungle Beat respectively, despite the Donkey Kong series already being used as an umbrella term for everything from the original Donkey Kong to the Country series. Now, a spirit's inclusion in a game series that it's not intended to be in is a lot less probable of a mistake compared to these instances. The closest thing I can think of is Sheriff being listed as in the Sheriff "series" despite only one game being part of said series.

Oh, and I feel like I should mention there seems to be quite a few gameplay similarities between Master of Diguise and the Wario Land games. Both feature situational puzzles that are solved by changing forms, treasure serves as Wario's motivation for the plot, the player is unable to take damage, and even the "key items" mechanic brings to mind the various progression functions of treasures in Wario Land 3. DrippingYellow (talk) 00:54, December 6, 2023 (EST)

@Doc von Schmeltwick: Shake It still had some of the transformations from previous installments, so it's not completely removed from them gameplay-wise. The minigames in WLII are far less emphasized than the ones in MoD and there aren't nearly as many of them; they're only necessary to get all the treasures and picture pieces for 100% completion, while MoD outright requires you to play the Touch Screen minigames to get new guises and key items. Sure, the early Wario Land titles played rather differently than the later ones do, and not all of the have the same cast, but the point is, MoD has no ties, gameplay or story-wise, to any of them (well, it kinda has Wario's signature Dash Attack, or rather a knockoff of it; he just juts forward instead of dashing). SSBU normally does label Mario spirits by the specific series they're from, including MC Ballyhoo and Big Top, while using the more generic Super Mario label for franchise mainstays like Mario and Bowser. Captain Toad is listed as being from the "Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker Series" despite it being a standalone game, yet Wanda is generically a "Super Mario Series" spirit, so it's hardly consistent.

@DrippingYellow: You change forms completely differently in WMoD, doing it using the Touch Screen to change costumes on commmand, rather than purposely getting Wario squished or setting him on fire from an enemy. Money/treasure is Wario's motivation for everything, that's not specific to Wario Land any more than Donkey Kong and bananas are specific to the Country games. You do take damage in MoD; not sure how you made that mistake.

In general: I had always found Cannoli's classification as a "Wario Land series" spirit really sketchy. Given the inconsistencies mentioned above, I just don't think that the whims of the SSBU development team, who had nothing to do with the creation of the Wario Land series or WMoD, should be the end all determining factor in this. 01:28, December 6, 2023 (EST)

To give an excerpt from our massive essay, since it feels relevant right about now: If the presence of returning characters and elements are the criteria for a game to be a part of a series, what does that say about soft-reboots, or games that are already considered "black sheep" of their series, or just... any game with a unique gimmick all to themselves (like, say, costume-based form changing rather than enemy-based costume changing)? And for a relevant example, is Virtual Boy Wario Land is a Wario Land game? The only things in common with that game and the Wario Land series are Wario, the side-scrolling 2D platformer genre, and the SML3:WL pots. Looking only at what returned honestly only exaggerates the differences the games have, which only serves to obfuscate how similar they actually are. We will give our wrists (and more importantly, everybody else here... ;P) the mercy of a full dissertation of the major gameplay differences between Paper Mario: Sticker Star and the 3 Paper Mario games that came before it, but uh, this isn't a new concept. (And, yes, DKJB can come too, we guess.) ~Camwoodstock (talk) 11:34, December 6, 2023 (EST)

If SSBU was the deciding factor of my vote, then I would've gone all-in on making Master of Disguise a full-on Wario Land series game, not just related. My statement that there was no health in MoD was an assumption based on a misread talk page discussion, so I'll give you that. But after watching a playthrough of Master of Disguise for the past 45 minutes, there definitely seems to be Wario Land DNA in its design aside from the whole treasure thing. Wario has access to a crouch that he can crawl during, much like in the Wario Land games, and the default Thief Wario has access to a Dash Attack. Even with the multitude of changes made to the forms, such as the deliberate activation via the touch screen, and each form having its own level, I'm still more inclined to believe it's an evolution of the Wario Land games' transformations, in order to make it fit with the more dialogue-driven story.

