Wario Franchise Appreciation Blog's Game Rants

A place where I talk in greater detail about various gaming thoughts, especially regarding Mario/DK/Yoshi/Wario.

[wfagamerants]

Planning on a Mario Kart World impressions post after the Treehouse stream days.

For now I am relishing them going all in on Toad being Captain Toad, paying off all the contradictions to the claims he isn't, that I documented for liteally 11 years.

[wfagamerants]

This is a funny thing to discuss. I am obviously not saying we need a new one ASAP, with Jamboree still being so fresh and in fact, I still play it a lot.

What got me interested in writing about this is the Switch 2. With new Nintendo hardware on the horizon, it’s inevitable Mario Party will make the jump there and given the series’ more frequent release schedule, that could happen as early as 2026. 

Thinking about what the new system could mean for MP just gives me a desire to talk a bit more about one of my favorite game series. My affection for Jamboree has not gone down at all since launch, but I did notice some things I feel could be addressed in a future title.

In particular I prepared 10 personal points I think would be pretty darn neat to see addressed in a new game. These aren’t ordered in any way, just general talking points

Fewer, but more focused modes

This is moreso the culmination of several points I’ll get to talking about, but they can also be summed up under this umbrella.

Jamboree has a lot of modes and that’s not an issue by itself. I actually consider it NDCube’s most successful attempt at a variety pack type approach and even the Hudson era games had bonus modes.

Thing is, 4 months later it’s easy to tell I barely touch the Motion Islands much at all, with Party Mode, Koopathlon and Kaboom Squad as the default trio I keep going back to and Party Planner Trek as the charming single player campaign.

This isn’t to say the other modes are bad, even Paratroopa Flight School to me is inoffensive at worst, but for future games I’d be more than cool with focusing the resources on adding even more to the very replayable modes.

Ditch Motion Controls

I don’t mind motion controls and will say they work very well in this game. At the same time, they do feel tacked on, like something they felt they had to keep because Super had it. 

While I do enjoy Toad’s Item Factory and find Rhythm Kitchen to be a cute, if lacking in Sound Stage’s competitive aspect, follow-up to said mode, I find both to lack in replay value. Paratroopa’s Flight School even more so.  That mode really is just a big gimmick that has its appeal, but once the novelty wears off it just doesn’t have much to make you return to it, even with three modes on offer.

Where I start to have more issues with it is Party Mode. Motion Controls are merely an option, but playing without them does lock several mini-games away from play. This hurts because while Jamboree *does* have the most minigames in the series, they are many different types. 

34 of the 112 minigames are not present in Party mode and on top of that, between 5 Duel, Item and Boss minigames each and 10 Showdown minigames on top, that’s another 25 minigames that aren’t part of the regular Free for All, 2v2 and 1v3 rotation. Take out motion minigames from those categories and that’s another 12 minigames off that list, leaving 41 minigames as part of that rotation, which feels quite compromised.

I got used to the single joy con to access all the games, but this isn’t really a situation that should exist. Either go all in on that control scheme, abandon it or offer a button control alternative for Pro Controller players.

Even more customization

Superstars introduced a really cool thing by letting you choose what kind of Bonus Stars you want. Jamboree would add an entirely separate, additional ruleset, as well as the ability to vote for minigames, replacing the roulette. All those are great additions, but what started as a cautious toe tip can easily be turned into a cannonball.

In particular the return of old options such as 50 Turn games or being able to make every character a CPU. They are niche options, but there is a place for all of them. Additionally, the custom minigame pack from MP4, letting you choose what minigames can appear, that’s a no brainer that I am sincerely shocked is only in one game.

Besides that there is a lot they can do. A custom bonus star option where you choose a set of three from all available ones. A toggle to turn Hidden Blocks on and off. A similar toggle for Jamboree Buddies. Really, the sky's the limit.

Mario Party becoming more customizable just offers a lot of room to spice up the game, while also not leaving those who prefer the default way of doing things out, since they are merely options.

Minigame Modes like in the older titles

The minigame modes on offer in Jamboree are…passable. It gets the basics of the job done, but it’s hard to deny that they are very samey. They basically all just amount to win the most minigames or get the most points.

I miss modes like Decathlon, where it was about the speed you complete minigames in or Rocket Rascals, where you win minigames to gradually build a path to the rocket in the middle. Heck, even non-Party Mode minigames can offer potential for such an extra mode, as Bowser Challenge in 10 showed.

Modes like that offer their own rules and gimmicks, which give more of an incentive to replay the minigames outside the board context and are extremely fun on their own. What we have now is passable, but nothing beyond the bare minimum and lacking in long-term appeal.

Returning GameCube and onwards boards

I am a big fan of Mario Party going the Mario Kart route, with returning boards, on top of the new stuff. It’s a very valid way to boost the board count and thanks to the inherent mechanical differences of each game, they feel very fresh anyways.

The purely N64 focus though is something I can do without. The later games to me had a lot of the most interesting boards and frankly, it just feels like N64 bias to appeal to nostalgia. It didn’t land for me in Superstars and I am still not a fan, even as someone who started with 2, played all the games in order from there and got MP1 via a lucky flea market find between 4 and 5.

Even with that N64 focus, it also stands out how much 3 gets shafted and I’d gladly see that changed too. Both 1 and especially 2 have great boards I’d happily put on a favorites list, but 1 is the flawed first attempt and 2 is what truly got the basics down. 3 onwards is where the series could expand and do more elaborate and unique things with the boards, thanks to 1 and 2 providing the foundation and that’s why I would rather see more 3 onwards stuff come back.

More 6-8 and DS-type star gimmicks.

MP6 marked a turning point for the series that I always really enjoyed. On top of traditionally styled boards, there were also boards with completely new star gimmicks. 

Sometimes everyone already starts with stars and it’s all about stealing from each other.

Other times you try to reach the end of the board to get the star and then go back to the beginning to start the process over.

Yet again other times you brave a mansion, trying to figure out the randomly set up paths, to find the room the star is in.

And the list goes on.

Mechanics like that always felt like a natural extension of the MP gameplay and it goes a long way making each board even more distinct from the rest. Roll em’ Raceway already feels a lot like these kinds of boards, but I’d like to see them take it further again.

Bring back Bowser Party

I am a vocal MP10 enjoyer and I’ll say this: Bowser Party would make for a great returning side-mode.

In hindsight it very much feels like the precursor to Kaboom Squad and Coinathlon/Koopathlon and it’s not like boards created for side modes are anything new. Making it more explicitly a side-mode also makes the same kind of content amount that the OG Bowser Party had (three boards, ten minigames) more reasonable than if it was promoted as the main point of the game.

More than anything, I just think it’s a really fun mode and my preferred kind of playable Bowser.

Relatedly:

Bowser

I want the series to make up its mind about Bowser.

I firmly think it’s okay for him to not be playable in MP. The role he plays is just too irreplaceable and Kamek in Super really showed how lame attempts to replace him can be.

Jamboree does go for a compromise by introducing Imposter Bowser and I am fine with that, but even then they lock Bowser out of the Bowser centric bonus modes, Koopathlon and Kaboom Squad.

In general the fact we got two Bowsers running around is further proof how important Bowser playing his usual role is to this series and nobody does it better than him. He has the imposing appearance, the humorous, yet villainous personality, the dangerous hide-outs and minions for minigames and boards.

Sticking with the Imposter Bowser solution would be perfectly fine by me, I just want them to commit to it, if they do so and not lock Bowser arbitrarily out of some modes anyways.

Keep the roster big

It’s hard to say where the series will go in that area, but simply put, I want the character roster to stay in this kind of size area. Be a Super and Jamboree, not a Superstars.

Yeah, characters don’t affect the gameplay, in terms of who you play as, but I am also tired of pretending these games don’t sell more than ever before and by a significant amount at that.

There is a reason Pauline got an entire trailer dedicated to just announcing her. They knew people wanted her, people like having these characters on the roster, there is no reason to cheap out on that.

It’s flavor, but flavor matters a great deal, it’s why people will still pick their favorite character, instead of saying ‘’I don’t care, it won’t affect the gameplay’’. Nobody actually thinks like that and after Superstars and Strikers Battle League, I am done trying to find understanding for bad rosters.

And on behalf of my friend Mod Mamono: Keep Montgomery Mole.

He funny.

Take it easier with Lucky Spaces

Lucky Spaces are a contentious mechanic and I am of two mindsets about it.

On one hand I don’t inherently mind them, particularly in Jamboree, which has enough ways to spend or lose coins that the bonuses that come from these spaces feel like a deliberate part of the game’s economy.

At the same time there really are a lot of them and I feel they should be something more special than essentially a second flavor of Blue Space, that sometimes feels similarly common.

Thinking about it though, making them more uncommon could cause different problems, by giving those that manage to land on them too much of an advantage.

Hard to say what could be done, spaces this powerful do mean playing with fire when adjusting things, but I do feel SOME kind of tweaking would be good.

Those are my main sticking points.

I adore Jamboree. While I spend a lot of this post pointing out things I feel could be done differently, I would still happily call it my third favorite MP.

Frankly, it’s so good I would gladly wait a year or two longer than usual for the next one. I am just a big MP fanboy, so the inevitable prospect of a new one, with new hardware on the horizon, makes me muse what could be, since the future of the series is an exciting one.

[wfagamerants]

As is well documented by now, I really love Mario Party, even beyond the realm of Mario it’s one of my favorite series ever. It’s also been said plenty by now that my relationship with the Switch games has been rocky.

I know, me being so nice to ND Cube’s output, only to have problems with the Switch games is for many an off-beat opinion, it’s just how I feel.

When Jamboree was announced it seemed to be the MP I had been waiting for right out of the gate and I can happily say it delivered. While we are still in the honeymoon phase with the game, I feel confident even calling it one of the best Mario Party games, a sentiment I never agreed on when brought up with Superstars, which I only find solid.

I’ll go by the same structure I went with for my essay on the Switch games, since that is what I am most comfortable with, so we’ll start with the roster.

While the selection was very not for me, I do give a lot of credit to Super for really beefing up the character numbers and after a really sad showing in Superstars, Jamboree returns to that, with a 22 characters large selection, one I am a much bigger fan of.

The character/mook ratio is closer to what I prefer, the Toads are back, Pauline and Ninji are wonderful newcomers and my issues with playable Bowser have been addressed with the introduction of Imposter Bowser. At least in terms of what can be expected, the roster is just one Diddy short of being perfect for me.

The game in general prides itself on the sheer amount of content it packs and that shows with the boards too.

7 boards, 5 new and 2 returning. I got some nitpicks, particularly how we are still sticking to only N64 boards coming back, but on the whole I do like the idea of Mario Party going Mario Kart by bringing back old boards. They genuinely are really well remade.

Mario’s Rainbow Castle was always going to be more strategic and involved thanks to the inclusion of items, but Western Land was the big surprise. I always loved the board, but the greater control you have over Steamer, the train here, being able to drive two stations ahead or even get him to come to whatever station you’re at, thanks to the new Steamer Ticket item, really alters the game. It’s a far bigger part of the game plan to knock opponents back to start, but the wealth of movement based items also means you have the means to rush where you need to, it’s well balanced that way.

The 5 new boards are an extremely good selection. Superstars is the basis for the board play, so in many regards it’s a bit hard to go into heavy detail without stating the obvious. It’s classic Mario Party and still clearly based on 1-4, with things like Boo being on every board, but it’s in the details and a couple key aspects where the game leaves its own mark of quality.

Despite the Super moniker, the boards are thankfully nothing like in that game. They are all a good size and full of mechanics of their own and obstacles. In fact, what impresses me most is how distinct they all feel.

Whether you rack up an insane amount of coins and visit specific shops for items or collect stamps in Rainbow Galleria, brave the delightfully evil Bowser Byway in King Bowser’s Keep or make a mad dash across the track in Roll ‘em Raceway, every board feels distinct and has a very strong identity. I do miss the more varied star collecting methods from 6-8 and DS, with only Roll ‘em Raceway feeling similar to that, but they are still the most distinct bunch of boards to not go for that formula and that is a genuinely huge compliment.

Of course, good boards are one thing, but the finer mechanics need to check out too and luckily Jamboree doesn’t disappoint and that’s where three major points about the board play I love come into play.

First are the Lucky Spaces. I am on and off with how I feel about them, but thanks to the much greater amount of hazards threatening your coin count and ways to spend them, their bonuses end up feeling like a more natural part of the game’s economy. 

They can still feel a little overtuned at times, but unlike Superstars the game is designed in ways to make their instant perks a bit more justified. There even is an Unlucky Space counterpart, even if the penalties there are milder than the benefits of its good counterpart, but it does contribute to keeping things in check.

Secondly there are the items. While there is still a heavy emphasis on movement based items, I think the variety has seen a good upgrade. I’m particularly fond of the returning Bowser Phone, as well as the traps, which are just hexes from MPDS and can turn portions of a board into a hilarious coin and star steal minefield.

What really pushes it to another level though is an idea 6 toyed with in Snowflake Lake and what 7 made a much bigger deal of: board specific items. Superstars did have that in the sense it makes no sense to have a Skeleton Key available on the MP1 boards, but Jamboree is different.

These board specific items are all made to interact with the gimmick of the board. Use the Tide Shell on Goomba Lagoon to control the tide, put a hole into everyone’s deep pockets with the Markup Sticker in Rainbow Galleria and I already mentioned the Steamer Ticket on Western Land and how that alters how you play the game.

Items have always been meant to be the more strategic part of MP, something to give the player agency in a kind of game ruled by the dice and items like this really allow you to make power plays and plan ahead in a way the orbs in 6 and 7, still the best item system to me, excelled at.

The way they are distributed is also good. Multiple shop types like in 3, item minigames are still here as a potential outcome on an Item Space and while Lucky Spaces can still give out items, it feels a bit more restrained or at least the game is better designed around it. Horror Land in Superstars when I play it often devolves into a long series of Chomp Calls, since it’s so easy for everyone to get an arsenal of those. Nothing like that ever really happened for me here.

The third big aspect for me is the Jamboree Buddies.

For all its flaws, being basically just lifted from Star Rush, I did find the allies to be one of the genuinely interesting parts of Super, but it needed a lot of retooling and Jamboree did just that in a variety of ways.

Jamboree Buddies will eventually appear on the board, but only one is around at a time and you need to reach them first. If you aren’t fast enough they just leave and you need to wait a couple turns for the next one to show up.

Even if you do reach them, you need to win a Showdown Minigame first, each centered around that character and only through winning it, will you get them.

While their perks such as their own abilities or doubling the effects of positive spaces OR being able to use Boo twice in one turn or buy two stars at once, are very powerful, they also double negative effects. If you land on say, a Bowser Space, you take double the punishment and on King Bowser’s Keep, that even makes for situations where there are so many Bowser Spaces that passing up on a Buddy may even be the smarter move,

While their perks are potentially game changing, you only get them for a few turns and someone passing by you can steal your Buddy from you, so making the most of their perks in the limited time you have can be a genuine challenge.

All that combined makes the Jamboree Buddies a significantly more balanced take on allies. Very exciting when around, but the game doesn’t centralize around them and it is possible to even suffer more bad effects than good ones, if you get one in a bad spot.

Those are some of the big factors that help Jamboree really push the board play up further in quality for me beyond ‘’boards good’’. In the end it’s Mario Party as you know it, but it has some really good refinements and new ideas.

Another such good idea is a voting system for minigames now being an option, along with the Bonus Star options returning from Superstars. It’s just neat to see Mario Party inch towards a more customizable experience.

In fact to add to this, Jamboree introduces an entirely new ruleset called Pro Mode. This mode offers a bunch of changes, including, but not limited to:

The turn count is a set 12 turns.

Chance Time and Hidden Blocks are not a thing.

Everyone can choose one item to start the game with.

Items in item shops are limited in supply.

The voting system for minigames is the default and only option, no roulette.

There is only one bonus star and you know which one it is from the start, so you can play specifically for it.

Lucky Spaces let you choose between 10 Coins or a Double Dice item.

Bowser on a Bowser Space will automatically steal a star if you have one.

Boo always steals 15 coins, no mashing mechanic to be found.

Among other things.

Overall it’s a really fun alternative way to play the game that changes your approach to many situations. I wouldn’t call it a definitive competitive minded experience, since it is at the end of the day, still a board game, but as a different way to play the boards, it’s a lot of fun.

Of course the board is just half of the MP experience, so how are the minigames?

In my opinion, really good!

I touched on this in my write-up on revisiting the previous Switch entries, but something about how many minigames in Superstars controlled always felt off to me. It’s hard to explain and really weird since I didn’t feel that way about Top 100 or any other MP, but it is a contributor to why I was never fully on Team Superstars.

Luckily Jamboree feels just fine to me and the overall selection of minigames is solid, packing a lot of action based games, mixed with more puzzly or reaction and mashing based ones. The variety is here and there isn’t much in the way of stinkers.

