#Wario Land 2

[weirdmarioenemies]

Name: Kamukamu

Debut: Wario Land 2

Have you ever thought about a world where everything is exactly the same... except you don't exist? Everything functions perfectly without you... that is the existential horror that this fangly little fishy must contend with! Kamukamu only appears in the Game Boy version of Wario Land 2, and is entirely replaced in the Game Boy Color version!

This is Drill, but you can call it SpongeBob SquarePants episode 151a, because it's the New Fish In Town! This is the one that replaced Kamukamu on the Game Boy Color, and I really have no idea why. They're completely different fish in both design and function! Kamukamu is a bitey fish who chomps onto Wario and makes him drop coins until shaken off. Drill is a pointynose fish who causes instant damage if touched from the front. They can coexist!

Of the two, I'm not sure which I prefer! Kamukamu has a more fun personality to me, with its glassy eyes and toothy overbite. It reminds me of a wolffish, but it's likely just a generic "bitey fish". Meanwhile, Drill has the goofier anatomy! It is seemingly based on a sawfish, but instead of a saw-like rostrum, it's like a drill instead. Its actual mouth looks toothless and non-threatening, as if it pulverizes prey into a smoothie that it slurps up!

Ok, that's about it, I guess. Post's over. Drill, taking the bus again? Okay, get home safe! What about you, Kamukamu? Your dad's picking you up? Okay! Let's see if he's here... oh, there he is!

Name: Big Kamukamu

Debut: Wario Land 2

This is Big Kamukamu, a boss in both versions of Wario Land 2! Even when little Kamukamu was replaced, no one had the gall to tell THIS fish it was fired. Would you? Big Kamukamu is, in fact, the only reason we have a name for Kamukamu! Big Kamukamu's name was given from a Picross game of all things (awesome swag epic), and from this we can only assume that the smaller ones are regular Kamukamu.

That's so many sources to go through to find a name for poor Kamukamu! Even after all that, we're not SURE that would be its name. It definitely seems so, it just isn't confirmed. Is this fish doomed to obscurity at every turn? I think it deserves a little something nice, so I am going to give it its very own localized name!

"Kamu" means "to bite", making "Kamukamu" basically "Bitebite". I think this is more than enough of a base for a silly cute little name!

Kamukamu, I hereby give you the fan-localized name of Bittybite! I hope you like it! Yes, it sounds like Biddybud, but this game was long before 3D Land and they would not have cared about an enemy in a subseries having a similar name. And I like Bittybite! So there is some love for this little fish who has been really craving it.

[charliejaeart]

Went all loose for this tremendous W

[ninebaalart]

Bubble Wario

the transformation era of the wario land franchise was full of wacky punishment based powerups with such great art and expressions

[justdenys1]

WARIO

I actually wanted to draw this for like, a while, just didn't got around doing it. obvs it's a redraw of that one venom image

[dandelionsprout42]

How to create pixel art the easy way 😎

Take an existing drawing.

Open it in PaintNET.

If viable, set "Canvas Size…" so that the height and width are both divisible by 4.

Go to "Resize…" → "Resampling: Nearest Neighbor" → "By percentage: 25%" → apply

Go to "Resize…" again → "By percentage: 400%" → apply

You now have pixel art in less than 2 minutes. 😎

This also makes supposed pixel art projects far less often needed.

(Based on https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/121537412 by するが かなで)

In the cases of many other art pieces, it still looks far too detailed to simply go 25%→400%, and may instead need for example "divisible by 5"→20%→500%, etc.

And as a direct comparison with the original for people who are not keen on going to Pixiv's websites outright:

[pokerninja2]

Introducing War.io, robotic clones of Wario made by Dr. Crygor that mimic the abilities of his reactionary transformations! The Model-FM replicates Flaming Wario, who runs at high speeds and can set foes on fire with its attacks.

Plus, you can now have a whole team of Warios!

[shinigami-striker]

30 Years of Wario Land | Sunday, 01.21.24

It's been exactly 30 years since the Wario Land series kicked off with the original Wario Land game on the Nintendo Game Boy handheld in Japan.

Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land (1/21/1994) | Game Boy

Virtual Boy Wario Land (12/1/1995) | Virtual Boy

Wario Land II (10/21/1998) | Game Boy Color

Wario Land III (3/21/2000) | Game Boy Color

Wario Land 4 (8/21/2001) | Game Boy Advance

Wario Land: Shake It! (7/24/2008) | Wii

[mario-fax]

The manual for Wario Land II incorrectly states that Wario cannot jump when he is flat.

(Mario Fax|Source: Wario Land II (US) Manual)

[thedestinysunknown]

Wario Land 2 - Uncanny Mansion:

"Happy Halloween! What a perfect level for today. Just like in most Mario games, Wario also has a spooky mansion with a lot of ghosts to deal with. This place is so cool looking. Sure, we are repeating missions but at least it's in a fun place."

PS: the gameplay used for this gifset is not mine. The original video belongs to the user: Fenômeno de Jogo Vídeo, on Youtube.

