Nintendo Tried to ERASE Them from History

the mario series has seen many iconic fan favorite characters over the years and maybe some that are used a little too much but in contrast to that there are very many who are rarely used at all now while most cases of this simply come down to well no one actually caring about the character there have been many instances of nintendo wanting some to be completely erased from history with reasons ranging from preventing major controversy or in some cases saving themselves millions of dollars from financial disaster this is the sunset wilds track in mario kart tour there's a bunch of shy guys mining throughout the area getting their work done but this track isn't original to this mobile game and in the first appearance of the track in mario kart super circuit on the game boy advance the shy guys had a much different gimmick in the japanese original the shy guys are dressed in native american headdresses and live in tepees a much different inspiration that nintendo felt the need to change for the international release here they changed all the shy guys to simply being generic to avoid any controversy but since they seemed kind of bland this way they finally gave him the explore gimmick when the track was remade we've seen several versions of the shy guys over the years from the sky guys to the spear guys to the fat guys but none have been completely erased from history until now safe to say we'll never see these characters again but it's just one form right what about some major characters who had big roles in games that many fans feel nintendo have completely erased from history let's examine the first one who could have very well been mario's next main antagonist but before we get into a character who has been forgotten from history i want to talk about a game currently making history with rave reviews in the app stores i'm talking about the sponsor of this video gemstone legends gemstone legends is a match 3 fantasy puzzle rpg that has taken the world by storm with 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to roth and by using the link in the description below you can claim an exclusive offer just for you guys once you finish the tutorial you'll automatically get this awesome starter package and includes moralia an amazing healer that will help you get through the whole game and give you a quick and easier start the potions gems and money that you get will also allow you to climb easier and faster do not miss your chance to get this offer you may or may not remember wart from super mario bros 2. this guy was the main antagonist of the adventure replacing bowser this time around this wasn't just done because nintendo wanted to change things up though which looking at their games today really shouldn't have been expected anyways the real reason this was the case was because the international release of mario 2 was not the same super mario brothers 2 that came out in japan while they received basically a more challenging version of the original which we now know as the lost levels i came japan literally deemed as too challenging for an international audience i mean i don't really blame him when i see a mario kart lobby like this i know my chances just dropped off a cliff our mario 2 needed to be based on the much easier japanese game doki doki panic just with some modifications to had mario characters to play as wart was already in the game so he was carried over as a boss much easier for nintendo to do compared to creating whole new sprites for bowser i guess it shouldn't be too surprising to see nintendo reuse assets nowadays then huh now while something like this may be considered a big deal nowadays at the time it really wasn't even though bowser was well known due to the massive popularity of the original super mario brothers since this was the first and only appearance of him at the time the idea that mario would have a different villain to conquer in every game wasn't too unrealistic wart was just seen as the next step but as i led into this i mentioned that many may not know much about this character it's because for the most part he's been forgotten about by nintendo we had this split path after mario 1 with japan getting bowser as their main villain and award being ours and since nintendo is a japanese-based company it was only natural for them to develop the follow-up title to mario 2 with the villain that their fans exclusively knew especially since the third entry in the super mario series began development well before our mario 2 even came out but this seemingly small decision to include bowser and mario 3 actually turned out to be extremely important seeming to doom wart's hope to become a main mario villain in the future as for game after game we would not continue to see nintendo change it up bowser is who they were pushing as the main villain and wart's presence wouldn't be considered as another asset to nintendo's roster it would actually be considered a hindrance why wouldn't it be better for nintendo to have as many iconic villains in their arsenal as possible why would it be bad to have wart be seen on a similar level to bowser while this mainly has to do with the marketing of their characters and for a series with as big of a fan base as mario nintendo feels that they need to have a set recognizable core cast of characters to help promote the brand sure we can have a ton of different one-off enemies and bosses some even recurring but none have assumed that key main role they don't want wart to be confused with bowser in any way now kind of a counter argument here is one could say the reason he's been forgotten about is because mario 2 takes place in the land of dreams also known as subcon so canonically it doesn't make sense for him to appear in games that take place elsewhere like in the mushroom kingdom being backed up even further with his minor appearance in the legend of zelda link's awakening a game that also takes place in a dream while i absolutely love canonical explanations like this the problem is by that logic birdo shouldn't be appearing anymore either and while at one point it seemed like they'd been phasing the character out that's definitely no longer the case this link's awakening appearance could also be explained by warp becoming more relevant in japan around the time of its development