I was a bit iffy seeing returning minigames initially, since two of the three last games were all returning minigames, but Jamboree handles it gracefully and in a way that, like returning boards, would even be totally cool as a new norm for me. There are only a couple, the selection is good and several are even heavily recontextualized, like Leaf Leap, Bumper Balls and Shy Guy Says now being a three-part marathon challenge in Mario’s Showdown game or Platform Peril now being a coin minigame.

I am happy to say the game cools it with Coin minigames. They are still there and that’s fine, but the game isn’t blatantly rigged for them to pop up often like Superstars was and I appreciate that.

Duel minigames are once again oddly snubbed, only five once more, but at least the selection is really good. Slappy-Go-Round in particular is easily one of the most brilliant concepts for a duel minigame in the whole series.

Showdown Minigames for Jamboree Buddies are totally new. They revolve around the character you play for and are far longer than the average mini-game. This is gonna be more subjective but I think they mostly pull it off, with Waluigi, Wario, Mario, Daisy, Jr, Rosalina and Yoshi all having really good ones. Luigi’s is pretty good, but can be an autowin for players who reach him and get an advantage. Peach and DK are the only duds for me. Peach’s has an awkward first part and a luck based second part, while DK’s doesn’t do a great job filling its length and ends up being the one game of the bunch to really feel long for me.

Jamboree also brings back boss minigames from 9, 10 and Star Rush. Once unlocked in Party Planner Trek they can appear as options on the VS Space, making them effectively a return of dedicated Battle Minigames, if mixed with regular minigames in the rotation.

The minigames themselves are decent, Imposter Bowser’s is a bit lame to me and none are quite as good as the ones in previous games, but they aren’t bad by any means and I am happy to see them experiment with bringing that idea over into the classic formula.

Lastly for Party Mode minigames there are the motion control ones and that is a bit of an awkward one. Like in Super, I actually think the controls for them work really well and I like the minigames themselves, but being required to play with the one Joycon method to play them isn’t my favorite thing in the world and it’s a shame that they didn’t find a more graceful solution than to just lock those minigames away when playing with a more comfortable controller.

Also a bit of a shame there are no Bowser Minigames this time, though at least they have a good substitute in another mode.

Despite a slightly more mixed tone by the end, I consider Party Mode a big success, so let’s discuss the other modes.

First there is Party Planner Trek, our first dedicated singleplayer, somewhat story mode, in a long time.

In a lot of ways it’s basically a mix of Advance and the Minigame Island-type modes. You can walk freely across the board and do tasks for NPCs, along with playing all the minigames to collect Mini-Stars. Collect enough and you face the boss of the board, defeat them and you can move on to the next one.

It’s a simple concept, but nicely executed. The best way to describe it is cozy. It’s a nice laidback excuse to run around the boards and play through all the minigames that I can see myself revisiting when in the mood for it. The framing of this being how all the boards are made ready for the big event is also just really charming.

The only bad thing about the mode was getting first place in Gate Key-pers due to its luck based nature. I’d even call it the worst part of the game, but it is just one tedious minigame, hardly something that ruins anything and it can be skipped if you don’t care for 100%.

Then we got the Minigame Bay, with its modes and it’s….okay. The Boss Rush and Showdown Minigames based modes are welcome inclusions and the presentation is great across the board. Still, I miss the minigame modes of days past, especially Decathlon and would love to see some of them again.

We got two more flavors of extra modes and to me the stronger one is easily the two Bowser modes.

First up is Koopathlon, which is very much just Coinathlon from Star Rush, but now with 20 players and online functionality. You still collect coins in minigames specific to this mode, to move across a linear board and race to clear a certain amount of laps first. Even the items are taken straight from Star Rush, apart from Lava Bubble being replaced by Imposter Bowser and even that amounts to the same effect, all that changes is what burns your butt.

None of this is a negative though, since Coinathlon was easily one of the best side modes in the series and Jamboree is a very positive case of more of the same. I’d even say I like it a bit more thanks to the Survivathon Bowser minigames.

These were already a thing in Coinathlon, you try to survive a Bowser minigame and if you don’t you get moved back a certain amount of spaces as punishment. Jamboree edges out as better for me for not only having more and really good Bowser minigames, but also being far more challenging to survive, making them much more intense.

Koopathlon’s just great, taking an already amazing side-mode and making it just a tad better, easily my most played mode aside from Party Mode.

The other Bowser Mode is Bowser Kaboom Squad, one that caused a lot of intrigue pre-release for how little was known about it.

An 8 player team goes up against Imposter Bowser in a city and attempts to dodge him and other obstacles to collect bombs to attack him, as well as balance that with collecting coins for a Bonus Round where all bombs do more damage. 

The team needs to defeat Imposter Bowser in 5 rounds and at the end of every round is a team minigame, where you will net items to help you in various ways, with what items you get being determined by what Rank you archived in the minigame.

In some ways this mode feels like an extension of your typical Bowser final boss minigame from the Hudson days and I really like it for that. It’s frantic, offers fun opportunities for teamwork and Imposter Bowser, especially on Hard, is genuinely imposing to go up against. 

It’s a simple mode, but I really enjoy it. Not quite on the same level as Coinathlon, but a really welcome addition. I have played quite a bit already.

Lastly is the Motion based modes. Those were always going to be more novelty driven, but I do think the end result is a positive one.

The best is easily Rhythm Kitchen, a sequel to its equivalent in Super, my favorite part of that game. Unlike in that game the minigames are cooperative, making it more of a ‘’go with the vibe’’ experience and luckily it succeeds there.

The games are simple, but easy to understand, the music catchy and you even get to play a Rhythm Heaven-style Remix mode, set to the SMB1 overworld theme.

It’s a fun, cozy mode. Doesn’t take long until you have seen everything it has, but as basically a glorified minigame mode, it does it’s job well and is a nice every once in a while option.

I feel similarly about Toad’s Item Factory. The goal is to get orbs to a goal, using motion gimmicks to guide them. The controls are intuitive, the gimmicks varied, that’s really all there can be said. Fun mode, but very simple and not something to go back to regularly, but a good time when you play it.

The last mode is Paratroopa’s Flight School and yeah, that is the lowlight of the game, not bad though.

I do love the idea and the free flight mode in particular is actually pretty cool for what it is, with two extra modes as an extra on top. It works well, never had a problem with the controls and it is a cute idea, it’s just also very much a gimmick and not one that lends itself to going back to it a lot. The idea of it just wears thin and also requires more set-up to properly play.

It’s also weird how the mode locks you into playing as Mario or Luigi as the second player. Not a huge deal, modes where not everyone is playable isn’t new to the series, but being stuck with just one set character feels alien for Mario Party.

That’s all the modes and there is one constant across most of them: online. Jamboree emphasizes that aspect more than any other part of the series and I am happy to say that at least from my experience, it’s very good. It plays as well as the game does offline and I didn’t experience more than one small lag spike and no connection errors, which sometimes plagued Superstars for me.

Another big area where the game shines is presentation. The NDCube games have always been very good at this, but Jamboree takes this to another level. There are so many things to say that I may as well do it in a list format, because there is a lot there, in many different places too.

First off, a lot of old animations got small touch-ups, tiny details in how say, Mario, Luigi and Wario’s hats now obey gravity when they go back down after hitting a dice. Similarly, the characters during high rolls will not only speed up, but even transition into a new sprinting animation once fast enough.

There are several new situation specific animations, such as the panic run animations in the Granite Getaway remake, which you don’t see anywhere else.

The camera on the boards is way more dynamic and loves showing very appealing shots, such as Imposter Bowser looming over the characters in King Bowser’s Keep.

Mario’s Rainbow Castle turns dark and threatening if Imposter Bowser is in front of the castle, you can even see Bullet Bills pass by in the background.

They went through the work to tweak some animations for certain boards. Chance Time always catapults the characters in the air for instance, but in Rainbow Galleria this comes with a crashing sound and a visual effect showing the characters crashed through the ceiling.

Roll ‘em Raceway in general bothered with a unique, if simple, animation set of everyone in cars, to make the board concept possible.

Really, long story short, the game looks great and is full of life and personality. It also retains the zany, cartoony vibe that I love the series for, Super mostly lacked and Superstars didn’t always retain either.

Goomba Lagoon is in part my favorite board for representing this so well. It’s the perfect showcase for the dynamic camera and things like Lava Bubble spaces making everyone bounce across spaces with their butts on fire or the characters being forced on zipline rides they visibly don’t want to get on and even lose their grip by the end, are that toony fun energy that always gave the series a distinct personality for me.

The game also strikes a good balance of modern Mario visuals and original stuff. There is plenty of NSMBU and 3D World inspired content in there, but then you get say, the cities from the Bowser’s Kaboom Squad mode, which feel like cities you could see in Hudson era minigames. It’s nicely diverse.

While Mario Party has always been good with cool references to other Mario things, I’d argue Jamboree may be the best one yet.

The Showdown minigames are an obvious example, with say, Wario’s taking from both Ware and Land, Waluigi’s being a Waluigi Pinball reference or Donkey Kong basically making you play Donkey Konga being some big examples.

Even beyond that though you got things like Imposter Bowser being a shout-out to the SMB1 Fake Bowsers or Plessie making his first appearance in a spin-off. There is a lot to discover and it always made me smile. Mario spin-offs aren’t really like say, Dissidia or Theatrhythm are for Final Fantasy, where they feel like a true crossover and celebration of the whole series history, so any time one does include a lot of nods and elements from other games, it’s a treat.

The music ended up being a surprising highlight too, being full of catchy and varied tunes, not to mention just a lot of music in general. This is a hopelessly subjective topic, but there are several tracks I have already listened to a bunch outside the game. Imposter Bowser’s rocking themes and the bouncy, motivating Level 2 theme for Koopathlon being my highlights.

There is a lot of good detail work in here too, such as Imposter Bowser getting his own version of the Mario’s Rainbow Castle theme when he is out or all 22 characters getting their own little turn start jingles, because this game loves effort and I in turn love it for it.

We also got a fresher set of voice clips for a bunch of the cast, some new and some from Wonder and I won’t lie, Superstars with how much it makes the characters shout their canned old clips really tested my patience with the same clips they have used game after game, not just in this one sub-series, for over a decade and being rid of them feels like sweet release.

It helps that I genuinely think Kevin does a good job with his roles and while Deanna Mustard was really good, I utterly adore Giselle Fernandez as Daisy.

Been doing a ton of gushing and well, that’s because this game’s damn good and a showcase they learned all the right lessons. It’s not perfect, I have laid out things I thought could be better or are missing, but none of it comes even close to souring the experience for me.

I’d still put 6 and 7 at the very top for me, but Jamboree is really competitive with 3 as a solid third place for me and I don’t think that’s just the honeymoon phase speaking. Jamboree is a true return to form that makes me extremely optimistic for the future of the series.

That and I am curious if we will see DLC this time. The game is already more than packed enough to not need it, but if a MP ever were to see that kind post-launch support, I’d want it to be one as robust as Jamboree.

Because Jamboree really is just that good and I am so happy I can say that.

[wfagamerants]

Mario & Luigi as a series, loves its villains. I really can’t think of any other Mario series that gives its bad guys this level of attention and spotlight, as well as recurring appearances for several villains exclusive to the series.

While Fawful is an obvious example in regards to this, I’d actually say it’s none other than Bowser himself who really embodies all of this and manages to effectively be the third main character of the series, with a genuine arc to his name.

Bowser’s role in the series already starts out very uniquely. While he does start off wanting to kidnap Peach, as per usual, her now explosive voice makes her less than desirable to have around in his castle, so he promptly teams up with the Mario Bros, starting off Superstar Saga.

At this point in time, Bowser is a genuine ally, giving the Bros a ride to the Beanbean Kingdom and even giving them tutorial hints during their battle with Fawful, but things go downhill fast for the big guy.

From that point forward Bowser:

Ends up stuck in a cannon and held at ransom

Gets shot out of said cannon and suffers amnesia.

While amnesiac, becomes the rookie lackey of Popple, suffering two defeats at the hand of the Bros.

Takes another fall and lands back heavily injured in Stardust Fields, where Fawful and Cackletta find him, leading to the latter possessing his body. From this point, Bowser himself vanishes from the plot, aside from his body being rented out by Cackletta as a vessel.

Even once freed, he falls with the exploding Bowser Castle and when delivered back home, is just dropped off there.

Not much goes right for Bowser in SS, despite not taking an antagonistic role he ultimately ends up on the brunt of a ton of punishment and really is the one in need of saving from the big bad, once his body is taken over.

The Minion Quest side-mode in the 3DS remake does a little to expand on Bowser’s role in the game. We do get to see how he actually got his amnesia (Captain Goomba fell on him) and he gets a moment to fight back by knocking Fawful away, during an attempt to abduct him while unconscious.

That stuff is nice, but more than anything this game emphasizes an aspect of Bowser that will become important later on. The loyalty his minions have for him.

Putting the player into the viewpoint of a common Goomba does a lot to show how much Bowser’s minions think of him and how much they will band together to get their beloved ruler back. When Rookie Bowser fails to recognize Captain Goomba it really does make for a sad moment, that adds a sense of drama to Bowser’s role, which is otherwise largely played for laughs. Very fitting, given the change in viewpoint.

Partners in Time puts Bowser into a role that’s both unique and closer to what we expect from him, at the same time.

While his child self is a recurring nuisance that actively takes part in the plot at numerous points, adult Bowser is absolutely clueless about the greater plot going on. He shows up to kidnap Peach, who is actually Princess Shroob in disguise and lands in a time hole, never even realizing he’s time traveling.

Despite being locked out of the loop, Bowser does manage to make the most out of his role. He decides to turn the volcano in the past he fell into, into a new hide-out, teams up with his younger self, after some arguing and is able to emulate the team-work the Bros have with their younger selves, really well.

Following his boss fight, Bowser is kicked out of the past and by extension, the plot. He does reappear for a for a post-final boss encounter, but that one is not only over quickly, but also just pretty strange and doesn’t add anything to the story, though Bowser eating things he really shouldn’t, in this case, the mushroom-fied Elder Princess Shroob, will become important next game.

Bowser’s Inside Story just straight up is Bowser’s game. He may share the spotlight with the Bros, but on the whole, this is in very, very large amounts, his story. It also marks what I consider to be the big turning point in Bowser’s story in the series.

While Bowser falls victim to Fawful’s scheme, having his minions captured, his castle taken over and being given the Vacuum Mushroom to mindlessly inhale Peach and the Bros. That said, unlike Superstar Saga in particular, this time, Bowser fights back.

Bowser does need the help of the Bros, starting out without even his fire breath, but with that extra push, Bowser ends up recovering his lost abilities, gains new ones altogether and even learns to weaponize the new vacuum ability he got from Fawful’s mushroom.

We get to see Bowser be a brutish meathead, but he does manage to get himself out of problematic moments, if often with unknowing help from the Bros. Through this, Bowser reclaims his castle, fights through Fawful’s forces, survives what would otherwise be fatal moments and in the end, finishes off Dark Bowser with style.

I am not going too deeply into individual moments, because it is more the greater picture. Bowser went from an unlucky victim of the antics around him, to being out of the loop on what was going on, to one of the main stars, showing what he is capable of through his raw strength, ability to overcome whatever is thrown his way and the loyalty of his minions who upon rescue, assist him for his special moves.

The Jr’s Journey side-mode reinforces Bowser’s care for his minions we already got hints of, by showing that several Goombas of his kingdom suffer from the Blorbs and that him coming to the meeting at the beginning really was him wanting to take part in it. 

Outside of that, the story is very disconnected from what Bowser is doing, being way more about Jr’s story and development. That said, what role he does have, along with how Jr and his troops refer to him, truly show Bowser to be the big good of his kingdom, building on what Minion Quest established. 

We also do get the occasional check-in on when the stories take place relative to each other and those really do feel like getting a look at how Bowser’s antics look to minions and allies of his that aren’t directly involved in any given game.

Dream Team gives Bowser another entirely new role to play, this time teaming up with the new big bad of the day, Antasma.

I am going to say something maybe a bit contentious, but to me, Bowser in Dream Team is the best example of continuity anything in Mario has ever pulled off.

A lot of this is communicated really effectively through gameplay. In his first battle, Bowser’s moves include:

A sliding punch.

Him rolling up in a spikeball.

His usual fire breath.

And then much later in the game, we get a giant Bowser battle.

All of these are techniques that he learned through help of the Bros (Sliding Punch, Spikeball), recovered (Fire Breath) or was previously only able to pull off with their help (Giant Bowser) in BiS.

The Bros and by extension the player, has helped Bowser that whole time and powered him up. Now he’s a villain again and makes use of those new abilities to be YOUR problem to deal with. You helped create this monster.

