Sundry Sunday: A Christmas Warol

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 1Episode 2Episode 3Episode 4 (Youtube)

A Video on Wario Land 4’s Sound Design

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)