The Flipside of Gaming
Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.
nathorz on Youtube made this great little video that put animation to an assortment of Wario voice lines. It’s just great!
It’s great, and it’s here (1 minute):
Sundry Sunday is when we present gaming culture finds from across the years and decades. We’ve changed things up a little for the season!
A Christmas Warol, from GabaLeth, is an entertaining remix of A Christmas Carol, starting Nintendo’s charmingly notorious money-grubbing libertarian.
It’s interesting to muse on how Wario has escaped popular condemnation for his capitalist ways, or at least aspirations? I think it’s partly because he’s an object of fun and not presented as a positive figure, the wa of warui, Japanese for bad, is right in his name. He’s also rarely successful, and sometimes implied (very vaguely) to have a good heart under there somewhere.
Anyway, here’s Wario as Ebenezer Scrooge. There’s four installments so far, and they’re all surprising short (although it never was a very long story); presumably there’ll be a fifth by the time you see this.
Episode 1 (3 minutes):
Episode 2 (2 1/2 minutes, with Wagooigi):
Episode 3 (1 1/2 minutes):
Episode 4 (1 1/2 minutes):
A Christmas Warol, Episode 1 – Episode 2 – Episode 3 – Episode 4 (Youtube)
Did you ever play Wario Land 4 on the Gameboy Advance? It was the last “classic” Wario Land game before its team switched over to making WarioWare games. If you’re a gaming, or at least a Nintendo, enthusiast you probably know what WarioWare games sound like, that endearingly weird crushed and echoey sound, but you might be surprised to discover that Wario Land 4 sounds of a piece with the Wario Land titles! Here’s the intro, hear for yourself:
Here’s the original WarioWare’s intro to compare its sound to. It’s all the good stuff!
geno7 over on Youtube (who has a terrific home page, by the way!) did a 51-minute deep dive into WL4’s sound design that’s just the kind of obsessive attention to detail that our cadre of pixel art loonies appreciate! Have a gawk and a listen and see if you agree.
The Bizarre Music and Sound Design of Wario Land 4 (Youtube, 51 minutes)