And on top of gameplay examples, Bowser really shows how much he has learned on the story side of things too. He goes along with what Antasma does and gets a cool new castle out of it, which to me read like Antasma buttering Bowser up for an eventual betrayal.

Then one did indeed happen and it was Bowser betraying Antasma instead, having gotten everything he wanted out of him and thusly taking off with the Dream Stone to take charge all by himself.

I understand some didn’t vibe with this, because the RPGs are a rare time we get new villains. For me though, as someone who played all the RPGs, it was a really cool thing to see Bowser defy expectations and be the one overthrowing the new villain, without needing to be on the hero's side to do it. It’s a nice reminder he is the main villain of the franchise for a reason.

All this comes to a close with a boss battle against Dreamy Bowser. Bowser powered up to be able to summon whatever he wants and power up his usual abilities to a never before seen extreme.

The battle also gives some nice thematic pathos to both sides. Mario and Luigi for many of the attacks, are seen protecting each other or working together, while Bowser shows he thinks highly enough of his minions to summon dream versions of them to aid him. It genuinely really does feel like a true finale.

That sentiment also goes for another aspect of Bowser’s character in this series: Bowser’s dynamic with Luigi. Back in SS, Bowser barely even remembered him and even as the series went on, he’d always view him far more dismissively, never even calling him by name.

Dream Team gives Bowser and Luigi their most direct 1 on 1 confrontation (Yeah, Mario’s there, but he’s largely support) via their giant battle and through that and the final Dreamy Bowser battle, Bowser finally gains enough respect for Luigi as an enemy to recall his name.

Following all of this is Paper Jam. There are many things that can be discussed on how many aspects of it were handled, but strictly speaking Bowser, I think it’s a fitting conclusion to his arc in the Alphadream era.

After being kicked around, unaware of the plot around him, fighting the big bad and teaming up with the big bad, before backstabbing him, Bowser and his paper counterpart are just the villains outright, from start to finish.

While conceptually, much of what we see is fairly standard Bowser stuff, the context we see it in makes a big difference. Many call the new Neo Bowser Castle a lazy name and concept, but to me it again, stands as a good example of continuity. Unlike Dream Team, Bowser doesn’t need Antasma to get his sweet new castle, he just makes it himself through planning and ruthlessly capturing and enslaving Toads in mines to gather materials to fuel it.

Similarly, all it takes for Bowser to launch an attack on the kingdom following the Jr duo's defeat, is his own resources and the new final boss form of the day also doesn’t require a McGuffin of any sort. It just takes Paper Bowser going along with it.

Bowser pulls off all the stuff you’d expect from the Mario RPG villains with very little extra help. All he needs is the cooperation of another Bowser and together they stand tall as the main threat. I understand the circumstances around Paper Jam can muddle things, but to me, this is a really fitting and satisfying way to close out Bowser’s arc across all these games.

Time will tell what Brothership does with him. Given everything that happened I wouldn’t blame them if the game is seen as a bit of a relaunch and I have full confidence it will be a good role.

Mario games do whatever they want and I think Bowser’s progression has already concluded very well, so I am more than game to see them do more things with it.

This write-up is a companion piece to this video by my dear friend Mod Mamono, all about M&L villains, check it out here:

[wfagamerants]

With my Jamboree hype still in full force, I decided to revisit both previous Switch Mario Parties as a refresher, with some 3, 6, Star Rush and Top 100 on the side to help with some things I wanted to compare.

Mario Party is one of my favorite series in anything and I have been vocal about my relationship with the Switch games being rocky. I was curious to see if the benefit of hindsight changed my views on them.

The answer is one No and one Yes, with some no sprinkled in.

Super Mario Party

This is the big one for me.

From the Hudson games, to the first five NDCube titles, I unironically enjoyed every previous entry, as is well known with all the cheerleading I do for 10 and Star Rush in particular and even Island Tour has some good stuff well worth experiencing.

With all that in mind, it probably comes as a surprise THIS is the one Mario Party I genuinely can’t stand and a revisit did not change my mind one bit.

Not like I didn’t try either, even with my enjoyment of the other NDCube games, of course I was excited to see the old formula back, but that only means so much when it doesn’t do it well and that’s what I really do think is the case here.

Going point by point, as I like to do, I wanna start with one thing I do find praiseworthy…despite not liking it that much, the character roster.

Mario Party usually doesn’t have much going on in terms big roster numbers, so to see one push so far is genuinely refreshing and they did need to put work into it, given the amount of characters that needed to be updated (Hammer Bro and Dry Bones) or never had a playable MP outing period (Pom Pom, Goomba, Monty) not even mentioning all examples here, that stuff is commendable.

I’m just personally not that big on the selection. Losing the Toads really hurts and I am generally more in favor of less mook centric rosters, even if I like all the ones on offer. Pom Pom to me, even as someone who loves the boss characters like the Koopalings, King Boo, Petey, King Bob-omb, etc, is just a really lame and unappealing character, no better than Boom Boom who at least had Strikers to make me warm up to him.

Bowser being playable is also iffy for me. I love the big guy, but taking him out of his usual role has some very drastic consequences in function and flavor, which I am very happy Jamboree is addressing, to give us the best of both worlds, but more on that later.

Objectively, this is a good roster, it’s just very not for me.

Another thing I find praiseworthy and do enjoy is the hub. Dropping regular main menus in favor of an interactive hub where you can walk around and chat with characters is a cute concept I want to return.

Once we get to the actual board gameplay though, the cracks start to show right away.

Everyone already complained about it, even when the game was new and generally praised, but yeah. 4 boards is an absolutely abysmal number and that could at least be salvageable if they were all good and fun to play on but….you already know where this is going.

I will say, I do love the themes. As much as I think the previous games did more with the NSMB tropes than they are given credit for, it’s great to go back to something more original again. They are cool themes, they are visually great, that stuff all works out.

Too bad they’re really bad boards.

It’s been talked about to death, but yeah, the boards are incredibly tiny and small boards don’t even need to be bad. DS had smaller boards and did such a good job with them you barely felt it, on top of to me, being a Top 5 Mario Party.

Not only are Super’s boards even smaller than the ones for the game that HAD to scale them back, but they are also very linear, with little in the way of interesting gimmicks or alternate routes.

You can call most MP boards, aside from deliberately linear ones like Pagoda Peak, basically big circles or squares. That’s fine, they are BOARDS after all, it’s more what you can do on them that matters and makes you not even notice that.

King Bob-omb’s Powderkeg mine feels like the closest to  an aversion to this and even it just amounts to choosing either the smaller circle or the larger circle, to run in circles in. There is simply nothing interesting going on and the events are too basic and lame to distract from it.

What doesn’t help is that Super made some changes to fundamental aspects of MP we take for granted and it really says a lot about how well thought out those elements were.

For one thing, the Dice has been reduced from a 1-10 to a 1-6. This was already a thing in 9 and 10, but in those games you were all in the same vehicle and progressed together, it was way more about wanting the best result out of your current situation. In Super, being a classic style MP again, it just makes progression feel fundamentally more sluggish, since cutting down the dice numbers so hard means you will go by nature, much slower and the odds of barely going anywhere are way higher.

There is also just the general lack of truly threatening obstacles on the boards. This especially shows with Bowser being playable. Gimmicks like him being on the board like MP1 and MP4’s Bowser’s Gnarly Party are off the table, as is him having his own board or game specific ideas like Bowser Time in MP7. Instead of Bowser Spaces we now have Bad Luck spaces.

They Suck. Really hard.

The penalties are just not threatening and the game feels rigged to prioritize the tamest one. The coin penalties barely hurt, losing an item is really not that big a deal here, the star moving is rarely anything but a non-punishment, etc. They do get a bit more punishing during the last 3 turns, but not only does that window give them little time to come into play, but even losing a star is less of a big deal than it would usually be, for one particular reason.

The economy in SMP is totally out of whack. 

Now second and third place also get coin rewards in minigames, which WAS a thing in 9 and 10 as well, but in those games that had more of a purpose, given the much more limited control during board play for everyone. In a classic Mario Party though, this already has implications and it only gets worse with other elements thrown in.

It just doesn’t feel that rewarding to be good at minigames,  because even if you play well, you may not even build up much of a lead, with Hidden Blocks, Hidden Block items and Lucky Spaces that can give coin rewards in abundance and ALL that is combined with how little everything costs.

Stars cost only 10 coins and combined with how small the boards are, getting to one rarely feels like a hassle. Even stealing a star only costs 30 coins and items are remarkably cheap and that’s on top of there being so few events that really threaten your coin count. King Bob-omb is really the only one that makes a real attempt there.

All of that results in really dull board play. More than ever the game really is all about the dice roll, with nothing from the board layout, to events, to the items, doing anything interesting to let you strategize or anything like that.

There’s also the small annoyance of them finding it necessary to give you needless tutorials and tips, like when you open the map or getting an item for the first time, which you can’t disable. 

On a final note for the board play are the allies and ally spaces, as well as custom dice, all taken from Star Rush. A lot of people dislike them, but I do find their implementation to be the most interesting thing on SMP’s boards. Supremely unbalanced, it needs another pass there, but I can see interesting potential for it in a MP with boards of more substance.

There is also Partner Party, which is essentially the Star Rush mode of the game and as Star Rush fan, I should love it.

Eh.

I appreciate the thought, but you can’t do free for alls, There are way fewer opportunities to get and especially steal allies and the boards continue to be void of anything interesting. Even just playing the 4 boards it had once each, with the minimum Turn count of 10, felt like a slog.

Then there are the minigames, which I often see praise for and honestly, they’re okay enough, but I do find the overall selection pretty meh.

It has genuine highlights, Slaperazi, Croozin’ For A Broozin’, Don’t Wake Wiggler and Fuzzy Flight School all being ones I really like for instance and I don’t hate the motion controls, I think they work fine.

It’s really not so much that there are a lot of bad minigames and more that it misses types I really like. There are no platforming minigames, no brawling minigames where you just punch and kick other players off of a platform, only one mashing minigame, etc. That’s on top of the fact that I feel a lot of the rumble minigames are really samey. There are like three separate minigames where you use the rumble to select the biggest/most of the thing you are meant to get.

There is also a general major sense of reduced player interactivity that plays into this and the most blatant example of it for me is comparing Hammer Drop from Mario Party 1 (and Superstars) to Super’s very own Lightning Round.

They are very similar coin minigames, but there is a major difference that sets them apart. While the hammers and lightning strikes both aren’t much of a threat, Hammer Drop lets you jump to swipe the incoming coins and coin bags, even jumping on opponents and hindering them or even ground pound opponents to hold them back. In Lightning Round, that interactive element doesn’t exist and everyone is just slowly running to the coins, while dodging total non-obstacles.

That example sums up a lot of why I find SMP’s minigame selection to be just not as interesting as the rest of the series and it also contributes to a stylistic difference I am not fond of at all.

I always loved Mario Party for being a more zany kind of Mario game, putting the characters in all kinds of wacky scenarios and to be fair, Super isn’t FULLY devoid of it. It’s still a rare time you see, say, Peach, helplessly chased by a giant Wiggler or Broozer army entirely as a gag at her expense one moment and then the next she pilots a big Sidestepper mech to whack Bowser with hammers with. That stuff is just awesome.

Super just has very little of it, due to the lack of interesting board gimmicks and action-heavy minigames and even what is there is heavily scaled back. Like characters just go into their dizzy animations when a Bob-omb blows up on them, rather than flying off-screen and said Sidestepper mech minigame just flings the characters away with a generic flail the game uses for almost every single negative event, as opposed to the other MPs which will just totally crush the character.

Is it pure flavor? Yeah, but I like flavor, flavor is good. MP just has a particular personality to it that Super doesn’t capture. It has plenty of personality in other areas, but it is missing a particular aspect I thought helped make the games really energetic, competitive and cartoonishly charming. It’s as if Mario took a page out of Wario’s playbook to be more wacky and I miss that.

Having said all that, one area the game does quite well in are the side modes. Champions Road is a perfectly functional ‘’Play all the Minigames’’ mode and Toad’s Rec Room hosts some minigames I honestly wish had regular play counterparts.

River Survival is decent, not something you can go back to much, but it’s a neat concept that at its hardest, does offer a challenge and its own minigames are pretty enjoyable for the most part.

Sound Stage meanwhile is the big star of Super as a whole for me. I love the rhythm minigame approach, there is a great energy to it, it’s got some lovely charm with all the dance animations for the cast (Waluigi’s moonwalk being the best, just sayin’), it’s just a good time. At most I wish I found the music more catchy, but it does its job at being fun to play along with.

I didn’t mean to be as negative as this likely came across, but it is just how it is. While it has some content I really like and ideas I think have potential, SMP on the whole I just do not like at all. It brought back the classic formula, while totally butchering it and it’s just all around lacking in so many things I like about the series. I went back to it to see if time and benefit of hindsight changed my mind and sadly no, if anything I have only grown to dislike it more.

Mario Party Superstars

By contrast, Superstars won me over on several things I was iffy on. I still have my gripes, but overall, I was pleasantly surprised.

One not pleasant surprise since the game came out, to start similarly to the Super section, is the roster. It’s small, it’s lame, we all know that. Of course character choice rarely affects anything in MP, but as I said, flavor is good and besides: When a series makes this much money and makes so heavy use of reused models, animations and voice clips across games, I do expect it to at least be able to compete with games that came out in the 2000s in terms of content in all places.

Speaking of which, this game is a bit funny to evaluate because it is all remakes of older content, but there is still plenty to talk about.

First there are the boards, five in total. Only one more than Super in terms of quantity, but they are all so much better than all of Super’s boards combined that they may as well be four boards more than Super had. That said a 6th board would have been appreciated, ideally they wouldn’t have just a N64 focus, but if they really wanna then at least give 3 a second board.

The board selection itself is quite pleasing. It has Horror Land so that alone is already a slam dunk, but there is a good quality level all around. The lack of a proper finale board is felt and I would have rather had a second MP3 board than two from MP1, simply because the former has much more interesting board design, but as it is, it’s fine.

Peach’s Birthday Cake made me roll my eyes when I saw it, but it turned out to be the most pleasant surprise of the whole game. The addition of items, a shortcut ramp and Bowser also doubling as a short-cut, if with a penalty, along with the lottery being moved, makes getting around and actually getting stars is far smoother and quicker. This also makes star stealing Piranha Plants far more of a threat, since there actually is something to steal now and that’s on top of there also being coin stealing Piranha Plants now.

This game turned what I thought was easily the worst Hudson era board and turned it into my second favorite one in this game. I am still stunned to this day and the improvements made to it show some really smart thinking that makes me optimistic for Jamboree’s new original boards.

The other boards haven’t seen any major changes and that’s perfectly fine. Playing Yoshi’s Tropical Island with items is a fun new experience though.

The actual board play has improved a lot, on top of playing on actually good boards, the coin distribution after minigames has been reworked to give the winner 10 coins again instead of only 8, with second and third only getting 2 and 3 respectively, making minigame wins far more of a benefit to build up a lead again. Stars are also back to the usual 20 coins and Bowser is back and as punishing as his spaces always are, so seeing harsh loses through that and the returning Chance Time brings back a ton of value to coins and stars that they largely lost in Super.

One new addition that’s consistent across all boards is Lucky Spaces, functioning the  same as in Super. The coin and item rewards you get from those can be really extreme and coupled with how many of these spaces there are, it gives the game a pretty chaotic feeling at times. For this particular game, I’m cool with it for this game, but ideally future games cool it a bit with these things.

There are also some nice QoL additions that once again, give me a lot of confidence for Jamboree. The generally increased game speed is a plus. Getting to choose between random Bonus Stars and the classic three is a feature that always should have been there. Getting to save up to 8 sessions, even online ones, is incredible and having the option to speed up board event scenes is a godsend for ones you may see many times in a row.

So yeah, the board game portion to me is a total hit in this game. The minigames are where I get more mixed. Not counting item minigames there are 100 in total and over half of those were already in Top 100. Not a bad thing by itself, but it does make some choices made bother me even more. Also not a fan of the N64 focus on the minigames as well, since it not only throws out a lot of good minigames, but it also screws over the GameCube and Wii & Wii U minigame packs, which would have been really cool options with a bigger selection.

Despite the latter gripe, I think the selection is….okay. It has it’s winners, particularly Hot Rope Jump and Dungeon Duos, but also some really notable stinkers like Spin Doctor, which wasn’t even in Top 100, so they deliberately picked that over something like Camp Ukiki or Apes of Wrath from the same game, genuinely bewildering. Duel Minigames in general really got the short end of the stick with only 5 in total and of all things, they pick stuff like Spin Doctor (which is at least okay) or Mass Meteor (one of MP6’s few stinkers).