with r mario 2 being released there as super mario usa from their perspective nintendo could have been introducing a new iconic villain character to this audience but time has shown that this wasn't nintendo's intention after this though wart wasn't just being phased out he was dropped faster than dlc for an ea game nintendo never talked about this guy at all for years he didn't physically appear in games he didn't have cameos and this could have been construed as him being erased from history is what i would say if these didn't exist the mario animated series the mario cartoons being made around this time had a difficult decision to make with all the confusion going on concerning the series primary antagonist but the super mario brothers super show which yes was an actual thing being mostly based on the international release of mario 2 it would make sense for wart to be the main villain of that show but at the same time most people knew who bowser was and they likely recognized that in japan bowser was being used in an upcoming mario game so what were they to do huh how about we just uh put them together i know it seems like i'm making this up but hey just look at this they ultimately used a hybrid as their character for the show known as king koopa he has the green of wart but the spikes of bowser kind of combining both looks and by examining a nintendo of america sticker that was uncovered from 1989 showing original concept art for the character you can see it bears even more similarities to wart than there ended up being this guy was being groomed to be the main antagonist of the show but they pulled the plug on you with an obscure nintendo comic putting the stamp on wart and king koopa being completely different characters mostly because they had the mario 3 and world animated series planned as well and wanted to use the same character in all three a mostly bowser based design would make the most sense as a choice so was this it was one hope for a return in an animated series of all things wart's last stand well it actually looked like this might not be the case as there could have been hope for a return in 1994 where in donkey kong country we'd be getting a large green villain with a crown and cape and oh it wasn't worth it was king k rool an original character for sure but the design similarities to wart and even king koopa for that matter are uncanny it's almost like he was thought to have been put in this role but got replaced somewhere during development nintendo didn't develop donkey kong country but they did publish it and maybe they pitched the idea of a return for this villain but since it didn't work out even if it was the case at all this definitely put the stamp on warp being gone his original role as mario's main villain couldn't happen anymore and now a similar looking character to him took the role as donkey kong's main villain so giving him a similarly prominent role in the series wouldn't be good for business now more than ever not only could he get confused with bowser but also with king k rool two different characters so after all of this can we really say that wart falls under the criteria of being erased from history well not quite this guy appears as a spirit in smash ultimate albeit everyone else does but i digress so nintendo doesn't seem to have much of an issue referencing him in a slight way despite him not being featured in prominent roles anymore funnily enough if you don't believe my king k wart conspiracy theory his spirit battle does use k-roll as a base which is pretty interesting bottom line is wart's been forgotten neglected even but completely erased from history definitely not but the same cannot be said for some other characters donkey kong jr is another one who you don't see at all anymore and the real reasons for this get pretty interesting but first of all who is this guy anyway well before the days of mario 3 mario 2 and yes even mario 1 there was a different main antagonist of the franchise this one being um well mario yeah in a stark contrast to the roles played by the characters in the original donkey kong arcade game where dk is the main villain to overcome this time mario kidnaps him and who's out there to save him well it's none other than donkey kong jr the son of the original dk while it's strange looking at it now seeing mario as the villain i still think it's pretty cool to switch up the roles once in a while something they rarely if ever try today and this gave a natural opportunity to introduce a new marketable lovable protagonist character for the series with a popular appearance right well uh considering how this guy isn't too well known anymore this philosophy didn't quite pan out but why things started out hot with a main playable appearance in a game literally named after him with a sequel to follow called dk junior math showing nintendo had some faith in the character being a big deal in the future he would gain a supporting role in donkey kong for the game boy get cameo appearances and a couple punch out games and actually a playable spot in super mario kart one of only eight characters to do so this was as big of a push as a new character can get right up there with rosalina when she was first introduced but after all this things fizzled out and it came down to one key incident back on the snes the development studio rare was creating what would soon be the critically acclaimed donkey kong country and wart was potentially not the only character snubbed from this game dk junior was intended to be included in this game as a partner to donkey kong the problem though is rare wasn't too happy with the appearance of donkey kong jr they wanted to change his design an updated version of the design was conceived but nintendo thought the changes were too drastic and gave them an ultimatum either keep the original design for the character that nintendo made or the newly altered design would have to become his own character and well the rest is history this new design rare conceived would go on to be known as diddy kong a character that fans took a strong liking to becoming so popular to the point where he was the center of attention in the n64 title diddy kong racing like junior before him this time diddy would be getting his own game and from nintendo's perspective just like the wart situation there was only a need for