And there's also the obvious: this is the only Wario platformer to not be listed as related to the Wario Land series. If this fails, we might have to reconsider the relatedness of Wario World, what with it being a linear, 3D beat-em-up/platformer hybrid with a notable lack of transformations of any kind. DrippingYellow (talk) 11:58, December 6, 2023 (EST)

@Camwoodstock: All of those games you linked/mentioned are named for the series they're a part of, which is far more important than returning characters, gameplay elements, etc. That's why Super Mario Bros. 2 is a part of the Super Mario series despite starting life as a mostly unrelated game, playing nothing like other installments, and featuring Wart as the villain instead of Bowser and his Koopa Troop. Wario: Master of Disguise does not bear the Wario Land name nor is it marketed as a part of the series or even as a spinoff of it, hence why those secondary factors are more relevant here in determining related-ness.

@DrippingYellow: Honestly, Wario World has barely anything to do with Wario Land itself, and falls into a similar boat of "it's a platformer starring Wario and Wario likes money and treasure". It seems that people consider it and MoD Wario Land-adjacent (if not straight up part of the series) purely for that reason alone (and I guess because the Dash Attack made it into both), since Wario Land came first and is the only one with proper sequels. 19:56, December 6, 2023 (EST)

We raise you Donkey Kong 64. No "Country" in its name, but it's generally considered to be a part of the Donkey Kong Country games, or at least a "related game" to it; it literally has Rareware's own development team behind it, after all. This still is not a new case. ~Camwoodstock (talk) 20:35, December 6, 2023 (EST)

It's listed as "related". Anyway, DK64 is not a good comparison; it is clearly part of the DKC lore, featuring the Kongs and the Kremlings, and Wrinkly outright mentioning DKC3. If it bore the Country name, we would unquestionably have it listed as a full installment of the series, despite its gameplay being more in line with Banjo-Kazooie than DKC. Unlike WMoD, which, when compared with Wario Land, only has the vague thematic similarity of "Wario likes treasure". 23:56, December 6, 2023 (EST)

We stated it was "or at least a 'related game' to it"--we clarified as such. And again--if the story is that important that different gameplay isn't the issue, are the stories of, say, Wario Land 4 any closer to the stories of the original Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land beyond "Wario likes treasure"? Because, um... That's the only through-line for every Wario Land game already. Wario Land isn't exactly a stickler for a recurring cast and consistent stories with more than one through-line to them (except for maybe Wario Land II? But then that game ignores Virtual Boy Wario Land, so um, maybe not.) This is not WarioWare; recurring characters are absolutely not the norm in these games, and using the presence of those as your basis would leave you with the only Wario Lands being the original, II, and Shake It, because they're the only ones with Captain Syrup--the closest thing the series has to a recurring villain by proxy of being the only one that actually showed up more than once in the series. (No, Rudy the Clown doesn't count because he appeared in Dr. Mario 64, we feel pretty confident in stating Dr. Mario is not Wario Land.) ~Camwoodstock (talk) 00:30, December 7, 2023 (EST)

OK, I've withdrawn my opposition thanks the below evidence, but I must still complain that you are misinterpreting my thoughts. I never said that story and characters are always more important than gameplay. I said that in the specific case of DK64, it is related to the Country games in spite of not sharing their gameplay because of the plot and characters. I'd explain further, but I'm honestly exhausted by this discussion, and since I'm no longer opposing, I see no reason to continue. 14:13, December 7, 2023 (EST)

I wouldn't say Master of Disguise has "vague thematic similarities" with the Wario Land series. I and others have mentioned already that there are many parallels between Master of Disguise's gameplay and the Wario Land games'. In fact, as I was typing this, I found a quote from this interview that confirmed my suspicions:

SPOnG: How will the stages be structured? Will they be classic Wario platforming or involve more of a puzzle element?
Yutaka Hirata: Do you mean like “Wario Land Series” by classic Wario platforming?
SPOnG: Yes, that's right
Yutaka Hirata: Yes, it has the same structure as classic Wario games.

So... yeah, the director of the game himself compared the game to Wario Land. DrippingYellow (talk) 00:58, December 7, 2023 (EST)

Well, that's certainly the kind of evidence I was looking for. If it's coming straight from the horse's mouth... 14:13, December 7, 2023 (EST)