Top 100 wasn’t perfect in that regard either, but I found its overall selection way more consistently solid and satisfying.That and bringing back certain minigames a third time just baffles me. Piranha’s Pursuit is a really bad minigame in all its incarnations, that can way too easily turn into a free win for the one player. It was a weird choice in Top 100, but bringing it back again in Superstars, without any changes for the better, really pushes it.

It’s still largely a good selection, it’s just easy to see the cracks when you have older versions to compare these games to and some did get butchered a bit. Tidal Toss’ hitboxes for the biggest waves not matching the visuals in particular being a NASTY example.

The characters also make far more grunts in many of the minigames and...yeah they can get pretty insufferable, especially with how small the pool of voice clips in this game is, compared to say, MP10, which had two minutes worth of clips for everyone.

There is also a case where the game still feels like holds back on bit on Mario Party’s old personality, with alterations to some minigames, for some examples:

You don’t see losing players bounce away in the lava anymore in Bumper Balls, they just vanish.

Several minigames replace more distinct damage poses with the generic flail, even if the more appropriate animation is elsewhere in Superstars.

The characters just lamely fall off the record in Dizzy Dancing, instead of crashing into the walls.

Squared Away lost it’s ending animation, which was already a thing in Top 100, the only time it took something like that away, but that had an excuse due to it using a generic minigame results screen like the other NDCube games did before.

Even taking the slapstick aside, replaying 3 in particular really revealed how many small things got cut for more generic animations. Hide and Sneak in particular has the characters just all do a heads down ducking pose, as opposed to the original where everyone had a distinct one, like DK adjusting his tie or Mario lying down.

Again, all this is flavor, but it sticks out even more when you are remaking content and if the roster is gonna be that small, going the extra mile on a few things would be appreciated.

It feels weird too, because the game oozes personality in so many other areas.

The title screens are all lovely.

The board ending pics and loser elimination sequences at the end of a round are very classic Mario Party.

The way characters literally pull out maps when you study the board map is amazing.

The dismayed reactions everyone has when landing on a Bowser space are great.

The Stickers are a fun evolution of taunts that can express way more.

Really, the game is full of great personality, it’s just in the minigames where some of the old charm they had gets weirdly sanded off.

Lastly there is online which is as functional as one could hope for. Has its hick-ups, but for Nintendo standards it’s fine. It’s not a disaster ala’ Mario Maker 2.

All nitpicking aside, this is a good game and a good Mario Party. I don’t think it’s one of the best ones, but the QoL additions and generally really solid board gameplay show the potential for it is there.

More than anything it feels like a testing ground to study the old board designs and test out things like the online, rather than something meant to be big on its own. I didn’t even touch on side content because there really is nothing to discuss.

Good game, but I was waiting for the next big thing and now it’s finally happening.

Super Mario Jamboree

My thoughts back here still apply and are very up to date, since we haven’t seen anything new since:

Wario Franchise Appreciation Blog's Game Rants

You know the drill by now. New Direct, New Mario games shown. I will talk about them here. There was plenty else I enjoyed, but with the Mar

Playing the other two games again just really put into perspective how many things already got improved from one game to the next and it makes me all the more hopeful for Jamboree.

I have no doubt it will be the MP I have been waiting for all gen and I couldn’t be more excited~

[wfagamerants]

You know the drill by now. New Direct, New Mario games shown. I will talk about them here. There was plenty else I enjoyed, but with the Mario focus of the blog, I wanna give the three new Mario games my attention.

Donkey Kong Country Returns HD

I understand this one feels underwhelming for some, given DK has still not gotten a non-port or remake game on Switch, but to be honest, I like this. DKCR is a phenomenal platformer and with the 3DS content included, we now finally got a definitive version to point people to and I do think this gives this re-release a lot of value.

Not much else to say, because I doubt there will be much, if anything, new. Seems like a very Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD situation and I am okay with that.

Mario & Luigi Brothership

This was easily the biggest bombshell and yeah, what a way to start the Direct. The recent RPG and TTYD remakes made me hope that Nintendo may be working on a serious relaunch for the RPG branch of Mario, but to see them do it this soon is not something I could have ever seen coming.

Much is still unknown, but there is quite a bit we can look at, like the visuals! The occasional use of 3D models in the 3DS games made me wonder what a fully 3D M&L could look like and Brothership gives a very pleasing answer. Translating a series known for stellar sprite work into 3D is an uphill battle and Brotherhood manages to pull it off with both a really faithful translation of the series’ artstyle we always saw in official art and animation that’s as snappy and toony as it should be for a series like this.

Especially happy about the cutscenes. RPG already made me really want to see more like those and Brothership is very similar. Seeing the characters be this animated and not limited to their standard animation sets is a joy to watch and M&L is the perfect series to do a lot with that.

We got plenty of new character designs already too and those largely go for a tool theme. Very interested to see where this will take things, but just in terms of designs, I like em’. Connie seems to be the big hit among fans and I am firmly in that camp too. She’s adorable.

What we hear of the music is good stuff too. It’s to be seen if Yoko Shimomura is still working her magic, but I’d be surprised if she wasn’t brought back.

In terms of gameplay there is not much known yet, but I am very curious how they’ll do things. After the Baby Bros, Bowser, Dreamy Luigi and Paper Mario, we are back to just Mario and Luigi and that promises some expansions to the gameplay around just the two of them.

We already see hints of that with the jump and hammer attacks shown in the trailer, which involved Luigi helping out Mario for a bit of a team attack. They don’t seem to be Bros Attacks, since we see the Shell one we had since PiT at the end of the trailer, so maybe that’s just what jump and hammer moves are like now? We’ll see, I find the idea intriguing. 

One thing up in the air is how the game will handle previous M&L specific characters. The series has been remarkably good about keeping those in the picture and making these games feel truly connected. Not a big deal if they treat this like a soft relaunch though, even if I would be perfectly content with even just a picture of a Shroob on a wall or something.

The titular ship and island theme makes me curious about the overall structure of the game. The most likely answer being that different areas are separated into islands you visit one by one. Perhaps there could be an exploration mechanic ala’ Wind Waker, or the very blatantly based on that section in Origami King, where you can sail yourself, find treasure and optional islands?

Only time will tell, but I am really excited and happy to see a series back that has been in a very unsure place for years.

Mario Party Jamboree

As far as realistic wishes go, Mario Party was my big one, so I am very pleased and it easily stands shoulder to shoulder with Brothership and away from Mario, Echoes of Wisdom and the Marvel vs Capcom Collection, for me.

Mario Party is one of my favorite series period and I even got quite a bit out of the pre-Switch NDCube games. 10 and Star Rush in particular I openly defend a lot. That said, my relationship with the Switch entries has been a rocky one.

I never really liked Super, it always felt like a pale imitation of the classic formula, that lacked a lot of what I like about the series and made many decisions I didn’t vibe with.

Superstars is much better, but still ended up being a tug-of-war of really good stuff and things I found still lacking, particularly in terms of content and how off a lot of minigames felt to control, compared to their original counterparts.

Jamboree is looking to be the Mario Party I have been waiting for all gen and it’s looking to fix all the problems I had with the previous games.

7 boards, 5 new and 2 returning. Never thought of a mix of old and new as an option, but it’s a move I can get behind. It’s a good way to get more boards in. I’d like it if they remade some of the GameCube boards for once, but I am not complaining. Hard to when Western Land is back baybeeeh!

The new boards all look good. It really seems like we are back to the 6-8 era approach of giving every board their own gimmick and that’s something I have been waiting to see again. The theming looks great too, especially the mall and race track ones, some creative stuff in there.

The roster surprised me too. Superstars had a laughably poor one and while Super had a large one, it made decisions I didn’t like, particularly relegating several established characters to NPC roles.

Jamboree does away with that, Birdo’s here, the Toads are back, which I really wanted and all around while I prefer less mook heavy rosters, I like the selection on offer here, especially Ninji and I’ll never say no to Boo or Shy Guy.

I also like what they did with Bowser. I love the guy, but his playable role in Super I feel robbed the series of something. His usual role is a big, irreplaceable part of the series, in both gameplay and vibe. This force who commands the power to massively shake up the game. Kamek in both function and presentation just didn’t offer a good replacement, so the new approach to have a Kamek created Bowser clone fill in is a significantly better compromise.

Ninji not being in the intro and bringing the roster up to an odd numbered 21 does indicate possible unlockables. I’d be happy if what we saw is what we get, but I’d never say no to say, Pauline, who is otherwise still strangely absent from the series.

What we saw of the minigames meanwhile looks good. A much better mix of zany antics and more grounded competition than Super had, which dialed back the slapstick adventure feeling a ton. The large number of minigames, seemingly all original this time, is also genuinely impressive.

We also got the promise of more modes, but so far the only one we got concretely introduced to is Koopathlon, which is blatantly Coinathlon from Star Rush brought online and escalated to 20 players. As someone who loved Coinathlon, I fully support this.

On top of that, I could already hear new voice clips, which is just that extra mile I appreciate. Mario spin-offs are no stranger to reusing those a ton and Party is one of the more notable examples of it, but something about the ones used post-10 I found especially grating, especially how much Superstars spams them in some minigames, so I am VERY pleased to get away from that.

On the whole, Jamboree feels like a lot of lessons were learned and they really want to make this one something special and I am very excited for that. This really makes the previous two games feel like test runs and I did hope they were just that. Especially Superstars which showed some real understanding of how to make a great Mario Party, but just wasn’t there yet in too many areas for my liking.

In general, a strong trio of titles, that really shows a surprising amount of gas in the tank for a system that is now in its twilight years. Along with the 2023 output for the series, I am extremely excited where things will go from here.

[wfagamerants]

Toad's Identity

A massive, comprehensive write-up of Toad. How he was handled over time, how he is indeed a distinct character and notable consistencies and inconsistencies with how he has been portrayed.

[wfagamerants]

Updated it with even more explicit mentions and references to Toad being a Super Mario Bros 1 Toad, Sunshine Red Toad and Captain Toad. All from Nintendo Power, Iwata Asks Interviews, In-game content and trailers.

[wfagamerants]

One final update covering weirdness like the unexplained second blue Brigade Toad in Odyssey, in my conclusion section. Wasn't sure how to cover it, but it is a good example of how Nintendo plays these things lose and clearly doesn't plan it out that deeply.

[wfagamerants]

Toad's Identity

A massive, comprehensive write-up of Toad. How he was handled over time, how he is indeed a distinct character and notable consistencies and inconsistencies with how he has been portrayed.

[wfagamerants]

Updated it with even more explicit mentions and references to Toad being a Super Mario Bros 1 Toad, Sunshine Red Toad and Captain Toad. All from Nintendo Power, Iwata Asks Interviews, In-game content and trailers.

[wfagamerants]

Toad's Identity

A massive, comprehensive write-up of Toad. How he was handled over time, how he is indeed a distinct character and notable consistencies and inconsistencies with how he has been portrayed.

[wfagamerants]

I have made it very blatant that I am a fan of Toad.

If you followed me for a while, you also likely have heard me vent about the claim Toad and Captain Toad are different characters, citing multiple contradictions to this claim in the games themselves.

I’m not here to deny official word or push my preferences (though I do have them), rather I want to give my perspective on the whole thing in full and delve a little into how Nintendo handles main members of a Mario species in general.

First, it’s important to recognize that Nintendo is loose with a lot of stuff. Many different people work on these games and you can see different takes on how to present certain species quite frequently.

When we think of Toad, the main way we think of him distinguished from other members of his species is the red spots and blue vest combo. In a large number of games that is indeed the case.

Most spin-offs, Super Mario 3D Land and Luigi’s Mansion Dark Moon, only to name some. Those make it simple, red spots and blue vest Toad is THE Toad. Other red Toads have a red vest.

However, not every game makes it so nice and simple. The pre-GameCube games had ALL the basic Toads rock the red spots and blue vest combo. THE Toad was distinguished more by role, being the only Toad in the game or as in Super Mario RPG, being the only Toad to have Toad: in his text box, even in the japanese version I might add, to indicate he is the main one you keep meeting.

The modern games aren’t without occasional screwyness themselves though. Odyssey reverts to the idea of all generic Toads using that look and then you have things like Sunshine or the Baseball games, where there is no red spots & blue vest Toad, but a red vest Toad is identified as THE Toad in things like the manual:

It’s weird, but it should be said the 2000s were still a bit of a transitional era for Mario. It took until 2004 for short sleeves Wario to be consistently used in spin-offs for instance and Peach still had her old dress in Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door. You saw oddities like that around a fair bit.

The only time the Toad thing ever came up again in later years is Puzzles & Dragons SMB Edition and even that one has THE Toad on the cover, despite him having a red vest in the game,

Something that is even stranger given that by then they had stock Red Toad renders around and Nintendo is so overprotective of Mario as an IP, that them letting this slide is notable.

While this kinda stuff muddles things, it doesn’t take away from the fact a THE Toad exists. It’s seemingly more about the iconic visuals, than the detail. That visual of a single red Toad being with the rest of the main cast.

Something that still persists to this very day and will, with the distinctions we prefer to go for (only one blue vest, red spots Toad) even be present in the movie, which Nintendo is directly involved with.

It’s a thing that extends beyond Toad and has been present with other characters representing their species as well. Kamek being the most blatant example of it.

Even prior to Yoshi’s Island, singular important Magikoopas such as a particular Yoshi’s Safari boss, a right-hand man Magikoopa in Super Mario kun’s Super Mario World story or the eeeeeevil Koopa wizard Wizenheimer in the Super Mario World cartoon, had already appeared as important parts of Bowser’s troops.

It’s with Yoshi’s Island that one particular Magikoopa, who was the one who raised Bowser no less, was introduced. While this had no distinct name in Japan, where all Magikoopas are known as Kamek, the localization either consciously or by lucky accident, kept his name as Kamek, giving him a big distinguishing element from his species.

The idea of Kamek the main Magikoopa is one that persists to this day and it makes a lot of sense why. Given his shown connection to Bowser in his debut game, there is no reason to assume the most prominent Magikoopas aren’t this particular one and localization was happy to keep the concept around.

In Japan meanwhile, Kamek the character is not a foreign concept, but many materials do not make a formal distinction between the character and the species. It’s there, just more vague. You can sense that in localizations too, with how there are a couple notable oddities.

Mario Party 9 has a playable Magikoopa who is referred to as such in american localization, is called Kamek in other versions, like the german translation. Whether this is meant to be the character or a generic member of the species is genuinely not clear. Not helping matters is how european translations sometimes call generic Magikoopas like in the first couple Paper Mario games and as recent as Bowser’s Fury, Kameks.

A particularly noteworthy example is Giant Kamek in Super Princess Peach. His status as a boss, the one to guard Luigi no less, makes it easy to take him as Kamek transformed, but then you look at the Glossary:

A Kamek. It’s meant to be a generic member of the species, in a new form.

The truth is that Mario is a very, as I like to call it ‘’function over flavor’’ series. It’s more about the function, such as a main red Toad or a main Magikoopa and not so much the finer details like whether the vest color is correct, even if many games DO take that into account.

Because of this, I think the thing to look for is consistency, whatever fits the consistent image is the most likely answer. We will never know in some cases if the character in question is a generic member of the species or the main one, but that is because Nintendo themselves often don’t put that much stock into it.

On that note, while localizations, despite greater efforts to define things can fumble too, I don’t think that means they don’t ‘’count’’. I generally don’t agree with the idea that only japanese sources have any say with how to interpret Mario stuff, because the series does not have the lore consistency to give that idea weight.

On top of that, we have seen that western influences have affected the franchise at large more than once.  The western Super Mario Bros 2 is the most obvious example of this, with how many elements of it have made it far into the franchise. Most notable though are the Koopalings, who didn’t even have names in the japanese version of SMB3 and adapted their localization given names.

This kind of stuff isn’t like say, Monsteropolis in the US Mega Man manual or the US Sonic CD manual clumsily trying to treat Amy as Sally. This stuff is still with the franchise today and as the movie shows, still matters.

THE Toad is a thing in the movie and as is Kamek. Both clearly defined as such and while the New York backstory is not a western invention, it was more emphasized in the west and that’s back too. It’s even Brooklyn again and I’m not even sure if that was ever specified in japanese material or direct confirmation from Miyamoto.

Mario is not a story centric series where only the original text matters. It’s a extremely loose canon, where what the west did, still matters to this very day and is of equal importance.

With all this in mind, let’s talk Captain Toad.

To understand my point on what I mean with contradictions regarding him and Toad being separate characters, we need to look at what Captain was like in the Galaxy games.

In these games, Captain Toad as a name did not exist, with him being only referred to as ‘’the captain of the Toad Brigade’’ and being specifically shown to be a self proclaimed captain at that. Even his inability to jump was invented later on and is contradicted by many level set pieces he shows up in, as well as this:

Even the headlamp, one of his defining visual features, wasn’t treated as anything that special, with BankToad being able to get it at a certain level of deposited Star Bits in Galaxy 2.