one main donkey kong companion and junior wasn't gonna be it when it came time for mario kart double dash on the gamecube and nintendo was debating on who to include in the roster despite them reportedly originally planning for junior to be dk's partner with the success of diddy kong racing it made a lot more sense to include this character as donkey kong's partner in this environment unfortunately for junior though this decision would have a major ripple effect leading to the depressing state of the character that we discussed today hey at least he was in the audience in double dash that's something many wonder about the reasons why rare wanted junior's design changed and while i admit i prefer what diddy turned out to be i still don't think that the original design for the character was that off-putting or anything like that would this really have been their hilda dion to outright replace the character with someone that had no name value makes you wonder maybe it wasn't the design itself that was the problem maybe it's that they didn't think it was a help to donkey kong country's market ability and was actually a hindrance seems a bit counterintuitive to think but dk junior math which i brought up as a point of nintendo having faith in the characters one of their main mascots was actually a major failure this game was nintendo's hope to branch out into the educational game genre being released under that label on the nes performing so well that there would go on to be no other games released in the educational series ouch rare may have actually thought that this game's underperformance could have been due to consumers not connecting as well to the character's original design and if that was the case it's safe to say that their philosophy to change it certainly worked out just not so well for donkey kong jr the bulk of his appearances from this point onwards would mainly be for games he was either already in development for like mario tennis remakes of older stuff or the odd cameo appearance here and there nothing major though safe to say he's not erased from history after all this though even though some may want to make that claim but completely rejected for another character absolutely i doubt he has much hope to regain his spot in the future either unfortunately for his fans if there are donkey kong junior fans out there i'm sure there's a couple of you while someone like wart i could realistically see as a sub boss and a mario odyssey 2 kingdom or something in that vein dk jr's role as donkey kong's main buddy is now gone and in terms of his role as the baby version of dk well he also made an entirely new character for that and his most recent appearance which was in mario kart tour another game where everyone basically gets in he was listed as quote donkey kong jr snes even further cementing that this guy is a character of the past not a character of the present so is that it some of the most noteworthy cases of mario characters being forgotten aren't completely erased from history are they even nintendo can't let them go as much as they want to try so roth back with the clickbait again guys way to go you got scammed well that would be the case had it not been for these guys the koopa kids when you think of mario villains the classic characters like bowser the koopalings and many others may come to mind but these guys you don't see him very often why is this though what's the real reason that the koopa kids are never seen anymore to begin let's go to the first game of the mario party series in which the koopa kids make their first appearance there are seven of them and they appear in the final board of the game eternal star in which the player stars are stolen and you have to take on the koopa kids in order to get them back a decent role in the game for sure but one with seven villain slots that seem to have been primed for an appearance of the koopalings to fill they were a recurring set of seven villains by this point that were known by the fan base it would make sense to put them here right but they were likely omitted because this was an n64 game and making seven unique character models for this one purpose would have been much more difficult compared to one simple model repeated seven times not the best origin for a character this still wasn't the biggest deal to the fan base though since it's clear that these characters were experimental and it was the late 90s where we were still getting core cast members replaced in the series quite frequently they could have simply been one of the several one-off characters like boom boom at the time who had only appeared in mario 3 up until that point some figured we may not see the koopa kids in games ever again but others really started to believe that the koopa kids would be closely associated with this new spin-off title and its potential sequels which is exactly what happened with all this confusion surrounding the characters their next appearance came in the sequel to mario party mario party 2 just a year later there are smaller groups of koopa kids that work together in this game one of them hosts aboard and a single koopa kid appears on every single board in the game where they'll take five coins from you when you pass them or give you five coins if you're lucky things were looking brighter for them here since they didn't appear in the group of seven this time around this meant that any worries about them getting dropped when nintendo decided to get their act together and make 3d models for the koopalings have been completely eviscerated they were fulfilling their own role right now a completely original spot combine that with them being referred to as baby bowsers in the north american release of the first mario party known as mini bowsers in europe and mini koopas in japan since bowsers called king koopa over there if the koopalings were a large group of the koopa family offspring we finally had the koopa kid as the main guy they appeared in mario 3 where they run a shop and ran some mini games and it was fun to see them in there but when we got to the gamecube era the best and worst happened for these characters with no home console main series mario game being released for a while the hype was building behind super mario sunshine in 2002 we got this new game which saw the debut of another child for bowser known as