Well, that’s certainly been a while hasn’t it? Seems like the last interview we had on Gaming Reinvented was back in November 2015, a gap of more than three months! But fortunately, interviews are now resuming here on the site, and first on the list is a name that many Nintendo fans will know.

It’s WwwWario! Notable for creating the Super Wario series, the Five Nights at Wario’s series and the upcoming Super Wario Land game, he’s a popular Youtube celebrity with 60,000 subscribers and a list of videos that have taken the internet by storm! And now, exclusively on Gaming Reinvented, we have an interview with the man himself.

So enough with the intro, let’s get to what matters! Here’s our interview with fan game and Youtube phenomenon WwwWario!

Well, thanks for accepting the interview! Let’s start out with a few general questions first. Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

Sure! My name is Andreas, but since Andy is both a nickname for Andreas and more international, I use Andy while online. I live in a little village in Norway where everyone know each other, and this place is heavenly beautiful. I have two big brothers who are twins who love sports and are very talented gymnastics. I’m very shy, something I hope to overcome soon. I love music, games, movies, and horror stuff. I go music school in High School with the best class in the world, and I play mostly piano, but also play guitar and accordion (and try to sing for myself). I generally love all type of music, everything from slow sad songs to fast country songs. The only genre I really don’t like is metal. And yeah, that’s the general stuff I guess! I’m crazy after chocolate too, that’s important to note.

And what’s your history with video games? What one did you start with all those years ago?

I have lovely memories with games. Me and my brothers have always played together since I can’t remember when. Our first console was Nintendo 64, and we played Mario Party, Super Smash Bros., and other games when we didn’t have anything else to do, and I have such wonderful memories with it. We got the Gamecube shortly after, so I believe actually one of the first games I every played was Super Mario 64, Zelda: The Wind Waker, Starfox Adventures, or some of the Mario Party games. Can’t remember. I’ve loved games every since, because they’re not just fun, but it’s like a movie where you have control. Some games are beautiful and tells a beautiful story with beautiful music, some games are fun because they take lots of skill, and some games just drags you into them because of their atmosphere, characters, etc.

Above: The original Super Smash Bros was one of WwwWario’s earliest games.

Above: As were the Mario Party titles on the system

Onto a Wario question now. What’s your history with the franchise? Why do you like the Wario series so much?

My first Wario game was Wario Land 4, even though I knew him before that from Mario Party and other sport games. I got the Gameboy Advance as pretty young, so WL4 is very nostalgic for me. After that, I’ve gotten Wario Land Shake It, Wario World, and tried Wario Land 2 and 3 a good amount of years later and love them. They’re so good imo, because, well, they have Wario, and they’re very unusual yet familiar platformers. They have you go through exciting levels, but often with absurd enemies and transformations that only Wario Land provides. I like Wario Ware too, but I don’t like it nearly as much as Wario Land. I’ve always been a massive Wario fan. I remember the early internet days for me, whenever I found just a PICTURE of Wario on Google, I went crazy, and I just HAD to print it and draw it. I loved to draw before, you see, but not as much now. I even drew lots of Wario comics. I don’t know why I was so crazy after Wario. It might just be that he was my favourite Mario character since I both liked his design and personality, and the fact that me and my brothers chose one of the 4 bros as our “own”, you know (one of my brothers have always had Luigi as his favourite, my other one always had Waluigi). It’s also the fact that I’ve always liked big and strong characters in games. In all fighting games I’ve played I’ve always liked the big guys, the fat guys, or the strong guys. Not much of the small fast ones, or the magic ones.

Above: His first Wario Land game was Wario Land 4

For that matter, what type of Wario Land game do you enjoy the most? Traditional Mario gameplay like in the original, puzzle gameplay where you can’t die like in 2 or 3, or the ‘get the treasure and escape the level’ gameplay from 4 and Shake Dimension?