He wasn’t really talked about in any official materials and didn’t even get an official render of any sort, but you know who did and is on the cover of Galaxy 2 no less?

Toad. I have seen the argument that this could be an error, but for that to make it all the way to the cover, the first thing someone would see of the game when buying it, would make that a very massive one. Additionally, Toad also has a render for Galaxy 1, even though he wouldn’t have any presence in either game aside from a Save File icon and a cameo in the story book opening of Galaxy 1, if he’s not Captain. The only existing bios for Toad or Captain in these games, even identify them as the same character.

It does line up with what I said about consistency. Sunshine gave us a group of 5 Toads in different colors, with the red vest and red spots one being singled out to be the main Toad. Galaxy introducing a similar group and making the red Toad, in a franchise where a red Toad is one of the main characters, THE Toad, like in Sunshine or the Baseball games, makes sense because there is precedent.

Then many years later came 3D World, the game where Toad and Captain were supposedly clarified to be different characters, co-existing at the same time.

This is also the game where the main playable Toad is a Blue Toad. THE Toad, has never been portrayed that way before or since, to the point where every time Nintendo reuses one of the Blue Toad renders in this game

They are recolored to fit his proper appearance, because this has NEVER been how he has been portrayed. The game really emphasizes the playable Toad being a blue one too, with how the credits scene even shows Captain with a group of Toads, missing a blue one.

This flies heavily in the face of past established consistency, where between Sunshine, the many spin-offs or Luigi’s Mansion Dark Moon, THE Toad has always been distinguished as the red one, because that’s the first one, who established himself as THE Toad.

One could point to his blue color palette in NES SMB2 and I have seen arguments that it’s an homage to that. We don’t have official word on this, but I find that very hard to buy, because he was never supposed to look like this. When he WAS depicted that way in art, everyone was portrayed with their in-game colors:

And in every other case, everyone had their proper colors:

3D World doesn’t do either. The idea of a homage rings hollow when Mario, Luigi and Peach are the same as usual and those couple spots needing to be recolored to not confuse him with Mario, also doesn’t really make sense, given how drastically different their body types are. 

It goes so far the official Super Mario website even lists red spots specifically as one of Toad’s defining features, which would make him being Blue Toad in 3D World even stranger:

The game also lacks any kind of red spots and blue vest Toad, which 3D Land ensured there was only one of, to identify him as THE Toad. You know who had an icon like that in the reveal trailer though?

Captain Toad. Completely new art no less, that stuck around in the game to be in the reveal trailer, less than half a year away from release.

Also, yah know how you can find Captain Toad in levels and sometimes get a collectible out of it?

Toad did the same thing in 3D Land. Even in terms of gameplay function, the two are extremely similar. Similarities between the two are a running theme from here on out.

Prominent red Toads who throw turnips, give out stars, have Toadette as a partner, act as leaders to other Toads and have been depicted with fairy partners (though in Captain’s case only in concept art).

It is baffling how much they have in common and you can tell that even more by how much the two are linked.

Captain Toad Treasure Tracker has an amiibo bundle, amiibo functionality and a pre-order bonus, centered around a character that, according to some sources, you don’t even play as.

All by Nintendo themselves btw. Same with say, this video title or german eShop description for the game, which refer to the main character as Captain and Toad interchangeably.

This even extends to in-game content:

And an Odyssey developer interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVNYfoFcrZY

Then you got Mario Maker call Toad Captain:

Smash let’s Toad’s spirit evolve into Captain, which is tied to gameplay AND in-line with stuff like Shadow becoming Super Shadow or Alm and Celica becoming their adult selves. The game even makes the distinction that THE Toad exists in the tips, where Peach’s Toad is THE Toad and Daisy’s (who is blue ala’ 3D World btw) is a Toad. 

And then you get Mario Kart Tour, the only spin-off Captain Toad is in and the same one where someone like Peachette can be an independent playable character distant from Toadette OR Peach, so yeah. He even shares most of his animations with Toad:

A trait mainly seen with the simpler alts. Pit Stop Toad has more unique animations than Captain has.

VS Tour promos even group him with Toad, right next to him. Same happens with Peachette, who is correctly placed between Toadette and her alts.

Hillariously enough, even LEGO gets in on this, by giving Toad a treasure hunting themed expansion:

As I said, it’s not my intent to ignore official word. Officially, Captain is regarded as a different character, I’m just pointing out how much the games themselves don’t support that and how it requires a lot of justification and ignoring of past patterns to get there and explain away the mountains of counter evidence.

I don’t think it’s fair to dismiss every source that speaks against those claims either, these are just people trying to make sense of the mess Nintendo has left behind and I could just as easily point out that the original confirmation Captain is a separate character, also came with Toads not truly being mushrooms. A claim that contradicts a lot of past descriptions of the species, dialogue mentioning things like spores and Toad showing spore abilities at multiple points.

Not saying this invalidates the entire thing, just pointing out this is a nightmarish mess if you want to maintain consistency.

It’s why Movie Toad is exciting to me.

Giving him the backpack, Captain’s most defining feature these days and thus possibly silently merging them, is to me, the best and least complicated thing they could do. 

Time will tell if this will affect anything, but Nintendo allowing for this at all does tell me they are fine with the characters being linked, which I hope translates to good things for him. Toad has a lot to gain from being Captain, while Captain really struggles to be his own thing, because he IS Toad in all but official word.

[wfagamerants]

Doing an update, because quite a bit has happened since.

For one, the movie is long out now and on top of the backpack, he also got the Captain Toad theme during his introduction and his section of the credits and on top of that, we got this pamphlet:

Given out in japanese showings of the movie to explain references in the movie and it just calls Treasure Tracker the first 3D Action game to star Toad, no distinction between him and Captain made, so they are pushing that beyond just being the movie’s own interpretation.

I have also seen an argument that his introduction in Galaxy 2 proves they can’t be the same character, since Captain introduces himself, but not only does that already contradict Galaxy 1:

(Which also indicated him and his gang hung out with Luigi, someone Toad knows)

but in at least one langauge, he doesn’t introduce himself so formally, so while I don’t know the japanese text, it seems to be a depending on the translation thing:

And even if it is the same in japanese, it contradicts Galaxy 1 and Wonder has him not recognize anyone on the roster, not even Toadette, who he shared an entire game with:

So I genuinely don’t take this stuff at face value, the platformers aren’t consistent with that stuff.

Aside from that we also got a big game push with it’s own trailer, webpage:

Explore the world of Mario | Nintendo

Selected Nintendo Switch games to explore the world of Mario

Once again treating Treasure Tracker as Toad’s game and in the case of the Switch news tab above, even refering to him as Captain, since it only talks about the characters on the thumbnail.

And on top of that, we got even more instances of THE Toad in a definitive way and Captain refusing to show up together.

Wonder, which has Captain as an NPC, does not have Toad on the roster, despite how massive it is:

and Rosalina’s Ice World, as part of the Booster Course Pass, which reuses Tour assets left and right, skipped out on an opportunity to have Captain cameo in an obvious place:

So yeah, that’s all that happened since then.

Point is they still don’t commit to what they claim and it straight up feels like they are walking back on it.

[wfagamerants]

A couple more things, in part because I want to address something. Also doing it via reblog again, because for some reason the editor didn’t want to save additions last time.

A thing I never touched on with the Smash Ultimate example is regular Toad’s spirit fight, which uses Captain Toad Treasure Tracker music:

An interesting thing to do given there are plenty other tracks that could be deemed fitting for Toad himself, including a brand new Super Mario Bros 2 remix, yet they went for Captain Toad music.

I also saw this news article on Nintendo’s official website:

Talks about the Toad vs Toadette Tour in Mario Kart Tour, but has Captain on the thumbnail, while talking about Toad.

Even extends to the Tour itself, since all VS Tours have a spotlight pipe with variants of the featured characters and Toad got:

Captain.

The only one who breaks that pattern is Funky, in place of a DK alt for the Bowser vs Donkey Kong Tour, but that’s also because DK didn’t have an alt at the time and wouldn’t get one until not long before Tour would cease to add new content.

The german Treasure Tracker website also contains another example of Captain just being called Toad: 

We also got yet another instance of Treasure Tracker being applied to Toad, via the german Mario Portal:

Especially noteworthy since all entries have the characters’ own games listed first. 

RPG also makes sense to list for him, due to Toad being a major NPC and a game mechanic via Toad Assist, to the point I have even seen more than one japanese fan artist draw him as an honorary member of the party…which has no bearing on anything official, but it’s cute.

Wonder meanwhile is an interesting one, because Blue and Yellow are the playable Toads (along with Toadette), so Captain is the only thing they can be referring to here. It’s not impossible they may be conflating character and species in this case, but we don’t actually know, especially since the bio, like all versions in all languages, emphasizes the red spots as a defining characteristic of Toad and while acknowledging him being a species, focuses on him as an individual.

This brings me to another point. Between the Mario Portal, Play Nintendo, the Japanese Movie Pamphlet, that promo video I brought up last time, the Switch News Tab article related to it AND the webpage related to it, we now have a minimum of six sources that call Treasure Tracker Toad’s game.

By contrast, 3D World, where supposedly, Blue Toad is THE Toad, is never tied to him in that kind of fashion and the description for this Play Nintendo video even explicably calls him Blue Toad and the video itself also just calls him a blue Toad:

Not even saying this one source is ultra definitive, I am just collecting.

The Mario vs DK remake also heavily flies in the face of the idea that Toad HAD to be blue due to worries he and Mario could get mixed up.

Even more so given Toad and Mario are the only playable characters here. The choice to leave out Red Spot, Blue Vest, Toad in the platformers like 3D World and Wonder, whenever Captain is around, comes off as very deliberate. as in they are just the same Red Toad.

That is a good cue to get to talk a bit. I have had some experiences with people not quite understanding what I am going for, so here is the gist of it in a few points:

For one, I am not at all saying I am ‘’right’’ or ‘’correcting’’ anything. I fully acknowledge that official word in the past has referred to them as separate characters, I am just pointing out official sources that contradict this idea.

Secondly, while I have a preference, none of my points are born from bias. My conclusion comes from the evidence, rather than me twisting the evidence for my conclusion. There really isn’t anything interpretive about the examples I cite and I make it a point to only show what’s being said and shown in official capacity, no speculation.

I also take every source into account and not just japanese ones, because with Mario, western influences do very much have weight. I mean, this is the same franchise where the Koopalings had no individual names in Japan and had to be named in localization, with those names being adapted back into Japan, as I mentioned waaaay earlier.

A very extreme case, but that should tell you something.

Another thing is that I explicably avoid mentioning canon, since there is no officially defined one and Miyamoto himself has gone on record to define Mario as a fluid cartoon canon, where things can change depending on what each game wants to do:

This is also where the movie comes in. A common retort I get is that it’s not canon and the thing is: this was never about canon, it’s about the fact that Nintendo allowed for Toad and Captain to be so blatantly the same character in Mario’s biggest non-gaming outing to date. 

Even more so since they know the movie has a influence on how the average joe sees Mario, with Wonder’s animation upgrade being meant to live up to the movie and the Peach Showtime key art being changed to make her resemble movie Peach more:

And that’s not even going into the japanese movie pamphlet, meant to explain how things are in the games, which continues to treat Toad and Captain as the same character and calls Treasure Tracker the first 3D game to star Toad, no effort to distinguish him and Captain present, which implies deeper intent than just the movie doing it’s own thing.

And then there is the supposed personality difference between Toad and Captain, which I never got.

Captain is supposedly too cowardly to be Toad, yet is described as courageous by Nintendo themselves:

And even spends ⅔ of his game adventuring to save Toadette, despite how afraid he often is, which also shows how loyal he is, a trait deeply associated with Toad.

Toad himself can be compared to Luigi, scared, but brave. There is a reason this art exists:

Luigi’s Mansion in general sums Toad up well, especially 3. He is visibly afraid and in a position where he genuinely can’t do much, yet he is the only one of Lugi’s captured friends in 3 besides E. Gadd, who actively helps out after being rescued, leading to a later escort mission with him.

Toad is on several occasions also shown as a leader figure for the Toads, especially in sports games where they cheer him on (Mario Golf World Tour) or serve as part of his special move (Dr. Mario World, Mario Strikers Battle League).

Toad and Captain genuinely aren’t that different, even the treasure hunter aspect has been applied to Toad in LEGO Mario as said before, an ongoing merch line with a gigantic name.

That’s all I wanted to say, to make my stance maybe a bit more clear than it was before. This entire thing is me wanting to point things out that make Nintendo’s exact intent pretty confusing. On their own none of these would mean much to me, but the fact stuff keeps happening is what makes me question things.

[wfagamerants]

Forgot a crucial detail:

They even play the same instrument.

That’s very important.

[wfagamerants]

Out of curiosity I was looking through Nintendo's official Twitter accounts to see what they say about Toad and wouldn't you know: I found more stuff for here!

Let's start with this Puzzles & Dragons ad:

This isn't inherently tied to the Captain, thing, but I mentioned how it was the one example post-the Wii era where Toad was depicted with a red vest, showing there CAN be instances where that happens and thus it doesn't make Captain's red vest in Galaxy a sign he is someone else, especially with it being during the era where they still did that sometimes.

That game also had a series of tweets on Nintendo's german account, where Toad would give tips and this one is especially interesting:

''Wenn Toad isn't hunting treasure, he gives you valuable tips for Puzzles & Dragons: Super Mario Bros Edition''

Yeah, this is making very explicit reference to Toad being Captain.

Outside of that I found these two tweets with a Toad amiibo with a little headlamp, to promote Treasure Tracker:

One of those things that very explicitly invites seeing the two as the same character and even follows a trend of Captain being associated with blue vest Toads (the initial 3D World life icon and the Ultimate spirit situation) which happened conveniently at the time Toad stopped ever being depicted with a red vest, safe for that one single P&D exception.

This poll also lists Treasure Tracker as a game with Toad on it:

This ad for UK Store Treasure Tracker pre-order pins refers to Captain as just Toad:

On top of that, this checklist lists Treasure Tracker in a way that very explicibly advertises it as Toad's game:

And lastly, Mario Run had a promotional event for Treasure Tracker themed all around Toad, which would be strange if he isn't Captain, since he has no real relation to the game besides the Pixel Toads if that's the case:

So yeah. The list keeps growing.

[wfagamerants]

What other characters you did smash movesets for?

I haven't really done anything as fleshed out as the Toad & Wanda one to be honest.

[wfagamerants]

I have made it very blatant that I am a fan of Toad.

If you followed me for a while, you also likely have heard me vent about the claim Toad and Captain Toad are different characters, citing multiple contradictions to this claim in the games themselves.

I’m not here to deny official word or push my preferences (though I do have them), rather I want to give my perspective on the whole thing in full and delve a little into how Nintendo handles main members of a Mario species in general.

First, it’s important to recognize that Nintendo is loose with a lot of stuff. Many different people work on these games and you can see different takes on how to present certain species quite frequently.

When we think of Toad, the main way we think of him distinguished from other members of his species is the red spots and blue vest combo. In a large number of games that is indeed the case.

Most spin-offs, Super Mario 3D Land and Luigi’s Mansion Dark Moon, only to name some. Those make it simple, red spots and blue vest Toad is THE Toad. Other red Toads have a red vest.

However, not every game makes it so nice and simple. The pre-GameCube games had ALL the basic Toads rock the red spots and blue vest combo. THE Toad was distinguished more by role, being the only Toad in the game or as in Super Mario RPG, being the only Toad to have Toad: in his text box, even in the japanese version I might add, to indicate he is the main one you keep meeting.

The modern games aren’t without occasional screwyness themselves though. Odyssey reverts to the idea of all generic Toads using that look and then you have things like Sunshine or the Baseball games, where there is no red spots & blue vest Toad, but a red vest Toad is identified as THE Toad in things like the manual:

It’s weird, but it should be said the 2000s were still a bit of a transitional era for Mario. It took until 2004 for short sleeves Wario to be consistently used in spin-offs for instance and Peach still had her old dress in Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door. You saw oddities like that around a fair bit.

The only time the Toad thing ever came up again in later years is Puzzles & Dragons SMB Edition and even that one has THE Toad on the cover, despite him having a red vest in the game,

Something that is even stranger given that by then they had stock Red Toad renders around and Nintendo is so overprotective of Mario as an IP, that them letting this slide is notable.

While this kinda stuff muddles things, it doesn’t take away from the fact a THE Toad exists. It’s seemingly more about the iconic visuals, than the detail. That visual of a single red Toad being with the rest of the main cast.

Something that still persists to this very day and will, with the distinctions we prefer to go for (only one blue vest, red spots Toad) even be present in the movie, which Nintendo is directly involved with.

It’s a thing that extends beyond Toad and has been present with other characters representing their species as well. Kamek being the most blatant example of it.

