![]() You could even say that Wario’s greed, established in Super Mario Land 2 because he steals Mario’s castle, is a warped version of Mario’s need to collect coins.īoth Spike and Wario were created by the same person, Hiroji Kiyotake, who worked as a graphic designer or character designer not just for Wrecking Crew but also for Duck Hunt, Kid Icarus, Metroid, Famicom Wars, and Super Mario Land 2, not to mention and all the Game Boy sequels that made Wario the lead character. I think of Spike as being a test run for a character who is summed up by the phrase “looks like Mario but bad.” When Wario debuts, he is also “looks like Mario but bad,” but he’s less a doppelganger than an obvious exaggeration of Mario - fatter, with a wilder mustache and an even more distinctive nose. Their noses all stick out the same number of pixels. The illustration for Spike suggests he might have a longer, beakier nose than either Mario or Luigi, but in-game that’s not the case. They have almost identically colored sprites, with only Spike’s beard to set him apart. It’s probably a result of the limitations of pixel art more than anything, but there’s not all that much to distinguish him from Mario on screen. For one thing, Spike looks a great deal like Mario. What’s interesting about Spike debuting this far back in Mario’s video game career is that he serves as a sort of prototype for Wario, the much more famous bad anti-Mario who’d debut seven years later, in 1992’s Super Mario Land 2. The vibe of this game reminds me of Mario’s Game & Watch days, when Mario and Luigi performed all manner of manual labor jobs, like working at a cement factory, not that they ever spend all that much time doing plumbing in the actual games. In some levels, Mario has to maneuver around Foreman Spike in addition to generic enemies. This, of course, is all a throwback to the 1985 NES video game Wrecking Crew, which has Mario scrambling around a construction site in a way that’s somewhat reminiscent of Donkey Kong, only the objective here is to destroy certain elements of each level - bricks, ladders, what have you - in order to advance to the next. Because a lot of B-tier Mario characters were not announced as appearing in the film, it was pretty wild to consider that the first major adaptation in thirty years would include this guy, whom few fans were even aware existed. I wasn’t expecting that, but I was even more surprised by the news that Foreman Spike would be included in the movie, apparently being voiced by stand-up comedian Sebastian Maniscalco. It was a September 2021 Nintendo Direct that announced the film’s voice cast, surprising many people with news that Chris Pratt would voice Mario. These were issues I was concerned with as well, but given my affection for underloved, underserved Super Mario characters, I was most interested to see how this nearly forgotten Wrecking Crew villain would figure into the story. ![]() Longtime fans had a lot to be concerned about, from Chris Pratt’s controversial take on Mario to whether the film would “girlboss” Princess Peach in a way that betrayed her character in the games. I saw it the Wednesday it opened in Los Angeles, and among the people rushing out to see it, I was probably unique in that I was curious to see how it handled Foreman Spike. Even so, Nintendo is being much more careful it seems.This past week, the new Super Mario Bros. An extended cut of the movie was recently released online. Due in part to its deviations from the source material, the movie was a flop at the box office along with its critical failures, though it has since found a cult following in the years since. The video game franchise was infamously developed as a universally-panned live-action movie in 1993 starring Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo as reimagined versions of Mario and Luigi. Perhaps going animated will bring about better results for a theatrical Super Mario Bros. The comedian is also currently filming an untitled movie directed by Ray Romano which stars Maniscalco alongside Romano, Laurie Metcalf, and Sadie Stanley. He has also appeared in several movies over the past few years, including Tag, Green Book, and The Irishman, and did voiceover work for The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature. Maniscalco is a comedian and actor who has released five comedy specials between 2009-19. Wearing overalls similar to Mario and Luigi but with sunglasses and a beard, the foreman vanished from Nintendo games until his comeback in the Japan-only title Wrecking Crew '98 on Super Famicom, this time working as a builder for King Bowser. During the bonus stages, Foreman Spike competes against Mario in collecting coins. With players controlling Mario and Luigi, the goal is to break down all walls at a demolition site. Foreman Spike first appeared in the 1985 title Wrecking Crew.
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