I think I like Wario Land 3 the most, even though that was actually the Wario Land game I played last! But in spite of that, I still get nostalgic feelings from WL3 for some reason, probably because the game just feels so Wario-ish. I think it has brilliant puzzles, and as I’ve explained in a video of mine, I simply LOVE the backtracking in this game. The fact that you see doors or places you can’t reach first, and later in the game, you either get an item or power-up that allows you to come back to these levels to find new areas. It’s brilliant, and having these 4 chests in the level really gives off a good 100% feeling. I also like the fact that you can’t die in this game. I like that you can in WL4 and Shake It, but not dying fits better with WL3’s level design and gameplay.

Above: but Wario Land 3 is his favourite Wario Land game.

Have you played Wario World or Wario Master of Disguise? What do you think of them?

Wario World is SO underrated and amazing. It has so much you can collect, it forces you to truly explore the levels, it has many awesome and satisfying moves, cool platforming, great difficulty, and typical Wario enemies (absurd ones). Really a great game. As for Master of Disguise, I can say so much that it’s very different. Not only with how you transform, but the whole feeling you get from the game. I think it has to do with the more realistic world, the music, the sounds, etc. that makes this game feel so different. People hate it, or dislike it, for the most part, but I think it very good. It has good level design, great puzzles, very cool transformations, and the dialogs for Wario are just amazingly fun.

Above: Unlike quite a few Wario fans, WwwWario enjoyed playing Wario Master of Disguise for the Nintendo DS.

Let’s talk fan games now. What got you into making them?

It was many years ago when I found this Youtuber called Kjellm87, who also happened to be Norwegian, who had made a video called “MY OWN GAMES” or something. I thought “What? He has made his OWN games?!” and indeed he had. I got SUPER excited that someone had made their own Mario games. So I made a Youtube channel just so I could message him and ask questions, and that’s also one of the reasons how my Youtube channel was born. He helped me A LOT, and spent a lot of time with that too. He taught me so much. I most likely wouldn’t make games today if he didn’t help me back in the day.

So, your main series seems to be the ‘Super Wario’ series. What inspired these games?

After I started to figure out how the software (Multimedia Fusion 2) worked, I immediately wanted to make a Wario platformer, obviously, as the Wario fan I am. I wanted to make something super epic, you know, with epic dialogues and epic boss battles and epic endings, but looking at it now, it’s pretty pathetic and funny since the games I made back then were so bad, haha! Anyways, my first game was called Super Wario 10 (since I made it in 2010), and the Wario sprite there is made by this Kjellm87. The game is very short, very glitchy, and not really fun at all. But I was proud of it. So I thought that I will now make people excited by announcing a second Super Wario game, and so the series continued with The Ghost Ship, The Hunt of the Frozen Treasure, 4Tune, and the World of Wirio.

Above: Super Wario 4Tune (one of WwwWario’s favourite fan game creations)

They also seem to have a very… hand drawn aesthetic. What made you decide to draw your own sprites and backgrounds for these titles?

I always thought that using ripped sprites from other official games will just make my game blend in with the rest and basically become worse versions of their official counterparts. I wanted to use own graphics to both make the games stand out, and to give them some more personality and truly make them feel like mine. I don’t use much custom graphics in this game I’m making now, since it’s not in the Super Wario series, and I wanted to make a really good game now, with proper and good graphics.

And out of all these games, which ones are you most and least favourites? Why?

I believe, out of my 5 Super Wario games, my favourite is my 4th one, Super Wario 4Tune. This was the one I thought would turn out the best, and I still think that one did. I used a LOT of time on that game, and I truly wanted to make it epic and big, by trying to make more exciting cutscenes, putting Photoshop to good use, lots of moves, a shop, exciting levels, Wario Land 4 gameplay, etc., and I think that one turned out the best, honestly. I did use Photoshop a bit TOO much, I think, since the graphics are often too big so the game can lag or even crash sometimes, but not often at all. I’ve learned more how to use it smart now, tho. The one I’m least proud of is my first one, since, well, it’s the worst, haha! However, there is one I’m even less proud of – a cancelled game, that was supposed to be my 3rd one. It was called Super Wario & The Amulet of Time, which would take Wario back in time to the times of the Big Bang, and teleport him forward in time for each level, going through Earth’s history. But that game’s small demo got SO many complains, and for good reason, since the game was both historically incorrect, glitchy, looked bad, etc., so I cancelled it and started on a new 3rd Super Wario which would eventually become Super Wario & The Hunt of the Frozen Treasure.

