I’ve been playing Wario games lately for the Gameboy and Gameboy Advance, in an emulator, using a wireless gamepad. I played through Super Mario Land 1 and 2, having never played them before and being very interested in seeing how different they were developed from the other games, and what influenced what.

As much as Mario games are the same thing over and over again, I’d say every Mario game (of the main platforming series, which excludes the rpg, kart, sports, remake games, and with the exception of Lost Levels) is different in a significant and mostly successful way. From pickups, to enemies and enemy behaviour, to goals and end of levels, to navigation. Almost none of them are direct copy and paste sequels or continuations like so many games are now (with the obvious exceptions of the mario games on Wii and DS which are essentially extensions of each other, and, again, Lost Levels is like a continuation of the first game). Each game experiments with what the world looks like, how you move around within it, what kind of bizarre creatures exist within it.

While people seem to love to rag on Super Mario Bros. 2/Doki Doki Panic, it seems to be what started the series down this road of intense experimentation with each new game. Each Mario sprite is different, not only from system to system, but from game to game, evolving not only with technology but with artist’s growing understanding and mastery of pixel art. Even when Mario became 3D with Mario 64, then Mario Kart 64 and all the other many Mario games, he evolved and changed. Sadly, they seem to essentially use the same model for Mario in every game now, with varying levels of texturing. Something to do with brand recognition, I’m sure.

Anyway, Wario games. So Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land/Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 for Gameboy stars Wario, after being introduced as the final boss in Super Mario Land 2. I’d previously played a little bit of Virtual Boy Wario Land, Wario Land 4 for GBA and all of Wario: Master of Disguise for DS. I’ve also played through most of the WarioWare games, and while they’re great, the gameplay is entirely different. I love the Wario platformers when I’d played them. There’s just something so satisfying about them. The combination of fairly tight platforming control, variable abilities, and level design that is packed with hidden items really does it for me, apparently. At times it almost feels like a tile sliding game, as Wario perfectly fills a 2×2 block of the game grid.

So I played through Wario Land, absolutely astounded by the delightful graphics and what the artists had managed to bring to life with just four shades. I tried to start up a few different copies of Wario Land II, but they wouldn’t work. I started up Wario Land 3 and thought I had loaded some sort of hacked together fan game. The graphics were jarring, even off-putting. The gameplay was bizarre. Wario never got hurt. I couldn’t get anywhere. I quickly gave up on this one.

I started up Wario Land 4 and was soothed by its gorgeous graphics. The animations are smooth and beautiful and the colours so perfectly mood setting. The cg backgrounds in some levels don’t really do it for me, I’m not a big fan of mixing pixel art and looser digital painting styles. Not too far into the game I started to find many elements of the third game at play in the fourth, just in a more obvious context, elements that I actually found quite interesting (and one quite reminiscent of Metal Slug). I’m almost three-quarters through the game now. I will have to go back and play the third again, as well as the second if I can find a working rom. I’ve been wanting to play Wario Land: Shake It! for the Wii since it came out, too.

Anyway, all that to say, while playing Wario Land 4 I came up with a loose idea for a game mechanic based on the currency system in the game. I’ll title this mechanic Caregiver: Blood Money. In the Wario Land 4 you collect heaps of money through out the levels. This money adds to your end of game score, as in the other games. It also allows you to purchase a round of a minigame. While playing those minigames (successfully) you earn minigame coins. The minigame coins allow you to purchase special weapons for use against the bosses.

This system reminds me of a typical free2play game model in which two different forms of currency exist. One is earned in-game, and can be used to purchase power ups. The other is purchased using real money and can be converted to heaps of the first currency, or used to purchase exclusive items.

Caregiver: Blood Money goes like this: The game involves lots of treasure, and weapons. You pick up treasure like a typical platformer. This treasure goes to helping out illiterate orphans or the underprivileged of some sort. Or perhaps returned to the rightful owners if it was stolen treasure (and what treasure isn’t stolen, really?) That’s the caregiver part. Whenever you kill an enemy, they’ll drop red coins. That’s blood money. Blood money can only be used to purchase weapons, and only blood money can be used purchase weapons. This neatly separates your good and bad deeds. The two currencies could even be tallied at the end to show whether you were really in it for the good cause or the murderous fun.