One of the Mario titles that have been long since been an exclusive to the Super Famicom (the Japanese version of the Super Nintendo), but last October it was rereleased officially, in this case as part of the Super Nintendo Classics app/service on Switch and Switch 2.
It’s has been a long sought after title that it would be logical to assume might have gotten a rerelease on Switch 2, since it has a mouse-style control set up for the Joycons, and it wouldn’t have required much fnagling as the game was already full translated in English in its original SFC release, kinda surprising it didn’t actually get a NA or PAL release, despite there having been plans at the time.
I guess besides Mario Paint there wasn’t much interest in games that used the SNES mouse peripheral, but regardless, you can now play it on Switch 2 or even Switch 1, for the latter you will need to connect an USB mouse… which is how i played it, with the old Switch 1 docked and with a cheap random USB mouse anyway, at first anyway.
I tried that but i guess my USB mouse was too shit, since i later tried the mouse mode on a Switch 2 joycon (both in docked and handheld mode), and that was actually WAY better, like usual an actual proper modern mouse, even with the game mouse speed set to low, so i stuck to that for the rest of my experience.
I tried with a wireless mouse but it doesn’t seem to work, and i ended up mostly playing this on Switch 2 via the mouse mode, so i can’t help you in that regard.
I’ve been actually pretty curious to try this one, as on top of being a Japan-exclusive Mario game, it was also developed by Game Freak (the game being designed and conceptualize by Pokemon’s original creator, Satoshi Tajiri, and predating Red/Blue) when they let them out of the Pokemon mines more often, and it features Wario as a direct nemesis of Mario, which isn’t a thing anymore.
Yes, the one with Wario putting buckets and shit on Mario’s head.
The gist is actually just that, as Wario is throwing things from his airplane like barrels and buckets on Mario’s head, obstructing his vision, so it’s up to a fairy, Wanda, to help him out of this jam.
it’s an action-puzzle game in the vein of Lemmings or Lode Runner, actually feeling like a prototype of sorts for the Mario VS Donkey Kong sequels, since Mario moves automatically to the left and right (and changes directions automatically after bumping into a wall or a similar surface), but can’t see, so you have to interact with the obstacles, enemies, contraptions to lead him safely to the goal where Luigi waits at the end of each level every area is composed of.
The main way of doing that is by, well, using the mouse cursor that is Wanda to make block appear, defeat or neutralize enemies, destroy blocks, make Mario change the direction he’s walking and so on, with some collectables that can net you an extra life and a time limit to contend with.
There are 10 worlds with 10 levels each, which can you approach on any order you want for the first 8, the remaining 2 will require to beat all available world to becoming playable.
And while it might feel a bit too easy at the beginning since there are no advanced use of the mouse buttons (the right one just pauses the game), challeng does steadily ramp up as every world and often level introduce new obstacles, or more complex level layouts, to keep things interesting as any good puzzle game should… and this is a pretty good puzzle-platformer/action-puzzle game.
Even when you think the world has run out of ideas or new gimmicks and it’s gonna stretch itself out since it’s almost over, it will thrown some nifty new kind of block or peculiar obstacle that might not be immediatly obvious, to keep you on your toes and test your reflexes too, even if some sections are a bit too peculiar in how fast and precise they require the mouse controls to be, leading to some frustrating moments where a run goes to shit because you didn’t react at mach speed, or you were thrown some difficulty spikes than aren’t really about thinking how to navigate the level but more reacting to some curveballs that leave little time or space to react.
It looks pretty good, honestly, which isn’t too surprising since it uses Super Mario World sprites and assets, but there is original stuff in there and ultimately it doesn’t matter if it recycles too much or not from SMW, as it looks and sounds damn good, it’s almost indistiguinshable from a in-house developed Mario game of that era.
My only other gripe is that the levels do get bigger but you don’t have an option to zoom out the level and see it all at once to get a better, more immediate understanding of how to plan the traversal, otherwise it’s pretty good, always introducing new obstacles, traps, contraptions, while also using familiar ones in new ways that force you to proper plan the course to set for the goal.
It isn’t too much of an issue since you can pause the game and use the mouse to scroll-scout the screen in each direction, to be fair.
You can also collect coins from the marked coin blocks, as well as during the end-world minigame where you can wack Wario’s moving on his airplane for even more coins, netting you extra lives.
It also has an unorthodox difficulty selector, since you can pick Yoshi or Peach as the character to guide in the levels instead of Mario, which has Medium speed, while Yoshi is super fast and Peach is super slow.
That gives the player a bit of replayability once you finish all the 100 relatively short levels, which takes ¾ hours on the Normal difficulty that is choosing to defend/escort Mario.. oh wait, there are extra levels that you unlock only when finish the game.
Even without the extra levels, there is replayability as well in how often getting all the stars in each level is a challenge in itself that will require multiple runs to achieve, even when you know what to do in order to get the stars and the 1UP bonus a perfect level run brings.
Aside from some trophies in Smash Bros referencing it, it was also mentioned in the original Pokemon Red/Blue games, even the localized versions, so for years players didn’t had a clue what that “Mario with a bucket on its head” thing was about.
Now they know, and while it’s no masterpiece, Mario & Wario is a simple but good mouse-based puzzle game by Game Freak just before they released their first Pokemon titles, and as said before, you can see some ancestry of the later Mario VS Donkey Kong games, especially from March Of The Minis onwards they begun more being about controlling the toy Marios more than facing DK as the plumber in the flesh himself.
Definitely worth a try now that’s widely, pfficially available even outside of Japan.
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