A curious thought: Thought the fat frog called “Wart” has only technically been the last boss of one Mario game,
Super Mario Bros. 2, the process of remakes, reworkings and upgrades to the game's engine have quintupled Wart’s appearances.
In short:
- Doki Doki Panic
- Super Mario Bros. 2
- Super Mario USA (in Japan)
- The Super Mario All-Stars version of Super Mario Bros. 2
- Super Mario Advance
And that’s not counting cameos in
Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening or
Animal Crossing. The former is odd because it features him as “Mamu,” which was the character’s name in the original Japanese version of
Super Mario Bros. 2,
Doki Doki Panic. Presumably that version of the character should have been long forgotten by the time Nintendo cranked out
Link’s Awakening six year’s later. The matter is made more mysterious by the fact that both
Super Mario Bros. 2 and
Link’s Awakening take place in a setting that is later revealed to be the product of a dream. Odd stuff.
Now that I think about it, it’s also strange that all the
Super Mario media of my youth — the cartoons, the children’s books, etc. — featured Wart fairly prominently, as
Super Mario Bros. 2 had just come out at the time and, from a marketing perspective, it probably seemed like a sure bet that the character would continue in
Mario mythos on equal footing to that other big bad, Bowser. But Wart never again appeared in a “new” game and has been all but forgotten now.
A kid today looking at those some low-grade cartoons and books would probably be confused as to who the frog thing is.