bowser jr again like in the first mario party some uncertainty arose upon the reveal of this character we didn't know if this would be the quote unquote real son of bowser considering the koopalings and koopa kids had already been revealed prior to junior's debut but as we now know bowser jr saw major success and a prominent role in the series we see this character all the time and i don't see that slowing down but this big push from the big end came at a cost a cost which saw the up and coming koopa kick characters vanish into thin air but we're getting ahead of ourselves a bit later on in the same year that sunshine came out we got the first mario party release of the gamecube being mario party 4. like in all previous titles of the series koopakit appears in this one and for the most part acts in a similar way to how he did in the past however there have been some major upgrades for him such as him appearing in the final battle with bowser remember that for later and he's actually playable in the beach volley folly minigame which marks the first time that they've been playable in some form in the mario party series this is big stuff and seemingly big things are in store for this character in mario party 5 the koopa kid is now a full-on playable character and there are even new variations of them introduced being the red blue and green colored ones this makes the koopa kin himself seem even more important as this establishes for the first time that there's a main one that has several other variations instead of there being no main one this prominence continued into mario party 6 where they're now fully playable in all game modes and while they aren't playable in mario party advance they do make an appearance but after that is where some drastic changes really begin to take place in mario party 7 koopa kid stalls his own space on the board but in this game he's no longer playable in any way unlike the previous three home console mario party games and while at the time it may not have seemed like these characters were on a major decline the fact that they appear in no games after this being completely removed from the mario party series for the first time ever meant something happened something serious bringing us back to what i was talking about before in terms of the mario series previously not having a fully established lore and complete cast this still held true to some extent for the release of super mario sunshine it appears that a while after sunshine released and saw some success that it was decided within nintendo that bowser jr would become the main son of bowser and the existence of other koopa kids would make it complicated for the primarily younger demographic of the mario series to understand like wart and donkey kong jr before him if nintendo really wanted bowser jr to be the next big thing then they would have to do anything possible to ensure that this was the message conveyed and this included the scrapping of the koopa kid characters now some of you may be wondering why they still appeared throughout most of the game kubera after sunshine released and i believe that this is because of game development time it would have likely taken a few years to develop each of the mario party games on the gamecube and since hudsonsoft was handling that and nintendo themselves was handling the development of sunshine the thought that bowser jr was going to be a very important part of the mario series likely wouldn't have been conveyed considering that this decision would have only been finalized a while after sunshine released this means that mario parties 4 5 6 and advance would have probably all been in their development phases before this time since they all released less than three years after sunshine if shigeru miyamoto wanted to spread the message to hudson soft about bowser jr being used instead of the koopa kid it probably would have been too late to do so for any of these four titles but by the time seven came out in late 2005 i think the message was conveyed concerning the diminished role of the koopa kids they probably decided not to entirely remove them at this point number one because it was on the same consoles the other three mario parties which contain these characters and the decision to do a slower phase out was probably for the best and number two there would have been more resources that needed to be used to develop a whole new model for bowser jr to incorporate him in the game if that was going to be done but by mario party 8 in 2007 when the series had a new console and bowser jr had already been included in another main series title on the ds it was finally time to scrap these characters in the eyes of nintendo by the time 2012 rolled around shigeru miyamoto cleared up some of the confusion that fans had about bowser's children saying that the current story is that the koopalings are not bowser's children and bowser jr is his only child number one this is why the koopalings didn't cause any problems when they were put into superstar saga nine years prior to the statement because the intention wasn't for them to be thought of as direct children of bowser as had been previously stated and instead just as higher ranking minions in the koopa troop number two this confirms that before there was another story concerning the children of bowser but it's now considered that bowser jr is his only child which is why nintendo is drastically distancing themselves from the koopa kids as to keep their current story consistent all this explanation still doesn't clear up how miyamoto became junior's mother though but if this all wasn't bad enough not only were they prohibited from appearing in any new mario party games and not having nintendo mention them at all in the future but something even worse would go on to happen for these characters when mario party the top 100 was revealed i was pretty excited to see some of my favorite classic mini games remastered not so much excitement for the new type of boards but excitement for the mini games definitely the final battle with bowser in this game is also a classic being reused from mario party 4 the one that i said to remember earlier in the video and the reason i said that was because the koopa kids were originally involved in this fight but were now replaced with bowser jr yes i'm serious i get that nintendo wants