The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is going to once again pull from the deepest depths of Super Mario Bros. gaming lore to tell its cinematic story – including obscure lore that most fans either forgot about, or didn’t know in the first place. Trailers for Super Mario Galaxy have already revealed that we’re getting new era characters like Princess Rosalina (Brie Larson) and Bowser Jr. (Benny Safdie) in major roles, along with story elements and power-ups from Super Mario Galaxy video game lore.
Videos by ComicBook.com
However, the first Super Mario Bros. Movie established that this cinematic series is not afraid to pull references that only the most diehard Mario fans understand. There are fun Easter eggs to be found by the eagle-eyed viewer whenever the Mario movie machine starts rolling – and today is no exception!
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie Will Feature Wart!
A new promo poster for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie has been released, and longtime Mario fans instantly spotted one big Easter egg hiding in the background of the one-sheet: Wart! It’s unclear how big a role he’ll have (he is quite literally a background character); however, we can be sure that some stop along the way of this next Mario Bros. movie adventure will include a cameo from Wart.
“Who is Wart?” we already hear much of the Mario fandom asking: Well, if you became a fan of Nintendo’s Mario games after the character made the jump (pun!) to 3D, you probably don’t know that Wart was the big bad of one of the most infamous video games of all time: Super Mario Bros. 2.
The History of Wart & Super Mario Bros. 2 Explained
When Nintendo launched its flagship console, the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System), in the mid-1980s, it did so with one of the greatest launch title lineups ever (The Legend of Zelda, Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out, Duck Hunt) led by Super Mario Bros. By the late-80s it was time for sequels to both Mario and Zelda, and Nintendo opted for radical swerve in the formats of both franchises. Super Mario Bros. 2 reimagined the entire physics and gameplay dynamics of the original game: the timed side-scrolling running and jumping mechanics were replaced with a “free exploration” side-scrolling concept, where players could explore each level in any direction (up, down, left, right) at their leisure. The entire combat system was also changed from a simple jump-crush or fireball blast system to a more complicated system of picking up and throwing weaponized objects. The story also tried to introduce a new franchise big bad in “Wart,” an evil toad-looking King who led his gang, the 8 Bit Club, in an invasion of the dream world known as the Subcon. It was that dream world setting that was supposed to explain the changed mechanics of the game, but needless to say, it was still a jarring experience for most players.
Super Mario Bros. 2 is rightly considered a cult-classic that introduced many prototype ideas the franchise would later refine. That said, Nintendo pivoted back to a more traditional format (with some new RPG elements thrown in) for Super Mario Bros. 3. After that, the 3D era would begin on the Super Nintendo console, and Mario would explode into the entire universe it is today.
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie has a release date of April 1st.
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