Above: Super Wario the Amulet of Time was not well received.

Now, what encouraged you to make the Five Nights at Wario’s games? They’re obviously Five Nights at Freddy’s fan games, but why Wario?

Now this was fun, haha! FNAF was pretty new at the time. I found FNAF on Markiplier’s channel and thought it was “just another decent horror game”, but this was kinda before FNAF exploded into what it became. I THINK it was around FNAF2, or maybe before that was released, that I started making something. I thought that “hmm, I wonder if someone has made a FNAF fan game?”, so I started playing around and managed to make a engine that worked similar to FNAF, so I thought to myself “I’ll make this into an actual fan game!”. And a few days before that, I had found a GIF on Twitter, where Wario’s head was flashing in the left door in the office instead of Freddy’s head, and under it was the text “Five Night’s at Wario’s”, and it was both hilarious and horrifying at the same time. So that’s how I got the idea, since I had models for Wario and Co. from Smash Bros Brawl. I uploaded the demo, thinking that this was the first FNAF fan game, but apparently Five Nights at Treasure Island was before mine. I believe Treasure Island was the first ever FNAF fan game, and mine was the second one.

Above: A trailer for Five Nights at Wario’s

One of the key things about these games are the creepy, messed up Mario verse character designs. How did you create these spooky character models?

This is interesting. For all of them, I made a pose for them inside BrawlBox (the Brawl modding software), took a print screen, removed the background, and put them into the pictures of the different rooms, before adding shadows, etc. For Wario, I simply used Photoshop afterwards to make his eyes glowing, and making some black lines in his face. For Waluigi, I did the same, but I also stretched out his arms to make him look more uncanny and really play on his height and skinny body. As for Peach, I did the same, pretty much. For Luigi, however, I went through all of his animations inside this BrawlBox software (you can look at and play the animations from Brawl in there), and for some reason, some animations made Luigi’s nose super big and stretched out, even though that didn’t happen in Smash Bros Brawl itself. So I used this to my advantage! As for Mario, I removed some models on him by accident (namely his head), so only his eyes and moustache were left. So I used this to my advantage, too, haha!

Despite the name, Five Nights at Wario’s arguably takes a bit more inspiration from general Mario games than Wario. Why are there fairly few Wario Land and WarioWare characters featured in them?

Well, mostly because the models for Luigi, Waluigi, etc. were already in this BrawlBox software, so I had the models ready for use. Finding models for others would be hard. Also the fact that I wanted to use the most familiar Mario characters so everyone would be familiar with them.

Is Five Nights at Wario’s 3 the final game?

Story-wise, yes. But Five Nights at Wario’s: Origins came after that, too. That’s the last game I made in the series, and will ever make. The story is a little complicated time-paradox and time loop. FNAW3 has both a good and bad ending, and FNAW: Origins is a result of the bad ending, resulting in the loop starting over, but the events in the whole story couldn’t have happened if Origins didn’t happen first… so, a time-paradox, because it’s a mystery where this whole loop started.

Above: A trailer for Five Nights at Wario’s Origins

Onto Youtube stuff now. What inspired you to start your channel?

As I mentioned above, I made it really for sending people messages and comments. But eventually, I wanted to try to upload something just to test, and that’s how my first video was made, which is still on my channel. As time passed, I slowly started to learn how Youtube works, what is smart to do, and my interest just grew for each day. Getting an audience and seeing people wanting to see more from you is such an amazing feeling. That’s really what inspired me to take Youtube more seriously later on.