Even prior to Yoshi’s Island, singular important Magikoopas such as a particular Yoshi’s Safari boss, a right-hand man Magikoopa in Super Mario kun’s Super Mario World story or the eeeeeevil Koopa wizard Wizenheimer in the Super Mario World cartoon, had already appeared as important parts of Bowser’s troops.

It’s with Yoshi’s Island that one particular Magikoopa, who was the one who raised Bowser no less, was introduced. While this had no distinct name in Japan, where all Magikoopas are known as Kamek, the localization either consciously or by lucky accident, kept his name as Kamek, giving him a big distinguishing element from his species.

The idea of Kamek the main Magikoopa is one that persists to this day and it makes a lot of sense why. Given his shown connection to Bowser in his debut game, there is no reason to assume the most prominent Magikoopas aren’t this particular one and localization was happy to keep the concept around.

In Japan meanwhile, Kamek the character is not a foreign concept, but many materials do not make a formal distinction between the character and the species. It’s there, just more vague. You can sense that in localizations too, with how there are a couple notable oddities.

Mario Party 9 has a playable Magikoopa who is referred to as such in american localization, is called Kamek in other versions, like the german translation. Whether this is meant to be the character or a generic member of the species is genuinely not clear. Not helping matters is how european translations sometimes call generic Magikoopas like in the first couple Paper Mario games and as recent as Bowser’s Fury, Kameks.

A particularly noteworthy example is Giant Kamek in Super Princess Peach. His status as a boss, the one to guard Luigi no less, makes it easy to take him as Kamek transformed, but then you look at the Glossary:

A Kamek. It’s meant to be a generic member of the species, in a new form.

The truth is that Mario is a very, as I like to call it ‘’function over flavor’’ series. It’s more about the function, such as a main red Toad or a main Magikoopa and not so much the finer details like whether the vest color is correct, even if many games DO take that into account.

Because of this, I think the thing to look for is consistency, whatever fits the consistent image is the most likely answer. We will never know in some cases if the character in question is a generic member of the species or the main one, but that is because Nintendo themselves often don’t put that much stock into it.

On that note, while localizations, despite greater efforts to define things can fumble too, I don’t think that means they don’t ‘’count’’. I generally don’t agree with the idea that only japanese sources have any say with how to interpret Mario stuff, because the series does not have the lore consistency to give that idea weight.

On top of that, we have seen that western influences have affected the franchise at large more than once.  The western Super Mario Bros 2 is the most obvious example of this, with how many elements of it have made it far into the franchise. Most notable though are the Koopalings, who didn’t even have names in the japanese version of SMB3 and adapted their localization given names.

This kind of stuff isn’t like say, Monsteropolis in the US Mega Man manual or the US Sonic CD manual clumsily trying to treat Amy as Sally. This stuff is still with the franchise today and as the movie shows, still matters.

THE Toad is a thing in the movie and as is Kamek. Both clearly defined as such and while the New York backstory is not a western invention, it was more emphasized in the west and that’s back too. It’s even Brooklyn again and I’m not even sure if that was ever specified in japanese material or direct confirmation from Miyamoto.

Mario is not a story centric series where only the original text matters. It’s a extremely loose canon, where what the west did, still matters to this very day and is of equal importance.

With all this in mind, let’s talk Captain Toad.

To understand my point on what I mean with contradictions regarding him and Toad being separate characters, we need to look at what Captain was like in the Galaxy games.

In these games, Captain Toad as a name did not exist, with him being only referred to as ‘’the captain of the Toad Brigade’’ and being specifically shown to be a self proclaimed captain at that. Even his inability to jump was invented later on and is contradicted by many level set pieces he shows up in, as well as this:

Even the headlamp, one of his defining visual features, wasn’t treated as anything that special, with BankToad being able to get it at a certain level of deposited Star Bits in Galaxy 2.

He wasn’t really talked about in any official materials and didn’t even get an official render of any sort, but you know who did and is on the cover of Galaxy 2 no less?

Toad. I have seen the argument that this could be an error, but for that to make it all the way to the cover, the first thing someone would see of the game when buying it, would make that a very massive one. Additionally, Toad also has a render for Galaxy 1, even though he wouldn’t have any presence in either game aside from a Save File icon and a cameo in the story book opening of Galaxy 1, if he’s not Captain. The only existing bios for Toad or Captain in these games, even identify them as the same character.

It does line up with what I said about consistency. Sunshine gave us a group of 5 Toads in different colors, with the red vest and red spots one being singled out to be the main Toad. Galaxy introducing a similar group and making the red Toad, in a franchise where a red Toad is one of the main characters, THE Toad, like in Sunshine or the Baseball games, makes sense because there is precedent.

Then many years later came 3D World, the game where Toad and Captain were supposedly clarified to be different characters, co-existing at the same time.

This is also the game where the main playable Toad is a Blue Toad. THE Toad, has never been portrayed that way before or since, to the point where every time Nintendo reuses one of the Blue Toad renders in this game

They are recolored to fit his proper appearance, because this has NEVER been how he has been portrayed. The game really emphasizes the playable Toad being a blue one too, with how the credits scene even shows Captain with a group of Toads, missing a blue one.

This flies heavily in the face of past established consistency, where between Sunshine, the many spin-offs or Luigi’s Mansion Dark Moon, THE Toad has always been distinguished as the red one, because that’s the first one, who established himself as THE Toad.

One could point to his blue color palette in NES SMB2 and I have seen arguments that it’s an homage to that. We don’t have official word on this, but I find that very hard to buy, because he was never supposed to look like this. When he WAS depicted that way in art, everyone was portrayed with their in-game colors:

And in every other case, everyone had their proper colors:

3D World doesn’t do either. The idea of a homage rings hollow when Mario, Luigi and Peach are the same as usual and those couple spots needing to be recolored to not confuse him with Mario, also doesn’t really make sense, given how drastically different their body types are. 

It goes so far the official Super Mario website even lists red spots specifically as one of Toad’s defining features, which would make him being Blue Toad in 3D World even stranger:

The game also lacks any kind of red spots and blue vest Toad, which 3D Land ensured there was only one of, to identify him as THE Toad. You know who had an icon like that in the reveal trailer though?

Captain Toad. Completely new art no less, that stuck around in the game to be in the reveal trailer, less than half a year away from release.

Also, yah know how you can find Captain Toad in levels and sometimes get a collectible out of it?

Toad did the same thing in 3D Land. Even in terms of gameplay function, the two are extremely similar. Similarities between the two are a running theme from here on out.

Prominent red Toads who throw turnips, give out stars, have Toadette as a partner, act as leaders to other Toads and have been depicted with fairy partners (though in Captain’s case only in concept art).

It is baffling how much they have in common and you can tell that even more by how much the two are linked.

Captain Toad Treasure Tracker has an amiibo bundle, amiibo functionality and a pre-order bonus, centered around a character that, according to some sources, you don’t even play as.

All by Nintendo themselves btw. Same with say, this video title or german eShop description for the game, which refer to the main character as Captain and Toad interchangeably.

This even extends to in-game content:

And an Odyssey developer interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVNYfoFcrZY

Then you got Mario Maker call Toad Captain:

Smash let’s Toad’s spirit evolve into Captain, which is tied to gameplay AND in-line with stuff like Shadow becoming Super Shadow or Alm and Celica becoming their adult selves. The game even makes the distinction that THE Toad exists in the tips, where Peach’s Toad is THE Toad and Daisy’s (who is blue ala’ 3D World btw) is a Toad. 

And then you get Mario Kart Tour, the only spin-off Captain Toad is in and the same one where someone like Peachette can be an independent playable character distant from Toadette OR Peach, so yeah. He even shares most of his animations with Toad:

A trait mainly seen with the simpler alts. Pit Stop Toad has more unique animations than Captain has.

VS Tour promos even group him with Toad, right next to him. Same happens with Peachette, who is correctly placed between Toadette and her alts.

Hillariously enough, even LEGO gets in on this, by giving Toad a treasure hunting themed expansion:

As I said, it’s not my intent to ignore official word. Officially, Captain is regarded as a different character, I’m just pointing out how much the games themselves don’t support that and how it requires a lot of justification and ignoring of past patterns to get there and explain away the mountains of counter evidence.

I don’t think it’s fair to dismiss every source that speaks against those claims either, these are just people trying to make sense of the mess Nintendo has left behind and I could just as easily point out that the original confirmation Captain is a separate character, also came with Toads not truly being mushrooms. A claim that contradicts a lot of past descriptions of the species, dialogue mentioning things like spores and Toad showing spore abilities at multiple points.

Not saying this invalidates the entire thing, just pointing out this is a nightmarish mess if you want to maintain consistency.

It’s why Movie Toad is exciting to me.

Giving him the backpack, Captain’s most defining feature these days and thus possibly silently merging them, is to me, the best and least complicated thing they could do. 

Time will tell if this will affect anything, but Nintendo allowing for this at all does tell me they are fine with the characters being linked, which I hope translates to good things for him. Toad has a lot to gain from being Captain, while Captain really struggles to be his own thing, because he IS Toad in all but official word.

[wfagamerants]

Doing an update, because quite a bit has happened since.

For one, the movie is long out now and on top of the backpack, he also got the Captain Toad theme during his introduction and his section of the credits and on top of that, we got this pamphlet:

Given out in japanese showings of the movie to explain references in the movie and it just calls Treasure Tracker the first 3D Action game to star Toad, no distinction between him and Captain made, so they are pushing that beyond just being the movie’s own interpretation.

I have also seen an argument that his introduction in Galaxy 2 proves they can’t be the same character, since Captain introduces himself, but not only does that already contradict Galaxy 1:

(Which also indicated him and his gang hung out with Luigi, someone Toad knows)

but in at least one langauge, he doesn’t introduce himself so formally, so while I don’t know the japanese text, it seems to be a depending on the translation thing:

And even if it is the same in japanese, it contradicts Galaxy 1 and Wonder has him not recognize anyone on the roster, not even Toadette, who he shared an entire game with:

So I genuinely don’t take this stuff at face value, the platformers aren’t consistent with that stuff.

Aside from that we also got a big game push with it’s own trailer, webpage:

Explore the world of Mario | Nintendo

Selected Nintendo Switch games to explore the world of Mario

Once again treating Treasure Tracker as Toad’s game and in the case of the Switch news tab above, even refering to him as Captain, since it only talks about the characters on the thumbnail.

And on top of that, we got even more instances of THE Toad in a definitive way and Captain refusing to show up together.

Wonder, which has Captain as an NPC, does not have Toad on the roster, despite how massive it is:

and Rosalina’s Ice World, as part of the Booster Course Pass, which reuses Tour assets left and right, skipped out on an opportunity to have Captain cameo in an obvious place:

So yeah, that’s all that happened since then.

Point is they still don’t commit to what they claim and it straight up feels like they are walking back on it.

[wfagamerants]

A couple more things, in part because I want to address something. Also doing it via reblog again, because for some reason the editor didn’t want to save additions last time.

A thing I never touched on with the Smash Ultimate example is regular Toad’s spirit fight, which uses Captain Toad Treasure Tracker music:

An interesting thing to do given there are plenty other tracks that could be deemed fitting for Toad himself, including a brand new Super Mario Bros 2 remix, yet they went for Captain Toad music.

I also saw this news article on Nintendo’s official website:

Talks about the Toad vs Toadette Tour in Mario Kart Tour, but has Captain on the thumbnail, while talking about Toad.

Even extends to the Tour itself, since all VS Tours have a spotlight pipe with variants of the featured characters and Toad got:

Captain.

The only one who breaks that pattern is Funky, in place of a DK alt for the Bowser vs Donkey Kong Tour, but that’s also because DK didn’t have an alt at the time and wouldn’t get one until not long before Tour would cease to add new content.

The german Treasure Tracker website also contains another example of Captain just being called Toad: 

We also got yet another instance of Treasure Tracker being applied to Toad, via the german Mario Portal:

Especially noteworthy since all entries have the characters’ own games listed first. 

RPG also makes sense to list for him, due to Toad being a major NPC and a game mechanic via Toad Assist, to the point I have even seen more than one japanese fan artist draw him as an honorary member of the party…which has no bearing on anything official, but it’s cute.

Wonder meanwhile is an interesting one, because Blue and Yellow are the playable Toads (along with Toadette), so Captain is the only thing they can be referring to here. It’s not impossible they may be conflating character and species in this case, but we don’t actually know, especially since the bio, like all versions in all languages, emphasizes the red spots as a defining characteristic of Toad and while acknowledging him being a species, focuses on him as an individual.

This brings me to another point. Between the Mario Portal, Play Nintendo, the Japanese Movie Pamphlet, that promo video I brought up last time, the Switch News Tab article related to it AND the webpage related to it, we now have a minimum of six sources that call Treasure Tracker Toad’s game.

By contrast, 3D World, where supposedly, Blue Toad is THE Toad, is never tied to him in that kind of fashion and the description for this Play Nintendo video even explicably calls him Blue Toad and the video itself also just calls him a blue Toad:

Not even saying this one source is ultra definitive, I am just collecting.

The Mario vs DK remake also heavily flies in the face of the idea that Toad HAD to be blue due to worries he and Mario could get mixed up.

Even more so given Toad and Mario are the only playable characters here. The choice to leave out Red Spot, Blue Vest, Toad in the platformers like 3D World and Wonder, whenever Captain is around, comes off as very deliberate. as in they are just the same Red Toad.

That is a good cue to get to talk a bit. I have had some experiences with people not quite understanding what I am going for, so here is the gist of it in a few points:

For one, I am not at all saying I am ‘’right’’ or ‘’correcting’’ anything. I fully acknowledge that official word in the past has referred to them as separate characters, I am just pointing out official sources that contradict this idea.

Secondly, while I have a preference, none of my points are born from bias. My conclusion comes from the evidence, rather than me twisting the evidence for my conclusion. There really isn’t anything interpretive about the examples I cite and I make it a point to only show what’s being said and shown in official capacity, no speculation.

I also take every source into account and not just japanese ones, because with Mario, western influences do very much have weight. I mean, this is the same franchise where the Koopalings had no individual names in Japan and had to be named in localization, with those names being adapted back into Japan, as I mentioned waaaay earlier.

A very extreme case, but that should tell you something.

Another thing is that I explicably avoid mentioning canon, since there is no officially defined one and Miyamoto himself has gone on record to define Mario as a fluid cartoon canon, where things can change depending on what each game wants to do:

This is also where the movie comes in. A common retort I get is that it’s not canon and the thing is: this was never about canon, it’s about the fact that Nintendo allowed for Toad and Captain to be so blatantly the same character in Mario’s biggest non-gaming outing to date. 

Even more so since they know the movie has a influence on how the average joe sees Mario, with Wonder’s animation upgrade being meant to live up to the movie and the Peach Showtime key art being changed to make her resemble movie Peach more:

And that’s not even going into the japanese movie pamphlet, meant to explain how things are in the games, which continues to treat Toad and Captain as the same character and calls Treasure Tracker the first 3D game to star Toad, no effort to distinguish him and Captain present, which implies deeper intent than just the movie doing it’s own thing.

And then there is the supposed personality difference between Toad and Captain, which I never got.

Captain is supposedly too cowardly to be Toad, yet is described as courageous by Nintendo themselves:

And even spends ⅔ of his game adventuring to save Toadette, despite how afraid he often is, which also shows how loyal he is, a trait deeply associated with Toad.

Toad himself can be compared to Luigi, scared, but brave. There is a reason this art exists:

Luigi’s Mansion in general sums Toad up well, especially 3. He is visibly afraid and in a position where he genuinely can’t do much, yet he is the only one of Lugi’s captured friends in 3 besides E. Gadd, who actively helps out after being rescued, leading to a later escort mission with him.

Toad is on several occasions also shown as a leader figure for the Toads, especially in sports games where they cheer him on (Mario Golf World Tour) or serve as part of his special move (Dr. Mario World, Mario Strikers Battle League).

Toad and Captain genuinely aren’t that different, even the treasure hunter aspect has been applied to Toad in LEGO Mario as said before, an ongoing merch line with a gigantic name.

That’s all I wanted to say, to make my stance maybe a bit more clear than it was before. This entire thing is me wanting to point things out that make Nintendo’s exact intent pretty confusing. On their own none of these would mean much to me, but the fact stuff keeps happening is what makes me question things.

[wfagamerants]

Forgot a crucial detail:

They even play the same instrument.

That's very important.

[wfagamerants]

Just wondering but do u have any HD Scans of the entire Wario Woods/Mario and Wario manga storylines along with others that have Captain Syrup, wario woods characters, and Wanda appear in as well?

A mountain of Mario manga

Here's one good source for nearly the full Comic BomBom Mario run. Most my sources are no longer up, but this one is still there.

[wfagamerants]

If Wanda and rest of Wario Woods/World/Land/Ware cast ever appeared in the Mario movie, how would they be portrayed, how would they be changed, how would they be part of that universe and what celebrities would voice them?

