Great Game Stories, No. 3: The Scoundrel Who Wanted a Castle (Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3)
- Marcel Pflug
- 10 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Once upon a time, the villain got to be the hero. Not a nice hero, mind you. A loud, greedy, garlic-loving brute of a hero who wanted only one thing in all the wide world: enough treasure to build a castle even grander than Mario's. This is the story of how Wario stopped stealing other people's spotlight and swaggered off into an adventure entirely his own.
It is a tale of pirates, of a skull-shaped island, of silly magic hats and, best of all, an ending that grows or shrinks depending on just how greedy our hero is willing to be. Fair warning: nobody in this story is especially well behaved, and that is exactly what makes it fun.
The Characters
Our anti-hero is Wario, and the cartridge that finally lets him lead is Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3. Fresh from being thrown out of Mario's castle, Wario wants a palace of his own, and he is not fussy about how he pays for it.
The prize that catches his eye is a rumour: a band of pirates has stolen a giant golden statue of Princess Toadstool and is holding it for a princely ransom. Mario is out searching for it too, but Wario reasons that if he grabs the statue first, along with all the pirates' other loot, he can cash it in and buy a palace far bigger than his rival's pathetic little castle. Greed, for once, is the whole plot.
Standing in his way is Captain Syrup, the clever and dangerous queen of the Brown Sugar pirates. She rules the island, she commands the crew, and she guards a hoard of stolen treasure that she has no intention of handing over to a garlic-scented thief in a purple cap.
The World
The whole adventure takes place on Kitchen Island, a strange, skull-shaped scrap of land that the Brown Sugar pirates call home. It is dotted with hiding places, and Wario must fight his way clear across it, one region at a time.
He starts on the sunny shore of Rice Beach, then climbs the slopes of Mt. Teapot. There is the frozen, secret Sherbet Land, an icy detour you can only reach by sniffing out a hidden way in. There is the fiery Stove Canyon, the pirate vessel of the SS Tea Cup, and the gloomy tangles of Parsley Woods. And at journey's end looms Syrup Castle itself, the stronghold where the pirate queen waits with her treasure and her temper.
The Adventure
Wario does not play the game the way Mario would. He is too heavy and far too rude to daintily bounce on his foes. Instead he lowers his shoulder and barges straight through them with a mighty shoulder-bash, or grabs them and hurls them aside. And everywhere he goes he is hunting: for coins, for the fat money bags that fill his sacks, and above all for the fifteen glittering treasures hidden across the island.
Scattered through the land are magic Power Up Pots, and each one hands Wario a new hat and a new power. As Bull Wario he wears a horned helmet, pounds the ground with a mighty stamp and even clings to the ceiling above him. As Jet Wario he sprouts a little jet pack and goes zooming through the air. And as Dragon Wario he dons a spout of a helmet and breathes gouts of fire down onto his enemies. One greedy man, three ridiculous costumes, endless mischief.
The clever part is that treasure hides behind secrets. Many a coin and many a jewel is tucked away behind a hidden door or a blocked passage, and it is those secret exits that unlock the optional icy world of Sherbet Land. A lazy Wario can simply bash his way to the finish. A truly greedy Wario turns over every stone on the island, and, as we shall see, that greed pays off in the strangest way.
Spoiler Alert: How It Ends
At last Wario storms into Syrup Castle and corners Captain Syrup herself. She is not about to lose gracefully. She rubs a magic lamp, and out roars a great Genie. The pirate queen hops up onto its shoulders and the pair go swooping around the room, flinging fireballs at the intruder. But Wario is stubborn as a mule, and eventually he pounds the Genie down.
Beaten but never truly caught, Captain Syrup escapes by blowing up her own castle and slipping away into the smoke. Wario, though, walks off with the loot, and here comes the most delicious twist in the whole tale. What Wario gets to build with his fortune depends entirely on how much of it he managed to carry home.
Gather only a little and the poor scoundrel ends up with a tiny birdhouse. Gather more and it grows into a hollow tree trunk, then a cosy log cabin, then a handsome pagoda, then, at last, a proper castle to rival Mario's. And for the very greediest treasure-hunter of all, the one who tracks down every single one of the fifteen treasures and sweeps up every coin on Kitchen Island, the reward is grander than any castle: Wario gets a whole planet of his own to lord over. In this story, the size of your happy ending is measured out exactly by the size of your greed.
If you would like to meet the cartridge that turned gaming's greatest grump into a leading man, you can find Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 in the collection. Come and see it at the Game Boy Museum.
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