And for that matter, what made it so popular in general? It’s pretty rare to see a Wario based channel get nearly 60,000 subscribers!

Above: Very impressive stats for a channel about the Wario series and related fan games.

Good question, haha! I’m not really sure, actually. I hope it’s me as a person that made it popular, but maybe not. It might be the creepy things I made, the game speculations, the games I made, the Smash Bros videos, the Minecraft videos… I’m not sure, since I’ve changed a lot during my Youtube period. But I’m so glad I’m where I am now!

Talking of Youtube, what other channels do you follow and why?

LuigiKid, since he’s both awesome and a personal friend. CinemaSins is an awesome channel, since he’s so hilarious and genius, too. I also follow lots of channels that I can’t remember right now, but possibly my favourite channel on the whole Youtube is DashieGames, since he’s so extremely entertaining, hilarious, and friendly. He can always make your day better with his videos.

Last topic now, and that’s Super Wario Land. What inspired you to make this game?

Above: Some footage from the first Super Wario Land demo, courtesy of me…

I said to myself that I didn’t have the motivation or will to make another Wario platformer, since it’s a LOT of work. But then I found these remastered Wario Land 3 sprites on MFGG, and I fell in love with them. I slowly started to think that it would be fun to make a game with these sprites, and slowly I started to make a little engine. One thing led to another, and suddenly, I was making it.

And where did you find the rest of the team?

Gameonion and Brie are two I’ve played Smash Bros with for a while now, so I know them and their talents. Alex is someone Gameonion knows, so he fixed that. TheDaKoopa is someone who has tested my games for a long time, so he became a tester now, too.

It seems like a cross between Wario Land 3 and 4 in its design. What’s the reasoning behind this?

I love both games in their own ways. I love WL3’s explorations and the non-linear gameplay, so I mostly took inspiration from there, as well as the star- and character features from Super Mario 64 and Donkey Kong 64. So, basically, I tried to make a mix of all of these.

How about the story? What is it anyway?

Actually, by the time I write this, I don’t know, haha! But! Me, Gameonion and Brie have talked about an idea that this game will take place right after Wario Land 4, namely right after the credits scene in WL4, where Wario would be transported to another dimension. But where, why, how, and how it will look there, is still unknown.

Do familiar characters like Captain Syrup, Princess Shokora or Rudy the Clown make any appearances?

Above: Rudy in Super Wario & The World of Wirio

Still unknown. But I’m sure I’ll introduce some familiar faces. I did include Rudy in Super Wario & The World of Wirio, so maybe he won’t be in this one… or maybe he will?

And heck, boss battles. Any plans for those yet?

I want to make different boss battles. Not just “avoid attack -> hit sweet spot -> repeat”, but to have some different mechanics for each boss. Nothing more than that is made yet.

Are there going to be any transformations? I know Wario Land 1 esque hats are included, but how about stuff like Flaming Wario, Snowman Wario and Vampire Wario?

Most likely not. The thought in this game was to not include them and put the focus on the hat transformations only.

What’s the release plans for the game? Will there be a website? Will it be on Mario Fan Games Galaxy? Somewhere else?

I haven’t calculated any date yet, but it will be this year (I hope). It will be on MFGG for sure, yeah! Maybe a website, too.

Finally, what advice would you give anyone wanting to start a popular Youtube channel, or a popular fan game series?

Have FUN! Doing things you don’t like won’t bring good results. It will only make you want to “get it over with”. Find something you like, think about how you can get people back later and how to make them interested, do what you want, have things organized and systematic, and have FUN. As for making games, the same thing, but start from the bottom, watch tutorials, explore and experiment, learn basics in platforming, and TRY as much as you can! You will see your work – and you – getting better. I promise.

And with that, WwwWario’s interview is now over! It’s been a long interview, but hopefully it’s been an interesting read and answered a whole ton of questions you may have once had about Five Nights at Wario’s, Super Wario Land and Youtube in general!