Also how would some of them that never spoken in the games(either in full sentences, words, or sounds) , especially Wanda, would sound like as well? (In games and everything else)

Not sure on VAs but I do picture there would be major changes to how Wario himself is portrayed, by having them be around.

Wario in the Mario games tends to stay true to being a rival of varying degrees of antagonism. Having his own friends and enemies be around would likely lead to him being more of a true neutral, since it gives him his own cast to bounce off of more.

How much they know Mario himself beyond Wanda is a question mark, though the Volts would obviously look up to him.

Honestly, that question is worth it's own post on how the Wario cast could interact with the Mario crew. I should get on that.

[wfagamerants]

I was gonna ask you this but since you don’t have an ask box, I’m gonna ask you here if it’s fine with you.

If Nintendo ever decided they wanted to put Wanda (from Mario and Wario) in Smash Bros as DLC as both a Retro and Mario Rep and as either her own playable character or as a duo with Toad/Captain Toad/Toadette/Captain Toadette, what moves would she have, what kind of stage would they have, music would come with them, movesets, final smash, etc. how would they also be protayed in game as well both personality and look wise especially since Wanda hasn’t appeared in any of the 3d games and not the commercials she appeared in?

I’m also thinking about making art of that and how would that look like as well.

My Toad & Wanda Fighter Concept

Here it is, my first draft at a moveset for these two, I very much want to keep this one in mind and keep working out ideas, but I like what

Ooooh~ I'd be very interested to see that~

I actually made a full moveset for them years ago, which I still like, as linked above.

As for a stage, I'd say a inside the Tree stomp stage ala' Round Game in Wario's Woods would be a good fit and could be mechanically unique.

As for personality, I generally see Wanda as upbeat and friendly, but also assertive, perhaps to a fault, since she isn't a fighter herself. Someone who makes for a great support for the timid, but brave when it matters, Toad.

[wfagamerants]

I have made it very blatant that I am a fan of Toad.

If you followed me for a while, you also likely have heard me vent about the claim Toad and Captain Toad are different characters, citing multiple contradictions to this claim in the games themselves.

I’m not here to deny official word or push my preferences (though I do have them), rather I want to give my perspective on the whole thing in full and delve a little into how Nintendo handles main members of a Mario species in general.

First, it’s important to recognize that Nintendo is loose with a lot of stuff. Many different people work on these games and you can see different takes on how to present certain species quite frequently.

When we think of Toad, the main way we think of him distinguished from other members of his species is the red spots and blue vest combo. In a large number of games that is indeed the case.

Most spin-offs, Super Mario 3D Land and Luigi’s Mansion Dark Moon, only to name some. Those make it simple, red spots and blue vest Toad is THE Toad. Other red Toads have a red vest.

However, not every game makes it so nice and simple. The pre-GameCube games had ALL the basic Toads rock the red spots and blue vest combo. THE Toad was distinguished more by role, being the only Toad in the game or as in Super Mario RPG, being the only Toad to have Toad: in his text box, even in the japanese version I might add, to indicate he is the main one you keep meeting.

The modern games aren’t without occasional screwyness themselves though. Odyssey reverts to the idea of all generic Toads using that look and then you have things like Sunshine or the Baseball games, where there is no red spots & blue vest Toad, but a red vest Toad is identified as THE Toad in things like the manual:

It’s weird, but it should be said the 2000s were still a bit of a transitional era for Mario. It took until 2004 for short sleeves Wario to be consistently used in spin-offs for instance and Peach still had her old dress in Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door. You saw oddities like that around a fair bit.

The only time the Toad thing ever came up again in later years is Puzzles & Dragons SMB Edition and even that one has THE Toad on the cover, despite him having a red vest in the game,

Something that is even stranger given that by then they had stock Red Toad renders around and Nintendo is so overprotective of Mario as an IP, that them letting this slide is notable.

While this kinda stuff muddles things, it doesn’t take away from the fact a THE Toad exists. It’s seemingly more about the iconic visuals, than the detail. That visual of a single red Toad being with the rest of the main cast.

Something that still persists to this very day and will, with the distinctions we prefer to go for (only one blue vest, red spots Toad) even be present in the movie, which Nintendo is directly involved with.

It’s a thing that extends beyond Toad and has been present with other characters representing their species as well. Kamek being the most blatant example of it.

Even prior to Yoshi’s Island, singular important Magikoopas such as a particular Yoshi’s Safari boss, a right-hand man Magikoopa in Super Mario kun’s Super Mario World story or the eeeeeevil Koopa wizard Wizenheimer in the Super Mario World cartoon, had already appeared as important parts of Bowser’s troops.

It’s with Yoshi’s Island that one particular Magikoopa, who was the one who raised Bowser no less, was introduced. While this had no distinct name in Japan, where all Magikoopas are known as Kamek, the localization either consciously or by lucky accident, kept his name as Kamek, giving him a big distinguishing element from his species.

The idea of Kamek the main Magikoopa is one that persists to this day and it makes a lot of sense why. Given his shown connection to Bowser in his debut game, there is no reason to assume the most prominent Magikoopas aren’t this particular one and localization was happy to keep the concept around.

In Japan meanwhile, Kamek the character is not a foreign concept, but many materials do not make a formal distinction between the character and the species. It’s there, just more vague. You can sense that in localizations too, with how there are a couple notable oddities.

Mario Party 9 has a playable Magikoopa who is referred to as such in american localization, is called Kamek in other versions, like the german translation. Whether this is meant to be the character or a generic member of the species is genuinely not clear. Not helping matters is how european translations sometimes call generic Magikoopas like in the first couple Paper Mario games and as recent as Bowser’s Fury, Kameks.

A particularly noteworthy example is Giant Kamek in Super Princess Peach. His status as a boss, the one to guard Luigi no less, makes it easy to take him as Kamek transformed, but then you look at the Glossary:

A Kamek. It’s meant to be a generic member of the species, in a new form.

The truth is that Mario is a very, as I like to call it ‘’function over flavor’’ series. It’s more about the function, such as a main red Toad or a main Magikoopa and not so much the finer details like whether the vest color is correct, even if many games DO take that into account.

Because of this, I think the thing to look for is consistency, whatever fits the consistent image is the most likely answer. We will never know in some cases if the character in question is a generic member of the species or the main one, but that is because Nintendo themselves often don’t put that much stock into it.

On that note, while localizations, despite greater efforts to define things can fumble too, I don’t think that means they don’t ‘’count’’. I generally don’t agree with the idea that only japanese sources have any say with how to interpret Mario stuff, because the series does not have the lore consistency to give that idea weight.

On top of that, we have seen that western influences have affected the franchise at large more than once.  The western Super Mario Bros 2 is the most obvious example of this, with how many elements of it have made it far into the franchise. Most notable though are the Koopalings, who didn’t even have names in the japanese version of SMB3 and adapted their localization given names.

This kind of stuff isn’t like say, Monsteropolis in the US Mega Man manual or the US Sonic CD manual clumsily trying to treat Amy as Sally. This stuff is still with the franchise today and as the movie shows, still matters.

THE Toad is a thing in the movie and as is Kamek. Both clearly defined as such and while the New York backstory is not a western invention, it was more emphasized in the west and that’s back too. It’s even Brooklyn again and I’m not even sure if that was ever specified in japanese material or direct confirmation from Miyamoto.

Mario is not a story centric series where only the original text matters. It’s a extremely loose canon, where what the west did, still matters to this very day and is of equal importance.

With all this in mind, let’s talk Captain Toad.

To understand my point on what I mean with contradictions regarding him and Toad being separate characters, we need to look at what Captain was like in the Galaxy games.

In these games, Captain Toad as a name did not exist, with him being only referred to as ‘’the captain of the Toad Brigade’’ and being specifically shown to be a self proclaimed captain at that. Even his inability to jump was invented later on and is contradicted by many level set pieces he shows up in, as well as this:

Even the headlamp, one of his defining visual features, wasn’t treated as anything that special, with BankToad being able to get it at a certain level of deposited Star Bits in Galaxy 2.

He wasn’t really talked about in any official materials and didn’t even get an official render of any sort, but you know who did and is on the cover of Galaxy 2 no less?

Toad. I have seen the argument that this could be an error, but for that to make it all the way to the cover, the first thing someone would see of the game when buying it, would make that a very massive one. Additionally, Toad also has a render for Galaxy 1, even though he wouldn’t have any presence in either game aside from a Save File icon and a cameo in the story book opening of Galaxy 1, if he’s not Captain. The only existing bios for Toad or Captain in these games, even identify them as the same character.

It does line up with what I said about consistency. Sunshine gave us a group of 5 Toads in different colors, with the red vest and red spots one being singled out to be the main Toad. Galaxy introducing a similar group and making the red Toad, in a franchise where a red Toad is one of the main characters, THE Toad, like in Sunshine or the Baseball games, makes sense because there is precedent.

Then many years later came 3D World, the game where Toad and Captain were supposedly clarified to be different characters, co-existing at the same time.

This is also the game where the main playable Toad is a Blue Toad. THE Toad, has never been portrayed that way before or since, to the point where every time Nintendo reuses one of the Blue Toad renders in this game

They are recolored to fit his proper appearance, because this has NEVER been how he has been portrayed. The game really emphasizes the playable Toad being a blue one too, with how the credits scene even shows Captain with a group of Toads, missing a blue one.

This flies heavily in the face of past established consistency, where between Sunshine, the many spin-offs or Luigi’s Mansion Dark Moon, THE Toad has always been distinguished as the red one, because that’s the first one, who established himself as THE Toad.

One could point to his blue color palette in NES SMB2 and I have seen arguments that it’s an homage to that. We don’t have official word on this, but I find that very hard to buy, because he was never supposed to look like this. When he WAS depicted that way in art, everyone was portrayed with their in-game colors:

And in every other case, everyone had their proper colors:

3D World doesn’t do either. The idea of a homage rings hollow when Mario, Luigi and Peach are the same as usual and those couple spots needing to be recolored to not confuse him with Mario, also doesn’t really make sense, given how drastically different their body types are. 

It goes so far the official Super Mario website even lists red spots specifically as one of Toad’s defining features, which would make him being Blue Toad in 3D World even stranger:

The game also lacks any kind of red spots and blue vest Toad, which 3D Land ensured there was only one of, to identify him as THE Toad. You know who had an icon like that in the reveal trailer though?

Captain Toad. Completely new art no less, that stuck around in the game to be in the reveal trailer, less than half a year away from release.

Also, yah know how you can find Captain Toad in levels and sometimes get a collectible out of it?

Toad did the same thing in 3D Land. Even in terms of gameplay function, the two are extremely similar. Similarities between the two are a running theme from here on out.

Prominent red Toads who throw turnips, give out stars, have Toadette as a partner, act as leaders to other Toads and have been depicted with fairy partners (though in Captain’s case only in concept art).

It is baffling how much they have in common and you can tell that even more by how much the two are linked.

Captain Toad Treasure Tracker has an amiibo bundle, amiibo functionality and a pre-order bonus, centered around a character that, according to some sources, you don’t even play as.

All by Nintendo themselves btw. Same with say, this video title or german eShop description for the game, which refer to the main character as Captain and Toad interchangeably.

This even extends to in-game content:

And an Odyssey developer interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVNYfoFcrZY

Then you got Mario Maker call Toad Captain:

Smash let’s Toad’s spirit evolve into Captain, which is tied to gameplay AND in-line with stuff like Shadow becoming Super Shadow or Alm and Celica becoming their adult selves. The game even makes the distinction that THE Toad exists in the tips, where Peach’s Toad is THE Toad and Daisy’s (who is blue ala’ 3D World btw) is a Toad. 

And then you get Mario Kart Tour, the only spin-off Captain Toad is in and the same one where someone like Peachette can be an independent playable character distant from Toadette OR Peach, so yeah. He even shares most of his animations with Toad:

A trait mainly seen with the simpler alts. Pit Stop Toad has more unique animations than Captain has.

VS Tour promos even group him with Toad, right next to him. Same happens with Peachette, who is correctly placed between Toadette and her alts.

Hillariously enough, even LEGO gets in on this, by giving Toad a treasure hunting themed expansion:

As I said, it’s not my intent to ignore official word. Officially, Captain is regarded as a different character, I’m just pointing out how much the games themselves don’t support that and how it requires a lot of justification and ignoring of past patterns to get there and explain away the mountains of counter evidence.

I don’t think it’s fair to dismiss every source that speaks against those claims either, these are just people trying to make sense of the mess Nintendo has left behind and I could just as easily point out that the original confirmation Captain is a separate character, also came with Toads not truly being mushrooms. A claim that contradicts a lot of past descriptions of the species, dialogue mentioning things like spores and Toad showing spore abilities at multiple points.

Not saying this invalidates the entire thing, just pointing out this is a nightmarish mess if you want to maintain consistency.

It’s why Movie Toad is exciting to me.

Giving him the backpack, Captain’s most defining feature these days and thus possibly silently merging them, is to me, the best and least complicated thing they could do. 

Time will tell if this will affect anything, but Nintendo allowing for this at all does tell me they are fine with the characters being linked, which I hope translates to good things for him. Toad has a lot to gain from being Captain, while Captain really struggles to be his own thing, because he IS Toad in all but official word.

[wfagamerants]

Doing an update, because quite a bit has happened since.

For one, the movie is long out now and on top of the backpack, he also got the Captain Toad theme during his introduction and his section of the credits and on top of that, we got this pamphlet:

Given out in japanese showings of the movie to explain references in the movie and it just calls Treasure Tracker the first 3D Action game to star Toad, no distinction between him and Captain made, so they are pushing that beyond just being the movie’s own interpretation.

I have also seen an argument that his introduction in Galaxy 2 proves they can’t be the same character, since Captain introduces himself, but not only does that already contradict Galaxy 1:

(Which also indicated him and his gang hung out with Luigi, someone Toad knows)

but in at least one langauge, he doesn’t introduce himself so formally, so while I don’t know the japanese text, it seems to be a depending on the translation thing:

And even if it is the same in japanese, it contradicts Galaxy 1 and Wonder has him not recognize anyone on the roster, not even Toadette, who he shared an entire game with:

So I genuinely don’t take this stuff at face value, the platformers aren’t consistent with that stuff.

Aside from that we also got a big game push with it’s own trailer, webpage:

Explore the world of Mario | Nintendo

Selected Nintendo Switch games to explore the world of Mario

Once again treating Treasure Tracker as Toad’s game and in the case of the Switch news tab above, even refering to him as Captain, since it only talks about the characters on the thumbnail.

And on top of that, we got even more instances of THE Toad in a definitive way and Captain refusing to show up together.

Wonder, which has Captain as an NPC, does not have Toad on the roster, despite how massive it is:

and Rosalina’s Ice World, as part of the Booster Course Pass, which reuses Tour assets left and right, skipped out on an opportunity to have Captain cameo in an obvious place:

So yeah, that’s all that happened since then.

Point is they still don’t commit to what they claim and it straight up feels like they are walking back on it.

[wfagamerants]

A couple more things, in part because I want to address something. Also doing it via reblog again, because for some reason the editor didn’t want to save additions last time.

A thing I never touched on with the Smash Ultimate example is regular Toad’s spirit fight, which uses Captain Toad Treasure Tracker music:

An interesting thing to do given there are plenty other tracks that could be deemed fitting for Toad himself, including a brand new Super Mario Bros 2 remix, yet they went for Captain Toad music.

I also saw this news article on Nintendo’s official website:

Talks about the Toad vs Toadette Tour in Mario Kart Tour, but has Captain on the thumbnail, while talking about Toad.

Even extends to the Tour itself, since all VS Tours have a spotlight pipe with variants of the featured characters and Toad got:

Captain.

The only one who breaks that pattern is Funky, in place of a DK alt for the Bowser vs Donkey Kong Tour, but that's also because DK didn't have an alt at the time and wouldn't get one until not long before Tour would cease to add new content.

The german Treasure Tracker website also contains another example of Captain just being called Toad: 

We also got yet another instance of Treasure Tracker being applied to Toad, via the german Mario Portal:

Especially noteworthy since all entries have the characters’ own games listed first. 

RPG also makes sense to list for him, due to Toad being a major NPC and a game mechanic via Toad Assist, to the point I have even seen more than one japanese fan artist draw him as an honorary member of the party...which has no bearing on anything official, but it's cute.

Wonder meanwhile is an interesting one, because Blue and Yellow are the playable Toads (along with Toadette), so Captain is the only thing they can be referring to here. It’s not impossible they may be conflating character and species in this case, but we don’t actually know, especially since the bio, like all versions in all languages, emphasizes the red spots as a defining characteristic of Toad and while acknowledging him being a species, focuses on him as an individual.

