Mario and Wario was released in 1993 and is a great action puzzle game that is a classic sidescroller that makes full use of the Super Famicom Mouse, where the gameplay is just as quick as any of the great games on the system. The basic gameplay involves the player playing as ‘Wanda’ who directs the player’s character leading them to the goal. The ‘story’ behind the game is that Wario has placed a bucket type object over your characters’ eyes, so Wanda must guide the player to Luigi who can then free the bucket from your characters head. The gameplay is very fun and is extremely import friendly as most of the game is in English, making the game that much easier to play. The Super Famicom Mouse comes with a hard plastic mouse pad that makes the mouse feel very responsive and makes the quick movements need to play the game feel natural.

The Super Famicom Mouse

The game starts by loading the title screen and then going to the character select screen where the player chooses their character and can also adjust the speed of the mouse. The mouse speed has two settings, ‘low’ and ‘high’ that changes the range of motion of the mouse for the area that it is moved. There are 3 characters to choose from and the reason for each is apparent in the select screen, ‘Princess” who is low speed, ‘Mario’ who is medium speed and ‘Yoshi’ who is high speed. The difficulty of each puzzle goes up exponentially with the speed of the character, making the replay value high as it is very fun to go back and try each stage with each character. After selecting a character, the level select screen shows up and the player can choose which level to try in any order that they would like. Inside each level there are 10 stages and a short ‘boss’ stage that follows the end of stage 10.

There are 8 total levels (with 10 stages in each one) making for a good selection of puzzles that get increasingly more difficult with each level and stage. The beginning stages are very easy and can be passed on the first try, but some of the later levels bring much more of a challenge. The beginning levels puzzles take up one screen, where the later levels can be mutliscreen puzzles that move as the player goes in each direction, making the player pay much more attention to the surroundings that could harm their character. At the end of the 10 stages in each level, a boss battle ensues and they range from using Wanda to click on Wario in a plane to beat him up, to clicking on Wario in a plane to beat him up! That’s it; the boss level is the same for each level ending. Take a quick look at some gameplay from Mario and Wario to see the gameplay in action:

Gameplay Footage:

The gameplay video shows the variety of levels that illustrate the different game types of the gameplay and how each level’s theme make for a fun and interesting game. The music in the video is a sample of the music from the game which is very pleasant and somewhat repetitive, but overall is a very good soundtrack that makes the game seem very light and happy. The game is challenging in the later levels as the objectives of each stage get harder by adding enemies, coin boxes, movable blocks all while directing the character to the proper place, it can take a few tries to beat some of the later levels last stages.

Overall, the game is a great addition for any fan of puzzle games and the sidesrolling aspect make it a great classic game. It is a shame that the game never made it outside of Japan for gamers all over the world to enjoy, as it is a great game that was inventive for the time period. The total package of the game including the fantastic soundtrack, the fun and interesting gameplay and its use of the Super Famicom Mouse, make it a great game for any different types of gamers to enjoy. The added fact that the game is almost all in English make it an easy choice for importing without any prior knowledge of the Japanese language as it is not need at all. Mario and Wario is a great game that is one the incredibly fun games available for the Super Famicom and it won't even set a gamer back all that much.

Pinky G always enjoys a good game of Mario and Wario

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