[mice-rats-daily]

Today's mice are the Chuta from Wario Land II!

[wariofranchisefanblog]

A pixel art recreation of one of Wario's Wario Land 2 artworks, which could be found on the Game Boy Color promotional demo cartridge.

[rhyliethelovelycaterfly]

[devileaterjaek]

[clownkiwi]

STREAMS ARE FINALLY MAKING A COMEBACK!!!! in an hour i will continue my wario land 2 quest and go through the intended route of the game instead of sleeping in again (stream starts at 8:30pm EST)

[weaselandfriends]

did you know? "coming back is difficult" is a line from tōryanse, the little tune crosswalk signals in japan (formerly?) play(ed). apparently well known enough over there that it's alluded to not infrequently in media, including i presume in wario land ii. (lyrics reference a traditional rite of passage thing, allegedly; only sources i can find are blog posts.) wanted to send this ask after ch37 but forgot, or maybe i did send it and then forgot i'd done so? anyways i enjoyed reading your story

Good example of how influences can creep across cultures. It's similar to that other post I made about postmodernism and meta/post-postmodernism, where you now see major pop cultural works exhibiting these formerly academic literary modes. Are the people creating Spider-verse and Homestuck familiar with post-postmodernism in any direct way? No, but the ideas have permeated works that then influenced works that then influenced works that then influenced them.

It also reminds me how much of your default JRPG worldbuilding contains influences from Tolkien, not necessarily because Tolkien was incredibly popular in Japan, or even that Dungeons & Dragons was incredibly popular in Japan, but that the first JRPGs were emulating Western games like Ultima that were directly inspired by D&D.

[miloscat]

[Review] Wario Land 2 (GBC)

Oh yeah, Wario time.

After the boom of Wario spinoffs, things slowed down for him and Nintendo R&D1 in term of raw releases. When Wario Land 2 arrived a few years later, it represented a new direction for Wario Land. Six months to a year after that—depending on region—the series stepped into full colour for the first time with a rerelease for the GBC. This would be the definitive version if not for the lovely Super Game Boy borders that the monochrome release came with.

This is a sequel full of callbacks, to Super Mario Land 2 with Wario living in his ill-gotten castle, and to Wario Land 1 with the return of Captain Syrup and her pirate gang out to steal Wario's treasure. But in gameplay terms it's a clever reinvention of Wario's platforming mechanics. The levels are even more about exploration and nabbing filthy lucre, while Wario has become an undefeatable powerhouse: no more powerups, lives, or timers... and it's about time too.

Virtual Boy Wario Land dabbled in exploratory stages and destructible terrain, but WL2 takes that further to the point where you can consider it a puzzle platformer. A big new mechanic is Wario being affected by enemy attacks and taking on temporary forms or conditions, like being on fire, becoming a zombie, being flattened. These are a double edged sword: they can be carefully succumbed to as fun methods of interaction and traversal for reaching new areas and treasures, or they can set you back or force you to reset a room.

Since Wario can't die, the only penalties the game can enforce on you are a small loss of coins (important for playing the repetitive between-stages minigame and treasure minigame) or a wasting of the player's time. Backtracking through the branching levels is bad enough, but this game makes an art form of tedious setbacks. Now lacking the patience of a child, I was thankful that emulator features let me minimise interruptions of this nature.

This is the dark side to the new gameplay paradigm, but the bright side is the novelty of this fresh take on the brash comedic anti-hero, the level of environmental interactions and puzzle-solving that called to mind Yoshi's Island, and the integration of the story. Wario's quest to regain his pilfered loot takes him to various locations—a dank forest, cities and factories, a haunted house, undersea ruins—all contextualised with cutscenes far better than VBWL's slapdash whimsical mishmash, and letting new concepts breathe over a number of levels.

The branching narrative, with alternate exits to new sets of levels, seemed intimidating at first but an initial playthrough takes you on a straightforward path, and after the first credits (you'll see them at least five times if you go for 100%) you get access to a user-friendly level select that shows you where new branches can be found, so there's minimal need to replay stuff you've done already. This menu screen also shows you which treasures you've found—one per stage—although I wish there was a pause screen within a level that did the same, as I sometimes forgot if I'd nabbed it already. The sidestories are fun alternate takes on the adventure that also change the final credits sequence appropriately, which was a nice touch.

Wario Land 2 is the closest thing to what I was already familiar with: its direct sequel, Wario Land 3, so of course I loved it. But there's more to it... it's where the series really comes into its own; focusing on interactability, streamlining Wario's moveset with a permanent shoulder barge and butt-stomp while adding a bunch of gimmick transformations that can both help and harm, depending on the situation. It really works. The GBC refresh also makes the environments really pop, although it shows its nature as a "retrofit" with the palette limitations imposed on sprites, as Wario's forms and enemies only have a couple of shades each. Some minor growing pains and bland minigames drag it down a bit, but this is easily the best Wario game yet, and I already know the next one along takes it to another level!