This brings me to another point. Between the Mario Portal, Play Nintendo, the Japanese Movie Pamphlet, that promo video I brought up last time, the Switch News Tab article related to it AND the webpage related to it, we now have a minimum of six sources that call Treasure Tracker Toad’s game.

By contrast, 3D World, where supposedly, Blue Toad is THE Toad, is never tied to him in that kind of fashion and the description for this Play Nintendo video even explicably calls him Blue Toad and the video itself also just calls him a blue Toad:

Not even saying this one source is ultra definitive, I am just collecting.

The Mario vs DK remake also heavily flies in the face of the idea that Toad HAD to be blue due to worries he and Mario could get mixed up.

Even more so given Toad and Mario are the only playable characters here. The choice to leave out Red Spot, Blue Vest, Toad in the platformers like 3D World and Wonder, whenever Captain is around, comes off as very deliberate. as in they are just the same Red Toad.

That is a good cue to get to talk a bit. I have had some experiences with people not quite understanding what I am going for, so here is the gist of it in a few points:

For one, I am not at all saying I am ‘’right’’ or ‘’correcting’’ anything. I fully acknowledge that official word in the past has referred to them as separate characters, I am just pointing out official sources that contradict this idea.

Secondly, while I have a preference, none of my points are born from bias. My conclusion comes from the evidence, rather than me twisting the evidence for my conclusion. There really isn’t anything interpretive about the examples I cite and I make it a point to only show what’s being said and shown in official capacity, no speculation.

I also take every source into account and not just japanese ones, because with Mario, western influences do very much have weight. I mean, this is the same franchise where the Koopalings had no individual names in Japan and had to be named in localization, with those names being adapted back into Japan, as I mentioned waaaay earlier.

A very extreme case, but that should tell you something.

Another thing is that I explicably avoid mentioning canon, since there is no officially defined one and Miyamoto himself has gone on record to define Mario as a fluid cartoon canon, where things can change depending on what each game wants to do:

This is also where the movie comes in. A common retort I get is that it’s not canon and the thing is: this was never about canon, it’s about the fact that Nintendo allowed for Toad and Captain to be so blatantly the same character in Mario’s biggest non-gaming outing to date. 

Even more so since they know the movie has a influence on how the average joe sees Mario, with Wonder’s animation upgrade being meant to live up to the movie and the Peach Showtime key art being changed to make her resemble movie Peach more:

And that’s not even going into the japanese movie pamphlet, meant to explain how things are in the games, which continues to treat Toad and Captain as the same character and calls Treasure Tracker the first 3D game to star Toad, no effort to distinguish him and Captain present, which implies deeper intent than just the movie doing it’s own thing.

And then there is the supposed personality difference between Toad and Captain, which I never got.

Captain is supposedly too cowardly to be Toad, yet is described as courageous by Nintendo themselves:

And even spends ⅔ of his game adventuring to save Toadette, despite how afraid he often is, which also shows how loyal he is, a trait deeply associated with Toad.

Toad himself can be compared to Luigi, scared, but brave. There is a reason this art exists:

Luigi’s Mansion in general sums Toad up well, especially 3. He is visibly afraid and in a position where he genuinely can’t do much, yet he is the only one of Lugi’s captured friends in 3 besides E. Gadd, who actively helps out after being rescued, leading to a later escort mission with him.

Toad is on several occasions also shown as a leader figure for the Toads, especially in sports games where they cheer him on (Mario Golf World Tour) or serve as part of his special move (Dr. Mario World, Mario Strikers Battle League).

Toad and Captain genuinely aren’t that different, even the treasure hunter aspect has been applied to Toad in LEGO Mario as said before, an ongoing merch line with a gigantic name.

That’s all I wanted to say, to make my stance maybe a bit more clear than it was before. This entire thing is me wanting to point things out that make Nintendo’s exact intent pretty confusing. On their own none of these would mean much to me, but the fact stuff keeps happening is what makes me question things.

[wfagamerants]

I have made it very blatant that I am a fan of Toad.

If you followed me for a while, you also likely have heard me vent about the claim Toad and Captain Toad are different characters, citing multiple contradictions to this claim in the games themselves.

I’m not here to deny official word or push my preferences (though I do have them), rather I want to give my perspective on the whole thing in full and delve a little into how Nintendo handles main members of a Mario species in general.

First, it’s important to recognize that Nintendo is loose with a lot of stuff. Many different people work on these games and you can see different takes on how to present certain species quite frequently.

When we think of Toad, the main way we think of him distinguished from other members of his species is the red spots and blue vest combo. In a large number of games that is indeed the case.

Most spin-offs, Super Mario 3D Land and Luigi’s Mansion Dark Moon, only to name some. Those make it simple, red spots and blue vest Toad is THE Toad. Other red Toads have a red vest.

However, not every game makes it so nice and simple. The pre-GameCube games had ALL the basic Toads rock the red spots and blue vest combo. THE Toad was distinguished more by role, being the only Toad in the game or as in Super Mario RPG, being the only Toad to have Toad: in his text box, even in the japanese version I might add, to indicate he is the main one you keep meeting.

The modern games aren’t without occasional screwyness themselves though. Odyssey reverts to the idea of all generic Toads using that look and then you have things like Sunshine or the Baseball games, where there is no red spots & blue vest Toad, but a red vest Toad is identified as THE Toad in things like the manual:

It’s weird, but it should be said the 2000s were still a bit of a transitional era for Mario. It took until 2004 for short sleeves Wario to be consistently used in spin-offs for instance and Peach still had her old dress in Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door. You saw oddities like that around a fair bit.

The only time the Toad thing ever came up again in later years is Puzzles & Dragons SMB Edition and even that one has THE Toad on the cover, despite him having a red vest in the game,

Something that is even stranger given that by then they had stock Red Toad renders around and Nintendo is so overprotective of Mario as an IP, that them letting this slide is notable.

While this kinda stuff muddles things, it doesn’t take away from the fact a THE Toad exists. It’s seemingly more about the iconic visuals, than the detail. That visual of a single red Toad being with the rest of the main cast.

Something that still persists to this very day and will, with the distinctions we prefer to go for (only one blue vest, red spots Toad) even be present in the movie, which Nintendo is directly involved with.

It’s a thing that extends beyond Toad and has been present with other characters representing their species as well. Kamek being the most blatant example of it.

Even prior to Yoshi’s Island, singular important Magikoopas such as a particular Yoshi’s Safari boss, a right-hand man Magikoopa in Super Mario kun’s Super Mario World story or the eeeeeevil Koopa wizard Wizenheimer in the Super Mario World cartoon, had already appeared as important parts of Bowser’s troops.

It’s with Yoshi’s Island that one particular Magikoopa, who was the one who raised Bowser no less, was introduced. While this had no distinct name in Japan, where all Magikoopas are known as Kamek, the localization either consciously or by lucky accident, kept his name as Kamek, giving him a big distinguishing element from his species.

The idea of Kamek the main Magikoopa is one that persists to this day and it makes a lot of sense why. Given his shown connection to Bowser in his debut game, there is no reason to assume the most prominent Magikoopas aren’t this particular one and localization was happy to keep the concept around.

In Japan meanwhile, Kamek the character is not a foreign concept, but many materials do not make a formal distinction between the character and the species. It’s there, just more vague. You can sense that in localizations too, with how there are a couple notable oddities.

Mario Party 9 has a playable Magikoopa who is referred to as such in american localization, is called Kamek in other versions, like the german translation. Whether this is meant to be the character or a generic member of the species is genuinely not clear. Not helping matters is how european translations sometimes call generic Magikoopas like in the first couple Paper Mario games and as recent as Bowser’s Fury, Kameks.

A particularly noteworthy example is Giant Kamek in Super Princess Peach. His status as a boss, the one to guard Luigi no less, makes it easy to take him as Kamek transformed, but then you look at the Glossary:

A Kamek. It’s meant to be a generic member of the species, in a new form.

The truth is that Mario is a very, as I like to call it ‘’function over flavor’’ series. It’s more about the function, such as a main red Toad or a main Magikoopa and not so much the finer details like whether the vest color is correct, even if many games DO take that into account.

Because of this, I think the thing to look for is consistency, whatever fits the consistent image is the most likely answer. We will never know in some cases if the character in question is a generic member of the species or the main one, but that is because Nintendo themselves often don’t put that much stock into it.

On that note, while localizations, despite greater efforts to define things can fumble too, I don’t think that means they don’t ‘’count’’. I generally don’t agree with the idea that only japanese sources have any say with how to interpret Mario stuff, because the series does not have the lore consistency to give that idea weight.

On top of that, we have seen that western influences have affected the franchise at large more than once.  The western Super Mario Bros 2 is the most obvious example of this, with how many elements of it have made it far into the franchise. Most notable though are the Koopalings, who didn’t even have names in the japanese version of SMB3 and adapted their localization given names.

This kind of stuff isn’t like say, Monsteropolis in the US Mega Man manual or the US Sonic CD manual clumsily trying to treat Amy as Sally. This stuff is still with the franchise today and as the movie shows, still matters.

THE Toad is a thing in the movie and as is Kamek. Both clearly defined as such and while the New York backstory is not a western invention, it was more emphasized in the west and that’s back too. It’s even Brooklyn again and I’m not even sure if that was ever specified in japanese material or direct confirmation from Miyamoto.

Mario is not a story centric series where only the original text matters. It’s a extremely loose canon, where what the west did, still matters to this very day and is of equal importance.

With all this in mind, let’s talk Captain Toad.

To understand my point on what I mean with contradictions regarding him and Toad being separate characters, we need to look at what Captain was like in the Galaxy games.

In these games, Captain Toad as a name did not exist, with him being only referred to as ‘’the captain of the Toad Brigade’’ and being specifically shown to be a self proclaimed captain at that. Even his inability to jump was invented later on and is contradicted by many level set pieces he shows up in, as well as this:

Even the headlamp, one of his defining visual features, wasn’t treated as anything that special, with BankToad being able to get it at a certain level of deposited Star Bits in Galaxy 2.

He wasn’t really talked about in any official materials and didn’t even get an official render of any sort, but you know who did and is on the cover of Galaxy 2 no less?

Toad. I have seen the argument that this could be an error, but for that to make it all the way to the cover, the first thing someone would see of the game when buying it, would make that a very massive one. Additionally, Toad also has a render for Galaxy 1, even though he wouldn’t have any presence in either game aside from a Save File icon and a cameo in the story book opening of Galaxy 1, if he’s not Captain. The only existing bios for Toad or Captain in these games, even identify them as the same character.

It does line up with what I said about consistency. Sunshine gave us a group of 5 Toads in different colors, with the red vest and red spots one being singled out to be the main Toad. Galaxy introducing a similar group and making the red Toad, in a franchise where a red Toad is one of the main characters, THE Toad, like in Sunshine or the Baseball games, makes sense because there is precedent.

Then many years later came 3D World, the game where Toad and Captain were supposedly clarified to be different characters, co-existing at the same time.

This is also the game where the main playable Toad is a Blue Toad. THE Toad, has never been portrayed that way before or since, to the point where every time Nintendo reuses one of the Blue Toad renders in this game

They are recolored to fit his proper appearance, because this has NEVER been how he has been portrayed. The game really emphasizes the playable Toad being a blue one too, with how the credits scene even shows Captain with a group of Toads, missing a blue one.

This flies heavily in the face of past established consistency, where between Sunshine, the many spin-offs or Luigi’s Mansion Dark Moon, THE Toad has always been distinguished as the red one, because that’s the first one, who established himself as THE Toad.

One could point to his blue color palette in NES SMB2 and I have seen arguments that it’s an homage to that. We don’t have official word on this, but I find that very hard to buy, because he was never supposed to look like this. When he WAS depicted that way in art, everyone was portrayed with their in-game colors:

And in every other case, everyone had their proper colors:

3D World doesn’t do either. The idea of a homage rings hollow when Mario, Luigi and Peach are the same as usual and those couple spots needing to be recolored to not confuse him with Mario, also doesn’t really make sense, given how drastically different their body types are. 

It goes so far the official Super Mario website even lists red spots specifically as one of Toad’s defining features, which would make him being Blue Toad in 3D World even stranger:

The game also lacks any kind of red spots and blue vest Toad, which 3D Land ensured there was only one of, to identify him as THE Toad. You know who had an icon like that in the reveal trailer though?

Captain Toad. Completely new art no less, that stuck around in the game to be in the reveal trailer, less than half a year away from release.

Also, yah know how you can find Captain Toad in levels and sometimes get a collectible out of it?

Toad did the same thing in 3D Land. Even in terms of gameplay function, the two are extremely similar. Similarities between the two are a running theme from here on out.

Prominent red Toads who throw turnips, give out stars, have Toadette as a partner, act as leaders to other Toads and have been depicted with fairy partners (though in Captain’s case only in concept art).

It is baffling how much they have in common and you can tell that even more by how much the two are linked.

Captain Toad Treasure Tracker has an amiibo bundle, amiibo functionality and a pre-order bonus, centered around a character that, according to some sources, you don’t even play as.

All by Nintendo themselves btw. Same with say, this video title or german eShop description for the game, which refer to the main character as Captain and Toad interchangeably.

This even extends to in-game content:

And an Odyssey developer interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVNYfoFcrZY

Then you got Mario Maker call Toad Captain:

Smash let’s Toad’s spirit evolve into Captain, which is tied to gameplay AND in-line with stuff like Shadow becoming Super Shadow or Alm and Celica becoming their adult selves. The game even makes the distinction that THE Toad exists in the tips, where Peach’s Toad is THE Toad and Daisy’s (who is blue ala’ 3D World btw) is a Toad. 

And then you get Mario Kart Tour, the only spin-off Captain Toad is in and the same one where someone like Peachette can be an independent playable character distant from Toadette OR Peach, so yeah. He even shares most of his animations with Toad:

A trait mainly seen with the simpler alts. Pit Stop Toad has more unique animations than Captain has.

VS Tour promos even group him with Toad, right next to him. Same happens with Peachette, who is correctly placed between Toadette and her alts.

Hillariously enough, even LEGO gets in on this, by giving Toad a treasure hunting themed expansion:

As I said, it’s not my intent to ignore official word. Officially, Captain is regarded as a different character, I’m just pointing out how much the games themselves don’t support that and how it requires a lot of justification and ignoring of past patterns to get there and explain away the mountains of counter evidence.

I don’t think it’s fair to dismiss every source that speaks against those claims either, these are just people trying to make sense of the mess Nintendo has left behind and I could just as easily point out that the original confirmation Captain is a separate character, also came with Toads not truly being mushrooms. A claim that contradicts a lot of past descriptions of the species, dialogue mentioning things like spores and Toad showing spore abilities at multiple points.

Not saying this invalidates the entire thing, just pointing out this is a nightmarish mess if you want to maintain consistency.

It’s why Movie Toad is exciting to me.

Giving him the backpack, Captain’s most defining feature these days and thus possibly silently merging them, is to me, the best and least complicated thing they could do. 

Time will tell if this will affect anything, but Nintendo allowing for this at all does tell me they are fine with the characters being linked, which I hope translates to good things for him. Toad has a lot to gain from being Captain, while Captain really struggles to be his own thing, because he IS Toad in all but official word.

[wfagamerants]

Doing an update, because quite a bit has happened since.

For one, the movie is long out now and on top of the backpack, he also got the Captain Toad theme during his introduction and his section of the credits and on top of that, we got this pamphlet:

Given out in japanese showings of the movie to explain references in the movie and it just calls Treasure Tracker the first 3D Action game to star Toad, no distinction between him and Captain made, so they are pushing that beyond just being the movie's own interpretation.

I have also seen an argument that his introduction in Galaxy 2 proves they can't be the same character, since Captain introduces himself, but not only does that already contradict Galaxy 1:

(Which also indicated him and his gang hung out with Luigi, someone Toad knows)

but in at least one langauge, he doesn't introduce himself so formally, so while I don't know the japanese text, it seems to be a depending on the translation thing:

And even if it is the same in japanese, it contradicts Galaxy 1 and Wonder has him not recognize anyone on the roster, not even Toadette, who he shared an entire game with:

So I genuinely don't take this stuff at face value, the platformers aren't consistent with that stuff.

Aside from that we also got a big game push with it's own trailer, webpage:

Explore the world of Mario | Nintendo

Selected Nintendo Switch games to explore the world of Mario

Once again treating Treasure Tracker as Toad's game and in the case of the Switch news tab above, even refering to him as Captain, since it only talks about the characters on the thumbnail.

And on top of that, we got even more instances of THE Toad in a definitive way and Captain refusing to show up together.

Wonder, which has Captain as an NPC, does not have Toad on the roster, despite how massive it is:

and Rosalina's Ice World, as part of the Booster Course Pass, which reuses Tour assets left and right, skipped out on an opportunity to have Captain cameo in an obvious place:

So yeah, that's all that happened since then.

Point is they still don't commit to what they claim and it straight up feels like they are walking back on it.