to stray away from this character to promote another but this is pretty ridiculous mario party the top 100 remade this boss fight and instead of being faithful to the original game they completely took out some of the main characters within it same thing happened in mario party superstars where junior takes the place of koopa kid in every single possible situation which ultimately summarizes his legacy as a mario character first being characters who are placed a spot so obviously intended for the koopalings to then have their new founded spot not only be replaced by bowser jr but having history be rewritten to do so that's what really happened to koopa kid and because of this most recent occurrence i don't think we'll be seeing any more mario party appearances of him ever again but throughout this video character after character story after story we've seen a common theme these characters have ranged from neglected to forgotten to completely erased from history all to simplify the series cast of characters and i think an interview surrounding paper mario the origami king can explain the real reasons for every instance like this many wondered why in recent paper mario games there haven't been any modifications to older characters like there were in the first couple games in the series there you'd see cooper goombella a caveman yoshi but now the ability for nintendo to modify known character concepts in this vein is completely gone there is no longer the ability for developers to change known character concepts too much for fear that their larger known image will be disrupted bombs are just mindless enemies who blow themselves up what you want one who's a pirate that has a dark tragic backstory get out of here we see this rule being pointed out now but i'd argue it's actually been phased in for a long time up until this point likely around the turn to success that nintendo would receive during the wii era while we all see nintendo as a success nowadays i mean how can you not the switch is selling like crazy setting new records faster than kirby star allies gameplay time there have been many periods where that has certainly not been the case we all immediately think to the wii u era because it was recent and a noticeable drop between the success of the wii and the switch things were certainly bad for the wii u but it looks that much worse being shoved between two insane successes for nintendo but before all of that we had one of the most ambitious eras that nintendo had gone through this being with the gamecube many fans clamor for gamecube titles to be added to the switch online service myself included and the main reason for that is because there are just so many classics on there which innovated their respective series in unique ways let's give luigi his own game and make it take place in a haunted ghost house mario's soccer game let's make it hardcore and completely change the tone of the series new 3d mario let's send him to a tropical island and add cut scenes into the story for the first time and add some blue coins too we all love that like nintendo shot many shots here many of which sunk but at the time many of them didn't we mostly tend to remember the good times through the lens of nostalgia but not quite everything on the gamecube was a smash hit and even the stuff that was didn't quite move the needle that much it hurts hardcore fans of the console when fans say this i know but it's just the truth for as great as super smash brothers melee double dash f-zero and metroid prime were they didn't get enough fans to buy the console and that's just the honest reality there was no gimmick to carry the success of the gamecube like motion control for the wii the software had to carry it and sometimes the more complicated concepts appeal to the existing fans of the series but fail to bring in a mass of casual players and here is where nintendo's key change begins do you think it's a coincidence that with the turn of the gamecube era to that of the ds and wii we saw a mass simplification to game concepts the new super mario brothers series saw massive success despite not having too much new from one entry to another focusing more on the addition of multiplayer fun rather than making the levels much more challenging mario kart wii had motion controls it was a natural fit and really accessible to a casual crowd game after game after game we saw more appeals to the casual player base actually pay off and isn't it funny that this is also the time that we saw donkey kong jr and koopa kid get completely dropped interesting that that never changed after nintendo had figured out what worked back in the day super mario bros was a simple game that sold a ton of copies because it was a fun platformer with a concept in characters that anyone could understand when we added more like wart sales went down when more unique character concepts kept getting introduced sales went down so when multiple characters were set to compete for the same role at this point in history nintendo had finally had enough of it and for as much as we may miss or not missed some of these characters sales have not gone down nintendo made two games with bowser jr side modes in it already they promoted the first release of mario kart 8 in large part on the ability to play as all seven koopalings these characters have legitimately helped make nintendo millions upon millions of dollars and in their minds if you still remembered koopa kid that would not have been able to happen please remember to download gemstone legends with the links to claim your special bonus of moralia we have a qr code on screen that will take you right there i'll see you next time and if you're new here don't forget to subscribe

Channel: Siiroth

Views: 829,836

Keywords: Nintendo, Mario, Siiroth, Smash, super mario, nintendo tried to erase them from history, forgotten mario characters, forgotten nintendo characters, the real reason why nintendo scrapped these mario characters, the real reason nintendo rejected these characters, mario characters that got erased from history, koopa kid, dk jr, donkey kong jr, wart mario, mario wart, mario controversy, controversial mario characters, these banned characters cost nintendo millions, new mario game

Id: FOHUQbeli3E

Length: 27min 21sec (1641 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 18 2022