Well folks, seems like it’s that time again. Yep, as the title suggests, Nintendo have now unveiled another batch of retro games being added to the Switch Online service, including some real obscure ones.
Here’s the announcement about it:
As you can see, most games are the usual third-party stuff. You’ve got Bubsy, who’s more relevant than ever due to a surprisingly good looking revival being helmed by Fabraz. You’ve got another Fatal Fury game, which looks about as good as the rest of them.
And then you’ve got Mario & Wario.
Developed by Game Freak and released in Japan in 1993, the title has the player as a fairy called Wanda who has to lead various Mario characters to the goal after Wario dropped a bucket on their head. It was a fairly original concept overall, and one which then got referenced in a few of Game Freak’s later games.
Mario & Wario got referenced in the Pokémon series, as seen here
Yet despite its potential, the game never made outside of Japan. It’s unclear why this is, since the game itself has no Japanese text and there were even adverts showing a localised box art design for the game:
A tentative localised box art design for the game. Thanks to Mario Wiki for the picture!
But it just never happened. The game remained in Japan, and that’s it.
Well, until now anyway! Thanks to it being available in the SNES app, it’s now finally available to play for fans in other parts of the world. So yeah, another exclusive has finally gotten an international release, a whole 32 years later. Definitely check it out if you’re a fan of puzzle games, or want to experience Game Freak’s history prior to Pokémon!
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